from The North Suite
“Something really does happen to most people who go into the North — they become at least aware of the creative opportunity which the physical fact of the country represents and — quite often, I think — come to measure their own work and life against that rather staggering creative possibility: they become, in effect, philosophers.”
— Glenn Gould in “The Idea of North”
“Wolves evolve.”
— from “Vowels,” Eunoia, Christian Bök
“...the further north we went, the more monotonous...”
— Marianne Schroeder in “The Idea of North”
THE GREAT CANADIAN QUERY
WESTERN CANADA
Why are you here? How does your inquiry inform you? What are you hoping to learn? Why do you choose to study? What is your attraction to questioning? How does your environment define you? How does a language blend with its surroundings? How do you define ecopoetics? How does your use of English support or dissuade speciesism? Are human languages necessarily humancentric? How reliant on pronouns are you in order to communicate in verbal and written capacities? How aware are you of your use of pronouns? Is it possible for you to engage in conversation that does not position you as the central or primary focus?
SOUTHERN CANADA
How could a language be an ecosystem? How does a language become its own functional ecosystem? How do you enter into and survive in a linguistic environment? How do you engage with the written environment? How do your engagements and comments on the environment shift your relationship to language? How does your use of English reflect your values? With a reduction of linguistic resources, how is communication limited? How could a lipogram in a linguistic ecosystem reflect the creative redeployment of a society working with a limited set of resources? How could you employ a lipogram to reflect localtarianism? What systems can you employ or develop to reduce, reuse, and recycle language? How do you sustain your use of English given a limited character set? With the erasure of personal indicators or references to human/persona within writing, would the language eventually collapse or deteriorate? At what point would characters or ideas push forth and create space for, demand, or organically develop the need for new characters?
EASTERN CANADA
If the page is a field and letters the species populating it, how might my ecosystem translate into a written environment? How do species distribution maps correlate to English-language letter frequency usage? How does any human language reflect or resemble the ecosystem in which it originated? How much of my acquired oral language is based on mimicry of lost soundscapes? When I listen to my soundscape, do I construct a narrative from it? If so, how do I factor myself into that narrative? How do I project what I want to hear into a soundscape? How do I love what I want to hear? How do I hear what I want to love when I speak? How do I love what I want to hear when you speak? How am I capable of interspecies communication? How do I try to understand or decode other species’ communications? What are the implications of learning the languages and life patterns of other species? What would I do with such knowledge? Do other species on Earth have a written language? What forms do other species’ written languages take? What are human forms of visual, aural, kinetic, and olfactoric communication? What are other species’ forms of visual, aural, kinetic, and olfactoric communication? What is the communicative capacity of a plant? What is the communicative capacity of a planet?
NORTHERN CANADA
Were trout here? Were trees still here? Were moths here still? Owls or wolves? Who?
THE CANADIAN: WHO? WHERE?
In this area, within this boundary, inside this border, behind these lines: Wolves! Wolves! Wolves! Isolate vowels that relay emotion; then eliminate. Wlvs, wlvs. Whole selves threatened and because of what.
Interaction of different letters within a biocoenosis is evident at dinner. Notice how Os chase Ms. Vs hover over Ts, home in air or shell. Us stew on rotten Es as Ws mate. Biodiversity breeds words. Whowho lives in isolation. Not one, not I.
A toe traces a curve in sand. Hydro dams destroy emotion. Herons nest in trees. Where is the environment, this written forest of hoots and howls and letters and nonsense? In this area, this whole, this field.
Words are reused. Letters are reduced. Have I beavered in moose? I eye my shrew, fern, loon. Fish where I fern to loon. How everywhere, how nowhere, is my love.
Where is this area? Where is this boundary? Am I inside the border? Am I behind these lines? What are wolves? Where are wolves? Why are wolves? When do vowels relay emotion? Whose whole selves threaten? What?
Who interacts with letters? Where does she eat dinner? Why notice wolves? Hover where? Stew what? Breed when? Whowho lives in isolation?
Which toe is in the sand? Does emotion destroy hydro dams? Herons nest in trees? How is this nonsense useful? Where is this area? Where is this whole? Am I inside the field, too?
What words are reused? Which letters are reduced? Where is this moose? Who owns animals? Where am I? How aware am I?
The Committee initiates a wildlife-recovery system. Too soon? De- -ed. What of Canada?
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David Herd’s collections of poetry include All Just (Carcanet 2012), Outwith (Bookthug 2012), and Through (Carcanet, 2016). He has given readings and lectures in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, India, Italy, Poland, the USA and the UK, and his poems, essays and reviews have been widely published in magazines, journals and newspapers. He is the author of John Ashbery and American Poetry (2000), Enthusiast! Essays on Modern American Literature (2007), and the editor of Contemporary Olson (2015). His recent writings on the politics of human movement have appeared in Detention Unlocked, Los Angeles Review of Books, Parallax, PN Review and the TLS. He is a co-organiser of the project Refugee Tales and Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Kent.