Toronto Poets 5 Questions Series - Rob Rolfe

Rob Rolfe was born in London, Ontario. He was a trade union leader and librarian for many years. He now divides his time between Toronto and Wiarton. Saugeen (Quattro Books, 2011) is his most recent book of poetry. He has also published The Hawk (Quattro Books, 2008), and two poetry chapbooks with LyricalMyrical press. His poems have appeared in The Fiddlehead, Grain, Windsor Review, Our Times and many other Canadian publications.

Rolfe’s poetry explores themes of nature, work, aboriginal history and struggles for social justice throughout the Americas. Saugeen reads like a road trip, beginning in the former Saugeen Tarritory in Ontario, and then extending to other parts of Canada and the Americas. These are deeply personal poems linking present conditions to the historical past, and moving backward and forward in time. The book best reflects the author’s belief in the dignity of work, the sanctity of nature and the fight for social justice.

The Pacific Hotel

This is the Sauking, though most still call it the Bruce,
ignorant of the peninsula’s long history. We are sitting at
a small table in Wiarton at the Pacific Hotel. I am eating
a sandwich and drinking beer. At the bar are several of the
town regulars, but not one person from the reserve. The
bar is fancier now, but it’s still thick with smoke, as if
nothing has changed.

The last time I saw her was at this same hotel. I’d just run
down the hill with my sisters and friends, to grab a quick
beer, minutes before the wedding at the top of the hill. The
room was packed, and loud with laughter, a real Saturday
crowd. At a nearby table, looking very old, sat Charlotte
Solomon. I gazed at her, but she didn’t recognize me.


Woodstock

at six
every morning
it begins

you give in
and go in
to the smoke

the gray ash
the heat
of the foundry

you give up
your life
for eight hours

too tired
to talk when
it’s over


TTQ - Your past vocations have been quite diverse and unrelated to one another, from being a trade union leader and then a librarian. What are the similarities between the two and to what degree have these experiences influenced you as a poet, and were you writing poetry throughout your working years and at what point did you decide to take it more seriously?

Rob Rolfe - I was a librarian in the North York and Toronto Public Library systems and a trade union leader for almost 30 years. These are people-centred careers, and my writing is primarily about people and places. I did a lot of writing in my union work. Writing for blue collar workers especially, who demand you get to the point right away, was very good training for the type of poetry I write. I began writing poetry, and occasionally publishing in journals, in the 1970s. I continued to write throughout my working life. I credit my friends at Quattro Books for publishing The Hawk and Saugeen, and for giving me the opportunity to have my work more widely read.

TTQ - Your latest collection of poetry Saugeen (Quattro Books, 2011) has been described as reading like a road trip. What was the genesis of the book and how personal are these poems to you? Would you best describe the writing of Saugeen as a cathartic experience for you in many ways?

Rob Rolfe - The genesis of Saugeen is in my belief that the recorded history of this region of Ontario is incomplete. It omits many uncomfortable secrets, and it portrays a one-sided history of events. I wanted to use the idea of a road-trip to explore, with fresh eyes, familiar places, the beauty of the natural landscape, people I’ve known and my own life. In this sense, yes, the poems are quite personal, though I try to write in an accessible style that will invite readers to bring their own experiences to the poems.

TTQ - What particular message or ideal were you most hoping to convey to readers through the poems contained in Saugeen and how helpful is any feedback you receive from reading your new poems first in front of a live audience?

Rob Rolfe - I wanted to write about the difficult and often overlooked lives of working people, whose lives and social institutions, such as trade unions, are undervalued in our society. Another difficult theme I wanted to explore in Saugeen is what an artist friend of mine from Israel describes as the “guilt” that comes with possessing land that once belonged to others. The Saugeen Territory, as it was once known, was the traditional homeland of the Saugeen Ojibwa before the arrival in Upper Canada of tens of thousands of European settlers. The first six short poems at the start of Saugeen were written in a newer style for me. I began reading them to live audiences shortly after they were written. The audience response, along with useful feedback from friends, helped me to find a voice and a shape for this book as a whole.

TTQ - Do you write poetry daily and what does your writing process consist of, and when do you know that you've written a good poem?

