Words At Large

How important are prizes like the GG to poets and poetry?
Awards like the GGs definitely have a place in the cultural life of a country. One has to only imagine how discouraging it would be to live in a country that did not acknowledge the contribution that the creative community makes to our national identity. Of course there are those and, I am one them, who think that awards have become too important in some sectors. Reading the press you might easily come to the conclusion that we write just to garner prizes, which is completely wrongheaded. If that were the case I would likely have not survived past my first two books. It's just too much work to be sustained by the hope of winning prizes.

But this award does bring attention to poetry, and that's always a good thing. I think that's where the attention should be anyway, not just with my offering, but with poetry itself. I'm very happy to have won the Governor General's Award, it's just that poetry itself demands that we take a larger, more comprehensive view of the situation. It demands that we rely not on prizes, but on a firm and sacred belief in the invisible moment just ahead of us. To quote Annie Dillard: "Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair. "

Your work brings the inanimate to life. What draws you to blur the line between the animate and inanimate world?
It probably comes from childhood originally, children blur that line all the time, giving life to inanimate objects, to toys and dolls, because they can't imagine it otherwise. What I'm doing is making my way to presence, and blurring that line helps to draw out the inherent presence in things. My definition of life is isness, its elementary stance and grace, therefore everything is alive, simply put being equals life. Now I know this isn't the usual definition, but still it is an ancient one, not just among children, but among people from all cultures.

I'm an animist when it comes to how I interact with the physical world. Animism is the oldest religious/spiritual practice, the base experience out of which all the other ways of the sacred have grown. So I guess you could say I'm a traditionalist of a sort, a basic believer in first experiences, whether it's cultural or ones from childhood. There's a very deep truth there that strikes well below the thinking level, a connection richer than language, which can give words a more inclusive depth and reach.

What draws you to geology and palaeontology as subjects for your writing?
I've always been interested in the natural sciences, so it seems almost instinctive that geology and palaeontology should find their way into my work. I collected fossils for fourteen years, to try and get some sense of time, some understanding of the permutations of time on life. Of course in the end it's time out of mind, it's impossible to grasp what two hundred million years actually means. But there were moments in this hunt for time that shone forth with a particular light I wouldn't have seen otherwise. For instance, finding the impressions of raindrops that were three hundred and fifty million years old. The rain falling on a completely different planet then we live on today. That gives a new perspective, a new appreciation of being.

Incorporating geology and palaeontology enriches the work and the orientation of the language, adds another level of connectedness. The natural sciences are also sacred texts, when read beyond the mere accumulation of facts. It helps to show us our place in the scheme of things, to enlarge our point of view beyond the merely human. For example, if you stand with your arms outstretched at your sides, from the tip of your middle finger on your left hand to the tip of the middle finger on your right represents a timeline for all life on earth. Now if someone comes along and takes a nail file and runs it once along the nail of your middle finger of your right hand all of human history is erased. Just once. Now that puts things in perspective. That's another version of the cross, one of the most sacred symbols we have, which predates Christianity by thousands of years. But this new cross bears a very different message, one we should be paying closer attention to.

Your nature imagery is interlaced with references to Buddhism, Greek mythology, ancient civilizations and even witches. What is the significance of these other cultures in your writing?
I began writing poetry at fifteen, and started reading religious texts as well. Buddhism and Taoism in particular struck me as important, as offering something that intensified and focused my view of the world. But every religious tradition has something to offer beyond all the dogma; centres of insights and wisdom exist in each that draw their source from the same place that art does. Religions can offer us a place of origin for the human heart to take hold, well beyond the names and forms of doctrine. You can be an atheist and still learn from these practices, because religious texts are poems in the final analysis. The bible is a long poem, both scientists and creationists would do well to read it as such, "the world was created in seven days", it's called a metaphor, and metaphors are neither true nor untrue.

As religions can offer us a place of origin so too can Greek mythology, Celtic mythology, Occult mythology etc., also ancient civilizations, such as the Maya or the Parisii for example. Their rootage originates from a preverbal longing to rise into language, to translate experience into poetry in one form or another. So to cite these mythologies and civilizations seems like a natural step in the structural integrality of my writing. They are all part of what it means to be human, they are bread crumbs to help us find our way back through the forest, where most of the paths have been erased or obscured over time. They all offer a rich texture of meaning, and so enhance our consciousness.

