Poetry is reflective; poetry is concentrated; poetry can slow down time.
Poetry is also like freeze-dried foodstuffs. At least it is according to local poet John Barton.
Barton, who’s about to launch For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin: Selected Poems, his latest collection of poems, says that poetry, when done powerfully, can make people think about things both internal and external, and can change societal norms in doing so.
“Good poetry makes us want to expend the effort to pass through the looking glass toward insight, toward insights that we as readers come to on our own, not simply those that the poet wants us to find,” says Barton. “It’s the ability of poetry to allow readers to draw their own conclusions that permits it to challenge societal norms. For example, if reading a poem about two men who love each other causes readers to see that love is love ‘no matter how the bodies join’Ńto quote one of my own poemsŃthen a norm has been effectively overturned.”
In Barton’s work, societal norms get torn apart, tossed aside, and thrown out. His work deals with the complexities of being gay, how the culture of fearŃand, by extension, courageŃthat surrounds AIDS changes the quest for (and acquirement of) intimacy, and the reinvention of family in today’s world.
“In the past, I’ve always said that being gay in a straight, hetero-normative world, where the nuclear family is defined by intimacies arising from mixed genders, made me imagine it otherwise and without apology,” says Barton. “For gay men and lesbians of my generation, who were raised by unsuspecting parents of opposite sexes, we had to claim this spaceŃthis non-nuclear-family spaceŃfor ourselves.”
Camosun College Student Society pride director Daphne Shaed agrees that the typical notion of family is becoming antiquated and that traditional family ideology is flawed. Shaed says that art is one way to get these ideas across to the public.
“Art is an important part of the discourse arising from the queer community to help others understand current issues, influence social concepts, and generate change within the greater social landscape,” says Shaed. “I applaud Barton for addressing the issues in such a creative way.”
Barton says that his work documents the claiming of this new family space, warts and allŃcourage, homophobia, hopes realized and unrealized, and, in his words, “the hazards of a previously unknown country.”
“I pose this space as a hypothesis to be proved,” he says, adding that he no longer sees his experience as marginal or wholly crucial to every family.
“I now see what I have lived throughŃand what I have written aboutŃas one piece of the puzzle in the reinvention of the family,” he says, “a reinvention through which all differences are both respectable and respected.”
Take that, freeze-dried foodstuffs.
John Barton
7pm Thursday, September 27, free
Cadboro Bay Book Company
cadborobaybooks.com