Rob Rolfe - I carry my writing with me constantly, scribbling ideas into notebooks, searching for poems inside my head. I write mainly very short poems, so I don’t need to sit at a desk to compose. Eventually, though, I do use a computer for the difficult stage of building or constructing a poem from an initial image, thought or observation. A good poem for me is one that reads well and has a flow, a rhythm, and usually a visual image. It must be truthful to my own life experience. For me, such poems don’t come easily, and require hard work and persistence to avoid that sometimes fatal desire to finish a poem prematurely.

TTQ - What are your opinions on the recent Occupy Toronto and Occupy Wall Street protests that were happening in many prominent cities worldwide? Do you think the message of Occupy protesters was muddled in many ways or was their message for you loud and clear in your opinion, and to what degree do you think poetry could have enhanced or influenced the Occupy manifesto?

Rob Rolfe - The Occupy protests are a work-in-progress, but I think they have struck a chord with many, mainly because they tap into a widely-held belief that our economic system is in crisis, and that the concentration of vast wealth and power in the hands of big business, banks, the IMF (the so-called “1%”) is at the root of this problem. These protests are part of a worldwide movement in search of democratic and progressive social change. There has always been a place for artists and poets in this struggle. African-American and Latin American poets like Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, Cesar Vallejo and Pablo Neruda are perfect examples. Similarly, many poets, artists and singers of modern Quebec (Gaston Miron, Jacques Ferron, Gilles Vigneault, Pauline Julien) played an important role in the shaping of a more dynamic and progressive modern society from a colonial past.










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Toronto Poets 5 Questions Series - Lisa Young

Lisa Young is a poet and experimental writer residing in Toronto. Her work has appeared in Jones Av., Misunderstandings Magazine, Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, and Rampike Magazine. She is the former fiction editor and senior poetry editor for Existere: Journal of Arts and Literature. She recently joined the Quattro Presents WordStage Reading Series Team and will be co-hosting events every other month. She also belongs to the Plasticine Poetry Collective and Moosemeat as well as a few other long-standing writing groups in Toronto.

Lisa’s debut collection of poetry When the Earth was published by Quattro Books in the fall of 2011. Her poems are laced with an overlapping nature theme that interweaves comparisons to the wonderment and innocence of childhood. She challenges the reader to give serious thought to the immensity of natures dynamic and its lingering effect on their own mortality, the nature of self. She encourages us to drop our guard and look at the outside world as no longer being the enemy.

For more information, visit Lisa at her blog.

In My Brother’s Room

In my brother’s room,
blue-green walls, a glade,

or an underworld
where seaweed never tangled.

Crumbling caverns
of books,

a turtle with a felt shell,
a stone in the shape of a man.

Behind the door,
a chemistry set.

In the days before we grew out
of our rooms and stopped,

we drew figure eights overlapping each other
and coloured the new shapes in.


TTQ - How would you best describe the poems contained in your debut collection of poetry When the Earth (Quattro Books, 2011)? Is there a particular theme or message you were trying to convey to readers?

Lisa Young - Many of the poems in the collection might be what you call nature poems. Nature poems perhaps have a bad reputation, but if you look at the kinds of poems someone like Jane Hirshfield writes, you see that nature is a great teacher in terms of showing us the forces we’re up against.

Nature is both frightening and comforting and I try to portray it as such. In some cases, the poems are meant to point toward a more inspirational way of living – in an attempt to honour those times when I do have more clarity than I might regularly have access to.

Some of my poems could be described as meditative – using the everyday to express inner experiences. I write for many reasons, but the one reason that is always forefront in my mind, is that my whole life is going by and I want to reclaim and value those fleeting moments in poems.

Some of my poems, oddly, take place in the kitchen. Chores somehow inspire poetry. Who knew?

In the poem, “The Way of Yellow” there’s a reference to castle walls. Just thinking about it now, perhaps the collection is about bringing down these walls – where one no longer has to consider the world “out there” as the enemy. I’m in question about life – and I suppose that’s also the message I want to impart – to stay in question about ourselves and the world around us. Childhood wonder and the reclaiming of it, is definitely a theme of the collection.

TTQ - How difficult was the editing process for you and deciding which poems would be included in When the Earth? Who helped you with editing the book and what was that experience like?

Lisa Young - In terms of which poems to include, it really was a very organic process. Some poems, over time, politely admitted defeat and left gracefully. Allan Briesmaster was my editor. While he would give certain suggestions, it was entirely up to me how to improve a poem. When we were both happy with what was on the page, the poem was “ready.”

