The Poet Laureate Podcast

Episode 5: Fiona Tinwei Lam on Poetry as Ritual, Film, and Public Art

Host: Kyeren Regehr Guest: Fiona Tinwei Lam

[INTRO MUSIC]

Fiona Tinwei Lam: This first poem is "Gift," dedicated to Jiro and Kimmy Uda and family.

The first epigraph says: "In 1935. 1000 young cherry trees are donated to the Parks Board by Mr. And Mrs. Uda. These are the first in the city and will be planted out when more mature and funds available." It's a quote from Mike Steele's book, The First 100 Years: An Illustrated Celebration.

The second epigraph says: "In April, 1942, three months after the Uda family had been removed from Vancouver, 700 of their 1000 donated cherry trees were planted out." And that's a quote from Nina Shoroplova's, A Legacy of Trees: Purposeful Wandering in Vancouver's Stanley Park.

Poem Reading: "Gift"

I search among the most venerable, burly trunks, gnarled branches, offering delicate pink and white profusions to the sky. Does even one remain from your thousandfold gift?

No longer festooning Cambie Boulevard. No longer amid the sonnet of trees pedaling Shakespeare’s garden into spring. Not among grafted cultivars ornamenting park pathways towards the tōrō’s rivering arms, where the fluted pillar of the Japanese Canadian war memorial rises high, its lantern’s flame extinguished in 1942, whole neighbourhoods gutted, erased— schools, churches, factories, farms uprooted to an exclusion zone, ghost towns. Your Dunbar home and downtown business seized, bolts of silk unraveling in others’ hands. You would never see Vancouver blossom with your thousand trees, pale pink petals flutter over palimpsests, mirage of shimmering groves in a could-have-been city.

What survives returns? By the causeway, a quartet of Somei-yoshino, ancient companions, moss-brocaded, scarred and scabbed, anchored by their own deep roots, can still remember to bloom. And decades later, a granddaughter coaxes songs from a once-vanished branch.

Kyeren Regehr: Welcome to the Poet Laureate podcast, a luminous sanctuary for poetry and reflection. Recorded at House of Owl Creation Labs in Victoria, BC on Lekwungen Homelands. I'm Kyeren Regehr, and episode five is supported by Canadian Literature and The Tyee.

Sponsor: The Tyee

The Tyee is British Columbia's award-winning, non-profit, reader-supported news magazine. Since its founding in 2003, The Tyee has offered fact-driven journalism and cultural reporting with editorial independence, free to all and funded by readers and public interest supporters. With a commitment to justice, environmental awareness, and amplifying marginalized BC voices, The Tyee consistently holds power accountable and publishes original news and analysis. Learn more at thetyee.ca.

Kyeren Regehr: This episode is also supported by Canadian Literature, Canada's foremost journal for literary scholarship. More about Canadian literature a little later. We just heard "Gift" by Fiona Tinwei Lam, who was the Poet Laureate of Vancouver from 2022 to 2024. Welcome, Fiona, and thank you for being here.

Fiona Tinwei Lam: Wonderful to be here.

Kyeren Regehr: That beautiful poem just now arrived in our ears. Where did it first begin for you?

Fiona Tinwei Lam: I read about these trees that had been donated to the city, beautiful cherry blossom trees. And when I heard that the family who had donated these trees had been interned during World War II and that their trees had not fully been planted out until after they'd been removed from the city, I had to find them. So I went to Stanley Park looking at all the cherry trees around the rose garden and various parts of the park, wondering if this tree or that tree could be part of that donation.

So I contacted the author of a book about Stanley Park Trees, and she and I investigated it. I also looked into the family's history and found some information about the granddaughter. So when the author found what she believed to be some of the very few remaining trees from the 1000-tree donation, I was so excited and I wanted to pay homage to those trees and to the family for having been so generous to the city. Because back then, in the earlier parts of the 1900s, we didn't have, of course, in the city the flowering cherry trees that we see now. In fact, Vancouver has a fantastic cherry blossom festival that celebrates the profundity and profusion of cherry trees all over the city. And it came from this donation and a small donation earlier from the Japanese government.

