Writing the Common: Poetry Commemorating the 250th Anniversary of the Halifax Common, 1763-2013
By Peggy Cameron (Foreword)
Kentville, NS: Gaspereau, 2013
93 pp. $22
In 1763, King George III dedicated several hundred acres on the first major plateau above the harbour slopes “for the use of the inhabitants of the Town of Halifax as Commons forever.” Thus was born those green acres—public, unfenced, and open to the elements—termed the Commons or Common. The latter word is the choice of Friends of Halifax Common, who have, with Gaspereau Press, issued a poetry anthology honouring this space.
Writing the Common: Poetry Commemorating the 250th Anniversary of the Halifax Common, 1763-2013, offers work by 31 poets (including yours truly), plus a nicely nuanced foreword by Peggy Cameron. Cameron highlights the struggle, in British history, between peasants and farmers, wishing to hold land in common for hunting, farming, and firewood harvest, versus the interests of aristocrats and capitalists wanting to fence off property as their own preserves or charge others fees for its use. This contest was transferred to Chebucto—or Halifax—as the British and ankee settlers arrived, stealing, of course, upon Mi’kmaq lands. While the creation of the Commons served the progress of the colony, it also meant the transformation of a “treed, marshy watershed,” a haunt of moose and ducks, into grassland, serving agricultural, military, and commercial needs.
Indeed, the Commons has been progressively shrunken, built upon, and paved over. The debate over the use of the old Queen Elizabeth High School lands and the successful development of the Common Roots Urban Farm (CRUF) is a continuance of tussles inherent to European feudalism. The Common(s) is a living museum of the local contest between grass and gold.
So, what of the anthology? The first question is, do we say “Common” or “Commons”? An 1898 map proclaims the site as “Halifax Common.” But the original land grant employs the plural. (Cf. “House of Commons”: This usage also favours the plural). Most of the poets write “Common,” but Bill Hanrahan, David Huebert, Jean MacKaracher-Watson, and Wanda Robson use “Commons.” (As a child who lived on Cunard and Maynard Streets, I remember playing on the “Commons.”)
Questions of nomenclature aside, the poets present a rich array of ideas, impressions, and memories. Former Halifax Poet Laureate Tanya Davis protests the fencing of the Commons for concerts, suggesting, “I don’t have a sheep, / but if I did I’d bring it / and together we’d balk at the business / and make rituals to gods who fled the premises.” Brigid Garvey turns in a bluesy, break-up poem that ends happily thanks to the sudden up-spurt of the fountain. Corinne Gilroy’s “Dark Grass” is so crammed with striking images—“gravel dirty heart” and “black grass hours ahead of dew,” for example—it borders on surrealism.
The prized poet Sue Goyette narrates a “Revolution of Rhododendrons,” that imagines a garden goddess with “a contraband of pollen,” who “spreads honey on the idea of public.” Hanrahan pictures the Commons as a Halifax Explosion field hospital and cemetery, while Huebert notes, pithily, how “Forests became lawns.” Joanne Jefferson’s fine poem is about a girl becoming a woman who loves women, navigating the Common all the while, as “the air bursts open as you cross Robie Street.” Maryann Martin has intimations of mortality, while Robin Metcalfe comments on a Public Gardens Boer War soldier statue that resembles “a nymph in drag.” Karen Reynard’s “Blessing Common Roots” conjures up the Zen Buddhist chanting style of Allen Ginsberg; it’s a fetching celebration of the CRUF. Matthew Walsh channels a Beat aesthetic in his slim lyric.
Writing the Common helps us understand the city as a network of grassroots-and-asphalt fault lines, that is, as a site of concrete struggles over where we may live. History teaches us that citizens must decry inappropriate expropriations. The establishment of the Common(s) was, is, a public victory, then, yes, while the bulldozing of Africville was a triumph of uncivil power.
*November 29th was the 5oth Anniversary of the loss of TCA Flight 831. Nova Scotian author Ern Dick’s book about the crash and the 118 victims, Voices from a Forgotten Tragedy, can be purchased via his website <www.tcaflight831.com>.
