Poet Laureate Podcast: Episode 8 - Joanna Streetly

Introduction

(The episode begins with Joanna Streetly reading "Cochlear.")

It was a time of seeking, days spent combing small pebbles on the beach just for the feel of them slipping through hourglass fingers. Pebbles like time visible, grasped passing. Past the beach littered with minutes and giants walking the shore, the crunch of lives underfoot.

But that pale, warm chunk of stone, how it filled my palm, how I eyed it like a crow, one side, then another, how I smelled it, tested it against my teeth, my tongue, how I tasted its origins, bone or boulder. How time murmured from its sleek ivory skin, sang from its long broken face.

I came to you that evening, slid the shape from my pocket, and you slid a shape from your own—two shattered halves becoming the ear bone of a whale, intact, whole. Break line barely visible.

What we heard then, faint at first, until our ears perceived the low rumbles, crooning calls, rolling waves of whoosh, inviting us to swim into a heart beyond ours, to drift particle-sized through borderless seas, among clouds of plankton, to lose our names in the scattered light. Sail through sagas.

Whale-speak in our blood and in the tips of our primordial phalanges, in our secret leg bones, storied and shaped with the sure knowledge of transformation, the remembered feel of land underfoot.

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. Episode Eight of the podcast is supported by Mermaid Tales Bookshop, a charming independent bookstore in Tofino, BC, known for its carefully curated collection of novels, local interest reads, children's books, and literary treasures. Mermaid Tales helps readers take chances on stories that open new vistas. Discover more at mermaidbooks.ca.

We just heard "Cochlear" by Joanna Streetly, who was the inaugural Poet Laureate of Tofino. Welcome, Joanna, and thank you for being here.

Joanna: Thank you so much for inviting me. Um, I really appreciate the outreach and your way of making the poetry community bigger.

Kyeren: Thank you, Joanna. That beautiful poem just now arrived in our ears, but can I ask where it started for you?

Joanna: That poem started as a poem I wanted to use to describe the process of exploring that I was going through. Um, when I... I was living on this remote islet and I was newly arrived to Tofino and everything just seemed so much more magical and larger than life than anything I had encountered so far. And it stayed in this stage that it was in—let's call it Stage One. Mm-hmm. You know how there is Stage One and sometimes there's Stage Two and it's Three, and sometimes the poems just never exit stage anything and ever progress to, uh, center stage. But so this stage stayed at Stage One for a very long time until I was really studying the poetry of the Anthropocene and poetry that kind of, uh, more decenters the human and looks into the deep time and, uh, you know, how small we are in comparison to time overall. When I was really, really studying that and looking at ways to take away the human-centric nature of things, I saw this opportunity to move this poem from Stage One to Stage Two, connecting up with the evolution of whales and the ungraspable scale of time. And I felt that that was a good fit for that one. And, and, uh, at that point it sort of moved into center stage and, and, and entered the, uh, the nearly, nearly done. Um, because really what poet do you know that ever is completely finished their poem, you know?

Kyeren: It's true. Yeah. Thank you so much, Joanna. I love what you said about decentering the human and entering the timelessness.

Joanna: Yes.

Kyeren: Yeah, I... could you talk about how that comes into your work?

Joanna: Well, I, I really think that—well, certainly my latest collection is a lot about transformation and I am very endlessly fascinated by matter and, um, the way we are recycled and particles are recycled over time into different forms. But time itself I do find very, very interesting. And when you look at the scope of time and how small of a time that humans have been important on the earth, you see the need to decenter humans, uh, and look at the bigger things. You know, I was up in the Orkneys and we were walking along the coast and you can see these big veins of rock, um, and they're carved out in places by surge channels. And then I was reading about this one place where you can actually step across where somehow the veins of rock from the ocean floor are folded. You can step across these million years of time. Uh, and it's just like a short step and all of a sudden just the hugeness really took over my imagination and the hugeness, the way things can telescope and become small when they're big and big when they're small. I, I just find it endlessly fascinating. So there's a lot of interest in transformation in my book. Uh, who is becoming what, when, and how are you becoming? And you know, obviously I'm going on about it too much, but it... I do find it very interesting.

Kyeren: It's a kind of... it's kind of a timeless subject, right?

Joanna: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think if I was a gardener, I'd be more practical about it. It's like, okay, there's, there's vegetables and now there's compost, you know, and now there's vegetables again. But on the larger scale, I think...

