Jul. 28, 2010 - Issue #771: Young at Heart

Changing of the guard

Swapping the position of poet laureate for a songwriter would be more reflective of art's daily importance

When Edmonton named Roland Pemberton, aka Cadence Weapon, our third poet laureate in May of last year, we turned heads in both directions. There were those who were sharply opposed to the decision, who took the appointment of a person better known for his music as a misguided, populist move at best and an affront to what a poet laureate is supposed to be at worst. Then there were those who praised it as a rare forward-thinking decision, an acknowledgment of the broad definition of poetry or even just an opportunity to engage a wider swath of the population with a position that, though it's not even a decade old, can feel a bit antiquated.

Of these, I'd count myself pretty firmly in the latter camp. So much so, in fact, that I think that when it comes time for Pemberton to vacate the post next July, Edmonton should go one step further and reconsider the post of poet laureate entirely. Instead of returning to the old well and going back to another traditional choice, I think it's time we scrap the poet part entirely and use Pemberton as a jumping-off point for founding a new position altogether: songwriter laureate.

Before Edmonton's poetry community goes off to write sonnets about my grotesque taste or sub-literacy, I should say that I don't have anything against poetry as an art form. As a graduate of the University of Alberta's English program before it became a pseudo-philosophy-criticism degree, I've got an institutionalized appreciation for the stuff, and I even managed to internalize some of the lessons about the joys of rhythm and rhyme for their own sake. I'll admit that I find the modern predilection for free verse a little baffling, insomuch as I think once you entirely untether yourself from artistic restraints, you destroy a lot of what makes art so exhilarating, but that's an accusation I could level just as easily at free jazz, and anyway I'm not so arrogant as to confuse taste with truth.
No, this is a matter of cultural impact. As laid out by the city, the poet laureate essentially has two main responsibilities: to reflect the city through readings of poetry, and to act as an ambassador for the literary arts. It isn't explicitly laid out as such, but I'm willing to argue that "reflecting the city" is the most important aspect of that particular job description: for a start, anytime the word "ambassador" isn't followed reasonably quickly by a country name, it's usually a political term for "what we want to appear to be providing at least token support to." Less cynically, though, that understanding of the position is a relatively recent invention: historically, the poet laureate was a documenter of the life and times of a city (or country or what have you), speaking to the public and promoting a certain level of civic engagement through a popular and accessible form.

The very idea that the poet laureate needs to act as an "ambassador for the literary arts" is indicative of its decreasing relevancy to the public. I'm not trying to argue that poets aren't capable of representing their city: The Office Tower Tales, produced by former poet laureate Alice Major while she was in the position, mines a lot of humour and pathos from a quintessentially Edmonton experience—chatting over lunch at a food court. But the underlying idea that the literary arts—or, really, any art form—need someone to remind us of their importance is self-defeating: it inherently suggests that the art form is something that needs to be preserved, that can't stand up without institutional support. And all that does is reinforce the notion that art is something somehow removed from the average person's everyday life.

But music—particularly popular music, for which the loose definition "songs with lyrics" will suffice in this case—is an art form that is all around us: I mean, you're not going to flip this page and suddenly discover a poetry section taking up the back half of our paper, and it's a reasonable assumption that Vue's audience is more arts-aware than the average Edmontonian. Popular music ranks with film or television as the most prevalent art form in our everyday lives. Partly because of this prevalence, though, many people don't really consider them as such, which is unfortunate and wrong-headed but true all the same. If nothing else, the legitimacy that a city-sponsored position could confer on an art form like songwriting could serve as a patently direct reminder of the importance and vitality of the arts in peoples' lives.

And it's not as if we're talking about a huge difference in medium here, either. I'm happy to support arguments that, say, television—even some of the exceedingly intelligent television that's regularly produced these days—is a fundamentally different and arguably poorer intellectual and spiritual experience than reading a book. But the essential difference between poetry and popular music is that the latter has music behind it. You could argue that the musical flourishes make things like rhythm and emotional impact more obvious in lyrics, but I'm not convinced that's inherently a bad thing, and anyway melding music and lyrics is debatably a more complex process at that. I think you could also argue that the broader commercial and popular appeal of music attracts a wider and therefore deeper pool of talent than poetry, too, but here again we run the risk of arguing tastes, so I'm willing to leave it at the fact that these are related and comparable art forms, though only one is capable of drawing a crowds of a thousand or more onto a closed-down city street on a Sunday afternoon.

Poetry certainly has its place, and I wouldn't presume to discourage anyone from practising or appreciating it. But when it comes time to pick an art form that truly represents the city and encourages people to engage with the arts, songwriting is the better choice. V  vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus