by: Monica Kidd
For more than a decade, April has been the month for an international celebration of poetry. It’s said that members of the Academy of American Poets began the tradition in 1996 when they stood on the steps of a post office in New York City, in April, and handed out copies of T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land—say it with me, April is the cruellest month…—to people waiting to file their taxes. (Haha. Can’t say poets don’t have a sense of humour.) Canada’s League of Canadian poets imported the tradition two years later. National Poetry Month has since become a time to bring together poets and publishers, booksellers and buyers, and take poetry to the streets.
Now I know that not everyone loves poetry. If my being a poet comes up in mixed company, I’m often met with a polite smile and a quick do-si-do toward another topic of conversation. It’s okay. If your only exposure to poetry was a steady diet of heroic couplets, or pondering That sunny dome! those caves of ice! à la Coleridge in Grade 10 English, or even just sassy limericks, I can understand your hesitation.
Poetry (considered opposite prose) can be difficult to put into a box, but is principally concerned with style, layers of meaning, and often emotion. It sometimes gets at truth by looking at it askance, much the way one can sometimes see stars more clearly by looking slightly away, employing parallax. Poetry can rhyme but doesn’t have to. Poetry doesn’t even need words: “concrete” poets conveys meaning by visual means, often typographical marks. Poetry is a practice of celebration and innovation.
I can’t say what brought me to poetry in the first place. I was a science undergrad for Pete’s sake. But somehow I found it, and poetry happily became my constant companion, the way I make sense of the world.
And I’m not alone. Earlier this year, The Guardian (“Poetry sales soar as political millennials search for clarity,” January 21, 2019) reported that sales of poetry in the UK had hit an all-time high in 2018. Yes, you read that correctly: in 2018, poetry sales in Britain topped £12.3 million, a historical record. A spokesperson for the UK book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan put it this way: “Poetry is resonating with people who are looking for understanding. It is a really good way to explore complex, difficult emotions and uncertainty.”
In a time where politics and community-making has devolved into launching 144-charater missives from behind enemy lines, people, not unsurprisingly, crave more complexity, more nuance.
So this April 8th, safely in your own community, I invite you to the Hillhurst Sunnyside Farmer’s Market, 4-6 pm, to sample some poetry. Locally-connected publishers (Freehand Books, House of Blue Skies Press, Loft 112, Pedlar Press,?! Press, NeWest Press, University of Calgary Press) will be on hand with titles for sale. Several poets will read from their work. There’s a good chance you’ll go home with swag. And maybe even a new place in your life for poetry.
Monica Kidd’s most recently collection of poetry is ‘Chance Encounters with Wild Animals’ (Gaspereau Press, 2019). She is acquisitions editor for Pedlar Press.
