At Pierre Elliot Trudeau Airport, Montreal

On the Champlain Bridge

Hotel Dieu Hospital, Montreal

from the last election

This is what people think of their former heroes, a caricature, with a little Hitler moustache for that je ne sais quoi effect.

wedding day at Alexis Nihon Plaza

the wolves have turned their backs to us

Belmore on May 23, 2011

Construction of mega-hospital

Champlain Bridge

Across the street from Emile Nelligan's home on Laval Avenue

On Laval Avenue, Emile Nelligan's street...

A Poet's Journey: Notes on Poetry and What it Means to be a Poet (10)

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

Marriage between a man and a woman—the expression of male and female energy—is a basic archetype of life. In the archetypal dimension we come close to universal laws that govern life. To deviate too far from the archetypes is to lose touch with what connects us to humanity, wisdom, and the eternal. It is also dangerous to be absorbed or possessed by an archetype, to lose the separateness of individuality and archetype.
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A number of years ago, out of curiosity, I became interested in the Holy Spirit. I read the bible—in several translations—for the first time. I made notes and studied what I was reading. I began by trying to remember the words to the Lord’s Prayer, which I had forgotten, and with some effort the words returned to me from my youth. I thought about each sentence of the Lord’s Prayer, it seemed incredible that I could have wandered as far from God as I had, because I felt very close to God as a child.
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The root meaning of the word “enthusiasm” is to be “filled with God.” To be “filled with God” is to have a spirited approach to life. Dis-spirited people drag themselves through life, they aren’t “filled with God.” To have lost our enthusiasm is to be dis-spirited at a very basic level of everyday life. Someone who is spiritually and emotionally depleted, has been dis-spirited. As a child I knew what it meant to feel “collapsed inside”—“The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind, / My face turns green and pale,” as William Blake describes someone looking back on his unself-conscious youth. It was a struggle to survive the life that I was born to, but I created a new life, and I always affirmed life; this was accomplished, at least in part, by writing poems. The spiritual, for me, is nourished by and manifested in the poems I am writing.

Stephen Morrissey
2003 - 2008
Montreal, Canada

A Poet's Journey: Notes on Poetry and What it Means to be a Poet (9)

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

When I heard that a friend’s sister, living in New York City, was a “shaman,” I thought it was mildly humourous. Then, by chance, I read a transcript of one of her shamanic healing journeys. I found it fascinating. I said, “ I can do that.” It is not really “hard” to journey, but I also had years of foundational work before I could begin exploring shamanism. It is now clear to me that I began my shamanic work when I was a child and had experiences and listened to dreams that made a deep impression on me.
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The shamanic journey is not the product of imagination and it is not a guided meditation; it is also not “active imagination.” What you do on a journey is watch, observe, and later record what one experiences. It has nothing to do with influencing what happens on the journey, and it is not dreaming or lucid dreaming in which you attempt to control your dreams. The intentionality of the journey is the shaman’s, but the details of the journey are only discovered during the shamanic journey.
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When I read some of the astrological degree sets invented by other people, I knew that this was something I wanted to do and that I could do. Then Carolyn Joyce and I spent several weeks during which I dictated what I saw on shamanic journeys and we wrote The Aquarian Symbols (Coracle Press, Vancouver, Montreal, 2000). Each degree is a symbol; it is what was seen in each of 360 shamanic journeys. I did not know for which degree or sign I was journeying to write a symbol, this was all done without my being told this information; all I did was the journey and then report what was seen.
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The Aquarian Symbols are archetypal images, one for each of the 360 degrees of the zodiac. The Aquarian Symbols were not channeled, but the result of 360 individual shamanic journeys. They are to be meditated upon. For each symbol I “flew” over Vancouver, the city where they were written, and descended where the archetypal image would be given to me. Nothing was decided by me or determined by me, or by anyone else. Sometimes I entered a tunnel and sped, on a roller coaster-like ride, to the inside of the earth. What was seen during the journey was then recorded.
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The language or imagery of the shamanic journey is made up of archetypes and symbols, both are found in the collective unconscious; however, what one sees during a shamanic journey is what is literally seen on the journey, not as archetypes, not as symbols, but as fact. The poet’s journey is not the same thing as the shaman’s journey, but there are some similarities.
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A Poet's Journey: Notes on Poetry and What it Means to be a Poet (8)

