Howlings from the Wall

april 4, 7:30pm, arts court, 2 daly ave.: five raving minutes; performance art and poetry

april 16, 8:00pm, royal oak 161 laurier ave.: bard diana brebner & Marcel Kopp

may 2, 8:00pm, royal oak 161 laurier ave.: bard & ottawa valley book festival; multi-cultural poetry evening. poetry in nine languages.

may 10, 8:00pm, arts court: bard & arts court present lady reads the blues; poetry performance art and blues featuring; tamara fairchild, suzie vinnick, sylvia adams and sheri d. wilson. tickets $6.00 and $10.00 dollars.

sealed in struggle: canadian poetry & the spanish civil war; edited by nicola vulpe with maha albari, 270 pg., published by the centre for canadian studies universidad de la laguna, available from concertina press, po box 20360, ottawa on K1N 1A3 canada. price $15.00 dollars.

this anthology was launched at the bard reading series at the royal oak last month. the evening began with an introduction by the ambassador of spain, Jose Luis Pardos who then chose to read a few poems at random from the anthology.

the anthology opens up with an essay in lieu of an introduction, by nicola vulpe, without which i probably would not have been able to appreciate the poems of this anthology. the number of poems suggests that the events of 1936 and the spanish civil war, though distant held significant social and political import for canadian writers. most of my generation would have no memory of this prelude to the second world war, unless they were to have caught it a documentary on tlc, a & e, or maybe pbs. they would not know that canada fielded a volunteer battalion known as the mac-paps (mackenzies-papineau), made up of approximately 1400 working class men. only 729 returned home.

in his essay vulpe suggests these reasons for the way many of these poems were written: "in these poems spain as a concrete place, a real country with a geography, history, culture and political life is irrelevant. what is most important is the historical struggle between two opposing visions of humanity, the one humanist and democratic, the other fascist and totalitarian; a struggle which at the moment just happens to have come to war in spain." vulpe suggests these reasons for the significance of this poetry: "most interesting, (in the development of canada poetry) is not the fact that canadian poets turned their thoughts to the war—for almost three years the world did after all its attention fix on spanish politics—but the particular manner in which they responded to it, writing at once about the spanish war but only rarely about spain." according to vulpe "the coincidence of the spanish war with the beginnings of modernism in canada ensure that this far-off and apparently unrelated event would exert a special influence on the development of canadian poetry."

maybe this is true. the depression, the dust-bowl of the prairies the rise of tommy douglas' ccf party, which was later to evolve into the ndp party, all occurred during this period. maybe spain did symbolize the struggle of fairness between the elites of business and politics verses the working masses. certainly the fascists of europe, and particularly the falangists of spain, wanted to strike the balance in their favour, which ultimately they did, and a decade later the economic ties with the rest of europe would be re-established and franco would rule spain until his death.

many of the poems found in this anthology had phrases which reminded me of those used by people who wish to describe or prescribe to an event and persons a sense of evil and of great moral impropriety. this would be particularly the case with regards to war. unfortunately this language of generality detracts from the poems, and shows the authors to be ill-informed or less than articulate about the people and country they're writing about. this weakens the quality of their work, although a quick perusal of the table of contents includes many of canada's best poets, these poems are not their best.

but these are just minor criticisms, i'm personally glad to have read the anthology for two reasons. the first is that it gave a glimpse of canada's literary and social history that i had no knowledge of prior to reading the book. as a poet and political scientist, it is fascinating for the second reason, which is the larger question of exploring what happened. there was a passion in the work of a significant number of canadian writers on the larger question of what that war meant, and how do we reconcile the past with the years that followed.

for me, i don't think we've come that far, and i think those who died may be lying uneasily in their graves. are the economic policies pursued by so many of today's governments that much different than what fascists espoused? humanity, compassion, social-welfare--but only if you can afford it.

i would also like to put in a plug for a fellow zine publisher. go out and buy jones/av from oel press, published by paul schwartz. his last two issues have been solid pieces of work, having had consistently high quality poems. to submit or subscribe: 88 dagmar ave, toronto on m4m 1w1 canada. check it out!

Have you seen the writing on the wall

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Managing Editor: b stephen harding, Editor: Robert Craig, Consulting Editor: Seymour Mayne
Guest Editor: Tamara Fairchild
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