Poetry Primer #14: Jim Johnstone & Ben Ladouceur

National Poetry Month will soon be drawing to a close and we intend to finish it out with a few more fantastic Poetry Primer picks. Lucky number fourteen of our established poets is Jim Johnstone. He is the author of four collections of poetry, including his latest, Dog Ear, published by Vehicule Press in 2014. He has won awards from the CBC, The Fiddlehead, and Matrix for his poetry and is the poetry editor at Palimpsest Press. Most recently he edited a collection for The Porcupine’s Quill’s “Essentials” series, featuring the poetry of Earle Birney, and his critical literary writing is forthcoming in Poetry and The Rumpus. When asked which poet he would recommend as an emerging voice on the Canadian poetry landscape, Johnstone picked fellow Torontonian Ben Ladouceur. His debut collection, Otter, was just released this spring by Coach House Books. Previously, his poetry was featured in Arc, The Malahat Review, PRISM International, The Walrus, and in the Best Canadian Poetry anthology from Tightrope Books, and he won the Earle Birney Poetry Prize in 2013.Read on for a sample of Ben’s poetry, of which Arc‘s John Barton says, “This is poetry motivated by an honest wit.”* * *Jim Johnstone on why he selected Ben Ladouceur:Ben Ladouceur’s Otter is a rare kind of debut: vital, on voice, and spirited from start to finish. Opening with “Armadillo,” where the protagonist’s lover carves the titular mammals from their shells, Otter rolls out with purpose, giving voice to queer Canadians in poems that are both unrepentant and honest. How many poets would dare write of a lover “throwing, upon my balls, your tongue, how sea urchins / throw their stomachs upon the coral reefs they eat”? But such lines are Ladouceur’s bread and butter, unravelling with an assonance that exudes sexuality regardless of content.All this would be enough for me to recommend Otter, but it’s Ladouceur’s skill with the personal lyric that truly makes him noteworthy. Poems like “Ox,” “Happy Birthday, Thomas Dearnley-Davison,” and “Goodbye, Cruel World” are vivid sketches that reoccur long after they’re first read. And “The Masturbating Flowers,” printed below, is a master class in give and take, with Ladouceur’s emotions dusting the poem like pollen. When the flowers “bite their filthy lips,” the poet’s world fills with “a decadence of unclean teeth” that more than alter his voice. They help him sing.

Ben Ladouceur on why he writes poetry & who his influences are:“It takes guts to know some happiness / & not make a poem about it.” That’s from The Brave Never Write Poetry by Daniel Jones. I write poetry because I am not brave.Regarding influences: Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay Male Poets, edited by John Barton and Billeh Nickerson, has been a key resource for me since the year it came out. Specifically, that anthology brought the works of bill bissett, Shane Rhodes, and Emile Nelligan to my attention. Barton’s own book Designs From The Interior has had an impact on my output that is difficult to verbalize.As I wrote Otter, the wonderful White Stone by Stephanie Bolster gave me something to try to be as structurally sound as. Along the same lines, sequences by Esta Spalding, Anna Moschovakis, Joanne Page, Lynn Crosbie, Matthew Walsh, Dennis Lee and Penelope Shuttle gave me assorted forms of guidance as I tried to create a collection that adds up to something greater than its individual poems.Mark Doty, Paul Monette and Wilfred Owen helped me remember why poetry was the best medium for the book I was building. As a poet, Johanna Skibsrud helped me remember the effectiveness of simplicity. And I owe a lot to many of the chapbooks that came out of Carleton University’s In/Words Press between 2006 and 2011 or so.Here are some other, non-poetry works that heavily influenced Otter. The middle third of my book was written in response to Rites of Spring by Modris Eksteins, so that’s an important one to mention. Also, a ballet called Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men, filmed by David Hinton. An opera called Einstein on the Beach and a song cycle called Music in Twelve Parts, both by Philip Glass. The sculptures of Louise Bourgeois. The short stories of Shirley Jackson, Lorrie Moore, Bronwen Wallace, George K. Ilsley. The novels of Marian Engel. Ray Monk’s biography of Wittgenstein. All of Whoopi Goldberg’s lines in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” And the artwork of Zachari Logan that was featured in the Spring 2013 issue of Grain Magazine. We were fortunate enough to get one of Logan’s works as the cover, so the book really looks the way it’s supposed to.* * *Going, going, gone . . . only a few more days to get your hands on our All Lit Up merch! Catch up on all our featured Poetry Primer poets or take the whole series home and then some with our #NPM15 anthology, ibid., available only on All Lit Up.