What I noticed above all in seeing over 100 “Younger” Canadian Poets interacting was a disconnect between a number of poets’ work and their actual selves. Ambitious projects dominated many poets’ ideas of themselves. I could talk to a poet but then see nothing of them in their work. This isn’t always a problem but it is a problem as a trend.
It seemed to me that particularly the younger poets were suffocated by the ambition that comes from this notion of joining something as abstract and meaningless as “the new canon.” Many young poets are so busy trying to prove how brilliant they are in every syllable that their poems have no breathing room and they cease to be about something... their poetry isn’t about the world but instead uses esoteric details of the world as a type of intellectual wallpaper.
- Brad Cran, discussing his Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference, in response to Carmine Starnino's CV2 interview. You can read the whole thing here.
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