At my recent Erland Lee poetry readings two poets, James Deahl and Michael Mirolla, each made a passing reference to the University of British Columbia, Creative Writing Program begun in the mid-1960s by poet Earl Birney, the one in reference to poet Michael Bullock, a founding poet-member, and the other in praise of its effect on his own artistic development. Poet and blogger Joseph Hutchison has also related to me the enormous influence of UBC teacher George McWhirter, to whom he's dedicated the "Thread of the Real" poem in his recently published book by the same name. It did strike me as interesting (and I hardly doubt I'm the first) that here was a relatively little-heard writing school, praised enthusiastically by its students still, that had been all but eclipsed by that other West Coast Canadian literary movement associated with the very popular Simon Fraser "Black Mountain" poets & poetics and the well-known 'Tish' magazine by which the whole movement's mostly remembered.
It struck me, indeed, that the Simon Fraser and UBC presence served as a sort of symbolic representation of the state of Canadian letters in which we still find ourselves today. A 'Modernism' of the Layton, Birney, Souster and P.K.Page variety mindful of national tradition, attuned always to modernist realities and the music of the lyrical heart, still competes against the wildly 'Postmodernist' 'Tish' poetics fostered and nurtured by Black Mountain and its stable of Objectivist authors Creeley, Olson, Duncan, Levertov, et al. Simon Fraser is credited still with being the putative breeding ground of Canada's own avant-gardist version in the form, among others, of Frank Davey's Open Letter and the once popular Toronto Research Group of bpNichol and Steve McCaffery. An 80's offshoot of the American L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E school has also taken root in the Kootenay School of Writing in Vancouver Canada. The results of these heady experimentalist days are too numerous to mention (the writings of poets like Christian Bök and derek beaulieu come immediately to mind). To narrow the poetic practice of an entire nation to a field of two may be a unwarranted generalization--since there are bound to be intersections between competing literary credos--but I believe it's generally true. It's so typically Canadian.
I'm inclined to believe that Canadian poets seem condemned to stand somewhere in between, regarded as either wild-eyed imitators of their American literary masters (as Robin Mathews and Keith Richardson contend) or guardians still of a distinctively Confederation poetics suited to modernist times. UBC may have been intended as a check on the poststructuralist wildfires spreading from the south but in terms of its own influence on literary development and student following it's lagged far behind Simon Fraser. Tish is, for example, a far more recognizable name than Prism though both serve as archives of their best literary efforts. I can't (as I'm often prone to do) tie the popularity of Simon Fraser to any academic advantage either since the poet-professor was to be found in both places. In any event Canada has a pretty long tradition of the student- and academic-poet coupling movements with their own signature publications, such as the McGill group in the 20s of F.R.Scott, A.J.M. Smith and their pro-Modernist The McGill Fortnightly Review.
And so here we are, again: UBC (of high Modernism) or Simon Fraser (of the poststructuralist poesies of American invaders)? There have certainly been more offshoots of the latter than the former: again, Kootenay but also the Toronto New School of Writing. I'm not aware of any UBC-style writing programs springing up anywhere in the country. The idea of a Modernist (or Formalist) revival (pace Timothy Steele) almost seems silly in our day. So where do I belong exactly? Where do any of us in Canada? I can't rightly say since so much with me has been the result of both happenstance and a case of following my own personal instincts. Yes, Birney's writing school paradigm--and even more so Simon Fraser-- was a novelty in its day and nothing like it came to the very conservative English faculties I attended in the 70s: McMaster University was once a Baptist college! But counteracting the horiible elitism of the Brits who taught me my English (and who always made me feel stupid!) were the wonderful poststructuralist theories of Derrida and Deleuze. The Net later provided both a technology and market share I could never have enjoyed in the old 'paper' regime.
So I trace my own poetical development to an early Modernist education (largely frustrating), growing allegiances to Continental language theory and an Internet forum for both discussion and publication. I guess it's regrettable that I can't seem to favour any one literary influence. I rather envy those (like Michael Mirolla and Joseph Hutchison) who can.
