Hardscrabble: bracken, western hemlock,
Bony crust of ocean, tacks of maps
The greater landscape curates, acrossThe margins of Stanley Park
(rob mclennan, from Four Poems for Lunch Poems SFU)
It has been an exceptional year, this 2020. Exceptional for the immense grief, suffering and upheaval the global pandemic has brought with it — the travel restrictions, the ongoing ban on in-person gatherings and events of all and every kind, here in British Columbia, across Canada and globally. So, it’s certainly a difficult endeavour, if not a fool’s errand, to extract very much humor from this 2020 year. On Twitter, early-pandemic, there was one attempt on a comic take, looking at the early effects of COVID-19 restrictions, specifically around poetry readings.
The setup: “Events and gatherings of over fifty people are to be cancelled.”
The punchline: “Poetry readings will do just fine.”
But as history unfolded, they weren’t at all spared. Mid-second wave this joke, to our ears, fails to land. Considering this, in the weighty absence of much of anything funny to say, what can really be said? It must be at least tolerable to talk about one’s regrets from the sliver of 2020, the early portion that was ‘pre-pandemic.’
Looking back, this year was to be part of an intentional effort to enter into and participate in the poetry community, editing myself into community, rather than out. You could call it a resolution. I suppose it was, in the sense that it was meant to be a positive thing, antidotal to a certain level of underlying social anxiety. 2020 was to be a year for me to break those invisible barriers and step forward into the world, including taking part in workshops with The Writer’s Studio, attending poetry readings, launches, and other community workshops. Again, the chunk of 2020 pre-restrictions and closures, cancellations, there is a certain regret that lingers for me around one poetry reading I attended.
On late February afternoon, as I rode the Canada Line away from Vancouver’s Waterfront Station, I began to feel the full weight of disappointment, of a missed opportunity. As it happened, the day was particularly beautiful. It was unusually mild for the tail end of winter, even for Vancouver. I had made the trek downtown to see rob mclennan and Christine McNair, who were in town from Ottawa. They had traveled to the west coast to read as part of Simon Fraser University’s Lunch Poems series.
At the reading, I spotted many poets and writers from the city’s literary scene in the audience. There was even a class of local elementary school children on a field trip. They had all come to listen, overflow seating was necessary.
When the poetry reading ended, I swiftly left, my mind buzzed with a feeling that it was among the best such events I’d ever attended. As I headed for the trains at Waterfront Station, I passed through the doors and down the long corridor towards the outbound platforms. But, just before boarding, I stopped, paused and considered for a moment. Then somehow inwardly convinced and finding my wallet empty, I turned back. I headed to a cash machine that I’d noticed in the station’s foyer. And with a twenty dollar bill which I slid into my pocket and having mustered just enough courage, I crossed back over West Cordova Street. I told myself, I’d head back to buy a copy of rob’s newest poetry title.
Through the campus doors, past the food court, I made my way back up the escalator and returned to the Teck Gallery in the atrium on the main floor of SFU’s Harbour Centre campus. Nearly every member of the small crowd still gathered had dispersed. I approached the table where the two poets’ many volumes were for sale. rob was chatting with someone off to the side, by the large windows that look out over the harbour and the North Shore mountains. He saw me and called me over. With brief introductions — a first face-to-face meeting after virtual exchanges via email and Twitter — he dug through his bag and pulled out an envelope of the latest chapbooks from his above/ground press. He said that he expected I might attend and as I was one of his subscribers, he was glad to save on postage. Along with that envelope chocked full of chapbooks, I ended up purchasing his 2019 title a halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press). He also generously threw in a copy of his red earth from Black Moss Press (2003).
As he and Christine packed up and prepared to head out, we spoke further. When we had reached the doors to West Hastings Street, rob half-inquired-half-invited me, asking if I was going to lunch with his crew of poets, including Christine McNair, George Stanley, Renee Sajorini and others. Of course it was an immensely kind gesture and looking back, if a gesture is all it was, it’s one I deeply appreciate (all the more for the impossibility of such a thing occurring in this present state of pandemic life). But I hesitated, waffled and tilted towards the responsibility of little ones at home. All of which basically amounted to a nervous excuse for feeling intimidated by what I perceived as well-established and bonafide writers, people of the poetic craft.
Later that day, I asked myself, “how to be a lonely poet?” and I was immediately struck by the answer that it’s exceptionally hard or nearly impossible. I, then, took to Twitter, tweeted something about this notion, got a few sympathetic and knowing likes from a handful of writers. And being present on Twitter, a social media platform preferred by writers and literary types, it occured me just how small and familial the poetry community really is, particularly in the Canadian context, CanLit, CanPo, etc.
The next day, rob wrote about the Lunch Poems reading on his blog, and even happened to mention me by name. What I didn’t know then, was that this event was the last reading I would attend in-person, before the full effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic hit. With hindsight being what it is, I now see this missed opportunity as one of my biggest regrets of 2020. The chance to have a face-to-face conversation and to share space, physical space, together with people who are active and vital in the world of poetry, is literally out-of-reach for the moment and into the foreseeable future. For now, online and virtual readings are something of a gracious replacement, however the act of sharing a meal or drink with others who pursue the art of writing and making poems is something that carries with it a deep vitality, magnified through a nostalgic lens of this particular and singular lost opportunity.
As it happens, I wrote a review for a chapbook from Steffi Tad-y ahead of what was to be the next instalment of SFU’s next Lunch Poems series, scheduled for the following month, for March 2020. It was among the first of such events to be cancelled. The reading was set to feature poets Meredith Quartermain and Steffi Tad-y. It was postponed, “POSTPONED” and never rescheduled, simply frozen in time, it seems. Lost in the fog between the early pandemic and just prior to the uptake and adoption of Zoom as a platform for these readings, in the new normal.
