Poet Laureate Podcast: Inaugural Community Episode 2025

Featuring: Lorne Daniel, Jeremy Loveday, Zoe Dickinson & Tracy Wai de Boer

Introduction

Kyeren: Hello and welcome to the Poet Laureate Podcast. I'm Kyeren Regehr, and we are recording our first community episode in the Garden Studio at Haus of Owl Creation Lab in Victoria, BC on the Lekwungen Homelands. In this episode, we'll hear from four poets with new or forthcoming books, and maybe even the poetry of people dropping by to watch the episode live. This episode of the Poet Laureate Podcast is supported by Haus of Owl Creation Labs. What happens when artists from multiple disciplines are given the inspiration to create, the studio environments to capture that creation, and the community to share it, all under one roof? Designed as a co-working club for Creators, Haus of Owl exists to support the creative spirit, hunger, and process of artists working in music, film, fashion, photography, dance, writing, and more. This curated community offers flexible membership options, from drop-in artists to dedicated creator, with access to in-house recording and film studios, including a podcast studio and a sound booth for audiobook recording, all supported by collective industry professionals.

LORNE DANIEL: Poem 1: "Until the Seas Grace You"

Until the seas grace you when the call comes, it's always a hundred foot waves. Search and rescue, transport and triage. Jump in. Keep heads above water until the seas grace you with a few seconds between slams. Okay. Halifax or Victoria, Atlantic Coast or Pacific, the same. The call comes after months of not. Grab your flotation devices and wade into the wreckage. There is no time for salvage. No point reaching for that falling photo of the last family Christmas. Gathering the crusted laptop once gifted, simply stay out of the crashing debris. By now, you know the rescue routine. No longer parents, first responders, divers geared up 24/7 ensuring the basics, oxygen, evacuation. Then the dangerous calm when you think you can take a breather before the echo waves hit. Big swells of unpaid bills, stray animals, abandoned roommates with needs, fatigue, resentment. Recovery repeated on an asymmetric cycle as tides respond to the pull of moons. Festive dates circled on the calendar. Patterns of trauma predictable and not like a life. Over these wrecks. Don't linger. Don't return. Expecting sunken treasures.

Interview 1: Lorne Daniel

Kyeren: We just heard Lorne Daniel reading "Until the Seas Grace You." Lorne, welcome to the Poet Laureate Podcast. Thank you for being here.

Lorne: Thank you, Kyeren. It's an honor to be here.

Kyeren: It's an honor to have you. Thank you. Lorne, would you please tell us about the origin of that poem?

Lorne: Yeah. The poem comes from, you know, decades really of, of experience, but it sort of crystallized, um, uh, the experience of parents, in this case, but family members responding to the traumas of, um, addictions and mental health issues and all kinds of emergencies that occur when a family member is really struggling. And the, the poem kind of came because simultaneously with that kind of sort of family trauma that we were going through—and when I say going through, it's over like a 25 year period. Mm-hmm. So it's just this repeated wave after wave, and that image of wave after wave, uh, kept coming back to me—at the same time living here on Vancouver Island dealing with the literal emergency planning of possible earthquakes and all of that, that's kind of in mind. And then a really good friend of ours works for the Coast Guard. And she was talking about, you know, just coming off a shift where you're diving in and trying to judge the waves and how they're hitting the rocks and how you're gonna get in and and get someone who's capsized out of a, out of a canoe or a kayak or something. And so all of those images sort of came together. The, the family trauma, the attempted rescue, and the repeated of that, sort of doing it in a, in a family, you're typically doing it over and over and over again over many years. And the poem came together around that. And um, and then living by the sea, the title, you know, "Until the Seas Grace You." Mm-hmm. Uh, you live by the sea and you get this sense that from time to time that sea out there is dead calm and it's really calming and it graces you with the sort of... the permanence of the water's there. The sea is there, nature is there. Mm-hmm. And your little human life is gonna be okay. You know, the world's gonna be okay. And so all of those things sort of pulled together into that poem.

Kyeren: That's beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. And the poem is from your new collection, What Has Broken Binds Us, right? Which has been, has been published by, uh, University of Calgary Press, right?

