We’re getting down to the wire! There is one week left to submit your poem about Niagara Falls to the Niagara Falls Poetry Project 25th Anniversary Poetry Contest!!
The judges have sharpened their pencils and are eagerly awaiting reading the submissions!
The curator is feverishly working at getting all of the submission ready for the print anthology of the winners and contestants that will hopefully be available later this year.
The Falls of Niagara–From the Canada Side painted by B. Hess, 1868 Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
God of the mountain-height and rolling flood !
What majesty, and might and grandeur soar
In one unceasing hymn of praise to Thee
From out the turmoil of Niagara’s surge.
Roll on, proud terrorist ! with sweep sublime,
Whose merest touch is as the lusty throes
Of a whole race of Anaks starting from
A trance of passion gathering while it slept.
The massive oak that wrestles with the blasts
For centuries, is but a fragile whisp,
A giant’s toy, in thy relentless grasp ;
And man, whose pride would overawe the world,
Is but a paltry bubble in thy hand,
That passes into nothingness and death.
The crash and wrack of worlds, the sway supreme
Of nation over nation, and the rise
And fall of mighty empires, are as nought
Compared with thee, who’st seen the ages pass,
As in a mirror ; thou the Merlin dread
That beckons them to their eternal rest,
And lulls them into silence with a psalm.
The centuries lie buried at thy feet,
And all their shrouded hosts rise up to pay
The great magician homage. Thy dread voice
Is as the thunder amid Alpine hills,
And the sun-flash upon thine angry brow
The awful lightning of thy wrath, that like
The fine Damascus blade lets out the life,
Or ere the spirit mounts the Elysian fields.
The children of to-day will have grown old ;
Their children’s children from the ample scroll
And record where the generations trace
Their mortal autographs, shall pass away
And be forgotten ; but thy trumpet tones,
Wild, deep, sonorous, then as now, shall make
The heart of man a solemn fane of praise.
Æolus’ slaves, the rude compliant winds,
May lash the sea to fury ; billows roll,
And mountain-wave on mountain-wave be piled ;
When, lo ! the spirit of the storm bows down
Beneath the fetters of the angel, Calm :
But thy tremendous bass confronts the skies
With jubilee of passion evermore,
Unchanged, unchangeable, making thy song
The type of the eternal, without end.
Source: Niagara by Charles Sangster was first published in the British American Magazine (Toronto), 1 (1863): 234–35
Also published in Charles Sangster, ed. by Frank M. Tierney. Norland Echoes and Other Strains and Lyrics. Ottawa: Tecumseh Press, 1976
Fort Mississauga, Niagara-on-the-Lake, 1890s. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
I propose a toast for Missisauga beach
where the lake’s waves make clarion calls! – retreats…
in a rhythm ancient, as the waves and sand
way older than fights o’er the Plains of Abraham
what these waters perform, it is no small feat
but unlike torturous forces have no walls to breach
what can be called victory, what called defeat?
I raise a glass of beverage for Ryerson park
strands of softness and a silent spark
of the world fire cosmos must have set aflame
some sort of constraint for the settling lake
who’s hunger for land-mass liked a tired shark
stopped reaching for its prey, halting its iron heart
To Know Where The Fire Ends And Starts – The Art™
And this one goes out to the troops of Missisauga fort
not for the causes, pawns, the blood, the war, the sport
but for the brothers, fathers, husbands that would be in there
during the Sixty Years, rebellions and the Fenian scare Fiat lux! and a lighthouse stands tall on the shore
bricks and hands adjust it: now it’s war its for
somewhere in there: a lesson for us all
I direct my speech directly at the womanhood and guards of pride
and the manhood and non-binaryhood of the Onguiaahra tribe
who first came to these shores and seemed to settle down
before borders came along and the jest of crowns
saw these waters, called them holy, then were marred by whites
blood and tar on knives when the Wasi’chu in war took strides
these white jarring sprites left them scarred for life
Guess there is beauty at the Hob Nob and the golf club, too
beauty can be tamed like shrews, be laid subdued
but true beauty comes from the shores and lakes
the light on trees in Chautauqua Park when autumn fades
sages, tools and crazy fools I pray for you
for the beauty that is baffling be made anew
through the eyes of the Maid of the Mist to blaze a new
pathway crossing rivers not like a erasing tool
but as a trade wind coming on emblazed in gold
where the remnants of the vengeance are not in haze but cold
the way that dish is best served as Eugène Sue used to say – and wrote
before these woods burn down, let’s say we tried First Nation-rule
or at least learnt lessons from the days of old
we must restrain ourselves, change our ways, we’re told. We know.
Friends, I propose a toast for Missisauga beach
where the lake’s waves make clarion calls! – retreats…
in a rhythm ancient, as the waves and sand
way older than fights o’er Plains of Abraham
to settle up a town here, it is no small feat
and there’s no enemies here, yet we have walls to breach
what can be called victory, what called defeat?
When the enemy is all greed inside us… already on retreat?
Source: Arvida Svenske, 2026
Arvida Juni Svenske is a poet, a folk high-school teacher, writer and journalist born in a place called Stockholm, Sweden. She is a history buff, fantasy nerd and a huge fan of hiphop and reggae, who in 2025 just published her first poetry collection in English, Caribbean Wind, Polynesian Storm published by She Rises , in which she explores colonial crimes committed and knowledge lost, especially other views on gender than the two-gender-norm. Oh, and she’s currently writing a follow-up book that details her journey into womanhood, Estrogen speech – and oh, she has a podcast: Cohenpodden.
Heart-Shaped Jacuzzi in a Suite at the America’s Best Inn on Lundy’s Lane . Photo by Alina Rashid, July 13, 2005 Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library
The same old souvenirs
still amuse us — pennants,
Indian wood carvings,
and the aphrodisiac cocktails
whose nectar we spill
on pillows like some happy couple.
We spent our sleepless nights
rehearsing melodramas (I remember
your fondness for Chopin)
while the monotonous aquatic
thunder numbed our ears
and the braille of stars felt soft.
In a lofty luxurious suite
overlooking
the picture postcard cataracts
we tickled the skin of dreams
and fevered our love
with hors d’oeuvres.
At night the neon loins
of this city unveil brides galore.
O Rainbow Bridge,
believe me when I say
our honeymoon was nothing more
than breakfast in bed.
Source: Len Gasparini. Cutty Sark: Poems. Quarry Press, 1970. This poem also appeared in New American and Canadian Poetry edited by John Gill, 1971
This poem was not received favourably by all readers. In the Cincinnati Mirror a review was published by “G,” presumably the editor William Davis Gallagher. The tone of this review is set in the first sentence: “Upon what principle this production is called a poem, we have not been able to determine” and grudgingly continues “It is true, that it contains occasional good similes, and is not destitute of poetic imagery; and moreover, has one quality of the sublime—being sometimes eminently obscure.”
I’ve added this review in the pictures below, and also added it to this poem’s page on the website (link above).
I invite you to take some time, read the poem and then the review, and decide if G was perhaps a little harsh or right on.
