Poet Laureate Podcast: Episode 7 - Yvonne Blomer

Introduction

(The episode begins with Yvonne Blomer reading "Cutting Hades' Hair.")

Hackles up, Stephanie’s a storm down the stained stairs to Uncle H’s souvlaki, her new hatred of the underground and a lifetime of trouble bubbling up, mice scurrying inside her. The man she calls Uncle H, the ritual of cutting his hair. She’s already decided freedom is a life without him, free of his cloying flowers, his snakey presence. She goes to his souvlaki in the underground, truth a torture on her mind, slings an old towel around his shoulders, ready to cut his curled and graying hair, no longer secure in his company. She goes to dig for the seeds of truth. Mother not lost her. Taken. So this stranger who knows her so well, this Helios, says. She goes for Uncle H’s story or lie. She flinches as he holds her hand, wrist to his nose. He knows but hovers the way he always has, breathes her in before he sits and she snips and sweeps and wants to leave. I know you marked me, she says, sharp quiver in her voice, but he coughs, he coughs over her. I met Mom’s friend. What did you do? He ignores her. Hey Stephanie, can you trim a little more around the ears? He does not drink but always sounds drunk. Then, 'Before my brother died, I attacked a girl.' His cough, long and hollow in the chest, interrupts. That cough, something he feigns. What? Say that again. Uncle H, say something true. Attacked. What do you mean? Slow heat surges in her, his violence a truth. What did you do to me? His throaty bray. I took you. Your mother—she never left you. What do you mean? Go find your mom. I can’t stand your hate. More fake coughing. He watches her. She snips and snips and snips, the scissors a weapon, a tool. Here, these are yours. He pulls something from under the towel, so prepared she thinks, tosses a stack of postcards to the floor, her birth certificate on top, more throaty hacking. She snips and snips around his gray flapping ears, snip she snips, hate is a rising bile, bone cracking in its wake. Tell me more. She lets the blade hover, lets it slip. Ouch, Stephanie. She throws him a damp cloth, sweeps and sweeps at the gray curls. She could be any age, five or ten, fifteen. She’s 21. She leaves, scoops the postcards, the legal certificate on top, from the floor, his cut hairs in the creases, turns, mouth open to pant a silent scream from his underground. She rises, fury a shield against grief. She breaks to the surface, breathes the traffic, bakery, breath, shoves the postcards into her bag, pushes her body into a run. Wishes ancient Greece or flapping a Yaya's hands fussing over one more thread, not Uncle H wanting everything.

Interview

Kyeren: Welcome to the Poet Laureate Podcast, a luminous sanctuary for poetry and reflection. Recorded at Haus of Owl Creation Labs in Victoria, BC, on Lekwungen Homelands. I'm Kyeren Rae, and Episode Seven of the Poet Laureate Podcast is supported by Bolen Books. Independently owned and run by women of the Bolen family since 1975, as Western Canada's largest single-location independent bookstore, Bolen Books has been a cornerstone of Victoria's literary life for 50 years. With over 30,000 titles on the shelves, including works by internationally renowned authors and rising Canadian voices, they remain a beloved space for readers of all ages. Visit the store on Hillside Avenue or discover more at bolenbooks.com and find out why Bolen Books continues to be Victoria's number one bookstore.

We just heard "Cutting Hades' Hair" by Yvonne Blomer, who was the fourth Poet Laureate of Victoria. Welcome, Yvonne, and thank you for being here.

Yvonne: Thank you, Kyeren. It's great to be here.

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

Yvonne: I started this collection, Death of Persephone, and my Persephone was much younger than in the myth, and I made her Stephanie rather than Persephone. And I wanted there to be moments in the series of poems where she released herself from her uncle, Uncle H in the book, Hades in the myth. And so this poem gave a way for him to kind of, for once, be honest, and for her to cut herself free.

Kyeren: Very cool. This is in your newest collection, uh, a Caitlin Press book, and it reframes myth through like a contemporary lens of danger and witness and survivorship.

Yvonne: Yeah. Yeah.

