The Poetics of Deep Time

The idea of deep time or geological time has been troubling to conceptions of human importance since it was first mooted by Scottish geologist James Hutton in the late eighteenth century. The Romantic poet Charlotte Smith addressed the issue in her poem 'Beachy Head'. In this article, I offer a reading of the work of Canadian poet Don McKay who has written a number of poetry collections which address deep time. McKay calls what he is writing 'geopoetry'. In his poetry, and a series of related essays, McKay examines how poetry can provide a 'bridge over the infamous gulf separating scientific from poetic frames of mind.' On the one hand he is keen to avoid the 'tendency of facts to close the imagination' and on the other the tendency of what he calls 'romantic poets' to turn any object of perception into an 'emotional condition'.