What to make of it all? The life and poetry of John Newlove

"I do not draw up schemes for writing a poem. I wait until they, or at least the beginnings, come to me. I do not decide to write a poem."

Acclaimed poet John Newlove (1938-2003) emerged as a major literary voice in Canada at a time when poetry mattered. In the 1960s and 70s, poets sold more books, attracted more readers, and rode a wave of notoriety as they gave voice to a new and self-conscious nationalism. Newlove, who had abandoned the rural Saskatchewan of his childhood for the beatnik heyday of Vancouver, spent years weaving in and out of literary communities across Canada. He was among the most acclaimed and most notorious of his generation-known almost as much for his wild drinking as for his terse, lyrical writing.

Poignant interviews with Newlove in his last years are punctuated with commentary from George Bowering, Patrick Lane, Joe Rosenblatt, John Metcalf and the many poets and friends who knew the public persona and the private man. All consider him to be among the best of North American poets; all saw signs of his descent into alcoholism. His wife and children discuss his battle to overcome addiction and the depression that plagued him throughout his life.

Plain spoken and carefully crafted, his poetry mixed an obsession with the history and identity of the prairies alongside a bleak personal struggle for understanding. His spare and immaculate work is the constant backdrop to this complex portrait of a troubled artist. 48 minutes. 2006

Director and producer Robert McTavish also edited A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove (Chaudiere Books, 2007).

REVIEWS

Because of Newlove’s actual participation in the film, there can never be a better evocation of his life and work than this remarkable documentary record. This is all the more true because of McTavish’s profoundly simple, unpretentious and relatively unvarnished presentation of the life, the poetry and the man. - Jamie Reid, Pacific Rim Review of Books 8 (Spring 2008).