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A Verse Map of Vancouver
One can't imagine Prince George or Kelowna or Surrey would have the hubris to generate a coffee table book of "verse geography"; such as A Verse Map of Vancouver (Anvil $45), edited by outgoing, pre-Olympic Poet Laureate George McWhirter.
But Vancouver-and Victoria-take themselves seriously as city-states of the mind. Apparently the hip new Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson will be handing out gift copies of McWhirter's quirky urban atlas to distinguished visitors-and good for him. Because McWhirter has molded a non-self-celebratory, mostly private reflection of a public place.
On a Seabus ride, George Whipple typically describes "20 storey high steel pterodactyl cranes as delicate as dragonflies"; and notices "one happy flag having an orgasm with the wind."; This is not an advertisement for a 'world class city' to raise the property values even higher. It is a sampling of moments, of minor epiphanies amid the clamour of machines and the distractions of nature.
Instructing contributors to accentuate places (rather than themselves) was a great idea, as was making the poems equal partners to Derek von Essen's unpretentious urban photographs, but this patchwork of impressions is ultimately illuminating because McWhirter has mostly chosen poetry about how it feels to be a citizen of Vancouver.
Shannon Stewart encounters electric eels and an octopus at the Aquarium. Mark Cochrane describes the banjo busker outside the 4th & Alma liquor store. David Conn has a lovely description of returning home from work to non-descript East Vancouver, "body charged, euphoric, the daily commute an accomplishment.";
Heidi Greco contributes a recollection of being stuck in an elevator of the Lee Building at Main & Broadway. George Stanley recalls the oddity of evacuating his building at 5:30 a.m. due to a fire alarm, "apartment dwellers, strangers, gathered out on the sidewalk.";
When the famously handsome English poet Rupert Brooke visited Vancouver and Victoria in 1913, he wrote, "You think B.C. means before Christ,"; he wrote, "but it doesn't. I'm sitting, wildly surmising, on the edge of the Pacific, gazing at mountains which are changing colour every two minutes in the most surprising way. Nature here is half Japanese.";
By opting not to provide context for the poems (ie. by choosing not to inform the Mayor's next Distinguished Visitor that Joy Kogawa's ode to her former home incorporates the painful family back story of forced internment during World War II), George McWhirter's verse map is, well, half Japanese. Whatever Rupert Brooke meant by that.
There is an element of haunting mystery to this carefully laid-out poetry garden of concrete and cherry blossoms. From VanDusen Gardens, Michael Bullock can see "The distant mountains / veil their sad faces / behind a scarf of mist."; You have to be a Vancouver insider to "get it."; But outsiders are welcome to have a gander, too.
Bernice Lever describes the urban circus of Word on the Street with a knowingly jaundiced eye. Kate Braid describes the architecture of the Science Centre as an "ugly attempt to mimic heaven."; Jancis Andrews ponders a cultural divide when she peers at grandmothers in Chinatown who "seem boneless, these women, twigs of black pants and dragon-embroidered jacket.";
Even bud osborn's sublime poem about predators in the Downtown Eastside is more poetic than political. The shortest poem is Joseph Ferone's haiku-like four-liner about visiting the BC Collateral pawn shop. "The bus stopped / before the pawnshop window: / I went to the guitars, / you went to the knives.";
Perhaps some poems about Vancouver from estranged outsiders-views of the Big Smoke from Anne Cameron in Tahsis-would have added a dash of piquancy but it's silly to dwell on all the poets who might have been included. No Kerrisdale Elegies from Bowering. No Birney. No bissett, etc. Well, that just creates room for newcomers like Elizabeth Bachinsky, Stephanie Bolster and Daniela Bouneva Elza.
