Compulsory Figures

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By (author): John Barton

Who are the people who mark our lives? Must we know them personally or is influence also exerted from the distant past, the grave, or even from the pages of a book? Devastated by the sudden death of one of his sisters in 2015, award-winning poet John Barton, over the decade since, felt moved to answer these and other questions for himself in Compulsory Figures, his thirteenth collection of poems.

Born in the 1950s to parents who moved to Edmonton during the early years of the oil boom, Barton roots many of his poems in the prairie, foothills, mountain, and urban landscapes of his Alberta childhood—the land itself a formative influence—to ground his memories of his sister and of his parents, who divorced just as he was entering his twenties.

Barton broadens his inquiry to wrestle with larger societal forces, including settler colonialism and the role his ancestors played in Ontario and the Canadian West after their arrival in the nineteenth century. As a gay man who came to a full acceptance of himself during the AIDS pandemic, he also explores the stigmatizing impact of homophobia and how the courage of figures like Christopher Isherwood, Frank O’Hara, Paul Monette, and Robert Mapplethorpe continues to provide him solace and strength.

Lyrical and thought-provoking, Compulsory Figures plunges into the depths of history, grief, and the unshakable power of everyone and everything that shapes us.

AUTHOR

John Barton

John Barton is a poet, essayist, editor and writing mentor. His books include Polari, For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin: Selected Poems; Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay-Male Poets; We Are Not Avatars: Essays, Memoirs, Manifestos; and The Essential Douglas LePan, which won a 2020 eLit Award. Formerly the co-editor of Arc Poetry Magazine and editor of The Malahat Review, he now lives in Victoria, where he is the fifth poet laureate.

Reviews

The forces that shape identity occupy this latest collection from one of Canadas most distinguished poets Oceanic views lodge inside me John Barton writes testament to the self and the abundance it contains These poems remind us that real art risks vulnerability Rescuing elusive moments from the past and present Barton gifts the reader with a passionate exploration of desire loss and family history Within its headlong and detailrich linesCompulsory Figuresextends in panoramic scrutiny a lifelong engagement with experience through a singular virtuoso craft

David OMeara author ofMasses On Radar

In Bartons masterful lyrics the stream of consciousness shimmers under a prairie wind that cuts across private and public histories moving from the sexual politics of traditional marriage and family to the inheritance of queer culture ever attuned to the landscapes bodies books and art which form our understanding of home Written through and alongside a dazzling archive of influencesCompulsory Figuresoffers us a tender interrogation of memory

Kevin Shaw author ofSmaller Hours

With a dazzling combination of skill and potent emotion John Barton delivers the profound poems ofCompulsory FiguresHe begins his theme of stolen ground as a Canadian Tolstoyinverse exploring a midtwentieth century marriage and divorce from a grown sons point of view decades later Further sections circulate ideas of stolen love and land through elegies for a sister mother and father stolen by time deft examinations of other human attachments and ultimately through Bartons reckoning as a gay man with First Nations territorial rights and his settler heritage The book unfolds like a tapestry where every verbal gesture is distinct Even something as simple as a hug becomes pipe cleaner arms garlanding his neck Throughout extreme weather and vast landscape drive Bartons lines The humanity of this poets reach his force of feeling and his shining craft makeCompulsory Figurescompulsory reading Awestruck I couldnt put it down

Molly Peacock author ofThe Widows Crayon Box