Lorne: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It just came out, uh, September 15th and, um, is out now. And so I'm, I've been out this fall doing readings across uh, BC and Alberta and, uh, enjoying doing that. 'Cause as you know, uh, being a poet, it's a long process. Uh, the whole process of writing, editing, finding publishers, getting a book out there and then sharing it with the public is... these poems weren't written yesterday. You know, they're...

Kyeren: Right. And may I ask you like about the experience of reading, because a lot of these poems are very vulnerable and very deep. Mm-hmm. You know, deep has an, and they, they're touching on the wounds that we all kind of carry, but...

Lorne: Yeah. Yeah. And, and yeah. And that's definitely something I struggled with. And initially a lot of the sort of episodes, um, in the book, some of which I, I just wrote and recorded to have a record, you know, a personal record. Mm-hmm. And then at a certain point when they start to sort of shape themselves a bit as, as poems, you think about, well, do I wanna publish? Do I wanna share this? And, um, there's a real, you know, you really have to examine that. And we gave that a lot of thought. I say we 'cause my wife, Sandy, and I, and initially, and then talking to editors all the way through, and uh, talking to publishers and then even, you know, some of the media interviews I've done, uh, interviewers have, you know, asked about, you know, the ethics of this. And, and the, what we came back to time after time was the experience of meeting other family members who've gone through these struggles. Often parents, but sometimes it's siblings of people that have... have had a lot of difficulties. Sometimes it's the children of adults who have, uh, you know, their parents, their parents have gone through mental health issues or addictions issues or estrangement problems. And, um, so, uh, I, I felt over time that, um, there was sort of a stigma of not sharing enough of those stories and that, and that people need to know that they're not alone in, um, going through those experiences because I mean, we went to lots of, uh, you know, addictions, uh, groups and, and you know, certainly met a lot of people along the journeys mm-hmm, over the years. And, um, I really feel for all of those people because almost everybody kind of initially goes through all of that on their own. You know, there might be a single parent or a, a parenting couple or a sibling or whatever, but they, uh, they don't know that there's other people going through it. So the poetry is, is, uh, I think a way of sort of using art to, to present that, uh, out to the public and people to be able to share it in a way that's comfortable and, and works.

Kyeren: Yeah. When we hear things that we resonate with, when we hear things that are similar in our own lives, it is healing.

Lorne: Yeah, I think so. 'Cause they, you know, if people don't share it in some way, then it just becomes, it kind of eats away at them more, I think. And um, or they feel they have to hide something. And even the thing we certainly went through, when, um, our, the, you know, our youngest son is, is the one who had a lot of difficulties. Um, and, um, in the early years of, of his challenges, there's a temptation to kind of pretend and pretend that everything's okay. Mm-hmm. Or it's going to be okay. And this is just a phase and "Oh yeah. He'll probably go to college in a couple of years," or "Oh yeah. You know, he'll meet some, you know, partner and settle down," or, you know, you kind of invent these narratives that society wants. Mm-hmm. And, um, uh, sharing some of this is kind of intended to reassure all the people whose narratives don't fit the common arcs. You know, not, not every, um, child or adolescent or teenager's life, uh, pattern is the same. They don't all follow that same pattern. And, uh, and we have to be willing to, uh, to accept that.

Kyeren: Yeah, so it's a really great example of the healing power of poetry.

Lorne: Yes, I hope so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyeren: Thank you so much, Lorne. I'm so grateful that you could stop by and read today and talk about your book, What Is Broken Binds Us.

Lorne: Lorne Daniel, thanks very much, Kyeren, and an honor really to be here. Thank you so much.

JEREMY LOVEDAY: Poem 2: "I Almost Punched Elvis"

I almost punched Elvis right in the cheap seats, which is to say I felt the learned heat of someone else's idea of manhood protection. What I mean is that it wasn't really Elvis. Just a set of veneers sweating out the hits. Gyrating frantically, haphazardly through his second show on this unremarkable Tuesday in Nashville. While singing "Love Me Tender," he began to kiss every woman in the audience row by aisle with his wife taking photos. He wasn't asking before leaning in. The women I was with were 15 years old and I was their camp counselor, which is to say that if he took one puckered step into our row of plush seats, I'd knock the blue suede shoes off of him. I couldn't wait to impersonate the savior to put on a performance of masculinity worthy of a king.

