THE POET LAUREATE PODCAST

Season 2 Episode 2
Recording date: March 10, 2026

Host: Kyeren Regehr

Guest: Carla Funk

Recorded at: Haus of Owl Creation Lab, Victoria, BC, on Lekwungen Homelands

Links:

University of Victoria Department of Writing: https://www.uvic.ca/humanities/writing/

Russell Books: https://www.russellbooks.com/

Carla Funk: https://www.carlafunk.com/

Haus of Owl Creation Lab: https://hausofowl.com/

Transcript

Classical guitar intro music

[CARLA READS POEM #1 ]

Kyeren: Welcome to the Poet Laureate Podcast, a space for poetry and presence. The poem is listening I'm Kyeren Regehr, and we're recording at Haus of Owl Creation Lab in Victoria, BC on Lekwungen homelands. This episode of the Poet Laureate Podcast is supported by the University of Victoria's Department of Writing, one of Canada's leading programs dedicated to the study and practice of writing.

UVic Writing offers BA, BFA, and MFA programs where students learn to write across multiple genres, including poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, screenwriting, playwriting, journalism, and for digital mediums. Since 1963, UVic Writing has nurtured generations of writers and storytellers through teaching, research, and mentorship, and is committed to launching new voices and stories onto the modern literary landscape.

Learn more at uvic.ca/writing. We're also grateful for the support of Russell Books, Victoria's favourite independent family-owned bookstore. More about Russell Books near the end of this episode. We just heard "I Want to Say a Thing Important and Alive" by Carla Funk, the inaugural Poet Laureate of Victoria, BC.

Welcome, Carla, and thank you for being here.

Carla: Oh, Kyeren, thank you so much for the invitation.

Kyeren: Carla, that poem has just arrived in our ears, but where did it first begin for you?

Carla: That poem was a bit of an assignment for myself because as the poet laureate, I was tasked, and you would know this- ... I was tasked with writing poems.

I think the, the number they gave me was three to five poems a year to be read at public events within the city. And I was going to be reading a piece at the Victoria, the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize. And it's a gathering of writers. You're celebrating these amazing writers, and this thought was burning in my mind, "Well, I wanna say something that's worthy of all these amazing words that are being celebrated."

And so that, that title actually just burned in me as a first thought. I want to say something that's crackling with life, that is true and not posturing, that's not trying to be somebody. And I want it to be important, not in the self-importance way, but to contribute something of truth and beauty to the landscape of language that is so rich in our city and in the earth.

And even more now these years later, in a world of noise and clutter and language that is twisted and so knit with deception, I wanted-- I wanna write something, I wanna say something that has life in it, that has truth in it, that has beauty in it And so it started there. And then I'm always in love with iambic pentameter, so that little, I want to say a thing important and alive...

That rhythm propelled it forward. But for me, I just look around at the beauty, even in the dismantling of the natural world, I look around at the beauty that's still here, and I wanna suck it all in. Mm. And I want it to infect beautifully my language and my, um, my inmost being, and I want to then contribute something of beauty to the landscape of beauty that's already here.

So that's where the poem started.

Kyeren: Wow. I remember you speaking about hunting beauty in common places, and I feel that there's such a generosity of attention in the way you find beauty in the ordinary. What draws you to the common and the overlooked as poetic material, and what helps you stay awake to the small miracles of everyday life that you're just describing now?

Carla: I fight for it. I fight for it in a noisy world, in a world that's, it's so easy to be heartbroken. Um, and I, I do believe it's good to lament what's worthy of lament, but I don't wanna live in that place all the time. I don't wanna create out of that place. Actually, my heart has been pursuing love in the sense of what does it mean to be a writer, somebody who creates, and just a human who is fueled by love?

And- Mm. And not in a-- You know, you say that word and it can sound so saccharine and- Mm-hmm ... sentimental, but I really want to write as a human being filled with love so that my attention to the world is awake to wonder. I, I guess childlike, still preserving some sense of innocence and hope in the world.

And so that fight to maintain a sense of awakeness, it begins for me every morning. As soon as I wake up, I, I start my day on my little porch, and it does not overlook some grand meadow- ... in the idyllic natural world. It actually overlooks suburbia. But I can see beyond the traffic. I can see the sunrise coming up in the east.

And I take my tea out there every morning, and I begin my morning watching the sunrise. I begin it in quiet. I begin it in listening prayer. I begin it in a way where I am tapping in. I'm, I'm making myself available to a bigger wonder that's, that's beyond myself, and then letting that be my fuel, needing that to be my fuel throughout the day.

That's really, really important for me. It's become more crucial to me in this world we're in right now. Mm-hmm. And I tap into that highest source of love, and then like, "Okay, let me create out of that. Let me write out of that. Let me live out of that." And that helps me not live in heartbreak, not live in lament.

Be honest about those things, but then write up out of it.

Kyeren: Wow, that was so well said, and it feels like a vital practice for the times we live in.

Carla: It absolutely is. I think more than ever, I've felt it. I don't know if you've felt it. Mm-hmm. You have to wrestle for it. You have to wrestle for a grip on reality

Um, what is true and beautiful. I refuse to live in despair. I refuse it. I just refuse it. It, it will come. It'll come and crouch at your door, the door of your soul, and I just refuse it. Not to say that I don't, um, I'm not living in some sort of weird toxic positivity. But I do, I cling to hope, and more and more, actually, the gift of it is that I find myself returning to a sense of childlike play when I'm creating.

