Who knew that deep in the Canadian psyche lay a penchant for poems about bears, guns, drinking, war, fruit and Adam & Eve? Well, if you’d spent almost every waking second for two months reading thousands of poems from over 50 journals as York English Professor Priscila Uppal did, that’s just one of the things you’d learn. You’d also learn that Canadians have a delightfully quirky and playful sense of humour.
Uppal (BA Hons. ’97, PhD ’04) is the guest editor of this year’s Best Canadian Poetry in English series (Tightrope Books) set to launch Wednesday, Oct. 26, at 7pm at Revival Bar, 783 College St. at Shaw St. in 
Toronto. The York launch will take place Monday, Oct. 31, from noon to 2pm, in the Paul Delaney Gallery, 320 Bethune College, Keele campus.
As the series’ fourth editor, Uppal follows Governor General’s Literary Award-winner Stephanie Bolster, Griffin Prize winner A.F. Moritz and Lorna Crozier. The 2012 guest editor will be announced at the first launch. Poet Molly Peacock, the author of six volumes of poetry, is the series editor.
“We write a lot of humorous poetry,” says Uppal. The problem is there seems to be a bias toward the more serious poems. “Humour and comedy are not always appreciated for how hard they are to write.” Take John Creary’s poem “Horoscopes”: “that’s the kind of poem people would share with others and would put up on their bulletin boards.”
In addition to humourous works in the 2011 edition of Best Canadian Poetry, Uppal was determined to look beyond lyrical poems to some more avant garde work. “This is the first anthology in the series with collages of text and images, as well as visual poetry by Christian Bök.” There is even a sound poem on the long list.
The short list of 50 poems is what’s published in the anthology, while the long list is bibliographic information for an additional 50 poems of note. “I’ve tried to include a vast range of poems that would please any poetry reader,” says Uppal.
To come up with the 100 poems, however, was no easy task. Uppal read everywhere. “I dog-eared any poem I was interested in,” says Uppal. “I had two to three hundred poems by the end.” And those had to be whittled down further still. “I reread that stack several times. There were poems that were shoo-ins because they just stood out that much.” She tried to choose a range of styles, subject matter and writing traditions that represented Canadians writing today. “It was a really satisfying and interesting process,” says Uppal.
Left: Priscila Uppal
As for the Canadian penchant for bears and guns and fruit, Uppal decided to include the best poem for each category. So there is a poem, a philosophical mediation, by 2010 Griffin Poetry Prize-winner Karen Solie, who taught at York last year, called “Birth of the Rifle”. Another is a delightful ode to fruit by Al Rempel, called “We Love Bananas”, and a beautiful parable by Tom Wayman, “Fable of the Child Who Went into the Mountain”, about a girl left alone at a cottage who is forced to kill a bear that breaks in. Later in life, it’s a man who comes after her.
Also in this year’s anthology are poems by Steven Heighton, Dennis Lee, Eric Ormsby, Patricia Young, York humanities Professor Richard Teleky, Shane Rhodes, Jonathan Ball, as well as emerging poets Peter Chiykowski, who wrote “Notes from the Canary Islands” about doing environmental research, Andrew Faulkner, who wrote the drinking poem “Bar Fight” – what Uppal calls a “playful and surreal poem” – Julie Cameron Gray, who wrote the tongue-in-cheek “Widow Fantasies”, Sean Howard and Andrea Ledding.
“I now have some new favourite poets,” she says.
Uppal is the author of eight books of poetry, including Winter Sport: Poems (2010) and Traumatology (2010); the novels To Whom It May Concern (2009) and The Divine Economy of Salvation (2002), as well as a critical study on elegies, We Are What We Mourn (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009). In 2010 she was CANFund poet-in-residence during the Vancouver Olympics and Paralympics.
For more information, visit the Tightrope Books website.
By Sandra McLean, YFile writer
Republished courtesy of YFile– York University’s daily e-bulletin.