Interview 2: Jeremy Loveday

Kyeren: We just heard Jeremy Loveday reading "I Almost Punched Elvis." Jeremy, welcome to the Poet Laureate Podcast, and thank you for being here.

Jeremy: Thanks so much for having me on your podcast. I look forward to chatting.

Kyeren: Uh, I love that poem. Would you tell us how that poem emerged?

Jeremy: Yeah. So that it's, uh, it's a true story, um, of being, uh, I led, I led some tours around the, the US um, for a couple summers for a van full of 15 year olds driving them around. And, uh, one of the stops we made was in Nashville, Tennessee. And, uh, it was, uh, we actually went and saw an Elvis impersonator and this, this was how he was behaving. And, uh, and, and I hadn't thought about that moment in years, many, many years. And it was actually when, uh, when Will Smith went on stage and, uh, slapped the host at an award show. I was reflecting on, uh, the performance of masculinity and how violence and protection tends to be a big part of that. And, and ended up reflecting on this own, uh, lived experience, um, in, in my life. And, and how my thoughts, although not my actions, um, were, were of a similar vein. And so, reflecting on that and, and what it, what it means, especially when you're, um, trying to counter, uh, that sort of violent masculinity in your actions in everyday life. So.

Kyeren: Okay, thank you. That's, that's awesome. And this poem is from, uh, your debut, full length collection, Maybe the Starling, coming out with Write Bloody North.

Jeremy: Yes. Yeah, that's, uh, that's in there. It's in there, yeah. And, uh, yeah, that the, the book, it's, it's been a long time coming and really excited to have it be out in the world in the next few weeks.

Kyeren: Very excited too. We're all excited here in Victoria. Can I ask you about the process of, uh, moving poetry for the stage onto the page? Because you are a remarkable spoken word poet. An award-winning spoken word poet, and now you are a published literary poet too.

Jeremy: Yeah, I think the process, uh, was a, was a... it was a deep learning process actually. I, I, when I started the work, I thought I was creating a book of my spoken word poems that I would sell at my shows and kind of catalog the work to date. Um, but it ended up being a very different process. Um, and I ended up. Some of my spoken word poems are in the book, uh, but in very different forms, and a lot of the work is brand new written for the book. Um, that came out of a, a process of being pushed by my editors. And so, uh, my, my initial manuscript, I, I worked with John Barton, um, and then the book, uh, itself, the editor is Alexander Naito, and both of them push it pretty hard. And then at the same time, it was, uh, I was writing it during COVID and I had a different amount of space in my life and began taking classes online that I never would've had access to. Um, and I'd never taken a poetry class before that of any kind. And so, uh, I began to do that and it really made me fall in love with the craft of poetry in a way that I hadn't felt in a long time. And so that, that's all reflective in the processes of the book and, and me kind of learning what it takes to translate my words onto the page, and then also to write words for the page and then try to bring them alive when I read them out loud. So going backwards again. Yeah. Yeah. So it's been, uh, yeah, I, I, I, it's been a beautiful process and I'm, I'm hooked.

Kyeren: What do you prefer, Jeremy? Do you prefer, uh, coming from oral to written or from written to oral?

Jeremy: I find, uh, well, I think that, like some of my spoken word poems, I, they, they don't work as poems on the page is what I learned. Mm-hmm. Um, they, they work as sort of, uh, you know, a transcript of a spoken word poem. And if you have heard the poem, you can hear my voice. Um, and you might enjoy that if you like the poem. Um, but in terms of like a poem that is, uh, very exacting and, and written to written to be held and, and, and read and, and reread. Then for me, that's been a different process. So I just kind of, um, it, it's a different skillset that I've been, I've been learning.

Kyeren: Yeah, totally. And, and what about your attention? I mean, when, when you are writing a poem for a stage, you're writing a poem to be performed. But when it's on the page, it's a private reader experience. So how does that sort of shape the way that you, that you're moving through the experience of writing?

