We are thrilled to announce the Poetry in Transit 2020/21 selections!
See the full announcement here.
Below, poet and author Rob Taylor reflects on the role of Poetry in Transit, in the ‘before times’ and in our new normal, and highlights poetry’s unique ability to connect us.
Eight of the featured poets will be reading at Word Vancouver next Friday, September 25th. Click here to register for this free, virtual event.
Riding the bus is not what it used to be. (I know, add it to the list…)
One of my greatest joys on transit used to come in observing the range of faces I encountered there—some closed off, some welcoming. Occasionally I even struck up a conversation, or found myself drawn into one. Now our faces have been reduced to eyes, and our opportunities for connection have similarly diminished. The world is, in many ways, a lonelier place. Because of this, I find myself more grateful than ever for Poetry in Transit. Despite all the changes that have come in 2020, those placards remain, connecting us through poetry.
The poets who will be featured in this year’s edition of Poetry in Transit are here to commiserate: “I’m having trouble with this day,” says Adrienne Drobnies, “sometimes i get jealous,” adds Francine Cunningham. Looking out the window, Cornelia Hoogland sighs, “Dear summer, / don’t leave.” Kyla Jamieson describes a girl who sees only her shadow, “never the pattern of light / rippling across her back” and that girl feels like she could be any of us. Taking in our collective anxiety, John Pass motions towards the gulls and the ever-present, ever-calming mountains, and reminds us that “none of it [is] reflecting / upon peril as we do.”
I often marvel at the connections poems can make. They can bind reader to writer, of course, and reader to reader (some of my favourite bus conversations, both those I’ve participated in and those I’ve overheard, were discussions of Poetry in Transit poems). Poems also connect us across space and time: we are transported; the world is transported to us. I read Russell Thornton’s “Copper Door” and I think of my father, who died 25 years ago. I read Dominique Bernier-Cormier’s “Nord-Ost” and I’m in a foreign train, in a foreign country, with a foreign wind whipping my face. I read Susan Buis’ “Lucky Cat” and I’m back on Commercial Drive with my wife, before our children were born, eating take-out on yet another sprawling summer evening. I read Fiona Tinwei Lam’s “Z” and I move inside a sound: the wasp’s buzz that swirled around my toddler just before she swatted at it and it stung. This web of associations that extends out from a poem can snag just about anything and anyone. It can pull us closer to those we love and miss, be they two metres or a lifetime away. Like the moon hanging over Ruth Daniell’s “Blue Moon (Honeymoon)”, each connection a poem sparks is “perfectly ordinary and rare.” And needed, now more than ever. So the next time you’re on a bus or train, look up.
You’ll find a welcoming face.