John Steffler
Biography
John Steffler - Photo Courtesy of Canadian Poetry Online
From 2006 to 2008, John Steffler served as the Poet Laureate of Canada. Though he was born and educated in Ontario, Steffler spent many years in Corner Brook, NL, as a professor of English at Wilfred Grenfell College.
He has published six books of poetry, the most recent being 2010’s Lookout (McClelland & Stewart), which was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2011. His first novel, The Afterlife of George Cartwright (McClelland & Stewart, 1993) won both the Thomas Raddall Award and the Smithbooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and was also shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award and the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book. He has also published a children’s book, The Flights of Magic (Press Porcepic, 1987).
He has published six books of poetry, the most recent being 2010’s Lookout (McClelland & Stewart), which was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2011. His first novel, The Afterlife of George Cartwright (McClelland & Stewart, 1993) won both the Thomas Raddall Award and the Smithbooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and was also shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award and the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book. He has also published a children’s book, The Flights of Magic (Press Porcepic, 1987).
Additional Information:
Author's Wikipedia page
Interview
The Wreckage of Play
Lookout
“That Night we were Ravenous”
Author's Wikipedia page
Interview
The Wreckage of Play
Lookout
“That Night we were Ravenous”
If your wharf is washed away
it will come to Cedar Cove -
Wild Cove on the maps or
Capelin Cove. If your boat
goes down it will sail to Cedar
Cove piece by piece.
And your uncle, should he not come back
from his walk on Cape St. George,
will be found grinning among
the glitter of barkless roots
laths struts stays
stringers and frayed rope
in Cedar Cove, where no
cedars have ever grown,
but that's what the local people
call it. The water horizon
topples straight down
on Cedar Cove over
and over, box cars
falling, loads of TNT.
And the wind will not let you speak
in Cedar Cove, which could
be called Deaf Cove
or Lobotomy Cove, will not
let you think or stand straight;
the shrunk trees writhe
and have the wrong kinds
of leaves, but their roots spread
wide in Cedar Cove,
whose gravel is soft compared
to its air. We have come to Cedar
Cove overland, my love
and I, having been lost
at sea in another way.
All day we scatter
ourselves through the noise
and whiteness, learning the thousand
ways things can be taken
apart and reassigned –
the boot sole impaled on the shattered
trunk, the rust flakes,
the bone flakes encrusting a bracelet
of kelp - losing our pictures
of home, stick by stick.
After Cedar Cove,
what will be left of us?
Published in That Night We Were Ravenous (McClelland & Stewart, 1998).
Used with permission of the author and publisher.
it will come to Cedar Cove -
Wild Cove on the maps or
Capelin Cove. If your boat
goes down it will sail to Cedar
Cove piece by piece.
And your uncle, should he not come back
from his walk on Cape St. George,
will be found grinning among
the glitter of barkless roots
laths struts stays
stringers and frayed rope
in Cedar Cove, where no
cedars have ever grown,
but that's what the local people
call it. The water horizon
topples straight down
on Cedar Cove over
and over, box cars
falling, loads of TNT.
And the wind will not let you speak
in Cedar Cove, which could
be called Deaf Cove
or Lobotomy Cove, will not
let you think or stand straight;
the shrunk trees writhe
and have the wrong kinds
of leaves, but their roots spread
wide in Cedar Cove,
whose gravel is soft compared
to its air. We have come to Cedar
Cove overland, my love
and I, having been lost
at sea in another way.
All day we scatter
ourselves through the noise
and whiteness, learning the thousand
ways things can be taken
apart and reassigned –
the boot sole impaled on the shattered
trunk, the rust flakes,
the bone flakes encrusting a bracelet
of kelp - losing our pictures
of home, stick by stick.
After Cedar Cove,
what will be left of us?
Published in That Night We Were Ravenous (McClelland & Stewart, 1998).
Used with permission of the author and publisher.
Critical Analysis: Nature and Predictability in John Steffler's "Cedar Cove"
Patrick O’Reilly (for ENGL 3103: Advanced Poetry Workshop)
John Steffler's poem “Cedar Cove” begins as a catalogue piece, enumerating the flotsam which finds its way in to the titular cove. It is a gulch where roots, wharves, boats, and even lost uncles have been brought on the tide. Their arrival in Cedar Cove is inevitable. This opening description imagines nature to be a predictable, even reliable, force. Steffler's establishment of Cedar Cove as a centre of predictability places it in opposition to the humans referred to in the text, establishing a binary between man and nature, the mercurial and the dependable.
