Atwater Library, March 2010

I've mentioned, and written about, the Atwater Library before. This skylight, above a stairwell that allows you to look down from the second floor to the main desk on the first floor, has always held a fascination for me. I have always appreciated the aesthetic quality of the skylight, the repetition of the windows, and even the electric light hanging from the middle of the skylight. On the second floor walls adjacent to the open area that the sky light is above, are photographs of the original founders and administrators of the libray, back from when it was called the Mechanics Institute and located in a different part of Montreal. The library is an important part of our English-speaking history and presence in this city.

Vehicule in Vancouver

A few weeks ago I was doing some research at UBC's Rare Books & Special Collections and University Archives. Part of this research was reading Brian Fawcett's "NMFG," an acronym for "no money from the government." NMFG, a magazine of poetry and poetics, ran from 1976 to 1979.

Vancouver was especially important back in the 1970s, that's where contemporary poetry was happening in Canada. This is no longer the case and I suspect there is no single place in Canada that is the center for new and important poetry in this country. I remember visiting with Richard Sommer, who was a poet and had been one of my professors at Sir George Williams University, after he and his family had visited Vancouver and been influenced by the poetry scene there; Vancouver, truly, seemed like a Mecca as compared with Montreal at that time. Richard was a little bit of Vancouver in Montreal, someone who made a significant impression on me back then.

I need to qualify these comments on NMFG and the Vancouver poetry scene by saying that NMFG represents only one aspect of the Vancouver poetry scene back in the second half of the 1970s; there were other groups, other poets, other poetry scenes in Vancouver. My impression has always been that Vancouver was a pretty open and welcoming place for poets. It has always seemed to me to support and welcome poets, support a literary community, and not try to drive poets away. I can't say the same for Montreal, where a literary community exists but it is fragmented and divisive. I remember receiving a letter from bpNichol commenting on this. This is also one reason why the Vehicule Poets were so important in Montreal, we had no single aesthetic commonality but we were inclusive and supportive to each other.





I noticed two items of interest in NMFG's back issues that I want to mention here: first is a short message from Artie Gold, suggesting that the gay content in the journal was detracting from commentary on poetry. Good old Artie, you wouldn't make this comment in today's politically correct world. But you also wouldn't get away with the "boy's club" of poetry found in NMFG; check out how many women poets are published in its pages, in many issues it's none. These intellectual men running NMFG come across as embarrassingly mysognynistic. As well, another comment, while American poets found a welcome home in Vancouver back then some of them don't seem to have thought Canadian poetry worth their time. I wonder if some of these same people will one day be seen as little more than long-term visitors to Vancouver, as footnotes, and not really part of the poetry tradition in Canadian Literature? Maybe someone will address this issue in Anvil Press's forthcoming Making Waves: Reading BC and Pacific Northwest Literature, edited by Trevor Carolan at the University of the Fraser Valley.

The second item is Brian Fawcett's review of the first anthology of English poetry in Montreal (English Montreal Poetry of the 1970s) published by Vehicule Press back in the mid-1970s. I know the anthology very well, I taught it for several years to my college-level Canadian Literature students, and I know personally many of the poets in the anthology. The review misses the point of the anthology which was a gathering of what was happening in English poetry in Montreal back then; we'd had years of the poetry community growing smaller and smaller, and finally there was a kind of Renaissance going on mainly due to our efforts at Vehicule Art Gallery. The anthology's editors (Norris and Farkas) were fairly democratic in choosing who would be in it, and it was the first evidence in print that Montreal poetry was coming back to life. You might trace the more open and inclusive aspects of the present-day poetry scene in Montreal back to this anthology, it was one of the signs that things had begun to change for the better. We'd had Dudek and Layton's public quarrel before Layton left for Ontario and Louis seemed to stop making public statements until he wrote the introduction to my first book, The Trees of Unknowing (Vehicule Press, 1978). As well, the separatist movement was growing in Quebec and the English-speaking community was being increasingly marginalized. The Vehicule Poets, beginning around 1974, were the first poets in Montreal at that time who were awake to contemporary poetry whether in the States or in the rest of Canada; however, NMFG couldn't have known any of this.

A Store Window in Vancouver (three)

This magical window is located near Milestones Restaurant on West 4th Avenue in Vancouver. Things float in the air, is that a photograph of the Queen Mother, and flowers give some colour.