Kyeren: Well, you are a poet. Yeah. Uh, your, your new collection that you just spoke about, All of Us Hidden, uh, you returned to a place of deep loss and you're documenting the reshaping of self and memory and place. When did the language for this book first become possible? What distance, temporal or formal, did you need before the poems could speak?

Joanna: Well, it's very simple. You can't pave over your grief. It's like paving over a tree root. It'll always rise up to the surface and buckle the asphalt over and over again. So what do you do with it? You know, I write it and I write it in the moment, and I write it after the moment. I write it long after the moment with hindsight. And all those stages eventually later combine and coalesce into something that I feel more able to feel confident about. But I think the process of writing is cathartic. Mm-hmm. But also, when you are in the moment, you are capturing the most relevant details. You may not have the greatest oversight of an issue, but the actual details of how things happen and unfold, um, are very important to the authenticity of a poem. So I don't think there's any harm in writing in at the time, but it's kind of like sending an email when you, you are angry about something. Maybe don't press send just yet. You know, uh, just keep it and, and then keep writing and keep evolving it until you've reached a stage where you start feeling the distance is helpful and, um, and that you have better, better sight and better confidence in what you're actually trying to say.

Kyeren: Right. So you are, you're riding really close to start with and then sort of zooming out to a bird's eye view as time passes.

Joanna: Yeah. Yeah. But still keeping some of that, um, immediacy because 'cause you've got it there.

Kyeren: Yeah, because it's there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You took the time to record it.

Joanna: Yeah. Yeah. And, but it's not even taking the time. I think it's just a really... for a lot of people, it's a very ne... it's a necessity because you're always trying to make sense of your feelings.

Kyeren: Yes.

Joanna: Or you're trying to make sense of perplexing situations that your body doesn't have the ability to understand.

Kyeren: Yeah. It takes a long time for our nervous system to catch up, doesn't it?

Joanna: Yeah. Uh, your nervous system. Yeah. And I've, I've long ago realized that, you know, I may feel like I'm not feeling stress in my head, um, and my body's painting a different picture and...

Kyeren: Yes. Yes.

Joanna: So at some point you get knocked on the head with that, or, and you, you realize you have to pay attention.

Kyeren: It's such an intimate work that you've written. And now touring this book, I've been thinking about you and the mic and how the mic can feel really raw when something is, is so deep. And I'm wondering if you're comfortable sharing how it feels to voice these poems in a room, or what, if anything, helps you to feel at ease while letting the work breathe?

Joanna: I think it's really important to challenge the interiority of grief. Um, grief makes your world a smaller place. And writing poetry and poems themselves kind of tear down those walls that you build up around you and fully exploring the extent of this really precious, um, but difficult emotion. And it's one thing to write the work, but I think it's really vital to share it because so many people have similar experiences and they're looking for touchstones and, and ways to relate to their own experiences. There's an image I really wanted for the front cover of the book, and it didn't work out for various reasons, partly because it was part of a huge canvas, um, and it's a small book, but um, it's a painting by a wonderful Salt Spring artist called Naali Santama. It's a strange, abstract world, and in the midst of this, there was a tiny figure, a swimmer, deep in the water, in a shaft of light and looking for something. Mm. And that's when really embodied for me this reality that while humans know or, or think we know so much about the land and the shapes of the land and our daily emotions and our daily selves, we know so little about the ocean and her depths and anything that really involves darkness is something we so shy away from, and we avoid those things because of negative associations. But it's just like when you explore a new place and you find out that there are beautiful things in that place and you come back from that exploration and you feel braver and more liberated and your picture of the world is more wholesome and, and full of details and understanding. And, and so that Brave Swimmer was iconic for me in showing the nature of exploration and how important it is to find beauty in all its forms, especially in the darker places. And by representing this figure, the artist really helped me see a role for myself. Uh, and part of that role is reading aloud and taking back what you know. Um, in old times you would send out a seeker and a person would go and come back with the news of what they found. Um, so I really feel like there is a role for that in sharing the news of what you find when you go looking.

When I first moved to Tofino and, uh, my, my partner at the time was Indigenous and, um, I very quickly, uh, realized, you know, there were... there was a lot of death, um, unexpected, young, tragic death. And the first time something like this happened for me, everyone was going to the house of the bereaved person, um, when this tragic event had just happened. And, um, I was not going to go because I didn't know the parents. I didn't know the family, and I felt that, you know, I had all my kind of European-centric upbringing about, um, respecting the family and not treading on anyone's toes and not disturbing the peace. And, um, that clearly was not the way that death was, um, approached in, uh, the Nuu-chah-nulth culture. And for them, the way you help a person who's, um, in this tragic circumstance is to show your support by going. And so I was pulled along with everyone else to this house, and when I got to the door, you could barely even get through the door for all the pairs of shoes in the house.

