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Wendy Morton's CD-sized, beautifully bound memoir, Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, published by Victoria-based Emdash Book Publishing, focuses on Morton's career not so much as a writer, but as a woman driven to get out into the world and become known for her poetry. This is her plan in the beginning, but bit by bit in trying to get her own name out there, she ends up putting poetry on the Canadian map.

The book's title is inspired by a line in Alice in Wonderland where Alice and the Queen are discussing believing in impossible things. The Queen says, ":When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why sometimes, I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.": Morton has gone out into the world and simply asked for what she wanted, and more often than not, gotten it.

A review should center on the writing: clarity, language, an ability to move the reader. This review, however, will focus more on the subject of the book being reviewed: the act of propelling oneself into the limelight to become known and the intricate repercussions of this. It will expound on the successes of the memoir, but it will also question the implications of what is on offer. It will ask if there is some kind of moral/artistic dilemma in the act of marrying poetry to corporate sponsorship while at the same time celebrating Wendy Morton, a woman savvy with the way the media, advertising and self-promotion works.

So what are these impossible things? Though her antics have been widely publicized in newspapers across Canada, I will summarize the main six here. In 2001 Morton published her first collection of poetry titled Private Eye with Ekstasis Editions. Using what she calls her ":PI/Poet Hook": Morton got Canada Press interested and had a slough of stories in papers across the country. From there she went on to be WestJet's Poet of the Skies, reading poems for free flights; in 2003 with her second book, Undercover, also by Ekstasis, Morton talked herself into a PT Cruiser to tour the Maritimes with a decal that said ":Poetry Travels/ Wendy Morton 2003 Tour/ Chrysler Supports Literacy":; she contacted the Royal York (Fairmont) and gets free accommodation year after year; she contacted Prairie Naturals and is given their product for her own consumption simply by touting its goodness and handing out samples at readings; and she got Fujifilm on board as a sponsor and was given a Fuji Digital Camera, which she makes excellent use of at The Black Stilt Coffee House reading series called Planet Earth Poetry (formerly Mocambo Poetry) that she has been hosting since 1999.

Interspersed between concisely written stories about picking up the phone and asking, and asking again, are some of Morton's poems. These are populist, narrative poems, many written for people on WestJet flights and during Morton's travels. She firmly believes that ":poetry is the shortest distance between two hearts": and in short anecdotes throughout the memoir she shows how the experience has led to connections between poet and muse or audience.

Though the chapters and anecdotes are short and to the point, a how-to book for poets, Morton manages a few moments of profound insight into what poetry can do. At the DaimlerChrysler headquarters she wrote a poem for CEO Jim Morrison, ":Something happened when I read him this poem. If there had been any barriers between us, they fell away and we connected. I wanted him to see the power of poetry, and how it could move through the armour we all surround ourselves with.":

A major spin-off from the key six impossible things is perhaps her greatest achievement, Random Acts of Poetry. Morton was asked to write a poem that led to her gaining an anonymous sponsor who promised to match any money Morton could raise to start Random Acts of Poetry.

On one hand, through Random Acts of Poetry, Morton has brought poetry to the people of Canada - it has appeared in newspapers, on radio, on buses, and in cafes, and people have gone home with free poetry books written by authors they have likely never heard of. Are they reading those books when they get home? How much that matters depends on whether poetry is an act of communication. If it is, perhaps that connection between two people when the poet randomly chooses a person and reads him or her a poem is enough; equating the free book with icing on a cake.

The part of the book that centres on Random Acts is the strongest. Morton acknowledges that all she did before, in building her own reputation, built toward Random Acts and the possibilities of Canadian poets reading across the country, and UK poets following suit. The moral dilemma begins at the end of the book:

I want to see poets walking down the street with the celebrity of sports stars, rock stars. Wearing logos. I want poet stars to fill up the newspapers across Canada. I want to see ":poet spottings": in major magazines. I want to see the nightly news end with a poem by Patrick Lane, Don McKay, Lorna Crozier or Jan Zwicky, and give us a poem that makes sense out of the chaotic world they've just reported on. I want the car companies to commission poets to write their ads. I want poets to appear in American Express ads and Rolex ads, with a gold watch on their wrists. I want everyone to carry a beautiful poem in their pocket and read it to strangers on buses and in restaurants, standing in line at the supermarket. Is this going to happen? Absolutely. I've imagined it, just today, before breakfast.

Some of these are fanciful but suggest a way for poetry to matter in the world; for it to help us make sense of it. The idea that car companies should commission poems teeters close to selling out. Recently, BMW has taken to hiring a variety of big-name movie producers to make short films that feature BMWs. The movies have well-known actors such as Forrest Whittacker and Madonna. The films are real films. One titled ":Star": and directed by Guy Ritchie was overtly geared toward selling the BMW. Certainly, the directors and writers were well-paid to do this, but how does creating a film specifically to sell a car enable freedom of expression? What would happen to poetry if the same were to actually happen? Appearing in ads to sell watches would liken poets to sports stars, but they actually use the products they are selling. Writing poems to sell cars is what advertising copy writers do, but are they poets? Is it naïve to think that poets should stay true to their art when actors, directors, musicians and other ":artists": taylor their craft to the demands of the public and media? How then do they pay their bills, especially at a time when government support to the arts is being cut?

Let's go back to the eighteenth century and look at William Blake. At that time, there were patrons of the arts who often had a very strong hold on the work the artist did. Morton's anonymous patron seems purely interested in supporting poetry through Random Acts. He does not suggest what to do or how to do it. For Blake, however, his patron was determined to steer Blake's artistic energies toward what was ":fashionable": while Blake wanted to follow his own vision. This resulted in the loss of the patron, and financial decline.

The example of Blake doesn't really answer the riddle of freedom of expression over economics. Morton is by no means making a fortune through offering to use her sponsors' products or names. She is not telling people at readings to fly with WestJet or buy Fuji. She states simply that these people support her poetry. With Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast she offers the possibilities to writers who haven't put their imagination to the promotion of their books. She firmly believes in poetry and with this book, not only has she reopened an interesting debate, she has also offered poems to the waitress and fireman, to the average Canadian and challenged poets to pick up the phone and ask for what they just dreamt. Perhaps for most Canadian writers the choice is ask for what you want, or let your writing sit in boxes gathering dust.