Kyeren: When a poet enters a living myth, there's both power and risk. What first tucked you towards Persephone?

Yvonne: I think part of it was that idea of a "young maiden." So how do you define the age of a young maiden who's taken? And I had an argument with this hypersexualized queen of the underground that this young girl becomes. And so that's where it started for me. Mm-hmm. And also the book is loosely set in Montreal, and I got very lost in the underground metro system there. And it's such a rich space. There's underground malls, so much... people can travel underground in Montreal. And I was like, "Oh, this is cool. This could be the underworld is the subway system." So I think those two things were going on. So place, mm-hmm, and myth, and kind of marrying those two together.

Kyeren: And your subconscious birthed this.

Yvonne: Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Kyeren: What ethical touchstones guided you in depicting violence against women? There's a lot of violence in the book.

Yvonne: There is. And that was a big struggle. I wanted to explore violence to women without writing the violence. And ultimately I did have to. So I have a poem in here where I kind of explore that. In the time that I was writing it, I had a residency in Vernon and I'd gone to the gym there. And of course, it was an uncomfortable space to be in because of course, everyone looks at the women in a gym, in this particular instance. And I was like, "What if every act of violence was actually just a first kiss?"

Kyeren: Wow.

Yvonne: And so I kind of switched... I kind of played with that. Like, what if I had gone hiking and there was a bear warning, and I was like, what if an attack by a bear was also just a first kiss? I kind of played off these ideas to hide the violence or change the violence, but ultimately I did have to write the poem in which she's killed. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyeren: And when you navigated through that, you know, what are some of the things that sort of arose for you in terms of, you know, like what did you cut, what did you have to add, you know, where did you struggle with that?

Yvonne: Yeah, I very much... I had many poems of women walking the city, and I cut some of those. And I think part of that was that notion of women taking back the night was playing in there. And if women felt safe just to walk through a city and didn't have to think about anything...

Kyeren: Or hold their car keys.

Yvonne: Yeah, right. All those things. There's been this... like I recently saw a study: "Men, what do you do to prepare to go to walk home on a late night?" And the men are like, "Nothing." And the women's list is, you know, 20 things long, what they do. And so I wanted also the character of Stephanie to sort of have this sense of owning the city. So she knows this city so well, so she's not afraid to go down the alleys and she loves those spaces, and yet she's caught. And then when she is caught, some of the violence of the poem... she's murdered. I'm not giving anything away, it's in the title... is her leaving DNA evidence. So she's very determined to leave as much evidence as she can of her murder and her death.

Kyeren: I found that a really interesting choice because there's power and control in that.

Yvonne: Yeah. Yeah. And so even in this terrible act, she's taken some of that back for herself. Yeah. Yeah, it was tricky though. Yeah. Pretty tricky. Tricky, tricky. And then she's a ghost after. She's the shade of Persephone. Mm-hmm. And she's pretty angry as the shade of Persephone. And I read some poems recently that represent kind of the city as a character with a friend, and he was like, "These poems are so angry." I think I felt that if myth is a way for our previous selves to understand the world we live in, I want to break that understanding so that we don't have to allow for such a patriarchal world anymore. You know, like, mm-hmm, can we not rewrite the myths for the world we'd rather live in, than the world is run by men and where violence is done to women? Am I wishful thinking or something?

Kyeren: Were you surprised to have that much anger arise within yourself through these poems?

Yvonne: I guess it came both through doing research on the mythology and getting to know the Persephone myth from varying sources, right, and in being out in the world as a woman. So the two things came together. Yeah. So lots of experiences the character in the book has, I had as well, sometimes while I was researching it. Like I have a poem where she's walking down the street and she as a character... men are so interested in her. So I allowed her to have that kind of goddess draw, I think. Mm-hmm. And so that men are constantly watching her. And in one moment when I was in Old Montreal doing research, I was followed by a man, and that became a poem in the book.

Kyeren: Wow, there was this parallel.

Yvonne: Yeah. Yeah.

Kyeren: Did it feel like a reclaiming of what you'd lost in being followed?

