Winding Down, Revving Up

It's National Poetry Month, so every Friday in April I'm writing something about Canadian Poetry.

Well, today is the last day of of National Poetry Month and it's been a pretty good month, I think. And, even though the emphasized, focused look at poetry is winding down (not in all circles of course), it looks like this month has spawned some pretty good things to help keep poetry in the spotlight for a little longer.

First, the Poet Laureate of the Internet project. It was a democratic process, but in the end, the Internet couldn't decide and it was a tie: Canadian poet Sina Queyras and American poet Robert Lee Brewer. Both poets have blogs where they post not only poetry, but also about poetry and poetics and influences, etc. It makes for good reading and they both work to engage people in the greater discourse of poetry, as well as in the poems themselves. So congratulations to both Sina Queyras and Robert Lee Brewer; I'm interested to see how this year of Internet poetics will unfold.

The other post-April poetry movement I'm excited about is Influency Salon, an online poetry magazine. The magazine/website just launched its first issue, featuring reviews of poetry books, essays and poetry discussions. The site itself looks really sleek and the content is well crafted, with many of the contributors published poets themselves (Sina Queyras pops up here as both a reviewer and a reviewed).

So, National Poetry Month may be over after today, but poetry (and poets) don't seem to have any interest in giving up the attention they've been receiving this month. And neither should they. New and interesting things are happening in the world of poetry (Canadian and otherwise), and confining our attention to just one month would be a waste.

Métaphysique des tubes

Every once in a while, I'm in the mood to read something really weird. Not weird in an implausible or completely outlandish way, although I do have those moments, too; rather, weird in the sense that the story takes place in this world, in more or less this time and yet what happens could never really happen (or, if it could, it couldn't happen to me), but doesn't come across as anything by realistic. In literature, sometimes an unusual perspective or style of narrative is weird enough to hook me, without turning me off. Belgian author Amélie Nothomb is a master of this. Métaphysique des tubes is her sort-of memoir about her childhood in Japan, and it is weird.

The story starts with God. It's a condensed retelling of the Bible's version of the beginning of the world and lays out in a very short space a lot of explanation of what's to come (of course, hindsight is 20-20 and when I first read this I had no idea what God was doing at the beginning of such a story). After she introduces the reader to God, though, and reminds them of His power and magnificence, Nothomb introduces us to baby Amélie, who her parents think is brain-damaged. Baby Amélie doesn't cry or fuss, she doesn't move, she just lies there like a small pink-ish cylinder. The doctor proclaims her a vegetable and her parents are devastated. But they soldier on, nicknaming her Plant hiring a nanny to look after her.

Baby Amélie is waited on hand and foot and although she's small, she does grow. But, even though there's really nothing wrong with her mind, she doesn't speak. Baby Amélie has fully developed language skills in her head, but she doesn't bother using them because she doesn't need to. She's like a little god, whose ever wish is fulfilled before she ever need ask for something. Then, one day at the beach, she nearly drowns. And, upon being rescued by a family friend, she thanks him in perfect French - to the shock and awe of her entire family. Of course, this ends the god-like phase of her life. As soon as she demonstrates an above-normal linguistic capacity, she is expected to behave like other toddlers, and in Japan that means no more nanny after age 2.

It's fairly unusual for a book to be narrated by a baby and not have it be a book for children, which Métaphysique des tubes certainly is not. Rather, baby Amélie has a very sophisticated perspective on the world. And, because she is a silent observer for the majority of the narrative, she is exposed to more than most babies would be.

As I said above, this is a weird book, not least because of the point of view of the narrator. But, through its weirdness is a really detailed look at what it means to be alive, and how that definition changes based on where you are (physically, mentally and spiritually). It's billed as an "autobiography from age 0 to 3 years old," but it's much more than a look at what it means to be a baby. Nothomb's other sort-of memoir Stupeur et tremblements (about her return to Japan as young woman) is more widely known and also hilarious. But reading Métaphysique des tubes first explains a lot about the woman she becomes, and her writing style in general.