Beyond the noteworthy inclusions of George Woodcock, Pat Lowther, Al Purdy and Michael Bullock, this ain't no dead poets' society. McWhirter's Vancouver is mostly contemporary-and also fleeting. The editor's selectivity has rendered this gathering of "surveyors"; into a coherent choir of small voices. 978-1897535-02-8
-- Alan Twigg
But Vancouver-and Victoria-take themselves seriously as city-states of the mind. Apparently the hip new Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson will be handing out gift copies of McWhirter's quirky urban atlas to distinguished visitors-and good for him. Because McWhirter has molded a non-self-celebratory, mostly private reflection of a public place.
On a Seabus ride, George Whipple typically describes "20 storey high steel pterodactyl cranes as delicate as dragonflies"; and notices "one happy flag having an orgasm with the wind."; This is not an advertisement for a 'world class city' to raise the property values even higher. It is a sampling of moments, of minor epiphanies amid the clamour of machines and the distractions of nature.
Instructing contributors to accentuate places (rather than themselves) was a great idea, as was making the poems equal partners to Derek von Essen's unpretentious urban photographs, but this patchwork of impressions is ultimately illuminating because McWhirter has mostly chosen poetry about how it feels to be a citizen of Vancouver.
Shannon Stewart encounters electric eels and an octopus at the Aquarium. Mark Cochrane describes the banjo busker outside the 4th & Alma liquor store. David Conn has a lovely description of returning home from work to non-descript East Vancouver, "body charged, euphoric, the daily commute an accomplishment.";
Heidi Greco contributes a recollection of being stuck in an elevator of the Lee Building at Main & Broadway. George Stanley recalls the oddity of evacuating his building at 5:30 a.m. due to a fire alarm, "apartment dwellers, strangers, gathered out on the sidewalk.";
When the famously handsome English poet Rupert Brooke visited Vancouver and Victoria in 1913, he wrote, "You think B.C. means before Christ,"; he wrote, "but it doesn't. I'm sitting, wildly surmising, on the edge of the Pacific, gazing at mountains which are changing colour every two minutes in the most surprising way. Nature here is half Japanese.";
By opting not to provide context for the poems (ie. by choosing not to inform the Mayor's next Distinguished Visitor that Joy Kogawa's ode to her former home incorporates the painful family back story of forced internment during World War II), George McWhirter's verse map is, well, half Japanese. Whatever Rupert Brooke meant by that.
There is an element of haunting mystery to this carefully laid-out poetry garden of concrete and cherry blossoms. From VanDusen Gardens, Michael Bullock can see "The distant mountains / veil their sad faces / behind a scarf of mist."; You have to be a Vancouver insider to "get it."; But outsiders are welcome to have a gander, too.
Bernice Lever describes the urban circus of Word on the Street with a knowingly jaundiced eye. Kate Braid describes the architecture of the Science Centre as an "ugly attempt to mimic heaven."; Jancis Andrews ponders a cultural divide when she peers at grandmothers in Chinatown who "seem boneless, these women, twigs of black pants and dragon-embroidered jacket.";
Even bud osborn's sublime poem about predators in the Downtown Eastside is more poetic than political. The shortest poem is Joseph Ferone's haiku-like four-liner about visiting the BC Collateral pawn shop. "The bus stopped / before the pawnshop window: / I went to the guitars, / you went to the knives.";
Perhaps some poems about Vancouver from estranged outsiders-views of the Big Smoke from Anne Cameron in Tahsis-would have added a dash of piquancy but it's silly to dwell on all the poets who might have been included. No Kerrisdale Elegies from Bowering. No Birney. No bissett, etc. Well, that just creates room for newcomers like Elizabeth Bachinsky, Stephanie Bolster and Daniela Bouneva Elza.
Beyond the noteworthy inclusions of George Woodcock, Pat Lowther, Al Purdy and Michael Bullock, this ain't no dead poets' society. McWhirter's Vancouver is mostly contemporary-and also fleeting. The editor's selectivity has rendered this gathering of "surveyors"; into a coherent choir of small voices. 978-1897535-02-8
-- Alan Twigg
Submitted on May 7, 2009 in By David.