Yvonne: I think it felt like I could kind of dissect the moments of it. And as a person, maybe as a woman, when something like that happens, you're like, "Oh, is this okay or not? I'm not sure." Mm-hmm. So this man caught my eye as I crossed the street and I was like, "Oh, I shouldn't catch people's eye." You know? So I went through all that process and I allowed that in the poem. Like, so the woman's second-guessing or wondering, how should I behave out in the world and what is that saying? Which is interesting as well. Right.

Kyeren: Which very interesting, is imposing something on ourselves.

Yvonne: Yes. And how we are in the world.

Kyeren: What we've been taught to do.

Yvonne: What we've been taught to do. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So it was fascinating for that.

Kyeren: It's an incredibly polyvocal book. I'm wondering about the shape of the work aloud and whether you read it aloud to really refine those voices.

Yvonne: Yes, I did. And particularly, the poems that represent the detective in the book are written in sonnets, and I wanted him to sound a little different. I wanted him to sound kind of noir detective. Mm-hmm. And so very much, and of course they're linked sonnets, but are separated throughout the book. So I had to lay them side by side as well and read them together to see how they flow, made sure they flowed together. Yeah. And younger Stephanie, and as she gets older, and Hades' tone of voice and those kinds of things. So yeah, it was important. Uh, I think my poems tend to have a lot of sound quality, a lot of rhyme, internal rhyme. Mm-hmm. And so I need to hear that when I'm working on the poems as well.

Kyeren: And then of course, you're now touring it and you've taken it to the stage. So how has that transition been for you?

Yvonne: Um, this is the first book I've written where the poems tell a narrative story, that they're very linked to each other. I think they stand almost on their own, but they're really part of a larger series. So when I'm selecting poems to read, sometimes the struggle is what to select in order to give people a sense of the book without giving anything away and without, you know, without having to overexplain and all of that kind of thing. I'm not sure what your question was though. It's gone right outta my head.

Kyeren: Just how, what, how the experience, you know, having them come out into the world. Because there's something that happens when you read to the audience, is that feedback that you get and...

Yvonne: Yeah. And I really want to allow for the shifts in tone and mood and mischief. She's a mischief, you know, because she's a young girl in the underground. The underground is her uncle's souvlaki restaurant, and she's trying to push his boundaries like any young girl does. And I want to allow for her mischief there. And also, I have poems that are kind of thematic capture, they're more overarching poems, um, like a poem about the bat and a poem about the macaw. And those are creatures that are linked to Persephone. Mm-hmm. And in those ones, I had a lot of fun playing with tone and kind of angle at how they come. You know, it's about the fruit bat, but it's also about the girl, right? And sort of play off those.

Kyeren: You have Diana as graffiti artist as well.

Yvonne: That's right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot going on.

Kyeren: There's a lot. People might be interested to know how long it took you to write such a book with so many voices.

Yvonne: It took a very long time. Yeah. Um, so I did research. I started in 2009.

Kyeren: Wow.

Yvonne: And it came out in 2024.

Kyeren: There you go.

Yvonne: Of course I was doing other things at the same time, so other books came out and that kind of thing. But I think the final push, I'd written a whole bunch of poems and then I needed to go back and learn how to do a kind of narrative structure, mm-hmm, and reshape the whole thing. So. Yeah.

Kyeren: You have done a lot of other things during that time, as you said.

Yvonne: Yes.

Kyeren: Including putting out three anthologies.

Yvonne: Yes.

Kyeren: And so I'm wondering if we can switch gears to your environmental curation across the Caitlin Press Anthologies: Refugium: Poems for the Pacific, Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds, and the third book in the triptych is Sublime: Poems for Vanishing Ice. And that's coming out next year.

Yvonne: Yeah, that's right. Yep.

Kyeren: So with so many voices now focused on this crisis, do you feel a relief or a rising urgency?

