matt robinson currently works in Residential Life at UNB in Fredericton, NB. His most recent collection of poetry is 'no cage contains a stare that well' (ECW, 2005), a full-length volume of hockey poems. A poetry editor at The Fiddlehead, robinson's poetry has received numerous awards, including The Petra Kenney International Poetry Prize, and has appeared in anthologies such as The New Canon (Vehicule, 2005), Breathing Fire 2 (Nightwood, 2004), and Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada (Goose Lane, 2002). Previous collections include a chapbook of hockey poems, 'tracery & interplay' (Frog Hollow Press, 2004), as well as the full-length collections 'how we play at it: a list' (ECW, 2002), and 'A Ruckus of Awkward Stacking' (Insomniac, 2000), which was short-listed for both the Gerald Lampert Memorial and ReLit Poetry Awards.
heart
whether to take an axe to this
loose shutter and its insistent clattering,
or not; to draw, perhaps, the hammer back
and drive the bolt into its
place. whether to cleave. there is,
no doubt, a force in this - the kind of thing
that bursts barrels and topples
stacks of whatever might not be
nailed tightly down.
whether to simply make our way
over to the door and be done
with it. to spread our arms; to brace
our shoulders against the hard angle
of the frame. to just make do
right there, standing at the threshold of:
delay; one of any number of perspectives on flight
it's become painfully apparent the airport
doesn't have the sweetest clue. it snores its way
through the snowed-in grey we can see shadowing off
the crack in the dawn of this
morning. each breath is a chore, a burden
to be carried awkwardly down the long hall
of your throat, an over-sized frame of
a picture you don't really care for. your arms
simply can't stretch far enough; you
are always on edges. and the frowns people wear
as they shuffle about the rote of their waking
are only spun tire tracks mirrored: the sullen
discomfort of their shifting stark roads now brow-etched
across them through the windows of earlier cabs.
this, we might say, is the difficult face of travel.
the taut, weathered skin of the tent
in which anger lies fitfully sleeping.
but the rules here, we all know, are still
different: you keep your baggage close by at all times.
no more than an arm's length away; no
exceptions. and as bad as this seems, we can guess
our alternative's both nothing and something like love,
only instant. so: having thought, you think
you should sit and be glad for the crowd
of mis-matched totes crashed here at your feet, how much
you still have to be carted about. be glad
for this time - this new time - you've been gifted
to consider just where you might've been
going; to rethink things blown out of proportion.
So, I'd like to start with a comment made near the end of your Late Nights with Wild Cowboys, in the poem "Jawbone." You express real fear and anxiety over the prospect of having your life and love be objectified, turned into summary, a bowdlerized rendering that "[leaves] nearly everything out." More than that, though, you are worried about how we ourselves are complicit in this sort of exclusionary act. I guess what I'd like to ask first, then, is: do you imagine poetry as a means of letting things in rather than keeping everything out? And what are you aiming to let in, exactly?
I really do think of poetry in that way, in terms of providing a space -- an opening -- in which it might be possible to say the things that are hard, and perhaps impossible, to say otherwise; in which to express that inarticulate feeling that you get sometimes...continue reading
Steve McOrmond's new collection of poems begins with a caution. In the style of TV content warnings, "Advisory" lists potential disturbing content to come: "themes which could threaten the viewer's sense of security," "Evidence of fatalism and irreligion," and the typical forewarnings about sexuality, violence and "language." Here McOrmond displays the dual cautionary and playful perspectives that interact throughout the book, switching from warnings about a drowning and an animal attack to the line, "The following program may contain scenes not suitable for language."
The poem raises the expected questions about what we censor and screen in popular media. What is considered objectionable, and why? Placed at the start of a collection whose title references Armageddon, "Advisory" leads the reader to expect a certain discomfort.
With that warning, the book moves to the title...continue reading