The power of words - hearing them even more than speaking them - has been the guiding life force for Chuck Fraser.
The longtime social worker has won lifetime achievement awards provincially and nationally, including the Bridget Moran Award named for the late icon of the region who mentored Fraser both as a fellow social worker but also as a writer.
Now Fraser's work as a poet is finding new fingers to touch. He is published in the latest edition of Descant Magazine, the revered quarterly journal of Canadian literature. Fraser's poem Paperarchy is in the summer edition now on newsstands.
"It's a poem about poetry as a form of communication, and about open expression," said Fraser. "I was in the airport when the idea came to me, as I watched people going through security, having their possessions checked, setting off security alarms, and that made me think about the books of poetry I had along with me and how that could set off security alarms in a lot of ways. If there's anything that resists conventional thoughts and pushes back against the forces against us in society, it's poetry. The poets I was reading have set off those alarms before. It made me think of the poet as terrorist to those trying to impose control and a singular version of order on us."
He named Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Leonard Cohen, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac as examples of producers of resistance literature, the breakers of mental moulds, and in some ways made to suffer for it. Ginsberg was put on trial in 1957, accused of breaking federal obscenity laws for his poem Howl. When he won the trial, the case redefined freedom of speech and expression in the United States.
"So imagine a poetry bomb going off," said Fraser. "Imagine how the poem as a literary form can contain thoughts that you lob into crowds, and when they go off, all the shards fly and strike people with new ideas and enlightenment."
Fraser's poetry bombs went off in other recent crowds as well. The latest edition of Anti-Oppressive Social Work Practice by Sage Publications uses two Fraser poems and an essay he penned about social justice.
He is particularly proud of eight of his poems being accepted for publication by the Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Many of the dealings of his social work career have been shouts and echoes of that atrocity, officially apologized for by the federal government and mass penalties paid to the thousands of victims. Again, Fraser used poetry as a vector for the emotions and information he gathered from those human interactions.
When the United Nations launched a probe into Canada's systemic violence against aboriginal women, manifested in forms like the Highway of Tears cases and Robert Pickton cases, Fraser was invited to make a submission as a social worker involved with some of the surviving victims. He made that presentation in the form of poetry, for publication in that upcoming final report.
"So poetry goes a lot of places. It's a valid and effective form of communication in more than just a purpose-built book," he said. "There aren't many other forms of communication that can do that. It's what the arts do."
Paperarchy
Airport security sirens ring loudly
A man carrying a black briefcase
Had beat poetry books, apparently,
Armed and ready to be read:
Ginsberg, Kerovac, Cohen,
Even one by Ferlenghetti,
That alone, if read,
Could liberate everyone in the security area
It is rumored that such poetry books
Are packed with words like:
Peace, Love, Hope, Adventure and critical thinking,
Anyone of those shards
Could liberate a person instantly
Undoing a lifetime of propaganda
From right-wing news media outlets
The poet was from Canada
He was also carrying
Homemade poems of liberation
The lone wolf poet said:
"If given the chance,
He would have read them on the plane."
There seems to be a rash of these dissidents
Another poet was found in broad daylight
With radical poetry books strapped to his chest
He was holding one which was connected to the others.
This could have caused a mass reading if ignited
One can only imagine the amount of
Liberation and freedom this could have caused
On a university campus
One poet said that in order for the bird of
Democracy to fly straight
The left-wing needs to flap
As well as the right-wing.
The sleeping public is asked to be vigil
If you see a poet, do not go near him/her
Please call the anti-poetry police
The masses are cautioned
To watch for women poets
They decode patriarchy
And can undo much of the lies
Around the issues of equality.
