Tributaries: Scott Nolan + Man on a Wheel

Read “Hoping for Angels”
from Man on a Wheel

Hoping for Angels

Here where the water breaks
The sky into diamonds
I open myself
I surrender
for isn’t this what it all was in preparation for
love or dying

All night I listen to the thunder
For the earth is a broken bell
I took three pebbles in my hand
and shook them like a rattle
Someday your bones will sound like that

See how the sky is a horse on fire
As the night sails
blue and alone
Songs of a hard season
Tiny voices echo
Hoping for angels
Hoping for angels

How I came to know
Faith is silence
How under each stone blue sky burns
In dreams we speak of ships
That rise and fall upon the ocean
Over and over

See how the sky is a horse on fire
As the night sails blue and alone
Songs of a hard season
Tiny voices echo
Hoping for angels
See how the sky is a horse on fire
As the night sails
blue and alone
Songs of a hard season
Tiny voices echo
Hoping for angels
Hoping for angels

An interview with poet Scott Nolan

ALU: Has your idea of poetry changed since you began writing?

Scott Nolan: My idea of poetry is changing all the time, I don’t have any type of formal background, nor am I particularly well read in this regard so it’s all a bit of a beautiful mystery to me. More often than not I try to write a poem in a similar manner to trying to capture a photograph. I’m trying to preserve the moment with as little fuss or pretence as possible.

ALU: What drew you to poetry?

Scott Nolan: Somewhere just between my adolescence and teen years, my cousin began serving a life sentence in a California prison. During a prison lockdown he began writing poetry and I suppose this was my introduction. He used to send me books from the prison library and many years after. I did some concerts and workshops there, and performed in the library he used to work in.

ALU: If your collection had a theme song, what would it be?

Scott Nolan: If my collection had a theme song other than a song of my own, I might choose “mutineer” by Warren Zevon.

ALU: Choose a non-written piece of art (e.g. a song / album, painting, sculpture, or film) that you feel is a “sister city” or companion to your collection.

Scott Nolan: One of the collages from the book. The vision for this project I credit to my publisher Karen, who could see a way for these poems and songs and collages to live together and still remain a tribute to my late friend. I’m particularly proud of this collection and grateful to my publisher Signature Editions.

Scott recommends…
“Oodena” from Catherine Hunter’s
St. Boniface Elegies (Signature Editions)

ALU: Why did you choose Catherine Hunter’s poem “Oodena” from her collection St. Boniface Elegies? What do you love most about this particular poem?

Scott Nolan: I adore this poem, and I adore this book. Catherine is one of my favourite writers.

Oodena

Every morning the bus flies past the hospital,
climbs the bridge above the intersection
of the rivers, and we all look out to see
the elm trees leaning from the banks as if to drink.
At the centre of town, there’s an observatory
for invisible things: constellations at noon,
wind sculpture melodies, and husbands
with their minds on darker matter, who vanish
without warning. It was twilight. Canada Day.
Children flittered through the underbrush
with sparklers. Hundreds of people
pushed onto the bridge to watch
the fireworks, and somehow in the crowd
you lost your way. Afterwards, I searched
for you along the river banks, in the nearby bars.
Dialled our number, listened to the dark house
ring. Said to myself, oh well, you always knew
you couldn’t keep him.
Years later, after a baseball game,
we were walking home together
through The Forks. This is where you got lost
that time, you said. Remember?
At the centre of town, there’s an aperture,
a flaw in the Earth’s electric field.

*

At Oodena, George plays “Maple Sugar”
on the fiddle. Across the river, the neon
cross above St. Boniface General marks
the site our daughter first appeared to us,
the place I touched my mother for the last time.
Ran my fingers through her soft white hair.
That’s where I visited my old friend Patrick,
bringing books and flowers. Or tobacco,
when they let him come outside to smoke.
At the exit to the psych ward, he lifted
his hands, fingered the bright holes in the air,
deep fissures where a man might disappear.
North of the burnt Cathedral, the narrow Seine
comes twisting toward the Red.
At the centre of town, three waterways
converge, like my two brothers and me,
each entering the hospital on the same night
through a different door, wandering
our separate corridors through the labyrinth
until gathered once again into our mother.
Only her beautiful body at rest in a room
and a stranger saying a prayer.
Above the rivers, the bright, invisible socket
of departure was still open.

*

At Michael and Rebecca’s wedding,
the bridesmaids were so young we held our breath.
At church, we heard the Song of Songs,
and later at the rowing club, the band played
“Do You Love Me?” while the guests
all did the mashed potato. They did the twist.
I stepped outside, onto the terrace, felt
in the warm night air the closeness of those things
I need no light to see because I know they’re there:
the docked boats and the rail bridge,
the sundial in the darkness telling time,
the oak and elm trees and the paths that weave
among them, and the hospital grounds, where
Patrick unfolded his paper-winged poems,
the fervent itinerary of his future. Told me
he was cured at last. He was going to run away
to sea, learn to parasail, climb Mount
Kilimanjaro. Love is a kite, he said. He carried
no more than a sparrow carries through the air,
slipped easily into the slender opening between
the words. Love is a fig tree, a solar wind.
The wedding band played “Shake,”
and the wedding guests were shaking it.
I heard the river flicker like a flame.