When I read about how this family had a business and had kids in university and a lovely home and so forth, and how they wanted to celebrate the city's Golden Jubilee, then were treated so horribly and didn't come back to the city, I felt a poem really needed to be written. And so the poem was really about the search for those trees and then discovering them and seeing them. They're very, very old. They don't flower very well anymore, but they're very special. And the fact that the granddaughter returned as a composer after the family felt so unhappy and so distressed about what happened to them, as did the 22,000 other Japanese Canadians... it was a kind of reconciliation.

Kyeren Regehr: Amazing. Wow. It seems that your ethical commitment to colonial history, to the environment, to cultural memory is central not only to your poetry, but also to your civic projects. Do you feel a sense of responsibility as a poet, or is your impulse more about care or observation or something else entirely?

Fiona Tinwei Lam: It's all of the above. It's all of the above. In this case, I felt like the trees were calling me and I had to respond. Whether or not there was a sense of civic duty, I felt there was a wrongness—a wrongness that these trees had not been acknowledged. And there hadn't been any ritual or ceremony around that. And I wanted to bring it full circle with the granddaughter feeling like her family had been recognized and celebrated and commemorated for what they had contributed to the city.

Kyeren Regehr: And so the poem becomes part of that ritual or ceremony that was missing.

Fiona Tinwei Lam: Exactly. Exactly. So, I felt I was compelled, I was called upon to do this even though very few people knew about it. I wanted to find out more and I wanted to meet the granddaughter as well and present her with the poem. And what happened was I decided that even though I'd never done a broadsheet, that I would do my first broadsheet. I approached a local printer, and the local printer had a staff member who could do woodblock prints. And so she found a piece of cherry wood and did a wonderful woodblock print showing the trees in different stages of flowering and losing their leaves. And we had that woodblock print on the broadsheet, and they made a limited edition number of copies to give to the granddaughter, to city hall, to the Nikkei Cultural Museum in Burnaby, and to also to University of Victoria and University of British Columbia, so that they would also know and commemorate this very special donation. (More information can be found at: Gift: the Uyeda cherry tree donation)

Kyeren Regehr: Wow. I just love this so much. What a rich story. Thank you. Fiona, could we talk about your City Poems Project? For those of you who aren't aware, the project ingeniously blends poetry with film, public space, and a geolocated app, which is still underway at UBC, but the project has woven poetry into the fabric of Vancouver. I have two main questions about this project. Firstly, you're an incredibly generous person in the way you uplift other voices, and I'd love it if you'd speak to what it means for the poets and student filmmakers involved in this project.

Fiona Tinwei Lam: It was fascinating to become poet laureate right after the COVID Pandemic and the lockdowns, and I felt the urgent need to address the isolation and alienation that so many people were experiencing, especially students. And I thought, poetry—poetry is medicine. I thought poets could also use a little bit of a helping hand as well. There are so many fine writers in the city. So I organized a poetry contest for youth, emerging, and established poets to write poems about historical, cultural, or ecological sites in the city.

After the contest, I held a second contest for four post-secondary classes in digital media and in animation. They were to take those poems and turn them into poetry videos. Now a lot of the students had not ever dealt with poetry and had not even worked in a collaborative group before. So it was a challenge for them to work with poetry, to work with the poets, and also to work in a group. But there was a contest, and that was of course, a motivation to make it work.

And as a result, there were a whole lot of poetry videos that were made from these groups of students in the four classes. In the competition, we posted them on the Vancouver Public Library's YouTube playlist and people could vote by liking for their favorite poetry video. And we also had a judge to decide which of the poetry videos were going to win the prizes. So the winning teams had their poetry videos screened at Word Vancouver and also at the Museum of Vancouver. They're still on the Vancouver Public Library's YouTube playlist. So the poets had the opportunity to see their poems turned into poetry videos for them to share with friends and family and to have them out there in the public view. And then also the students who made the poetry videos had a chance to say that their poetry videos had won awards, had been screened publicly. There was also a screening at the Mount Pleasant Community Screen on Kingsway and Broadway for about a year. The poetry videos were shown in rotation, 14 of the best ones, along with other videos that the curators chose. So they were on rotation every day.

