Poetry Quarter’ launch at the Glebe Report

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

It may seem surprising that this article, heralding the Glebe Report’s new feature “Poetry Quarter” begins with a quote from a character in the 1989 film, The Dead Poets Society, as played by the late Robin Williams, and written by Tom Shulman.

But read on to learn how fitting the words are.

August 11, the anniversary of Williams’ death, explains why this excerpt from the movie’s script appeared among my Facebook notifications. I include it here not for reasons that are maudlin. Rather, the words speak clearly not to the death of poetry, but to its importance in our everyday and every day hereafter.

By committing to publish poems from emerging and established local poets four times a year, the Glebe Report seeks to give voice to “what we stay alive for.”

It’s never too late to come back to poetry in my thinking. Some readers may have left poetry reading and writing behind when they finished school, where classic poems often were worked to the point of tedium. That certainly is how Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening was ruined for me as a teen until I heard it years later as a song and found its quiet and disquiet compelling.

I approached Editor Liz McKeen to suggest a regular focus on poetry in the paper, because I see the Glebe Report at the heart of this community, where poetry has a place.

Good poetry goes to the heart of a matter and can convey through the particular what is universal in experience. It does this with the innovative use of form, imagery, language and rhythm, and a compression of thought and emotion that, taken together, make a poem powerful and memorable. It’s at the gut level that such work hits.

I have worked with adults and students of all ages in workshops that encourage writing poetry as an essential tool of self-expression. So:

To adult poets: Here’s an opportunity to share what matters to you, to your community, to your world with neighbours, friends and peers in poetic form. So important to hear from you!

To students in high school: Poems written by young poets on everything from bullying to body image, love and conflict have blown me away. I am impatient for your words.

To poets aged 9–13: I’ve read amazing rhymes and free verse from kids in Grades 4–8. Make me laugh! Make me cry! Send your best!

“Poetry Quarter” welcomes submissions from poets who work, live, study or volunteer in the Glebe or in its close, neighbouring communities on subjects that reflect the lives and sensibilities of people living in this community and that are appropriate for publication in a paper with an audience of all ages.

Poems can be in any form – rhyme, free verse, sonnets, haiku, found poems, etc., but must not be more than 30 lines in length. The work must be the poet’s own and should not have been published before anywhere, in any form or medium.

As curator, I will select and recommend a number of poems per quarter to the Editor. Poets will be contacted if their work is slated for publication in “Poetry Quarter.”

Shulman’s script supplies an appropriate coda for this article by quoting from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass: “What good amid these, O me, O life?/Answer./That you are here – that life exists, and identity; /That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.”

Please do.

JC Sulzenko’s poetry has appeared in anthologies and chapbooks, online and in local and national media, either under her name or as A. Garnett Weiss. Recent credits include publication in/on: Arc Poetry Magazine’s shortlist for 2014 Poem of the Year; Vallum: Contemporary Poetry; Silver Birch Press; and first place in the 2014 Saving Bannister Contest and Anthology.

JC leads poetry workshops and residencies, judges poetry contests, and was poet-mentor in The Gryphon Trio’s “Listen up! Ottawa” project. She serves on the selection board for Bywords.

Her books for children include: Boot Crazy, Fat poems Tall poems Long poems Small, and What my Grandma means to say, launched at the Ottawa International Writers Festival. www.jcsulzenko.com

How to 
submit your poem

• Email your poem by October 9 as a WORD attachment to editor@glebereport.ca.

• Your poem should be no more than 30 lines long, original and unpublished.

• Send up to 7 poems at a time.

• Include your contact information.