Mind you, there was a whole section that was immediately put up on the chopping block as soon as my manuscript was accepted. It was a section entitled, “Fairies and Fantasy.” It was a fairly weak section, so when Allan suggested we leave it out, I immediately saw that he was right, although, I did save at least one poem from that section.

It was a relief to have such a seasoned editor help me with the book. I trusted his instincts completely. I did have some resistance to going back and editing certain poems, just because of the sheer work involved. In some cases, I could make simple changes to improve a poem, but some needed major renovations. Allan provided a fresh perspective with his editing suggestions – so that gave me the extra boost of energy I needed to go back in and have another look. I definitely stretched my capabilities to the limit.

TTQ - How would you best describe your writing process? Do you find yourself writing poetry on a daily basis or only when inspired? What works best for you?

Lisa Young - I do have a system that works for me. The main function of this “system” is to ensure that month after month, I’m writing on a consistent basis. I have batches of rough drafts of poems to work on. I generate my material at writing retreats which I attend about four times a year.

My monthly poetry feedback group requires that we bring two of our poems to be critiqued. So I always have two poems I’m working on for the next critique session.

I also attend one day workshops at least three times a year. And I have a monthly poetry writing group where we write for 45 minutes straight. In that group, we write early in the morning. To start, I might just describe what I see – or pursue certain ideas or images that have bubbled up that morning. Sometimes I wait for something to come to me, but you can’t wait too long because you only have 45 minutes to write. Reading poetry aloud before we begin writing also generates a certain rich, creative energy.

I try to put myself under conditions where inspiration may come. It rarely comes on its own without some preparation or prodding.

TTQ - What turns you on creatively, spiritually and emotionally?

Lisa Young - I love clouds. It’s a good day if I can sit with a pad and pen in hand and write about the clouds I see rolling by. I’m interested in ideas – particularly around creativity. What do you dive into and what do you leave behind?

Reading aloud definitely creates a certain cozy, but exciting atmosphere. I like coming across foods I’ve never heard of or tasted before. Silence inspires me. A quiet Saturday morning – the wind brushing up against the windows. Exploring what it means to be human – asking questions and trying to find ways around my own resistance.

I like the excitement of a monthly reading series. The creative mish-mash of people and readings, and the way you have to talk loudly just to hear yourself.

Music can wake my whole body up. Piano, bassoon, flute. Music is one of those mysterious elements or forces in life. I like those rare, blessed moments when I experience a clear mind and a light heart.

TTQ - What is your opinion of the poetry community in Toronto? Do you feel poets should play a bigger role and lend their voices to socio-political events like, for example Occupy Toronto?

Lisa Young - There must be thousands of niches known and unknown in the poetry community. Some of my favourite poets haven’t even been published or shared their work with the wider community. What makes a community? Camaraderie. Open mics introduce and welcome people into the poetry community. Blogs also help keep us in the loop and let us get to know each other a bit more.

There’s a lot of creative cooperation going on. A big crossover and blending of all types of poetry is especially alive and well at reading series.

I personally would love to see more poets sharing their poetry at socio-political events, on the street – anywhere and everywhere.

Are poets seen as dreamers? Or do we have something practical to contribute? Whether political arenas take poetry seriously or not – a bit of poetry can have a huge impact and in the bargain a few more voices are heard. Whether a poem is a call to action, a cry for justice, or a rant to clear the air – poetry always has a place, just as all the arts do – in helping us celebrate and understand ourselves and our lives. That’s a good thing!






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Ariana Gillis - Review of her new CD - Forget Me Not

With the music industry desperately in need of a substantial shot in the arm, allow me to introduce you to, Ariana Gillis. She is a 21-year-old singer songwriter from Vineland, Ontario, who recently launched her second CD Forget Me Not.

Gillis possesses a unique voice that can best be described as fearless – an “original” musical talent in an ocean of bland and blander. She is a self-professed voracious reader with the innate ability to write songs that matter, her subjects ranging from personal despair, to creatures with healing powers, to celebrating freedom and mourning the state of the world we live in.

There have been the comparisons of her to the likes of Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, her sound is indeed rife with a traditional folk and rock beat that seems to suit her perfectly.

After listening to Forget Me Not, Bernie Taupin (Elton John’s lyricist) had this to say: “I’m staggered by how good she is. There is not much that impresses me these days, but after hearing her available tracks I can honestly say she’s the single most exciting thing I’ve heard in a very long time.”

