Low Down Articles
Artist Profiles - Charles Gregory
Article 25 of 73
From the book Artists of the Gatineau Hill by Catherine Joyce. This article first appeared in the "Artist Profiles" column in the September 7, 2005 issue of the The Low Down to Hull and Back News.
Reprinted with permission. Search complete list of Low Down Articles.
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Poetry as Magic
Moments of inspiration come. But in the face of pragmatic reality, when the world bears down, Charles Gregory believes we must resort to some creative purpose. For him it is poetry. "We need magic in order to survive. Poetry is the natural way of finding magic in the mundane, relief from what is banal in everyday life."
He is in good company. The romantics believed Imagination was Reality. Today the question is: can we make ourselves believe in such magic?
"In a sense poetry has taken the place of religion - its a way of worshipping the world, of making it holy, sacred, of finding meaning in what is. But so few people read poetry anymore. A century ago fewer poets wrote but their readership was vast. Now it seems everyone is writing but no one is reading, no one is listening - it has become a world of poet-readers, rather than public readers. We are the poorer for it."
For all that Charles Gregory is a cheerful man. "People wonder why I am always happy. It is a choice I make. Why be grumpy? The constant search for depth in life can throw you off kilter but writing poetry is the greatest freedom."
Such freedom began early. Born in Ottawa in 1968, Charles grew up in a family where open discussion enlivened the dinner table. "Everything was up for exploration. My parents read a lot - newspapers, books, poetry - the exchange of ideas defined our relationship."
Free to leave home at 16, he hitchhiked out west, then travelled back and forth across the country, subsequently studying Art History at the University of PEI and Creative Writing at Concordia. Talk and travel enriched him. Writing poetry became a way of looking at the world, of cutting through moral preconceptions.
"People dissociate. Sanity demands that on some level we dissociate. But poetry brings that grey area, that shadowland on the fringes of our awareness back into focus. It helps us to see how we affect one another. Poetry offers to save such moments. It says 'these things happened' - it registers ripples we might prefer to ignore or forget."
Twice, in 2000 and 2002, while living in PEI with his young family, Charles won the prestigious Milton Acorn Literary Award for Poetry. Since moving to Chelsea he rises early to find time for his poetry before work.
"We live such comfortable lives, it's often easier to watch TV and have fun with the kids. Poetry is different when you're young. Every young person is a revolutionary writing about life 'on the edge' - love, death, betrayal, epiphanies of truth, beauty, the ugliness that lies beneath - as if such things never happened before in the history of the world.
"It's harder when you're older to keep that intensity - to believe in the magic and to make it happen. You have to work at it. You have to trade in that youthful, dangerous 'edge' for wisdom - to find that place where you can still honour the mysteries, the possibilities, and give them poetic form."