And it feels so good. I feel like a five-year-old at the craft table with, like- Wow ... pipe cleaners and scissors, and I just ... When I'm writing in that space, it's not every poem and every piece of writing, but that sense of play and discovery and wonder, it's fueled by that sense of hope and this higher, deeper well.

Um, that's ... I rely on it, need it. I would shrivel and, and float away without it.

Kyeren: Wow. I'm, I'm just actually remembering right now going out for drinks after at a poetry event with Ali Blythe and Melanie Siebert, who you know well from the writing program. 

Carla:Two amazing humans. 

Kyeren: And Ali was asking us all, all the poets at the table, "Who feels sad when they're writing? Who feels happy?" And there were so many sad poets.

Carla: That's sad, but I do understand that. Yeah. I do understand that. I-

Kyeren: You're not that.

Carla: I don't want to be that. I mean, sure, we all have our days, but the world is sad. It's easy to be sad, and it's hard to fight up out of it. And to me, just making something, just the very act of creating is very countercultural, very defiant.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. 

Carla: Um, I think it comes with ... It can come with a defiant joy because- Mm ... the world is all about deconstructing, dismantling, degrading. And so I don't wanna create out of that. I wanna create counter to that. And so what is predominant in the world right now? Hopelessness. So I wanna create out of hope.

How do I do that?

Kyeren: Very subversive of you.

Carla: Oh, is, isn't it? Isn't that what poets are supposed to do? Um, but I f- I, I fight for it. I fight for it. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyeren: Well done, and thank you for doing that.

Carla: It's ongoing.

Kyeren: You know, uh, a lot of your poems and your memoirs often return to the natural world and to Mennonite culture and family and storytelling and rural life and memory, and I'm curious about the way you reenter memory.

And how do you reopen a memory so that it becomes alive on the page?

Carla: I often joke with my husband that I have the equivalent in my mind, uh, of a hoarder's storage locker because I'm just-- I marvel that he can forget things because it's not crucial information, so he's like, "I just toss it." How do you do that?

Mine just goes into the storage locker, and it's actually a gift as a writer, but it's also, uh, like how do you defrag your storage locker of memory? There's so much in there. But it is a gift as a writer. So to be able to go back into the, the storage locker of memory, the files, the catalog, the, the archives, and plunder it is wonderful.

I love looking in the rearview mirror. I love it. I love looking in the past and seeing what's there to be pulled up and seen freshly, because time and distance gives you this wonderful gift of objectivity. And there are elements of my upbringing, my childhood, adolescence, gosh, last year even, where I couldn't see it for all it was when I was in it.

But when I return to it I feel like a treasure hunter. I feel like I'm going back in with magnifying glass, a teles- like I'm look- I get to dig around and find what gold is there. And the going back to memory for me has been therapy. It's been, in that way, poetry and in all forms of writing that go back into memory, it feels like going back to get the truth, the full truth, and to look at it with the eyes, again, of love.

That sounds-- I know that can sound really weird to people to say, like how do you-- to look at something with the eyes of love. But for example, I write about my dad so often. I keep writing about my dad, and I feel as though all these years, over a decade now that he's been gone, he's dead, I can look back on him with love, even in his broken state.

He was a broken man, a lot of hurt, a lot of pain, um, addiction and trauma from childhood. Like all those things were there. Didn't know it at the time. Just saw my dad as this, the guy he was, and now I look back and I see the boy. Mm. I see the young man. I can look at him with love. And so when I go back to a memory, I get to look at him with love.

Feels like a gift. It feels like I get to go back and live it better the second time when I'm writing out of memory. So for me, it's um, it's opening the door to a room, going in with expectation and hope that I will find something good. I will find something true. I may find that the old wound is reopened a bit.

Mm-hmm. But if it's reopened to clean it, to finally remove those little last traces that were keeping it a wound, then it gets to heal. It gets to turn into a scar, and it doesn't have the same pain to it, and even some scars can be beautiful.

Kyeren: When you're speaking about writing, writing memory from a place of love, it brought to mind, it's a T.S. Eliot quote, and it's about, uh, the distance between the, the person that experiences and the artist that creates. There's a cleanness to that, the ability to turn the human experience into art, and I think that's what you're just naturally doing with the way you enter into memory.

Carla: For so many years, I saw the writing of a poem as, it felt like a contrivance to me.

And of course, there's elements of craft, and you want your language to just burn and have this voltage to it and be precise and, you know, Coleridge's best words in the best order. You want all that, but I think sometimes I would work the poem so hard as the artist, as the, the crafter of it, that it would lose its soul.

Mm-hmm. And so for me, over the years, I think what I've done is I've, I've let craft and technique find its place, and I love it. Like, I really love craft and technique. I love that as just a subject even. But a poem without a soul, it's like a human without a soul. The soul is really important in the poem, and it has to have this, to me, gleam of honesty and presence that is essential to the human condition.

Mm-hmm. And so I do try to come into it first as human, and then the revision process is where the artist gets to come in and be the craftsperson- Mm-hmm ... and, and you're tweaking lines and thinking strategically about decisions, but never to the detriment of that soul that was there working the material from within to the outside onto the page.