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

As a woman animates and brings to life a man’s potential, CZ has animated me to live more fully and deeply. She is a person of compassion and intelligence who has helped many people, including myself, fulfill their talent and destiny. She is a brilliant poet who has also worked as an editor and publisher. We have been together since we met in June, 1991; she brought love into my life and gave me a new and fuller life. I love her dearly and my life revolves around her. She is my life partner, my creative partner, my friend and partner in family affairs. All of my life I had wanted to find someone like her, and I thank God that I did find her.
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Family history is a quest that can take up years of one’s life, but eventually it returns us to our own life, more fulfilled and with a deeper appreciation of life. You don’t necessarily go on a quest knowing you are on one; it is something that gradually preoccupies much of one’s time. My quest was to find my ancestors, to list them genealogically, and to find information about them: who they are, their dates of birth and death, where they lived, and some facts about their lives. Writing poetry is not a quest, it is a calling; family history has been a quest.
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When I was a child I knew, intuitively, that the stories I heard my relatives tell about the family were important. I felt there was heroism to life, not the traditional heroism and bravery of the battlefield, but heroism involved in everyday life by everyday people. I felt that there was something of importance to remembering the past. I recorded the stories I heard about my relatives and ancestors. Even as a child I always felt that the real heroes of everyday life were average people, the ones who survive and who go about their lives with dignity. It is the ordinary people among us who I found to be of great interest.
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I often think about the ancestors. I work through all the generations of my family, beginning with the first family members to move to Montreal. My great great grandfather, Laurence Morrissey, moved from Ireland to New Brunswick, Canada in 1837 in the company of his parents (my great great great grandparents Patrick Morrissy and Mary Phelan) and his six siblings: John, Michael, Mary, and Patrick who were all older than Laurence, and Catherine, the youngest of the children. The whole family uprooted themselves from where they lived, possibly in Mullinahone, County Tipperary, and moved as a group to Canada. Patrick, Laurence’s father, was a saddler by profession and not a young man when he moved here; he may have been as old as fifty years. What caused them to move, whether by necessity or the desire to improve the material prospects of the family, isn’t known. I believe Laurence married within months of arriving in New Brunswick and a few years later he and his wife, Johannah Meany and their son, or perhaps two sons, moved to Montreal.
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I honour and respect the ancestors by remembering them. I am in a direct line of ancestors according to family dates of birth and death. I was born just days before the first day of the Celtic season of Beltane, on May 1st, which for the Celts was the first day of summer. Beltane, with Samhain, winter, is the time when the Otherworld is closest to our material world. Samhain, which begins on November 1st, is the first day of winter for the Celts, and is a time when the days grow shorter and the fabric between the material world and the world of the ancestors and spirit is at its thinnest. This is when the ancestors communicate with us the most, whether it is in dreams, or their physical presence.
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One November night I sat in a restaurant with some friends. After we ate a band played music. While the others listened I was filled with deeply moving memories of my father and later that night wrote a poem about the final days of his life, of his journey to a hospital in Boston where he died a few weeks later. The next day I discovered it was the forty-seventh anniversary of my father’s death. The ancestors visit us if we listen to them. On many occasions I have walked on the street and felt the presence of ancestors walking with me; I have felt them pressing against me when they have numbered in the hundreds.
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The work of writing poems, honouring the ancestors, the work of healing in poetry, all of this is given to me. I have really been very passive in life. My life was given to me, it was presented to me as a mission in which I am sometimes little more than an observer of what happens. This is the work that was given to me: writing poems, honouring the ancestors, giving time, care, and love to my family, and loving God.
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I love all of the ancestors, no matter how elevated or how lowly their social position when they were alive. Some of the ancestors are a daily presence in my life, as though they were physically present. I believe I have a connection, extending across my whole life, with the ancestors. I loved my grandmother, Edith Sweeney, who died one month short of her ninetieth birthday, on April 23, 1965, and who was buried the day before my fifteenth birthday in April 1965. My great grandmother, Mary Callaghan was born on my mother’s birthday, March 1st, and died in 1906 on my birthday, April 27. Mary Callaghan’s father died on my birthday, in 1905. My great great grandmother, Johannah Meany, died on April 26th, 1880. Her husband, my great great grandfather Laurence Morrissey, married Marie Emma Mercier, a year to the day after Johannah’s funeral, on April 29, 1881. Out of all the dozens of dates of family members’ births and deaths that I have recorded, these are some of the people I feel are the closest to me in my family history, all are in a direct line of family ancestors. I have in my own way and to the best of my ability honoured seven generations of family members.
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On Pine Avenue near St. Laurent Boulevard

