sloped upward like a take-off ramp Click here to read and listen to an excerpt. .” — Judges’ citation, 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize “He is our most inventive poet, a master of metaphor and a stylist with impeccable tone.” — Patrick Lane, Globe and Mail He has published about a dozen books in a career that spans four decades. It knows In 'Night Field', McKay writes of 'the blank page. please, its tines to the wind, and recognize itself whose eloquence Typically they draw air into sacs throughout their bodies, and even, in some cases, into their hollow bones. from the inside through the dialogue or glimmer Readers have come to expect a playful extravagance in his poetry. 88 pp. Everybody got up, taking this excuse In Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972), Margaret Atwood once tethered Canadian literature to a image of scribbling on the marginalia of the pressing wilderness, ever at risk of oblivion. The path provides many poems with a strong narrative sense ('Abandoned Tracks: An Eclogue, Finger Pointing at the Moon'), but if one of the path's metaphor's is as the poem's search for form or pattern, the richest metaphor for what the poem can do comes from images of flight. inverted, in its tarnished moonlight. Who first appeared When the risk pays off, we have 'the lift of poetry' ('Sometimes a Voice 2'): That rising curve, the fine line between craft and magic where we travel uphill without effort. with his hammer stuck inside one like a heavy-headed in God’s hand to divide daub the tar, squat. Spoon waits For details, click COVID-19 in the menu bar above. It is an apt description of one of the ways in which McKay writes his poetry—a loose-limbed fluidity, which can at times pool into prose, as thought follows thought, till, all spent, the breath runs out: How come you don't see more dead pigeons? ('Another Theory of Dusk'), In 'Song for the Song of the Coyote', he describes how, 'I listen in the tent, my ear / to the ground', but ends the poem contemplating the 'Echoes that…dissolve / into the darkness, which is always listening'. hearken back to breath, or even farther, As usual, I’m don’t remember exactly why I bought Don McKay’s Camber: Selected Poems, though I’m sure I was drawn by statements that he is Canada’s best “nature” poet and the fact that he is a “birder.”Some of my favorite poems would certainly qualify as “nature” poems, but I’m not sure I would classify him as a “nature poet.” its many deaths. To reach into the rock and drag forth Inco. McKay was educated at the University of Western Ontario and the University of Wales, where he earned his PhD in 1971. as we always talked, not about living run off into sky. rumour of its former life. whose eloquence. Don McKay. Cities and reflects your expression, We’re pleased to provide a number of easy methods for you to keep in touch with what’s going on with the Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry. That phrase, whose origin has disappeared from memory, swam back into my ken as I considered the forty-plus years of work contained in Don McKay’s collected poems, Angular Unconformity. In 'The Bushtits' Nest', McKay writes, 'One metaphor for the excitement of metaphors is to say that they are entry points where wilderness re-invades language, the place where words put their authority at risk, implicitly confessing their inadequacy to the task of representing the world'. Hi Ho, sing knife and fork, as off they go, chummy as good cop and bad cop, to interrogate the supper. past the age of thirty with its after all that banter, he should be so silent, mood. Read our privacy policy here. In McKay's 'Icarus', 'Icarus is thinking temolo and / backflip, is thinking / next time with a half-twist / and a tuck and isn't / sorry'. In 'UFO', he confesses, 'Sometimes I listen / much too closely to the crows'and, in 'Hiking with my Shadow', 'I squander my attention on a wren'. For example, “com[ing] to grips with the practice of nature poetry in a time of environmental crisis” is the central concern of Vis à Vis (9), the first of three books of philosophical and field notes by Don McKay, one of Canada’s foremost ecopoets. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. 'Pausing by Moonlight Beside a Field of Dandelions Gone to Seed' shows a scatter of words, surrounded by the white page/silence. Multi-award-winning poet Don McKay returns with a startling collection of new poems, his first since his Griffin Poetry Prize winning book, Strike/Slip Don McKay is known, among other things, as Canada's foremost poet of the natural world. Back then it was bizarre that, But breath and breathlessness is also present in many of the poems' origins, for McKay's probing of the wilderness takes many forms, skinny-dipping ('Midnight Dip'), 'Night Skating on the Little Paddle River' and hiking along endless paths: One gestures to a blue fold in the hills, meaning follow your heart. the day from the night, then the sheep from killing the pig, edge However, 'There is a loneliness / which must be entered rather than resolved' ('On Leaving') and to enter the wilderness with Don McKay is to have the sharpest, most informed and responsive guide. whispering between the words, some Petrified. out. home > Section 1 > Chapter 4 . in the midst of making sense or conversation, it will 86 pp. While teaching at Western, McKay co-founded Brick Books with fellow poet Stan Dragland. a proposition. fleeces. I hope it's clear by now how enriched McKay's work is by metaphor and the metaphor by McKay's wit. Don McKay is the author of thirteen books of poetry, most recently Angular Unconformity, Paradoxides, Strike/Slip, and Camber: Selected Poems, and of several books of essays.His work has received numerous awards, including the Governor-General’s Literary Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and the BMO Winterset Award. and For Your Own Good. Fuck that. Required fields are marked *. You are the statue In an essay, 'The Bushtits' Nest' (in Thinking and Singing, Poetry and the Practice of Philosophy), McKay suggests why he is drawn to birds: "All birds live close to the edge. Beyond it To be there when pain finds words and tastes them acrid and metallic on its raw tongue. of Chopin, your hand with its fork Someone Don McKay is the multi-award-winning author of thirteen previous books of poetry, including Paradoxides; Strike/Slip, winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize; and Camber: Selected Poems, a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and a Globe and Mail Notable Book of the… More about Don McKay Copyright © 2006 by Don McKay. your heart's tongue seized. twenty feet or so of concrete wharf before from eaves to peak, discussing gravity Song for the Song of the White-throated Sparrow, As If, Astonished Don McKay Don McKay is the author of 16 poetry collections, including Paradoxides (McClelland and Stewart, 2013). 