Kyeren: Oh, yeah. Thank you, Carla. 

You know, if you reach back to your first collection, Blessing the Bones into Light, and move forward to your most recent, Gloryland, what have been your most significant discoveries as a poet? Can you speak to the evolution of your voice? Maybe has your sense of permission changed or the unfolding of the questions that you're, that you're asking as a poet?

Carla: I think my first collection, it felt like I was a kid learning to walk. Like, it felt like I, I was taking some steps and Lorna Crozier, who, amazing poet, amazing editor, she was the editor for that first collection, and I was terrified because she'd been my instructor and such a mentor, and I looked up to her so much for her writing.

So she was my editor, and she had to give me a bit of a stern scolding to quit acting as if this was an assignment for school, to, to really step into my voice. So my first collection felt like I was feeling around in the room to find the light switch that was gonna turn on some part that turned me from student writer to writer.

It was a great experience working with her, but I look back now and I see the youngness of the voice. I see tentativeness. Uh, I see attempts and, and I don't disparage that because that's just a stage, right? We don't look at a child learning to walk and say, "Huh, fell down again," or, um, "You took too big a step.

Well, you should've learned." So it was just, it was a learning. Second book, I look back on that and I say I was trying to, to run when I should have probably just been walking. Like, I can see some elements of what I'm attempting, but I wasn't quite ready. So that second book feels very green to me. But again, I, I look at it and go, "That was a stage."

And then I would say third, fourth, fifth, I felt like I was coming into my voice. And interestingly, the more I began to employ techniques like blank verse and even thinking about order and progression and Uh, some sense of stanzaic pattern. It helped my voice. It gave it shape- Mm-hmm ... when it felt a little unruly and a little wild.

It was maybe the equivalent of, okay, the child now knows how to walk. Let's let her learn some choreography. Let's get her dancing a bit. And so those, those three books, "Up to Gloryland," have felt like, uh, the technique actually helped me find a sureness in my voice, gain a little bit of authority of tone.

So maybe there's some subject matter that I'm not, "Oh, how to, how do I handle this so that it sounds real and true?" Taking from tradition and taking from craft and technique and metrical thinking in a line of poetry, that helped me gain a little bit of order and structure. We resist boundaries and structure and constraints when we're young, and we learn, oh, they're vital.

They're vital. When you're older, you learn that anyway, so, uh, I think that was probably the evolution, was moving out of a kind of unruly, wobbly, figuring it out into some, some measure of confidence in the voice that I have been given. And, um, but every stage, I look at it and I, I have a fondness for each stage of the process.

Mm-hmm. But I also see, oh gosh, can you imagine, like, going back to f- first poems that you published, and you just want to revise them. Yeah. Like, you just think, "Oh, I would write this completely differently," but I also do not want to be the poet revising the same poem over and over again. So I want to move forward.

So keep walking, keep writing, keep moving. Look back and say, "Oh, well, that was a interesting phase of development, but it was necessary to get me to where I'm at now."

Kyeren: Perfect, yes. And of course, you've also squeezed in memoir and essays and have you finished the novel?

Carla: I did finish a semblance of a novel.

It's out there floating around, seeing if anybody wants to buy it. But it's always, people will say, "Oh, have you sold your novel yet?" And I'll say, "Imagine a strange little house, and it's just gonna take the right buyer to want to live in that house." That's how I feel about this novel. So yeah, it's, it's done-ish, and it's out there floating around.

And I've started working on another one because I wanna keep growing as a writer. I'm started cobbling together a new poetry collection and keep creating. But I've worried so much less about, oh, I should publish a book. It's been so many years when- since I published a book. Mm-hmm. I'm just not worried about that.

To me, publishing is a lovely part of the process, but without writing, without making, there's nothing to publish. So I'm much more interested in making, creating, growing, and continuing a sense of play and wonder in my writing. If I never published anything again, I would be totally fine with that.

Kyeren: That's amazing. I love the freedom of that, being in that place.

Carla: Took me a little while to get there- Yeah ... but I really feel the freedom. It actually returned me to a sense of fresh delight in writing. You know that feeling of, like, the expectation the world has on you- Yes ... and it's like this thing breathing at your back saying, "Oh, it's been this many years"?

I just, I kicked that thing out, and it feels really wonderful.

Kyeren: How did you kick that thing out? All the writers who are listening want to know.

Carla: Uh, honestly, I just refused to let a sense of the world's identity of the writer be my identity. The machine of, I guess it's a sense of, well, capitalist machine that will want to impose some sort of identity on you, uh, and it's all about production.

I'm not interested in just producing. I want to bear fruit. I wanna be fruitful. So make me fruitful, and whatever fruit that looks like, I'll bear it. Like, let's go.

Kyeren: It's kind of a- amazing to see your progression as a writer. Poetry and memoir, like, how do you shift gears between these genres, and how do you know that the material that's coming through for you to write is meant for a particular genre?

Carla: Well, this is hard for me to answer without giving a sense of what my process is, which is, I mean, I start every day, as I mentioned, in this posture of silence, and for me, it's prayer. It's writing and prayer are interchangeable to me. So I'm spending a lot of time in contemplation and prayer and really trying to discern what the direction of my life is.