A Poet's Journey: Notes on Poetry and What it Means to be a Poet (7)

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

Reg Skinner was my mentor and friend for many years. Our initial connection was a shared interest in the writings of J. Krishnamurti, but we also discussed other things. From 1974, when I first met “RR” (Reginald Rice) Skinner, to the mid-1990s, when he died in his late eighties, we corresponded on an almost monthly basis; during this time I also visited RR at his home, first at “Boisville,” near Camberley, and then later at Felpham, near Bognor Regis, both in England. I heard RR’s life story in considerable detail, and I also learned something of spirituality, healing, dowsing, and bee keeping from him. It was not uncommon that we would sit for ten hours and he would talk about his life and what he called “things appertaining” which referred to a spiritual and psychological understanding life. Knowing RR has been a blessing in my life, one for which I am deeply grateful.

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Being a part of a community of poets is a wonderful thing, especially when you are young. In a group, it is not necessary to write poems that are similar to someone else’s poems; to be creative is to write from your own soul and inner being. The important thing is that poets in a community respect each other. My community, when I was young, was other young poets; later we were known collectively as The Vehicule Poets. There were other poets I knew as well, and all of my poet friends from when I was young have a special place in my heart.
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A community of poets includes the elder poets, people we respect for their dedication to writing and for the body of work they have created. It is the work of young poets to know the tradition they are working in and to respect the older poets. But older poets must also mentor younger poets. It is a wonderful experience to receive the “blessing” of the older poets we grew up reading; I have had this experience and it sustained me for many years—even now I am thankful for the kindness, affirmation, and teaching I received when I was young from poets who were older, wiser, and more mature than I was at the time. Louis Dudek and George Johnston were especially kind and helpful to me.
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Poets can be insurance salesmen, janitors, lawyers, teachers, unemployed, or unemployable and on welfare, but these are jobs of convenience or of necessity to survive. The commitment of a poet is to writing poems, and this requires vision, dedication, single-mindedness, and determination in order to do the work the poet was born to do.
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Soon after I married for the first time, I knew that the marriage was something to be endured. I lived a dis-spirited existence, not a life-affirming and expansive one, just as I had before the marriage. Then, in my thirties, I didn’t write much poetry at all and what I wrote I didn’t like; that was why I turned my attention to writing book reviews. Much of the poetry I managed to write reflected my spiritual emptiness and unhappiness. These poems were not an expression of the Temenos that is entered when the poet is in touch with Spirit. I am not blaming the marriage for this; I take responsibility for the mistakes I have made in my life and in my first marriage. I was dis-spirited before the marriage, and the marriage itself only emphasized my emotional and spiritual condition.
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In the 1990s, I wrote “The Shadow Trilogy” (The Compass, 1993; The Yoni Rocks 1995; The Mystic Beast, 1997), books that came from an awareness of the shadow aspect of the human soul. The shadow is an important archetype in Jungian psychology; it is made up of what we reject in ourselves and project onto other people. “Owning one’s shadow” refers to being aware of one’s dark side, being responsible for one’s psychology instead of projecting its negative aspects onto other people, and examining one’s life. Writing these three books was an important journey for me, it was a time when I tried to make sense of the first half of my life.
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A Poet's Journey: Notes on Poetry and What it Means to be a Poet (6)