*

Light from the windows cast gold bars
upon the water, revealed a figure on the pier
below. Then a sudden turbulence and rippling.
Another figure running with a flashlight.
Two men bent low together, struggling,
pulling something, pulling something in.
Catfish, said Ravi, who came out to watch.
We saw the flashlight’s flash, a brief
illumination flapping on the dock,
and then the man leaned down
and must have tugged the hook out,
for we saw him fling the catfish through the air.
Silver gleam of its body in the beam of light,
white splash of life and it slid below the surface,
going home. Then Ron came out
and Carolyn came out behind him.
We heard the rumble of a freight train
travelling west and then another, travelling east.
A riverboat paddled south against the current,
ablaze with booze and rock and roll.
We stood on the terrace, Ron and Ravi,
Carolyn and me. Before us, two trains passing
on the trestles high above the rivers. Behind us,
Rebecca, dancing in her white dress.

*

When my daughter broke into the world
it was November, the power of the rivers
locked beneath the ice. Still, she found
her way. She is a navigator. I have seen her
thread a pathway through the woods,
blaze trails through mathematical equations.
At the centre of town, the naked-eye
observatory teaches us the stories of the stars.
Stone markers frame the sunrise
at the winter solstice, sight on Vega, point out
solar north—a direction you might need someday.
The art of calculating where you are demands
a known location. A familiar place, however
distant, to help you take your bearings.
When my mother left, I could not follow,
could not find the passage she had forged,
though I knew it was right here. If only
I could sight a line among the oaks and elms,
triangulate the vectors of the rivers, measure
the magnetic declination. Instead, I learned
what I didn’t want to learn, passed
through a lesser opening, became
somebody else. Lost and working
in a world that I don’t recognize.

*

They say the northern pass
is the best route up Mount Kilimanjaro,
the wildest one, the most remote.
Elephants graze on the grasslands
of the lower slopes, and leopards
prowl the montane forest, hunting antelope.
They say the planet’s warming up. The ice fields
at the summit have begun to melt. The trees are thirsty,
fires sweep the upper timber line. Yet still
the mountain holds its ark of families, its delicate
wild flowers, heather and lobelia, rare black rhinos,
herds of wild dogs and gazelles.
Still the stars above
Uhuru Peak are breathing,
close enough to touch.
Patrick’s probably on his way by now.
He’s on the foot slopes with a walking stick,
beneath the rubber trees.
Tomorrow he’ll emerge above the clouds
onto the moorland, where
the air’s so thin desire finally
dissipates completely.
He’ll climb the alpine desert
to the snow.

*

I keep in my house a gift that Patrick gave me,
a pale pink alabaster elephant with a smooth hole
through its belly. He didn’t know
it was a napkin ring. It lives
in the china cabinet with the teacups
and the other elephants, the brass one
and the one my daughter made of clay
when she was little. Even then
we knew she was a person who could coax
the earth into her hands and give it shape.
I’ve seen her walk into a room,
my mother’s necklace sparkling at her throat.
I’ve seen her light the kindling
in the garden fireplace and wake the flames.
The evening she was born, snow fell
against the window of the taxi as I paid the driver.
That’s the last thing I remember from that other life:
snow that burst like fireworks
above the hospital, the neon sign, the glass
doors leading to Emergency. I knew
I needed to enter those doors, but first
I stood in the parking lot a moment, alone
for the last time, raised my head
to watch the cool white sparks escape the darkling sky.

Reprinted with permission from Signature Editions.

* * *

Scott Nolan is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and poet from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Treaty One Territory. His debut poetry collection, Moon Was a Feather, was a finalist for the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book. His albums include The Suburb Beautiful, Before Tonight, Silverhill, North/South, Postcards, No Bourbon and Bad Radio, Receiver/Reflector, American Hotel, and Canadian Amplifier. His songs have been recorded by Hayes Carll, Mary Gauthier, Watermelon Slim, and Corin Raymond among others. After more than a decade of relentless touring, Scott decided to take some time away from the road to collaborate, produce records, and enjoy life, and has since produced albums for William Prince, Stephen Fearing, Lynne Hanson, and Watermelon Slim.

Patrick O’Connell is one of Scott’s favourite contemporary Canadian poets, and his lyrical style had a strong impact on Scott’s early songwriting. Scott’s older cousin Patrick Nolan, who developed a passion for poetry while serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison, was another early influence, sending him books and letters from prison and encouraging the younger Nolan to read and work on his writing. Scott’s invitation to perform and host writing workshops in the very same prison library his cousin wrote to him from was the subject of a documentary called Visiting Day, produced for the CBC by filmmaker Charles Konowal.

* * *

Thanks to Scott for answering our questions, and to Signature Editions for the text of “Hoping for Angels” from Man on a Wheel, which is available to order now (and get 15% off with the code TRIBUTARIES until April 30!). Thanks also to Signature for the text of “Oodena” from Catherine Hunter’s St. Boniface Elegies.

Follow our NPM series all month long to discover new poetry or connect with old favourites, and visit our poetry shop here.