And so that day, if it's a poem... I mean, the other day I'm sitting on my porch. I was like, "Oh God, what do I write today?" And all of a sudden I hear the noise of the neighbor across the road. She has a new puppy, and all I can hear across the cul-de-sac is the dog's squeaky toy. It's a puppy just with a squeaky toy.

And it was this annoyance. I'm like, "I'm trying to tap into the divine love that is available to me," and there's this dog's squeaky toy. And then I just felt like this voice voi- which I would discern as the voice of God saying, "Write about this dog and this squeaky toy." And then a poem came. So that's what I mean.

It, to me, I don't start the day with my task list. I might have a task list, but I'm like, "Oh God, what do you want me to write about today?" So it might be an essay, it might be a poem, it might be working a patch, passage of, of revision on, on a piece of fiction. I just have given myself over to a higher thinking, and it's so wonderful.

It's such a liberating thing to not feel like I'm God of my own life and I'm in charge. I'm like, "No, no, I would rather be listening to a voice higher than my own and guided by that." So it, I, I, I don't mean that to sound super woo woo. Mm-hmm. It's just, it's just that's who I am. So my process of writing begins in a place of prayer, and I'm trying to listen.

V- I'm imperfect at listening, um, but trying to slow down, listen, and really discern what is the next thing that is my assignment. So always a student, really. Always a student, even if I'm out of the classroom, always a student, but trusting that there's this wonderful teacher who's just nudging me forward, "Try this.

Try that. Write about the puppy's annoying squeaky toy." And you know, it turned into this poem about sorrow and joy, the place of joy, um, in, in the midst of sorrow. So you just never know what the day's gonna hold. But I do always go into it this expectation that there's something, something to be made, something to be listened to, some strand, path, trail, little breadcrumbs leading me towards something beyond myself.

Kyeren: This process also applies to your revision. So you might be in your contemplation as like, "Okay, today is a work of revision."

Carla: Yeah. I mean, yesterday I was, I was actually working on some poems for thinking, "Oh, I'm gonna come in and talk to Kyeren." And so yeah, what poems? What poems? And just trust that the poems that float to mind are the ones to work on, and so there I go working away.

And I mean, for me, like I said, prayer and creative process completely mingled together. So I will be working a line, and I will be sitting with a word thinking... You know that feeling. You're working a line. You're like, "I don't like this word. This word is boring. Where's a better word?" And so I'll stop and be like, "Do you have a better word?"

And I'll listen for that voice that is so kind and loving, and I never, ever have heard an audible voice. I've never had my skull cracked open and a bolt of lightning shove in this wonderful word. But that pause, that listening, that really I-- uh, it's a posture of saying, "I'm a bit of an idiot sometimes, and, and I trust that you, God, are not, so can you help me out?"

And that kindness comes, and sometimes a w- little word will be stoked to mind or, or I'll pause and I'll read some other great poet's poems, and I'll be inspired in language. And- Mm. So it's j- I-- yeah, really trying to live in that place of humility, a sense of always being a student to the truth and beauty of the earth and the world and Out of that, sometimes ideas come that I feel like, hmm, that feels maybe beyond my own thinking or, or just a little, an arrow shoots through my imagination that seems like a, an outlier to the conversation I'm having with myself on the page, and I follow it and see where it goes.

Yeah. So it's, it's, uh, again, it does return me to that place of childlike delight.

Kyeren: And curiosity as well.

Carla: Total curiosity. I mean, I'm the nosiest person you're gonna meet. I'm gonna ask a gazillion questions when I meet a stranger because I gen- I genuinely wanna know. I wanna understand, and I, I take that into the world of writing.

I take that to the page. What about this? What about that? What would this word do here? What about that syllable? What about this sound? What would that do in that line? It's a great, great way to make something, I think. Um, for me anyway. Yeah.

Kyeren: Absolutely. Wow. 

Carla, you've spoken a little about faith, and your faith moves through your poetry, I mean, in such interesting ways.

How has that language, you know, sermons, hymns, scripture, shaped your poetic voice?

Carla: I look back now at the long Sundays in the little Mennonite church- Hmm ... with gratitude. At the time, it's like, "Get me out of here. Strip off these white knee socks and - ... get me out of this dress, and let me go run around and, you know, grab my little..."

We had little fake guns that we'd run around and play war. Like, I wanted to be out of the pew and out into the woods or doing something other than sitting under these long sermons. But I, oh, I'm so grateful for even the love of language, and it returns me to my student days as a fiction student under the wonderful writer Jack Hodgins.

And I remember him saying this, that if you do not, as a person growing up in the Western world, if you do not know the Bible, you are culturally illiterate. And I, I'd always thought of the Bible, and growing up listening to sermons, listening to scripture, memorizing passages from the Bible, I felt like it was a constraint.

And it was the first time somebody outside of a church context was saying, "No, no, you need to know this." And then, of course, it lit up when I started l- studying Shakespeare and- Mm ... T.S. Eliot, and you look at all these writers. And of course, for a generation, for many generations, the Bible as a work of literature was a seedbed for language.

And so I felt like, oh, I actually have this wonderful bank of language to pull from. And so I would say that was the start of, of it, just looking for what was there. I- it was familiar to me. Some people grow up with a Greek mythology or all the fairy tales or a completely other spiritual tradition where there are texts they draw from.