Kyeren: Wow.

Joanna: And the house was so full of people, there was like this system where there... you know, these ladies are making coffee and these people are making sandwiches and these people have gone to get groceries and everybody is here. And they are gathered around the people who are grieving and their immense presence and love is just, uh, almost a distraction from the tragic event. But it's just this show of force. It's this show of strength. It's this show of, uh, you can do it and we are here for you. It is, you know, people are speaking in hushed tones, but people are also laughing because there are always light moments, even in darkness and tragedy. And the world is going on around you and there is none of this, um, pussyfooting around. There is, um, it's very serious and people will come from far away to show their respect and it's very, very important. And at first, that was just antithetical to everything that I knew. And I knew nothing about death because, you know, in my privileged upbringing, I had not been at the receiving end of the tragic events that were befalling my partner's community. I started learning about other ways of responding to it, and at that age when I was like 19... and I could really see the value to it. Um, and it really opened my eyes to different ways of dealing with things. Um, and you know, so often, you know, if it's a friend who's in the non-Indigenous community who's had a loss, then I go back into all those feelings of uncertainty of, oh, should I call them? Should I respect their privacy? Should I go to their house, but just leave something at the door? There are all these walls that we build. So I think I take my cue from my, my years spent in, in the... in those families where death was a very inclusive thing.

Kyeren: Joanna, what ethical guardrails guide your writing about this place? You know, your listening practices, consultation, crediting knowledge. What to you is the writer's duty to land and to waters here?

Joanna: Spending my first seven years in Clayoquot Sound living with an Indigenous partner, it taught me a lot. And I was absolutely blown away by how openly I was welcomed into his family, um, and how quickly I came to love them and grieve with them as tragedy after tragedy befell them. And this was how I learned that the Indigenous experience of life in Canada is vastly different to what others call "normal life." And I realized how important it is to let those stories reach the light. And, um, I don't mean by telling them or owning them myself, but by finding opportunities for those stories to arise, um, and have a platform of some sort. Um, one of the things I think it's really important, uh, to do, where I feel interested in, is to explore this human urge that we have to own things.

Kyeren: Hmm.

Joanna: Um, it seems like we want to own everything and that really is the root for colonialism. It's something that's in all of us. We all own things and we don't think twice about it. But how do you recognize when ownership is not a sign of success? And there are Indigenous philosophies that believe really hugely in the importance of looking away from mine-ness and toward oneness and community. And, um, you know, just in my short time living out in Clayoquot Sound... you know, a lot of people spend parts of their lives living off-grid and certain beaches and, and you know, so "Melty Beach" becomes "Dan's Beach," and then there's "Dick and Jane's Beach" and you know, like you get all these beaches, but all those names are based on ownership. Whereas First Nations names don't aggrandize in that way. They're based on descriptions of place and they, they honor the place that that's there. So Yiksukqs is a big beach and Tin Wis means calm waters. And when you speak and use Indigenous names, it's easier to restore the sense of them being important to the people who have traditionally used them for centuries.

Tla-o-qui-aht Elder Moses Martin, um, has this dream to hear his language spoken throughout the peninsula to feel at home in his own land. So I've been taking language lessons, um, and I'm starting to, uh, use the language and it's been fun. Um, I work part-time at the hospital and sometimes when I have people come in who are First Nations and I know they are, you know, language speakers, and I will try and greet them in a way that puts them at ease and make them feel at home. And it's not as a way of stealing the language, it's this way of normalizing it and returning it, uh, to use, because I think about Moses wanting to feel at home in his own... in his own land. You know, I mean, those are, uh, just a few things. And then simply put, traveling on the land. Like in the summertime, if I want to go to Ahousaht and go camping, I will, uh, call Chief Hasheukmis (Richard George), and, and say, you know, I'd love to visit Ahousaht and stay overnight with your blessing. I mean, that's such a simple formality. Uh, but it's not one that is observed very much. I think they're formalities. Um...

