It was my second occasion to enjoy an evening of poetry at The Meet, 66 King Street West in downtown Cobourg last Thursday. I recall growing up in Cobourg in the 50s and 60s and poetry was mostly a lonely occupation. Poetry was an indulgence of students, a means of wooing one’s love, or protesting society at large. The beatniks and Bob Dylan provided the ‘cool’ to write poetry.
Cobourg was fortunate to have had Foster Meharry Russell as publisher and editor of the weekly Cobourg Sentinel Star, which became the Cobourg Star, which became the Cobourg Daily Star, which became Northumberland Today, a.k.a. Toronto Sun Lite.
Mr Russell had published a volume of poetry, Braids of Beauty. He also provided space in the newspaper for poetry, something unheard of in this day and time.
For a few years, students at Cobourg’s high schools produced an annual anthology of poetry, Refraction. Imagine the delight when such a student endeavour was given front page headline treatment. Below is the published story, Refraction Lets In Some Light, with the lead poem being one written by the very young Mandy Martin:
Make my bed
in your chamber
Make my baby
in your love.
It was great in those days. Check out the names of these budding poets – many remained resident in Cobourg. It would be beneficial if the current poetry lot, predominantly made up of non-Cobourgers, had a bit of outreach for these local born and bred poets. Poetry in the 60s was so popular that the Peterborough Examiner also got into the act by publishing this article: New Collection Published.
For those of you wishing to read this local poetry in the heady days of the 60s, back issues of REFRACTION can be viewed here:
Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 5
That was then, this is now. I must admit that I got a rush by being at the The Meet. I came early, and as the crowd assembled, I could hear talk of ‘poetry’ and ‘poems’ and ‘verse’ and other key words of the milieu.
The evening kicked off with MC, Eric Winter, introducing Doug Stewart. It was quite apparent that Doug held a great deal of affection with the assembled wordsmiths. Doug was one of the founding members of the group, and Eric introduced him as a naturalist who lived 150 percent in the here and now.
Doug has a spirited bit of poetry with some sauciness pertaining to why he’ll never wear a kilt again. But he can also write about matters of serious import. The crowd was especially moved by his NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE’S APPEAL FOR ENDANGERED SPECIES; FACE OF A MOUNTAIN GORILLA, JULY 2008. As his poem introduces the situation:
From out of yellow enclosing frame
Of magazine front cover photography
A mountain gorilla speaks
From total black darkness;
Can any human read Gorilla eyes?
Know grief of their lost mountain homeland?
How we feel when mate or child dies?
We humans fear most where we come from
From our savage, still lurking violent temper
That brands our species still Animal
Not long enough evolved from Monkey nature
…
From all our stereotype’s bin
The monster nightmare Gorilla
The King Kong horror thrilla
Empire State Tower kidnapper
Of female victim of savage desire
The near animal family we ape
What Homo Sapiens most fear
The zoo’s star feature on videotape
Of fancy dress ball in Gorilla skin
Who is more brute? Each asks of the other.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
JANET READ, a former Port Hope resident, now making home in Markham delivered some very powerful poetry with rich lines. Janet has a dual talent. She is an artist, which explains her keen eye to make striking visual images in her poetry. It is wonderful to know that she applies the right of free speech with eloquence and wit.
“… nothing as soft and yielding as water.”
… even the sky is a vessel, an upturned bowl.”
On her visit to Newfoundland she found … a field so ripe with rock.” And produced an icon with a wit-twist of an iconic phrase: IN COD WE TRUST
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Northumberlanders should be quite familiar with this writer who spins a good yarn with charm for children’s stories, Linda Hutsell-Manning.“Linda Hutsell-Manning was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1940. At age nine, she moved with her wanderlust parents to Ontario, eventually settling on a farm near Cobourg in 1951. She completed her elementary education in the senior room of a two room school in the nearby village of Baltimore. After graduation from Cobourg District Collegiate and hoping for a life on the stage, she studied Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson Institute in Toronto and then, completely changing gears, attended Toronto Teachers' College.”
Somehow or other, this has led her to poetry, and a reading of her work in Cobourg. Linda does not inhabit a niche very comfortably. Children’s stories is not the end of Linda’s story. She has the courage to continually expand her envelope, from prose into poetry. In this regard she can spin threads of silk with poetry, and walks into a room of adults to deliver this wonderful poem:
FREAK SHOW
Right this way ladies and gentlemen
See the most amazing spectacle -
The one and only dual-aged woman...
(it has a nice ring to it like a new kind of gear shift)
(it has a nice ring to it like a new kind of gear shift)
she sits as always
long legs crossed
the mandatory spike heels
lace-edged teddy
tightly pressing two hard nipples
cleavage holding secrets
somewhere in the region
of her neck she wizens
shrivels down to hollow eyes
and mud flat creases
long grey hair
pulled carelessly
into a bun
the crowds are all the same
young men who come to
stare and pock the air
with verbal raunch
dissective caustic laughter
makeup she hears
one man say
her semblance is impervious
caught in this chronological
cage a contradiction to
delight and tease the crowd
the question is -
should she drape her body
in the flowered silk of age
and give matronly advice
or put a bag on her head
and fuck them all
Hon. Mention in the Cross Canada Quarterly Writers Comp, 1988
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