Requiem for Steven Heighton

(1961-2022)

1.

Somewhere we have arranged                          with spring

a language of lament. To hear you’ve died. Abrupt, enough

to tear the earth                 along the Aegean.

 

2.

Sixty years                        , this unfinished sentence: through

a telescope of bone. With spring                            , as autumn, you wrote,
an old man’s Lent. Such currency of quiet charm,

of warmth.   

 

3.

You felt it all, it seems, their hurt           , their loss
: of friends divorced, dying or depressed                    , if this                              

a crappy year, you asked. Your love                 , an island

separated by the low rise
of lake.                                        And now,

this urgency of emails; to rephrase                   silence

as it petrifies,                     where once you roamed

against all reeling.

  

4.

What gap-toothed boardwalk                 of acoustic riff, a distance

travelled regularly, and with ease. And into                 hours.

A circle of chairs. A beer on the lawn.

 

5.

If, as you wrote, to die is truly                         to become invisible,

then perhaps                     this isn’t possible. A dram of single malt,

the waves of which                               

have crashed. These poems, carved                  from bread and butter,

shorelines, secrets             , tundra                   : something brittle,
ancient                    , deeply human. Stone                

as old as wine.

 

6.

I only just heard                you were sick.

 

What the Poets are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation, edited by Rob Taylor

Thammavongsa: Describe an image of a place you’ve travelled, and why it’s important to you to have been there.

Brand: The Atacama Desert. It was the quiet of it as soon as I arrived. This quiet settled everything I had been experiencing before; it quelled several years of disturbance.

Thammavongsa: Deserts are examples of maximalism. The quiet can be so large, so weighted, it is louder than any disturbance. I say this because it’s how I like to think of my writing. The quiet, the silence, the nothing there is maximized. I make things bare and I amplify that.

Brand: It’s wonderful that you say deserts are examples of maximalism. I had strangely thought minimalism! I wanted to go someplace empty of noise. You are right, the silence crowded out the disturbance.

            You’ve been to a desert; what was it like for you?

Thammavongsa: Yes. In Marfa, Texas. The land was so flat. All I noticed was sky. It made me feel seasick. It was too much. And I loved the tumbleweeds. I was so happy to see them. I know that tumbleweeds began somewhere and they take the shape they have because nothing stood in the way of their tumbling-toward.

I’m impressed with the interviews (more specifically: the conversations) in the collection What the Poets are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation, edited by Vancouver poet and critic Rob Taylor (Gibsons BC: Nightwood Editions, 2018). This book is self-described as a response and follow-up to another Nightwood title, Where the Words Come From (2002), edited by Tim Bowling, as Taylor explains in his introduction:

            The structure of this book mirrors the last, with a few key adjustments. We’ve added poems to the book—poems which, for the most part, are mentioned in the conversations themselves—in hopes they will deepen the reader’s experience. We’ve also set out to have these be true conversations as opposed to interviews, with both poets posing questions to one another and contributing equally. Tied to that, while the book does adhere to the structure of pairing established and up-and-coming poets, the qualifications for who fits in which category were amorphous and largely ignored while finalizing a pairing. There are poets in the up-and-coming slots who have published as many books, or are nearly as old, as some of the “established” poets. Oh rule sticklers, it’s a mess! Fortunately, you’re entering a party and not a coronation.

What the Poets are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation includes ten conversations between an intriguing array of paired currently-active Canadian poets—Steven Heighton and Ben Ladouceur, Armand Garnet Ruffo and Liz Howard, Sina Queyras and Canisia Lubrin, Dionne Brand and Souvankham Thammavongsa, Marilyn Dumont and Katherena Vermette, Sue Goyette and Linda Besner, Karen Solie and Amanda Jernigan, Russell Thornton and Phoebe Wang, Tim Bowling and Raoul Fernandes, and Elizabeth Bachinsky and Kayla Czaga, as well as an afterward co-written by Nick Thran and Sue Sinclair—running quite the range of engaged contemporary writers from emerging to established, and lyric to the more experimental. The highlights abound, but some of what struck included an utterly charming and illuminating sequence of seeming non-sequiturs between Dionne Brand and Souvankham, the conversational topography between Steven Heighton and Ben Ladouceur, and a fascinating conversation between Armand Garnet Ruffo and Liz Howard, two poets of similar heritage; born a generation apart, they were both raised in the village of Chapleau in Northern Ontario. As their conversation includes:

