NewPoetry.ca

I’m sick of borders. I’m sick of silos. Bunkers, too. Don’t even get me started on garrisons. I’m sick of the various poetries and poets I read and admire fighting and carping about each other instead of collaborating constructively (however that is interpreted between artists) to generate new poetic possibilities. I’m sick of judgments and systems of criticism that involve aesthetic preference over intellectual accomplishment, that reward attendance and loyalty over risk and depth, that spend more time tromping on the art and experiments of others than perfecting their own. I’m sick of lack of space for difference, or at least for difference within the same pages.

So, here’s what I propose: one site, many poetries. A magazine that proposes themed issues, then builds them by inviting poets and performers from all genres and forms to interpret as they will.

The web is the first medium that I know of that can accommodate most, if not all, of the forms currently out there. Through text, image, audio, video, and multimedia, as well as whatever new technologies are to come, NewPoetry.ca will publish the best of everything we can find: lyrical, visual, dub, sound, narrative, formal, hip-hop, surreal, automatic, recitation, aural, slam, flarf, algorithmic generations… and whatever is to come!

We’ll do this by bringing in key representatives from as many fields of production as we can, many of whom previously found themselves on opposite sides of the editorial pages. We’ll ask these people to bring us the best from their forms and styles for each issue. And we’ll see what comes.

People who have signed on to this idea include:

• Ken Babstock
• Elizabeth Bachinsky
• Derek Beaulieu
• Christian Bök
• Julie Bruck
• Mark Callanan
• Afua Cooper
• Dani Couture
• Steven Heighton
• Amanda Jernigan
• Anita Lahey
• Michael Lista
• Erin Moure
• Susan Musgrave
• Robert Priest
• a.rawlings
• Damian Rogers
• Stuart Ross
• Carmine Starnino
• Darren Wershler
• Rob Winger

Look for this list to grow! If you think as we do, you can be part too. Watch for our upcoming themes and funnel the best work you find our way; yours or that of others. Let’s see what we come up with together.

George Murray