Yvonne: I feel a rising urgency. Mm-hmm. I think moving towards ice has escalated my sense of urgency in many ways. Mm-hmm. I started with the Pacific. It was my proposal for what I would do as Poet Laureate, was "save the Pacific Ocean," because you know, why not? I loved the ideas about things and I felt like, I always thought that the notion of Refugium, which is like a place that's a refuge, that that book of poems might become the only place in the future where many of those creatures live anymore.

Kyeren: It's terrifying.

Yvonne: So it was a heavy, heavy weight. And at the time of Refugium, sea stars had that awful virus and they were melting away. Mm-hmm. But a few years after the book came out, the sea stars were recovering. So it felt kind of like, "Oh, I've done it." Not really, only in the most imaginative way, but, you know. Um, but with Sweet Water, our watersheds are in so much trouble. Yeah. You know, and now with ice, I mean it's terrifying. I think the loss of ice is terrifying. It really is. And the books, all three of them capture the human joy of these water systems and the fear of loss or the loss of them. So they kind of do both. They move between those spaces.

Kyeren: Yeah. I love how you... the variety of poems about water that you have included.

Yvonne: You always get many poems of particular creatures, mm-hmm, and then have to select. And, but I like the poems that come at it a little bit at an angle or a little...

Kyeren: Yeah. Sideways.

Yvonne: Yeah, a little sideways. So, yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Kyeren: Yeah. After all of this work with water, have you thought about what poetry owes the living world? What we owe the living world as poets.

Yvonne: Yeah. That's such a huge question. I mean, I worry often. I feel that poetry's so important. Mm-hmm. And, but the notion of what does poetry owe the living world? I mean, I just think human beings, you know, the damage that we enact is so astonishing. And, um, poetry is a kind of not-damage. So I guess other than, yeah. Yeah. So I guess I'm hoping that what poetry can do is get people who read the poetry, or and people who write poetry, to not damage as much or to think about what we're doing more so that we can change a bit more.

Kyeren: Yeah. A little bit more quickly as well. I wonder too, because there's so much crisis in the world, right? Yeah. What you think about poetry as a form of respite?

Yvonne: I guess I would say that poetry has a duty to respond to the world. Mm-hmm. And but the response can also be a respite. Yeah. It doesn't have to be... I think it's deep focus, and I think deep focus is good. Reading, reading poetry is focused time and writing poetry is. And perhaps that will enable us to change or to think about what we do. I'm not sure though. Mm-hmm. I'm not sure. Yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah. They're big questions. I really appreciate you tackling them.

Yvonne: Yeah, no, that's, yeah. I mean, of course I think I've tackled them with each of those anthologies too. Mm-hmm. And yeah, what are we doing here? And I know that in Refugium I quote Tim Lilburn, who had a lot to do with... he attended... so poets were invited to science conferences, mm-hmm, a few years ago. And the scientists wanted the poets to write about what was happening in ways that scientists felt they couldn't. And I thought that was very powerful. That poetry isn't necessarily facts, but poetry is a kind of truth. And the poet can imagine what could or could not happen. And I. I like that for its power and its play and the immediacy of it, right? Mm-hmm.

Kyeren: Yeah. I kind of think of poetry as entering us, like music when we hear it aloud, you know?

Yvonne: Exactly. Yeah. And it enters us differently. It might not go through the brain, it might go through some other body part.

Kyeren: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, as an anthologist you're shaping a chorus, and I'm wondering how you balance your own aesthetics with contributor range. And, you know, especially when a poem's beauty risks, softening the crisis it names, what conversations help keep urgency and accuracy in tune without muting the poet's voices?

Yvonne: I think what happens in an anthology is it's like a biodiversity. So the anthology is a diversity of voices, and so it allows... When one poem sits alongside another very different poem, there's a conversation between how those poems sit with each other. And I think that's a powerful part of an anthology. And I don't... that's part of why I don't just put the poets in by alphabet.

Kyeren: Yeah.

Yvonne: I section them and I try to... I move through kind of joy and grief in how I order the book to allow that kind of, you know, how do we engage with this watery substance? How are we altering this watery substance? Mm-hmm. And how are we grieving this watery substance? Mm-hmm. And so, yeah. I'm not sure that answers your question again.