They had a lot of opportunities to get out there in the world, and some of the poetry videos even were selected by international poetry video festivals in Copenhagen, New Zealand, Seattle, Montreal, United Kingdom, Wisconsin, and so forth. And I'm sure they're still being submitted to even more festivals. So what I hoped for actually was fulfilled—that they would have a long shelf life. (Learn more at: City Poems Project)

Kyeren Regehr: Amazing.

Fiona Tinwei Lam: And the poems can still be found too in publication. There's a copy of an anthology of the city poems project on the Vancouver Public Library shelves. (See the publication: City Poems Project Publication)

And the other element I wanted to add is that I created a resource for teachers who might want to teach poetry in the classroom. So on my website, there is a resource where they can access the e-publication if they can't access the book in the library and they can access links to the particular poetry videos and the text of the poems that they relate to so that the students can choose which version of a poem they prefer in terms of interpretation by poetry videos, and analyze the poetry videos and the poems, and perhaps make their own poetry videos. (Find the resource here: City Poems Project Resource List for Teachers)

Kyeren Regehr: Oh, that's fabulous. Wow, what a project. Fiona, what has it meant to offer this opportunity for public engagement with all of these historical and cultural and ecological sites, and offering this poetry and poetry video to the city of Vancouver? What has it meant like on a public level and for you personally?

Fiona Tinwei Lam: I really feel that poetry is relevant. I'm sure you do too.

Kyeren Regehr: Yes.

Fiona Tinwei Lam: But not everyone feels that way and this was a way to show poetry can be relevant. It can be meaningful, it can be a legitimate form of expression that is accessible. So many people think that poetry is intimidating, it's confusing, it's difficult. It's only supposed to be about flowers or rhyme. And I wanted to show that poetry can be here in the every day. And it can be about our local history and our feelings about it and our experiences with local history through these distilled gems of words.

It was really heartening for me because I've used the poetry video form of expression for many years, since 2009, and I haven't seen that many people take that up. Not as many poets maybe think of that as a way of spreading the news about their work. And so I was hoping that it would encourage poets to explore poetry videos and collaborate with filmmakers and animators, and it would also encourage filmmakers and animators to work with poets. Perhaps even it could be incorporated into the curriculum as it occurred with these four classes that I worked with. And of course, there's the public. Yes, there's the public who might not know about some of these historical sites. They might not have time to see a two-hour documentary about it, but they certainly can see two minutes. They certainly can spend a minute or two to look at a poetry video.

Kyeren Regehr: Yes. That's amazing. And Fiona, you're also a notable filmmaker yourself. You mentioned that you've been working in the medium since 2009, and I know that your short film plasticpoems won the Judge's award for Best Poetry Video at ReelPoetry Houston and your poetry films Aquarium and Omelet were selected for international screenings in Athens, Minneapolis, Berlin. When speaking about poetry on film, you've mentioned how audio and visual elements can tap into a poem's unconscious resonance. Would you speak to this please?

Fiona Tinwei Lam: Sure. There are some people who are very text-based and they absorb information, ideas readily through text. There are other people who are more centered on the auditory. There are other people who need more of the visual. And through poetry video, we can incorporate and intertwine all of these elements, all the sensory elements onto the screen. So there is something that can be heard, there's something that can often be read and experienced with music, with the rhythm coming through the visuals.

When all those different aspects are brought into play, sometimes you can unearth the unconscious reaction to the poem that the poem is trying to communicate. So when I've gone to poetry video festivals, I've seen wonderful poetry videos that I know if I'd just seen the poem, I would not have loved in the same way. Because I mean, originally of course poetry was meant to be an oral kind of experience. There would be the bard who would be strumming his or her lute and people would be listening because many thousands of years ago, not everyone was literate, but they could sit and hear a story told through poetry.

I think that's the same case now. Not everybody has the time and focus to look at text. And for some people who look at text, it doesn't tap into the other senses. But with the poetry video experience, it's all there, all brought in into the few minutes, distilled with color, with sound, and different kinds of collaged imagery, whether it's animation or it's live action. And it's like an orchestra. It can really bring a poem to life. (See Fiona's videos here: Fiona's poetry videos)

Kyeren Regehr: Wow. I love the way you're describing this. It makes me want to make a film about a poem.

