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Letteratura inglese Marlene Creates Canada

Marlene Creates is a Canadian contemporary artist, who lives in the province of Newfoundland. Canada is a federal country and a bilingual one, because since the 17th century it was a French and English colony. British and English colonizers came from Europe in order to live there, and then they created this colony. Before the Europeans arrived, in Canada there lived the so-called natives, or first nation people. These natives were affected by illnesses that Europeans brought there and so they died. They were also discriminated by white people: they were obliged to live in special areas; now they still live there but they are a small number, and they are still discriminated.

Although, Canada is one of the countries that was most successful in creating a multicultural policy, a policy of inclusion, allowing everybody to keep on their traditions, habits, languages. Canada is a multicultural country, not only because native people lived there, but Canada is also a land of migrations: here you can find people that come from all over the world, with lots of minorities (Italians, Chinese, Japanese).

To distinguish itself from the USA, Canada uses a different image: USA is a melting pot (mix of ethnicities), while Canada represents itself as a mosaic, which is made up of small parts, very distinguishable. Canada produced a legislation that allows this presence of multiple cultures, because they passed a law called Multiculturalism Act, which grants people the practice of their own language, their own rights and traditions; Canada protects the minorities that live there. It is a very tolerable country, safe and secure; the quality of life is very high.

One by one the provinces joined the federation, but only in 1999 the province of Nunavut was created: this is the province where the Eskimos live in (in Canada they are called Inuit). The population of Canada is divided: the natives, people coming from Europe, the Inuit, and there is another ethnic group there which is very prominent, called the Meticci, which are the descendants of mixed marriages between Europeans and natives, and they mostly live in the regions called Manitoba, Saska (regions called le praterie).

The provinces of Canada are divided in four areas:

• The Atlantic provinces: Newfoundland and Labrador
• The Central provinces
• The Pacific provinces
• The Subarctic provinces

A virtual walk of the Boreal Poetry Garden

Marlene created an innovative project, called A Virtual Walk of The Boreal Poetry Garden, located in Portugal Cove, where the artist lives, in Newfoundland and Labrador. It is presented as a digital map, something you get from a satellite. This is the cover of the digital project: it is done and planned for the web. If we click in the centre, we see another detailed map: around the house where she lives, there is a forest. Then we have numbers, which are the spots that she visits, and then a list of titles. For each of these spots, she has created a poem and she organises walks through the forest, along this pattern, and in each spot she has a poem to offer. She uses words and photographs: words are necessary to complete what images can’t describe. Photographs limit the vision of reality, so Marlene uses words to complete the images. Marlene says that words and photographs are complementary arts.

These poems are created for the web (digital literature), and they are not meant to be printed. Marlene reads the poem aloud in the middle of the forest, exactly in the same spot that inspired her.

Introduction

The title is The Boreal Poetry Garden. Boreal is a synonym of north, subarctic region. She is in the boreal forest, around the house where she lives, and she has created a poetic garden. A forest exists without the human presence, whereas the garden is created by man. She only reads the poems in the spots where they belong: the poems are sight specific, it means that the poem refers exactly to that spot that she’s describing, they are not universal, they are true only there. She reads the poem exactly in that place. There is the coincidence between the place where the poem is written and the place it is described there.

She experiences the place through the local language, English but with some specific words, typical of the place: she uses the local vernacular, the local dialect, typical of Newfoundland and Labrador, and not in English in general. She uses local terms and sight-specific poems. There is a coincidence between the language and the landscapes.

She speaks about the sonic of the language: we have to pay attention to the sound. At the background, there is the sound of the forest: this is an acoustic landscape. The soundscape is as important as the landscape.

She uses the forest as an art exhibition, and she has created art that fits the landscape. Words are the only means to complete the image that the camera is not able to catch, because reality is different to grasp, because it changes quickly.

White-throated sparrow

White-throated sparrows call; thud! a yaffle of white birch dropped on the woodpile

It’s a three-line poem. We hear birds singing, but we don’t see them. Then she tells us that this is a white-throated sparrow. She creates an image in our mind. Then we hear a noise of a piece of wood dropping; we see a pile of woods that she is preparing for the winter. The poem is only what she does in words.

Poetry is a literary genre, so when we analyse a poem, we need specific technical language and a specific method. How do we analyse a poem? The word white is repeated twice: repetitions are important because they create a sonic atmosphere, and they give importance.

Call refers to the song that the bird produces, so it references to a sound. Then the word thud is an onomatopoeia: it is not a word, it doesn’t mean anything, but it reproduces the sound of a piece of wood.

A yaffle means a little quantity of something; this word is a vernacular word, and it is typical of Newfoundland. In these first two lines, we have the chiasmus, a rhetorical figure of speech in which two elements appear in reversed order, and they create a kind of cross: the first part in the first line becomes the second part in the second line.