I took what was given to me, and I- Mm ... mined it. I took from it. I would say I was treating it like a writer, and then gradually, you know, I walked away, rejected that, 'cause whatever you grow up with, you have to kick it- ... and prod it and poke it and see what's worth taking out. And, and then re- uh, I returned to this deep place of devotion and faith.

So I don't look at it as a constraining text. I look at it as, as life. And so for me, it's very much in me, but not a rule book, more like just a book of beauty and truth. And curiosity where I can go back in and wrestle and ask questions. Mm-hmm. Um, I remember being told as a kid, we're given two books.

We're given this book of scripture, and we're given the book of creation. And so for me, those have been two texts that are so primary to me, the book of creation and the looking around at the world, reading the world, reading the hummingbird, reading the grass, reading the wind, and learning how to see in those elements a world beyond.

And looking at every book, every bit of language as this is not just a syllable. This is a keyhole that opens a door into a whole other realm. So that belief about the world, about language, about every part of life has infected my imagination. I, I don't ever wanna lose it.

Kyeren: I just love listening to you speak about writing, about life.

I have to say here, let everyone know that, uh, you were my first poetry teacher, and I was so deeply inspired by you, by your work, uh, by your teaching, your generous teaching, and, and by your laureateship. And I always thought that you had written everything down and edited it and memorized it before you said it in class 'cause it was so eloquent.

Carla: Little did you know I was walking in with imposter syndrome every day going, "What do I have to say that's of value? Help."

Kyeren: I would, I would love it if we could return to that after another poem. Mm. Would you be willing to read another?

Carla: Of course. 

Kyeren: Thank you. Uh, and also listeners, we will have a musical interlude after this poem so that you can rest and reflect in the words.

[CARLA INTRODUCES POEM #2]

Carla: This is one of those poems that came out of another morning on the porch, sitting with my tea, watching the sun come up. My goal every day is to see, to be awake, to, to be awake and reading the world. Anything that comes across the, my sight line or comes into my ears or imagination, I'm gonna take it and I'm gonna plunder it and I'm gonna poke around with it and see, be curious about it.

So the title of this is called "Profound Ordinary Miracle number 417"

[Poem text omitted from transcript.]

[Classical guitar interlude]

Kyeren: Being in class with you, I'm just remembering so much now sitting here with you, and that morning you had smelt spring in the air, and you were trying to pin down what it was that spring smelt like. We were saying sweet, and then you were going through the words, and you were like, "Sugary." And that moment pierced the poetry within me and opened it up, and I understood what was required to evoke a sensory experience and to nail the precision of language.

So I would like to know where it was where you first were pierced by poetry.

Carla: I grew up in a family that had no relationship to poetry. There were, there was a lot of Johnny Cash, there was a lot of, um, Elvis sings the hymns. There was music, for sure music. There were stories. And although this wasn't poetry, it introduced me to poetry, and tha- those were the books, um, the Narnia Chronicles by C.S.

Lewis. Mm. His book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And I'll tell you why it f- it introduced me to poetry. I had been living in a world where I was told that what was on this side of the wardrobe was reality. This is the tactile, sensory, concrete world that we live in. This is reality. And when, I don't know if you know the story, if you can remember- Mm-hmm

the Pevensie children and, and Lucy goes through the wardrobe, and she pops out into this landscape where there's fauns and there's the White Witch and there's Aslan and there's talking beavers and Cair Paravel and winter, perpetual winter, uh, all of these things. It was like, oh, the other side of the wardrobe.

We're living in Narnia, actually. Uh, so that, for me, I believe was the sort of beginning of understanding of poetry. Mm-hmm. That, yes, it's made of language here from the real world- Mm-hmm ... but there is the back of the wardrobe that gets pushed open when we write poetry. Poetry does that. It admits both worlds, the passageway between two worlds, two realms.

And so I just remember being so heavily affected by those Narnia books- Mm-hmm ... that I walked around the world different. I would-- I remember trying to push through the back of my parents' literal, like- There are more. Being like, pushing out, like, what if? What if? So of course, no, nothing. Just wood. But I walked through the world a little differently.

Mm-hmm. I looked at the cat differently. Like, like it suddenly opened up this higher realm, this different realm, this deeper magic, and that led me, eventually through high school, you encounter some poems and you dissect them to death and you write a little analysis for an exam and maybe you get, you know, 8 out of 10.

But in university, taking a poetry class with Patrick Lane, the, uh, beloved poet who's no longer with us, he, he cracked it open for me. Mm-hmm. And interestingly returned me to the language that I'd grown up with, which was blue collar, rural, Mennonite small town, telling me, "That's poetry. You can find poetry there."

So I'm trying to get away from it to find Narnia, and he's saying, "No, no, no. Go back there to find Narnia." And so that, it returned me and it, it gave me that permission to go back and use, take what I was given, that inheritance, that place I've-- I grew up, the people around me, and to see it with the eyes of one who has been in Narnia.

Kyeren: Wow. 

Carla: We still live in Narnia, I'm convinced. And, and honestly, that's-- I, I wanna walk around with that sense of, just because we don't see it doesn't mean it's not here. And so yeah, I walk around always trying to push the back out of the wardrobe when I'm writing.

Kyeren: Yeah. That's just such a great metaphor. It's, it's brilliant. 

