Technolandy

Day 145 (of 2025/26) #GreatPoetryReadingDay and a shoutout to @crashtestdummiesofficial @ctdsband

I like to recount a story connected to poetry… I was in my first year English class tutorial at UBC and our prompt was to discuss Earle Birney’s “The Bear on the Delhi Road” https://canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca/birney/poem4.htm  – and I thought that I would finally be able to share some good insight… and I did – talking about it being a metaphor for Britain colonial rule of India… and then I was stopped saying it was incorrect and why I might say that… to which I got to retort… that’s what Earle told me (I was lucky enough to meet him at a reading a year or so earlier and he went into great detail on that poem).

I did not help my grading with that TA, but I definitely set myself on my English Literature major pathway with a lot of analyzing and reading of poetry (a far better media to show what one knows that essays…) though my focus has long been on the Romantic and Victorian era for poetry as I found my exploration of later 20th century writings fit better as song lyrics (one group project had us go deep into the writings of the Crash Test Dummies – lots of allusions in those lyrics!

One of the biggest debates we had was around one of my favourite CTD songs: Afternoons and Coffeespoons crashtestdummies lyrics afternoons… referencing how “the day is like a play by Sartre” <— which at the time meant I needed to do a deep dive into Jean-Paul Sartre and realize how much existentialism thrived in his writing… now I wonder if I should re-examine them decades after first realizing who he was… 

Then the mentioning “when it seems a book burning’s in perfect order” resonates way too well with so much sentiment going on around writing – and I can’t wait until the annotated GenderQueer gets released on May 19… because it’s a fabulous book and too many people get hung up on the pictures (because they say 1000 words) And if people are worried about ‘too young of eyes’ coming across it… let’s hire more full time librarians in schools!

And the biggest wonder – why did Brad Roberts throw in the not-so-subtle line about coffee spoons and t.s. eliot? Or ought we go down the rabbit hole of the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock and take a look at how coffee spoons (very small) can be used to signify a life of trivial routines (stirred?) and not taking bigger risks? 

Ahh, poetry… go find a poem to explore (my favourites remain Robert Browning, Lord Tennyson, T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (did a Canada parody to Kubla Khan https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43991/kubla-khan 

“In Canada did Johnny Mac

a stately dominion decree:

where CP the sacred rail, ran, 

to lotus land and sea…” 

Poetry – it’s why we need to spend some time on letters and words… so we can play with them later on and make up new rules and rhythms! Who’s your favourite 21st century poet?