Kyeren: No, you know, it does. It's, it's beautiful. And thinking of it as a... what did you say? Ecosystem?

Yvonne: Biodiversity.

Kyeren: Yeah, biodiversity. Yeah. Makes so much sense.

Yvonne: I think often people don't read poetry books in order as well, right? So people might just open randomly and then they might think, "Oh, these three poems together. Oh, that's so interesting." And then they might go to the beginning and start from the beginning.

Kyeren: Yes.

Yvonne: Which is kind of fun. And I think, um, with Sweet Water, I had the poets each write a small paragraph on the region that their poem was set, so on the watershed that their poem belonged to. And I didn't do that with Refugium because it was the Pacific Ocean. And I haven't done that with Sublime either. But it was nice for this Sweet Water poem so that people would know what water system is being spoken about and what the poet's link to that system was as well. We had that diversity right across the country. Mm-hmm.

Kyeren: Yeah, it's amazing. You know, much of your own writing moves through environmental concerns, obviously, and you navigate praise and song and elegy. And I'm wondering how you move through that tension without slipping into the eco-pastoral on one side or the eco-despair on the other. You know, what feels honest and hopeful upon the page or necessary?

Yvonne: Yeah. It's very tricky to not fall into grief too much. Mm-hmm. And I think eco-pastoral, I feel like probably I'm always... I have, and I'm not sure this is necessarily good or bad, but I always have some concern going on in the back of my mind when I'm writing the poems, especially poems focused on climate change. Mm-hmm. And so even if it's more straightforward capturing of a beautiful scene, it's gonna have the underbelly of the concern sitting there. And so, yes. Yeah. And I think, um, going the other way, thinking too much about climate grief, I'm not too worried about leaving people feeling hopeless. So I'm not sure that's very kind of me, but I sometimes, as with Persephone, with those poems, I also don't mind being a little bit angry.

Kyeren: Yeah. The grief and the anger are necessary.

Yvonne: Yeah. Yeah. And it's part of where your poems are hitting, right?

Kyeren: Yeah. And where they're coming from.

Yvonne: Thank you. And sometimes a little tongue in cheek too, so...

Kyeren: Yes. Yeah. Notice that with your work.

Yvonne: Yes. There's mischief in me.

Kyeren: Mischief in you that comes out. It spills.

Yvonne: Yeah.

Kyeren: Staying with that idea of leaving people in the darker places. Let's step out of the stands and into, uh, you know, your public work. I'm wondering, you know, after a decade of curating and directing Planet Earth Poetry and your Victoria Poet Laureate term all the way through to the legacy poem on a stone at Little Ross Bay, you've placed language in a shared space and built community around poetry. How have you seen poetry change people?

Yvonne: I think, um, the most beautiful thing is to see someone who's not really been exposed to poetry, be exposed to it for the first time, or who didn't expect poetry to be at something they were going to, and there's poetry there and they're like, "Huh, this is different." I think it's really important. I think poetry and mathematics both get these kind of bad raps that they're, you know, hard to understand or difficult to entry. And poetry is not. I think Planet Earth Poetry was a huge community of people interested in poetry. Then that could spill into people who weren't so sure about poetry and draw them in. But I think the poet laureateship... I just remember part of the kind of role or the definition of the role was to bring poetry to areas where poetry isn't usually found. I love that part of it. I thought that was such great fun and such a great and important thing to do. So I can remember The Belfry had a play on about Leonard Cohen. Mm-hmm. And many of the people who'd come to see it weren't thinking of him as a poet, and it was really fun to remind them that actually this is a poet, won the Governor General's Award.

Kyeren: Yeah. What are some of your, or maybe one of your favorite moments during your tenure? You had a long tenure.