Do you feel like your teachers gave you an inspiration to teach? Like where did that come from? Was it always within you, or did you receive your teaching ability via osmosis?

Carla: Probably a little bit of that. Y- you know what it's like when you have anyone in your life who is, um- An authority figure or a mentor, somebody from whom you're learning, and they do it so well that you think, "I wanna do that."

It's like children when they see a dancer or an, an athlete or an artist of some sort and they, they are inspired. S- But it does meet, I think, a natural inclination as well, like a given inclination. I was looking back through old papers a few weeks ago actually cleaning out things, and I came across a report card from my kindergarten days and- Oh, wow

my kindergarten teacher did not like me. I knew that in the moment. I actually confronted her as a six-year-old. Tells you the kind of kid I was. And I said, "You don't like me." But in my report card she had written, "Carla seems to think that she's the teacher sometimes," and I think that's why she didn't like me-

because I probably had a, a desire to correct or ... So there was something in me, not to say it was pure and good all the time, but I wanted to teach, I guess, because I loved to learn. And so when you love to learn, you wanna kind of slide to the other side of it. So there was probably always that desire. It probably was, you know, in its untamed, impure form, just bossiness.

Um- ... wanting to be in charge. I was the younger sister of an older brother, and mostly there were, like, older boys around me, and so probably there was some, if you wanna psychoanalyze it, there was probably some younger female in a world of men going, "I will find a way to be at the front of the class rather than..."

I don't know. But, uh- But definitely teachers who were good teachers and who loved the material they were teaching and had a generosity of heart toward their students that I-- How could you not wanna do that too, and participate in that when you have received so much? So- Exactly ... certainly teachers like Lorna Crozier, Patrick Lane, Jack Hodgins, they were so kind as humans, but they were so excellent as writers, and then they had the ability to take their knowledge of the craft and give it away with such generosity.

Mm-hmm. So it's inspiring, for sure. So yeah, definitely made me want to do that. I wanna be like them. 

Kyeren: So bossiness and osmosis. 

Carla: Yes, pretty much. Bossmosis.

Kyeren: Bossmosis. I think I, I can claim that too. 

You also, uh, nowadays you offer, offer writing groups and workshops, and you create spaces where people come together to write, and sometimes people who don't yet think of themselves as writers. What do you see happening when people first give themselves permission to write, and what is it about writing in community that changes the creative process?

Carla: I love, I love having a writer who comes into one of my writing groups, which I, I operate over Zoom now. I love seeing a writer who's a little bit terrified take the risk. And the way I run my writing classes, I, you know, have a theme that I curate around, and there might be a little discussion of technique, but it's, it's probably more of an idea that I'll curate a class around.

And I'll read a few pieces, and generally I use poetry, even if the writer that day wants to write prose, go for it, but poems are such good teachers. Mm-hmm. And so I'll read a few pieces, and then I'll set up a little experiment. I'll give some direction. We're gonna try this. And we write, you know, mute everybody's screens, and we write for 10, 12 minutes.

And I will see this look on one or more writers, this look of terror. Mm. And they-- I recognize it 'cause I, I know it's pressure. How do you create under pressure? It's imposter syndrome. It's that fear that comes in which steals any sense of joy. It, it's a thief that comes in to destroy before you've ever created anything.

And I'll say, "Just, just follow where it goes. Break the rules where you need to break them." Just giving that permission and really trying to bring a sense of encouragement to just play. This isn't an assignment. You're not getting a grade on it. Just play. There'll be this look of terror, and then I'll see, you know, in the, in all the little screens, people who leave their cameras on, their heads will go down, and there's the writing.

And then you just see that beautiful, they're in it. They're in it. You can see the, the, the pen has started slow, and then all of a sudden it's going write, write, write, write, write. And now they're in it, and they're following the, the heat of the idea. They're following the heat of the ink, and they're... I love watching that happen.

And usually they go in a direction they weren't expecting, and they find out something they didn't know that they knew or a question they didn't know they were wanting to ask. And often they write from life, not always. It's sometimes it's just from pure imagination and sense of play and wonder at language.

But when these writers do that, and then when I give opportunity to read, and somebody bravely puts up their hand and they read, then the next permission slip has been written for the next writer. Oh, it's just such a delight to watch that happen in other writers, and then to see these people who may not call themselves writers yet, but they have written, so they are a writer.

Mm-hmm. And they hear it happening around them. It just creates this sense of a hive, like busy activity, and it gets sweeter and sweeter, to keep plundering the metaphor. It, it's just a sense of, oh, this is what happens when you make something really delicious happens, and you're doing it in the company of other people.

And it's wonderful when a, a writer says, "Eh, this did not go the way I wanted it to go," and eh, you know, they-- No, no, don't prologue the piece of writing with all the weaknesses. Go for it. My job is just to listen to the gold. I just pull out. I'm not interested in the old workshop model of finding the flaw.

All I'm listening for is: What's the heat? Where's the fire? Where's the spark? What's happening here? Where is it going? Where is it-- What is it reaching for? I will call that out after they've read it, and then everybody else goes, "Oh Oh, this doesn't feel so threatening. So I think sometimes it's a little bit of therapy for all the bad classrooms we've been in in our life.

That's what I'm trying to, I'm trying to rescue it from a sense of we're not just here to find flaws, we're not just here to put a D on it and say, you know, "Sorry, do better next time." What happened today? What's the gold? Um, what can you take from it? And, and then just celebrating. We're doing something creative in a world that is dismantling.

