A Woman Clothed in Words (5 page)

•

your eyes are gemstones

set deep in the metal of your face

are tourmaline

are lapis lazuli

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falling on gravel

•

my knees scratched I feel

small pointed stones entering

into my palm’s skin

drawing a bloody pattern

•

I know the stones are reaching for the bones

pushing themselves inwards

biting in.....trying to unite

with what is theirs

theirs is the hard part of me

....the knobbles and shafts

....and small tarsals

•

I will cheat you rock and inside

skeleton of earth

with potent berries and mushrooms

my bones will melt

and when at last

I go down into the dirt

I shall be crumbled loam

and a mulch of skin

and leafy hair

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“There was
an old woman lived under a hill

and if she’s not gone she’s living there still”

•

Adam standing on the mound’s top

his arms outstretched, his arms

stretched in accusing gesture

He is railing on God The west

seawind blowing his beard about

his hair a tangle of knots and wisps

•

And I crouching beneath

having been named a witch more than once

and a whore many times more than that

I am keeping quiet planning to have him

again if I can.....I let the knowledge

of myself rise up through the stony

earth and grass as though

I were a wisp of smoke rising through a chimney

but there is no easy aperture

I have to twist myself out

round and between the snaggy

roots of harebell and knapweed,

all those plants that cling to a dry

hillside where there are no trees.

•

He knows I am here beside him

but cannot see me, he looks to the west and the east

“I’m here I’m here, nearer than you are to

yourself” I cry out within him and he begins

searching carefully in his pockets for hairs

and nail parings and other wicked fragments

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I dreamt I was brutally mated

to a great brush wolf

•

our children – all male –

were dogfaced men

affable and neatly dressed

•

when they greeted each other

they did not whine or howl

but tore at each other’s faces

with blunt domestic fangs

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the first day of summer

you and I decide on a jour
ney

we will walk across the prairie

from the parkland to the mountains

•

together we stride from town to town

laboured with backpacks

fighting the heat and the wind

•

which blows between us

separating your voice from my ears

your lips move

faintly in a white cloud of grit

you turn towards me

and the wind’s sharp edge cleaves you

your halves perfectly cut as though by acid

fall side by side

onto the tough grass

•

they are full of seeds and green pith

the heat dries your pith

and shrivels it at once the wind

blows away your feathery seeds

your husk is nibbled by gophers

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here in a cabbage-tainted flat

time celebrates
itself as minutes, as days

there are mice nibbling at the wainscot

cockroaches climb the slop pail

•

within doors

within doors at last

we, who have spent our years

bent in the bright fields

or trudging over snow

from fence to far fence,

sit behind dusty windows

our faces even now not quite faded

from the lofty open sky

•

on the spread table

lies the bread in its cradle

of fluted paper

two cups of soup

thin as blood, red as wine

a fish with a lemon backbone

and olive eyes

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as you well know

I come from the city

was born in this acre of quiet

this very centre

shut away from the press of people

the clatter and the roar

•

soot blackens the walls of my garden

even the pits of the cherries are grimy grey

in my garden we sit together

eating the smoke of the city

•

I explain how all this soot

is good for the roses

“see how they climb up

over the arch” I say

“and how their blossoms

heavy with dirty rain

hang down from the trellis all summer”

and then I tell how they spring

from the cold and yellow clay

where their roots curl around

ancient blades and shards

•

lately I’ve heard that people are leaving

the city, escaping into the hills

evenings they stand in the wild grass

watching our distant glow

as though the streets were burning

•

as I stand alone in the dusk expecting

the whirr of wings, hundreds of

birds descending to roost in my trees,

I think I can hear in the distance

the sound of feet running

up and down the rows of small houses

and the sound of your voice

•

“the streets are burning” you cry

“the streets are burning”

•

you cry

Poetry Workshops – Some Practical
Advice

Poetry is the completest form of utterance.

– I.A. Richards

In a recent interview, Tess Gallagher speaks of the ’60s and early ’70s as a time of innocence when poetry groups were springing up everywhere: a time when thorough workshopping of each piece of work was important to every serious aspiring poet.

