On December 6, I attended the centenary memorial service for the Halifax Explosion at Fort Needham. Standing in a forest of umbrellas that strained against the bracing wind and torrential rain, I hunkered down in my rain coat, trying to keep the damp cold out.
Many dignitaries spoke, their words falling flat, beading off my raincoat. But then George Elliot Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate, and Nova Scotia’s native son stepped up to the mic, spewing a storm of words, that drenched me to my skin. Thunder clapped in my brain:
Lavender plumes disgorged from wrathful, aerated char…the skies tinged, absinthed, chartreused here, gangrened there, or rose pink and chocolate there, as if one spying spumoni ice cream spirited into fumes…
And this is I believe the nature of poetry; words so exacting they pummel your brain with the sting of driving rain.
Our local Ginny Boudreau, a published poet, says, “The poet’s real work is finding the “right word”. The writer is attempting to create a deeply personal response to a specific emotion or experience in as few words as possible.”
She also says, “I’ve become increasingly aware of the oral properties of poetry: the importance of how it “sounds”.
Clarke would agree, he says, “In revising I read the poem aloud, check for superfluous words, seek vivid verbs, and attempt to make my meanings as clear as possible.”
As we write, edit and revise into the New Year, I wish you a deluge of words which will leave your audience sodden to the bone.
– Janice Comeau
Link to George Elliot Clarke’s 57-page poem: Achieving Disaster, Dreaming Resurrection: Witnessing The Halifax Explosion, 6 December 1917, and After: https://www.halifax.ca/sites/default/files/documents/city-hall/boards-committees-commissions/GE%20Clarke%20HfxExp%20poem%20.pdf
