The conference began traditionally with a biographical investigation that produced staggering results. The speaker was able to draw upon private papers unknown to Bailey and Bentley which strongly suggest that Mrs. Walter Buchanan was in fact an illegitimate daughter of Robert Buchanan, author of that well-known anti-Pre-Raphaelite squib, “The Fleshly School of Poetry.” This immediately explains much of the physical immediacy of the poem (“carcase complete,” for example). At the question period that followed, a skeptic pointed out that “Mrs. Walter Buchanan” could surely have been connected with the family by marriage only, but the speaker hinted darkly that “there was a lot of incest in the glens.” Clearly, there is room here for fascinating further research.
     Two feminist-oriented papers followed (I arranged for two since one might have been construed as mere tokenism). The first, “Piggy or Sowwy: A Feminist Perspective,” made much of the gender distinction between writer and subject. Piggy is identified as male in the first line of the poem, and the “we” of the second line must surely be interpreted as the collective sisterhood of women (cf. “we use it when doing our baking”). Though a hasty reading might suggest that Piggy was being praised, a subtext of covert criticism is discernible throughout, ranging from “we can’t very well do without him” (implying: though we wish we could) to “bad cess to the cratur.” This subversive reading was well received by the delegates. The succeeding paper, “Piggy, Patriarchy, and the Phallocentric,” proved more controversial. Indeed, so frank and relentless was it in the revelation of the sexual politics lurking just beneath the surface of the text that it succeeded in bringing blushes to various masculine cheeks.
     The apparently inexhaustible hermeneutic richness of the poem was beautifully illustrated by the three papers that made up the next session of the conference. The first, an archetypal contribution, emphasized the poem’s disguised pastoral aspects. Here, the speaker argued, tradition blends with individual talent, since shepherds and goatherds were common in the pastoral tradition but swineherds were not. Hence the force of the title of this presentation, “Et Piggy in Arcadia.” Since in Book X of Homer’s Odyssey Circe turns Odysseus’s sailors into swine, the speaker argued that a subtle blending of genres was involved. In this early twentieth-century “Circe/Mud poem,” a timeless Circe is demonstrating her art (and craft) to an equally timeless Odysseus. The next speaker, however, would have none of this. Applying a strictly Marxist approach, she stressed, in “Fascist and Other Pigs,” the numerous class-indicators within the text: “our money affairs,” “a shortage,” “nobly,” “the pig is a gent.” Far from being an escapist pastoral, she claimed, Piggy is an allegory of the workers’ tireless struggle against the evils of capitalism. The third speaker of this session, by contrast, favoured a psychological-cum-anthropological reading. In “Trotter-Envy and Flitch-Fetishes,” we were treated to a fascinating if startling exegesis that confidently identified the “mischief” on which Piggy is “bent” as decidedly Oedipal in character. If the speaker had then known Bailey and Bentley’s convincing dating of the poem as “c. 1915,” he might very well have raised the possibility of Mrs. Buchanan’s having spent some time undergoing psychoanalytic therapy in Vienna prior to the First World War.
     An especially lively session followed. The paper was wittily entitled “Where is Here? A Neohistorical Deconstruction,” and the speaker, who had made a meticulous study of pig-keeping in different ages and localities, offered her opinion that the details of porciculture given in the poem suggest an Old World rather than a North American provenance. Here was a Eurocentric bombshell indeed (though her conclusions, it must be admitted, seem to be borne out by Bailey and Bentley’s explanatory notes that for the most part record British analogues). The strong implication, never directly stated but implied throughout, was that, wherever Mrs. Buchanan may have lived, the details of Piggy are derived from travels in Europe. The challenge thus posed to Piggy’s Canadian status provoked much heated discussion during the question period. One unrestructured cosmopolitan observed that the paper proved fatal to Piggy’s claims as a work of permanent literary importance (a “stuck pig” was the phrase used). If it portrayed an English or Scottish scene, the argument ran, only a diehard colonialist could possibly accept it as Canadian. On the other hand, if it wasn’t Canadian, it wouldn’t win canonical acceptance in any other literature. This view was howled down by the nationalists present but cheered by a vociferous group of anti-canonists. A straw vote was taken, which I am happy to report resulted in an acceptance of Piggy’s Canadianness by a small majority. Rumor has it, however, that the decision is to be appealed if not to the Supreme Court, then to the Department of English at Simon Fraser University.
