Adam Beardsworth

One of things Dr. Adam Beardsworth enjoys about working Grenfell Campus is the emphasis on the value of creative activity.

He explained that the distinction between academic writing and creative writing "has always been hard for me to reconcile."

"I am fortunate to work at an institution that recognizes the importance of creative work," he said. "I've always written creatively, though there have been long periods where creative work has been subordinate to academic projects."

Dr. Beardsworth's research focuses on how writers, primarily poets from post-WWII to the present, respond both directly and indirectly to moments of political crisis.

"Poets are good at gauging affective climates, and their work often reveals, for instance, the underlying anxieties of the conformist 1950s, the biopolitical repercussions of the Trump era's rhetoric of threat, or the terror and guilt of climate change," he said. "I'm more interested in how poetry voices the impact of such moments on the individual, and how these moments shape - or interpellate - individuals as subjects under neoliberalism, than I am in exploring more public poetic voices. So I like reading the anxiety of the mundane lyric."

When it comes to his creative work, Dr. Beardworth published three poems in 2019. Two were published in the Antigonish Review, which was founded in 1970 and is one of Canada's oldest literary quarterlies:

The third poem, "Big Stop, Aulac, NB," was published by Hamilton Arts and Letters and is featured below.

While in the past Dr. Beardsworth has felt there's less certainty when it comes to publishing creative work, his first sabbatical in 2018 gave him the opportunity to "pause a little and rethink my approach."

"Since then, I've devoted much more time to creative work, and have started to consider it an essential component of my scholarly activity," he said. "Grenfell English has a rich tradition of creative writing, and I’d like to be able to contribute to that tradition in some small way."

Big Stop, Aulac, NB
by Adam Beardsworth

After the bars the dark would pull like a
dog on a leash, drag us to the bleak out-
skirts of town, down the steep on-ramp to the
pitch-black highway where we'd try to hitch
rides with 3am truck traffic; possessed,
I'd harangue the gods, black out stars with my
pistol finger, threaten to climb the radio
towers that webbed the Tantramar or walk
the white divided line as high beams bore down
like a hungry barn owl until you'd tug me to the
shoulder.

Once we got lucky, rode shotgun on
the bench seat of a green delivery truck, got
dumped at the Aulac Big Stop where you up-
chucked a hot turkey platter while I slid my
fingers along the steel blade of a hatchet pinched
from the hardware aisle...
I can't remember how we made it home, just waking
up, hatchet planted firmly in my headboard.