Surreal, absurdist, satirical, playful and yet, at times, deeply serious is how 91ŃÇÉ« English Professor Priscila Uppal (BA Hons. ’97, PhD ’04) describes Traumatology, her latest collection of poetry officially launching on Wednesday.

A poet and novelist, Uppal will read from during the launch on March 24 at 8pm at the Monarch Tavern, 12 Clinton St. (at Henderson Avenue) in Toronto. Refreshments will be provided, along with a cash bar and cash book table. Everyone is welcome.

Traumatology, Uppal’s sixth major collection of poetry, is a look at today’s modern physical, mental and spiritual notions of health from the traditional to the contemporary and the sublime to the ridiculous.

Uppal says people exert a lot of physical and mental energy in the contemplation of what is healthy from the first decision of the day – what to eat for breakfast – to being mindful of getting the proper amount of sleep at day’s end. Words like protein and antioxidants bombard the senses.

“I think as a society we are incredibly obsessed with ideas of health,” says , who is just completing a stint as the Canadian Athletes Now Fund poet-in-residence during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games. "First Dr. Phil was supposed to fix us, now it’s Dr. Oz and the genetic and biological, instead of the psychological." Health has become part of pop culture.

“Even how we talk about it, the language we use – can we be cured, can we be fixed, can we be healed – is interesting,” says Uppal. For that reason, “some of the poems are playful; others are very deeply serious about how we deal with the sudden loss of someone. As a poet, it is fascinating material. What is the language saying, what are the symbols and metaphors? Much of the collection is like renaissance poetry of allegory.”

Left: Priscila Uppal

Two of the poems on the lighter side are “My Stomach Files a Lawsuit”, a playful, satirical look at the sins of eating, and “The Wheel of Blame”, where there is a host of external things to blame depending on the spin of the wheel, including biochemical imbalances and unresolved oedipal conflict. And “Restraining Order” has the soul forbidden to be near the brain. But Uppal also turns a serious eye to hysteria, fear and suffering. It’s a global concern. “The real struggle is knowing what to do with suffering and whether it has any meaning,” she says.

These questions around mental, physical and spiritual health have often come to visit Uppal. Part of this fascination comes from working as a pharmaceutical assistant in a drug dispensary department, from the age of 13 to 21, where she would decipher medical prescriptions and type them into a computer. Here she witnessed drug abuse by patients, as well as a willingness of the medical profession to overprescribe rather than addressing the underlying problems. “I honestly draw from that period a lot in my writing.”

That’s not the only period in her life that Uppal pulled from in writing the poems for Traumatology. At the age of two, her father had a boating accident that left him a quadriplegic. Six years later, her mother ran off. Her father, she says, is in the collection indirectly, her mother a little more. Friends, acquaintances, people she meets on the bus, perhaps, “they all make their guest appearance or cameo, bring something to the work, an anecdote or a symbol,” she says.

In her twenties, Uppal went to find her mother in Brazil. Does the poem “My Mother is One Crazy Bitch” capture some of the electrical storm of feeling brought about by the experience? Yes. “…At the checkout desks of my subconscious I am writing postcards to all dead mothers out there, all dead daughters who never had a chance to meet in this life. I collect their tears the way I have been hoping to collect my thoughts. Unknown grief is sweeter, I write…”

The two times Uppal travelled to Brazil to meet her mother – “I think I draw from a lot in mother figures I write” – will also be part of a memoir and a play that she is currently working on.

Uppal is also the author of the poetry collections , and , and of the novels and . She is the editor of ˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚý.

To read Uppal’s blog or poems from the Olympic and Paralympic Games, visit Web site or read the poems on the Web site.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

The post 91ŃÇÉ« professor launches poetry collection on health and pop culture appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Research at 91ŃÇÉ« is broader than books, journal articles, scientific findings or data sets. In the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, research can result in a piece of poetry that moves the soul.

Like the Greek poet Pindar, 91ŃÇÉ« English Professor , an internationally acclaimed poet and novelist, is penning poems for Olympians, playing with such sporting terms as “air to fakie”, “revert”, “stalefish air” and “peel”, and transforming them into accessible poetry.

She is the Canadian Athletes Now Fund – a non-profit organization dedicated to raising funds for Canadian athletes – poet-in-residence during the , from Feb. 12 to 28, and Paralympic Games, from March 12 to 21. In between, she plans to head to the , which run from March 6 to 13 in Grande Prairie, Alta.

Left: Priscila Uppal

“So much about poetry is having surprising language and using it in unique ways,” says Uppal (BA Hons. ’97, PhD ’04). So using snowboarding words like “crail air” and “elgeurial” will prove inspiring, challenging and fun. “The sporting language itself is so athletic, it has so many symbols and metaphors to play with. I’m really looking forward to working with the language.”

She has already written a haiku for every sporting category at the Games. That includes skeleton, luge, curling and speed skating. “I think people find it amusing when they hear them.” Her goal for the haikus is to surprise even the athletes.

“This is poetry that can be popular, can be accessible to more people,” says Uppal, who has penned six collections of poetry, including which was shortlisted for the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize. She is also the author of two novels, (2002) and (2008). Recently, she edited the first-of-its-kind anthology (2009).

Uppal stands at the intersection where sports and poetry interact. “It’s an untapped resource, sports language,” says Uppal. And people respond to it. Sport and art touch the majority of people in some way, but you rarely see the two coming together. Uppal thinks it’s a missed opportunity to communicate.

As poet-in-residence, she sees her position as intersecting with two traditions, public poetry for heroic figures and events, and the celebration of the local and everyday. “Poetry about the ordinary and poetry about the extraordinary,” she says.

Having a poet-in-residence writing about the Olympic Games may seem novel, but it is actually in keeping with a long, almost lost, tradition. That’s where Pindar comes in. He wrote odes to Olympians. And, there was a poet at the 2000 summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. But the other way it reaches into tradition is through the games themselves. During the Olympics, from 1912 to 1948, medals were awarded for five categories of art. Two people won medals in both an art and a sporting event. Uppal would like to see art return to the Games as Olympic events, as she believes it has a place there.

“It’s incredible, the power of sport and art to transform people’s lives, but we have to make the space available. This is a great intersection of sport and poetry…and maybe it will transform more lives,” says Uppal.

Take the Paralympics, for instance. These are people who were told they couldn’t do anything in their lives because of their physical disability, and they’re top athletes in their field. “It is extremely invigorating and exciting to watch them compete,” says Uppal.

Canadian athletes and artists, writers ˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýpoets share a commonality in their ability to transform and inspire, and they are all underfunded. Some of our Olympic contenders live with negative incomes, many rely on food banks and some have been known to live in their cars, says Uppal. At the same time, the country is having a health and obesity crisis, as well as a creative crisis. By bringing sport, art and funding together, there is potential to make a difference.

Her poems will be posted on the Web site, as well as 's own Web site, which will also list links to other places where her Olympic poetry can be found. In addition, CBC Radio One will air some of her poems.

The Canadian Athletes Now Fund has helped to fund about 80 per cent of the athletes at the Games. Donations made to the fund go directly to the athletes to help pay for such basic necessities as nutrition, training and equipment costs, and the donor gets a list of which athletes received their donation.

Uppal will read her poems directly to the athletes and their families over the course of the Games. “To me, it’s a wonderful, wonderful Canadian literary moment,” she says.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

The post Prof is poet-in-residence during Olympic and Paralympic Games appeared first on Research & Innovation.