Kyeren: I don't see why things should change just because we've imposed a different structure on top of, um, what was always there.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. So I do think there are a lot of things we can do and, and I think names and languages are key to that. You definitely wanna be sensitive... you know, you don't wanna be stealing language to use it in a way that somehow benefits you, but, you know, look at language as something organic to the land and, um, something that's there that tells its own story about the land. And, um, I think that's... those stories are important to uncover and, and, and to learn about. And, and that's part of your way of becoming connected to the history which connects you in so many ways and makes you sensitive to everything.

Kyeren: Honestly, I'm so inspired by everything you've just said. Absolutely gorgeous.

Joanna: Thank you. And, you know, recently we had a Truth and Reconciliation event in Tofino. And, uh, everyone spoke. Um, I wouldn't say everyone, but a lot of people stood up and spoke about their experiences at residential school. And, um, it was very heartfelt. And I don't think a single person, you know, who, who was going to talk about their experience, didn't break down as soon as they opened their mouth at the mic. Except for the very end,  Ah-Neets-Naas (aka elder Tom Curley) stood up—and he's a Tla-o-qui-aht elder. He spoke up and he was really angry. And he said, "This is my experience." It was a harrowing experience, which I'd known because I'd spoken to him about it before and he'd been taken away when he was five. Um, and he said it left him so angry and that anger really affected his life. And he said, "I want to know what reconciliation is. I keep hearing the truth part, but I'm not hearing the reconciliation part. So what is reconciliation? What is it? Because is it just a magic word from the government? Because I keep telling my truth and nothing happens, and it hasn't made any difference and it hasn't made my life better to tell them my truth. So we're now in, um, an equation that is not balancing out."

In terms of amplifying that question, I took that question to social media and I said, you know, Ah-Neets-Naas  is asking this question. This is a question we need to be asking. And I didn't say, oh, this is reconciliation, or this is reconciliation. I, I wanted it to be more of a hive mind of: How would you respond to him personally? Um, and how do we ask this question? And I, I think it's just important to ask that question of ourselves every day. How do we do better? Mm-hmm. How do we make it so that Ah-Neets-Naas  telling his truth is going to make his life better? Very simple.

Kyeren: Thank you, Joanna.

Joanna: Thank you.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. Everything you've said so is so powerful and I'm very moved by it. And, uh, looking at what, what is a writer's role? What does poetry bring to this? How can poetry help? Um, how has your poetry helped either you or the community?

Joanna: When I was Poet Laureate, I had the opportunity to speak in community. Poetry is kind of one of those things that people don't turn to unless they really need it. I get asked, "Oh, you know, my aunt has died and I'm really looking for something to read at her funeral that's meaningful." People, when people are seeking and soul searching and looking for meaning and wanting to find expression, mm-hmm, they will often turn to poetry.

In Tofino, we had this tragedy in, in 2015 when the Leviathan went down. And that was a whale watching boat that flipped over unexpectedly, and a number of people died. And it was... it was terrible. High season, October. And the people who were part of the event that were in the water waiting to be rescued and not knowing if they were being rescued... uh, I mean, very traumatic for everyone. And, um, I remember reading that poem down at the dock and, uh, people came up to me afterwards, often, and, um, thanked me for that poem because they weren't people who read poetry. But something about that... you know, it's like T.S. Eliot used to say that poetry can communicate before it's understood. There's something about poetry that can communicate for whatever reason. That's something that we chase and something that can be valued at certain times. So I think it is important, you know, if you, if your timing is right and there is a moment in time when there... there's an event or something that's really capturing people's attention and your poem can somehow attract all of those little iron filings of questions that people are asking and, and kind of bring them into a central space... you know, I think that can be really helpful to people. So I've, I've ended up speaking at a number of events, some of them solemn, very solemn, and some of them very fun. And um, I have had good feedback about that. I think the act of delivering a poem and being able to speak about something is, um, a really lovely gift to a poet because I don't feel like your work is really complete until it's actually connected with someone.

Kyeren: Yeah. It's meant to be an oral art. Right.

Joanna: I do feel it should be.

Kyeren: Joanna, you've lived on a float house in Clayoquot Sound for decades. How has living on water and tide and weather and soundscape changed your work? Do drafts or poetic attention change with the seasons or the storms or the swell?

