Words from the editor

Welcome to "The Poetics of Space." And just to reassure you—CV2 has not gone Star Wars, Volume 27 Issue 3: Revenge of the Poems, although I would imagine more than a few poets and poetry readers out there may feel that poetry is out to get them. While there are a few pieces in this issue that take on the universe—as good poetry is prone to do—I promise there are no sonnets about little green people or epics on creatures with vacuum-cleanerheads.

And while inspiration for some poets may lie in outer space, the question we attempted to ask in this issue is, “Where does poetry live? What is it about trying to explain where poetry comes from that makes a person feel as if they are forever reaching for another galaxy?” As we shall see in the pages that follow, there are no simple answers, because like fingerprints, each poet’s, and for that matter each interested reader’s, understanding of the poetic process—including where art comes from—is unique.

So, in our search for the last known address of what could easily be called literature’s most elusive genre, CV2 has dispensed with the moon for the moment to focus on the more down-to-earth spaces of our lives and what impact they have on the creative process.

To help with this discussion, I have sought the assistance of an expert. As it happens, the theme of this issue derives from a book of the same name: The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places, by renowned French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, who, during his lifetime—1884 to 1962—was the author of twenty-three books: twelve on the philosophy of science, two on time and consciousness, and nine on poetics, actually ten if one counts the volume left unfinished at the time of his death. Bachelard was best known for his work in science and philosophy, an academic who rose from humble beginnings to serve as the chair of history and the philosophy of science at the Sorbonne for twenty years. He received the Grand Prix National des Lettres in 1961, an honour bestowed on only two other philosophers, Descartes and Richelieu.

Today, Bachelard is most remembered for his postulation of “the epistemological break,” a theory that acknowledged that with the event of Einstein’s theory of relativity, the world experienced not just a complete break with previous science, but also with philosophy, a revelation that ushered in a new vision of inquiry in both the fields of philosophy and science.

Bachelard was no slouch on the subject of poetics, either, and reading The Poetics of Space, readers find themselves immersed in an analysis of human imagination that begins with a qualification of how a philosopher like himself with a background in science must leave everything he has learned behind in order to be open to the spontaneity of the creative process:
A philosopher who has evolved his entire thinking from the fundamental themes of the philosophy of science, and followed the main line of the active, growing rationalism of contemporary science as closely as he could, must forget his learning and break with all his habits of philosophical research, if he wants to study the problems posed by poetic imagination. For here the cultural past doesn’t count. The long day-in, day-out effort of putting together and constructing his thoughts is ineffectual.

Bachelard’s hypothesis, simply put, is that the spontaneous appearance in consciousness of an image begins the process—an occurrence he describes as “a sudden salience on the surface of the psyche.” In other words, it is an image that occurs suddenly—new and electric—and wholly consumes, however briefly, the entire being, and one he refers to as the “poetic image.”

Bachelard implied that these images appear out of nowhere—often strange and without language, “placing us at the origin of speaking being.” Bachelard states that the poetic image has no recent past “in which its preparation and appearance could be followed” and exists without any specific reference to culture. He also surmises that this process necessarily occurs outside the normal intellect, and can only be described as originating for the “soul.” By “soul,” Bachelard means a wholly human attribute; he ultimately a philosopher who believes in establishing logical arguments, and for him poetic image represents a basic process of the human imagination—not religious, and not one reserved exclusively for the artist.

Bachlard emphasizes that while poetic image is the root of the creative process—posing the actual question of creativity—the image is not in and of itself the poem. That process comes later and involves a much more intellectual process on the part of the artist—someone who becomes engaged by the possibility of connecting images. It is these images in the poem that are communicated to readers, becoming a catalyst for their own revelry, much in the vein of the collective consciousness of Jung, opening “hearts” to each other.

Bachelard substantiates his theory by the absence of other rationales, claiming that the spontaneous phenomenon of the poetic image could not be explained by mental health specialists, who could not likewise explain the appeal for something that seems completely outside or divorced from normal thinking.

Finally, for Bachelard, dreams are a primary means of poetic imaging, with those dreams coming both in waking and sleeping hours. The primary thrust of The Poetics of Space is how our internalization of our first sense of home, and our first living “spaces,” manifest in both the creative process and the spaces that we create for daily living.

Because his sense of the creative process is one that stems from a different way of looking at the way human logos works, and that it works in relationship to the influence of humankind’s most primary requisite of shelter, I thought it would be interesting to explore some of Bachelard’s ideas about poetics with the featured writers in this issue of CV2, as well as to talk about their own sense of space and poetics.

In this issue we are pleased to have on hand for this topic several accomplished poets: Sue Goyette, Chandra Mayor, Fiona Tinwei Lam, and Patrick Friesen.

With each of these writers we talk about the relationship of poetics and space—the physical space they work in, and the inspiration of childhood homes and other creative interstices that influence writing. Each of these poets has a unique domesticity to their poetry: Sue Goyette’s recent collection, Undone, deals with the demise of her marriage; and Chandra Mayor’s most recent book, Cherry, a novel, deals with the gritty and often violent reality of urban street culture. In Intimate Distances by Fiona Tinwei Lam, we find poetry about conflicts in a family where intimacy is made difficult by loss and cultural duality; and Patrick Friesen talks to writer Jonathan Ball about minimalist representation in his most recent writing project, Bordello Poems.

In addition to the featured interviews and poetry, you will also find the winners of The Poetics of Space Contest—first-place winner Alice Major takes us to new constellations with her poem, “Deep Field Experiment”; second-place winner Jessica Woolford gives us a unique approach to the space of a poem in “technique”; and third- place winner Jeanette Lynes takes on a galaxy of more human nebulae.

