Words from the editor

Contrary to popular expectations of the word contra—one we now often associate with revolution and in that context, violence—poetry itself continues to be regarded as literary form that has not changed since Homer’s time.

But like other art forms, it has transformed, transmuted—not to mention transmogrified—so that many of those larger-than-life legends of the poetic persuasion would not recognize their own art.

This issue of CV2 is dedicated to work that goes against expectation, starting with a feature interview with Manitoba’s own performance poetry sensation, Poor Tree. What makes them different is that they don’t ascribe to what has become an expectation of performance poetry. We are talking two guys and a gal who stand up in front of some of Winnipeg’s toughest bar crowds and win them over to poetry—no kidding—three bodies and three typewriters who get up in front of a crowd and just start typing. At the end they read, and the effect is amazing. One of the questions I asked them was how a magazine like CV2 could do a performance like theirs justice, and the answer was immediate and direct: “You have to see it.” It is an important discussion for CV2 to pursue, because one of the most controversial issues for poets right now is the split between those we typically see as performance poets and those who work more traditionally on the page, but for Poor Tree if there is a politic at work here it is about form—the expectation or emphasis on the importance of, as member Christoff Engbrecht refers to it, “archive,” and who is that record really for?

It is also an important question in a time when we are inundated with technology—and not only about how art has been transformed by it but how our expectations of art have changed because of it.