Fiona Tinwei Lam: Well, I hope you do.

Kyeren Regehr: Can you share an example, Fiona, of when a poem's meaning deepened or changed for you through its adaptation into film?

Fiona Tinwei Lam: There are a couple of them. I thought of Kate Flaherty. She's an Ontario poet who does poetry videos and she's got several of them. She tends to use live action rather than animation for the most part, but there was one that I remember that she was reciting in a very snowy landscape and into a park or cemetery about her mother's dementia, entitled "Far Away." And this poetry video was so beautiful. She recited it beautifully, number one. But number two, the landscape, the background, the movement as she's walking through this snowy environment, really brought out the cadence and the rhythm of her words and the way she would suddenly look at the camera also would highlight certain phrases.

There was another poetry video, I can't remember the name of it. It was a very low-budget one, and it was done with different voices saying phrases in different languages from the poem along with the toning of a bell. And that would not have worked on a page. You would've just seen a bunch of different phrases in different languages. I could imagine it if maybe it was written with different colors and different fonts, and maybe if it had been written in a different shape. But I think for most people to immediately sort of receive that kind of poem, within five or 10 seconds immediately you would receive it through the ears, as well as with the way the colors and the overlaid collages would appear to you. It was very immersive that way.

Kyeren Regehr: Wow. I have to look that up now.

Fiona Tinwei Lam: I have on my website a poetry video resource for the public to consult. It has a list of all the poetry video festivals that are easy to apply to through FilmFreeway, as well as examples of poetry videos and some articles about how to make poetry videos. Kate Flaherty's poetry videos are listed there. And there's one that I wanted to mention as well. That's a beautiful one. It's called, This is Africa or TIA and it has a dancer dancing in front of a surging river, dancing in different venues, by some homes, on the streets and so forth, while the poem is being recited and the text appears of the poem as subtitles and it is so impactful. It's very, very effective in showing this particular part of the world through dance, through the river, through cityscapes, and through text. So it's all available. I want people to make poetry videos. If you can check out that site, all the information is there for you. (Access the resource list: Poetry Video Resources for Poets)

Kyeren Regehr: And I'll put that in the show notes too. That's an amazing resource, Fiona. Now before visuals and sound, before the public project, what does your poetry practice look like at its source? How do poems emerge for you?

Fiona Tinwei Lam: Poetry can arrive in different ways and one just has to be really receptive to those little tendrils that are waving in the air so that you can reach out and tug them and capture them before they disappear and start appearing for somebody else. So it might be a word or a phrase or an image. It could be a line in another poem, it could be a painting, it could be a photograph, it could be even something you overhear, a line of dialogue or conversation that might lead you into a poem. All these potential portals exist all around us. We just need to pay attention to them.

So once I actually do write down that phrase or idea to make sure it doesn't elude me, then it takes some time for me to sit down uninterrupted somewhere to fill out a page of words and ideas without censoring myself and fill a page that way. Or if I don't have a pencil or a piece of paper around me, usually there's a receipt or something like that I can use to write. But if not, I can try typing something out on my phone—that's not ideal though. Or I can even record something on my phone, and then take that home to do a free write afterwards.

After I have those words on the page, whether it's handwritten or typed, then I'll go back and I'll circle or underline or put asterisks besides the most important phrases or ideas, and then try to do another free write based on those, or bring those together on the page to find if there's another way of arranging them, organizing them. If other words flow from them, I might have to go and revisit them a week or two weeks or a month, or even a year later. Preferably sooner is better. But slowly the poem will come together.

Kyeren Regehr: That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your process. I'm sure that will be very useful for people to listen to that and maybe try things they haven't tried before. Critics have praised the tightly constructed lines in your work. Your poems often feel deeply distilled and as if they're pared down to their essential resonance. And I think we kind of get an idea of how you do that now. How do you know when a line is saying exactly what it needs to and nothing more?

Fiona Tinwei Lam: Sometimes you do know that and sometimes you don't. I think there can be times when we try to embellish too much and make a poem too ornate. Not that we're necessarily trying to show off our rhetorical skills unnecessarily, but there might be times when we think the point isn't getting across, but we've maybe said it four or five times. So we need to find the best form, the best way.