Joanna: I think the seasons and the storms and the swell keep you inside. Um, and that makes you more likely to, um, burrow in and find your inner muse. But in the summertime, I can't write at all too much. There's too much out there. It's too beautiful. There's too much that claims my attention and I... you can't miss those opportunities, especially when you've lived through a long winter on the wet coast. Oh my gosh. You know, the... when the skies are clear and it's such a beautiful place, you just have to be out in it. But you know, I tend to overdo it that way in summer and then fall is such a welcome relief and I can settle into writing instantly with the shorter days, um, and everything. And living on the water, you tend to have a lot of light coming in at all the time. Mm-hmm. And my house is very prone to getting the waves coming in in the winter. So sometimes in a storm it's almost too distracting 'cause the house is moving so much.

Kyeren: Wow.

Joanna: And, uh, there's a lot of noise and you're kind of more in survival mode. But, um, definitely as soon as fall, I, I, I almost feel it pull at me during the fall. And, um, one of the interesting things about the house is, uh, where we are, we have in Clayoquot Sound... you have very strong tidal currents. And so in six hours, say it's full moon, when the tide is at its strongest, you could have 12, even 13 feet at sometimes of water being exchanged in a six hour period. So this... this little reef of rocks outside the house, and when the water runs over the rocks, it sounds like a river running by. Like there's really just this sound of water running that's very, very fluid. And so you can almost feel your thoughts being pulled into the current and the threaded through, uh, with the water. If you go to the beach, it's different 'cause you've got that very rhythmic wave action, you know, the sucking back of the wave and then the crashing of the wave and the sucking back of the wave and the crashing of the wave. Um, and when you step away from the immediacy of the wave noise, then you have kind of the roar of the surf, the pounding roar of the surf. So if you happen to be like on the beach where you're getting these huge waves and stuff, your poetry could be very infused with, um, that kind of rhythm of um, uh, almost there's kind of almost a, a desire for repetition because mm-hmm, there's this kind of rhythmic turning and, and recycling of waves and you know, it's kind of just this constant coming. And one of the poems I read last night was a fugue, which in, in musical terms, a fugue has a lot of repeated strains of melody. So I don't know that it's very formalized as a poetic fugue, but I did use a lot of repeated strains of language. And, um, that was one of the poems that I, I read last night. And I have a tendency to want to do that, but then I look at my poems and I'm like, well, you know, I don't want to be a poem factory where I, I always, you know... I like to change things up so that it's not repetitive.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: Um, you know, not every poem sounds the same or feels the same to the reader, so do have to challenge some of those things.

Kyeren: I love that description of the kind of metrical breath of the ocean.

Joanna: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyeren: Would you be willing to read a, a poem for us now? And actually, um, I'll let the listeners know that after this poem, there'll be a little musical guitar interlude for people to rest and reflect.

Joanna: So you can come with me now to a time when I was, uh, 19, 20, and this was my first experience of Canada. Um, I was very adrift from my own family, my own culture. And, um, I had arrived in Canada, knew nothing about its history. Um, and so I'll... this poem is called "First Supper."

That first supper on the island when I’m nineteen and the brothers butterfly salmon, splay them on sticks against the beach fire. I don’t know things yet. Jane cooks and loves with flashing eyes. Ray cooks and I do dishes, she says, smoothing the black feather in her hair, poking the fire with a stick. The salmon grow golden, spilling white fat. I’m first to hold out my plate. I’ve always hated the dank smell of fish so why does this make me hungry? Ray laughs when I ask for more. Ah-ha-ha. Those two front teeth protruding. I lean against Jack, hear swells surge up the beach, wrap us in ocean vapour.

When I comb pea-sized pebbles, find a cobalt glass trade bead, centuries old and bloody as a diamond, I still don’t know things. Beautiful, I say, turning it over in late summer light. Overhead, two ravens watch from a Sitka spruce. The meadow is tranquil void where longhouses were.

And when oversized men in an undersized inflatable try to land at the rocks in pressed suits and shiny shoes, briefcases and religious tracts in hand, I still don’t know things. Jane and I, we hoot at their slipping and falling, but Ray and Jack spill with sudden fuck. Leave us the fuck alone. This is our fucking land.

I wade knee-deep in the bay, wash dishes I can’t make clean while the brothers reminisce about running away from residential school. Beach hoppers bite my cold, white feet, hungry for blood. I look down but can’t see them, water blurred by all the things I don’t know.

That night, when fuck becomes a good word, Jack’s body helps me know things, tongue spangling my ignorance with delicate atrocities, one at a time. And in the darkness, even the ravens squint at the pallor of my nakedness.

Kyeren: Wow, what a poem. Thank you, Joanna. Joanna, you don't just write poetry. You've written a memoir as well. And I'm wondering, uh, how you've evolved as a writer across your books, uh, across genres and uh, and where poetry lives in all of that.