So- Mm-hmm ... this is a rebellious act. You're all being counter-cultural, and you're being revolutionaries, and- ... let's do it. So there's, there's also that championing the, the act of creation as a subversive, uh, counter-cultural, quasi-rebellious act. I like that idea. Yeah. Yeah. That's got juice in it.

Kyeren: Absolutely. Good juice. Nectar.

Kyeren: Carla, could I ask you about your laureateship? Because you were the first poet laureate of Victoria, uh, there must have been two sides to that, like the freedom of a blank slate and also the pressure of stepping into a role that the city itself may not have yet fully understood. So did you feel as though you were inventing the role alongside the city, and how did you imagine poetry functioning in civic life?

Carla: I, I do think that being the inaugural poet laureate, it was a great delight and a great honor, and I do think it was lucky for me because there was no... I didn't have to walk in anybody else's footsteps. And also, there was a bit of terror, like, "What am I doing? I don't know what I'm doing." And I'd ask people at the city, "Do you know what I'm doing?"

And they'd say, "Just do it." What? What is the it? So there was a little bit of feeling around for what this was gonna look like, but it was freeing, it was liberating to just say, "Okay, here's an event." They would say, "Do you wanna write a poem and read it at this event?" And I would say, "Okay." And so away I would go.

Sometimes I remember reading a poem in the middle of Centennial Square for some sort of, I think it was called The Learning Festival. I think it only happened one or two years, but it was a new thing for them. Uh, poet laureate, new thing for them, so why don't we put these two things together? Did anybody hear that poem and remember that poem?

No. You know, we were, we were playing. We were trying to figure things out, and it was an honor to go to events and be a bit of an ambassador for writing. My favourite part, though, was doing events where people who had no experience or relationship to poetry would come out because they'd be like, "Well, there's free chocolate."

We did this event at the library for years called Love, Poetry, and Chocolate. And there'd be free chocolate from Roger's Chocolates. So people would come for the chocolate, but they would leave liking poetry more. So- Yeah ... that was, that was a super rewarding part of it, was just bringing people into poetry when they either had a bit of an allergy or just a terror or- Right bad relationship with it. So that was, that was, to me, that was the most rewarding part of the, the work.

Kyeren: Did the laureateship change what it means to be a poet for you?

Carla: You know, it, it did make me conscious of audience. I don't think a lot about- Mm ... readership and audience when I am crafting. I don't know about you, but I'm just with the poem, I'm with the idea, I'm with the words- Mm ... I'm with the page, and I'm really not thinking about the listener at that point. When it comes to a time of doing a reading, then you're thinking about the audience.

But it made me go into the process of making poems thinking about the listener, and often thinking about the reader or audience member who didn't like poetry or didn't care about poetry. So I wanted to write in a way that was generous and invitational. Mm-hmm. So that, that definitely changed my process in those years.

Kyeren: Yeah, because the laureateship is so public-facing, you know, sort of curious about whether your poetry changed shape during that role, whether writing for community or occasion or public event, uh, did it change the way you heard your own voice?

Carla: I don't know if it changed the way I heard my own voice, but I do think it made me quiet my voice a bit.

That might sound weird. Hmm. But in the context where I would be asked to write a poem and read it, the first thought is, "Oh, my voice is really important here. This is the poet laureate voice that's coming." But then quickly followed with that was, "No, no, no. I need to quiet my own personal voice and humble myself to the occasion or to the, the context and the audience that's going to be there."

Mm-hmm. So I, I actually think it was a good practice for humility. That, that sounds counterintuitive, but it made me realize it's not me that's important here. I'm trying to listen to the moment, listen for the moment, and listen for what can be spoken or said or written that will serve. So it was that, the, the verb that became important for me was serve.

How do I serve this moment? How do I serve the city? How do I serve these people? Versus when I'm writing, it's just like it's my voice. I'm serving my own idea, the, the, the words that I'm interested in. And so I suppose that did help me come into this posture of really wanting to listen to a higher voice, not just my own, to come underneath something more beautiful than my first thought, something higher than my own instinct.

And so yeah, serve, I think became a verb that was important. Yeah,

Kyeren: I understand that. Yeah. That's really well said. Thank you, Carla. Wow.

Before I ask you to read your final poem, I wanted to ask you about your humor and the balance of all these elements in your work, humor, tenderness, spiritual seriousness, sometimes all in the same moment.

Does that balance arrive through revision or is it there when you write? For instance, is humor something natural to your voice or do you consciously invite it into your work?

Carla: I think for me, curiosity- Mm-hmm ... will lead to that because when you ask absurd questions of the world, it, it can sometimes arrive with a sense of humor.

And then I tend to be a person, pretty joyful. I- my default is joy. So curiosity and joy, I would say if I were making a cocktail that would maybe be called humor, it's probably joy and curiosity that are the two primary ingredients.

Kyeren: Interesting.

Carla: So coming into writing, I would hope that any joy that's in me and any curiosity in me would, would just naturally lead the way.

If it translates as humor, that's fantastic. Sometimes I've written lines that I think are super funny, and people find them dark. And- ... so I'm always like, "Oh, interesting." And then I'll have a line that I think is kind of maybe a little bit sad, and people will laugh at it. So I sometimes I can't read what's gonna be funny to people.

