1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
When I made my decision to go to art school and to study writing and visual arts, I had a foreboding sense that I had disappointed everyone. As the child of an immigrant, it can often feel like you are on a set path of success and there’s a great deal of anxiety that surrounds a life choice that threatens “security.” I had a feeling that my parents felt I was indulgent and somewhat petulant in my choice, believing that writing was essentially a “hobby” and that I should explore options that were much more stable, writing in my spare time. But I believed that I had a story to tell and that I was worthy of the investment to tell it, so when Thistledown accepted my first manuscript and my book was eventually published, I felt very vindicated and validated in my choices to that point. The physical book felt like proof that I was not just writing as a way to entertain myself.
My most recent work is a complete departure in style and in content from the previous two works. This is because I am a completely different person than I was when I started telling stories, specifically ones about my family. Since I first published, I have become a wife, a mother, someone who understands the mechanics of editing, someone who understands colonization and intergenerational trauma differently—I simply navigate the world from very different eyes. I’m a matriarch, and I feel a greater responsibility to this current book because it is a new legacy for me. These family stories are uncomfortable and sad, so I have shifted from writing “love letters to the family” as my previous books have been described. But no, maybe that’s unfair. This collection is a love letter to the family as well, because it was written out of a deep love and loyalty. I wrote this collection because I love my children and I want them to know where they come from.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I began my studies at UVic thinking I was a fiction writer—I fully expected to write novels. But part of the curriculum was to do introductory courses in a variety of media and I was blessed to study in one of Tim Lilburn’s poetry classes. He told me early on that my work was important and no one had ever said this to me. I had always felt like writing was a luxury that I indulged in and was kind of good at, but no one had ever read my work and said “this work is important and people should read it.” I found that poetry was the medium that worked for the stories I wished to tell. It was the medium that connected with how I walked in the world—paired down, hyper focussed. It was the closest thing to painting and visual arts (which I was also studying) in a writing style, and so it felt very organic and familiar to me. There’s a purity in poetry, it is the embodiment of art for art’s sake—we spend a great deal of time and energy creating it and are rarely compensated financially for the work we do. It’s a shame but it’s beautiful as well.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
My first two books were written rather quickly and came out relatively close to each other, within a few years I believe. This current one took a great deal longer, for a variety of reasons. First, it deals with very fresh trauma which I experienced in real time, recorded as journal entries as a mechanism to process the trauma, and then wrote into poems. Simultaneously, I met my future husband, got married, and was quickly pregnant, all while navigating a totally alien reality without my family (as I knew it) and dealing with post-partum anxiety, post-trauma stress, and a gamut of other things all culminating at once. So, the book took much longer to conceptualize and to flesh out. I remember editing and revising while my newborn slept on my shoulder, being interrupted mid-thought by her as she stirred. I no longer had endless time to work, my time was no longer my own.
In terms of my process, I normally begin writing long-hand through a process Tim Lilburn taught me called “emptying the hands” where I basically write subconsciously, just a stream of thought for a set amount of time without editing or even reading it back. From there, I return to the writing a few months later and comb through the rambles to find a good line or thought, phrase or feeling, and that is usually where the poem comes from. They are born there, and I build from that. I’m also a note writer—I find scraps of paper with short lines of poetry or phrases which I compile over time and sometimes those become the poems.
Definitely my writing at the beginning of my career looked very different in draft than it did as a finished collection, but I feel like this current work had a much more cohesive flow and content—I knew what I was writing and why, so it came together for me. The order of poems, for instance, stayed relatively consistent from draft to draft.
