Coasting TradeCoasting Trade started out as a series of six linked poems about various places around Newfoundland, which I wrote and submitted to what was then the CBC/Saturday Night literary competition. This was years ago, and I didn’t win, of course, but much to my surprise I made the shortlist and got a very encouraging letter from Robert Weaver. He told me just to keep going with it, that it wasn’t finished.
Every now and again I’d go back and add another visit to another community, but I knew It needed some unifying element for it to make sense to a listener from outside. Then one day I came across an old book of sailing directions for the island, dating back to 1865, and the voice of the navigator was so strong I could almost hear it. Except for the occasional church steeple or flagstaff, the directions for entering the bays and inlets of Newfoundland and Labrador were exactly the same more than a hundred years later.
My mind played one of those funny tricks of the imagination, and I thought of this man, Hobbs, sailing in an out of time, landing in various outports at different times in history. I made him a coasting trader because at the time I was working on the history of the early traders who came up from New England, and it seemed to fit.
I had intended from the very start to make this a performance piece. I wanted the voices to resonate literally just as they had imaginatively in my head. Some of the narratives went on to become free-standing poems, and found their way into print, but they still had a strong vocal element, which I think is evident in a lot of my poetry. Is this poetry or prose? A bit of both, I think. David Ferry once said that performance poetry is “just a free-form of theatre” so perhaps it’s drama as well.
Robin McGrath
Coasting Trade, a performance for three voices, by Robin McGrath is hot off the Audio CD press from Rattling Books. Recorded and mixed by the incomparable Chris Brookes and voiced by Robert Joy, Rick Boland and Anita Best - Coasting Trade is a feast for the ears.
