Susan McMaster
Canadian
poet Susan McMaster is the author
of seven poetry books, five recordings, and a 2007 memoir, The
Gargoyle’s Left Ear: Writing in Ottawa.
Her collection Until the Light Bends was
shortlisted for both the 2005
Ottawa Book Award and the Lampman Poetry Prize. She’s performed across
Canada
and beyond with First Draft, SugarBeat, and Geode Music & Poetry.
She
founded the national feminist magazine Branching Out and the
National
Gallery’s Vernissage Magazine, and edited such anthologies as Dangerous
Graces: Women’s Poetry on Stage, Siolence: Poets, Violence, and
Silence,
and Waging Peace: Poetry and Political Action. Her millennial
project Convergence:
Poems for Peace brought poetry and art from across Canada to all
Members of
Parliament and Senators. (The following circle poem
can
be read by one speaker, or by two
speakers simultaneously, with each taking a verse. It can also be
treated as a round, with the second voice starting a couple of lines
later, possibly in a whisper, and, perhaps, both voices saying the last
few words together, or the poem can serve as a basis for improvisation
of any other variant.)
Stumbling
through cloaked trees
of night over
leaves that slip on
rocks, soaked roots – you
shift, and the bole of
your haunch against mine lifts
in my dream – a
mossy knoll where
I can rest,
till
fogs drift off and
birdsongs rise
Fogs drift off
where I rest
on moss,
lift in dream,
your haunch against mine
a knoll that shifts
under rocks, soaked roots,
as leaves slip mist
over trees of night,
cloak my stumble
through the woods,
and songbirds
rise
Quarrel tète
melologue for flute and voice, in 4 movements
1 I can’t listen to this – What crap and imaginings do you expect me to swallow, man of flute and hollows, tubes and chittles? It’s too much to expect me to resound through your spaces as if they were mine,
fill such emptiness. Words are not enough whatever poets may say, whatever lies we might pile one on the other, marshmallow towers of soft intimation that don’t suffice to rationalize the lines of such desire, pull them taut. Oh, how to ride that note, that throw of poised reason over the abyss – you tug me, tug, and I promise once more
more than I think I can do –
to fill the
hollow tubes
with light
sound he(art
while below
below all –
will you
join me, close
this
gasp
mouth on mouth
hand on hand
breath on
(will
we)
breathe 2 No, don’t approach, turn your tremolos away the mirrors of ear bounce sound and inner more truly than any face to face when we try with all our might to confront what it really means who knows the mean of this sibilant
continuous hummm of
want, hardly heard /
but still
still mugging and nudging constantly so that I can hardly rest for pale undefined dearth
rout me with flutes
round me with screaks of orgary –
and now a
soft and
supple
swell that
leads
us into – Well, it is today. And this is what we have. And really –
yes?
start here
(word
(tone 3 pat the ground babble the top with that trombolono tambolo – where do you
rise to? o chorus
of resonating flap a trap or robabopbob this angel nowhere chorus wilded round and wrought pound sirocco slippage strayly hornpeg the
openings to a sluice of
strabble
we are we are
here now ware
Where we could always be if it were possible and perfect given the ALL thus
and enough
4 Stately and gently we swan into an upright amber touch of finger to lobe lithes of fire willowing through you me
oh here of me with such melodial weave kind unrolling oh hold and rest the minor inner that melds revels in mellifluous resound jazzaway the And Singing such sense to
us
(ancient stark wist still)
FULL are we of
breath and
joy
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