Sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts
& the Creative Writing Program at Capilano University
The Fall 2009 OPEN TEXT series at Capilano University continues on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 with a reading by Prince George poet Ken Belford:
CE 148 @ 11:30
Capilano University
2055 Purcell Way
North Vancouver
In addition to 18 chapbooks, Ken Belford has published five books of poetry: Fireweed, The Post Electric Caveman, Pathways Into the Mountains, ecologue and lan(d)guage. Difficult to categorize, Belford’s poetics blend borders. He is a self-educated land(d)guage poet who mixes a learned and lived pre-industrial knowledge with the push and pull of present-day questions, conversations, and what he sees as new linguistic possibilities.
“The surface particulars – rivers, mountains, forest, lakes and all that live there – act not as backdrop but as the literal and imaginative source for the poem and the necessary syntax Belford generates and inhabits. His poems are ongoing, large and politically dimensional, brave in their opposition to any traditional practice that would diminish what the new poem must reveal.” – Barry McKinnon
I trust, not in men or their systems,
but in women, and I don’t care about
saving time, or covering more space.
Writing of cities is about power
and class, and poems about place
are towns that look alike. The only
thing that differentiates them is
the memories in the buildings of authority,
where memory is manufactured,
and time is not money, but space.
When we remember together, other
memories are silenced and called heritage
in the space of a few hours, broadcast
into every room until the storage capacity
is full. Clock time is something signaling
the total, but the way I remember, what
I heard was about the succession
of forms and temporal complexity.
Anyway, I was distracted and inattentive,
and looking for some breathing space,
an opening or break, something I could
say in the company of strangers.
– from lan(d)guage: a sequence of poetics
Upcoming Readings:
- Nov 12: Kim Minkus
For info:
Roger Farr, Creative Writing Convener
rfarr@capilanou.ca
604.986.1911 (2291)
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