Pomes from home
Ah, Prince Edward Island .
There's nothing quite like it. And despite the warnings from other former islanders that “nothing has changed,” they're wrong. There is plenty different. Lots of new infrastructure in the city and lots of new big box stores out on the Avenue. For good or bad those things are noticeable.
One thing that hasn't changes though is the air. I sometimes forget how bad the air in Toronto is. It's stale and heavy and full of Particulate Matter. As soon as we stepped off the plane you could smell the sweet smell of freshly cut grass and clover and this is despite the smell of jet fuel n the tarmac.
I got to thinking as I often do when on the island about all the wonderful poets Prince Edward Island has produced. From Milton Acorn, John Smith and Frank Ledwell to John MacKenzie, Richard Lemm and Laurie Brinklow, Prince Edward Island has produced a number of very good poets. Maybe it's the aforementioned air or maybe it's the seasonal nature of employment that allows creative juices to flowing during the "R" months.
Whatever the reason, anyone interested in contemporary Canadian poetry should take a look at what has and is coming out of Canada 's smallest province.
All that having been said, while looking around teh Intrawebs for Prince Edward Island poetry I came across John MacKenzie's Blog. Years ago when I first met John he was a baker for Tim Horton's. A Canadian job if there ever was one.
Of all the Prince Edward Island poets he is the best, the most visceral and immediate. He didn't come by his poetry through university but through hard work and it's meatier for it. I talked to John a number of years ago just before his first book, Sledgehammer and other Poems, was published. At the time he said title came from the fact that, “friends had read some of the poems, they said they felt as if they had been hit by a sledgehammer."
John's poetry is in the same vein as Milton Acorn's work. Themes of grief, desire, love and work. His poems also talk about the nature of technology and its effect on personal relationships.
Laden with imagery of the earth, age, cosmos; his poems evoke a sense of depth and history while relating it to the personal experiences of the present.
From Sledgehammer and other Poems
Me as an Archaeologist
I dig into your city; piece together your shattered pottery of desire.
I find bone fragments & tea leaves.
Bronze arrowheads of lust. Petrified, unleavened love.
Your fossil eyes gleam with salt.
In a dusty corner, I find flax seeds; plant flax.
Watch it sprout green as your youth, blossom
blue as your hot Mediterranean sea;
turn it into crisp linen.
I turn back crisp linen & sleep every night
between cool dreams of olives embroidered with spun gold.
Ancient gods sing. Their voices are streams of white
galaxies.
Below us the earth sings in a voice of dark loam & granite.
The moon, a rough & worn coin, wishes us luck in our madness,
our night of being wolves in the grey mountains.
I brush dirt, chip sediment from the hearth where you kept time,
where time hung in beaten copper kettles
full of lentils, barley & bay leaf, maybe parsley.
Your larder is full of old rice & desiccated pine nuts.
I dig into the rubble of your city & find
all these things preserved.
I know where your house is; I touch the old stone walls.
I want to hang a beaten copper kettle over your hearth,
fill it with brown rice, pine nuts,
strips of spring lamb. Season it all with cinnamon.
I want goat cheese, unleavened bread, wine...
the strong wine of your youth
when grapes grew & grew under the lucky silver moon.
I want to mix your strong wine with water,
drink from your pieced-together desire.
on the sixth day I was pissed & ...
I made them, these
rough, young Rockies raised
recklessly from the earth
--treading heavy-footed, it was my anger
sank the Great Lakes
& sent
wave after wave
of dust-flinging rocks
westward
to pile atop each other,
canted & crooked, some
kicked sideways
& some upside-down,
asses
in the clouds
--I made them, & these
foothills suddenstopped
in awe,
running up
each other's areses in imitation
of these
still predators, whose teeth
rip open
the bellies of clouds,
who spit sheds
& rain;
chew the sky
to this
blue,
soft leather