National Poetry Month

Jan Zwicky is a musician, philosopher and award-winning poet. In 1999, she won the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry for Songs for Relinquishing the Earth. Her most recent collection of poetry, Thirty-seven Small Songs & Thirteen Silences (GP, 2005), was nominated for the Pat Lowther Award and the Dorothy Livesay Prize. In May 2008, we published a hardcover new-edition of Zwicky's GG-nominated book of philosophy, Wisdom & Metaphor. Zwicky currently teaches philosophy at the University of Victoria.

Today's poem, 'Small Song in Praise of Ears' appears in Thirty-seven Small Songs & Thirteen Silences and Gaspereau Gloriatur: Volume 1 (GP, 2007).

from Gaspereau Gloriatur: Volume 1
Jan Zwicky

Small Song in Praise of Ears

Ah, my mushrooms,
my little fishes!
They laugh
when I tell them
you are beautiful.
Ah, my pink mice,
my infant trolls!

But who among them
has drunk dawn with its
thrush-scented air?
Who but you
has fingered silence,
that dark jewel
burning at night’s throat.

Copyright © Jan Zwicky, 2005

National Poetry Month

Harry Thurston was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and has lived most of his life in his native province. For the last 25 years he has travelled widely as a full-time freelance writer for many of North America's leading magazines, including Audubon, Canadian Geographic, Harrowsmith, and National Geographic. He has served as a contributing editor of Equinox since its inception in 1981. His work has garnered several national journalism awards. Thurston currently lives in Tidnish Bridge, Nova Scotia, with his wife and daughter. Among his most recent publications are Broken Vessel: Thirty-five Days in the Desert (GP, 2007), A Ship Portrait (GP, 2005) and If Men Lived On Earth (GP, 2000).

Today's poem, 'Chimney Swifts' appeared in Gaspereau Gloriatur: Volume 1 (GP, 2007) an anthology celebrating the first ten years of Gaspereau Press poetry.

from Gaspereau Gloriatur: Volume 1
Harry Thurston

Chimney Swifts

     for Catherine

Fly ash, swifts swirl counter-
clockwise around the chimney

like smoke returning
to the fire. Time’s arrow

is reversed. As we watch their flight
spiral into darkness,

we are growing younger,
back toward our births,

borne to our mother’s womb
on charcoal wings.

First one bravely dips
into the inky stack,

then the others
obediently funnel down

to the mystery of our origins.
A place still, dark, expectant.

Dusk, the show is over,
we file obediently toward our appointment

with sleep, resume our steady movement
no longer suspended by waking wonder.

In the morning, the flock
unwinds like clock springs,

flies up as if the night foreman
had returned, kindled old fires.

The swifts, winged carbon, spiral up,
clockwise at the dawn light,

setting the day in motion,
unfurling the future.

Copyright © Harry Thurston, 2007

National Poetry Month

Last spring, we published Late Nights With WIld Cowboys, a collection of poetry by Johanna Skibsrud. Johanna's poetry has appeared in various journals, including The Antigonish Review, Prism International, Lichen and Exile. Originally from Meadowville, Nova Scotia, she currently lives in Montreal. Earlier this month, Late Nights With Wild Cowboys was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.

from Late Nights With Wild Cowboys
Johanna Skibsrud

I'd be a Hopper Painting

It’s just this: that I’d like things not to end.
That I’d never get past morning if I could.

I’d be a Hopper painting. Freight Cars, Gloucester, 1928.

Or, if I had to be a Summer Evening, in 1947,
I wouldn’t be the girl. I’d be the
step by the rail of the porch; I wouldn’t
listen to the man.

Or wonder if the girl will turn; forgive him, and take him in.

Cape Cod Morning, 1950, for example: I wouldn’t be the woman
leaning from the well-lit room. Instead, I’d be the pane of glass
and look (but not like her, out to the yard and waiting—
for what, for whom),

inside and out at once, without desire.

I wouldn’t even be a shadow if it touches her. I wouldn’t risk it.
I would stay away from women.

I’d be the lamp on the bridge of the Manhattan Loop,
in 1928. The point where the sand meets the grass at the
Wellfleet shore. The red wheel that sits out back
of the Panet River place. The square of light on the wall.
The unseen bow of the yawl that is hidden by a
sudden swell, in 1935. I’d be the diagonal thrust of the
Shoshone cliffs, I’d be the bright rock face that’s set in
stark relief by a black shadow cast in 1941.

If, let’s say, on a summer’s evening a girl forgives a man,
might not she, in waking, find herself inside
another—a Cape Cod—morning,
three years gone, and set to staring there?

I’d be a Hopper painting if I could.
Even his women he paints solid.
But I wouldn’t be a woman.
I’d be Freight Cars, Gloucester, 1928.
I’d be the light on the slanted grass.

Copyright © Johanna Skibsrud, 2008

Anne Simpson in Burlington

Anne Simpson was in Burlington earlier this month for A Different Drummer's Inaugural Spring Poetry Brunch at the Burlington Golf & Country Club. Anne read her new collection of essays, The Marram Grass: Poetry & Otherness.