Classic poems

Archive | About Sandra Alland | About this series

Sandra Alland on 'Paysage' / 'Landscape'

Guillaume Apollinaire (August 26, 1880 – November 9, 1918) was a French poet, writer, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother.

Among the foremost poets of the early 20th century, he's credited with coining the word surrealism, and writing one of the earliest works described as surrealist, the play Les Mamelles de Tirésias. He was also influenced by the symbolists, and helped to define cubism.

Two years after being wounded in World War I, he died at 38 of the Spanish flu. This poem, 'Paysage', is from his posthumously published collection, Calligrammes.

I chose this poem primarily because of a lineage it evokes for me. Many people, if they have heard of concrete poetry at all, associate it with the Brazilian movement of the 1950s, or American hippies of the 1960s. (Concrete poetry, simply put, is poetry in which typography and layout add to the overall effect, or in fact create the overall effect.) But here's this guy, almost a hundred years ago, who was delving into visual poetry.

This kind of lineage is important for me, partially because in the 21st century we're so obsessed with the new and the original. But of course before Apollinaire were George Herbert in the 1600s, and the Greeks in the 2nd and 3rd centuries BCE. Humans have been using similar forms of expressing and exploring language since time immemorial. Sometimes it's in looking back that we discover effective ways to respond to, to invigorate, the now. And we are nothing without roots. Perhaps doubly so if you're an artist.

Also, despite its apparent simplicity, this poem moves me. Something about the hope expressed through the tree about to bear fruit that 'looks like you'. And its placement between the house that 'gives birth to stars' and the smoking cigarette (that for me evokes boredom, death, waiting). Waiting for meaning. Waiting for a love that will pull apart your body. Waiting for Something. This poem is a landscape of that surrealist obsession with the spaces between hope and despair. A landscape of the minefield of our subconscious – the birthplace of revolution.

About Sandra Alland

Sandra Alland is a Scottish-Canadian writer, multimedia artist, performer and activist. Her poems, plays, stories, articles, photographs and films have been published and presented across Canada, the US, Mexico, Bermuda, England, Scotland and Spain. Sandra has published two books of poetry: Proof of a Tongue (McGilligan, 2004) and Blissful Times (BookThug, 2007). Besides being known for text-based work, she also has a reputation for innovative multimedia and sound poetry collaborations and performances.

Sandra has read and performed at such places as The West Port Book Festival, Word Power Books, Street Level Gallery, The Hidden Cafe, GRV, Club Welto, Who's Your Dandy, The Golden Hour, Canon's Gait, The Ottawa International Writers' Festival, The Scream Festival, The Hillside Festival and Pride Toronto. In 2009 she will be touring the UK with Lost in Translation, a poetry performance featuring writers from all over this dirty planet. Keep your eyes open for an October 2008 preview through the Oxford Playhouse.

• Blissful Times
• Sandra Alland

Landscape

here is the house
where stars and divinites are born

this little tree about to drop fruit looks like you

a lit cigarette that smokes

lovers lying together you will separate my extremities

Guillaume Apollinaire

Translation © Sandra Allan

Image: 'Paysage' / 'Landscape' by Appollonaire