Yvonne: I had a long tenure, so it was four years when I did it. There were a lot of great moments, I think. I had done so much sort of external out in the city doing things, and then one of the city people said, "Why don't you do something in your last year that's more a celebration of... that would interest you and a celebration of your work?" Mm-hmm. And I worked with Robert Bateman and wrote poems in response to... I got to choose the paintings. I got to curate the show. In fact, it was really incredible. It was an incredible thing. It was when the Bateman Centre was still downtown. It's not there anymore. And that was great. It was really incredible to work with such a fine artist and to write poems in response to them. It was incredible. The whole thing was quite incredible.

Kyeren: It's absolutely...

Yvonne: And I would never have done that, you know, I was much more pushing out than thinking in. So it was really lovely also to consider. And they were very environmentally minded and based, because Robert Bateman is. Yes. And, and also they were a little playful 'cause I was... I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted to with the images I chose. So that was, yeah, it was beautiful.

Kyeren: Thank you, Yvonne. Would you please read us another poem?

Yvonne: Sure. So I've been thinking about the water anthologies, and honestly, Death of Persephone is a climate-focused book as well, mm-hmm, because Persephone's so tied to the natural world. And I'm gonna go back to an earlier book, my book As If a Raven, mm-hmm, and read a slightly angry poem. Um, and this poem is a palindrome, "Audubon Still Life," and it begins with a quote from the Everglades Digital Library:

"His technique consisted of shooting as many birds of the same species as possible so that he could use them as models for his life size paintings."

Audubon Still Life

What was nest has been skimmed for bone structure, feather luster. Feathers, beaks, fine-boned wings, things that have gone missing from trees. Children will not scream, will study the pretty birds unflown. Feasted on by fox or hound. No. Consumed by eye, finger, palate, and brush. To capture with rigor death. Consumed by eye, finger, palate, and brush. Not feasted on by fox or hound. No. The pretty birds unflown. Children will not scream, will study things that have gone missing from trees: feathers, beaks, fine-boned wings, for bone structure, feather luster. What was nest has been skimmed.

Kyeren: That was a really powerful piece, Yvonne. That really got me. Um, maybe we can move to The Last Show on Earth. You have a lot of environmental poems in that book too, but you also write with openness about your son's Prader-Willi syndrome and autism and about your mother's dementia. I'm wondering about your writing living alongside family care and mothering a neurodivergent child and, you know, how care has reshaped your aesthetics.

Yvonne: Yeah, I think, um, I started writing about my son very early on. He was born with Prader-Willi Syndrome, and we knew by six weeks that that's what he had. And so the writing then, I think, was in a way, a way of sorting through my feelings and emotions and thoughts about that. Mm-hmm. Also moved beyond the sorting through into poetry and into also nonfiction. And I think my mom with her dementia became neurodivergent as well. Yes. And so we just become very skilled in managing that because of my son. So it was all... it all seemed, I don't know, somehow part of... just part of life. I think it would've been easy to not keep writing, actually.

Kyeren: Exactly.

Yvonne: Yeah. My first book came out about a week before my son was born, which I think was helpful. I got a grant the year my son was born, which was also helpful. And so the things that could have stalled or moved me away from poetry with his birth didn't. And that was great.

Kyeren: Thank goodness.

Yvonne: Yeah. Yeah. Thank goodness. Sometimes I don't want to write about myself and then I write, you know, novel poems based on myths or As If a Raven is also an argument with biblical literature and how birds are used. So I go outside and then sometimes I do write about myself. So it's, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah. I think that people would be interested to know how you keep writing truly, and how you've crafted time for yourself.

Yvonne: I think it's sheer determination a lot of the time. A very supportive partner. I don't know. I guess what else would I do? So, yeah.

Kyeren: But it's such a practice and you've returned to it through so much.

Yvonne: Yeah. Yeah. And just... I just have, so I journal, I write in a notebook a lot. Mm-hmm. Um, and a lot of poems start there and I think that helps. You know, I think it's funny 'cause I always thought when kids were little you'd have more trouble finding time, but I'm finding it harder now that he's not little anymore, which is funny. Yeah. But, um, yeah, there's an ebb and flow. I shaped my life early on to fit writing in and so maybe I had good tools in place for when he was born to keep doing that as well.

