Home of Emile Nelligan on Laval Avenue in the Plateau (one)

Here is the home of the Quebec-born poet Emile Nelligan.
The spoken-word poet Ian Ferrier and his family live there today.

A Poet's Journey: Notes on Poetry and What it Means to be a Poet (1)

A Poet's Journey: on poetry and what it means to be a poet, 
Ekstasis Editions, 2019

My essay,  A Poet's Journey: Notes on Poetry and What it Means to be a Poet, was originally published online in Poetry Quebec. This is the one of the versions of this essay; the final version can be found in

A Poet's Journey: on poetry and what it means to be a poet,  Ekstasis Editions, 2019.
___________________________________

A Poet's Journey: Notes on Poetry and What it Means to be a Poet

My life long journey is writing poetry. The poet’s journey is a calling, a mission, a commitment to creating a body of creative work; it is at the core of the poet’s inner being. Being a poet is central to everything the poet does. If the poet is a person of spirit, then poetry is also an aspect of a life awake to the voice of the unconscious mind and an intimate conversation with the Divine. Every poet’s journey is different and unique to the individual poet, but all poets have the same mission: to write their poems and express something of their vision of life.
__________________________

I was born at the Montreal General Hospital at 6:23 p.m. on April 27, 1950. This was when the Montreal General was called The Western Hospital and was located in what is now the Montreal Children’s Hospital, near Atwater and Ste. Catherine Street, below Cabot Park, in downtown Montreal. It is a half block away from the old Montreal Forum, the former home of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team, and a bus terminus across the street from the Forum.
__________________________

Some of the factors that defined my existence include my parents, my brother, my extended family, my race, social class, genetic makeup, physical constitution, the historical time in which I was born, and my own free will. World War Two had ended five years before I was born and we were entering the decade of the 1950s. As well, astrologically, I was born with the sun in Taurus; the moon in Virgo; and my ascendant in Scorpio.
__________________________

When I was about fourteen years old—sitting in Miss Poole’s English literature class at Monkland’s High School in Montreal—John Steinbeck’s novella The Red Pony made a deep and lasting impression on me. In this book, Steinbeck describes one of his characters as feeling “collapsed inside.” This phrase from Steinbeck was my first memorable and profound literary experience. I understood Steinbeck’s description right away because at times I, too, felt “collapsed inside.” I recognized what he described as something I had experienced in life. This phrase opened several doors to my thinking. One door was to the power of literature—indeed, to the power of a single phrase—to communicate experiences or nuances of feelings that were familiar and moving to me. This made literature an experience that I was eager to repeat by writing poems of my own and by reading the work of other writers. The other door that opened was to psychological and spiritual truth; Steinbeck’s phrase identified how I felt in life and became so much a part of my reflection on my life’s journey that I am quoting from him over forty years later. I believe that this phrase from Steinbeck’s story also contributed to opening the door to my becoming a poet of confession and witness. I wanted to do in my poetry what Steinbeck did for me in this single phrase of his novella: to accurately describe in words an emotional state that I had experienced and to find order in the confusion of my inner being by describing it in words.
__________________________

Champlain Bridge

The Great Year: The Age of Aquarius, c. 2000 - 4000 A.D.

The Age of Aquarius


(c. 2000 - 4000 A.D.)

the world felt itself
at the beginning
of a great change
            --W.B. Yeats

Odysseus took out
Cyclopes' single eye
and for his deed
betrayed himself to louts
and thugs,
ten years in exile and travail.
Is this the dawning
of the Age of Aquarius?
We know the future
less well than ourselves,
ourselves hardly at all.
Like Odysseus we search for home:
waking on board ship to waves
slapping the bow and stern;
moonlight is silver
across foreign waters'
surface. Written on the ship
or starship
the name "Aquarius".
We think of brave Odysseus then
and know the sea,
know the stars and space
calling us with celestial music,
sounds we hear
late at night, when
darkness enfolds us in mystery.
In each port the gurus and gods
have gone, no more Christs
or Buddhas, only fanatics,
eyes on fire with millennial fever.
Still, wherever a harbour or farm
exists we find a home--
this awakens nostalgia
for the homes we had,
exiles and outsiders
on the earth.
Our world is ancient
as giant turtles
or redwood trees,
where electric current
is the new river of life and blood,
making the earth one port,
one living being
in cosmic outer space

The Great Year: The Age of Pisces, c. 100 B.C. - 2000 A.D.