In the last line, there is the alliteration of the consonants p and b in the words dropped and woodpile. She describes two images: at first, she describes a typical bird, a white-throated sparrow, and then she describes a pile of wood. The poem is divided into two parts, and it describes what she sees around her house, in the forest.

This poem can be considered poetry because of these characteristics. This poetry is a video-poem, it is a mix of various media: language, photography, images, film. We can speak of a multimodal and multimedia (she needs the web to post her work, a video camera in order to record) way of presenting a text.

Another typical characteristic of poetry is the use of rhyme, but in this case, we don’t have any. Syntactically this poem is divided into two parts: the first line ends with a semicolon, so we have a punctuation mark that gives us an idea that the first line is a complete kind of sentence. This division marks the two different topics: the bird and the wood.

Colours are very important: white is repeated twice because she insists on this idea. We have various sensorial ideas in this short poem: our sight is involved (images), our ear is involved (sounds), colour is another visual element. People that are there can probably smell the wood: they really activate all the senses. We are the virtual audience, we only see the things through our screen, we use only sight and ear. We live a different experience from the ones that are physically there.

Talking about the quality of the language that she uses, she explains her purpose: to recuperate the words that belong to the local vernacular. She uses words that are not typically English, such as yaffle, but they belong to the dialect spoken in the region she lives.

On the ladder

On the ladder, sawing off dead branches; long grass on a rocky ledge.

This is a three-line poem. A very tall tree with missing branches is presented. There is an ambiguity in the title: she needs a ladder to go up on the tree to cut the branches, or she is making a comparison between the ladder and the branch missing tree.

There is a sound in the background, it might be water or wind, but this sound belongs to the forest. The sonic background is always important. The lines are regular because they end up with punctuation, there is not an enjambment. There is a coincidence between the statement and the length of the line.

There are three images: the ladder, the tree with its dead branches and the grass. She is describing what she is seeing: this is a documentary poem. The protagonist is nature. This is an eco-poem, that deals with the environment and the ecosystem. She’s different from the Romantic poets, because her poems are objective, she describes what she sees, while feelings are very important to Romantic poets.

The role of the poet, in this case, is to perform the poem: she is performing and the nature is like a stage for her. She reads the poem aloud, she is acting and reciting. She is using the oral performance. She goes back to the origin; this is a very ancient way to represent a poem: she prefers an oral way. This is a multimodal and multimedia poem.

Coming upon the rockface

Coming upon the rockface for the first time—it is something unto itself, eerie, numinous.

She reaches a point where there is a rock formation where she sees a face. A piece of rock becomes a rock: this rhetorical figure is called anthropomorphism. For the first time makes us understand that she visited that spot many times but at a certain point she realizes that that rock seems a face: it is like an epiphany.

The two last words are important: eerie means between strange and scary, while numinous, which is like miraculous, refers to the spiritual sphere. This poem talks about a sudden revelation, in which nature looks like a miracle; there is also the spiritual element: it could be the face of a God, a human face.

There is an enjambment between the first and second line, and also between the second and third line. In the second line, there is the repetition of the f and t, so we have an alliteration: for the first time. She uses the vegetal world, the animal and mineral one: she uses all natural elements without giving predominance to one of them, she doesn’t create a hierarchy. Rockface is a neologism, there are two words combined together.

Stillness

Stillness, like the moment after the moose bolted, clipped the turn: hoofbeats in the footpath.

In this case, what we hear in the poem and what we see in the video don’t coincide. She is describing the moment in which the animals disappear from her sight. Her presence, the sounds she makes, disturbed the animals in the forest that ran away. She is describing the movement of the animal and the sound of the walk of the animal on the ground.

There is a temporal adverb, that underline a moment before and a moment after. There is always a temporal term in the poem. She is opposing the visible and invisible, movement and stillness, sound and silence. We have the same sound produced by the verbs in the past form: bolted, clipped.

We have two lines that are syntactically complete, whereas the second line creates an enjambment with the third, as the fourth with the fifth. The moose is the protagonist of this poem, typical animal of Canada.

Blue gap

Blue gap in running clouds, camera poised, sparkling waterfall.

This poem is describing two natural elements: sky and water. Then there is the presence of a modern technological tool, a camera which is poised (puntata). Then the natural elements are linked to the movements, while the camera is static. Again, we have colors: the blue sky, the sparkle that can be a quality of the light or water. The sky is presented as a metaphor: blue gap (there isn’t the presence of the word sky but we can imagine it).

We see the elements from the bottom to the top: at first we see the ground, and then the camera starts going up, showing a waterfall and then the sky. In this poem, differently from others, we have also the inclusion of the photographer. In a sense, these poems are metaphotographical: not only we see the poet performing the poem, but we also see the photographer that takes pictures.