Joanna: I think I'm primarily a storyteller because that's where I'm led, but I'm also musically inclined. You know, I used to have the music scholarships at school, and I'm very interested in music. I think there's something about the musicality of poetry that attracts me to it. You know, I, I was always writing prose early on. I had an English teacher who was very complimentary about my essays and English was my subject at school. And, and at the time that I moved from Trinidad and, um, finished my, my A-Level exams in, in England, you... you couldn't really do creative writing at university in England. It just wasn't even a subject that was offered. And if I were going to pursue language, I was gonna have to do a degree in English literature. And I had no desire to really end up being a teacher. I was definitely more driven by the need to create. And I think for a lot of artists and writers, the process of creation is really the thing. Uh, 'cause I also paint and do art and you know, when you're, when you're in the middle of a painting or you're in the middle of a poem or in the middle of anything, you are like, "This is the best thing, this is my best thing." But then, you know, by the time you're onto the next thing, the next thing is your best thing, you know?

Kyeren: True though.

Joanna: It's so... it's really, you do get very captured. Your mind gets very, um, lit up by the thing that you're doing at the time. And so this summer was my... I think probably being my biggest career challenge was having a poetry book come out at the same time I was finishing the first draft of a novel. I found it very, very difficult to switch minds and go between the prosaic, uh, more mundane aspects of storytelling and the very precise and very distilled form of poetry. I've definitely kind of struggled with crossing that boundary. This summer, I actually have realized that I really have transitioned to poetry in a big way where when I sit down to write, I really just want to write poetry now. I actually don't want to necessarily be writing other things, like there's so much of my core that is now more pulled to poetry. But even when I'm writing poetry, I do find that I tend to always have kind of a narrative in there somewhere, and I, I don't think that's something I'll ever shake off. So I, yeah. And I don't get me wrong, I loved working on the novel and I'm thinking it's coming out really nicely. But, but there's just that urge and that longing to be pulled away into that very interior world of poetry that I love.

Kyeren: Do you think, do you find it more interior than a novel or than, than memoir and essay?

Joanna: Um, you know, I think it's very hard to, to speak to me when I'm writing poetry because I can't hear you. I'm thinking about that syllable and that line break and, and what's a better example of this? And I can get very caught up in the small details of a poem. Whereas if I'm writing a novel and I break off, I just know that I'm at that point in the story and then I can start again, you know? Mm-hmm. Whereas the poem is actually something that lives right in your head between your ears. And you know, I've had times when I've broken off for supper and my partner just rolls his eyes. I'm like, "I gotta go write this down. Sorry, I'll be right back." You know, so it's interesting to have... to feel like I've, I really have fully embraced poetry and, and kind of have a longing for it.

Kyeren: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I get that. Mm-hmm. Mm. You've also written haiku, and I'm wondering about the brevity of haiku, the brevity of those compared to longer forms, narrative forms.

Joanna: Such a great part of writing poetry is challenging yourself to be brief. When Twitter was first really kind of a thing and I, and then I thought, okay, well maybe I'll try Twitter and I'll, uh, this was back when it was a good thing and um, I'll just write a haiku a day. That was kind of my thought, and that was my challenge. One year I was gonna just write a haiku a day. Um, I set myself the challenge to use the formal 5-7-5, uh, syllabic form, and I found that the restriction and the brevity over the period of the year and, and the restriction of the form, if you're really using that as your guideline and you're taking something that you want to express and you have to fit it into that form... it challenges every part of you as a writer. And I think I came out of that year as a vastly improved poet because you don't just have to figure out the syllables. You know, I realized that often I would start with a topic and I'd have three or four places I wanted to go with it, but it's so brief with haiku that you can't follow all those threads, so you have to learn how to do this kind of triage of what you think is most important to say in this very short time. You actually become more precise in your thinking as well as your expression.

Kyeren: What a journey. 365 haiku.

Joanna: Oh yeah. And believe me, not all of them were any good. So there were, there were really only a few that that made it to the top. But I mean, what poet doesn't have, you know, A grade, B grade, C grade, bin grade...

Kyeren: The, the spare poem file?

Joanna: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I have one that is, um, I have a poem file that is "Begun and Abandoned."

Kyeren: I love that. Yeah. So in, in your book, This Dark, the haiku book, you were also, uh, collaborating with, uh, a visual artist.

Joanna: Yes, I was. Um, lucky enough to have my work picked up by Postelsia Press. And  Nathalie St Amant is an artist who was the co-editor of Postelsia Press, along with Adrienne Mason. She's a very talented artist, and I wouldn't say there was so much, um, collaboration. She picked up my work and she made these wood cuts... so these, well, they weren't wood cuts, they were lino. But, um, to pick up on the Japanese kind of feeling of haiku. And as I know her well, we were able to talk about the poems a little bit. Um, and I had full confidence in her that she would represent, uh, them in a beautiful way, which she really did. She also designed the book, and what I love, uh, is when people are very careful with attention to paper and, uh, to, uh, those kinds of things. And, and, uh, they were using recycled paper. And actually I have to always put in a little bullet for Caitlin Press because they use tree-free paper. I think they're the only publishing company they do, and it's a huge, um, deciding factor for me as a writer when I know that trees aren't being cut down in service of my work.

Anyway, um, it turned into just a sweet little book and, and, uh, very much about the seasons, uh, as kind of a seasonal journey through the outer coast, um, in haiku. And, um, I do love a collaboration. So when we had the launch for that, we had the original prints were up on the wall with the poems. Um, so it was really nice for people 'cause people did come in and they, a lot of the original prints sold, so that was really nice as well.

Kyeren: Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. Very nice. Yeah, yeah. You are also collaborating on a film at the moment, aren't you?

Joanna: I've been interested in video poems for a long time, and I was just talking to Jordan from Haus of Owl about this when I came in because I just, um, the idea of putting together a video poem was appealing, but when I looked at actually sitting down and learning all the software and doing it myself, while that seemed like a fun thing to do, realistically... it just wasn't something that I felt like I could start at the bottom with. So, um, I, I came down here. I also, at the same time, recorded a little audio chapbook of seven of the poems from my collection that, um, are now gonna live on my website. Um, and you can go there and actually hear, um, the poem spoken. Um, which is fun because I always believe in like lifting the words off the page, getting them out there, getting them into the audio sphere, having them heard, having them connect, um, in those ways that include more of you. Like your voice is, is a projection of you. And, uh, the page takes that aspect of you away from the delivery of the poem.

Kyeren: Joanna, you when you were Poet Laureate of Tofino, I know that you did work that was inspired by the Elder Project. I would... I would love to hear a little bit about that before we finish today.

Joanna: Yeah. Um, the Federation of BC Writers had an event, um, in Nanaimo where they had, uh, these students stand up and read poems that they had written in response to the stories of their significant elders. So these students had gone to their elder, usually a family member, and asked that family member to tell them about their early life. And then the students wrote poems and then very bravely stood up. I believe it was at the Port Theatre in Nanaimo, and it was Wendy Morton who had brought this incredible idea to the fore, and I was very inspired by it.

So I ended up taking a version of that idea and applying it, um, in my laureateship. And I took two community members. So one was Ah-Neets-Naas, who I spoke about earlier, who is from the community. Mm-hmm. And the other was Ellen Kimoto, who was one year old at the time that her mother was sent away to be interned as part of the Japanese community. During the war, for the Japanese community living in the Ucluelet area and in the Tofino area, they were basically sent away on a ship. They were allowed to take one suitcase with them. Then a lot of the men were sent with the boats to the Fraser River. Um, and the boats were confiscated. And if you've been into the BC, the Maritime Museum here in Victoria, they have this incredible picture of the boats chock-a-block in the river. Like the river was just white with a sea of boats that were confiscated that were never given back. Of course.

You know, um, these community members had very significant stories and teachings of history to tell. And so they weren't family members, but I did invite them into the school. So I did two sessions. One I did just with Ellen Kimoto with a very young group from the Hartwood School in Tofino. So they were kind of students around 6, 7, 8, 9. Nine. And Ellen told her story and they wrote just fabulous poems about the tiny details of her story. You know, some of the students would be fascinated by things like what her mother put in the suitcase. Um, and so one suitcase and her mother took her sewing machine and her tea set.

Kyeren: Hmm.

Joanna: You know, we would imagine her packing her fear into that suitcase and, you know, they, they were just so porous and, and, and caught up in this story, and it was so important to hear it told, you know. Uh, one of the students, uh, wrote about the knock on the door in the night and, you know, the Mounties coming in the night and knocking on the door and saying, "You have to leave."