Jeremy: I don't always know in the first, in the first writing. Mm-hmm. For me, it's in the, the edit, like, oh. Um, in the first writing where I'm just getting something down and I'm working through, uh, thoughts or a prompt. Um, I'm just trying to write. And so I don't think about it too much. It's really, uh, once I've got the first outline of a thing or the first few lines, then I'm like, okay, this is, this is what this is. And, and trying to understand what it is and, and leaning into that or breaking it, seeing what it is, and saying, I'm, I wanna do something totally different with this. And yeah. And sort of jumping it off that cliff.

Kyeren: And so you're like, you're letting the poem guide you basically?

Jeremy: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and as a reader, uh, I love the, the moments in a poem where you can see that the poet is having a discovery. Like I love that moment. And so to try to put that and, and be alive to those moments while I'm writing, um, without stifling them is, is something that I try to do.

Kyeren: Yeah. Yeah. That's, it is amazing to hear your process, Jeremy. Yeah. And, uh, and, uh, like the way that you're straddling both worlds and yeah.  I'm very much looking forward to your book emerging.

Jeremy: Thanks so much. Yeah, it's, uh, me too. I, I'm, uh, yeah, I learned a lot. Really thankful for my editors, uh, and publisher and, and I, and the... the cover art, I, I, we had a collage artist who did that and it's beautiful and I'm excited to finally, uh, put it out in the world. 'Cause one thing I hadn't, as someone who have never put out a book, I didn't really realize how many years it would take to go through the publishing process. 'Cause I'd put out chapbooks and I just, you know, I just finished it and gone down to the printer and printed them off and they're done. It's slightly different. Right. And I can sell them at the show that night, you know? And so this has been a, yeah, it's a different, different process, but different sort of emergence.

Kyeren: Yeah. Yes. So Maybe the Starling from Write Bloody North, please look out for it. Highly recommend that everyone checks this book out.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Kyeren: Thank you so much for being here today, Jeremy.

Jeremy: Thanks for having me on.

Kyeren: Yeah, thank you.

ZOE DICKINSON: Poem 3: "The Dream"

The dream in Joanne's dream, I open a bookstore on a moving train. We hurdle over mountain passes while I sell Emily Dickinson to the Heavens Children on their way to boarding school. Susan rolls her eyes. Don't you have any Rupi Kaur? Where's your BookTok section? Lucy elbows her and says, we'll take it. Thanks ever so. But Caspian's Horn drags them off to Narnia book in hand before they can pay. Shoplifting is rampant. Even in REM state. I recommend Thich Nhat Hanh to Tom Riddle. But all he wants is Nietzsche. I persist and sell him on Marcus Aurelius. He was an emperor, you know? But let's be real. This is my dream now, not Joanne's, and the train rushes on, engine room a blaze in my chest. Ms. Marple asks for "50 Shades of Grey," and I can't unsee the twinkle in her eye as she says, you know, dear this book reminds me of Ladysmith, the post mistress in St. Mary Mead, and the train roars on between chasms furred with snowy trees. Past the resort where I had my first job. Younger me is standing by the trestle over Beaver Creek, watching us fly by mouth sticky with unsaid words, and the train moves through moonlight and purple shadows, sliced straight edged by lodgepole pines. Above there are more stars than could possibly exist anywhere. Meanwhile, inside. I'm on the phone with TD to figure out why the debit machine stopped working. What do you mean you can't send a technician to a moving vehicle? A line starts at the register as we slip off the tracks and barrel down into the Pacific. I ding the bell for help.

Interview 3: Zoe Dickinson

Kyeren: We just heard Zoe Dickinson reading "The Dream." Zoe, welcome to the Poet Laureate Podcast and thank you for being here.

Zoe: Thank you.

Kyeren: Would you please tell us about the origin of that poem?

Zoe: Uh, well, so the origin of that poem was, um, my colleague Joanne's Dream. Oh, really? It was actually a dream. A real dream, yes. So thank you to Joanne for sharing your dream. Joanne, actually, still works at Russell Books and, uh, um, she's the origin of a few of the poems in my upcoming book. So she shared that dream with me. Obviously, um, some of those details are from me. It became my dream, but, but the original dream was, was hers.

Kyeren: What a novel idea to take someone's dream and turn it into a poem. I love it. So that, that, uh, poem is from the forthcoming collection Staff Picks for Invertebrates coming out with, uh, Guernica Editions in May, 2026.

Zoe: Yes. Yes, that's right. I'm so excited.

Kyeren: I'm excited too. Zoe, would you share a little about your book?

Zoe: Uh, sure. Yeah. So, um, this book is about the two places that I love the most in the world, which is Russell Books where I work and have worked for about 15 years, and also the Pacific Ocean and, and this island and this ecosystem. Um, so it is quite literally bookstore and ocean poems melded together, and hence the title Staff Picks for Invertebrates. Um, and the title poem is a poem in which I am recommending books to various different invertebrate creatures. That gives you a bit of a sense of what I'm doing there.

Kyeren: So it's, it's wonderfully original. Thank you. And full of... it's full of beautiful poems. I'm very lucky to have heard many of them. Can you talk about your process of writing and how poems come to you generally speaking?

Zoe: Yeah. So two things. And this book is, is really a braiding of those two things, of poems that originate in interactions with customers and, and coworkers and just being in the bookstore space and the, the human constructed space. Um, and then poems that come from being out at, on the water and on the beach and interacting with that wild space. Um, so most of the bookstore poems actually originated during National Poetry month, over the series, a series of three or four years. Um, and the ocean poems just come from the fact that that's where I spend my time and, and that's what really inspires me the most deeply. Um, yeah.

Kyeren: I guess, do you, when you, when you are out and you're experiencing the ocean, are you making mental notes? Do you carry a book with you? How do you give attention to the words that come?

Zoe: Um, I mostly, I'm just there. I don't usually write while I'm there. Maybe a, a note, I could take a little note in my phone or something, but what I find works the best for me is to go and be fully present in the space, and then to go home and give myself a few minutes to just take whatever came and let it exist on paper.

Kyeren: Oh, very good. Thank you.

Zoe: If I don't give that little bit of space, then whatever it is that came will just evaporate.

Kyeren: Right.

Zoe: But if I have the space out there and then a little bit of quiet space in an indoor setting, sometimes things happen. The magic kind of brews and emerges. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyeren: Can I ask you about writing your full length collection compared to writing chapbooks? 'Cause you have two award-winning chapbooks, but this is your first full length experience.

Zoe: Yeah. Well, so actually I have, both of the chapbooks that I have are sort of incorporated into this full length manuscript in a couple different ways. So my first one, um, is actually a series of little poems that are kind of represent me commuting to and from the bookstore because my first, uh, chapbook was all poems written on the bus. Oh, wow. Uh, so, so they're kind of, I've used them to be markers in between, so you'll have poems that happen out on the beach and then a commute, and then poems that happen in the bookstore space, and then a commute, and then they sort of over time blend together a little bit and the ocean enters the bookstore increasingly over the course of the book. Um, so the second chapbook that I did with, um, Raven Press, uh, it was all ocean poems. So a lot of those ocean poems make a reappearance and of course a bunch of others that didn't exist at the time. So, I don't know, maybe this is partly because this is my first full length collection, but it's, it feels like... I don't wanna say everything half decent I've written ever, but it is sort of, it ends up pulling in most of the things that I have had previously published. Does that make sense?

Kyeren: Yeah, totally. And, and the way that you've structured the book sounds amazing. The way that the public transit poems actually are functioning as they're, you know, in their, in their correct role within the book. It's, yeah. The reflecting real life.

Zoe: I have to give a lot of credit to Tannis McDonald, the first editor of this collection. Mm-hmm. Um, and then also to Atlanta Wolf, who's my editor with Guernica, um, who both of them sort of helped me figure out how these things could coexist. And Tannis particularly, she gave me really the key to turning it into an actual collection, which was that I didn't, I didn't have to separate the bookstore from the space, the ecological space that inhabited, that this constructed human space should be invaded by all of these creatures. And because you're bringing them with you, right? Yeah. And that the wild, the wild spaces and human spaces aren't actually separate. We like maybe think they are, but they aren't, and that just unlocked everything else.

Kyeren: Oh. That's wonderful. That's gorgeous. Thank you so much Zoe, and thank you for sharing your poetry. So Staff Picks for Invertebrates will be out, uh, next year. Please look out for it. Zoe's poems are gorgeous. And thank you so much for being here today.

TRACY WAI DE BOER: Poem 4: "Little Key"

Matthew took a spill around the corner, fell from his bike, tumbled over handlebars into the hot city streets that June rush houred to hospital. The cab ride bumpy, teeth tense. He sipped through the pain in emergency. We waited seven hours. Hungry, laughed the whole time. Later he said he felt the vibration of music against the bone. The two halves ground together as if mismatched gears, even the texture of water hurt. The sex was silly and slow. All the while he slept at an angle easier on the pain. We shopped for button downs and I bathed him wedged paper towel to wipe sweat from his armpits. All summer, the bones met again and merged on their own as we watched over weeks on x-ray. But now my nipples are unaligned. He told the doctor whose assistant stifled a laugh.

Interview 4: Tracy Wai de Boer

Kyeren: We just heard Tracy Wai de Boer reading "Little Key." Tracy, welcome to the Poet Laureate Podcast and thank you for being here.

Tracy: Thank you so much for having me.

Kyeren: Would you please tell us about the origin of that poem? How did it begin for you?

Tracy: Um, that's a great question. I mean, it's pretty obvious. It's right there in the poem. Yes. My partner of 10 years fell off his bike when we were living in Toronto. He took a turn too quickly. Just went over the handlebars, uh, broke his collarbone, and we rushed to the, the emergency room during rush hour. Um, it's called "Little Key" because clavicle is the word for, um, the bone here that I think translates to "little key" because it, the way it turns in our bodies. So...

Kyeren: Oh, wow. I didn't know that.

Tracy: Yeah. I didn't know that either. But, um, a lot of the poems from this book, which I have just read from Nostos. Um, refer to the Latin terms for the words, because Matthew's degree is in, um, classics. And so we spend a lot of time speaking about language and the origins of words. And for me personally, I find it really interesting to know, like, not the definition of a word necessarily, but it's etymology. Mm-hmm. What was it that it meant at one time and how does it come to us now and what does it mean?

Kyeren: So did you discover that in the writing of the poem and, and also how did you decide that that was poem material?

Tracy: Oh, that's a great question. 'Cause it doesn't seem like it is, it's so mundane of like a bike accident. Um, yeah, your first question of how did I, right, when did I come up with the titles? I think they sort of came together on their own over time. Um, titles are always very hard as you as a poet also know, um, titles are hard, but I think there was something really simple about just the word, that's the core piece of the poem, which was clavicle. He broke his clavicle. Mm-hmm. He broke his collarbone. Um, and then finding out that the word for that was little key was sort of lovely and it just felt right. And a lot of the poems throughout the book are like that. So I think it was just sort of like a fun side project in when I wasn't writing and I wasn't editing, I could just kind of like search words and be like, what does this word mean? What's the etymology of this word? What language did it come from to come to us? Um, and then how did I realize it was poem material? I mean, you never really know what's poem material and not until after you've written it and then you go back and read it and you think, oh yeah, that's actually not too bad. That's pretty good. Or you think, oh actually that's really cringe and that belongs in like my high school journal or something. Um, and we'll never see the light of day. But I think what's interesting about Nostos, this book, is that it's really more about the time of my life that I was writing these poems. And I think that episode where Matthew broke his collarbone was very core to that part of my life. Um, we were living in Toronto. I was in my mid twenties. Uh, I didn't really have a lot of direction as a lot of people don't when they're in their mid twenties living in Toronto. And I think also I wasn't quite sure about how my partnership with Matthew was gonna factor into my life. And now we've been together almost 11 years. Um, and so at the time I think I wasn't sure, like, are we gonna do these things together? Like, are we gonna get through the not so fun parts? Um, can the, can the not so fun parts also be kind of fun? Which I think that hospital visit, I mean, it's a thing that we still talk about where we were hungry, we waited in the waiting room for seven hours. And even now we have inside jokes about like the people who were coming and going at that visit, you know? And like I remember there was one lady who was just like off her rocker. And she was in the waiting room and the nurse said like, you know, you're gonna have to wait a little bit longer. And she was just like, testy. And she was like, you know, I'm gonna teach you to be smart with your tongue. And like, that's just like a thing that I'll never forget is how strange that was.