Pink wild

Pink wildrose petals poised downstream on the mossy edge for two days; then a record rainstorm.

The pink wild represents the flower, she describes it using the color. This flower is typical in Canada. A normal flower would die in this place, but it is like a miracle, a touch of color in the middle of nature. She insists in its color because it's rare, this is a special and short moment. The cesura is the breaking moment, where something changes. The time is crucial in this poem; in this case the cesura is presented by the words two days and then.

In this video, first of all we hear water, the element that takes away the wildflower. Before we have the flower, beautiful, in spring. Then we have the moment that the petals fall into the water and stay there for two days. Then a rainstorm comes, the water becomes rough, and the petals are gone, they are washed away. Small natural elements are presented in these poems.

Quiet

Quiet, as the lull when the black-backed woodpecker stops knocking overhead in the crunnick grove.

When the sound stops, there is silence in the wood: binary opposition between silence and sound. There is a movement from a lower level (ground) and then a higher level on the top of the tree: movement from the ground to the top of the tree. It’s a difficult path. Then there is a temporal shift: there aren’t elements that refer to time, but we have a moment before and a moment after. The moment before is when the woodpecker makes noises, and the moment after is when there is silence.

This is a very short poem. There is the usual repetition in sound, the alliterations (black-backed woodpecker – the same consonants are repeated). Then there is a vernacular, local term: in Newfoundland dictionary “crunnicks” are old twisted dead trees, with the bark all gone, weathered and turned white; and the dry crooked sticks of such trees. We have one image, the one of a woodpecker. We don’t see the bird, we just hear the sound of it: comparison between the visible and invisible.

Will I

Will I trim off this branch jutting in the new path? The next pass a yellow leaf brushes my lips.

This is a short poem. In this case, the poet is involved (first person). She’s talking about an intention she has. Trim off means "tagliare", "recidere". Jutting off means "allungarsi", "intralciare", creating a barrier. The first part of the poem expresses a doubt, an intention, but the protagonist is unsure about what she has to do. The last line, which is syntactically separated from the others, gives us the answer.

Attraversando il sentiero intralciato di rami sporgenti dagli alberi, lei passa e una foglia gialla le sfiora le labbra. Decide di non tagliare più i rami (dubbio iniziale) per non rovinare la natura, esercitando su di essa un potere artificiale. To cut a tree is an anthropogenic gesture that changes the image of the forest, but at the end, she decides not to cut the branches when she sees this beautiful branch full of yellow leaves that touch her lips. This is an image of beauty that makes her change her mind. She creates this aesthetic effect. A touch of colour in the forest. She’s giving us still images of beautiful objects that she is watching around her.

The poem is divided into two parts, and we have a temporal shift marked by next: it tells us that time has passed. In the first part of the poem, there is a question, while the last part is not really the answer to the question, it is a description of something that is there. But the answer is something that we deduce from the video. Without the video, this poem could not be very clear, but if we see the video we can see the branches on the trees, which are uncut. Brushes in this case means "sfiorare". What is the illusion? Here we have the same idea of the Rockface poem: a leaf is unanimated, but the leaf is acting, it is the protagonist of a human action. The gesture that the leaf accomplishes is a human act, and here we have an anthropomorphization.

Marlene concentrates on seasonal changes: what happens when the season changes in the forest. She shows us the transformation of nature according to the season: changes of colour, shape. Nature is not still, it evolves. We witness the modification of nature.

Plane overhead

Plane overhead taking my young nephew home with jars of jam; at my feet the plucked blueberry bush.

In this case, we have an object in the sky, a plane which is an anthropic element (not a natural one). Her nephew is on the plane, he’s going back home after visiting her. The jam that the nephew is bringing home is the product of the blueberry. It is implicit that first they had to gather the blueberry and then they had to make the jam. There are two different moments. We see the activity that human beings can do in the forest. This is a more personal poem that refers to the poet’s private life, however, the forest is the protagonist. She has a specific place to gather blueberries, at her feet there are the blueberry bushes. Here we have a different movement of the camera: from the top to the bottom, from the sky, where there is the plane, to the soil, the ground where there are the blueberry bushes.

Rocks moved

Rocks moved to grow potatoes so many years ago, moss.

In order to understand this poem, we have to know all the project, all the other poems. Because here she is probably referring to another poem, where she describes a vegetable garden in the forest. In order to create it, they had to move big rocks. This happened in the past, now the garden is no longer there, she can only see the rocks around. There is the cesura, and then the word moss is separated from the rest of the poem. She concentrates on the moss. This gives us a sense of time passing: before there was the vegetable garden, but now there is moss.