Métaphysique des tubes is unlike pretty much every other memoir I've ever read. But if you can get past that and lose yourself in the story (which isn't that hard), you get the important reminder that the life of a baby is still a life (and not a mere existence). And, if you're really paying attention, you'll realize that what Nothomb is actually saying is that a baby's ability to continuously learn and adapt and observe is something we should try to hold on to, because in many ways that life is much more sophisticated than the day-to-day life of an adult.

Métaphysique des tubes

By Amélie Nothomb

First published in 2000 (cover image shown from Le Livre de Poche edition)

Nancy Drew turns 80

It's hard to believe, but girl detective Nancy Drew turns 80 today.

Created in 1930 by Edward Stratemeyer, Nancy Drew was ghostwritten by several authors under the name Carolyn Keene (who also turns 80 today, I guess). She has solved over 175 mysteries and provided countless life-lessons to girls (and boys) all over the world. I can't remember which one I read first, but I spent many years obsessively reading about the adventures of Nancy and her two best friends, George and Bess.

Going back now, the books are definitely dated (and pretty formulaic). But there's something about those old yellow hardcovers that reminds me of what it was like to be 10 and not quite sure how Nancy was going to get herself out of whatever trouble she was in. But she always did, often with the help of her friends or her father, and she always figured out the mystery. And for all the stereotypes of class and race that were often present in the novels, Nancy was a smart girl who was revered, not ridiculed, for her intelligence.

So, happy birthday to my first fictional role model. Thanks for years of adventures and convincing me, for a brief period of time, that I too wanted to be a detective when I grew up.

Cover image shown from The Secret of the Old Clock, the first of the books published in the original series in 1930 by Grosset & Dunlap.

Book Covers: The Next Generation

In honour of Penguin's 75th Anniversary, Canadian author and artist Douglas Coupland started "Speaking to the Past," a project to show just how important book covers are.

Classic Penguin book covers are ubiquitous in used bookstores and well-stocked bookshelves. The old orange and white covers are simple in design, with clear titles and and little in the way of illustration. To celebrate these classic covers, Coupland decided to use their aesthetic to explain the world at 2010 to someone living in 1935.

"The Moon: We stopped going there 30 years ago" one cover announces (there are a lot of space-related ones). "1989 Communism Ends: An Anticlimax" proclaims another (politics is another popular topic, as is technology). Coupland's project site offers 30 examples of how simple language written in Gill Sans is all you need to explain the future to the past. He also gives anyone interested blank versions of Penguin covers so they can create their own (that can be subsequently posted to his Flickr pool).

Although we're frequently admonished not to judge books by their covers, most people do. What Coupland's project does is take that one step farther, simultaneously giving one-line history lessons and illustrating just how hard it is to capture important events and/or facts on a book cover. There's more to history than headlines, he seems to say; similarly, there are more to books than covers (although good ones don't hurt).

Image shown by Douglas Coupland as part of his "Speaking to the Past: A Penguin 75th Anniversary Project"

Canada Book Day

Despite an atrocious lack of press attention, today is Canada Book Day. To celebrate, here's a list of the great Canadian literature I've featured (so far) on Books Under Skin.

Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill
The Birth House by Ami McKay
Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findlay
Hooked by Carolyn Smart

So, Happy Canada Book Day. I hope you read something great.

Slam

It's National Poetry Month, so every Friday in April I'm writing something about Canadian Poetry.

Hold onto your hats: The Toronto Poetry Slam finals are tomorrow night. And if you're into slam, that's kind of a big deal. The finals decide who will make up this year's TPS team (four plus one alternate) and therefore, who will represent Toronto at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.

Slam is basically performance poetry. A TPS slam event usually features 12 poets, all of whom perform and are subsequently scored during the first round. The top six poets then progress to the second round, in which they perform something else. In the third round, the top three poets compete for the win. There are always prizes (ranging from gift certificates to X-Files DVDs), but they're sort of the icing on the poetry cake.

Slam is a little raucous - audience members are encouraged not to be quiet - and it is a competition, which some people take issue with. There is a contingent of more traditional poets who don't approve of slam's poetry-as-competition format; a position that has caused some heated debate (page vs. stage, if you will).