Howard: I think you’re exactly right that there is this all-too-steady gaze on the traumatic Indigenous experience. I also often wonder about what might be called Indigenous “futurisms,” or futures or possibilities, aesthetic potentials as you have said. I think I have made a way toward that in my work. At least that was the intention, the necessity. The fracturing, the hardship, the wound, whether within oneself and/or within one’s lineage as an Indigenous person is a fact. The question is what to do? Ultimately for myself as a writer, I discovered the figure of the infinite citizen of the shaking tent. Perhaps I am a kind of slippery, in-between, trickster spirit. I suppose this is the figure of myself as a writer that could compose in so many formally inventive and generative ways, pulling in neuroscience, the bush, Western philosophy, Nanabozho, dreams, calling down the sky, Toronto streets, ecological concerns and so on, and compressing them all together into my account, my gift, my book. The trauma, the silence, the absence is there too. But I think it is an ultimately joyful text. I see your work on Norval as being along the same lines. You don’t leave him with us as either a tragic or revelatory figure. He’s deeply human. I see the possibilities for Indigenous work as being an open and variegated as each of our stories.

Honestly, while going through this collection, I’m a bit surprised that there hasn’t been more talk around just how strong this assemblage of conversations actually is. This is, I would say, one of the examples of the follow-up surpassing the original, moving beyond the limitations of a particular aesthetic into a possibility of subject matter, one that is incredibly far-ranging and timely. Part of what this curated list of poets allows for is also the possibility for multiple conversations around race, representation and how a variety of violences have impacted individuals and communities, as well as writing, and how writing has been forced to adapt in response. Over the past decade or so, conversations around diversity, colonialism, #MeToo, #IdleNoMore and other topics that had long been bubbling under the surface have risen to the mainstream, and a series of shifts in publishing and possibility have allowed the same to emerge in writing as well, and this book does well to allow for those conversations, some of which might be seen as long overdue.

empire, empire (and a few lost bags,

The third and final entry on our UK adventuring [see parts one here and two here].

Tuesday, Oct 2

Our first and only morning in Oxford: nother day, waking slightly past when Christine has wandered off to her morning-conference and I slept for a bit, worked in the room until check-out, when I aimed to leave bags and walk a bit, at least, exploring the city.

Heading off from the hotel, I asked the young hotel man for assistance, given my gout-y-ness. He inquired as to how I was doing (Christine had inquired the night prior about medical things, given my gout-y pills I left at home are only available via prescription), and I told him I was pretending I was feeling better. Foolish, perhaps. He commented that I was stoic (Very stoic, sir, he said.) and quoted Kipling. Well, sir, he said, as Rudyard Kipling, I think it was, said… And then he proceeded with a lovely and hefty quote that left me quite stunned, for reasons including a) a young lad who quotes Kipling, let alone anything? He seems far too well-educated to be carrying my bags. 2) Who the hell quotes Kipling, nowadays?

I felt as though my stunned silence left him with the impression that I might have been, well, simple.

Hobbling away from the hotel, I found stamps and postcards, and even discovered a wee bookstore that held a couple of items I picked up, including a new edition of Al Purdy's Poems for All the Annettes (I was curious about the Steven Heighton introduction). Amused, as well, that such a thing would be sitting in a bookstore in Oxford, of all places.

Hobbling further south on my gout-y foot, I discovered Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum, known as "the world's first university museum." Not knowing anything about any of that, I wandered inside, appreciating that the museum was free, and started searching around, immediately stunned at not only the wealth of artifacts held in the space (the density of materials was incredible), but the fact that so many artifacts that in other venues might have been held under or behind glass, were simply not. I could have (but didn't) simply reached out to touch items that were thousands of years old. My god.

