Enough of politics for a bit. This post is about my mistress, art, and Matt Rader, of course.

One of my favourite poets is Matt Rader. Not only because I know him personally, but because of the evocativeness of his poetry (and his prose) and the stunning imagery with which it teases and challenges me.

I’ve been re-reading his book of poems called Desecrations which he published in 2016. It’s a delightful acid trip of a romp through the brush strokes of words and sentences that eventually come together in his poetic evocations.

I’m a painter. I put paint on canvas, paper or wood sometimes with the intent of producing an image that is recognizable, sometimes I stretch my own imagination, pushing the viewer to see the world in ways that challenge long held pathways of recognition and understanding. But, whatever my intent, I cannot control the viewer’s experience of my work.

In the same way, Rader’s intentions in writing his poems are essentially outside the reader’s remit. The reader must read Rader’s poetry just as he or she might gaze upon the images that are the realm of the visual arts.

I’ve attended a few readings by Matt Rader. They’ve always been a challenge for me. I’d think to myself: “What does he want to say with this poem? Where does his imagery come from? What do his lines, as evocative as they are, mean in relationship to one another?” I think that I might have provoked him occasionally to inwardly give his head a shake with my questions which, I admit, were coloured by decades of teaching sociology. I hadn’t realized that his poems, his words, his lines are akin to strokes of the brush on one of my paintings or pencil marks on one of my drawing. I myself have sometimes bristled when a viewer of my work questioned my use of colour or line or imagery. I often don’t know why I’m drawn to certain subject matter or approach and why I would use acrylic paint or watercolour rather than oil paints, or why, on occasion, printing appeals to me more than simply producing one off works.

Matt Rader paints poems with exquisite brush strokes, modelling and carving design, energy and landscape in much the same way I create a drawing or painting. There is no need to explain things to me anymore, Matt, not the juxtaposition of incongruity, not the process by which you carefully craft images, not the incredible research you undertake to bring historical moments, characters, places and events to a life they could never previously have known. You especially don’t have to explain to me the sources of your choices. I get it. At least I think I do.

Part of my epiphany came from my reading of Denis Dutton’s The ART INSTINCT: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution (2009). Reading Dutton it came to me that I was being too analytical in my assessment of poetry and maybe of art in general. Instead of riding the waves of imagery and luxuriating in the richness of expression, metaphor, simile, and characterization, I was losing myself in my frontal cortex, judging rather than enjoying. Now, reading Matt’s Desecrations again I can simply feel the words as they interweave and congeal into images and sensations, much as I l did in the Orangerie museum in Paris a decade ago surrounded by Claude Monet’s majestic paintings of his beloved Giverny water lilies. Thank you, Matt.