I think when we read it aloud, that's when we know. And when I read my work out aloud, that's when I find out that there are excess words or I'm stumbling, the phrase is too long, the words aren't quite right. But I think the revision process is where the real writing occurs. Mary Oliver talks about in her book, The Poetry Handbook, that it took her maybe 40 times for any particular revision of a particular poem. And I think that's true. Could be 30 or 40 times. It's very rare that a poem comes out whole right away, perfect. There's always some kind of tweaking. It could be punctuation—the punctuation is very important—or the line breaks, or the stanza breaks, how it looks on the page, which will really change so much about the poem.

So there are times yes, the muse will speak and it will be channeled directly onto the page with very, very little alteration. But that's a very rare experience. Most of the time there's a lot of tweaking, a lot of refining, just like making a musical instrument. There might be a lot of sanding, polishing and tweaking, shaving, and so forth, and even tuning as well. So it's the same. The poem is a kind of instrument and it might take a little bit of work to get to the final stage where everything's in tune.

Kyeren Regehr: Do you find that you move from head to heart, from control to intuition and then kind of back again?

Fiona Tinwei Lam: I think it starts from heart and then to head, from intuition and then to control. But then, yes, it does go back and forth depending on the poem, especially for a long poem. Yes, definitely.

Kyeren Regehr: Thank you, Fiona, for all of these wonderful answers. Would you please read us another poem? And listeners, after this poem, there'll be a brief guitar interlude for you to rest and to reflect.

Fiona Tinwei Lam: The next poem is a collaborative poem. It's called "Splash," and I'm not gonna read it myself because I think hearing the students from this Grade 5 / Grade 6 class reading it will be much more engaging. This was a very special poem that I assembled from the lines of 27, Grade 5 and Grade 6 beautiful poets from a class who were asked to write about Vivian Jung, who was the first Chinese Canadian teacher hired by the Vancouver School Board in 1951.

And this particular teacher played a key role in the desegregation of public pools in the lower mainland. A lot of people don't realize that segregation was part of BC's history, Canadian history, Vancouver's history. Not just something that happened in the Deep South in the United States. And in Vancouver and in Victoria, there was the Crystal Garden Pool and the Crystal Pool, both which were segregated against people of color. And Vivian Jung was part of a group of student teachers who needed to take a life-saving course in order to become certified as teachers at the time.

And so the students of Tecumseh Elementary School in East Vancouver were tasked with commemorating this very special woman. They came from a school which was the school that hired the teacher who worked there for over two decades. And so they had her daughter come and speak to the class and then asked me to lead a poetry workshop for the students to write the poems. I was supposed to come in only for an hour, but it ended up being a little more than that. Because of course, as I'm a revise-aholic, I wanted students to also realize that the first drafts were not the final draft. So I came in to help them with revision and gave them feedback. So they went through two revision processes until they got it just right, and then they created a chapbook of all their poems.

And then I wanted to bring the whole class together and create a collaborative poem or a cento. So I took a line from each of their poems, rearranged it, added a few bits and pieces here and there, for example, the last line, to make it cohere and be consistent with point of view to create a poem about this very special woman, her experience in that scenario with facing segregation and how she overcame that with the help of her classmates. And then how she came to teach at Tecumseh Elementary for those few decades.

And if you are interested in seeing a version of the poem and learning more, there was a wonderful article that I wrote for The Tyee all about it, and I hope you enjoy it. (Read the article: The Tyee article about Vivian Jung) (Watch the poetry video: "Ode to Vivian Jung")

Poem Reading: "Splash"

By Fiona Tinwei Lam and the Grade 5/6 Students of Division 6, Tecumseh Elementary

(Read by the Students)

