by The Live Poets' Guild

Powell River Live Poets’ Guild ventures in new directions with Parallel: Forty-nine Canadian poets speak to Obama. About five hundred Canadian poets were invited to a competition for poems that tell the new American president something essential about being Canadian. 



Poets famous, infamous, and unknown responded across the country. Governor-General’s Award winners and Poets Laureate mingle with poets who have never before revealed their verse. The variety and quality are high, says editor Eva van Loon. “I love this anarchic, populist project, not least because only rarely does the literary voice of Canada speak from the West. Tiny Powell River has the red-haired, swashbuckling gumption to try this on. Usually these initiatives come from Toronto or Montreal.”



Parallel will be the first book entirely digitally published and manufactured in Powell River. The Guild, which published its first book in 2008 as the Youth Peace-Poem Contest anthology PRIPPA 2008: Friendship Never Ends, wants to end dependence on out-of-community sources by starting local niche publishing. Parallel will be the first book along the learning curve.


“Some of these poems are heartbreakers and some are hilarious, “ says van Loon, who lilved in the US for a decade. “We’re asking our first, second, and third-round judges to try to put themselves in Obama’s shoes—or slippers, if the First Puppy hasn’t chewed those up—and consider which poems would speak to them about Canada and stick in their minds. That’s what sets this collection apart from any other collection of Canadian poetry. We are at a point in history when we must tell our enormous, powerful neighbor who we really are, and what our vision is. It would have been a waste of time to present the previous American administration with this collection. But this President may just listen—and hear.”



The Guild sent nine of the poems to Obama just before his Canadian visit and will send the book as a gift as soon as it comes off the press in the next two months. Powell Riverites will have first crack at buying a copy from the Guild’s website or at the still-to-be-announced book launch at $15 plus applicable taxes. “For once,” grins van Loon, “the rest of the country is going to have pay a little more—ferry costs, you see.”