Do you see a relationship between poetry and alchemy or between poetry and other spiritual practices?
Many other poets would argue with me on this, but I see no difference between poetry and spiritual practice. To me they are one and the same, cut from an identical cloth. I think a very strong case can be made that religious/spiritual practices grew out of poetry and art, not the other way around. When you're being truly mindful, when you're writing and paying close attention, opening up beyond the strict limitations of your ego, the dimensionality of the self grows exponentially. You began to see that the well defined impediments between the cherished notion of the self and the world don't actually exist. The more you write, grow, and become mindful, the more that thin line separating the"I" from the rest of the universe becomes blurred and at times erased completely. The self can be replaced with a kind of timeless existence, and yes, for a moment you and your desk, as Annie Dillard said, are in midair. Many artists have talked about this experiential reality, and also people who have spent long periods of time in prayer or meditation. So, to my mind they originate from the same source, the same light is shone in the same darkness, in those hard to reach places in us that differentiates between ourselves and the seeming otherness of the universe.

What schools or styles of poetry--if any--do you identify with?
Early on I was influenced by the Celtic school; W.B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas, etc., later on by European poetry, especially Eastern European work, also by Chinese and Japanese poetry. A number of people have called me a surrealist, but that simply isn't true. They may not get what I'm doing, and calling me a surrealist is a way to categorise me, which I think on some level is dismissive. But no, I don't identify with any particular school; I try to be influenced by whatever good poetry crosses my path. I don't adhere to the notion that one shouldn't be influenced by the work of others. As I've said many times we stand on the shoulders of thousands of men and women who have gone on before us. We wouldn't be poets without them, without their influence. You may set alone at a desk year after year writing your poems, but in reality you're not alone; it's a pretty crowded space you inhabit.

How do you see the relationship between the world of the poem and the external world we all live in?
I see no difference; poetry is simply one translation of the light being emitted from the external world. You may place a shadow here or there, but in the end what shines forth is the illumination of being itself. I should also mention the internal world that overlaps with the external at every point in time/space. Those shadows you place on a page come from the merger of both realities, a poem takes its life from both sources, and by doing so sidesteps onsensus reality, offering new possibilities and renderings of what the external world itself means. A man at his desk, an alewife in the ocean, a crow in a tree, are all external and internal corporalities, fading in and out of both worlds with every movement of a pen, flutter of a fin or motion of a wing. "All that's visible clings to the invisible," as Novalis said. Each reality depends on the other in ways that escapes language almost completely. Poetry comes as close to an understanding of this as words will allow, translating the light from both sources that brushes against our hearts in turn.

Why did you decide to become a poet?
This is the most difficult question for me, because I don't have an answer. I never liked poetry in school, wondered why poets didn't just say what they meant, why were we always trying to solve a riddle in class. The answer when the teacher finally revealed it seemed pretty simple, Wordsworth for example really liked nature, a whole lot! Well, my feeling was why not just tell us that, so we could move on to more important things, like biology, this interested me far more at the time. I remember when I decided to be a poet, it was in October 1965, and I was walking from my bedroom to the kitchen and somewhere in the living room I decided to be a poet. It came as a bolt out of the blue, but very calmly, no excitement, just an immediate acceptance that this was what I would do for the rest of my life. The next day I went to the Sydney Public Library and started reading poetry. I can only think that some process was going on beneath the surface, some unconscious outgrowth emerging finally at that age. But I'm only guessing here, being totally honest I don't have a clue. People that I've told this to find it rather bizarre, or perhaps apocryphal, but the thing is, I find it rather bizarre myself.

Selected List of Books:

All Our Wonder Unavenged
Brick Books
2007

Earthly Pages: The Poetry of Don Domanski
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
2007

Parish of the Physic Moon
McClelland & Stewart
1998

War in an Empty House
House of Anansi Press
1982

Heaven
House of Anansi Press
1978

Hammerstroke
House of Anansi PRess
1973