     In order to accommodate the maximum number of specialist papers, subsequent sessions were divided into smaller groups. Thus it was possible to squeeze three papers into each session. Space restrictions unfortunately prevent me from recording more than their titles here. A “technical and prosodic” section presented “Anapestic Irregularities in Piggy,” “Pigs Do Have Wings! Muse Poetry and the Concept of Pigasus,” and “The Variable Hoof: Open-Sty Theory and Contemporary Poetics.” The “linguistic and historical” group heard “Bawdy Innuendo in Piggy” (“he cares not a fig”), “The Erotic Sty: An Exchange Between Robert Krouch and Prudy Glebe,” and the somewhat outspoken “Porking Piggy: Rape Fantasies and the Tradition of the Street Ballad.” The “religious and spiritual” section proved to be hearteningly ecumenical with “Piggy and the Last Supper: The Aesthetics of Communion” (“...that many times graces our tables”), “Piggy Among the Quakers” (“the pig is a friend”), and “Not Kosher: Piggy and Anti-Semitism.” A special educational session (co-sponsored by O.I.S.E.) presented “Piggy in the Opportunity Class,” “Piggy in Pokey: An Experiment in Prison Education,” and “'Too Difficult for Freshmen?’ The Position of Piggy in the Undergraduate Curriculum.” The “critical theory” sub-group listened to “Polyphonic Piggy: A Bakhtinian Approach,” “Piggy: The Raw and the Cooked” (which disappointed O.I.S.E. devotees of home economics who were expecting the Galloping Gourmet), and “Grunt-grunt or Oinck-oinck? Piggy and Reader Response.” Finally, a motley group categorized as “political/nutritional” was privileged to consider “Justice Threatened: Piggy and the RSPCP,” “A Scots Reading of Piggy: An Alternative to Haggis,” and even a holistic-cum-homeopathic contribution entitled “Piggy: A Macrobiotic Warning,” which offered a lurid account of the dangers to the nation’s diet if the poem became even more popular than it is.
     The last speaker would have been shocked indeed by the culminating grand banquet, since the menu offered sucking pig garnished with bacon and served with truffle sauce. (However, those requesting special diets were given the alternative of pink-tinted tofu formed in specially-contrived pig-shaped moulds.) At the closing formalities (which agreed to postpone the threat to national unity posed by the neohistorical revelation) the following resolutions were enthusiastically endorsed: that feasibility studies should be initiated regarding a Piggy Newsletter and a fully computerized concordance; that the NFB should be urged to produce a Piggy video (in full colour) for distribution to schools; that Canada Post should be encouraged to issue a commemorative Piggy stamp (though experienced persons warned us not to expect a reply before the turn of the century); that the provincial government should spend whatever uncommitted assets it may have on the erection of a plaque at the Clarksburg piggery (though whether this should celebrate Piggy or Mrs. Walter Buchanan was not made clear); that a regular session on Piggy studies should be held at the Modern Language Association meetings whenever that body assembles in Chicago.
     It is clear, then, that Piggy is at last coming into its own. Now that Bailey and Bentley’s authoritative edition is taking its place on the shelves of all properly educated Canadians, those of us who have striven so gallantly for the recognition of “CanLit” as a solidly based academic discipline are beginning to see our labours bear fruit. A generation of young scholars is coming to maturity determined to see this major poem recognized the world over in all its porcine glory. As we all know, it was once hoped that our own era would become known as “Canada’s century.” That didn’t quite work out, but there is no reason why the next hundred years should not be celebrated as “Piggy’s century.” So, in the words of the bard duly employed for the Formal Toast, “here’s to you, Piggy-wiggy, may you go the whole hog—and sow say all of us!”

* Journal of Canardian Poetry 6 (1991): 182-95. [back]

Notes

Works Cited

Fatwood, Piggy. Circle Grunts. Hogtown: Ox UP, 1982.

Kouth, W.J. “Piggy Scrutinized.” Canardian Poetry: Studs, Documents, Reviews 6 (Spring/Summer 1980): 25-34.