Commentaries - March 2019

Toward a poetry and poetics of the Americas (18): Faustino Chimalpopoca

From 'The Náhuatl Exercises'

[Another excerpt from a work-in-progress, coedited by me with Heriberto Yépez and John Bloomberg-Rissman: a transnational anthology of the poetry and poetics of North and South America “from origins to present,” to be published in 2020 by the University of California Press. (J.R.)]

 

Fighting back

Lillian Allen's poetry of speech, song, and social justice

In 1984, following a tremendously successful year of touring and performing for large audiences across Canada in support of an album entitled De Dub Poets (1983), Lillian Allen, Clifton Joseph, and Devin Haughton sought membership with The League of Canadian Poets. The League is a Canadian literary organization whose mission it is “to nurture the advancement of poetry in Canada” and to promote “the interests of poets.”[1] As Allen recounts in Toronto-based This magazine, their membership applications were denied at a meeting in Regina, Saskatchewan that same year because the League did not recognize them as poets. Instead, they were distinguished as performers. “Are we all supposed to get up and do that?” one League member reportedly quipped.[2] In her poem on the Regina Affair, Allen refers to the League’s decision as an effort to maintain the Board’s firm grasp on literary power and what it meant to be a poet in Canada at that time.[3]

Qassim Haddad: poetry in conversation with its others

Cover of Haddad’s ‘O Coal, My Master’ (2015).
Cover of Haddad’s ‘O Coal, My Master’ (2015).
The Bahraini poet Qassim Haddad’s (b. 1948) first poetry collection The Omen was published in 1970.

Jerome Rothenberg: from 'The President of Desolation'

'A Book of Mirrors'

Collage portrait of J.R. by Angus Carter