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

Two dreams when I was young had a profound affect on me; they changed my life. I have written of these dreams elsewhere (see the Preface, Mapping the Soul, New and Selected Poems 1978 – 1998, The Muses’ Company, Winnipeg, 1998) but I feel that they are worth repeating, if only as evidence of the profound influence that dreams can have in a person’s life if he or she accepts the importance of dreams as a message from the unconscious. In the first dream I am still living on Oxford Avenue, in our flat where we moved in 1954. I was perhaps nine or ten years old when I dreamed this. Two men from an orphanage came to take me away; they were waiting at the back door, standing on the grey wooden stairs leading to the lane below. They had come for me from the orphanage with a wooden cage in which I was to be removed. It is this scene of the two men, and that I am to be taken to the orphanage by them, that so frightened me.
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Another dream was also significant. When I was around twelve years old I dreamed that I was in a room that either didn’t have a door or I couldn’t see the door, but that wasn’t the important thing about the room. The windows of the room were covered with mud, although the room was still bright. I remember being in this room and having, when I woke, the crystal clear awareness that I had to write down what was happening in my life or it would all be forgotten, that remembering had great importance for me or I would lose my inner being—the soul that I was born with—and that I knew intuitively was important. The effect of this dream was profound; it has resonated throughout my life: it told me that I have to remember my life, that the alternative to remembering is confusion and confusion is loss of soul. I woke from this dream knowing that I was already forgetting the details of my life. The important thing lay in remembering and understanding my life; the alternative was to sink into confusion and inner darkness. As a child I took this life-changing dream seriously. That was when I began writing a diary, which I have continued writing everyday for over forty years.
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My dream of being taken to an orphanage as a child was a nightmare. It was a dream of having my spirit depleted. However, my spirit was not depleted, stolen, or isolated; I found strategies to survive. Even as a child I knew that I was not the failure the school system told me I was. I wrote poetry; I wrote a diary; I lived a fairly solitary life for a child; I hid from or avoided those who would destroy my spirit. I was not taken to the orphanage; I affirmed life, creativity, and love. I saved myself by lying low, by not bringing attention to myself. I adapted to situations that other people would not have put up with. I survived what others would have not survived. I was not lonely as a child; I was resigned to my life as I knew it. It did not take courage to survive; there was no alternative but survival. I also gained depth and affirmation of life by surviving as I did. I cultivated my inner life, which was also the time of my apprenticeship as a poet. I lived in a kind of suspended animation. My home life as a child was spent being alone much of the time; I felt grief over my father’s death; I attended the many funerals of aunts, uncles, and grandparents; and I felt shame that I had failed two grades at school.
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It is a mistake to think of my poetry as being negative because I have written about grief, death, and loss. The fact that I have written any poems at all is a celebration of life. My poems are in no way a denial of life. All of my work is an affirmation of life and the spiritual aspect of life. All of my work is a celebration of the Divine and a journey towards the Divine.
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My life has been an affirmation of the life force, the triumph of spirit, the survival of the individual despite what has been endured in life. My whole life has been engaged with God, talking to God, God speaking to me through dreams, being separated from God, and then the return to God in my late forties. God does not write or dictate my poems, but an awareness of the presence of God is the foundation on which my poems are written. Writing, for me, is an act of survival, of strength, of courage, and it has always been a part of my life’s journey. I have had in my life and in my writing a dialogue with God.
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There is the story of Scottish poets in the Western Highlands who, up to the seventeenth century, entered a “house of darkness” as part of their apprenticeship as poets. Alone, the poet entered a darkened room where there was no communication with the outside world; the room was windowless, it was a place of solitude necessary for composing poetry, a place also for memorizing poems and communing with the Otherworld. These apprentice poets were Celts from Scotland. It was a Celtic shamanic way to apprentice a poet, and it recognized the importance of dreams and the unconscious mind. When I heard of this Celtic way to initiate poets, I saw my dream of being enclosed in a room as an ancestral memory, a message from the Otherworld to follow my path of poetry. And I did.
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When I read that shamans believed that being “dis-spirited”—losing one’s spirit, the loss of spirit, the diminishment of spirit, the attack on spirit—is one of the causes of spiritual and psychological illness in people, I knew that they were right. By “spirit’ they refer to both our own spirit and to our connection with the Divine, with God. A single phrase, “feeling collapsed inside,” is a diagnosis of being dis-spirited, a condition that was a part of my life until I met CZ in my early forties.

