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.
Canadians have an odd relationship to the U.S. We define ourselves against them, first of all. Many of us in urban centres find guns appalling, our history is closer to compromise than conflict, possibly born out of the need to accommodate both French and English, and the same need has introduced a greater love -- at least in theory -- of diversity, and a recognition diversity is a strength, not a weakness. There is a distinct Canadian identity that Canadians...continue reading
Your second collection of poems, The Cold Panes of Surfaces, is out now. Your first book, Bonfires, won the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award in 2004. Did winning a national award for your first book bolster your artistic confidence while working on your second, or did you find it daunting, as though you had more to live up to than other poets working on a second collection?
I think it certainly gave me a boost of confidence and the permission I needed to do what I wanted to do artistically with the second book. I didn't feel any outside pressure because of winning the CAA award, or feel that I had any expectations to live up to. Winning the award was terrific, and it was good publicity, but it was also an education on how fleeting such praise can be, and how it leaves your writing life virtually...continue reading