Adam Dickinson in e-conversation with Nnorom Azuonye continued from previous page

NA: How would you react to a poet who consciously sets out to write the ultimate poem of poems? Discuss also the factors that might make one poem a short-lived experience and another entirely immortal.

AD: I'm not comfortable with the idea of setting out to write a poem of poems.  I don't think this implies a lack of ambition; I think, rather, that intending to write an ultimate poem threatens to foreground an ego above and beyond a work.  Of course, every poet should want to write his or her best work; however, I think that aiming explicitly for immortality is a dubious aim.  Who is the judge of such success?  I am more intrigued by the idea of poetry as a writing toward the other.  If poetry, as I have been discussing, is a way of standing in relation to difference, to unknowing, then to aim for the ultimate poem would be to materialize that ambition, it would be to totalize it in some (necessarily limited) notion of greatness.  The second part of your question asks what it is that makes a great poem.  That is a huge question.  If I could gesture towards an answer I would say that a great poem is one that is in resonant relation with the world.  That is, a great poem makes me feel the harmonics of facing unknowing at a host of different levels and contexts.  In many ways it is as difficult to say how great poems analytically function as it is to logically distil a poetic metaphor--both resist a systematic linguistic explanation.

NA: With regards to creative output, readership and appreciation, do you agree that we are in a paradoxically golden but destitute time for poetry?

AD: In terms of the poetry scene in Canada (with which I am most familiar), I can certainly say that there is an abundance of excellent writing.  The writing scene is quite diverse here; there are some fantastic experimental as well as lyric poets.  I'm thinking of writers like Erin Moure, Lisa Robertson, Jan Zwicky, Tim Lilburn, Don McKay, Robert Bringhurst and many others.  In addition, there is a whole host of younger writers that are worth watching. 
As you point out, however, there is a paradox here because poetry rarely reaches beyond the sphere of its small but dedicated readership.  The establishment of the lucrative Griffon Prize has helped bring some attention to the art, but poetry is really not in the public consciousness.  Nonetheless, there are quite a few books of poetry published each year in Canada. 
I wonder if it is not necessarily a negative situation for poetry to find itself in the margins.  Poetry is after all an engagement with the limits of language, the limits of thinking - this is perhaps a necessarily marginalized space.  It seems to me poets have been complaining for centuries about the lack of attention poetry receives - Keats even worried about the death of poetry.  I wonder if it is a natural consequence of an art that asks us to think differently about our world to find itself on the edge of that world. 
It is a paradox, however, because we certainly don't help our poets by completely ignoring them.  The marginalization also means that it is virtually impossible to make a living as a poet.  I wouldn't say that it is a destitute time for poetry in Canada but when I compare it to the notoriety of the fiction scene in this country it certainly seems like poetry is the poor cousin. 


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