The Age of Pisces

(c. 100 B.C. - 2000 A.D.)

Fish surrounded me
when I was a child,
even my mother's arms felt
wet and cold; I could taste
salt on my lips
and lay with eyes closed
and knew the world
was an alien place.
I was surrounded by fish
all of them with
faces resembling
mother, father,
wife, mother-in-law,
they were sharks, piranha,
salmon, cod, pickerel;
they swam
upstream in my veins
finding a pool of warm
liquid in my heart
where they flung themselves
violently--
what heartache they caused!
At night I prayed
to God, as though this life
would never end,
my prayers were
the sound of water running
in a river until
giant boulders
are worn smooth. Soon
I, too, went to sea
and became a fisherman;
in my small cabin
cluttered with books,
a copy of the Vinland
Map spread across
my desk, and over my bed
was an icon of Christ
in whose arms
I rested; His eyes
followed me
as I moved from one
corner of my cabin
to the next, sometimes
His lips moved
shaping something
resembling a smile,
and I could hear Him
speak, in ancient Aramaic,
words I could not
understand;
I threw sardines
to a school
of dolphins
that swam beside
my ship, then
caressed their sides,
their eyes filled
with compassion.
The sea
is a cathedral
whose ceiling
is the stars
and whose floor
the blue water--
sun or moon reflected
it is a mosaic
of silver tiles,
the kind seen
in Roman palaces,
dolphins frozen
in the ceramic waves.

A "Stop" sign ("Arret") becomes "Art" on Park Avenue

The Great Year: The Age of Aries, c. 2400 - 100 B.C.

The Age of Aries

(c. 2400 B.C. - 100 B.C.)

The moon
blood red,
not with
harvest, but
like the earth,
with blood;
peaceful men
became warriors:
battering rams
at the gates.
In the night sky
Mars is near
the horizon,
the same sky
on land
as on the sea
where Odysseus
sailed;
someone asks,
"how could the goddess
not depart?"
Clouds
gathered
across the moon,
only a white circle
distant
almost disappeared
from the sky--
the sun, too,
is hidden
and everywhere
men leave home
to wander
and impose
their will.

A truck load of animals on the way to the abattoir

Phillip's Square seen from The Bay in late May 2011

The Great Year: The Age of Taurus, c. 4550 - 2400 B.C.

The Age of Taurus

(c. 4550 - 2400 B.C.)

The bull silent
in an ochre coloured
field, genitals hanging;
the shadow
in moonlight
of one
whose body was a man's,
whose head was a bull's--
he fed on human flesh,
his image inhabits
every mirror--
our passions
are too great.
We each
have one song,
a chorus
repeating
our need for love;
oh, I am consumed
with betrayal
and darkness,
inhabiting
a labyrinth
and waiting
for my executioner
who even now
I hear trying to walk
silently around a corner
with a club and knife.

The Great Year: The Age of Gemini, c. 6480 - 4550 B.C.

Montreal, 1852

The Age of Gemini


(6480 - 4550 B.C.)

When Adam and Eve
left the Garden
the journey began,
and so we find ourselves
always searching--
our memories
held together
by darkness,
tawdry rope
grown weak, unravelling,
and unkind.
Somewhere a garden
exists, but it,
too, is a memory;
our fall
is endured
alone.
We have invented
the Wheel of Life,
erected sacred pillars,
know gods in Heaven
and gods in the Underworld.
We are centaurs,
half man half
horse, half
divine and still
we are wounded;
why can we heal
others but not
ourselves?
I fell asleep
and woke at middle age,
so many years spent
in deepening sleep
until released
as though the ground opened
beneath my feet
and nothing was ever
the same.
Betrayal and grief,
love and compassion,
now I am someone
I never was
before, one
with the soul's
wounding.

Champlain Bridge in April 2011 (two)

The Great Year: The Age of Cancer, c. 8640 - 6480 B.C.

The Age of Cancer

(c. 8640 - 6480 B.C.)

We do not live
in caves, we visit
them as holy places--
each seed planted
is a new beginning,
and this is our desire:
the moon, the first
seed, erotic and glowing
in the night sky;
who could not be in awe
seeing the full moon--
stars disappear
and our homes
cast shadows
across the path
to the edge
of a forest or
the ocean's shore--
we visit caves
as sanctuaries
returning us
to what is lost:
a cave, the moon,
a woman's womb.
Floods cleanse
the land,
the soul
that watery element.
We place water
in bowls, seeds
in woven baskets,
the dead in graves,
live in settlements,
count seeds, trade
amulets, bracelets,
necklaces, female figurines
the size of your thumb--
the grave a container
for men, women, children;
bones with patterns scratched
on them, bodies positioned
in the earth containing them.

