Poem in a Pocket Leads to Singing in a Parkade

For the last number of years during April’s “Poem in Your Pocket Day”, I have shared a poem with colleagues, family, and friends by email, often prompting exchanges celebrating the value of poetry in our lives and sometimes raising the question of a poem’s potential to change us. But this year… this tough, tough year… it was my email signature lines that underwent an unexpected transformation — into song.

“if only for one ruby-throated moment
you could drink
from the chalice of the sun”

Composer Leonard Enns inquired if that “stimulating snippet” at the end of my email was part of a longer poem. Should the text and his musical concepts align, he would consider setting the poem as a choral piece. I was thrilled. The poem, exploring the idea of living with intention, and living “at the pitch”, had been written almost 30 years ago and gifted to my wife. One of my favourites, it had been published in TNQ in 2007. What new voice might Leonard give the poem?

Leonard, in fact, had challenged himself during the pandemic to compose a series of short choral works, having no idea when or if they would be performed. One of his driving motivations was the experience of having a friend in an ICU for a month with COVID-19. On a ventilator, in an induced coma, the friend survived; and Leonard imagined one day they could again “drink from the chalice of the sun”.

As the new compositions took shape, Leonard rehearsed them with members of DaCapo Chamber Choir, outside and distanced to suit the new restrictions. They even tried an historic jail exercise yard, but the sound quickly dissipated with no roof to contain it. Then an imaginative solution: a parking garage as a concrete cathedral. No walls but a hard ceiling. Ventilation and resonance both. Juxtaposition of utilitarian architecture and exquisite sound.

With technical recording expertise by Chestnut Hall Music and the City of Waterloo providing the venue, the “garage choir” has emerged to affirm the creative human spirit. And Leonard, as Director of DaCapo, in his New Year’s message spoke to how the lines of the poem express

“… the wonder, grace and joy which we wish for all of our listeners and choral friends as we embark on 2021. We have been restrained and constrained in many ways and will continue to be so, but our capacity to see the world with fresh eyes, to embrace life with joyful acceptance, need not be limited.”

From snippet to score. From pocket to parkade. A poem’s journey into song.