CV2 would like to offer congratulations to all our winners and to thank our contest judges, Sharon Caseburg and Lori Cayer, for a job that couldn’t have been easy with all those fine entries. We would also like to thank all who entered the contest.

It has been rather eventful around the magazine since our last issue—first in regards to CV2’s interview with featured poet Joe Denham in our last issue, Day Jobs, Night Shifts, (Volume 27, Issue 2). You may recall from that interview some comments, made by the poet in response to questions about the experience of publishing his first book, which could be considered contentious, particularly for his publisher, Nightwood Editions. For those readers who missed the last issue, I have reprinted the particular remarks.

“In hindsight I think flux suffered a bit—as many first collections these days do—from being published before it and I were ready. I am not saying that flux is a failure, but it’s probably the third draft in a five-draft manuscript.
This seems odd for a non-market genre, and I suspect it has a lot to do with the glut of grant-supported small publishing houses in Canada and their mandatory yearly quotas, but it’s too easy to publish collections that are far less than what is possible.”

Silas White, Managing Editor of Nightwood Editions, and the publisher of Joe Denham’s first collection, flux, thought the potential for the above remarks to cause misunderstandings about Nightwood Editions’ editorial and publishing practices was significant enough to approach CV2 with a request for an opportunity to respond. At the same time he approached Joe Denham, directly requesting a personal clarification of the author’s observations.

Silas White passed on Joe’s apologetic concern that these comments could be read to suggest that his publisher pressured him to release his book before it was ready, when this, in fact, was far from the actual case. If anything, Denham has acknowledged, he was the one who felt strongest that it needed to be published when it was, and that he, White, and other readers such as Don McKay and Séan Virgo all agreed that the book was ready.

Denham contends that it was not his intent to imply that Nightwood pressured him into publishing or that his publisher was working by quota at that time. On the contrary, he meant his comments to refer to much wider cultural issues; he still feels that too much poetry is published in Canada, and wishes that government support was concentrated on only a few literary presses like Nightwood, who do have high literary standards, rather than being spread out over a great many.

White accepts Denham’s apology, but emphasizes that he still doesn’t necessarily agree with the argument, one he has heard from young poets before. “Publishers do receive support from government bodies on a per-book basis (providing they are deemed to be eligible), but I don’t know anyone who is making money on poetry. There is no financial incentive to publish poetry, and I only do it when I find manuscripts that fit into our mandate and are as excellent and exciting as flux. Furthermore, publishers do have to put out four books per year to remain eligible for the Canada Council block grant, but I don’t know of any who are transparently churning out questionable poetry books in order to barely meet the minimum. I’m more bothered by funding going to more commercially oriented books that are published for profit and don’t need government support.”

White also disagrees with Denham’s modest regrets about flux. “Joe probably wishes that all the poems in the book had scored higher on the ‘poet’s poetry’ scale, but to me the fact that they didn’t has always been one of the book’s most impressive and daring qualities. We wrote something in our promotional copy about the collection being everything a poetry début should be, and I still believe this because the collection includes various poetic forms: rural and urban poems; a section of free-flowing, rambling and humorous hitch-hiking poems; and a sequence of very tightly controlled and constructed fishing poems, and so on.…

“A poet more set in one’s ways likely wouldn’t be capable of such a diverse and dynamic book. It was rather gutsy of Joe to do this and understandably some critics who liked some poems didn’t like others. Certain poems that were dismissed or ignored in Books in Canada were celebrated at a university newspaper, and vice versa. ‘Serious’ critics were more than reluctant to praise Joe’s risk-taking, but more importantly readers found it invigorating. I expect his future collections will be more polished and consistent, but flux is without doubt a début he should and will be extremely proud of.”

In concluding with a few words of my own, I would like to stress that it is not the purpose of interviews published in CV2 to serve as a forum for any one viewpoint over another. It is our intention to present a clear picture of the current state of poetry in Canada from as many perspectives as possible. Joe Denham’s response to my questions about the experience of publishing his first book was his opinion on how he believes the publishing system in Canada works, and while it certainly does not represent the views of this magazine, I do think it is imperative to establishing a better understanding of what poetry means in Canada today, to provide a place for clarifying possible misconceptions about all aspects of the art of poetry, creative and professional, with appropriate discussion, however that can occur. In that regard I would like to thank both Silas White and Joe Denham for the transparency of their process, making it possible for us to view more intimately the reality of publishing poetry.

Finally, you will notice the absence of the new French section in this issue. It is not for the lack of trying on our part, but at the last possible moment we discovered that the Algerian poet whose work we had chosen to publish in this issue is at the centre of a plagiarism controversy, stemming mostly from English translations of the work. It has been recently uncovered that many of his translations were actually poems written by other poets and have been published under his name. To be fair, it is a rather mysterious affair, and actually may be a case of identity theft, but the jury is still out. The problem is that the submissions made by the poet were sent by e-mail, and a writer has recently appeared, by e-mail, stating that someone has been sending poetry out under his/her name. While this so far seems to have occurred primarily with Internet literary magazines, he/she has managed to infiltrate a few print publications, and a book publication with a US company. If you have published poetry on the Internet, primarily but not exclusively in the US and Europe, I would recommend you check poetry published under the name of Amari Hamadene to ensure that your work has not been pirated by whomever is perpetrating this fraud. There have been over fifty and counting publications attributed to this name worldwide.

And while we are on the subject of the French section, CV2 is pleased to announce that we have added two new editors, so that in addition to Nina Berkhout, Laurent Poliquin and Denise Berkhout will be working to make CV2’s French section an exciting regular feature.

So that’s a wrap, folks—I do hope you enjoy this issue. And just a reminder: the World Wide Web is a huge, unchecked poetry-fest—so be careful out there.

Here’s wishing you all good words—until next time,

—Managing Editor, Clarise Foster