Robert Hogg was born in Edmonton, Alberta, grew up in the Cariboo and Fraser Valley in British Columbia, and attended UBC during the early Sixties where he was associated with the Vancouver TISH poets and graduated with a BA in English and Creative Writing. In 1964 he hitchhiked east to Toronto, then visited Buffalo NY where Charles Olson was teaching. After spending a few months in NYC, Bob entered the graduate program at the State University of NY at Buffalo, completed a PhD and took a job teaching American and Canadian Poetry at Carleton University in Ottawa for the next 38 years. He currently resides at his farm fifty miles south of Ottawa and is working on four collections: Lamentations; The Cariboo Poems; Postcards, from America; and The Vancouver Work. His publications include: The Connexions, Berkeley: Oyez, 1966; Standing Back, Toronto: Coach House, 1972; Of Light, Toronto: Coach House, 1978; Heat Lightning, Windsor: Black Moss, 1986; There Is No Falling, Toronto: ECW, 1993; and as editor, An English Canadian Poetics, The Confederation Poets – Vol. 1, Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2009; and from Lamentations, Ottawa: above/ground, 2016. Two Cariboo poems, Ranch Days – The McIntosh from hawk/weed press in Kemptville, Ontario, and Ranch Days—for Ed Dorn from battleaxe press in Ottawa have recently been published (2019). He edited the April 2019 Canadian poetry issue of the Portland Maine Café Review.
Listening – A Letter to Wade Bell
After our mutual
reckoning
on Facebook
yesterday
about growing
progressively deaf
I spoke to God
(albeit in
a quiet
voice)
and told Him
enough
with this
hearing loss
before we both go
completely
deaf I
don’t think he
heard me
amid the clamoring
din
perhaps I
should have
spoken up
(background noise
and all that) in
any case I
haven’t
heard back
so if you
hear anything
let me know
RLH: Mtn: 2020-12-03
Memory of a Future – The Poet Receives a Letter from Wade Bell
After reading
your poem
(to me
and your account
of dinner
with Leslie
I went to bed
hungry (I
wasn’t
Woke up
hungry and now
three hours
later I’m still
hungry
(I’m not
The only cure
to suddenly
appear
at your table
take a meal with
the two of you so
be prepared
at a moment’s
notice I
cannot say
when that might
happen only
Damn you
and all
the best
RLH: Mtn: 2020-12-04;
The Poet Replies
Then damned
I am
and will be
happily so
We’ll have
that meal
may be
our first
in fifty
years
maybe
our last
when Tyrannus
Covidicus
finally
sets us free
RLH: Mtn: 2020-12-04;
