Welcome to Atlantic Canadian Women Poets. This website is intended to accumulate and display information and scholarly work on, as the title suggests, Atlantic Canadian Women Poets. Despite an abundance of wonderful poetry by female poets, coming out of this region, there is a definitive lack of critical and scholarly material available on their work. Therefore, this website will attempt to create a foundation of information, and an introduction to some of these poets and their work. Happy perusing!

Among their collections both Marilyn Lerch and Jeanette Lynes have poems that are considered 9/11 reactionary, however both poems are taking a different approach to the subject matter they are dealing with. Lerch uses the direct event in order to shed light onto another, whereas Lynes looks at the larger picture caused by an event. We’re introduced to Maria Luz in “Maria Luz Continues” from Witness and Resist, where she is conducting a bus tour of Washington that comes upon the Pentagon immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. While the passengers and the bus driver all react in horror, Maria has a different reaction. She is “momentarily stunned,/as if images conjured up in a thousand sleepless nights/have finally worked their power, stunned” (8). It is clear from what Maria thinks here that she has spent a great deal of time thinking on the destruction of, at the very least, this facet of the U.S. Government. When Maria seemingly goes over the brink, she tells the passengers, as well as the reader, why she has the opposite reaction to the event:

“Exactly twenty-eight years ago

on a blue afternoon like this in Santiago,

I lay bruised and violated like thousands of others,

while somewhere in this iniquitous hive,

glasses were raised…” (8)

Here Maria refers to a coup d’état orchestrated in her homeland of Chile, where many Chilean citizens were arrested, killed, or disappeared. One of the citizens killed was her son, who was hauled from the crowd where “they poured gasoline on him/and set him afire” (9). This coup was fully endorsed by the U.S. government, explaining Maria’s feeling of vindication within this poem. Lerch closes the poem by noting that the ground for the Pentagon was broken on September 11, 1941.

While there are many critics who would ignore activist poetry based on its lack of poetics, this lack cannot be found in “Maria Luz Continues.” Lerch sets up an incredibly interesting interplay of the three September 11th’s – the 2001 attack, the 1973 coup d’état, and the 1941 groundbreaking, which one could argue is highly poetic. The insertion of Maria Luz outside the Pentagon on that particular day deliberately brings the coup d’état and the death of her son to the forefront of Maria’s mind, and as such, the reader can access these events through her emotions.

Jeanette Lynes approaches the events of 9/11 differently. In her poem “The new stories” Lynes looks at not the direct event of 9/11 like Lerch does but rather the aftermath of those events. “The new stories” is about just that, the new stories in a world after 9/11, a world of fear and complacency. In this new world “…No one spins yarns. The new stories are/set in airports, are blunt, without/punch lines” (59).  These stories refer to airport security, and like stated in the above quote, these stories are indeed blunt:

 …They made me unzip my fly. We had to remove

our shoes. They kept my best lipstick. They didn’t like

the way my watch looked at them. They move along with

little awe. …(59)

This section stands in stark contrast to the rest of the poem, where Lynes focuses on the character of the morning. Morning is the throw back 1950s girl, poodle skirt and all. Through her the reader gets that yearning for a simpler time, when the beauty in the world was appreciated. Even morning plays on the idea of security, showing that she, and most people are only “hiding/painfully thin leg, hoping to smuggle/herself into afternoon” (59). Morning is not only representing the morning itself, but also the innocence of the world and the people striving to live within it.

In “The New Stories”, Lynes is more subtle with the implications that she plants in the reader, as compared to Lerch, who is very direct with her intentions in order to make an impact on the reader. Lynes’ approach could be considered more accessible as it still brings the question to the forefront of the reader’s mind without pushing them, causing the reader to dig deeper into the subject matter themselves. This sort approach is common to their other poems as well.

