Chapbooks 3

Jim Larwill

Canadian Shield Chapbooks III
Text Box: Welcome to Chapbooks III. These four little booklets are virtual editions from my second wave of chapbooks published in 2008 under the Canadian Shield logo. Presented together here these four e-ditions include a long poem in its own booklet, a wedding speech, one collection of nine poems, and a second long poem in its own booklet. In Chapbooks II, my previous online publication in this series, I explained that in 2008 I returned to publishing chapbooks laid out in my 4¼ X 5½ inch format which I refer to as “Crapbooks.” (For an explanation of the term see Chapbooks I.) The reasons for returning to this form of publication were varied. Over the years many people have asked me in dismay as to the reason for my never publishing a “spine book” with a so-called legitimate publisher. Often after reading in an open set, where the featured reader was promoting a published work, at the end of the evening I would be confronted by an audience member’s reaction: they liked my poetry best. Why was I hiding in relative obscurity? Why was I not a well know public figure in the lime light? “You should have a spine book!” My most often flippant response was: “My poetry doesn’t need a spine in order to have a backbone.” Ultimately choosing to publish in the form I did was a political choice. Here is how government subsidized poetry publishing works. I am a poet. I start a publishing company. My friends are poets. They start their own publishing companies. In the name of legitimacy I don’t publish myself. I publish my friends. In return my friends publish me. It is called a circle jerk. When my poetry is published by “the legitimate” publisher I buy all the copies of the book and put them in my basement. It is an investment in future publishing because this means on the balance sheet of these “legitimate publishers” you are an author who sells out. I choose my words carefully here. Publishing the required number of books each year with a positive sales record gets you Canada Council grants. Being a poet who is regularly published by “legitimate publishers” also gets you in the running for funding. Being published by “legitimate publishers” makes you a “legitimate author.” And it also certainly helps if you are a university professor because then you can also put your friend’s books on your courses forcing your students to buy their books as other professors return the favor by putting your books on their courses. So I decided not to be a “legitimate poet.” I decided to continue in the tradition of self-publishing, which was good enough for the Lyrical Ballades of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and I continued with my series of small hand held chapbooks. Perhaps the blurb from inside cover of one of the box-set editions I packaged these works in sums it up best: From the writer’s hand to your hand, these booklets are a humble attempt to touch readers in an electronic age of over production and artistic alienation. Form and content here are a political statement as well as a playful exploration of the economic possibility for all to be creative artists. People’s Art is in the hands of us all and I place into your hands these inexpensive to produce examples of possibility. Creativity and regular work is the value added here. A simple computer and every day printer; paper from the big box stores; packages from the dollar bins, sharp knife with ruler or a paper cutter, stapler… publishing is no longer held captive by the means of production, it has been destroyed by the global whirlwind of electronic media; however, out of destruction comes possibility for the modest and everyday to re-invent and explore their own voice and expression quietly under the din of endless marketplace hype, free of government councils, beyond academic censorship. A life time dedication to craft and a pair of callused hands: The Canadian Shield Logo is a thumb print of People’s possibility held high. Beauty….. Hey Tommy! The Ballad of Sergeant Tom Prince is a poem about the most decorated indigenous Canadian soldier of the Second World War who I once randomly met on the streets of Winnipeg. It is a poem which contains not only a story of a brave and remarkable Canadian, it also explores a number of other themes. I suppose the random meeting on the streets of Winnipeg of a great Canadian war hero and a young man destined to become a poet is the stuff of possible legend. In our youth we all sign up for something and once signed up we readily march a path. When we reach old age we look back and wonder just what was it we fought so hard and long for, wondering what is this albatross around our neck and why have we carried its invisible mark so long? Those with a story to tell will often recognize one who will be willing to hear the tale they need to so urgently pass on. If we are willing to listen to a story coming from an unexpected source we are often left wiser, even if also left feeling forlorn. One is often confused by an unexpected tale. Some may become sadder. Some may become angry. Some may learn things do not always appear as they seem to appear. Wedding of Words is a wedding speech commemorating the union of my eldest son Mackenzie and his wife Lindsay. When I was young one of my greatest fears was standing in front of an audience and speaking. Those who know me now will find this statement somewhat hard to believe. Looking back over life if I had to pick a time I started to feel more comfortable speaking in front of an audience it was perhaps when I gave a speech at my own wedding. In the speech presented here I evoke that previous speech and like any proud pontificating father I do my best to pass what little life wisdom I may have gathered on to the new and happy nuptials. And of course, with a large audience gathered under a tent, how could one not deliver a dramatic sermon of some kind? Moonlight Dancing takes its title from one of the first songs I ever wrote and the lyrics are the first poem of this collection. When I wrote this poem it was not intended to be a song but when a number of musician friends of mine read it their response was to keep telling me it was a song. My friend Laurie Fuhr even tried to put it to music only said she couldn’t because it was in my voice, so she tried to get me to sing it. I didn’t think I could sing so at that time it remained a poem; but over the years my repetitive sing-song sermonic style of writing and reading poems like “Slumber” and “Song,” also in this collection, kept moving me towards music. One evening I let go of the idea I could not sing and out of the moonlit night a tune popped into my head and low and behold I began to sing. This little collection of poems is about the dance of romance where moonlight comes to meet the earth bringing with it howls of pure feral bliss as shining reflected light beams onto an often lost and broken heart. Free Will Dream is a ghost of a poem where the artist becomes a haunting specter. A disembodied soul gliding in cold mist above the world it is no longer part of. The contradiction of the true artist is they must be an individual willing to live beyond the boundaries of society at the same time as surrendering their soul to the tyranny of their collective craft. An overwhelming desire to connect turns into endless creative orgasms of alienated artistic search where corporal creation becomes the crypt of hopes and dreams, cast with incantations of a lost life. Love is simply blood to be supped upon in hopes of infecting a reader. Each poem is a tombstone in lieu of life.