The Wholeness Meter

by Tricia Dower

Victoria’s first poet laureate, young wife and mum Carla Funk, teaches at UVic when she isn’t penning lines for Victoria’s finest moments. (Ode to More Condo Development?) She doesn’t look like Wordsworth or Tennyson. For one thing, she has hair like pressed sunlight falling to her waist. She read a week ago Saturday at The Malahat Review’s somewhat misleadingly labelled “Gala” —coffee and cookies, nobody dressed up. Carla’s official bio says she grew up “in a world of logging trucks, Mennonites, storytellers and rural realism.” She envisions the “space of the page as a clean landscape where we can draw our own borders.” The poems she read were down to earth and powerful. I could have listened longer.

An aural art form, poetry is better for readings than prose, I think, especially if the poems are short. No struggle to follow the plot. You can let the rhythm of the words transport you; let their beauty infiltrate your subconscious (and perhaps the grocery list you’re drafting: ‘milk - empty of colour; coffee - dark and flowing.')

Pauline Holdstock, a heavy hitter in the literary world, with numerous books and a Giller prize nomination to her credit, says she tries to “reconcile the beauty and cruelty of the world” in her work. She read from The World of Light Where We Live. It won the 2006 Malahat Novella Prize. At the beginning and at points along the way, she wisely explained what we were hearing: scenes in a story about native people the government moved from long-held hunting lands to the shores of frozen waters where they were expected to survive on fish. I got a little lost trying to keep track of Wife, Husband and Brother, not to mention who had taken the sled where. None of that mattered, however, when she got to the ending — as heartbreaking as one could imagine. I cried.

Cut to a week later, Victoria’s McPherson Playhouse. Sitting in the upper balcony with everyone else who bought tickets late for the Bruce Cockburn concert, I scanned for cracks in the ceiling and pondered why Carla’s and Pauline’s readings had gotten to me while some others do not. The first notes out of Bruce’s throat —and fresh tears in my eyes — gave me the answer. It is the wholeness of their voices, the sense in my gut that their words are true to their natures as well as their art. A merging of intellect and spirit. An acceptance and celebration of who they are.

I got hooked on Bruce years ago when I heard If I Had a Rocket Launcher, the defiant, idealistic song he wrote after a trip to Guatemala. Now he sings about 9/11 and a trip he made to Baghdad; Tell the Universe (what you’ve done) is directed to Bush and company. His musical poems come straight from a convicted heart. If you’re interested, this interview in The Progressive offers more insight into what inspires the man.

Carla and Pauline seem to write from clear inner visions, as well; their words belong to them and no one else. It made me wonder how true or counterfeit my own words are. If there were such a thing as a Wholeness Meter, it might be fun to throw my words in and see how I score. Then, again, it might not be.

Photos: Poet Carla Funk; Author Pauline Holdstock; Singer/Songwriter Bruce Cockburn