A Store Window in Vancouver (two)

A Store Window in Vancouver (one)

"Each day and each night"

2010

Each night in each dream,
each day God speaks to me,
Each day I open a door
through which comes
sunlight & greet the presence
of the Holy Spirit—
Each night in darkness
I enter a world
parallel to this,
Each day and each night
my heart opens,
a door or window,
through which comes
starlight, moonlight, sunlight—
Each night I am visited by spirits,
by the ancients,
by ancestors;
Each day I walk
these streets, visiting
the homes of spirits,
the streets they know;
Each day and each night
we are a presence
in the dream world.

4 March 2000

Chronology and notes

August 1999: Aquarian Symbols described on shamanic journeys in Vancouver; I had read the Sabian Symbols several months before. September – October 2000: Astral journeys to visit CZ in Vancouver. Fall 2001: A Jungian event, a shamanic walk in the Plateau in Montreal; what a nightmare! I was exposed to a dark and negative atmosphere; everything went wrong; later, we ate in a restaurant and the food was cold, served on a cold plate; we returned to the car and it had a flat tire... dark, cold, hungry, flat tire... the others had a great time! Notes for a shamanic walk: begin with a question for which you want an answer. It might be something regarding a life decision or something spiritual, for instance. A shamanic walk is a kind of I Ching, a random response relying on a synchronistic or chance suggestion of insight. The walk gives meaning to what might otherwise seem random and meaningless--a walk in a city neighbourhood not regularly visited--or taken for granted. Let things that you see and experience on the walk speak to you. Be open, be conscious, to interactions with other people, or whatever else presents itself to you. Take, perhaps, forty-five minutes for the walk. Think about what happened during the walk, does it reflect back to you something about yourself and your present situation? The shamanic walk is a mirror of yourself, but it can also be a way to find answers to questions that are important to you. 16 November 2001: Don Evans lecture on Shamanism at the C.G. Jung Society of Montreal. I also read Josephine’s shamanic journeys: these did not precede the Aquarian Symbols, they followed them; it opened the door to shamanic journeying, they showed what could be seen on a journey and what can be seen indicates how it is done. The key to a journey is to have a question that gives the journey a focus, otherwise it can be quite pointless. Spring 2002: Tim Greene speaks to the Spiritual Science Fellowship conference in Montreal; a reading with Harley Monte who encourages forming a shaman centre, as he does in our yearly meetings, but without success. Spring 2003: Read Michael Harner on Shamanism; heard Wessleman lecture on his experiences and read his books; attended Harley Monte’s shaman workshop at the SSF conference. Note: Shamanism, is mankind's first expression of spirituality; there are common things in all shamanism: all link spirit and the world; they describe the seven directions of space: east, west, north and south, up, down, and within. 23.04.2003: Poem written while dreaming: Where does it end? In circles. When does it end? In your last breath. When does it end? In circles. Where does it end? In your last breath. 24.04.2003: Family history is a quest, requiring detective work, but it isn't my life journey: the quest was to find the ancestors, the spirits, and to list them in genealogical order, in a Tree of Family Life, to acquire information on them, their dates of birth, marriage, and death, to find anecdotes about their lives that bring them to life. When the veil between this world and the other world is at its thinnest, the ancestors will find some way in which to contact you, but it won't necessarily be the way you expect it to happen. The wounded become healers. Mundane experiences become a conduit to the spiritual dimension. At the bottom of all of this is the experience of the Divine.

Two Poems from The Compass

The Clothes of the Dead

I have worn the clothes of the dead

a second cousin's sweater,

already frayed when he died, I wore it

another dozen years;

my stepfather's scarves--

blue wool from Scotland,

white silk, and a yellow

Viella shirt. These were their

second skins I pulled on

inhabiting the shape of their

old clothes for years before

the clothes wore out;

days governed by clothes

unfolded and worn,

then thrown into a laundry hamper

or balled and kicked across

the floor. Now those clothes

are gone—eaten by moths,

torn into holes and rips

not even good as rags. I wore

my own clothes

like the clothes of the dead:

brown corduroy trousers, a sweater

shapeless and small even when new;

I pulled it over my head and assumed

the facial expressions of an old man--

these clothes aged me

into someone twice my age

sexless and afraid of life thinking

of retirement and paying off a mortgage;

the penalty of a marriage of lies

held together by threads,

thread-bare of love

a wardrobe

of secrets and despair.

