Paul Vermeersch
Biography
Paul Vermeersch is a poet, multimedia artist, creative writing professor, and literary editor. He is the author of several poetry collections, including Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020. He has been a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Trillium Book Award, among other honours. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph for which he received the Governor General's Gold Medal. He teaches in the Honours Bachelor of Creative Writing & Publishing program at Sheridan College where he is the editor-in-chief of The Ampersand Review of Writing & Publishing. He is also the senior editor of Wolsak and Wynn Publishers where he created the poetry and fiction imprint Buckrider Books. He lives in Toronto.
Poetics Statement
“A statement of poetics is always a work in progress and is therefore always subject to revision. Revision is to see anew. Revise always, or try to. Try to see the art form anew. Be humble before it. You must come to it asking, “What may I contribute?” You must work to find the answers for yourself, but part of that work is seeking what others can teach you. Be open and learn everything you can. Be generous and receive generously. Be curious and read with curiosity. Write from experience, observation, and imagination; all are important, but I have come to believe imagination is foremost among these. We will never live in a better world unless we first imagine it. When you write, imagine what language can do, and then imagine how to use language so that it might become capable of doing what is imagined. Language is a medium as well as the technology for fashioning itself. Poems are playgrounds made of language. Play is essential to life. Play and work are not different. Play is interplay. Interplay and the art form are not different. The art form is essential to life. Terminology is texture. Poetic form is a skeuomorph. Poetic form is an electric lightbulb shaped like a candleflame. A statement of poetics is always a work in progress and is therefore always incomplete. ”
Sample of Poet's Work
Suburban Hauntology:
On the Interpretation of Front Doors
1: The Red Door
The red door juts into view, but is always closed. I cannot help
noticing it, but do not stare. It is the door of severed tongues,
the mouth to a cave of private ciphers. Those behind it
want to be seen, but not observed; greeted, but not spoken to.
They wear the red robes of the witch, they ready themselves
in military red, tunic red. The postman in his dull blue livery
stops, delivers the sealed white envelopes, and proceeds without
knocking. Messages come from outside, but the people within
remain within. Their red door is a million red phosphorous
match heads pressed to the shoulders of a thousand red-winged
blackbirds—their epaulettes are a procession of toy flags
set ablaze. Their house burns with a private flame I can sense
but not see. A door like this does not become red, it is red
from the outset. An ever outward-facing door, a red hourglass
on the back of a black carapace: both summons and caveat,
signpost and stoplight. Enter. Do not enter. Red is fickle. I can take
my pick: grenadine or Mercurochrome, sweetness then sting.
It is the seeds of Hades either way: iron and briar and quarantine.
And here I am: talking about the door again and not the people.
I cannot help them. They want it known that their secrets
are not for knowing. They hide behind the Caesarean portcullis,
the barricade to the immaculate. The Janus door that opens in
and opens out, but remains closed. For them, it is home at last,
or home, at least. A red door is never red on both sides.
2: The Glass Door
This visible man lives in this house. He has nothing
to hide. See his lungs fill with air, his guts with bread
and sparkling wine. You can read him if you try.
He doesn’t mind. He likes to read himself. He’ll tell you
if you ask. All you have to do is walk up
to his glass door, and he will open up to you.
He plays a shell game with three glass cups. He moves
them round and round in figure eights, and voilà!
He has nothing to hide. You always win.
He doesn’t mind. He says he either wins or learns.
He learns a lot, he says. He takes a book down
from a glass shelf. “See,” he says, “I like to read myself.”
His book is onionskin. The ink shows through on both sides.
Nevertheless, he squints and takes it in.
He says wanting to know is as good as knowing.
He reads, and his brain glows with the force of oxygen.
His small nerves ignite with sparks. Come by any time,
he says. He doesn’t mind. He says he has nothing to hide.
Come see into his house. See through it. There are no secret
passages. There is only the visible man within,
and within him, an atlas of baffling channels.
There might be something there you do not recognize, but
do not think you’ve caught him in a lie. Difficulty
is not strictly forbidden. Hell, you are welcome to it!
3: The Door of Birds
At last, we turn the page to the door of birds, and it opens.
Downy soft and talon sharp, it watches us with a hundred
pairs of obsidian eyes. It opens a hundred throats, and it sings.
To enter the house, we say the word, and the birds will scatter.
They lift and wheel about. They alter direction together. They will
interlock again to re-make the door when we cross the threshold.
Inside, the family watches a murmuration of photons on TV.
Their atoms do the same. They separate and wheel about the room,
mingling in the air before re-settling into their human forms.
The children see in ultraviolet, like birds. They know true haloes
are not gold discs about the head, like in old art, but rather a ring
of eminence around the neck or a pattern of bright barbs at the throat.
The father asks: what do you call two bird scientists who wish to mate?
Hornythologists. The children are embarrassed. They scatter
the atoms of their faces to hide their embarrassment.
The mother’s hair is fifty-five brown birds. She fashions a wreath
of twenty birds to hang upon their door. It is important to her
that their neighbours understand she is attentive to the seasons.
When we visit, the hundred birds in the door sound their alarm
for the duration. It is deafening, but we have to tune them out.
The family serves us hot cross buns and water from a spring.
They would hate to do anything wrong. They learned to be a family
from TV. They don’t eat much. They spend their winters
in the south. This is who they are. This is who they wish to be.
Published in Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020, ECW Press, 2020.
Tags
Paul Vermeersch is looking into the camera with his arms folded. He is standing outside before a faded backdrop of green leaves, with sun light coming down from above. He is wearing a dark grey t-shirt and black-rimed glasses that fade downward into a cheetah print frame. ON his arms are several tattoos.