Creative Calgary Congress — Exploring ways that the arts and artists can play a leadership role in making Calgary a more curious, compassionate and creative place for all citizens.
Micheline Maylor
Calgary Poet Laureate 2016 – 2018
A poetic response…
Calgary’s Poet Laureate and a certified poetry fanatic, Micheline Maylor teaches creative writing, poetry, fiction, non-fiction and composition at Mount Royal University where she won the Teaching Excellence Award in 2015. Her newest collection, Little Wildheart, was short-listed for the Robert Kroetsch award for experimental poetry and deals with the question: What does it mean to be human?
Micheline was asked to respond to what she heard in the morning sessions. This is the poem she created as she listened.
What will the City Bring for you, Paulo Coelho?
“If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; it’s lethal.”
Suppose, the backstage is a hush, a tremble of tutus on point,
the house lights dim, the dancers wait in a gaggle.
Outside the whole world blurs grey, this way until April,
and maybe not the cruelest month. No colour save for Nenshi’s shoelaces,
and a burst of pink and sparkle inside a dark theatre.
There’s a rhythm on 12th Avenue, a pulse of cars driving downtown
in a daily pump. A driver in a Honda watches, through the window,
a modern dancer at DJD, and time stills. Café Blanca leaves the door
open for poets who shout out experience, and respect for the elders,
and wail about love, and the river, and birds, about longing and pollution and oil.
An Elder gives a blessing. And somewhere a symphony bursts
into a clothes line in Lakeview, a respite, from the stains from the food trucks, and homework, the political news full of so much angst. In Springbank, a man paints through the pain of cancer, that deep listening of healing. And such is the power
in creation, connection. On the CTrain, a violin sounds out the sound of the Bass Bus
convinces a man, yes, he can, yes, he can.
Peaceful protesters are burning, and freezing, and bleeding, and hungry.
But, John Lennon asks us to Imagine. And we do. We do,
we imagine in the theatre, and at the reading, and at the lecture,
and in the studio, and on the stage, we imagine on the canvas, and in the darkroom,
and we imagine out of ourselves, out of our own routines, out of our own discomforts,
out of our smallness in the world, into the place we become the best
of ourselves, into meaning and we become transcendent and beautiful,
and new, and alive.
Micheline Maylor
Micheline Maylor’s newest collection is titled Little Wildheart and was recently shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch award for experimental poetry (slated for publication in spring of 2017), and deals with the question: What is it to be human in our environment? Her second collection Whirr and Click (2013) was placed on the Pat Lowther Memorial Award shortlist.
She teaches creative writing at Mount Royal University where she won the teaching excellence award in 2015.
She serves as guest editor at Frontenac Press’ renowned Quartet series for 2013–17. She serves as the past-president and co-founder of Freefall Literary Society and is the consulting editor of FreeFall literary magazine. Her latest works can be found in Partisan, The Literary Review of Canada, and Quill and Quire. Micheline is a member of the Alberta Magazine Publisher’s Association.
Micheline was appointed Calgary’s Poet Laureate on April 25, 2016, and was appointed as Author in Residence of the Calgary Public Library on April 26, 2016.
About the Creative Calgary Congress
Calgary Arts Development produced the first Arts Champions Congress in 2011 as a meeting place for people who make Calgary’s arts sector a vibrant and exciting place to work and our city a great place to live.
Renamed the Creative Calgary Congress in 2014, it returned on November 22, 2016 as a place to share ideas and explore ways that the arts and artists can play a leadership role in making Calgary a more curious, compassionate and creative place for all citizens.
