28 - Wednesday, March 25, 1992 — North Shore News

A

Poets punch the clock

Comprehensive anthology on the current
North American ‘work poetry’ movement

Paperwork. An Anthology.
Edited by Tom Wayman
Harbour Publishing, $14.95

‘John Moore
BOOK REVIEW

HYSICALLY, YOU

are what you eat;

metaphysically, you
are what you do.

When someone asks “What
do you do?” they're not asking if
you tie flies, build model railroads
or dream of a better world; they
want a specific occupational self-
definition: 1'm a butcher, baker,
candlestick-maker, newspaper ed-
itor, whatever. . .
Saying, ‘‘I’m a poet’’ won't get
ou off the categorical hook; you'll
e branded as one of ‘‘those”’
layabouts lounging off arts grants
paid out of taxes squeezed from
“teal working people.” -
lronically, the.ones most likely
to sound that note are perk-fat-
tened politicians or people who
. elsewhere brag about how much
- self-indulgence they ‘write off’
on their tax forms, while the work-
ing class itself has been the source
of the most vigorous movement in
contemporary poetry for more
than a decade. .
Paperwork is the most current
_and comprehensive anthology
produced by the North American
“work poetry” movement.
In this sequel to the milestone
anthology Going For Coffee (Har-

Alberta Beef

bour 1981), many of the pucts are
punching the literary time-clock,
checking in after a decade. .

Poet Tom Wayman, who edited
bath collections, is a founder of
the Vancouver Industrial Writers’
Union, which has produced two
companion anthologies: Shop Talk
and More Than Our Jobs (Pulp Ar-
senal Press).

He's also written the (thus far)
definitive critical work en the
movement, Inside Job. Essays On
The New York Writing (l4arbour
1983).

Any or ail of these could serve as
texts for a high-school English class
soon to graduate into the cool
cruel world of the work-force.

But, however ‘‘relevant,’’ po-
etry can never be justified by its
socio-political content alone; po-
etry is a special way of using
words; “language charged with
meaning to utmost possible
degree,” as Ezra Pound put it.

This anthology carries its share
of shop-floor bitching, grievances
that might have been better off
submitted in prose to the shop
Steward, but it also displays work
by the most inventive and involv-
ed poets working today, like Zoe
Landale, Dr. Kirsten Emmott,
Leona Gom, carpenter Kate Braid,
Glen Downie and muttifarious
Poet and publisher Howard
White. : .

The best take their cue from the
oldest: B.C.-bred Peter Trower,
who logged these hills for two de-
cades and whose poetry had to
transcend the “work poetry”’
genre because the genre didn’t ex-
ist.

At 62, Trower is a younger con-
temporary of Earle Birney and Al
Purdy, who both wrote ‘work
poetry” before there was such a
critter, and like theirs, his work
always looks outward, beyond the
ego of the “‘poet trapped in his or
her day job,’’ finding in the minute
particulars of any daily grind the
universal, mythical emblems of the
human condition.

Trower’s Goosequill Snags is the
finest kind of work-poem; using
the egocentricity of the lyric poets
only for background tension to

draw a portrait of an ordinary mar

“burned out from booze and
board feet at 45’’ who coined a
single raetaphor for the charred
stelae left by a forest fire:
“goosequill snags.” :

“| never forgot the term. it was
his only poetry,”’ Trower says.

And whatever platitude is carved
in stone above that man’s grave,
his true epitaph is that one
evocative image, shared with a
young man in cautk-boots who
never forgot and made it into a
poem,

Youth orchestra auditions set

AUDITIONS FOR the Summer

Pops Youth Orchestra are set for”

April 4.

Musicians between the ages of
12 and 19 with band and string
experience are eligible to try out.

The orchestra’s repertoire in-
cludes everything from pop to

ee eta

Canada Grade A

tat

EXPIRES MARCH 28/92

show tunes to classical music.

The summer session includes a
two-week workshop in July and
concert performances around
the Lower Mainland.

For information on times and
location, phone 274-8858.

DUNBAR & DOLLARTON
Mon-Fa Sam-9om
Sat 8am-7pm., Sun. 9am-6pm

OUNDARAVE
WEST VAN.
Mon-Wed 9am 7pm
Thur-Fr Sam-Sam
Sat-Sun 9am-6pm
LYNN VALLEY
NOATH VANCOUVER
Mon-Sat 8am-9pm
Sun. Gam-Gom

MARINE RESORT [|
634 Campbell St.
TOFINO, BC.

WHALE WATCHERS
Accommodation & Breakfast for Two
$49.00 & Up (including tax)

BLUE HERON WATERFRONT RESTAURANT
March 1 - April 30, 1992

“GATCH THE OCEAN SPIRIT”
Reservations recommended
Box 553, Totina VOR 2ZO

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