The prophetic voice in contemporary Canadian ecological poetry

What is it about?

Gerard Manley Hopkins in “God’s Grandeur” (1877) considered the negative effects of humankind on God’s good creation, and concluded that “nature is never spent: / There lives the dearest freshness deep down things”— not because nature has inherent power, but because “the Holy Ghost over the bent / World broods. . .” In our own recently-named Age of the Anthropocene, in which the overwhelming effects of human intervention into the created order are seen as well-nigh irreversible, it can be difficult to maintain Hopkins’ calm assurance. In this paper I consider three poems by contemporary Canadian poets of differing spiritual persuasions for whom poetry provides a prophetic voice in which to propose alternative modes of ecological being.

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Why is it important?

P. K. Page in “Planet Earth” sees the work of human hands as vital for the health of the planet, but only when combined with the care of archangels and art as an act of love. Don McKay in “Twinflower” enacts the “poetic attention” that he calls “a species of longing which is without the desire to possess,” and celebrates in botanical whimsy “the wilderness of the other.” John Terpstra in “Flames of Affection, Tongues of Flame” shows how paying attention even to rocky outcrops in broken urban nature can be a lifegiving experience that challenges the status quo and reminds us of the transcendent.

Perspectives