In “A Poem Must”, Lerch again takes the most direct approach, and still doesn’t forfeit poetics to get there. Throughout the poem, she seemingly meanders over what a poem “may” do but when it comes to what a poem “must” do, that the focus is brought in tight:

but it must

enter the muddle somewhere and emerge transformed

using whatever means

to witness for beauty and resist despair. (7)

For Lerch, no matter what route it may take to get there, it is the poem’s ability to see the truth and grapple with it that is most important. She uses the poem as a medium for truth telling and paying proper witness to important political and social events. On the other hand Lynes’ poem is its own entity. In “What the poem wants”, the poem seeks experiences to immerse itself in to understand the truth, much like in “A Poem Must.” It is impossible for Lynes’ poem to lie, whereas Lerch’s must struggle with the truth and the need for it to be told.

These two poets set out to accomplish similar things through different approaches. While Lerch is more direct with her intent, and Lynes is more subtle, both use the main section of the poem to shed light onto the subtext and the importance of other ideas being introduced. Now, these poems are just a small sample of each poet’s work, meaning that there is something that could be dissected and examined here, despite the lack of idyllic Maritime imagery.

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In “Heh! Paradise,” Libby Oughton speaks through the voice of a woman who is trapped in her domestic situation; she is married, with a daughter, but wholly unhappy and unable to escape her responsibilities. Through a series of fragmented, choppy and short sentences, Oughton’s narrator describes her home life, and the routine that she undergoes. She jumps from one action to the next, her job as mother and wife blending together with household chores: “vacuum floors./polish too. lemon oil. lemon life. shine me. shine/ baby. shine sun. spotless. our little homespot. oil our/life.” She goes on to reveal the sham that is her marriage: “…i can’t stand this marriage. merry/age./HUH! i can not bear/it. this baby child. stuck to me like /glue. stuck to us. sticking us”. She has no space in her heart for the child that has kept her in this unhappy marriage: “turned to baby. waiting to be/parked. inside my heart. heart closed for baby. for/everything. zippered tight.” While Oughton’s narrator continues to fill the role of wife and mother, she has removed herself, emotionally, from her life.

The narrator goes on to say that her husband, and her domestic situation, has taken her up, absorbed her, both physically and mentally, until she has lost all sense of self:

park in

my body. in my mind. cadillac you said. parked in

me. taking up space. the little space i had left. lined

it. defined it. with your name. my own space. now i

fit yellow lines.

park-with-me-i-am-your-god-i-am-your-

right-to-life. i am man. here. this space is

yours. your very own. these walls. these

time saving utensils. park your mind here. 

this is my kingdom. king/dom. dome.

domesticity.

The poem continues, as Oughton’s narrator continues living her routine, and her domestic situation continues to consume her. Within the increasingly frantic pace of her fragmented thoughts, she states explicitly, “i am less,” and “i am dissolving.” By the end of the poem, “not even a shadow. remains of [her],” and she has been wholly and explicitly consumed.

However, in “sweeping up the mess,” Oughton offers a potential escape from entrapment; her narrator uses the reclaiming of her body as a metaphor for  reclaiming her life. The poem starts with a strong affirmation that “it’s time damn it/get out the broom,” followed immediately with the revelation that it is the narrator’s destroyed and fragmented body that needs to be swept up:

that’s me

littering floors and walls

there are my toes

now where are the nails

left toe    right toe

this little piggy goes

this tendon needs attaching

something to stand on

are these my long leg bones

hips   ribs   backbone

my soft belly   tender lips

breasts and all

the not-so-sturdy stuff

She goes on, starting the process of reclaiming her body: “i spend the day/sorting and piecing/me back together.” Then, once the rest of her body is sorted out, Oughton’s narrator identifies her heart as missing:

shake out the broom

last search for my heart

find magic markers

draw a big brand new one

to pin to my sleeve

Though she has succeeded in piecing her body back together, her heart is still broken. The healing process, though started, is incomplete. By putting her body back together, Oughton’s narrator starts the movement to escape entrapment, however, as her missing heart demonstrates, the movement is incomplete. On a larger scale, if Oughton’s poems are read as a representation of women in society,  women can fight against marginalization by re-appropriating their bodies and their lives for themselves. Nevertheless, the memory of marginalization, of entrapment, remains and must remain, in order for the healing process to continue.

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