Later when we presented that story, the students curated a little exhibit at the Tofino Museum and they found objects from history that represented the poem that they had made about Ellen's experience. And that young man who wrote about the knock on the door, he found this wooden mallet. And for him that was, that was, that was the thing. The sound. It was the sound of the knock on the door that really got him, you know. So that was the Hartwood College. And then I went into the high school with Ellen and also with Ah-Neets-Naas , you know, we sat around in, in a large circle, um, and there just wasn't a dry eye in the house. There really wasn't. And you know, it's so important for the students to hear these stories and so they did write poems in response to the stories.

And I collected those into an album. But I also, in the album... I interviewed both of the speakers, and so I kind of wrote a lot of their kind of stories with photos that they shared. And then I did take some historical... I did find some historical photos in the archives. Um, and then I ended up talking to Kenji Matsuo, who was, um... his father had been, um, sent for internment and had never returned to Tofino. And I got a lot of his family's history and his family stories as well. That came about by the most amazing coincidence where I had run into them when his, his father was feeling very unwell. He happened to mention that his father had grown up in Ucluelet, and I looked at Kenji and I said, "Was your father sent away during the war?" And she said, "Yes, he was. How did you know? How did you suspect that?" And I said, "Well, back when I edited The Sound magazine, in a previous iteration of The Sound magazine, one of the older residents of Tofino had written this beautiful love letter to her Japanese friends. Where she talked about waving goodbye to them, watching them go up the gangplank with their white bundles and their suitcases, and none of the adults talking about it. No one was allowed to talk about it, and no one spoke about it except, you know, she said, 'My friends were not in school anymore and I, I missed them.'" And so she wrote this beautiful sort of love letter to her long lost friends. And I told Kenji, you know, and he looked at me and his eyes just filled up with tears. And he said, "You know, when my father left, he thought nobody ever cared." And I was able to go and find that beautiful piece of writing and photocopy it and give it to him, and he was able to go and read it to his father, who was in his eighties and coming back to Tofino and the West Coast for the first time since the war, and hear for the first time in his life that people in Tofino cared that they were sent away, and that this one woman who was now no longer with us had written about how much she missed her friends and her confusion as a child about not knowing why they were sent away. And that had created a bond between, uh, Kenji and I. And so he was able to share a lot of his, um, stories and family history.

And so it became very much like a, an album. And I kept a kind of handmade feel to it. And, um, I didn't publish it professionally. Um, and we just had a lot of copies printed and we just sold them as a, as a fundraiser for the Polar Project. Keeping them on hand for the public record and, and really it's so much a, of an exercise for people to be in touch with their history and to understand who you're living among.

Kyeren: Yeah. Oh, Joanna, the projects and the work that you've done, they're very inspiring.

Joanna: Thank you. Thank you.

Kyeren: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing them.

Joanna: Yeah. Oh yeah. It was my privilege to be able to do those things.

Closing

Kyeren: It's, uh, I, I just thank you so much for your presence and your words today. And, and thank you also again to Mermaid Tales Bookshop for generously supporting Episode Eight of the Poet Laureate Podcast. Joanna Streetly's impressive biography can be found on the podcast website and in the show notes, and books by Joanna Streetly can be found at Mermaid Tales Bookshop in Tofino and elsewhere. If this episode meant something to you, please share it with someone who might need poetry today. Joanna, would you please leave us with a final poem?

Joanna: Yes, I will. This poem is about a glacier, but it's more about, um, the color of the glacier, which is just one of these incredible colors that seems to be composed only of water and time and light. And it's a color that I've never found words to describe. And as our glaciers retreat and vanish, uh, I feel like it's a color that's never going to be something that you can fully share with another person. And so the poem is called "Perhaps Blue."

January, and I am pruning lavender. A school group stops near my garden, teacher shouting over a bubble of hats: Not including human things, what colours have you seen so far? From open mouths: green, brown, blue. But when he asks what colours are missing, what they haven’t seen, I stop clipping.

If not children, who else might speak colours that live beyond lists? Who else might hazard the hues of this brisk day— wind rooster-tailing from the backs of waves or the colours of rain, from mist and mizzle to downpour?

Who else might perfectly express the glacier’s perhaps blue clutched by its vulnerable fortress? Isolate, a flicker through windows of time, always another glazed layer away.

Even as I watched a meltwater pool form and pondered flux, my mother’s years folded inside her, her eyes in the months before her death luminous with their record of passage. And later in a vision, those eyes overflowing, spilling a waterfall of blue into me— like meltwater, rain, sea— as she vanished and arrived, both.