Kyeren: It's very inspiring. Thank you. Yeah. To see just the sheer amount of work that you've produced, you know, while also being a mother, while also being a poet laureate, an artistic director, and you also mentor and teach.

Yvonne: Yeah. Yeah.

Kyeren: So yeah. You've been doing a lot.

Yvonne: Yeah. Yeah. And I know that you are an inspiration to a lot of people in the community and across Canada.

Yvonne: Oh, that's...

Kyeren: You've also been a poet in residence at Arc Poetry Magazine.

Yvonne: Yeah.

Kyeren: And read widely and advised many poets. Can I ask you what sort of patterns you see in emerging work right now?

Yvonne: Wow, that is a really good question. I would say I'm seeing more and more poetry with climate concern, mm-hmm, or place-based concern. Um, I always think change can start in municipalities and grows from there, right? And I think people are thinking about the changes happening where they live. And so that's a beautiful thing to see. I'm just sort of scanning my mind of all my students and mentees' work over the last little while, and I think we're concerned with creatures...

Kyeren: Fire...

Yvonne: And fires. Fires, yes, is a huge thing. So that actual, not just climate change, but the warming is a worry more. Um, and also our place on the globe, I think, is becoming a more focused concern. And there's also a lot of... a few anthologies coming out focused on biology or biological structures set alongside poetry. So I really like that as well. So here are the biological facts of this creature, and here's a poem. And that's a very lovely... So there's more intermingling. I think, I think cross-genre things are happening more and more, which is also very exciting. And maybe you can't say all you wanna say in a poem, so you add a little essay around it.

Kyeren: Right. And you, or you draw...

Yvonne: Yes. Do some illustration around it or something else. I'm really enjoying seeing that as well.

Kyeren: Thank you. Yeah. What does mentoring and editing sort of taught you about your own writing and your own drafting and revision?

Yvonne: It's a good question. I feel like I have very clear questions or wonderings when I'm working with a student's poem, mm-hmm, that I'm often too close in my own to see. So that's always kind of interesting, right? Like we can see someone else's work more clearly than we can our own. The ability... I'm often amazed by the ability to skip over errors even. Yes. You know, that we don't even see them. You know, some of the key things that I am asking students, such as, "I think you need to pull in closer here," is often a similar concern in my own work. Like, "Did I just skip over the surface of that? How can I get closer to it?" And I think that comes from... with students and with myself, is that we can fill in everything. So how do we know that we've put enough of it on the page?

Kyeren: Yeah. I also know that you've been experimenting with visual art and poetry for a while now, as well as teaching workshops combining these two disciplines. What draws you to this cross-practice?

Yvonne: I think I did Death of Persephone and it was a lot of work in the final sort of chunk of it. And I've been slowly working on a new project. I'm very curious about how visual might interplay with it. And so I've just been playing, kind of started there. And then often feel that I don't really have the skill. So then started working on taking a few little online workshops and things to build some skill. If I am doodling or drawing or thinking about a poem and doodling or drawing, it seems to give me access to another way of editing or another way of thinking about it. And so I've been teaching workshops on that, using visual art and visual play to think through a project or a poem. Mm-hmm. And that's been really fun. And yeah, just another way of approaching, you know, you are using a different part of the brain, right?

Kyeren: Yeah. But it's related.

Yvonne: It's related. And it's...

Kyeren: So you open different doorways.

Yvonne: Exactly. Exactly. And it started... I had gone to Italy, to Assisi in Italy, and started cutting up like cheese and bread bags and doing rubbings everywhere in Italy because the stone work and everything was so interesting. And then I had all these rubbings and I didn't know what to do with them. And then I was doing drawing and I was writing poems. And so it started with that project of kind of building poems after visuals rather than in response to visuals. But in my own experience, not looking at a piece of art, but trying to figure out how to... what could I say and how can I say this differently and what would the book look like and could the book have the visuals in it as well? And so that's made me interested in that idea for the project I'm working on now as well.

Kyeren: Completely fascinating that you took rubbings of a place that you visited. And so you've taken home these kind of pieces of this place...