Equipped with about 60 songs, Gillis spent four months of solid days recording and mixing the record with her father, David, who is also the producer, album designer, and guitarist. Their relationship is built on a deep mutual respect for one another that both agree has only enhanced their ability to make music together.

Gillis describes the recording sessions as painstaking and incredibly difficult, commenting that the songs ‘Dream Street’ and ‘Oh the World’ turned out to be the most difficult to produce. “I couldn’t tell you how many times we stripped down these songs and put them back together again. It was frustrating…but the end result feels so good that I’m glad we never gave up on them.”

The opening track on Forget Me Not is called ‘Money Money’ and is a song filled with sarcasm and is a playful shot at her father’s love of pretentious action movies, which Gillis plainly despises. The title track ‘Forget Me Not’ is next and suggests we reexamine societies past mistakes and is wrought with finger pointing and guilt.

Next is ’Dream Street’ a song of hope, and Gillis’ personal favourite on the record, “I am really happy with the way all the songs turned out. But, if I have to pick one favourite, I think it would be ‘Dream Street.’ I just never tire of listening to it or playing it.”

Listen to 'Dream Street' from Forget Me Not:


Gillis is very much an advocate for the protection of wild animal life and fully supports SaveJapanDolphins, and the next song ‘The Cove’ was written after she watched a documentary, of the same name, about the dolphin slaughter that happens annually in Taiji, Japan. She wrote the song for Ric O’Barry (SaveJapanDolphins) who she is a big supporter of and his mission to end the slaughter.

’John and the Monster’ is an extraordinary song about a young boy named, John, who has cancer and is cured by the monster, but at a cost. Gillis herself is puzzled by the song, “I actually have no idea where that song came from. It was purely inspiration running through me when I wrote it. Inspiration is a powerful thing. It never comes to me in the same way, but when it does, it just flows through me and on to the page. Usually, I’ll wake up the next morning and take a look at my lyrics. And about 9 out of 10 times I wonder how the heck I actually wrote them.”

The next track ‘Samuel Starr’ exposes listeners to Gillis’ humourous side and is based on a fictitious conversation between two dead guys, Samuel Starr and Joe Jasper. ‘Cannonball Sam’ is another wonderful narrative tale about a daring escape whereby the cabin boy slips Sam the key. ‘Snap Crack’ has a hypnotic beat and is laced with some superb guitar sounds. ‘Back on the Hill’ is a twisted love song and the final track ‘Oh the World’ leaves listeners with a sense of hope, optimism, and longing.

Listen to 'Oh the World' from Forget Me Not:


Gillis agrees that with her latest album they were determined to scale down the sound, “In the first CD To Make It Make Sense I didn’t know what direction I wanted so I was testing everything out. It’s just us now; we’re not trying to be anything. We wanted to make sure there is a lot of space on the album, say the most with the least amount of instruments possible. We wanted to sound like we do live.”

With that being said, Gillis had this to say about the possibilities of recording a live album, “I definitely think a live record will happen at some point. Even if it isn’t a live show recording, but just a live off the floor album with no overdubs or fixes. I really enjoy listening to those types of records because they feel real and sincere.”

Forget Me Not is a remarkable record by a remarkable singer songwriter. Ariana Gillis is definitely on the verge of becoming a huge star, it’s only a matter of when.

For more information about Ariana Gillis, tour dates, and details about how to purchase copies of Forget Me Not visit her website.


Ariana Gillis plays 'Samuel Starr' from Forget Me Not:


*Note - Photo #1 and #2 by Steven Elphick and Photo #3 by Kevin Molyneaux.



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Toronto Poets 5 Questions Series - Liz Worth

Liz Worth’s debut collection of poetry Amphetamine Heart (Guernica Editions, 2011) offers readers a glimpse into a harsh and dysfunctional lifestyle that is orchestrated by a rather seedy party culture filled with drugs, booze, and lost days. The poems were written over a three year period, and depict a lifestyle of excess and decay. Worth’s poems provide few excuses for living such a haphazard existence, but they do illustrate, with an unabashed intensity, the stark realities of addiction. Her poetry has been best described as being a little bit punk, a little bit heavy metal and a lot personal.

Many of the poems from Amphetamine Heart first appeared in the following publications: Carousel, Chiron Review, ChiZine, ditch: poetry that matters, and The Toronto Quarterly.