I guess I can see both sides of it, but to claim that poetry is never performance is just nonsense. Any time poetry is read aloud as a form of diversion or entertainment, it is being performed. And as for the competition aspect, well, I've certainly entered more than one poetry competition in my life and I never thought that made what I wrote less than poetry.

So, slam comes down to a matter of preference. It's a genre of poetry, which - if the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word is any proof - has been largely welcomed in Canada. I mean, we even had slam poet Shane Koyczan perform at the Olympics in Vancouver.

So, if you want page poetry, you can have it; if you want stage poetry, slam is growing in popularity all across the country; and, if you're like me and you want both, even that isn't a necessarily a contradiction in taste.

Image used: a live-painting (done on stage) entitled Canadian Festival of Spoken Word by Sharon Hodgson

The Secret Garden

It's Earth Day, and of all the nature-y books out there (some of which I've written about), The Secret Garden is one that never fails to inspire. I don't know how she did it, but even as Frances Hodgson Burnett takes you into Mary's psychological world - and all the emotional intangibles that entails - she takes you outside so you can feel the dirt on your hands and under your nails, and the damp breeze on your cheeks.

Mary Lennox is a pretty well known literary heroine, I think. But then, her story fascinated me when I was younger (well, it still kind of does), so maybe I take it for granted that everyone knows all about her. Just in case, though. Mary was raised in India, where she was incredibly spoiled by the attention of her parents' servants. In all of children's literature, I think Mary is the only thin, blonde child who is described as ugly (as much in attitude as in appearance). Anyway, at the beginning of the story, everyone in Mary's life dies from cholera, virtually overnight. And that is how Mary comes to find herself at Misselthwaite Manor, staying with her uncle on the edge of the English moorland.

As I've already said, Mary was not a pretty child, and she had a terrible temper. After being waited on in India, she had a very hard time adjusting to life in a house where none of the servants were paid to dote on her. She barely saw her uncle (whose wife had died tragically come years before), so she was very much alone. After puttering around and throwing several tantrums, Mary gets bored with her old ways and sets out to something. The Manor has large gardens and Mary starts digging around. One day, a robin shows her a door in a wall, but the door is locked and after trying to get in for a few minutes, Mary gives up.

The outdoor activity is good for Mary and she starts to perk up. Martha, one of the younger servants, introduces Mary to her brother Dickon (who has a way with animals) and they become tentative friends. Mary shows Dickon the door in the wall and they decide to try and find a way in. Mary does some poking around in the house and finds a key, which proves to fit the lock. Mary and Dickon open the door to the secret garden (which is encased by high brick walls) and go in. After playing in there for a while they decide to look after it and start trying to restore garden to its obvious former splendour.

Meanwhile, in the house, Mary has been hearing strange wailing noises at night. After being woken up several nights in a row, she decides to follow the sounds and discovers that she has a cousin named Colin. Her Uncle, Mr. Craven, is a hunchback and his son is similarly disfigured. So Colin is kept confined, away from everyone, so no one can see his condition. Because he's lonely, Colin is prone to tantrums (much like Mary was upon arrival at Misselthwaite). But as Mary slowly befriends her cousin, drawing him out of his shell and eventually out into the garden, his health also improves.

Clearly, this story has a happy ending. Colin's health improves so much that he is actually able to walk up to his father, and Mary is pretty and has friends for first time. It's fairly predictable, but as far as classic children's stories go, the moral is much more interesting.

Burnett places a huge importance on the children's life outdoors. Neither Mary nor Colin really begin to improve until they start spending time outdoors, in the company of other children. And it isn't just their health that improves from the exercise and fresh air, but also their temperament and emotional well-being. Essentially, Burnett is extolling the benefits of spending time with the natural world and illustrating how important it is for people to stay in contact with the Earth.

It may be a book written for children, but The Secret Garden is almost more important for adults. Kids are always reminded to play outside (whether in the park or their backyard) but it seems the older we get the more time we stay indoors, which often as a negative affect on both our moods and our health. Reading The Secret Garden when I was a kid made me wish I could find a place like that to look after and revel in; now, it makes me want to build something like that - I would even settle for a window-box garden, at this point. Or, I guess, sitting outside and reading.

The Secret Garden

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

First published in 1911 (cover image shown from that edition)