About Portage
Portage ... is a routes map to the poetry ecosystem, as spied in Canada and elsewhere around the world.
This Portage map points out the sometimes tucked away, and sometimes wide open, profusion of poetry and spoken word happening in Canada and in other countries. The emphasis is on poetry in English or translated into English. But as with traditional portage routes where explorers, traders, and indigenous people carried their canoes over obstacles to new waters, the goal is exchange.
What creates a vibrant poetry ecology? By no means comprehensive, this map attempts to offer a cross-section of the players advancing the craft, the critical discourse, and the public appreciation of poetry in its many forms, written or performed.
Routes
Through online links, this map outlines educational resources, professional tracks, academic debates, underground movements, historical and/or indigenous legacies, book and magazine trades, new media innovations, and grassroots community initiatives.
Mostly, these links have been rummaged from web searches or link exchanges and have been described with each site's chosen appellations, quoted or collated from the original source. Find recently added links on the Portage home page. Start by picking a navigation Route to the right. Many routes have side routes to dally in—you may find them luckier than the main routes. See All Routes including side routes. Or narrow quest with Search Portage.
Navigation note: On this site, all headings preceded by a plus (+) or minus (-) sign are clickable. A plus (+) sign says "there's more; click me to show contents". A minus (-) sign says "I'm expanded; click me to hide contents".
Tag List
Tags are like the precursors to Routes and are added on the fly. Here they indicate a poetry form, style, theme, subject matter, or medium that can be found on the tagged sites. Clicking a tag takes you to a search results page of link entries so tagged. See the Tag List.
Poet List
The place to look for poets and critics is under the Literary Directories route which charts where others have put together vast assemblies of links and poet pages. However, as another angle on finding sites already listed on various Portage routes, consult the Poet List for individual blogs or sites by or about a particular poet.
by Region
You can explore the links by country or by Canadian province. The National Capital Region, home to Arc, has its own list, and we are scouting for links with a bioregional emphasis. Any leads?
Interactive
Some routes have been linked to interactive forums or polls open for comment. Tell us about your favourite pubs or cafes to quaff bevs and poems, or your favourite spots to browse or shop for poetry, Or, make a case for Canadian poets, now deceased, who you think have been overlooked or forgotten.
Advertising and Donations
The text links and descriptions on Portage stem from our explorations and your suggestions. There is no fee for suggesting or posting links (though suggestions may be edited). If you'd like to support the growth and upkeep of Portage and/or promote your own site with an image, you can place a web ad in the random cycling adbar on the righthand side of the page appearing in Portage, Log Entries, Great Scots and How Poems Work, on over 800 pages at arcpoetry.ca. See the 2007 advertising rates. Though we cannot provide charitable tax receipts for donations at this time, we also accept donations, even just a few loons. Support Portage.
There will never be a charge for using this resource.
Your Thoughts and Suggestions
We welcome your thoughts and cartographic suggestions.
This tentative map met its current shape in a somewhat adhoc way, routes improvised from personal experience and finds from the Internet with the inkling of “a poetry ecology” as beacon. Poetry and literature have perennially been likened to landscape. Of course, a poetry ecology comprises much more than can be traced on the Internet, and this map is afterall just a set of Internet links. But perhaps like its geographic counterpart, this map might lead you off the map to places of reward, whether a place you're looking for or an unexpected eye-opener.
Do you know of any web traces to poetry heartlands that you'd like to recommend? Please send us your additions and corrections. The hope is that this map will grow to mirror some of the poetry passions of all of our visitors.
Tip the canoe. Enter the conversation. Rewrite this map.
(beta unveiled December 18, 2006; official launch March 21, 2007)