It is true that for many months now, literary communities have taken to Zoom and other similar virtual platforms. This has, in some ways, made ‘live’ readings more accessible, along with the added benefit of their recordings, posted after the fact (for those who cannot attend the timely virtual events). With all or many of us converted to virtual platforms, the great stop-gap measure that they are, there remains an important piece that is missing.
The trouble is, unlike in pre-pandemic times, there are really no organic after-Zoom, after-reading, pre-event, post-event hangouts. Once ‘The Host’ has ended the virtual call/event, there’s this sudden and hard stop. Just like that, you’re dropped out onto your desktop background, likely to a tropical beach scene with its warm white sand and turquoise waters or a perhaps just a photo of your dog. It’s the binary of the decision, to stay or not to stay, made for you by the grim facts of a combination of biology and technology. It places you back into your ‘hermitage’ of circumstance.
But I wonder now (in the middle of the pandemic’s second wave), how is, for instance, George Stanley along with the many other poets not apparently or publicly ‘online,’ without an ‘online presence?’ I know communities have existed and absolutely do exist offline, outside of the social media realm. But beyond Twitter, Instagram, blogs, online journals, which serve as places to take the digital temperature (analog in the case of paper-based publications), a way to engage with the literary scene, one is simply left to wonder and assume that with the absence of in-person readings, there must be this very real and present hole in the fabric of communal literary life.
And going back to that February day and other days like it, relative to now there is much that is missing, even if it wasn’t substantial conversation, just to share space and small talk with other poets like George Stanley, and making connections, and simply the ability to say, “what a great venue” or ask, “beautiful day for a reading, isn’t it?” This type of seemingly innocuous small talk is not so innocuous or small, after all. In previous times, before the pandemic, I would have likely seen him and many other poets and writers all over town. And it occurs, for the remainder of the year, earlier this fall, the only other time George Stanley’s name came to my attention was when Tom Sandborn reviewed his chapbook in the Vancouver Sun. This is the literary community functioning in-print, the way it has for centuries. The in-print community, no true replacement or substitute for in-person readings and book launches.
* * *
Afterward, despite the great SFU event and the rewarding decision to return, breaking out of my shell and the chat with rob, I felt the combination of novelty and rarity of such a thing, a pre-nostalgia of sorts. Slipping onto the Canada Line train, I did have this sense (or perhaps premonition) of a world about to be upturned in some way and of being ‘alone together’ on a train surrounded by so many strangers. It was to be my last train home before the near-total shutdown of the early pandemic. I’m sure none of the other passengers saw this train coming either, this final one.
And to find a word for this isolated existence, in this 2020 year, I wonder, does it all in some way classify as a feeling Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō called sabi? If there’s anything poetic to be said about loneliness, Bashō certainly has some historical authority, some provenance in this area. If a word exists to label this sense, it could be sabi, a word that is generally difficult to translate into English:
‘While literally meaning “loneliness,” sabi is the atmosphere of solitude, of attentiveness to impermanence and the nature of being, tinged with an aesthetic sense of irony, pathos and what might be called in the West melancholy or even a “tragic sense.”’ (https://www.hermitary.com/articles/basho_saigyo.html)
And now perhaps there’s some way in which we all feel, intuitively through this pandemic, what Bashō felt or aimed to convey in the composition of this poem (trans. Robert Hass):
Even in Kyoto—
Hearing the cuckoo’s cry—
I long for Kyoto
There’s a way in which most poets and writers, and all people might share some sort of common ground in the feeling captured in this haiku, a form in which, as T. Kamiya wrote, “poets and readers are identical.” Maybe there’s poetic soil here, best sewn with seeds of haiku in these moments, to be treated best by the form that demands both the poet and reader be immediately present to one another, though likely separated by time and space. It’s a familiar feeling.
* * *
To look back on that February day now, if there’s anything to learn, it’s the realization that regardless of whatever social discomfort or awkwardness there is to feel, that it is a temporary state of affairs and might simply be the price of admission for becoming a poet in a community of poets. It seems an especially small price to pay now, in light of what we are collectively enduring with the realities of this pandemic.
At that time, late winter/early spring, knowing of the robust poetry community in Ottawa, from where rob and Christine had travelled, I pondered one day travelling to attend that city’s renowned poetry festival, VersesFest. At the time of writing the nation’s capital is out of reach, ‘red-zoned,’ locked-down. However, I did virtually attend VersesFest this year, normally scheduled for March, which was held online in November. I listened to a few panels and readings with one ear, the other ear listened while my children rolled around, played on the carpet in front of me. So, in reality, I mostly missed the live events. Even though online, it sometimes feels like these sorts of readings might as well be transmitted from the moon.
This year—this strange, strange year—for me, being online has led to building community, finding a place in a literary community that is virtual. But when we return from and emerge from this pandemic, what will the world look like? How will this community come together, in-person after a long physical absence? So many questions. Mostly, through all of the uncertainty, I hold onto a piece of correspondence from the evening that followed February’s SFU Lunch Poems event. I sent rob a message thanking him for the reading and for his kind lunch invitation. He responded. His brief reply ended with: “see you again.”
Links:
For a review of the chapbook:
https://periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2020/10/stan-rogal-poems-for-lunch-poems-at-sfu.html
rob’s blog post about the reading:
https://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2020/02/rob-and-christine-at-lunch-poems-at-sfu.html
Steffi Tad-y and Meredith Quartermain link:
https://www.sfu.ca/continuing-studies/events/2020/03/lunch-poems/
Michael Edwards 
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