JACOB MCARTHUR MOONEY'S LAND

SOME ANTHOLOGIES WEAR THEIR POETICS OPENLY ON THEIR JACKETS

Canada has so many poets it is hard to keep track, due to an impressive arts council funding regime that, at one point saw a census reveal 12,000 living poets with books out from small and larger presses.

Much like in the UK or the US, but perhaps even more notably, every small town, every large city, every province, has a laureate poet. It is therefore impossible to anthologise them all - but when in 2010 Evan Jones and I put out an anthology of Modern Canadian Poets for Carcanet, the 40 or so poets we included were all out of print or unknown in the UK, except for about three. Today, in the UK, for instance, there are about five contemporary Canadian poets in print.

Back in 2010, a young Toronto-based poet, with a large press behind him, with the wonderful name Jacob McArthur Mooney, attacked (there is no other word) this anthology, as if it had been the baseball bat that had clubbed his parents to death. He stomped all over it, and suggested it was basically a fraudulent hoax - because a few poets were not included he might have expected; in point of fact there were about 11,960 poets missing, but hey....

I have not forgotten this, because a year or two before, I had written a very glowing review of his debut for Canada's leading paper, The Globe and Mail - which is Canada's New York Times. I did not expect any favours from this young fellow, but I hadn't counted on a strange willingness to tear off the kid gloves and kick a friendly critic in the shins, then cut his head off. But Canada has a thing with young thug-critics making a name for themselves by arm-wrestling in bars. Figuratively. Sort of.

I only mention this now because our main thesis of selection for this book he reviled was an internationalism moving beyond parochial Canadian concerns (landscape, especially).

Anyway the other day Mr Mooney's new anthology arrived from Toronto, called BEST CANADIAN POETRY 2015 (IN ENGLISH) - caps mine but hey again - and I was in this two times in its brief life so am pleased but hey again (thrice).... and can you guess what Mr Mooney's main thesis is?

We must move to a "post-Canadian" kind of poetry.... which, yes, you guessed it... is exemplified by the sort of complex, smart international poetry written by A.F. Moritz (who we highlighted in our anthology).

So anyway, this goes to confirm what Evan and I felt then - Canadian poetry remains behind the times, parochial, backwards, and mired in local tribal squabbles of little global import. Want to wrestle with me Jacob?

Oh, his third book is out soon, and I assume will be quite good.

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise...

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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