Step into one room, and its feudal Japan; another, Victorian England; a further, ancient Greece or ancient Egypt. The space was incredible and I completely want to get back there.

And do you think this German painting looks a bit like Christine?

After an hour or so, I made my way to the gift shop, collecting some postcards and books for the children. Did you know the museum makes its own gin? How many museums make their own gin? Madness. I saw something about King Harold's cache of coins, so post-lunch I wandered into a further room upstairs to see coins from the largest cache of ancient coins discovered in England.

As well as some tools for book-making, which I thought Christine might appreciate.

I slowly made my way back to the hotel, where I figured I would work for a bit, wandering through the church grounds next door.

Once at the lobby, by the roaring fire, with laptop and tea, I amused myself by writing silly postcards to people. At least two got the entire letter to King Haakon from Monty Python’s “Biggles Dictates a Letter” sketch. Especially exciting once I realized I had two postcards left over from the Isle of Skye, where we saw at least one business named after this infamous King Haakon (right by the ruins of the McKinnon clan castle). How was I to know at seventeen that knowing more history would enrich my appreciation of Monty Python? (Well, it probably wouldn’t have been that hard to figure out, had I bothered.)

Eventually, Christine returned from her conference, having enjoyed her two days hearing most of the lectures on paper, books, conservation thing-whats, and we made our way back to the train into London.

Upon landing in London, we made our way (I hobbled) back to a different hotel at King’s Cross, one that ended up including no elevator up three flights and no workable internet (as well as a shared bathroom), so we turned straight around after leaving bags. Christine beelined for the British Library for an hour’s research, and I found a pub with WiFi. Well, eventually. One that required a cellphone, so waitress #1 offering her horror that I didn’t have a cellphone (unhelpful), whereas waitress #2 eventually came over and offered her cellphone so I could sign in (helpful), which meant I wasn’t trapped there, awaiting Christine without any opportunity to work and even inform her. Bah and bah. BAH. I checked email, worked for a bit, strolled through some of our reading. Christine returned, and we ate food. We tipped waitress #2 quite well.

And, once back to our closet-room (nearly as small, by the by, as the sleeper on that train down from Inverness), there wasn't even an episode of Top Gear anywhere. Bah.

Wednesday, Oct 3

Feeling as though she needed to get a bit more work done at the British Library before we left town, Christine wanted to first-thing get a couple of further hours of research, which meant a first-thing breakfast, and hobbling our bags down into the lobby before heading out. I walked her to the library, and made for a couple of used bookstores, before we aimed to meet up again around 11:30am.

We sat outside for a few minutes, awaiting the 9:30am opening of the British Library. We sipped our Americanos and watched the fluttering of birds and people, throughout the courtyard. We wondered: what might our children be doing? Five hours ahead: most likely father-in-law and his wife entertaining Aoife, as they waited for Rose to finish her day of school (we were getting quite eager to get home at this point).No: five hours behind. It's so easy to lose track of the whole thing.

As I wandered, seeing this sign at the gate of the Library, which seemed entirely appropriate for Christine's research.

And then this glorious little tidbit, on a wall close by. I see you, haiku_bombs.

Given I was aiming for two close-by bookstores opening at 10:30am and 11:00am, the fact that I got lost for a while wasn't necessarily the worst thing, and I saw some local things that were pretty cool (but I was pleased to finally figure out where I was going). Once discovering both bookstores, I sat some forty minutes with coffee and notebook, flipping through poetry titles (MC Hyland, for example) and sketching out lines here and there. And coffee, made by a German student who came for schooling and stayed, who asked how long have I been here? (As though I had moved to London, perhaps).

The bookstores were curious, and interesting, but I left with little. I had really been hoping for some poetry titles by Salt publishing and/or Salmon publishing and/or Shearsman Books but not a single one, which surprised me, honestly. There was plenty of faber and faber, a couple of Eyewear, some Penguin, etcetera, but nothing that really jumped out at me. Some Karen Solie and Ken Babstock titles I already had. I picked up an issue of Granta, which is always worthwhile, for the sake of a Miranda July entry (discovering it was an excerpt of her novel, The First Bad Man, which I still haven't read).

