Who was John Newlove? How would you describe his poetry? Could you give a short biography of his life, in person and in print?

Newlove came from rural Saskatchewan in the early 1960s to become a major poetic voice of his generation, and critics loved him from the start. He was the quintessential intellectual drifter. George Woodcock even called him the first distinctive voice of the prairies. This label is limiting though; as Margaret Atwood recently pointed out, it "misses the target by as broad a margin as if you called John Milton ‘the voice of Cromwell’s London.’" 

Otherwise, his work is best known for its consummate craftsmanship and its darkness, a sly lyric cynicism. He has a true penchant for the killer line as well, and is often very funny. From ‘61-72 he put out a torrent of work, culminating in the 1972 Governor General’s Award for his book Lies. 

At the time he was also a senior editor at McClelland and Stewart in Toronto, editing many soon to be classics of the burgeoning CanLit canon. Unfortunately this is where things slip off track in his lifelong battles with alcoholism and depression. His next full book 14 years later – the masterful The Night the Dog Smiled – would be his last, the rest of his declining output gathered in a selected poems and a 1999 chapbook. He died in Ottawa in 2003. 

Biographically, he really fit the role of the nation-defining writer of his generation – by chance he would say – as he was enmeshed in critical Canadian cultural junctures: a post-war golden prairie childhood, "beatnik" Vancouver of the early 60s, nationalistic Toronto in the 70s, and finally settling in eminent, respectable Ottawa. As a personality he was fascinating – charismatic and contradictory, with always a touch of the wry curmudgeon.

What does the "argument" of the title refer to?

It reflects on several aspects of Newlove’s work and character, but most obviously comes from his poem of (nearly) the same name, which echoes in a more complex manner the early "Then, If I Cease Desiring" in its contentment with "moments, not monuments." His poems have been called starkly pessimistic, yet resonate far beyond that perspective because there is always tension in his work – between desire and loss, memory and present, and especially truth and lies. Of course the blatant argument is why write (and a true pessimist probably wouldn’t), and John’s work is always eloquently relaying the dubious nature of language. Jeff Derksen, in his great Afterword, further examines two parallel arguments in the work, one literary and one social, that address Canadian nationalism and the poet’s societal disgust.

Where does Newlove fit into the context of poetry, Canadian and world-wide? I'm curious to know about his relationships with his colleagues and contemporaries, but I don't want to imply that I'm only interested in nationalistic connections. Just a question about context: his influences and the inheritance he left.

I’ve heard Newlove called a transitional figure: a late modernist temperament with postmodernist tricks (see the early "Samuel Hearne in Wintertime"). He nailed the sixties intellectual temperament and its subsequent vacillations between hope and hopelessness. But from his nearly documentary beginnings to his later abstractions, Newlove was extremely influential on his and subsequent generations of Canadian and international poets, and not simply as part of a nationalistic project. His craft in line breaks and rhythmic patterns is emulated as much if not more than his wry tone and mastery of the pithy line. Still, as the Canadian canon shifted, and his own production waned, his voice was muted to the point of eclipse in recent generations. And let’s face it, he alienated a lot of peers and professors with bad behaviour and a healthy distrust of authority. His prairie poems such as "Ride off any horizon" and "Crazy Riel" remain staples in schools, but much of his work lays latent in this country’s collective mind waiting to rise again. If I had a buck for every time someone said "Oh yeah. Newlove wrote that...!" So the new book and film aim to reacquaint people with him, but his broader work endures, a fact attested to on the internet where on any given day you can find yet another quotation on all manner of sites.

Do you have a favourite anecdote?

There are so many to choose from, especially in regards to bad behaviour – always the drink. But those are for the grapevine. I also found it fun to find out that many of his early works were written on one of Robert Creeley’s old typewriters, given to John as a gift. But my personal favourite has to be his answer to the dreaded "Why write?" type of question. The only way he could explain it was like this: living in Toronto he sat down one morning after breakfast to work on eight or so lines he had written, amidst his children running around, housecats flopping about and such, and the next thing he knew his wife Susan was calling him for dinner. Where did the time go? "I was bemused," he told me. "The muse had me."

You made a documentary about Newlove. I wonder about the process of transferring the work and the life onto film. What were some of the insights that you gained while making the film? Did you gain a different understanding of the man, his work?

The book and film were different in that in the film I was trying to get behind the work somewhat and get to the man, whereas the book is about the work standing for itself. Thus, with the film I gained immense respect for his seriousness as a poet beyond the respect for the poems themselves – the fastidiousness of his approach, the simple lack of concern for fashion. Taking into account his battles with addiction and depression I felt that in certain aspects the work really was a lifeline for him. Of course delving into his past will mess with any interpretation, but in the end the poems were really quite impervious to excessive biographical inlay. They never faltered for me as works of art independent of the life – and I suspect that is the way John meant it to be.

I want to end with the poetry. Is there a poem or a fragment that speaks to you sharply? What is it -- and what makes its speech so insistent, do you think?

Again there are so many. "The Hero Around Me" and its last longing line: "and I was as a tree is, loathing nothing." Or from "Remembering Christopher Smart": "When I consider a small person/ such as myself, dreaming of women,/ those legs once again and that warmness,/ just to lie there, to lie,/ I see that we all make the world what we want./ Our disappointment lies in the world as it is." His plainspoken yet riveting statements of the limits of an individual’s (in)ability to meaningfully transcend his or her humanity - the flaws, the lies we tell ourselves – of course rendered so eloquently... almost hopeful. It’s an argument again, one bolstered the other way in one of his masterpieces "The Green Plain": "Stars, rain, forests./ Stars rain forests./ Sew up the lives together. There is/ this only world. Thank God: this World/ and its wrapped variations/ spreading around and happy, flowing,/ flowing through the climate of intelligence,/ beautiful confusion looking around,/ seeing the mechanics and the clouds/ and marvelling, O memory...."

But I can’t leave him on such an anomalous high. The tension could never abate for long.

(from "Insect Hopes")

O I am sick and called sick

and I am healthier than you are

At least I know how lovely we are

Enduring –