This human unpredictability first manifests itself in the name given to Cedar Cove. There is nothing to explain why Cedar Cove is so called. The speaker notes that it is a place “where no/ cedars have ever grown”(13-14), and in fact the locals have continued to call it that despite the likelier “Capelin Cove” or the seemingly more apt “Wild Cove” appearing on maps (3-4). Further, he says “And the wind will not let you speak/ in Cedar Cove, which could/ be called Deaf Cove/ or Lobotomy Cove” (21-24). This arbitrary attitude towards naming suggests a lack of reason or rationality in people, as opposed to the consistency of nature.
In his essay “How to be here?,” Tim Lilburn describes the arbitrariness of language as an important example of the human inability to comprehend nature. Lilburn writes “the world is its names plus their cancellations, what we call it and the undermining of our identifications by an ungraspable residue in objects” (5). The speaker of “Cedar Cove” seems to share Lilburn's outlook. Much as Lilburn suggests that to truly experience and understand nature, one must “retrieve all names, assertions of similarity, . . . wait in the hole; wait along deer paths; keep your eyes open” (20-21), Steffler's narrator and his love have come to Cedar Cove to:
scatter
ourselves through the noise
and whiteness, learning the thousand
ways things can be taken
apart and reassigned-” (35-39).
But while sharing a method of attempting to grasp nature, and supporting Steffler's assertion that recognizing the arbitrariness of language is crucial to accepting unpredictability, there is a fundamental disagreement between Lilburn's essay and the poem. For Lilburn, being forced to use human language necessitates the assignment of human qualities to nature. This is inadequate because of there is a perceived intellectual gap between humans and nature – nature is unable to engage in definitive verbal communication, to affirm the names assigned to it. This inability places nature in a position of unknowable other (4), and so on the unpredictable side of the binary Steffler establishes in “Cedar Cove.”
But to the speaker of “Cedar Cove,” nature is a dependable force, always going to the same places, always doing what is expected. It is the humans who are unpredictable. Their refuse is of a wide variety – boots and rope and boats and bodies – but it will always wash up at Cedar Cove. Even when human unpredictability can be attributed to forces of nature, the actions of humans themselves are seen as still more unpredictable and irrational, as in the case of the uncle who did not return from his walk, but was found “grinning among/ the glitter of barkless roots” (9-10). He exhibits an unnerving sense of joy in the wake of disaster. The unforeseeable, the unpredictability of the world around us, is part of the human experience; it is a force beyond one's control, and it is often met with an equally unexpected and illogical reaction. As Lilburn has placed nature in the role of unpredictable other, so Steffler has done for humanity.
Works Cited (for analysis):
Lilburn, Tim. “How To Be Here?” Living in the World as if it were Home: Essays. Ontario: Cormorant Books, 1999.
Steffler, John. “Cedar Cove.” That Night We Were Ravenous. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1998. 7-8.
John Steffler's poem “Cedar Cove” begins as a catalogue piece, enumerating the flotsam which finds its way in to the titular cove. It is a gulch where roots, wharves, boats, and even lost uncles have been brought on the tide. Their arrival in Cedar Cove is inevitable. This opening description imagines nature to be a predictable, even reliable, force. Steffler's establishment of Cedar Cove as a centre of predictability places it in opposition to the humans referred to in the text, establishing a binary between man and nature, the mercurial and the dependable.
This human unpredictability first manifests itself in the name given to Cedar Cove. There is nothing to explain why Cedar Cove is so called. The speaker notes that it is a place “where no/ cedars have ever grown”(13-14), and in fact the locals have continued to call it that despite the likelier “Capelin Cove” or the seemingly more apt “Wild Cove” appearing on maps (3-4). Further, he says “And the wind will not let you speak/ in Cedar Cove, which could/ be called Deaf Cove/ or Lobotomy Cove” (21-24). This arbitrary attitude towards naming suggests a lack of reason or rationality in people, as opposed to the consistency of nature.
In his essay “How to be here?,” Tim Lilburn describes the arbitrariness of language as an important example of the human inability to comprehend nature. Lilburn writes “the world is its names plus their cancellations, what we call it and the undermining of our identifications by an ungraspable residue in objects” (5). The speaker of “Cedar Cove” seems to share Lilburn's outlook. Much as Lilburn suggests that to truly experience and understand nature, one must “retrieve all names, assertions of similarity, . . . wait in the hole; wait along deer paths; keep your eyes open” (20-21), Steffler's narrator and his love have come to Cedar Cove to:
scatter
ourselves through the noise
and whiteness, learning the thousand
ways things can be taken
apart and reassigned-” (35-39).