Upon reconnecting, Christine and I collected our mound of luggage, and made for the train station, for the sake of a night in Amberley, West Sussex, to stay with her friend Ruth (who we visited in the British Library during our honeymoon) and her husband John. We were worn down, so our plans to visit West Dean, where Christine schooled for her conservation work, didn't quite pan out. Ruth, who schooled with Christine, had been a conservator at the British Library for a number of years, before going into private practice, so she worked while Christine and I didn't really move for a while, which was quite good. Eventually, we sat quietly with gin and tonics, and watched the sheep wander the hills behind Ruth and John's wee house in the village.

And the evening, then, where we had a fine meal at the pub.

Thursday, Oct 4

Woke from an email from Westjet, informing us that our plane was two hours delayed. Given we were up at 7am for such, I went right back to bed. The fog was in, holding our plane, it would seem, on the ground. At the airport, finally, further delays. Delays. Once on the plane, an hour or so on the tarmac, making five hours in total of delay. So much for catching our connecting flight from Halifax, we thought. Nothing worked, our machines were dying, both of us needing new cords for our de-charged laptops. Bah bah and BAH.

Did you know you can purchase ice cream from machines in the airport at Gatwick? That was nice, at least. We were amused, in part given we actually visited the original factory for Ben &Jerry's in Vermont a couple of years back [remember?]. Attempting to get rid of a pocketful of change from machines that refused it, eventually forced to use further credit card action instead. Bah and BAH.

At least I got some work done on the plane. Attempting to return to whatever it was I was working on before we had left. Editing through my manuscript of short fiction, scribbling and scribbling and scribbling. At Halifax, they gave us vouchers we had no time for, immediately having to run to collect bags (mine had been lost by then) and return through customs and security to get right back on the same airplane, a plane which was four hours delayed as well. When we landed in Ottawa, Christine's bag had also disappeared (it was returned two days later, but mine, as of Tuesday, still hasn't been discovered, which means losing not only clothes, laundry, shaving crap and lots of books, but the three books I purchased for the children, including the two from the museum in Oxford; BAH AND BAH).

We were home around 8pm, some four-plus hours later than scheduled. Aoife was out, but Rose ran laps like a hummingbird, excitedly telling us all the things she had done and said and heard and done and made and EVERYTHING (they had even made 'welcome home' banners they'd put on our front window [photo taken the following morning]).

THANK YOU SO MUCH to mother-in-law Karin McNair, and father-in-law Steve McNair and Teri McNair, without whom we could not have done any of this trip at all. The wee girls were very happy to see us. We are all still a bit tired, though. 

writing fatherhood, pt. 4 (of 4) : open book: ontario,

The fourth piece in my "Writing Fatherhood" quartet (see the first part here and the second part here and the third part here), is now online at Open Book: Ontario; in which I discuss some works by George Bowering, Dennis Cooley, Gary Barwin, Ed Dorn, Mark Cochrane, Rob Budde, Steven Heighton, Jason Christie and even myself. And then of course, our birth notice (in case you didn't catch).

fwd: The Al Purdy Show: a celebration of poetry and music to benefit the Al Purdy A-Frame

the autumn 2012 ottawa international writers festival schedule is now online!

the ottawa international writers festival
October 24-30, 2012

Check the schedule here, with authors including Linda Spalding, Christine Poutney, M.G. Vassanji, Shauna Singh Baldwin, Annabel Lyon, David Bergen, Lloyd Robertson, rob mclennan, Chris Alexander, Robert Fowler, Maureen Jennings, Peter Robinson, Michael Petrou, Pasha Malla, Missy Marston, Sarah Dearing, Ayad Akhtar, Shani Boianjiu, Anton Piatigorsky, Spencer Gordon, Barry Webster, Tim Ward, Amanda Lang, Nyla Matuk, Jonathan Goldstein, Nadine McInnis, Miranda Hill, Steven Heighton, Matthew Tierney and Marcus McCann (among others), and the Ottawa premiere of Midnight's Children screening and on-stage conversation with Deepa Mehta.

