Richard LeDue : part two

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

The three most influential poets for me would be Charles Bukowski, Al Purdy and Margaret Atwood. All three made me realize how you can really write about anything, whereas before I always thought a poem needed some measure of epicness to it. An example of this in my own writing would be my poem “The North is No Place For Love,” which was literally written from me watching a leafless tree sway outside my classroom window during a lunch break. It dives into the idea of the fragility of new love, but I don't think I could have written this poem without starting out with just the simple image of a naked tree.

Of the three, I've probably read Bukowski the most, but that's due to a lot of Atwood's and Purdy's older poetry books being out of print. Both Purdy and Atwood are giants in Canadian poetry, but they also changed the way I thought about being a Canadian poet. In school, we mostly focused on the “greats,” such as Shakespeare, the Romantics, the Victorians, and while they were immensely skilled writers, I find I relate more to contemporary subject matter. I actually beamed with pride when I discovered an old Purdy poem a couple of months ago called “Three Thousand.” It was written about the steel plant my father worked in in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. That poem made me realize the connection poetry can create, and how potent that is within any country. As well, Atwood's The Journals of Susanna Moodie is as valuable as any history textbook when trying to discuss Canadian identity, and showed me how one can write about the past without it sounding like the past.