But while sharing a method of attempting to grasp nature, and supporting Steffler's assertion that recognizing the arbitrariness of language is crucial to accepting unpredictability, there is a fundamental disagreement between Lilburn's essay and the poem. For Lilburn, being forced to use human language necessitates the assignment of human qualities to nature. This is inadequate because of there is a perceived intellectual gap between humans and nature – nature is unable to engage in definitive verbal communication, to affirm the names assigned to it. This inability places nature in a position of unknowable other (4), and so on the unpredictable side of the binary Steffler establishes in “Cedar Cove.”
But to the speaker of “Cedar Cove,” nature is a dependable force, always going to the same places, always doing what is expected. It is the humans who are unpredictable. Their refuse is of a wide variety – boots and rope and boats and bodies – but it will always wash up at Cedar Cove. Even when human unpredictability can be attributed to forces of nature, the actions of humans themselves are seen as still more unpredictable and irrational, as in the case of the uncle who did not return from his walk, but was found “grinning among/ the glitter of barkless roots” (9-10). He exhibits an unnerving sense of joy in the wake of disaster. The unforeseeable, the unpredictability of the world around us, is part of the human experience; it is a force beyond one's control, and it is often met with an equally unexpected and illogical reaction. As Lilburn has placed nature in the role of unpredictable other, so Steffler has done for humanity.
Works Cited (for analysis):
Lilburn, Tim. “How To Be Here?” Living in the World as if it were Home: Essays. Ontario: Cormorant Books, 1999.
Steffler, John. “Cedar Cove.” That Night We Were Ravenous. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1998. 7-8.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Steffler, John. The Afterlife of George Cartwright. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992.
---. An Explanation of Yellow. Ottawa: Borealis Press, 1981.
---. And Yet. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2020.
---. “Bruckner KO’d by Uncle Al.” Essays on Canadian Writing 49 (1993): 42-43. WorldCat.
---. “Cedar Cove.”Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada. Ed. Anne Compton, et. al. Fredericton: Gooselane Editions, 2002. 266-267.
---. "Connections." The Antigonish Review 197/198 (Spring/Summer 2019): 117.
---. "Crossings." Fiddlehead. (2016): 107.
---. "Elmira." Event. 44.3 (2016): 44.
---. "Everything’s on the Move." Fiddlehead. (2016): 108.
---. "Exchange." Fiddlehead. (2016): 37.
---. Flights of Magic. Victoria: Press Porcepic, 1987.
---. Forty-One Pages: On Poetry, Language, and Wilderness. Regina: University of Regina Press, 2019.
---. “From The Grey Islands: “They all save one last squirt.” Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada. Ed. Anne Compton, et. al. Fredericton: Goose Lane, 2002. 265.
---. German Mills: A Novel Pertaining to the Life and Times of William Berczy. Kentville: Gaspereau Press, 2015.
---. The Grey Islands. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1985.
---. Helix: new and selected poems. Montreal: Signal Editions, 2002.
---. "I Haven’t Looked at These in Years." Malahat Review. (2015): 59.
---. “Language as Matter.” Poetry and Knowing: Speculative Essays & Interviews. Ed. Tim Lilburn. Kingston: Quarry Press, 1995.
---. "Limits." Fiddlehead. (2016): 109.
---. Lookout. Plattsburgh: McClelland and Stewart, 2010.
---. "My Father Taught Himself Arc Welding." The Antigonish Review 197/198 (Spring/Summer 2019): 116.
---. "New Moon." Fiddlehead. (2016): 106.
---. "The New Sled." Ed. Sabine Campbell. Home for Christmas: Stories from the Maritimes and Newfoundland. Fredericton: Gooselane Editions, 1999.
---. "Old Forest." Malahat Review. (2015): 58.
---. "Seven. There is no one to blame." Ed. Hugh MacDonald and Brent MacLaine.Landmarks: An Anthology of New Atlantic Canadian Poetry of the Land. Charlottetown: Acorn Press, 2001.
---. "Silphium." Fiddlehead. (2016): 38.
---. That Night We Were Ravenous. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1998.
