ken babstock

I grew up, like every other young person, loving music -- pop music, indie rock and whatnot -- and finding out that some of these bands that you're listening to are reading your poetry is fantastic. It's wonderful. Leonard Cohen pallbearer at Layton's funeral. It appears that the link between musicians and poets is becoming nearly as strong as it was in the 1960s.

While he says, "I'm tone deaf and could never write a song if I had a gun to my head," he has appeared in more than one set of liner notes.

Babstock appears on the Rheostatics' last studio album, 2067, reading his poem "The Expected" in the track "Try to Praise This Mutilated World." "They plunked it down right inside the song, and it sounds gorgeous," says Babstock, who recognized all the potential problems inherent in mixing spoken word and music. "I was even wary of the idea, but they did a great job and it sounds lovely."

And there's more to come, so keep your eye out for the growing Babstock section at record stores near you. "Jim Bryson used one of my poems to kind of structure a song around," he says. "That's coming out on his new record."

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babstock's mean
made me cry on the bus to brampton
and i carried
his letter for a sister wherever
wadded up like a tissue in my pocket.

don't i have a poem where his scars rubbed against the sheets?

once i said
in bitterness against bush
"i bet if women were in charge
we would fix the current problems
of the world" with kindness, and empathy
and without the violence you know
and my v. clever man friend said
"okay, i'll grant you that.
but i think then, we'd have
an entirely NEW set of problems."

remember when i impressed
my poetry school teacher
by defining synethesia?
well, wasn't i happy to read
of a character's experience of it
in his friend's moody food
*
POP QUIZ:

antonomasia
id of person by epithet or other term that is not name; the use of a proper name for a common noun.
i.e. kleenix = tissue great lover = don juan

synesthesia
: a concomitant sensation
: a subjective sensation or image of a sense (i.e. colour) other than the one being stimulated (i.e. sound)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ken Babstock is a Canadian poet. He was born in Newfoundland and raised in the Ottawa Valley. He began publishing his poems in journals and anthologies, winning gold at the 1997 Canadian National Magazine Awards.

His first collection, Mean (1999), won him the Milton Acorn Award and the Atlantic Poetry Prize. He has since published a second collection, Days into Flatspin, which has also come in for high critical praise.

Ken Babstock worked as Poetry Faculty at the Banff Centre for the Arts and currently lives in Toronto. He is currently the poetry editor for the Toronto-based press House of Anansi
* * *

http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5388

early years
career
major works
awards and honours

including The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, PRISM International, and Canadian Literature

* * *
Any report on Ken Babstock should open with music. There was a Wilco dedication in his first book. 'Mean,' the title, came from the three meanings of the word: nasty; to intend something; and to be a midway-point between two extremes. Using these meanings would allow Babstock to work several metaphors, sometimes simultaneously.

in his u of t class, we discussed
metaphors
sylvia plath, 1932-1963

i'm a riddle in nine syllables,
an elephant, a ponderous house,
a melon strolling on two tendrils.
o red fruit; ivory, fine timbers!
this loaf's big with its yeasty rising
money's new minted in this fat purse.
i'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
i've eaten a bag of green apples,
boarded the train there's no getting off.

-- a poem of 9 lines of 9 sylables each. isn't she clever?


we workshopped two of my poems in ken's poetry school

room mate love letter was salvaged from my scrap heap because he introduced us to jory graham (sp). and he said he thought it was lovely but that i was making stylistic choices with it that i needed to be prepared to then follow thru on.

we did the southern aphorisms poem too, because i couldn't imagine one would be allowed to do such things, with being charged with Plagerism. he also said there is No Rule against adding in your own words and if it's MOSTLY found calling it a found poem.

(so, if i get arrested, blame ken).

he thought it was cheeky and you COULD see an author at work.

"-- onward!" he signed.

how to make a policy poem

1) gather a bunch of images/scraps that speak to you
2) put them together in a way that suits your fancy
3) list the most important words, phrases or messages
(tinker with the order as you feel you must)
4) post your latest collage poem on your blog


i couldn't tell if ray was impressed or disdainful, asking me the question.

then he said "a poet then?"

and i still couldn't tell.

have i ever told the story of the mutton birds packet? ray wrote back and he was honest and direct and encouraging with his suggestions (for once i included a SASE) but from his comments i could tell he hadn't LISTENED to the cd so i was a little bit disappointed in him. he turned out to be a good teacher though. just like his friend ken?
* * *
In his brilliant and long-awaited third collection, award-winning, critically acclaimed poet Ken Babstock finds momentary stays against our gathering darknesses in the irrepressible, acrobatic, free play of the mind. Poems of conscience collide with the problems of consciousness, the concrete and the conceptual find equal footing, and formal beauty mixes with imagistic brinksmanship.

Like Babstock's earlier work, Airstream Land Yacht testifies to the harrowing beauty of everyday experience while introducing an expansiveness of inquiry with linguistic bravado and a quiet grace. itself a love song to the wordless world.

"Babstock's ear remains finely attuned. Always adept at capturing speech cadences, in these new poems he plumbs as much from the jumpy rhythms of thought, and what gets sacrificed in accessibility is more than made up for in surprise. . . . one of the country's finest poets."
- Quill & Quire

" there's almost a tactile pleasure in how words sound, and a multitude of striking phrases vivid to both the ear and the eye . . . poetry that hums."
- Toronto Star