Paige Ackerson-Kiely, My Love is a Dead Arctic Explorer

In her second trade poetry collection, My Love is a Dead Arctic Explorer (Boise ID: Ahsahta Press, 2012), Vermont poet Paige Ackerson-Kiely adapts the narratives of explorer Robert Peary (1856-1920) and Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s (1888-1957) memoir Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure (1938) into a striking and unbelievably powerful collection of prose-poems. Robert Peary (in Ackerson-Kiely’s own notes) “was a U.S. explorer who claimed, April 6, 1909, to have reached the Geographic North Pole, a claim oft disputed. Peary made many expeditions to the Arctic, and famously brought several Inuit to the U.S. where, lacking immunity, most died.” Arctic exploration is something that bubbles to the surface of literature every few years, including by Kingston writer Steven Heighton writing of an earlier, failed expedition in his novel Afterlands (Knopf, 2005), or Ottawa writer Elizabeth Hay referencing fragments of the same in her Captivity Tales: Canadians in New York (New Star Books, 1993). The mystique remains, despite post-colonial stirrings that might render such interests obsolete. The north remains, and by contemporary writers, at least, remains predominantly unexplored.

The Pittance

On my pittance of I’ll do you if you do me, I have been strict in my stillness. It is a matter of indecent accrual, stacked upon, a compost of googolplex that the world should be mine for this pale, shivery packaging. If you love me I will love you back. spoiled dogs do not strain forward out of love, but for continued spoilage: Eventually you end up at a destination derived from the cartographer’s immeasurable desire for one true proportion. His cold-cracked hands lifting a camisole of cloud, sky behind mocking the bar’s neon invitation to drink a specific drink. Though we felt the same long night thirst, while those dogs worked so hard I continued to whip them.

Less a framing than a trace, a thread or perhaps echo, My Love is a Dead Arctic Explorer uses the foundation of arctic exploration as part of a larger canvas, highlighting a series of tensions held so tight they can’t help but cut directly into the skin, densely packed as so few prose poems have ever done before. Is her “love” one also nearly-lost, or frozen in a desolate, unforgiving landscape, or is her “love” changed by the experience, finally returning home from desolation to a confused familiarity? Ackerson-Kiely’s language itself is one of longing, loss and exploration, striking wild in a variety of directions, stock-still enough to articulate the previously unseen, and never-known. Ackerson-Kiely’s poems explore waitress and explorers, love’s poor judgments, heartbreak and family (the poem “Notes for a Daughter Learning to Swim” is a particular highlight, and a rare piece referencing family life) and the equal possibilities and limitations of what the language will allow.

Numbers are Many, Words

Are Limited

How many times we did it.

How many nouns we can replace with it.

You say fulcrum; I say plinth.

We better call the calling off: Off.

Your special note cards full of sums.

What real estate is worth when you rent it out.

If my embarrassment raised up as a hair

on the hackles of a jackal. No—

if each jackal, crouched under this charming sun

could describe my ear, warmed

only by your swarthy breath—

as often as I could say:

I want you. Is never

enough.

Several poems here also respond to the work of artist Adie Russell, originally collected into a small collaborative chapbook, This Landscape (Argos Books, 2010), and the poem “Book About a Candle / Burning in a Shed” appears to be a companion poem to her chapbook of the same name, a collection of prose-poems published by above/ground press in 2011.

Book About a Candle

Burning in a Shed

One time in a shed a candle burned.

My thoughts were with the window

looking out over the dark yard.

I know it isn’t much—

the light inside just strong enough

to illuminate nothing really out there.

I snuffed it. The shed continued to contain me.

If you toss a penny on the ground eventually

the ground will gather the penny into itself:

No imagined bank for saving poor white girls

on the sawdust-covered floor where he

traced his finger under the waistband so lovely

I paid him back by keeping still.