Confederation Poets

Poet and publisher James Deahl talks to AW’s Lucy Black about his latest collection of essays

LB: I am so intrigued by your argument that suggests that this group of poets, and their poetic works, contribute to our understanding of Canada at a seminal moment in our country’s history. I wonder if you would mind sharing the importance of Red Toryism as one of the unifying threads you considered when assembling this collection?   

JD: The Fathers of Confederation, along with the Poets of Confederation, as well as the bulk of the general population, wanted a nation a bit less rigid and class-bound than England but not nearly as socially revolutionary as the United States. Many English Canadians during the four or five decades following Confederation were both economically conservative and socially liberal. (In Québec, the largely Catholic French Canadians were less socially liberal until after World War II.) I believe this conservative/liberal mix — or “Red Toryism” — is clear from reading the poetry and prose of the poets I selected for my study. ”Red Tory” is a concept suggested by the work of political scientist Gad Horowitz. Although this term comes from a different realm of study and a different century, I use it to describe the post-Confederation Zeitgeist of late 19^th century Canada. Because this post-Confederation conservative/liberal political and religious milieu vanished generations ago, it is important to recapture a feeling for it if one wants to understand the beginnings — the actual social and cultural foundations — of the nation state we call Canada.

LB: There is a Romanticism inherent in the depiction of the great Canadian wilderness as portrayed by the poets and later, as you indicate, by the work of Thomson and the Group of Seven to promote an awareness of Canadian distinctiveness, or national identity. Would you share with us the ways in which these poets differed from the prevalent British colonial lens at the time?

JD: The Poets of Confederation were part of a general Romantic æsthetic movement that began in England and Europe about 1800. This cultural force dominated much of the 19^th century and even survived into the pre-war 20^th century. The foundation of Canada was laid by men and women who were, for the most part, romantics. Romanticism influenced the arts, education, politics, and religion. According to George Grant himself, what he was lamenting in his book Lament for a Nation was the loss of “the romanticism of the original dream” of our nation. It is important to understand that the Fathers of Confederation had a romantic dream or vision of what Canada should be. A major part of this vision was the romance of the wilderness. Many Confederation Poets wrote about this landscape. And later on, this same wilderness was discovered by Tom Thomson and members of the Group of Seven painters. Because Canada’s geography is unique, our version of Romanticism was different from England’s Lake Poets. Today, it is difficult to appreciate this romantic sensibility. It seems very old-fashioned in a post-modern world. But to understand Canada one must recapture the romantic vision of our 19^th century founders.

LB: Your analysis of the “Canadian Dream” as presented by the Poets of Confederation is a compelling one.  I wonder if you would expand upon this idea and its relevance to a contemporary understanding of literature in this place today?

JD: The landscape of Canada is quite distinct from that of England or the United States. Much of Ontario, all of Québec, and parts of northern Manitoba are covered by the Canadian Shield. Even before Confederation, The North featured vividly in the Canadian imagination. Today, many Canadians harbour romantic, and even mystical, feelings for the wilderness. It sets us apart from the Americans to the south, and The North remains an important concept in both Ontario and Québec. This is one of the first things I discovered after I moved from Pittsburgh to Ottawa in the spring of 1970. Despite travels all over the United States and England, I have never seen anything like the Shield region, especially the landscape around Sudbury, where I moved early in 1971. The strange thing I’ve noticed is that The North appeals even to Canadians who have seldom, if ever, visited it. In a sense, the Canadian Dream is a romance of The North.

 LB: Tell us about your decision to write this book. What inspired and/or motivated your interest in the subject matter?

JD: Initially, it was Milton Acorn who encouraged me to read the Confederation Poets if I really wanted to know Canadian poetry. That was during the early 1970s. And a bit later, Raymond Souster and Dorothy Livesay gave me the same advice. During 2016 it occurred to me that a series of brief essays on the Confederation Poets would be a fine way to celebrate Canada’s sesquicentennial. When I started, I thought eight poets would suffice, but by the time I finished there were sixteen poets, and over the next few years their pieces appeared in Canadian Stories. Then I expanded my essays for The Confederation Poets. Next will come a 250-page anthology featuring these sixteen poets.

LB: We know that words have power. When were you first aware that your ability to write could be transformative?

JD: When readers started telling me that some poem I’d written had changed their lives. Writing is an isolated activity, and that feedback encouraged me. I know there have been a few poems or articles or books that have changed my understanding of the world around me, of my place in the world, or of myself. Experiencing these works has made me a better human.

LB: Tell us about a book that you have returned to over the years and read more than once?

JD: Two books, really. Both are essential to me and to my work: Honey and Salt by Carl Sandburg (1963) and The Back Country by Gary Snyder (1968). Soon after reading Honey and Salt in 1964 during my final year of high school, I committed myself to a life of poetry. These two books show everything one needs to know about poetry, and they have been with me on my journey for over half a century. My goal was to be able to write a poem as great as Sandburg’s “Lackawanna Twilight” or Snyder’s “Burning the Small Dead” — and this still is my goal.

LB: What is the biggest challenge or hurdle you have had to work through as a writer?

JD: I struggle to trust the impulses of my non-conscious mind. Many of my better ideas and images bubble up from the non-conscious regions of my mind, not uncommonly while I’m asleep, but my conscious mind always seeks to override these. It tries to create poems from the top down rather than simply letting poems emerge from the bottom up. My conscious mind is quite intellectual, whereas my non-conscious mind is more emotional. I tend to “over think” what I write. This, by the way, was a problem Milton Acorn also had. In poetry it is better to think less and feel more.

LB: Are you aware of having taken some deliberate risks in the preparation of this book? Please explain.

JD: It was a risk to take the 20^th century term “Red Tory” from the realm of political science and apply it to 19^th century poets. It was also a risk to include some lesser-known — but very good — poets like George Frederick Cameron, Helena Coleman, and Barry Straton in with established names like Lampman, Roberts, Crawford, and Carman. This ran counter to the “received wisdom” of the professoriate.

LB: Do you have a writing routine or regimen? What does that include at the different stages in the writing process?

JD: I try to do a few hours of literary work every day of the year except for Thanksgiving. This breaks down into three areas: work done before writing, writing, and work done after writing. Of these, the most enjoyable as well as the most challenging is writing. Getting ready to write can also be exciting. But post-writing work is drudgery. Post-writing work requires a large investment of my time, and it is not writing. It’s merely an obligation, so to speak, of having written.

LB: If you were to give a young writer a piece of crucial writing advice, what would that be?

JD: As William S. Burroughs noted: Writers write. Never be afraid to write a bad poem or a bad story. All writers produce rubbish on occasion. Just throw the bad poem or story away — it’s only printed paper — and always write more. Do some creative literary work every day. The word “write” is a verb — “I will write in my study this afternoon.” — it’s an activity. This is what writers should do, or they are not writers.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, James Deahl grew up in the city and in and around the Laurel Highlands region of the Appalachian Mountains. He moved to Canada in 1970, and holds dual American/Canadian citizenship. Deahl has taught creative writing and Canadian literature at Norwell District Secondary School, Seneca College, and Ryerson University. He is the publisher of Unfinished Monument Press. He is a founding member of the Canadian Poetry Association. He is the author of over 20 collections of poetry. A cycle of his poems is the focus of a one-hour television special, Under the Watchful Eye (1993), the audio tape of which was later released by Broken Jaw Press. Deahl lives in Hamilton, Ontario. His wife, editor and artist Gilda Mekler, died in February 2007. He is the father of Sarah, Simone, and Shona. Deahl received the Charles Olson Award for Achievements in Poetry in 2001.