At the segregated Crystal Pool. Crystal clear waters, crystal clear rules. Shimmering shining pool of dreams for those of the right race. The Parks Board permitting only two hours a week for Asians and Blacks to swim. It started small, like a bright star shining. Vivian waited in line, ready to learn, needing a lifesaving certificate to become a P.E. teacher. Pool staff tried to turn her away, "You can't enter here," but she knew she was right. Born in Marpole, B.C., she too has sung "O Canada" all her life. Her coach and fellow students refused to enter the pool without her. Those friends, those allies fighting for the rights of all Asians and Blacks. United in courage, the courage to say we are equal. They didn't back down. Doors that were closed were then flung wide open. Diving board springing unfiltered laughter, splash. Vivian jumped off the diving board into refreshing freedom, into equality. So clear and clean, the pool gleaming, sparkling, glittered now, accessible to everyone. Imagine the pride she felt. Exclusion from pools no more. When she broke the colour ban, she broke down rigid minds, made a whole city know she was right and swam into teaching for 35 glorious years. What a wonderful teacher she would become, an inspiration. First Chinese Canadian teacher hired by the Vancouver School Board, coaching girls’ volleyball teams to city championships, sharing her love of softball, dance and phys ed at Tecumseh Elementary for decades. How do we solve inequality? Thank you Vivian and allies for showing us the way.

[GUITAR INTERLUDE]

Kyeren Regehr: Thank you, Fiona. This episode of the Poet Laureate Podcast is sponsored by both The Tyee and Canadian Literature.

Sponsor: Canadian Literature

Canadian Literature is Canada's foremost journal for literary scholarship. Canadian Literature publishes essays and reviews about literary and cultural objects produced in or about the lands known as Canada, as well as contemporary Canadian poetry. An upcoming issue will explore the late professor Y-Dang Troeung's capacious thinking on migration, memory, family, and autobiography through the lens of transnational Asian literatures and critical refugee studies. Please order an individual copy, subscribe, or check out past issues at canlit.ca.

Kyeren Regehr: Fiona, your poetry often moves with clarity across sorrow and tenderness or loss and praise. How do you hold these opposites together in a single piece or within a book?

Fiona Tinwei Lam: I think it's really important to go where the poem itself is leading you. Yes, the poem will tell you where it wants to go, and it might take you from one end of the world to another end of the world, from one emotion to another. I talked about poems as portals, but sometimes words themselves are portals and you don't know where you'll go. Sometimes I don't even know what I'm feeling until I write it down and then I realize, oh my goodness, I've suddenly descended into grief and loss when I thought this was gonna be a happy celebratory poem.

Of course, there's yin and yang in every experience. Mary Oliver, I quote her again, a favorite poet, tells us to pay attention, that paying attention is a way of learning and growing. Attention is the beginning of devotion. We become really close to understanding what we actually feel, what we actually want to say. The insights, the wisdom that is buried there. It takes a lot of mining to get there, a lot of focus and a lot of quiet to bring it to the surface. It's a deep dive.

So when there's both happiness and sadness, they are really two sides of the same coin, and many different shades in between. And bringing them together is a kind of wholeness actually. Taking the shards and splinters and sadness, the despair, and bringing back some kind of wholeness or understanding that can bring us peace or perhaps motivate us to act. It could be more than tranquility. It could be activism. It could be a desire for social change. It's those metaphors and those symbols that we can tap into.

Kyeren Regehr: Yes, really wise words. Thank you, Fiona. Many of your poems hold potent images of ancestry and migration and cultural memory. Do you feel your Chinese Canadian heritage has helped to shape your poetic voice? Maybe not necessarily in terms of content, but perhaps in rhythm, restraint, sensibility, other things?

Fiona Tinwei Lam: I'd say that music has been the greatest influence. My mother played the piano. She played classical piano and the accordion and the pipe organ and the ukulele, and would figure out any instrument that was put into her hands. And I found that listening to the cadences, the phrases, the expression that she could bring through her hands and through her breath to instruments really influenced me and impacted me. I didn't know it at the time, of course. Sometimes it was pretty loud, I would cover my ears or run away. But I also learned the piano, and I'm learning the guitar right now because I want to emulate what she did and how she could express herself so beautifully.

I feel it's music that is so close to poetry and has informed what I try and aspire to do with words. I don't speak Mandarin or Cantonese, except in a few phrases here and there for niceties and greetings and maybe for a few favorite dishes, dim sum, that kind of thing. And my mother really wanted us to speak English as our first language. I can understand a little bit of Chinese, but, and of course I can understand French from high school and a little bit of Spanish from learning Spanish. But even though I want to learn those other languages and I keep trying to learn other languages, I think the language of music is the primary one for me.