Worth is also the author of the critically acclaimed non-fiction book Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto (ECW Press, 2010) which went into its second printing within a week of its release. Her first chapbook Eleven: Eleven (Trainwreck Press, 2008) was reviewed in Cherry Bleeds Literary Magazine, Venus Zine, Broken Pencil, and Lipstik Indie.

For more information, visit Liz Worth at her website and blog.

The Sequence of Equation

                                           i

Leeching, it slid under the membranes
of my scalp, left a slow cold sludge:
the coating of nausea.
I’ve been licking knives.
My skin should be in spirals.
Instead it’s only heavy,
hungover.
Hand to hair, give it a tug,
pull out the lethargy and escape the
soft confines of the sheets.
Scrape back the morning with
muted screams tattooed to lids of fire.
Gag and spit
before the emergence of contractions
across the pupils.


                                            ii

The gases of a dead dream are composed of
this embryonic equation:

(MAJOR Arcana) x 3 : (minor Arcana) = 9fits9fits9fits


They enter the skull through
cerebral hemorrhages, grow translucent legs
by the thousands, with dull amber eyes of diviners
that memorize labyrinthine dispersions.

Whether this is a state of being
is a debate that goes like this:
It’s tepid stress and leaves
a taste only for gall.
Neural din is
a solar perception,
the sundering of all points of corrosion.


                                               iii

Dream Sequence, Exhibit A.

Your mouth: an intestinal cavity.


                                                iv

Crippled, this innate filth
covers the permeable caffeine film, scars like stains
that make up the skeletal arsenal
of this cerebellum, which I
poke holes through those liquids
that glint like a dragon’s eye and tranquillize,
cauterize with organized inversions.
These arterial branches are
test patterns, the schema of adorning myself
with residual dissension,
charting this operation interlaced with symmetry.
The subconscious fights to abate.


                                                 v

Dream Sequence, Exhibit B.

This is the pressure of what’s inside.

*Note – The Sequence of Equation is from Amphetamine Heart.

TTQ - When did you decide that you wanted to write poetry, and who were some of your early influences and/or mentors along the way?

Liz Worth - I first decided I wanted to write poetry when I was 13. Even though it took years of practice before I understood the difference between good poetry and bad poetry, I was fairly serious about writing even back then. I’d been taking guitar lessons for a while, but my interest in writing was starting to compete with my interest in music. Eventually, I realized I had to make a decision and just give myself over to one of them, so I chose writing.
     Edgar Allan Poe was an early influence, and so was Gwendolyn MacEwan, particularly for her book Magic Animals. I was also very influenced by music, and would study lyrics. I loved the strange images in Nirvana’s songs, and the daring statements that goth icon Rozz Williams declared in both his music and his spoken word recordings.
     Even now, when I look back at the poetry I wrote throughout my teens, I find it pretty immature. I was lucky that others around me recognized some kind of potential. Even though I was often the youngest person in the room, I was welcomed at open mic nights and they encouraged me to get up and read. I also had an English teacher, Mr. Smart, who I think was the first person whose encouragement to write I took seriously. He wrote a comment on an assignment one day that said I should consider pursuing writing. I still have that piece of paper.
     Later in high school, I did an internship at an experimental music magazine and became friends with the editor, Marisa Iacobucci. I had a poetry zine at the time and brought it in to show her at my interview. I lacked a lot of confidence in myself when I was a teenager and when I met her, I slowly started to get the sense that I could actually do more than I thought I could. Marisa had a huge role in that.

TTQ - Your debut collection of poetry Amphetamine Heart illustrates an uncomfortable and quite dysfunctional existence that is filled with boozecans, punk and heavy metal music scenarios, mixed in with what seem like hallucinations or dream sequences. How autobiographical are these poems, and to what extent was writing the book a cathartic experience for you?

