“poem” broadside #345 : “FALLS” by Claire Farley

What is a year in terms of falling water?

– Muriel Rukeyser

Nothing but lumber

falls dammed & city rezoned

material obstacle

to the flow of cars

For 10,000 years

this sacred pipe

is “river” now

open the viewer to zoom in

40,000 on the grid

I break it down in sections

who opposes & who supports

pavement or asbestos 

buried turbines

on contaminated soil

(preferred hire to stem

the flow Indigenous)

In the 1930s, Rukeyser

wrote hydro & silicosis

    All power is saved, having no end    

                                        

Water celebrates, yielding continually

         sheeted and fast in its overfall

now the green season is 

commerce, condos—

sometimes someone

chooses because

                            falling, the water sheet

    White brilliant function of land’s disease

another by-law

turns land industry

turns Crown municipal

duty to consult

cannot be delegated

to third parties

another resolution

whereas;

FALLS, by Claire Farley

produced in part as a handout during the fifth

Arc Poetry Walk, curated and hosted by rob mclennan, walking around Hintonburg, November 9, 2018

above/ground press broadside #345

Claire Farley is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at the University of Ottawa and co-founder of Canthius, a feminist literary magazine. Her poetry has been published in several Canadian literary magazines and in 30 under 30: An Anthology of Canadian Millennial Poets. She is the 2016 recipient of the Diana Brebner Prize.

“poem” broadside #344 : “Lifeboat” by Emily Baird

Home is a riverbed. It is the squelch of my toes burrowing into mud like clams, and the suction refusal of that mud to let my feet go. It is the wildflower laughter springing full-bellied from moist earth, and the maps I trace in the wrinkles of my fingertips. For me, river water can feel so smooth that it becomes a second skin and I can’t tell which parts of me are submerged. Once, I sliced my foot open on a rock while swimming and watched my blood cloud the water. When I lifted my foot, the crooked wound leaked clear and the river became a part of me.

Now home is invisible on my horizon. I feel not like I’m wading in the river but like I’m lost at sea. I fear the unknown planets and creatures miles beneath, afraid they’ll brush my suspended toes, afraid to discover them, afraid not to. This saltwater can’t quench my thirst for shore.

But before I learned to swim, I learned to float. It can save your life.

The trick is to lie on your back and let go of every tendon-clenching, muscle-tightened twist in your body. To unravel the knots in your own spine and allow the water to lap at your cheeks, run through your veins. In order to float, you have to let go of your fear of sinking.

From the river, I learned to make a lifeboat of myself. So maybe home isn’t a fixed destination slipping from my grasp like the rope of an anchor.

Maybe home is floating. 

Lifeboat, by Emily Baird
produced in part as a handout during the second
Arc Poetry Walk, curated and hosted by rob mclennan,
walking around Glebe, May 25, 2018
above/ground press broadside #344

Emily Baird recently completed her third year at Carleton University in a Combined Honors English and Human Rights degree. Hailing from the small town of Deep River, Ontario, she has been thrilled with the many opportunities to write and share her poetry since moving to Ottawa. Emily is the winner of this year’s George Johnson Poetry Prize (for her poem “Lifeboat”) and has previously been published in Carleton’s In/Words magazine for her poem “Les Cloches D’Is.”

“poem” broadside #343 : “IT'S WINTER IN OTTAWA” by John Newlove

IT’S WINTER IN OTTAWA

The streets are full of overweight corporals,

of sad grey computer captains, the impedimentia

of a capital city, struggling through the snow.

There is a cold gel on my belly, an instrument

is stroking it incisively, the machine

in the half-lit room is scribbling my future.

It is not illegal to be unhappy.

A shadowy technician says alternately,

Breathe, and, You may stop now.

It is not illegal to be unhappy.

IT’S WINTER IN OTTAWA

by John Newlove

produced in part as a handout during the first

Arc Poetry Walk, curated and hosted by rob mclennan,

walking around Centretown as part of WORLD POETRY DAY,

March 21, 2018

above/ground press broadside #343

Canadian lyric poet John Newlove (1938-2003) has been called a “powerfully influential presence” in the Canadian poetry scene, and is respected for the scrupulous honestly of his bare-bones poetics. And although Newlove lived in BC and Ontario for much of his life, he was always considered a Saskatchewan poet. He lived in Ottawa for seventeen years, longer than he lived anywhere, residing at 105 Rochester Street in Chinatown until his death.

Reprinted from A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove

edited by Robert McTavish; Ottawa ON: Chaudiere Books, 2007

Courtesy of Chaudiere Books