A Poet's Journey: Notes on Poetry and What it Means to be a Poet (5)

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

The contradiction in writing is that you write in private, and then you allow others to read what you have written. I am a private person and yet I have also always been a “public” person. The circumstances of my life pulled me out of the crowd when I was a child; these circumstances included the death of my father and failing two grades at school. I write from the private depths of my being, and then I let go of what I have written, get it published, get up in front of a room full of people and read it to them.
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If (as I believe) poetry is the voice of the human soul, then healing and poetry are connected in a fundamental way. Confessional poetry, poetry of witness and Spirit, is a form of healing, by revelation, by catharsis, by discovery of inner truth. Poetry can be healing for the poet and it can also contribute to healing the person who reads poetry. We denigrate this aspect of poetry when we call it “therapy.”
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The poet—who is also the wounded healer—brings psychological and spiritual depth to his work. It is the work of the poet to bring the unconscious to consciousness, to be a midwife to consciousness. Poetry is not therapy, it is poetry, but I believe that some emotional and spiritual healing can be a by-product of poetry. I refer here to both reading someone else’s poems and writing one’s own.
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Good poetry does not moralize, but there is a moral dimension at the very foundation of all poetry and literature. All great poetry, all great art, has a moral dimension grounded in the eternal and universal. It is the nature of the unconscious mind to seek wholeness out of psychic fragmentation, and to assert a moral response to life situations. Morality, what is good and what is bad, is inherent in the human psyche. Poetry, like all great art, has an underlying affirmation of morality.

Emile Nelligan's second childhood home, near Carre St-Louis, still on Laval Avenue



Here I am in front of Emile Nelligan's home on Laval Avenue in the Plateau, April 2011.
Nelligan is one of our greatest Canadian poets.

From Maud Bodkin

Maud Bodkin writes,

When a great poet uses the stories that have taken shape in the fantasy of the community, it is not his individual sensibility alone that he objectifies. Responding with unusual sensitiveness to the words and images which already express the emotional experience of the community, the poet arranges these so as to utilize to the full their evocative power. Thus he attains for himself vision and possession of the experience engendered between his own soul and the life around him, and communicates that experience at once individual and collective, to others, so far as they can respond adequately to the words and images he uses.

We see, then, why, if we wish to contemplate the emotional patterns hidden in our individual lives, we may study them in the mirror of our spontaneous actions, so far as we can recall them, or in dreams and in the flow of waking fantasy; but if we would contemplate the archetypal patterns that we have in common with men of past generations, we do well to study them in the experience communicated by the great poetry that has continued to stir emotional response from age to age.

Maud Bodkin, Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: psychological studies of imagination; Vintage Books, 1958, pages 7-8. First published in 1934