Kyeren Regehr: Amazing. Fiona, what keeps tugging at your poetic voice? What themes or questions do you find yourself returning to right now?

Fiona Tinwei Lam: With the climate crisis, there are a lot of symbols and metaphors around that draw me to wanting to address that. In the past few years, plastic pollution was a huge concern because I felt that people were not paying attention to the news articles and the research about microplastics and nanoplastics and their impact on the body and our ecosystems affecting birds and fish and so forth. So there was a time I was exploring concrete poetry and trying to use video poetry and concrete poetry together to communicate the seriousness and ubiquitousness of plastic pollution. I've moved beyond that and now I'm trying to address other climate crisis issues as well as continuing with themes of family and love and loss. But I'm very eclectic. I just got a diagnosis actually last fall of ADHD and that explains why I like poetry, 'cause I can write in short bouts and short concentrated bouts and I can write about very different things. And one day it might be environmental, another day it might be a family-oriented poem. Another day it might be something about a flower. So I'm very eclectic and now I understand why.

Kyeren Regehr: Fiona, thank you so much for your presence and your words. It's been amazing to hear about your eclectic poetry, the film, and just the richness of what you've done with students and what you've offered the public is quite remarkable. Thank you for sharing it. And thank you again to The Tyee and Canadian Literature for supporting this episode of the Poet Laureate podcast. Fiona Tinwei Lam's impressive biography can be found on the podcast website and in the notes. And books by Fiona can be ordered online or in person at all good independent bookstores. Please do check out Fiona's website and dive into her poetry links. If this episode meant something to you, please share it with someone who might need poetry today. That's how this little ripple travels. And Fiona, would you be willing to leave us with a final poem?

Fiona Tinwei Lam: Absolutely. This is a very short poem. It's called "Covenant," and it's an erasure poem. Usually an erasure poem is a visual poem that you would see on the page. You can see it in Canadian Literature if you look up the link, but I'll read the excerpt on which it's based first, and then I'll read the erasure poem.

So some of you may know that there were restrictive covenants put on properties all over the province and all over the country. What is a restrictive covenant? It's a type of legal promise about the use of a particular property that anyone buying that property must adhere to. And restrictive covenants will restrict how that property can be used by whoever owns that property. This particular restrictive covenant dealt with race and many of us don't know that so many of the properties, the houses, the buildings were not permitted for use or inhabitation by Blacks, First Nations, Asians, Jewish people, et cetera. This particular restrictive covenant stated the following:

"No poultry, swine, sheep, cows, cattle, or other livestock shall be kept on the premises. No person of the African or Asiatic race, or of African or Asiatic descent, except servants of the occupier of the premises in residence shall reside or be allowed to remain on the premises."

So this was an excerpt of a restrictive covenant on a West Vancouver property, similar to those still registered on properties throughout British Columbia. So here is the erasure poem. I used my mother's watercolor ink and her Chinese calligraphy pen to black out the text that I no longer wanted and to keep the text that I wanted to remain as the poem.

Poem Reading: "Covenant"

No other. No race.

All allowed. Africans, Asians, all shall reside, all shall remain, all shall allow all to remain.

[OUTRO MUSIC]

Show Notes & Links

• Sponsors:
  • The Tyee: thetyee.ca
  • Canadian Literature: canlit.ca
• Fiona Tinwei Lam's Projects & Resources:
  • City Poems Project
  • City Poems Project Publication: A free e-publication that includes winning poems from the city-wide contest, poems from published poets about local sites, plus links to the VPL YouTube channel with poetry videos.
  • City Poems Project Resource List for Teachers: Contains links to over a dozen poetry videos along with the text of the poems related to local sites.
  • Poetry Video Resources for Poets: Links to articles, videos, and festivals related to poetry videos.
  • The Tyee article about Vivian Jung: Featuring the collaborative class poem, "Splash."
  • Poetry video, "Ode to Vivian Jung"
  • Gift: the Uyeda cherry tree donation: Blog post with background on the poem.
  • Fiona's poetry videos: Including "Omelet," "Aquarium," "plasticpoems," and more.