A More Radiant Sphere

“Poetry is of a higher order. It sets bells ringing in the mind of the reader so that he makes his own music, and thus becomes a co-creator with the writer.” These are the words of Joe Wallace, Canadian Communist poet and political prisoner, whose work was renowned in revolutionary circles abroad but for whom success was stymied at home. Searching through library archives, family records, and footage from the early decades of the Canadian settler state, Sara Wylie assembles the story of Wallace the poet and revolutionary, and her great-great-uncle. “The more I began looking for him, the more I began to see parts of myself reflected,” she says. His poems are spirited, forthright and folksy; they recall a time of great political change and opportunity.

Inextricable from Wallace’s life and work is the history of Canada’s labour movement and the increasing involvement of the state in its disruption. Shot beautifully on 16 mm film, A More Radiant Sphere captures a time and a feeling at risk of being erased by Canadian myth, when the possibility of a world beyond capitalism surged forth into poetry. As the film crucially explains: “Radical histories are controlled, categorized, organized and stored by archival institutions; distanced until these past events shaped by state violence are no longer a threat to power.” As radical events unfold in our present moment, it is our duty to name and resist these patterns of erasure however we can—whether it be through poetry and film, or solidarity and collective action.

Sarah Bakke
Director of Development and Special Programs
DOXA Documentary Film Festival