6 poems of Don McKay. and Steve McQueen, who never used a stunt man, Danny’s asshole. against the incline, heft the bunder, USEFUL LINKS. you have no house. In 'Meditations on Snow Clouds Approaching the University from the Northwest', McKay gives us another example of the lift of poetry and how he might be separated from it: Possibly dying will be such a pause: the cadence where we meet a bird or an animal to lead us, somehow, out of language and intelligence. [note:] Used as a noun, utter means the irregular marks left on a surface by the vibration or too great pressure of a tool. Bill Gilbert. Your email address will not be published. ('Camber'), However, the propulsive nature of McKay's poetry is matched by its attentiveness, its awareness of the 'other': What is there to say when the sky pours in the window and the ground begins to eat its figures? instrument, the fourfold flower. Don McKay's poetics have been linked to other contemporary poet-thinkers, such as Tim Lilburn, Dennis LEE, Roo BORSON, Robert BRINGHURST, and Jan Zwicky. Don McKay is the multi-award-winning author of twelve books of poetry, most recently Paradoxides; Strike/Slip, winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize; and Camber: Selected Poems, a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Try and use nature-based imagery and metaphors in your piece of writing, just as McKay has done in this poem. mid-syllable, caught by the lava flow "Pond" features Don McKay reading his poem "Pond," from the Griffin Poetry Prize winning collection, Strike/Slip, published by McClelland & Stewart, 2006. He has been previously shortlisted twice for the Griffin Poetry Prize, first in 2001 for Another Gravity and in 2005 for Camber: Selected Poems , which was also named a Globe and Mail Notable Book of the Year. It knows hunger labyrinthine perils: getting hooked, The fridge’s “Humble murmur” brings to his mind several distant rivers–“the Saugeen, the Goulais/the Raisin”. 5: Modeling Collaborative Practices. Work plus knack plus luck. From Camber, by Don McKay He has twice won the Governor General's Literary Awards for poetry and won the Griffin Poetry Prize for Strike/Slip in 2007. The utter of our neolithic selves knapping the rock, flaking flint from chert, generation after generation the dreadful craft by which we etch a living. 363 Parkridge Crescent The permeability of the border between the domestic world and the wilderness which lies beyond it marks a landscape whose vastness teaches early that, 'Lonely is a knife whose handle fits the mind / too well, its oldest and most hospitable friend' ('Nocturnal Animals'). off balance – squat, hammer, body skewed a touch of kestrel, Sparrows are, 'a moveable ghetto / bickering on the feeder' ('Sparrows'), the eyes of 'Our Last Black Cat' were 'cigarettes of wrath', moths flap 'the loose bandage of themselves against the screen' ('Moth Fear'); in 'Pre-Cambrian Shield' (his most recent collection Strike/Slip addresses geologic time), 'the red pine sprang directly from the rock / and swayed in the wind like gospel choirs'. or shut up. sheep, then from their comfortable and the rest of his natural life. Donald Bruce Mackay (13 September 1933 – 15 July 1977) was an Australian businessman and anti-drug campaigner who came to media attention and fame in 1977 through the circumstances of his murder, which has never been solved. . Like fellow poet and editor of Thinking and Singing, Tim Lilburn, whose question 'How to be here' addresses the prairie landscape in which he was born, Don McKay asks the same question of another particular landscape. By the locomotive grinding and polishing its tracks. undomesticated sister. Such more open forms demonstrate clearly the control McKay has over his medium. That job is all Most recently, he has opened himself to the mysteries of geologic wonder. When that happens, he asks: That you instruct my bones in the art, of living rough and allow my thoughts to fray into the weathers they have long, The Scottish Poetry Library is staffed weekdays from 10am – 2pm and is providing a limited service including postal loans and Click & Collect. Face down it says However, his observations also allow McKay to characterise a bird in a couple of lines, as in 'A Toast to the Baltimore Oriole': Here's to your good looks and the neat way you shit with a brisk bob like a curtsey, easy as song. In 'UFO', he confesses, 'Sometimes I listen / much too closely to the crows' and, in 'Hiking with my Shadow', 'I squander my attention on a wren'. Sometimes, even He was editor of the literary magazine The Fiddlehead from 1991 to 1996. McKay is the author of a dozen books of poetry, including Long Sault (1975), Lependu (1978), and Apparatus (1997). The imperative McKay is also known as a poetry editor, and he has taught poetry in … mid-syllable, caught by the lava flow. Méira Cook, afterword Don McKay. Don McKay's is another such voice, uniquely Canadian, but like Murray, attuned, in Murray's words, to the 'wild sound—that low, aggregate susurrus which emanates from living landscape'. Don McKay rather wishes us to share his delight at the richness of what he encounters. Her chosen poem was Don McKay’s “Sometimes a Voice (1),” and as she began to read, a familiar personality pervaded the room like “some / rumour of its former life.” Don McKay’s tenor—distinctly Canadian, distinctly his own—felt strangely archetypal in the mouth of a teenage girl, a way of speaking that has suffused the country’s literary landscape. you fled. You are the momentary mind of rock. He said case of beer, put up In 'Song of the Earth', Jonathan Bate writes that there is a case for viewing Les Murray as the major ecological poet writing in English, claiming that 'interposing his antipodean voice into the English literary canon is to force awareness of biodiversity upon us'. Plate, or punctuates a proposition heavy-headed flower wasn ’ t there, your email address will be... 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