I would also say that one of my main editorial tricks is that I have no problem sacrificing my lines—some writers get very attached to a certain line, or image, or phrase, but I am not this way. I am happily ruthless in the culling of words if it makes for tighter writing.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I think currently I do write with a collection in mind—I have become a much more conscientious writer as I have matured. This is, I think, motherhood, and the necessity to use my time as efficiently as possible, as so little of it now belongs to me. I used to have a lot of space in my life to writing about just everything and anytime in an attempt to find beauty. I have experienced a lot of changes in my life over the past decade and those changes have altered my perspective and my approach to writing. These days, I eek out a bit of space for my work and have to get written what I need to write with the awareness that at any moment some aspect of my life will emerge, and that if I have not writing my thoughts down I may not get an opportunity to do so again. So I write very feverishly these days, my poetic lines are shorter and my images are more plain. This is because likely a small child has popped into my poetic space to ask a question or be comforted, or whatever it is they require at that moment. I lose lines and thoughts and phrases just as my children lose their cleats, this piano music, their matching socks.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love reading my work in public, even though I am an introvert by nature and relatively shy person (though I am often accused of saying this falsely because I am able to mask my shyness after four decades), I have always enjoyed readings. I think this is because I write poetry to be read aloud, it is an aural art form and part of a storytelling tradition that feels good to me—this is the good medicine of our Elders. Storytelling is healing, and so reading feels like that to me.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Definitely I have many concerns with my work as it is rooted in family, history, and is extremely intimate. In my current collection, I had to be extremely aware that the story I was telling was about my own perspective and my own experiences of trauma, despite the collection being centred on the family, their experiences, admissions, stories, memories, etc. I wanted to ensure I was telling the stories without adopting any one else’s trauma, and that I was fair to my own perception and my own navigation of a very difficult circumstance. I actually had to rewrite the collection in the editing phase when I became aware that a family member who had read one of the drafts was feeling extremely stressed and vulnerable due to some of the stories I had decided to tell—there are no words that I could ever write that would be worth putting that kind of pain in to the world, so I made a choice to rewrite. My publisher was generous in allowing this, and I think the work was far more successful as a result of this. In terms of questions—I am always trying to answer the questions about who I am, and where I come from. I have always been interested in family stories and the ways in which they influence how we walk in the world. Now that I am a mother, I also seek to write in a way that will help my children to understand our history-whatever that may be. I think as a Metis person and as someone descended from enslaved peoples, there will always be mystery. There will always be questions about who we were, and what our people endured to get us here. I want to write down everything I know, as I understand it, so that they will have access to their own stories.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I can’t speak to all writers but I can speak to poets, who I believe have an essential role in society. Poetry, with its curated lines, holds up a mirror to society in a way that perhaps other genres do not. It is hyper-focussed—we are the recorders of the precise way that dust flutters in a ray of sun, of how the swirled bark of a tree feels when we place our finger tips on it. We consider the daffodil, the pucker of sumac in the hinge of the jaw. Poets remind us that we are interconnected, that we are all relations. And poetry is a genre that is the embodiment of art for arts’ sake. We write because we are drawn to create work, not because of the promise of financial compensation or even because of the desire to be read. Poets quietly record the world almost in opposition of attention, and I think that in a world that is constantly demanding attention and is constantly seeking a wider audience, we need that.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Absolutely essential. I think that outside editors remind us that not everyone navigates the world as we do. They are so important to helping us see beyond our own writing—I often hyper-focus on whether I should be using a semi-colon or if I broke my line before or after a specific word, and miss that something I have written can be interpreted in a completely different way or that from a cultural perspective may mean something other than what I had intended. When we are creating work that we intend to send out in to the world we have to do so with the understanding that no everyone will understand what we are saying and not everyone will be engaged, and having an outside set of eyes grounds the work by letting us block interpretations. Often editors will say to me “you said this, but did you mean to say this other this?” and if I don’t want a line or a stanza or image to be read in a certain way, I can use language an other poetic tools to block that reading.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Rest is resistance. This is something I take extremely seriously as a woman who is both Indigenous and the descendant of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Generations of trauma and oppression have disregarded the need for women (especially women of colour) to engage in rest and self-care, and self-reflection, and quiet contemplation. But someone once gave me the permission to rest, and they explained that it is the greatest form of protest. I try to live by this.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to visual art)? What do you see as the appeal?
