Ars Poetica

A celebration of the Canadian literary tradition

There was a time, during the Montreal Fringe Festival, when a 19th century swimming pool, the Bain St. Michel, was used as a theatre venue, referred to as the P-Scene. Pronounced the English way, it sounds like the French word for swimming pool, piscine. It hasn’t been used for bathing since the late 1990s, but it makes for a great theatre space. Many troupes use it to great effect, not the least of which is Montreal’s Infinitheatre. They’ve got a new play running in the deep end of the pool, a true Canadian story peppered with comedy, poetry, and mobile devices in Arthur Holden’s new Ars Poetica, an awkward celebration of the Canadian literary tradition. Either that or, dare I say, a eulogy?

“Ars Poetica,” reads the Infinitheatre’s news release, “is a comedy about poetry, wireless communications and the wayward impulses of love.” A lawyer steps into the muck and mire of a struggling Montreal literary magazine and finds himself swept up in more than he bargained for. The plot plays, somewhat, on Montreal’s rich literary tradition. There was a time when Irving Layton, Louis Dudek, et al, were involved in what were then called “little magazines,” celebrating poetry. In Ars Poetica, which means “poetic arts,” the old literary tradition mixes with the high gloss and business world of publishing. And they don’t mix well. Neither, ostensibly, do the characters who people the offices of Ars Poetica.

The script is rife with Canadian poetic references old and new, with lines and/or full poems by David Solway, Endre Farkas, Mary di Michele, and others. Audiences may wonder if they can enjoy a live play about poetry, which by today’s standards might be seen as somewhat esoteric, and thus ignored, song lyrics and hip hop notwithstanding.

But Arhur Holden emphasizes the comedy, suggesting the play, set in the summer, provides audiences with a badly needed antidote to the dark and cold of January and February. “I chose poetry,” Holden told me in an email, “precisely because people nurse certain – entirely unfair – prejudices about the art form and its practitioners. I thought the obscure passions of poets in general, and English Montreal poets in particular, could be the basis for an engaging kind of comedy. Audiences and critics will now decide if I was right.”

Want to accept Holden’s challenge? Ars Poetica is at the Bain St. Michel, 5300, rue St-Dominique, through to February 12.