Um, I do have some German roots, and, and I come from a Mennonite background, and there's often a lot of death humor, dark humor. There's always a little bit of a shadow to humor, that schadenfreude thing that humans- that translates to damage joy. It's kind of what I'm talking about in your work. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. And so it's a natural, it's a- I think it's something that's in me naturally. But I will say that I do, do like to have fun, and I, I like to ask weird questions. I like to be a little, um, playf- I like to be very playful. So that it comes into my writing, I hope it does because that's just who I am, and I don't wanna ever posture.

I don't wanna ever not be who I am. If it comes off as funny, I take that as a compliment because I, I love, I love a good dose of laughter, and not for the sake of the LOL, but just really truly being able to move through the world with a sense of defiant joy and just childlike curiosity. I mean, how can you not laugh at things like hummingbirds fighting and

I mean, yesterday, I'm looking at my hummingbird on its feeder, and I'm eyeing it, and I- I'm watching this hummingbird. I'm thinking, "It's so beautiful." I just refilled the feeder, and then it just shot out a jet of poop- ... in the moment of me thinking how beautiful it was. And I laughed. I love it. I was like, "This is wonderful."

That hummingbird gave me my laughter dose for the morning. It started me off great. I was like, "This thing of beauty, this delicate, iridescent..." All the poetry words were coming to mind as I stared at this hummingbird, and then it just shot out this angled ... It was at this wonderful angle, too. Like, I was just thinking of the physics of it.

And I was like, "There it went." Then it just shot out its, its jet of excrement and- Exactly. And you can't la- help but laugh. So it may make its way into a poem yet.

Kyeren: Carla, is there anything about poetry or writing or the creative life that you wish people would ask you? Is there something that you would like to leave with us today?

Carla: I think it's a question I would like to ask myself. I do ask myself. Mm-hmm. And I would ask any person who writes poetry, I would ask you, "Why do you keep writing poetry? Why do you keep going back to poetry? Of all the things you could write, why poetry?" Yeah. And I ask myself that often, "Why do you keep going back to poetry?"

Honestly, I would love to know that. Why do you go back to poetry? Why do you go back to poetry? We're just going in the little merry-go-round here.

Carla: Hmm. I actually wanna know, why do you go back to poetry? Why do you keep making poems? Of all the things you could do when you sit down at the page, why poem?

Why a poem?

Kyeren: Carla, I just can't not write poetry. I think life comes to us in a little bite-sized pieces that want to be poems. And then obviously there are big, big moments too, and I love the long poem form for those. You've written a novel, and you're writing a second novel, so why, why do you return to poetry?

Carla: It's my best first teacher of writing. Hmm. Uh, it's the form that has taught me to love language. It's taught me to wrestle in language. It's taught me the beauty of syntax and playing with word order. When you're writing prose, at least when I'm writing prose, I have to change my pace. I have to, I have to pick up my pace.

Mm-hmm. Poetry slows me down in a world that is going too fast and is too noisy. It slows me, it quiets me. It dials down the volume on my mind, on my soul, even my body. I'm sure, if there aren't, there should be, but studies done on writers making poems versus writers writing fiction. They should attach us to some sort of electrodes, some MRI machine, and look at our brains. I'm sure all the physiology would, would correspond to that sense of slowdown. I, I bet you- Mm-hmm ... my blood pressure, my heart rate... Actually, I do know because I can look at my health stats on my, on my watch, and I can see that days when I've been writing poetry, my resting heart rate is like 56.

Kyeren: Wow. 

Carla: Whereas if I'm go, go, going, um, even writing probably other things, tapping away at a fast prose pace- Yeah, yeah ... it's faster. So the slow, slowing down, the quieting, the listening, it demands something of my brain, my soul, my inmost being to be awake and attentive. And I am always convinced that crafting a poem will make you a better listener to other humans- Mm-hmm

and just to the world. It will, it will tune you, it will tune you to Narnia, I think. So that's why I keep going back. I wanna live in Narnia, so I better get into a genre that's going to slow me down and wake me up to it.

Kyeren: Gorgeous. Thank you. 

Carla: Thank you. 

Well, Carla, thank you so much for your presence and for your words.

It's been absolutely wonderful to talk with you.

Carla: No, I've loved talking with you, Kyeren.

Outro

Kyeren: This episode of the Poet Laureate Podcast is supported by Russell Books, Victoria's favourite independent family-owned bookstore offering new, used, and rare books for every kind of reader. For over 60 years, Russell Books has been serving the community, connecting readers and writers through an expansive selection and a deep commitment to local literary culture. Explore more at russellbooks.com. 

And again, we're also so grateful for the support of the University of Victoria's Writing Department. 

Carla Funk's impressive biography can be found on the podcast website and in the shownotes. 

Books by Carla can of course be found in person at Russell Books in Victoria or ordered from anywhere in the world through their online store.

Kyeren: Carla, would you please leave us with a final poem?

Carla: I would love to. We've talked about memory and we've talked about returning to memories that, uh, stay with us, and I mentioned how I keep writing about my dad and always trying to go back with love. So this one, uh, I wrote in that space of going back and looking at him again with love.

This is called "Old Loop Road."

[Poem text omitted from transcript.]