Today I burned six shirts,

two sweaters and trousers:

I burn the past out of my

life, return to living

from dying, take what

I have been,

clothes that made me

someone I didn't want to be

or someone I was but never liked,

clothes that are days and months and years

of a life I gave up

to fear and despair.

Now those clothes are gone:

ashes of clothes

ashes of former selves

ashes of time and space

ashes of words and notebooks

ashes of thoughts

and flesh and blood

ashes of one who surrendered.

Two Tales

1. The Well

She wakened the sleeping giant,

now he struggled to escape

the bottom of a well

where once he lay curled and fetal,

half-submerged in mud.

He could see her above gesturing to him,

holding her forefinger and thumb

together in a circle, then

her hand opened revealing

a message only he could see

written on her palm. He climbed

the cold stone wall of the well,

back pressed against the opposite

wall; gradually he

mounted the well

stopping only to groan

and scratch words on the stones

with his finger nails.

She held out her hand;

oh, she had helped him

all along this journey. Now he

was climbing over the lip

of the well, afraid

of what he might find above.

He remembered the long

fall below him, the

seemingly bottomless well,

the circle of black water so far

below that should he fall

his bones and spirit

would be broken, he would

disappear into the nothingness

of the well's great darkness.

2. The Amphora 

Retrieved from sea-bottom,

caught in a fisherman's net,

two ancient amphoras

containing honey, still liquid

and golden after night's darkness.

Decorating one amphora are images

of men and women in positions of love:

fondling breasts, couplings

of various fashions, the man

between the woman's legs,

the woman eased on top

of the man, the man

from behind thrusting with

hands beside her hips or on

her buttocks. Still other

images of perfection on

the second amphora:

the bee-keeper at the hive,

the farmer in his field

standing in full sunlight

admiring the season's crops;

not far away

lovers transform themselves

into God and Goddess, lose

the illusion of separateness

and return us wholly

to ourselves awakened to love.

The Compass

Here's the poem referred to at CNNGO. 

 ________________________________________ 

The Compass 

On the four corners of the bed 

the body becomes a compass 

describing the direction of passion. 

Months of desire arrive at this destination, 

rocking on a single almost silent wave 

we are sheltered by darkness. 

The body is a compass needle; 

you turned me from east to west 

awoke a sleeping giant that moves 

between your mouth and breasts and legs; 

the room illuminated by static electricity 

thrown off by our bodies. 

How many decades did I sleep 

waiting only for you; 

I lust after you in all 

the directions of space. 

Meeting at the airport 

your foot touching my leg 

beneath the restaurant table, 

we secretly entered an empty 

banquet hall where the caterers 

chattered and poured drinks behind 

a wall partition then quickly leaving 

we found a deserted hallway of open 

office doors where we embraced. 

All the others in my life fell away, 

I was ready to abandon my old life 

for you, for the touch of your hand and mouth, 

the apple red and delicious cut in half that I eat. 

Tied to the four corners of love 

as to a bed which becomes a compass, 

I find you on your stomach, on your back, 

in the morning lying pressed against me. 

It is not possible to return to sleep now, 

it is not possible to forsake your touch 

and love, black lace, fingers, wetness, 

your mouth, words. The compass needle 

turns finding north switched to east 

and west to south, night becomes morning; 

nothing remains as it was. You pointed my life 

in a new direction, towards a corner of the world 

only dreamt of before. Outside the sun is red 

descending behind a row of trees, 

shadows fade into the other unexplored 

regions of night. 

 (Published in The Compass, Empyreal Press, Montreal, 1993)

The Compass in Hong Kong

You never know where your work will show up in our still "new" internet age. Someone in Hong Kong found my poem, "The Compass," the title poem of my book The Compass (1993) and inscribed it on a real compass. Someone else wrote this article on finding a compass with my compass poem on it, and this article was published by CNNGO, located Hong Kong, an affiliate of CNN News. The complete article is below:

-------------------------



An unlikely object of desire found at the Cat Street Market

An engraving on an antique compass spawns a search for answers. Thankfully, a reader comes to the rescue

We saw a beautiful antique compass at the Cat Street Market, which we got for HK$19, thinking it would make a great Christmas gift for a relative. However when we looked inside the cover of the compass and read the long engraving, we thought otherwise.

We've typed out part of the engraving here as we thought you might enjoy it:

“On the four corners of the bed the body becomes a compass describing the direction of passion. Months of desire arrive at this destination, rocking on a single almost silent wave we are sheltered by darkness.