I was struck by the nostalgic quality of her comments. Are we now in the post-workshop era? Can we never again experience that sacred family, the closely knit poetry group? Are these groups and workshops of no more use or interest to the young poets of the ’80s?

It is true that the proliferation of small magazines has made it easier for the beginner to be published. It is true that some editors of some magazines seem to be taking their work more seriously. No longer is it enough to slap a few mimeographed pages together and call it a poetry magazine. The best among our editors have become the father/mother confessors of literary writers. Advice is given. Revisions are called for. This is a very important development which should do a great deal to improve the quality of Canadian writing, but it cannot take the place of that group of friends and fellow conspirators who used to demand revision and reconstruction before the work was sent out. The emphasis has been taken away from writing and put on publishing. I do firmly believe that what is important is writing the stuff, understanding what’s going on in your head, in the poem, in the poetry of your fellow workshoppers, in the literature of your time and language and place.

As a veteran of poetry groups and workshops, I feel that I am in a position to give a little practical advice to those just starting out. You’ll probably begin by calling up all the people you know of that write poetry and invite them to a meeting next Thursday at the public library. Well, experience has taught me that library space is not the best space for a poetry meeting. Still worse is university space. This is likely because the non-academic writers are intimidated by the learned surroundings, or they may feel, as I do, that Canadian poetry has suffered a great deal from the fact that so many of our poets are academics. What you want is a fair mix of ages, of interests, of backgrounds. Your own living room is probably the best place to meet; there your busdriver/waitress/doctor/grandmother poets can feel at home. Your professor/student poets will like it too. And when you get hungry or thirsty you are within easy reach of a pot of tea or a plate of cookies. Reading poetry is hungry and thirsty work, and it’s hell being caught in a bare room at the public library with only a water fountain between you and starvation, and with the disapproving faces of the Queen and Prince Philip staring down at you from an off-white wall.

The size of the group is important too. Three is a group, it’s true, but a better size is six to nine people. More than eight or nine will mean you’ll be at it until four in the morning if you want to give each poet a chance to read.

I have just a few more suggestions. The first is to avoid spite. Snide remarks won’t improve anyone’s poetry and may ruin your group. The second is to be gentle with newcomers and respect their shyness. You do not have to be dishonest to be kind. First tell the beginning poet what you like about her/his work, then explain how you think it could be improved. Next encourage the beginner to criticize your own work. Listen carefully; you are likely to learn something from a fresh, unbiased mind.

So much for the practical; and good luck with your poetry group when you’ve got it going.

I’d like to end on a more tentative note. In spite of enthusiasts like myself, poetry workshops are neither as easily organized nor as useful as they once were. Our way of looking at poetry is changing. Poetry itself is changing. The time of the spare bare poem is almost past. Poems are becoming longer, more complex, less personal. It is not enough any more to cut, cut, cut until only the bones of the poem remain. More diffuse and explanatory poetry is coming into vogue. This kind of work is much more difficult to criticize. It will be important to bring copies of work so that members may read it several times before they make their comments. As poems get longer groups will have to become smaller. They will then become less varied and perhaps less useful to the members. However, just because things are getting more difficult is no reason to give up workshopping our poetry. We shall just have to work harder at our comments and criticisms. For in the world of the complex ’80s poem we’ll need the help of our fellows more than ever.

(1981)

Excerpts from Prairie Mass

by Bob Haverluck and Anne Szumigalski

Editor’s note: Prairie Mass
was performed three times in Anne’s lifetime, each time in Manitoba, with changes on each occasion. Only in the third performance, for instance, did a reading of her “Story of the Heartberry” (found later in this book) replace a telling of the Biblical story of Joseph and Mary.

The three excerpts published here found their place amid many other elements of an untraditional Christian service, from an opening medley of old Western songs and hymns to a brief play by Bob Haverluck, and from readings of work by other Canadian poets (F.R. Scott, John Newlove, Andrew Suknaski) to Cree stories and the Welsh hymn “Guide
Us, O Thou Great Jehovah.”