By Scott Beaty
Where have all those hip bohemians gone . . . Bohemia?
Not long ago, I stepped into a poetry reading expecting to find myself in the midst of a smoky lounge, drinking jug wine with a black beret perched atop my shaggy mop.
I’d snap my fingers intermittently and scream “Yes!” and “Go!” randomly at the poets — just to keep them on their feet.
Everything would happen in black and white with old bebop providing a suitably hip soundtrack.
I’d call people “cat” and they’d call me “cat” and it would be grand.
But it wasn’t like that at all. It seems that sometime between the 1950’s and now, poetry changed. Who knew?
Instead of a dingy café with an ironic name, the reading was at a small bookstore on Bank Street. Instead of cheap wine – tea and animal crackers. And in place of the stereotypical bohemian – scruffy goatee and all that – middle aged intellectual types who talked about their latest stint in Banff as a writer in residence, or an old friend they ran into at a reading in Winnipeg.
And there were only 10 people there.
As it turned out, it was quite an enjoyable evening, but it left me turning over a question in my mind: do people care about poetry anymore? I mean, besides being forced to study it in high school, does anyone even read it?
At least a few people do. rob mclennan, an Ottawa poet who doesn’t use capital letters to spell his name, is one of them.
In the late 1990’s he started SPAN-O, the Small Press Action Network of Ottawa, to organize poetry readings throughout the city.
He says that an interest in poetry exists in Ottawa, but the events are not covered by the media or included in entertainment listings.
“People would rather stay home and complain that nothing is happening,” mclennan says when asked why poetry seems to have dropped off the radar. “We’re supposed to be the city of poets. We’re supposed to have more writers per capita. A lot of stuff happens here but it happens very quietly or you have to know people who know people.”
And although most people would probably say having a bunch of poets living in their city is a good thing — compared to, say, politicians –— making a living as a poet is generally damn hard work.
“It’s extremely hard to make a living,” says mclennan, who has written eight books of poetry and edited six anthologies. He adds that many writers in Ottawa reach a certain point in their career and then move to a bigger city, partly because of a lack of publishers for their work.
But mclennan says he is optimistic that poetry in Ottawa, and in general, will experience a resurgence in the next few years.
“It’s been shifting in the past five years. People don’t feel as much that they have to leave, that things can happen here. And maybe it’s just four or five people like me who just belligerently stay.”
Whether or not people take notice of the poetry that runs through their city is something that is yet to be decided. What is true, however, is that mclennan and his fellow “belligerents” will continue to read their work in discreet venues across the city, for whoever happens to show up.
And even without the berets and bebop, it beats soaking up the warm ultraviolet rays of a television any day.