Black Elk: Crying for a Vision

Every man can cry for a vision, or "lament"; and in the old days we all -- men and women -- "lamented" all the time. What is received through the "lamenting" is determined in part by the character of the person who does this, for it is only those people who are very qualified who receive the great visions, which are interpreted by our holy man, and which give strength and health to our nation.

The Sacred Pipe, Black Elk's account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux, recorded & edited by Joseph Epes Brown, (Baltimore, Penguin Books, 1971) p. 44.

The Great Year: The Age of Leo, c. 10,800 - 8,640 B.C.

Age of Leo

(c. 10,800 - 8640 B.C.)

A lion is born
in the heart,
he walks at night
enters dreams,
and in our throats
when we wake
we seem to hear
growls, roars.
This is not
a time for prayer
or worship
of any god,
but knowing
an inner light
illuminating
consciousness,
as the sun
moves across fields,
mountains, lakes,
from morning rising
to evening sunset.
Here is the birth
of Apollo, somewhere
else Dionysus is born,
somewhere else again
Hermes and Osiris.
This golden age
when we found
light above our
heads, within
our souls;
and always
a lion waiting
in the distance.

Champlain Bridge in April 2011

The Great Year: Age of Virgo, c. 13,000 - 10,800 B.C.

September 2016

The Age of Virgo

(c. 13,000 - 10,800 B.C.)

The months begin
and are like winter,
always longer than expected:
five months of winter, so you
long for it to end;
consider it
a time of rest and quiescence,
a time to turn inward:
add drawings to earth walls
white as fields--
grass brown in the cold,
and then disappearing beneath
more snow;
fields that are
austere,
the soul's condition
in winter.
The moon
cold and white
as earth,
it is also woman
round and open
unfolding secrets
of existence, repetition
of birth and death,
seasons, tides,
sunlight and moonlight,
planting crops,
bears hibernating
in caves, snakes
in a crevice,
deer's antlers
on the forests' floor:
this is the time
of silence, of
the soul's gestation--
at night
we see stars
moving in the sky.

The Great Year

01 01 2017

I have always been concerned, perhaps obsessed, by time. I have been a diarist since January 1965. Some of my first poems were about the transience of time. How could they have not been when I was preoccupied with death and failure? I have written an extensive history of my family, going back to the early 1800s. I have written "A Short History of the Irish in Montreal" and other poems that I group into the category of history, time, the years. Since the mid-1980s I have written poems on individual years. I look at my life and think there is more that has been done than will be done in the future. The expiry date is not far off. It is time to do the important work of life, the mission of writing and what it means, the vision of art. There is chronological time, emotional time, and cosmic time. This poem, then, deals in cosmic time.

The poems that follow, "The Great Year," were first published at The Astrology Guild website (probably now defunct) and in my selected poems, Mapping the Soul (1998):

(http://www.astrologyguild.com/thegreatyear.htm).

The Great Year

In our present day, when this same planet, Earth, rocking slowly on its axis in its course around the sun, is about to pass out of astrological range of the zodiacal sign of the Fish (Pisces) into that of the Water Bearer (Aquarius), it does indeed seem that a fundamental transformation of the historical conditions of its inhabiting humanity is in prospect.

                                            --Joseph Campbell
                                            The Inner Reaches of Outer Space (1986)

These poems celebrate the Great Year, a period of time that lasts 25,868 years during which Earth passes through the twelve zodiacal signs, and the Great Months, each lasting approximately 2,500 solar years. Poetry, like astrology and mythology, is the language of the unconscious mind, dreams, symbolism, irrationality and intuition. © Stephen Morrisey, M.A.. 2002

Age of Virgo - c. 13000 - 10800 B.C.Age of Leo - c. 10800 - 8640 B.C.Age of Cancer - c. 8640 - 6480 B.C.Age of Gemini- c. 6480 - 4550 B.C.Age of Taurus- c. 4550 - 2400 B.C.Age of Aries- c. 2400 B.C. - 100 B.C.Age of Pisces- c. 100 B.C. - 2000 A.DAge of Aquarius- c. 2000 - 4000 A.D.

Where Cedar meets Pine Avenue (two)

Where Cedar meets Pine Avenue (one)