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Tributaries: Matthew Gwathmey + Family Band
During the pandemic lockdown, Matthew Gwathmey and his family started a band, which despite its eventual “breakup” resulted in a TV cameo and a poetry collection appropriately titled Family Band (The Porcupine’s Quill)—one that explores family, music, and the environment with a lyrical range that is both playful and poignant.
Today, Matthew chats with us about the joy of surprise in poetry and how his own last name began his obsession with wordplay.
Read “The Annex”
from Family Band (The Porcupine’s Quill)
The Annex
No, this is not a poem about FLW,
his inherent plasticity of organic forms,
his open-air atrium of rotunda and
circulation core, the golden mean and complete
geometries and all that. Riding the elevator
to the top and then descending the nautilus spiral,
each cycle corkscrew a pavilion of galleries.
This is a poem about the annex to that
celebrated museum, the tank and flusher
of the world’s most famous toilet bowl. All limestone grid.
All rectilinear foil recapturing the scalloped,
sloped perimeter. A touch of the artist
in four rows of offset slits. Call it backing vocals.
This is not a poem about Taliesin, the Welsh
magician and priest, about the family motto,
y gwir yn erbyn y byd (“take the quick ramp to exit”).
Not about the daily paint job of egg-finish white,
walls slanting like art easels in an inverted
Mesopotamian ziggurat. This is about
restoring the dome of heaven, reglazing
the central lantern. Cleaning out space and opening
the clerestories between turns. Balcony views
revelling in the original façades
of the monitor building from both the outside-in
and the inside-out. Why not a roof sculpture terrace.
Double-high ceilings that expand right by right angle.
This isn’t about genius or bumps or terrazzo,
but about the gilded age of refurbishment.
Something that’s tasteful, discrete, logical.
A quiet, beige backdrop. Reframing our buoyant
energy and unalloyed tartan cheer.
The splendid overhaul allowing us to peruse
a few horizontal flats, to wade through tangents.
An interview with Matthew Gwathmey
All Lit Up: Can you tell us a bit about your book and how it came to be? How did you
come to write “The Annex” and how is it representative of your collection?
Matthew Gwathmey: In the spring of 2020, a few weeks into the pandemic lockdown, a family got together and formed a band. They put out rollicking tunes, parodies of pop songs focusing on the unprecedented times we were living in. Their catalogue includes hits like “Don’t Start Now (Don’t Go Spreading the Virus),” “Mothers in a Dangerous Time” and “We All Live in Self-Quarantine.” Highlights include being on the CBC National News (seriously!) and a kind message from none other than Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. As the back cover of Family Band says, we eventually broke up to pursue our respective solo careers, but we do still all live together.
This poetry collection is more tangentially related to this experience, comprising poems about family, music and the environment. The poem “The Annex” is about a trip we took to visit The Guggenheim in New York City. It is a museum poem, but as it tries to make clear, not actually about Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic design. Instead, it celebrates “the tank and flusher / of the world’s most famous toilet bowl.” The personal connection is that the annex was designed by a distant relative of mine, the architect Charles Gwathmey, which I didn’t want to work into the poem, but I think this link did help to create the desire to write about it.
ALU: What drew you to poetry?
MG: When I figured out that my first name could be found in my last name (gWATHMEy), I began a lifelong obsession with words and wordplay. Naturally, this led to poetry, particularly after discovering e e cummings and Paul Muldoon. It was round about early high school when I first started writing my own poems, and as an undergraduate in university that I started getting serious about it.
What I value most about poetry is the act of surprise. Yes, I value metaphor and form and imagery and rhythm and tone and mood and “all the right words in the right order” and all that, but what I love about the best poetry is this potential for surprise. A turn of phrase, an associative leap that I haven’t thought of or read before, an approach to an old idea in an exciting and new way, a connection of “I know what you mean” even if you didn’t realize it until you read the poem.
ALU: If your collection had a theme song, what would it be?
MG: Could I make a whole mixed tape to answer this question? One made of songs from famous family bands? If I had to choose just one song to be the theme song for Family Band, I would have to choose “Take the “A” Train” played by the Duke Ellington orchestra. I know, not technically a family band song! But we were listening to a lot of big-band jazz at the time that I was working on these poems, so if I had to pick one song, this would be the one. Plus, I do have a poem about Ellington: “Bowhead Whales Are Jazz.” I think it’s the only name drop in this collection.
Matthew recommends…
“Amperage” from Yusuf Saadi’s
Pluviophile (Nightwood Editions)
ALU: Why did you choose Yusuf Saadi’s poem “Amperage” from his collection Pluviophile? What do you love most about this particular poem?
MG: I chose “Amperage” by Yusuf Saadi because it is a poem that I return to. It starts with a contemplative query and explores a full range of possibilities. This poem works on many levels: playing with the sonnet form, interesting enjambement (including an end-of-line hyphenation), superbly-sounding lines and some more conjectural questions (which Saadi does so well in other poems as well). Of course, what I enjoy most about this particular poem is the act of surprise in it. There actually quite a few surprises here, mainly linked this way: example of sound powers object that requires energy. The final pair gets me every time in its irreverence. This touching moment of dialogue could potentially be harnessed for something romantic like a nightlight, but no, that’s not what happens. And I just realized the connection between Saadi’s poem and my own: they both reference toilets. So before anyone asks, no, I’m not obsessed with toilets.
Amperage
Yusuf Saadi, in Pluviophile (Nightwood Editions, 2020)
Why can’t we harness sound for energy?
Skyline powered by Chopin, soliloquies
brew our morning coffee? I understand
the science, vibration/wattage, yet my hands
tremble to Shelley’s chorus while I shiver
Arctic sounds. Diminuendo gathers
us to places without railings, of nearly transcendental
feelings, so how can children’s
screams not turn an oven off? And we could
animate our cars with lovers’ arguments,
a mother’s non-stop babble jolt
a Macintosh, a faucet’s dribble fly
a warplane. I would whisper lay your
sleeping head my love to flush the toilet.
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Matthew Gwathmey lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, on Wolastoqey Territory, with his partner Lily and their five children. He has published three poetry collections: Our Latest in Folktales (Brick Books, 2019); Tumbling for Amateurs (Coach House Books, 2023); and Family Band (The Porcupine’s Quill, 2024).
* * *
Thanks to Matthew for answering our questions, and to The Porcupine’s Quill for the text of “The Annex” from Family Band, which is available to order now (and get 15% off with the code TRIBUTARIES until April 30!). Thanks also to Nightwood Editions for the text of “Amperage” from Yusuf Saadi’s Pluviophile.
Follow our NPM series all month long to discover new poetry or connect with old favourites, and visit our poetry shop here.