I think these two genres serve very specific purposes in my life—I have always loved colour and texture and visual art (both creating and observing it), and so here’s a tactile connection for me between the creation of visual art. It feels like physical story telling, but is also extremely humbling because it is 100% open to the interpretation of the viewer. Painting, for me, leaves no room for me to say “No, I meant to say this” when someone looks at my work and tells me “I see this.” I just have to accept that interpretation and remind myself that we all see the world only through the eyes that we have, not through what people tell us we must see. Poetry is more about expressing my thoughts. I have always written to save myself from carrying the heavy stuff. Writing poetry releases these stories from my brain, and perhaps, from my responsibility. So that I can continue to grow and evolve and look for new ways to record the world as I see it.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
Nowadays, my routine is dictated 100% by my family and children specifically. I no longer have a regular writing practice, and instead seek to find time where I am able. I supposed I have become a very undisciplined writer but a relatively disciplined mother.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I never worry when the work slows down. Sometimes I think this happens to give me space to process information so that I can write it better, sometimes it is because I have new stories and experiences unfolding that will eventually become work. I am proud of the work I have created, and I have always had the feeling that if that is all I was ever meant to write, it would be ok. That said, usually the “stall” is just a regeneration period, and the work reveals itself either by way of experience or inspiration.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Grass. I have prairie bones, so wet crops. Alfalfa. The moments before rain falls. These are prairie smells, that is my home.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Family stories are my biggest influence. I have always been interested in memory and how our memories change from person to person, and how all families seem to have that collective desire to speak of the past. Even if the past they recall is sterilized or even fabricated, there’s a human-ness to sitting at a table late at night and falling in to recall. I have always loved to hear these stories, and as I have grown to better understand the world, I even appreciate the difficult stories. I feel deeply that our ancestors, those who know the story’s ending, want us to tell stories because stories are how we heal and grow.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I am very interested in non-fiction work currently—I love Helen Knott’s memoirs. Becoming a Matriarch speaks to me so much, that book came in to my life exactly when I needed to face my own evolution. The Hon Murray Sinclair’s memoir Who We Are is also close to my heart right now. I feel like everyone needs to read that book to better understand this country and how to further reconciliation within it. Bad Cree by Jessica Johns is another recent read that I really enjoyed. It seems I’ve taken a break from reading poetry.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’d like to go to culinary arts school and open up a bakery that caters to people with food allergies. I have a child with multiple life threatening allergies and have spent a great deal of time and energy learning how to give her food experiences that are relevant culturally and also safe, and I feel like in a perfect world I would have a beautiful little bake shop where people can come in and feel safe and have an experience that makes them happy about the food they are experiencing. I’d sell dairy-free ice cream and nut free pastries, sesame-free bread and beautiful chocolates.
I used to make allergy safe candies to sell at local markets, and I can’t even count the times that someone would try them and start to cry. A mom once said she had never shared a chocolate bar with her son before. I’d love to keep giving people those kinds of moments.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Well, I spent 20 years as a uniformed officer with Canada Border Services Agency, and in fact, I wrote most of my first draft of my first book sitting in one of those booths where you show your passport. For some reason that is very funny to most people who know me only as a writer. And the fact that I write poetry is always so mystifying to anyone who knows me only as a law enforcement officer. These days, I teach police officers Indigenous culture and history and reconciliation. But I would have liked to have been a baker or a pastry chef. How different a person I would have been though.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I was taught to use writing as an emotional tool early on, to help process the trauma of my parents’ divorce and other adverse events. I journaled and wrote so that I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by things I was experiencing as I grew up, and now I use writing to process intergenerational trauma, and to send stories in to the world so that I do not carry them alone. I have always written, so I it doesn’t feel like it was ever a choice. I just did it.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
As mentioned above, Helen Knott’s Become a Matriarch is top of mind. I also loved Sinead O’Connor’s memoir Rememberings. It takes a certain bravery to write a memoir and though I write a lot about my life through poetry, it feels some how easier because poetry comes in breaths and snippets. I have always love reading the memoirs of interesting women though, and these two are extremely interesting. In terms of films, I feel like I have been watching Disney cartoons exclusively for the past seven years but recently I took a flight and re-watched the 1986 version of Little Shop of Horrors with Rick Moranis and Steven Martin among others. That is a great film, I have always loved it but realized that I didn’t understand what I was watching when I had seen it as a child. I loved the music and the singing and thought it was funny at times, but sometimes you have to revisit these types of stories once you’ve lived long enough to have been through some things. They hit differently now—but man, the music in that movie is still so good.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m working on a collection of stories about homecoming—I recently travelled to my dad’s birthplace in Trinidad and Tobago and my mother’s/my birthplace in Saskatchewan and have been looking at ways in which returning home after learning painful truths about your family feels different. I travelled to many of the sites of my own childhood traumas, spoke to myself as a child in those places. I think there are some interesting poems coming out of those recent travels.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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