Liz Worth - These poems are quite personal. In my early 20’s I did spend a lot of time drinking, and sometimes it was fun, and sometimes it wasn’t so fun. When it wasn’t fun it was usually because things had gone too far. I wouldn’t always know when I should go home. I wouldn’t always want to. I’d want one more drink and so I’d go find it, and sometimes other things found me. Or sometimes the night would get so late and out of hand and the next day my body would really feel it. Waking up at three in the afternoon shaking and not being able to remember much of the night before is not fun.
     I came to a point where I was frustrated by how I was making myself feel and I had to figure out why I was pursuing certain things with such commitment when they always seemed to bring me to a dark place. I eventually realized a part of me wanted to die. I was drinking with the hopes of dying.
     But even after I figured that out, and after I levelled out and stopped binge drinking to such an extent I still slid back into it, in a different way. In my mid-20’s I started to have a lot of trouble sleeping and so I started drinking at night to wind down, and then I would take sleeping pills, too.
     If the poems in Amphetamine Heart feel uncomfortable, it’s because I wanted them to be. I wanted them to mirror how I was feeling physically through some of these times. My body was rundown, and my body disgusted me. It was tired. I was tired.
    There are hallucinations and dream sequences throughout the book because those things also played a large role on how I felt. I’ve always had dreams. They make me tired sometimes, too. Insomnia was such a major factor in my life during the three years I was writing the poems in Amphetamine Heart that it was inevitable dreams and other sleep themes would make their way in there. I used to also get very paranoid at night, and imagine that things were in my apartment. Some of them made their way into these poems, too.
     I wasn’t necessarily looking for catharsis as I was writing these pieces, but since finishing the book I have felt differently towards a lot of the experiences and subjects in Amphetamine Heart. I don’t feel the need to talk about them or explore them as much now, so maybe I do have a sense that I’ve moved on, although I don’t know if any experience is ever completely behind me. It’s still shaped me, but it doesn’t drive me.

TTQ - What primary message do you hope readers will take away with them after reading Amphetamine Heart, and do you think by writing the book it's changed you into the kind of person you would ultimately like to be?

Liz Worth - I would hope that readers connect with the book in whatever way feels right to them. While I can explain how my own experiences are reflected in the poems, someone else may see something completely different in them. I wouldn’t want my own story to be the only one that can be found here.
     Did writing this book change me? I think it’s too soon to say. Before I wrote Amphetamine Heart I’d been doing a lot of music writing, which involved a lot of researching and interviewing. When I finished that book I really felt the need to go in a more creative direction, and so I went back to poetry. Making that commitment on its own changed me, and I think it did bring me somewhere closer to the person I would like to be. It helped me get back into spoken word nights and pushed me to get out to more literary events, and to think in a more creative way.

TTQ - Your first non-fiction book Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond was quite well received and went into its second printing with in a week of its release. Give us an overview of that book and talk about how the book came about and what the experience was like in writing it?

Liz Worth - Yes, Treat Me Like Dirt has a life of its own, which is great. It’s actually been reissued by ECW in a fourth printing. That book takes a look at Toronto punk’s first wave and includes bands like the Viletones, Diodes, Teenage Head, Curse, the Ugly and more. It’s an oral history format so all of the stories are told directly by people from that scene, including the bands, fans, girlfriends, club promoters, and friends.
      I’ve often said that working on Treat Me Like Dirt was both the easiest and hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was easy because I really wanted to do it and once I got started a lot of things just fell into place. One interview led into another into another and so on. But it was also hard because, while I met a lot of amazing people and had a lot of fun, I also met a lot of difficult people and often had to justify why I was doing what I was doing, or just put up with a lot of their over-inflated egos. That can be pretty draining.
      It was a lot of work. I not only did all the interviews but also all the transcribing myself, which takes hours. I didn’t know back then that you can hire someone to transcribe your tapes. It was all so overwhelming and there would be times when I would worry about whether I could even pull it off, but I was so far in that I knew quitting wasn’t an option.
      I’m glad I did it but if I’d known how emotional it would be I think I would have been more careful with my feelings.

TTQ - What are your opinions on the recent Occupy Toronto and Occupy Wall Street protests that were happening in many prominent cities worldwide? Do you think the message of Occupy protestors was muddled in many ways or was their message loud and clear in your opinion, and to what degree do you think poetry could have enhanced or influenced the Occupy manifesto?

Liz Worth - The Occupy protests were an interesting news story, but I’m not convinced they will influence as much change as the protesters would like to see. That’s not meant as a critique on the movement, as people obviously put a lot of their time into these protests, but I am just not sure what the outcome will be. I don’t consider myself to be an overly political person because I never feel like I know enough. Even if I read everything I could about Occupy or any other political issue I would always question whether I had all the facts, and so unless I am confident that I am fully informed it’s hard for me to make an opinion.
    Could poetry have influenced Occupy? That’s an interesting question. Protestors are kind of like spoken word artists on their own, aren’t they? They get out there, say their chants or their rhymes, and hope to be heard. If poetry were to enhance or influence Occupy, I think it would have to come with its own megaphone.



*Note – Photo of Liz Worth by Don Pyle.

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