Kyeren: Yeah, that's an in-joke.

Tracy: So funny. Like, so weird. Um, yeah, so I think it was, you know, I, I started to realize like, oh, this is a person that I could stand within a lineup for hours and we would still have fun. Or we are in the emergency room for seven hours with no food and we're still cracking jokes, you know? Yeah. So I think you don't really know that until you've done it. And I think that factors into the book and some of the poems about him specifically, there are a lot of poems about him and... Yeah, I know. It's a surprise to me too.

Kyeren: Well, you know, I, I wanna just share that No Doses is, uh, a beautiful book that came out with Palimpsest Press, and it's available now.

Tracy: Yeah.

Kyeren: And it's your first full length collection after a bpNichol chapbook nomination for, uh, maybe, basically, yeah.

Tracy: Yes. So how was it putting together a full collection for the first time?

Kyeren: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, it's nerve wracking, right? Because I think you're like, are all these little bites gonna make a meal? Like are they gonna come together or are they just sort of disparate in a way that doesn't really fit?

Tracy: And I think it was over time of just like revisiting the ideas and looking back at the work I had from that period of my life. Um, I started to think, oh, this actually all does sort of fit together. You know, not so literally maybe, but it just sort of works. Um, and I think that's how I approach a lot of my work creatively, is that I don't try to force it so much. I like to just do little bits and pieces here and there and kind of like put them away and then later go back and look at them and think like, oh, you know, there's sort of a subconscious mind here that was organizing these thoughts and I just have to come back and look at them later. Mm-hmm. Um, so yeah, I think now that I've gone through it once, I think the process will be more fun next time, a little more easy and, um, natural almost so.

Kyeren: More confident.

Tracy: More confident. Yeah. Just sort of like knowing that it's gonna come together.

Kyeren: Yes. I think. Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything you'd like to share about the book?

Tracy: Oh. I mean, it has pictures. 

Kyeren: Yeah, photography, because you're a visual artist as well.

Tracy: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm also a visual artist. Uh, I have had visual work published and, um, I try to interweave a lot of visual and sensory elements into my work more generally. Mm-hmm. So both the curation work that I do, um.

Kyeren: Yeah. Other visual work. And so I think the pictures are important to the book. They are. And they, and they're, I've been watching your social media posts, um, and the photographs of yourself or the self portraits, and there's like a zeitgeisty feel to them.

Tracy: Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. That I, I feel is also in the book. Yeah, I think that's right. And that to me is so interesting. It's interesting to hear you say that because to me, sometimes I feel like that's another character that exists in me, like, I'm like, I don't know who that is, but it's like she has to come out and work and do her work and then mm-hmm. Later I look at the, yeah. The self portraits or like even the portraits in the book, the images in the book. Um, and I think like that's like a sort of pulling together of things of like a version of me. Mm-hmm. And so that's always so interesting as an artist too, when you've got lots of different.

Kyeren: You know, a quasi-self.

Tracy: Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Kyeren: Tracy, thank you so much for talking today. It's been a pleasure.

Tracy: Yeah. Thank you for having me. And I really recommend that, uh, that everyone checks out Nostos and, uh, enjoys Tracy's poems. Thank you.

Tracy: Thank you, Kyeren. Thank you. 

Kyeren: Thank you again to Haus of Owl for making this first community episode of the Poet Laureate Podcast. Please visit Haus of Owl to learn how they can support your creative visions. Thank you to all of our guest poets today, Tracy Wai de Boer, Zoe Dickinson, Jeremy Loveday, and Lorne Daniel. You can find their impressive bios in the show notes when ordering their books. Please support your local independent bookstore. If this episode inspired you, please share it with someone who needs poetry today.