poet Jim Larwill: youtube vids on Milton Acorn and poetry from the margins

I heard from old comrade Jim Larwill today (Canadian Liberation Movement - google it). Jim was a mainstay of the Purdy Country Poetry Fests I held for eight summers at my ZenRiver Gardens retreat. Great to hear from him and to know that he's staying very alive and active on the Canuck poetry scene with his online vids. Please check him out!   

Hey Chris,

How are things going these days?  Same old same old here.  Slowing down with age a bit.  Writing less but trying to do something with some of it.  I don't know if you remember the paper I gave on Acorn at Purdyfest but I have turned it into a video/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9oo1fJIWns

The beauty of the internet is that today a poet can be ignored by the entire world!!  I miss reading to a live audience sometimes.   Covid seems to have shut down most reading series and I am too tired in the evenings to drive into town and all the way back anyway.  Videos are a hell of a lot more work that reading to a live audience...  and a live audience doesn't have an algorithm between the stage and the seats.

Anyway I hope you are well.

Jim

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Jim Larwill is an Omnigothic Neofuturist. 

You can read his poetry and essays at: http://web.ncf.ca/wolf

You can read "i Wolf" the Carnivoreque literary theory of "human" origin at: http://web.ncf.ca/eu386/iWolf

You can watch his You-tube videos at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXNKeq1xZcCY4QJ2_vI6oxg

some of Jim Larwill's memories of poet and CLM comrade Rob Macleod from our email

exchanges today:

The other day I happened to come across an obituary for Rob Macleod who it seems passed a few years ago.  Rob like all of us had his quirks, but he actually was such a really good guy.  Rob over the years was good at keeping in touch with me (phone to pass on bad jokes and puns on a regular basis) and I kind of eventually noticed I hadn't heard from him in a while.  When he became a father I did hear less because he was busy.  He absolutely adored his daughter.  I was quite sad to hear of his death.

So many memories come to mind.  There is is picture of me standing in the middle of the centennial flame of Parliament Hill where I am lighting a Time magazine to start a bonfire of American magazines which were being dumped into Canada.  A successful demonstration that helped bring in protection for Canadian Mags.  1974?  In the background of the picture Rob is holding the CLM banner with a Mountie standing beside him.  Of all of us I would say Rob was probably the closest to Acorn.  He took a trip to PEI with Acorn where Acorn lost his People's Poetry medal on a beach lamenting that eventually some American with a metal detector would find it some day.  Rob said he was working on a book on Acorn.  Not sure what happened with that.  It is maybe important we try to keep out version of history alive for a little while.  Maybe I should do a vid of my Acorn memories?

Jim and Rob on Parliament Hill

photo Jon Penner