Poetry Reading - Jeremy Dodds

I grabbed myself a cup of tea and joined a crowd of mostly English professors and students, as well as guests from the community. This is one thing that I love about Redeemer University; you have the opportunity to hear all sorts of poets come read.

Jeremy Dodds is probably the youngest poet I have heard at Redeemer, at 35 with one collection of poems (Crabwise to the Hounds[2008]), he has already won the 2006 Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award, the 2007 CBC Literary Award in Poetry, and the Trillium Book award for Poetry. I think that’s awesome! However this isn’t all there is to Jeremy Dodds, after all, he grew up in Orono Ontario, he studied in Iceland, knows their language, and he’s and archaeologist.

Dodds’ first poem of the night, Canada, reminded me of all those stereotypes that people make about Canada, with the beaver and everything. My favourite line in this poem that was inspired by Ginsberg’s America, was “Canada, I feel like another weather.” That actually made me chuckle. Sometimes it seems like Canada itself can’t decide what weather to be some days.

There were a couple of other great lines that came out during his reading that brought a chuckle from the crowd. One being “I’m worried about people who was their cars at night” Who does that anyway? Now the line that really made me laugh was from his poem Epileptic Acupuncture, “The Lake’s so clear you can see yourself to the door.” Seriously, people who know me, know the kind of jokes and lines I’d come up with. That one comes pretty close but obviously Dodds thought of it first.

After some time of reading, Dodds answered some questions from the crowd. I think there is an unspoken rule that the first thing you have to ask a poet is what inspired them. For Dodds his inspiration comes from anywhere and everywhere. “I steal mostly” he told us with a chuckle “Then I rewrite it to make it my own.” I guess that makes sense.

Someone from the crowd then asked Dadds about his writing process, I was a little thrown off at the passion he showed for editing his work. I never know there was so much that had to go into it. I don’t think I would have ever thought of recording myself reading a poem and then listening to it to see if there were flaws in the rhythm and the flow. It inspired me. I think I may actually try it.

If you are interested in reading more about Jeremy Dodds, there will be a more indepth interview between myself and Jeremy Dodds in Redeemer’s next edition of the Crown.

Dollarama Sunglasses

There is an interesting side effect that comes with being a university student: not only do you learn new things, but you learn new ways to think.

Every discipline that you specialize in shapes how you view the world. For example, I’m in microeconomics this semester – learning about demand and supply, efficiency, productivity, and stuff like that – and now I can’t view anything without putting on the glasses of economics and viewing the world through these lenses. We watched a youtube clip of “How it’s Made” in class and not only saw how a skateboard was made, but also how productive the assembly line was by combining technology with human labour. So maybe economics isn’t your thing, but I know my friends who are psychology majors analyse every situation through a psych-lens. Or another friend of mine who is a bio major told me that he couldn’t watch Avator without his mind racing through all the biology in it, while I saw it with a business mindset. It’s just sooo cool to be able to look at the world in a different light.

And the great thing about Redeemer is that it’s a liberal arts school, so we have the opportunity to try on different lenses from different disciplines of the core courses – biology, history, theatre, physical education, etc. – to get a taste of what the world is like when we see it through that mindset. University really opens your eyes up to the world around you.

But Redeemer takes it one step further. If you take just one class at Redeemer, you’ll hear this one buzzword: “worldview.” It’s kind of like those big goofy Dollarama sunglasses that you can put on where the lenses are bigger than your face. These glasses are so great because you can put them on overtop of any corrective-lens glasses that you may already wear and still look stylin’! But in all seriousness, Redeemer gives you a perspective of the world like these Dollarama sunglasses; Redeemer shows every class through the lens of faith. Christianity is our worldview because God made us and all of creation and everywhere we look – whether it’s business class, science, art, whatever discipline you’re studying – we can see God. It’s so great because we all get to wear these big Christian worldview glasses and be unified in the sense that we all see God everywhere, even though we also look through our respective discipline lenses. God is the one we worship and learn about, and the one you unites us all together in our communal effort to develop the world to enable others to honour Him.

God is just so cool! And because I came here, and because of how my classes are taught through this worldview, I can now see the world from this perspective. Everywhere I look on campus I can see God at work. It is in obvious things like Wednesday Chapel where we can all come together to get our Dollarstore glasses polished and worship God as a community of believers. Or in coffee house where we showcase our God-given talents and exercise our ability to make others laugh. Or even in more hidden ways, like Student Senate (as general senator position elections were held this week) where we work as one body with the like-mind of serving the student body through the love that God gives us to love our neighbour. God is everywhere; we just need to open our eyes to see it.