I completed the Canada Council for the Arts project of twelve videos based on my poetry collection Moving to Climate Change Hours at the end of October. Since then I’ve been thinking of how to create a longer form video including the 12 and to extend the project with linkages. The problem was how to link them in a way that was interesting to me and also worked with the videos. In other words how to create a cohesive whole from them. 

Sara recently suggested to me that I listen to the audiobook version of the American poet Ross Gay’sThe Book of Delights, a book of short essays coming out of a daily practice Ross developed. They are quite amazing, Ross’ mind is fascinating and the delights range far and wide. His definition of delight being quite expansive sometimes including very dark topics, often important topics, but sometimes whimsical, material that makes you angry, sad or happy, I often laugh out loud while listening. His observations have inspired me to observe more as I go about the world. 

Continue reading “Enjambment – A Video Essay”

 

This is the first video I’ve made for the Canada Council’s Digitals Originals program. My plan is to release about a dozen of these over the next three months.  The goal is to provide an experience of my new collection, Moving to Climate Change Hours published by Wolsak and Wynn, through a video gallery of selected poems. As well I will provide a blog post discussing each poem, its poetics and something around my thinking in the making of the video for the video gallery. 

 

The poem On Leaving was written after hearing a discussion on the use of steep enjambment in poetry. Poetry Foundation gives us this definition of enjambment: “The running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation”. Or another way to think of it is the line ends in the middle of a phrase with the continuation being enjambment on to the next line. 

Continue reading “On Leaving – 1st Video Gallery Poem”