---. “That Night We Were Ravenous.” Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada. Ed. Anne Compton, et. al. Fredericton: Gooselane Editions, 2002. 267-269.
---. "Three Poems." The Fiddlehead 282 (Winter 2020): 80-83.
---. "Three Poems." The New Quarterly, tnq.ca.
--- . “The Three-Walled House: A Reading of Poems with Some Thoughts on Language and Literature.” Forest Centre Lecture Theatre, Room 2014, Sir Wilfred Grenfell College. 13 Mar 2008.
---. "To Swim, to Break the Day’s Hold." Event. 44.3 (2016): 45.
---. "Trees at Saint-Rémy." Event. 44.3 (2016): 46.
--- . “The Uses of Poetry.” Department of English Language and Literature, Pratt Lecture. Inco Innovation Centre, Room IIC-2001, Memorial University. 15 Mar 2008.
---. "Watching." Event. 44.3 (2016): 43.
---. The Wreckage of Play. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988.
Secondary Sources
Armstrong, Tammy Lynn. "Atlantic Canada's Poetic Menagerie: Animal Presence in the Poetry of John Thompson, Don Domanski, John Steffler, and Harry Thurston." [Doctoral Dissertation, University of New Brunswick]. 2014. WorldCat.
Beardsworth, Adam. "Natural's Not In It: Postcolonial Wilderness in Steffler's The Grey Islands." Newfoundland and Labrador Studies 25.1 (2010): 91-114. Literature Online.
---. "'This page faintly stained with / green': Compost Aesthetics in John Steffler's That Night We Were Ravenous." Studies in Canadian Literature 39.1 (2014): 238-256.
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Daurelle, Florence. “Terre-Neuve: Terre-renouvelée a ré-explorer, dans The Shipping News(1993) d’E. Annie Prolux, et The Afterlife of George Cartwright (1992) de John Steffler.”Canadian Studies: Revue Interdisciplinaire des Etudes Canadiennes en France 46 (1999): 131-141. WorldCat.
“Excerpt from Letter of Nomination for John Steffler." The Parliamentary Poet Laureate. Parliament of Canada, April 2011.
Fowler, Adrian, and Al Pittman. 31 Newfoundland Poets. St. John’s: Breakwater Books, 1979.
Gladwin, Derek. "The Literary Cartographic Impulse: Imagined Island Topographies in Ireland and Newfoundland." The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies. 38 (2014): 158-183.
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Krotz, Sarah Wylie. "DisPossesion: Haunting in Canadian Fiction." English Studies in Canada 38.2 (2012): 207-210. Literature Online,
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---. "The Sins of Settlement: Confession and the Postcolonial Cartwright."Philament 13 (2008): 35-56. Literature Online.
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McConnell, Kathleen. “Textile Tropes in The Afterlife of George Cartwright.” Canadian Literature 149 (1996): 91-109. MLAIB.
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Renger, Nicola. “Mapping and Historiography in Contemporary Canadian Literature in English.” Europaische Hochschulschriften. New York: Frankfurt am Main, 2005.
---. “’Tampering with the Truth’: John Steffler’s The Afterlife of George Cartwright in Dialogue with History.” Studies in Canadian Literature 27.1 (2002): 69-87. MLAIB.
Stacey, Robert David. “Ghost of a Chance: John Steffler’s The Afterlife of George Cartwrightand the Meaning of History.” University of Toronto Quarterly 75.2 (2006): 718-726.WorldCat.
Strong, Joan. "Approaches of White Regret: John Steffler's The Afterlife of George Cartwright and Harold Hoorwood's White Eskimo." Echoing Silence: Essays on Arctic Narrative, edited by John Moss, Ottawa: ON, U of Ottawa Press, 1997, pp. 113-121. MLA International Bibliography.
Sugars, Cynthia. “The Impossible Afterlife of George Cartwright: Settler Melancholy and Postcolonial Desire.” University of Toronto Quarterly 75.2 (2006): 693-717. WorldCat.
Tremblay, Tony. “Piracy, Penance, and other Penal Codes: A Morphology of Postcolonial Revision in Three Recent Texts by Rudy Wiebe, John Steffler, and Joan Clark.” English Studies in Canada 23.2 (1997): 159-72. WorldCat.
Turner, Christina. "Atlantic Cosmopolitanism in John Steffler's the Afterlife of George Cartwright." Canadian Literature. (2015): 55.