Yvonne: Yes.

Kyeren: ...in textural form?

Yvonne: Yes. Yeah. And so why wouldn't you wanna include them when you're writing about it? I'm assuming you've got some Assisi poems.

Yvonne: Yes, exactly. You also, um, have been writing about dresses.

Kyeren: That's right. And fashion.

Yvonne: And women's fashion. Exactly. Mm-hmm. And so one of the things I was very curious in doing is drawing the women's faces. Mm-hmm. And so kind of started that. And quick line drawings, particularly Virginia Woolf, I've probably drawn her hundreds of times now. And then Lee Miller is another female pioneer, I guess, 'cause she was a fashion model and became a photographer. So drawing her. And I was at Elizabeth Bishop's house last summer, drew Elizabeth Bishop a lot. So it's just, I don't know, just seems to be something that hooks into me and I'm not sure where it will go.

Kyeren: But I love that you're following it.

Yvonne: Yeah, just following it. Yeah.

Kyeren: Would you be willing to share like an exercise or sort of something that can cross over into the visual art world for the listeners?

Yvonne: Oh, sure. I mean, I can... give me a moment to think here for a sec. So one thing is to take a poem that you're struggling with and read through the poem and highlight or underline the lines that you really like. And then have some magazines and do some... pull out some images and colors. Can just be colors. Do a color scheme for the poem. Is it in blues and golds, or is it in greens and yellows? And play on a piece of paper the colors of the poem. And then I might even start to rip the poem up or rewrite lines of it around the colors and also some collaging and things. And see if you turn these words into something visual, what happens and what other thoughts come to mind as you do that. So that's one way of kind of editing using the visual and also diving deeper into the poem through the visual.

Kyeren: Thank you, Yvonne. That's, yeah, so awesome.

Yvonne: Sure. Not sure how clear that is for anyone who's...

Kyeren: No, I could totally see it. You can totally see it. I wanna go do it now.

Yvonne: Yeah. Yeah. So couple of old magazines, some crayons, pencil, crayons, paint. Do a color scheme, play with the poem a little through the color scheme.

Kyeren: It's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that.

Yvonne: Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Pleasure.

Closing

Kyeren: Thank you, Yvonne, for your presence and for your words today. And thank you again to Bolen Books for supporting this episode of the Poet Laureate Podcast. Yvonne Blomer's impressive biography can be found on the podcast website and in the notes, and books by Yvonne can be found or ordered at Bolen Books, either in store on Hillside Avenue or at bolenbooks.com. And if this episode meant something to you, please share it with someone who might need poetry today. Yvonne, would you please leave us with a final poem?

Yvonne: Sure. So this is from The Last Show on Earth, and many of the poems from the Robert Bateman show ended up in this... I put in this book. And so I'm going to read the poem from which the title of the book comes, and it's after Robert Bateman's "Circus Train Nighthawks." And the poem is called "Circus Moon Circus Train." And in Robert Bateman's "Circus Train Nighthawks," it's an old circus train in the middle of a field with a moon above it, and Nighthawks flying around, and windows on the train are broken. And so the train is kind of a little decrepit because circuses and trains in Western North America are things kind of of the past.

Circus Moon Circus Train

Candy-wrapper moon, split-winged hawks. Circus train a dragon, silver and gold-scaled, its lashing tail. How tent and train drew coin from candy-flossed hands teased in by popcorn’s buttery scent. This beast once spun across borders, now the moon an opening in night where blue-grey seep in, here and then gone, a shadow, a species moving on, a field you see and look for again, faithful swaying servant, rolling, articulated, it carried animals and humans, mover of low moans and quick laughter, every rail and tie a rehearsal for the last show on earth. Waning moon, night-stilled hawk, broken-spine serpent. The oiled skin and painted smiles of ballerina, clown, strong man, shine through ghost shapes in splintered shafts of light on this reptilian ride. Absence of whistle on a field where a kid stands, frayed jeans, eyes rolled to sky as puffed breath moves on wind, luminous empty moon, feral moon, night’s coming, coming in.