John Barton Quotes

• You can never step into the same book twice, because you are different each time you read it.

  John Barton

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• No poem is easily grasped; so why should any reader expect fast results?

  John Barton

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• Sometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems.

  John Barton

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• Writing can sometimes be exploitative. I like to take a few steps of remove in order to respect the privacy of the subject. If readers make the link, they have engaged with the poem.

  John Barton

• Who is the ideal reader? God only knows.

  John Barton

• We are comfortable with the fact that we cannot know personally what happened in the world before we were born, yet we are uncomfortable with the notion that we will stop engaging with time at some point in the future.

  John Barton

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  To me many short poems read and write like beginnings that simply whet my appetite; I want to get over that.

   

  John Barton

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  The reader’s challenge is to replicate the experiment by reading the poem and to draw their own conclusions.

   

  John Barton

• The point of an experiment is not to arrive at a predetermined end point, to prove or disprove anything, but to deliver a poem that reveals much about the process taken.

  John Barton

• The poet must decide not to impose his feelings in order to write without sentimentality.

  John Barton

• The experiment of the poem is mostly intuitive. I write the first draft, pulling in the various elements that interest me, in the hope that their being combined will lead to some kind of insight.

  John Barton

• The community of poets I belong to is not as close as it used to be, if only for the fact that our lives have become busier: jobs, children, and the like.

  John Barton

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  Some readers allow their prejudices to blind them. A good reader knows how to disregard inappropriate responses.

   

  John Barton

• Reading should be a repeat performance.

  John Barton

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  Poets have to be sensitive to their audience, but it does not mean that they censor themselves. I realise my audience is diverse. Some will read with empathy and curiosity while others will take offense.

   

  John Barton

• Poets can’t resist the dramatic pull of their lives and so inevitably write autobiographical verse.

  John Barton

• Poetry is but another form of inquiry into the nature of phenomena, using with its own unique procedures and tools.

  John Barton

• My obsession with time informs my poetry so completely it is hard for me to summarize it. We want time to pass, for new things to happen to us, we want to hold on to certain moments, we don’t want our lives to end.

  John Barton

• Most victims of my autobiographical verse are either far too polite, remarkably understanding unaware that I have written poems about them.

  John Barton

• In the past, poetry came in the form of spells and chants used to effect change.

  John Barton

John Barton (31)

Birth:	1957
Nationality:	Canadian
Profession:	Poet

About

John Barton was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He is a Canadian poet. He studied at the University of Alberta, University of Calgary, University of Quebec, Victoria University, and Columbia University in New York. In 1986, he graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a Master of Library and Information Science. Since 1980 his poems have appeared in seventy-five magazines and thirty anthologies in North America, the United Kingdom, India, and Australia. He was co-editor of Arc Poetry Magazine from 1990 to 2003. He has written several poems include: A Poor Photographer, West of Darkness (Archibald Lampman Award), Notes Toward a Family Tree (Ottawa Book Award), Designs from the Interior (Archibald Lampman Award), Sweet Ellipsis (Archibald Lampman Award), Hypothesis, For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin, and Polari.

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Today's Anniversary - 22nd December

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Deaths

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