Matterstuff

Apr 11 2013

Founders’ Keepers

Why would anyone dedicate a poem to Ken Babstock? Here’s why.

Honoured that the poem “Re the Individual Wellbeing“ won the 2013 P.K. Page Founders’ Award over at the Malahat. (An altered version appears in Probably Inevitable.)

The judge was Barry Dempster. Here is his citation:

The music in Matthew Tierney’s ‘Re the Individual Wellbeing’ knocks down the walls between words, but never just for the sake of innovation. There’s a narrative to be untangled, a voice that goes beyond recognition, and an openness that manages to shut itself into amazing atmospheres. The language keeps reaching up off the page and dragging you deep inside the lines. Listen: rustle, Tagalog, throb, blunderbuss, tincture, distraught, yawning, Bach. Some crazy assonance going on here amidst content that swerves between life and death. It’s a risk of a poem written with hurtling grace.

How close is crazy assonance to crazy ass? Very.

Thanks there, Barry.

Apr 06 2013

2 Comments

Reviews

The Perfect Poem, 20 Years Later [Updated, Then Updated Again]

A photoshopped photo.

Is it possible to write a workshop-perfect poem without said poem going through a workshop?

Phoebe Wang has written a rebuttal to Kevin Kvas (the two critics who published antithetical reviews of Probably Inevitable recently). I’ve snatched a quote:

There are many fallacies in Kvas’ review, but the accusation that somehow our widely divergent Creative Writing graduate programs are producing overly clever, quip-prone and overwrought lyrics written by postmodern poets who become the darlings of Canadian editors and publishers is particularly pernicious. It’s a generalization that discounts how much of our lives we’ve spent writing – before entering graduate programs, and long after we’ve left them.

There’s more, along with decent follow-up in the comments section. FYI: the last workshop I attended was 20 years ago at the University of New Brunswick — for fiction, mind. Which may be neither here nor there. Well, it’s on the east coast, but you know what I mean.

UPDATE: Kvas responds to Wang’s response.

UPDATE: Wang responds to Kvas’s response to Wang’s response.

Mar 17 2013

Nephew Writes Lyric Poems, Takes the Piss Out of Kenny Goldsmith

The poet at play.

On his own initiative my nephew William decided to write a book of poems about colours. My nephew is six. He brought them to school and was invited to read them at a school-wide assembly.

William, as mentioned, is six years old. He’s already read to more people in one sitting than I have.

Afterwards, his mom conducted a follow-up interview. How dated is conceptual poetry to a six-year-old?

Mommy: William, I love your collection of poems about colours. Why did you decide to write poems about colours?

William: Because I want to be a typewriter.

Here’s to unboring answers.

Orange

Orange you mean two

things. You remind me

of Halloween. Orange you’re

an orange. You’re my

favourite colour. Red plus

yellow equals orange.

You taste

like an

orange pepper.

Matterstuff

in the head of Matthew Tierney

Founders’ Keepers

Like this:

The Perfect Poem, 20 Years Later [Updated, Then Updated Again]

Like this:

Nephew Writes Lyric Poems, Takes the Piss Out of Kenny Goldsmith

Orange

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