"The body is a compass needle; you turned me from east to west awoke a sleeping giant that moves between your mouth and breasts and legs; the room illuminated by static electricity thrown off by our bodies.

How many decades did I sleep waiting only for you; I lust after you in all the directions of space. Meeting at the airport your foot touching my leg beneath the restaurant table, we secretly entered an empty banquet hall where the caterers chattered and poured drinks behind a wall partition then quickly leaving we found a deserted hallway of open office doors where we embraced. All the others in my life fell away."

We were left wondering. How on earth could this have ended up on Cat Street and what kind of romantic souls with a penchant for bondage play could have possibly owned it? A pair of star-crossed lovers forced to live in separate continents, perhaps? Or an epic extra-marital affair between a poet and his muse? Something mundane like a member of the Cathay Pacific mile high club and a mistress from Lockhart Road.

Thankfully, CNNGo reader rgucci came to the rescue, pointing out to us that the engraving is actually from a poem by Stephen Morrissey, aptly titled "The Compass." We feel a wee bit silly that our literary knowledge didn't extend that far. If you want to read the full poem, or any other of Morrissey's works, click here.

We wonder now whether the author is happy his poem has made it to the new antiques of Hong Kong's Cat Street.

The eclectic market sells everything from Mao memorabilia to sex compasses. The Cat Street Market is located on Upper Lascar Row in Sheung Wan. It is between Lok Ku Road and Hollywood Road.

The street is also called 'mo lo gaai' (with 'gaai' pronounced as 'guy') in Cantonese by residents in the neighborhood and is how it should be referred to when asking for directions to the market.

The Outlook and other gates

There are archetypal images everywhere we look, including these gates leading to expensive homes in Vancouver. A gate is an opening, but the gate is strong, large, protective of what is inside. The psyche resonates to the archetype of the gate, it isn't just a gate to a home, it is a gate to something else, some psychic content that has value for us. But what is this value? What is it behind the gate? It can be ominous or it can be liberating, but it isn't neutral. It is something important to us. But at what level of importance? Well, it can be materialistic but that's doubtful. You can find material wealth on this side of the gate. You may begin with the materialistic, but you end up with the spiritual. We're being kept from what is behind the gate. It is something more like inner peace, or self-discovery, or some information that will liberate us from whatever it is that is holding us back, keeping us in stasis.

The "mission" is to penetrate, or venture, or gain access into whatever is behind the gate. That is the first part of this mission. The mission is a quest, and when we enter through the gate, however that may be accomplished (maybe just ring the door bell and the gate will swing open) then the adventure continues, then we continue this mission of finding what is behind the gate, and we're doing this because it is some kind of a journey. This is the archetypal value of the gate. Any gate will do as an image of the gate.

There is also a gatekeeper, but we haven't yet seen him. He's there, somewhere, adding to the complexity of the journey. If you capitalize "Gatekeeper," then the word assumes a different value, it has a more sinister meaning. Then it is personified; who is the Gatekeeper? Now we have at least five things: we have what is on this side of the gate; we have the gate; we have the Gatekeeper; and we have us looking at the Gate, questioing something about our situation in the world and what is behind the Gate. We also have a narrative about all of this. And now we have a myth; now we've given birth to a mythological perspective of our lives, and in some sense it all came from this one observation of a gate.

I hope this explains something of my interest in archetypal images. A gate is just a gate until it assumes some psychic value, and then it works (as poetry works) simultaneously on several levels of complexity. This is a simple thing to understand but until we make the leap into archetytpal thinking, we are missing the other levels on which thinking, images, archetypes, symbolism, poetry, and mythology can work.

Vancouver (three)

Taken outside where I am staying on the UBC campus.

Trees in Vancouver (two)

Taken as one approaches the Student Union building at UBC.

Trees in Vancouver (one)

Trees on the UBC campus.

Montreal Goddesses

This old photograph of a semi-naked woman was found in a jewellry store window on Monkland Avenue in Montreal. We had just had dinner with Laurence and Mary Hutchman at the St. Viateur Restaurant across the street; I had seen this photograph before but this was an opportunity to photograph it.

Crypt at Le Grand Seminaire, April 1998

This is the crypt at Le Grand Seminaire of the Sulpician Order, Atwater and Sherbrooke Street West, here in Montreal. My great great uncle, Father Martin Callaghan, is buried here, as well as his brother Father James Callaghan. Remains are disinterred after fifty years and then deposited in a small box seen in the bottom two photographs.