Follow the Poets

April is National Poetry Month and as a press, Wolsak and Wynn has always been a home for poets. The two women who started the press, back in 1982, were poets themselves, and they created the press to publish poetry. In fact, Marja Jacobs and Heather Cadsby paid for their first publication in a very poetic way: they used funds from the sales of their own chapbooks. Heather and Marja were determined to fill what they felt was a huge hole in publishing in Canada. There were incredible poets that they knew who could not find publishers. So they started a company and published them, quickly picking up a couple of major awards and a lot of nominations for their books along the way.

Yet awards were never the goal. I remember Marja being asked by a reporter at the announcement of an early Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist if this new prize, with its substantial award, changed everything. Marja smiled and said, “The prize changes nothing. The poets will still write, with or without prizes. They write because they are poets.” It was not the answer the reporter was looking for and I’ve never forgotten it. It took me a while to understand just what she was saying. I was a lot younger and the fanfare around prizes is enough to turn anyone’s head. The prize changes so much, I thought at the time, though I was at least wise enough not to say it. But Marja had lived through both the Depression and World War II in Holland. Her mother had hidden Jewish families in their small house during the Nazi occupation and she told me many stories about what that was like. Prizes did not turn Marja’s head. Poetry did.   

The poets will still write, regardless of the world, because they are poets. Book launches are being delayed, cities and entire countries are being asked to stay home and stay safe. The readings have all moved online and it’s not the same, but it’s still poetry.

The poets will show us the way through this pandemic and they will capture it in elegant or powerful or surreal or graceful lines and they will make sense of it all for us later. I think poetry is the best way to engage with monumental changes. Nothing else has the clarity and intensity of a good poem. I hope you have a few beloved books that you can turn to when the scale of what we’re facing threatens to overwhelm you. I know there’s a few collections that we’ve brought out over the years that I’m keeping on my reading table right now.  

One of these is Armand Garnet Ruffo’s TREATY #. Here’s one of my favourite poems from the collection:

A Wise Man Once Told Me 

for Wilfred Peltier

When the knock comes
to your door
you will not be there to answer it. 
We have been undressing too long
it is time 
to put your clothes back on.  

You take the water that is still
and the water that flows 
and all the things in the water
bring them back here
within you 
where they belong.

You take the land
and the rocks, and the trees
and all those animals
and the insects
who live in those forests – 
you bring all that back too
inside of you.

Then you take the birds
the air
the clouds
the stars, the sky
and the whole universe 
that too belongs
inside of you.

And then we take all
of the people in the world
and every language
in the world
and bring that too back 
inside of you – 
where it rightfully belongs
when you have done that 
you will be fully clothed.

And each foot will know
exactly
where to fall
and you cannot make a mistake.
When the knock comes
to your door
you will be there
to answer it.