The Libertines	by Alessandro Porc

Three Canadian poets bring their unique poetic debaucheries—and I mean that in the best possible way—to Rust Belt Books (202 Allen Street) Friday night at 7:30pm. Jason Camlot, David McGimpsey, and Stuart Ross read their latest poems. Joining them is Buffalo’s own Andrea Strudensky.

Camlot’s latest effort, The Debaucher (Insomniac), is fueled by totally naughty pun-filled lyric poems, such as the suggestively titled “Since I have stuck my tongue…” and “To Your Pink.” His translations of Baudelaire, Verlaine, and other French modernists are superior by virtue of their colloquial ease. Camlot’s poetry is a perfect mix of the musical (he’s a singer-songwriter), intellectual, and playful. And if my recommendation isn’t enough, consider that one of America’s most eminent poetry critics, Marjorie Perloff, praises Camlot as “a remarkable poet.”

Artvoice: Jason, your book’s title poem suggests maybe debauchery isn’t such a bad thing. Does poetry need a little more debauchery in it?

Jason Camlot: Everything needs a little more debauchery in it, poetry included. As I imagine this idea in my book, the debaucher leads us astray from safe habit into lucid and alive (if errant and embarrassing) experience. Our most meaningful encounters and thoughts arise when we are lured away from what we are supposed to be doing and thinking. “The debaucher understands/each moment is just once./His understanding is chronic.” In the process of writing poetry, the debaucher is the anti-muse who entices us away from making the “right” choices, into making instead the entertaining, illuminating, and fatally memorable wrong ones. Yes, the debaucher should be made more welcome in poetry. To approach life without fear is the debaucher’s motto. To make art without fear is a good motto for a poet.

David McGimpsey’s latest book, Sitcom (Coach House), is largely composed of extended dramatic monologues, often satirical, sometimes slapstick, yet always touched by an elegiac sensibility. McGimpsey expresses an affection for, and an affinity with, the citizens of “loserville”: failed lovers and professors, the overweight and balding, and misanthropic recluses who spend days analyzing episodes of Hawaii Five-O (Sitcom includes four poems about the Five-O, including “Aloha” and “McGarret”—seriously.) McGimpsey was recently named one of Montreal’s five greatest living literary figures, alongside the likes of Leonard Cohen and Booker-winning Yann Martel.

Artvoice: “Poet Laureate of Popular Culture” is one of the ways you’ve been described—how do you feel about that?

David McGimpsey: That’s fine with me. I wish it came with some kind of endorsement deal, though. Given the hostility which tweedy snobs sometimes carry about working class culture, I can see how such a label might hurt, but those kinds of snobs (who don’t read poetry anyway) can cram it. I remember Berryman reacting to the label of “confessional” with “rage and contempt” and I understand his point but it’s hard to fight labels. Once Bounty sells as “the quicker-picker-upper” it’ll be “the quicker-picker-upper” for awhile.

Hot on the heels of last year’s I Cut My Finger (Anvil Press) is another book of poetry by Stuart Ross, Dead Cars at Managua (DC Books). Ross made a name for himself as part of Toronto’s small press poetry scene in the 1970s. His poetry is very much indebted to the New York School of poetry (Ashbery, Berrigan, Padgett, et al). A title from one of his recent poems aptly summarizes his style: “Because one thing bumped into another”—it’s the poetic equivalent of bumper-cars: It may, at first, seem meaningless chaos but afterwards the experience of the linguistic whiplash sticks with you.

Artvoice: Stuart, you’re often considered one of Canada’s foremost surrealists. What does it mean to be a surrealist today?

Stuart Ross: Surrealism is a tricky one these days, because there’s been an attempt by advertising, TV, and music video to commodify it, to use it as a badge of hip. I don’t set out to be a surrealist, or to push a surrealist agenda with my poetry: It’s just what often happens when I write. At the risk of stating the painfully obvious, the real world has caught up with surrealism: I mean, this is a world where a half-wit frat boy can be the most powerful man on earth.