I see tremendous entrances and exits . . .
—Walt Whitman
Memory permitting, now everlasting,
a river meandering before sunrise
when night comes again, and I will
move along taking you there with me,
going in another direction where
you see a lilac tree far ahead, but
not really see on hard ground—
heaving in as I’m out of breath
for there’s nowhere else to go,
but crossing borders and courting
disaster. America, O America: the
tree standing tall where I’ve come to be,
not knowing why. New territory only
marked out for visitors like me, and
aiming to be with the Pilgrim Fathers
with longings of old, touching
leaves of grass tenderly.
Cyril Dabydeen is “a noted Canadian poet” (Hansard/House of Commons) and Ottawa Poet Laureate Emeritus. His latest book is Forgotten Exiles. His work is featured in Heinemann, Oxford, and Penguin volumes, among others.
Questions and Answers
How/where do you find inspiration today?
I find inspiration almost everywhere, but mainly through what I observe and dwell upon with the senses working. I think it is a bit of a mystery how a poem actually comes to the writer. But when it comes, it simply grips the imagination with the underlying layers in the mind coming to the surface allowing me to shape and reshape things in the actual writing process.
As a published writer, what are your tips or words of motivation for the aspiring poet?
Read a lot and observe what the best contemporary poets are doing. Make notes and keep a journal, I may suggest. Essentially look at how poets make things new—how each poet’s individual sense of style and form come together in shaping the poem with his particular voice. The poem must not mean, but be—as has been said many times before.
What inspired or motivated you to write this poem?
I was motivated to write “Through Leaves of Grass” because of the sense of belonging and place that I am sometimes haunted by. Also, images of people—refugees and immigrants, or “aliens” (horrible word)—crossing borders to get to places like the USA and Canada are always upon us (in the media). Inevitably, because of my own background, I naturally experience empathy with the idea of the overriding sense of our beginnings and that we are all people living on the same planet (“through leaves of grass” . . . as I echo Walt Whitman), and how much we want our lives to be better as we aim to put pain and suffering aside.
How did your writing process unfold around this poem? How did you write, edit, and refine it?
I usually write many drafts paying careful attention to words as I try to hone the thoughts and images as they come to me. But it’s the imagination that allows me to associate the sense of craft as I make every word count and to not overwrite as I experience the rhythm with line-breaks (enjambment) all working towards a unified or harmonious whole. Essentially, I am a minimalist, I think, if only to make the poem accessible to the reader.