THE POET LAUREATE PODCAST Special Live Episode Host: Kyeren Regehr Guests: Junie Désil, Christina Shah, Kim Trainor. Recorded live at Haus of Owl Creation Lab, Victoria, BC, on Lekwungen Homelands

Links League of Canadian Poets: https://poets.ca/ Canada Council for the Arts: https://canadacouncil.ca/ City of Victoria Poet Laureate Program: https://www.victoria.ca/ Haus of Owl Creation Lab: https://www.hausofowl.com/

Transcript

[JUNIE READS POEM #1]

Kyeren: Welcome to the Poet Laureate Podcast, a sonic sanctuary for poetry. The poem is listening. I'm Kyeren Regehr, and we're recording live at Haus of Owl Creation Lab in Victoria, BC on Lekwungen homelands. Hyshka Siyaam. Thank you, honourable ones. This special live recording is part of the League of Canadian Poets 60 Events for 60 Years celebration. The League is Canada's only national professional poetry organization, supporting poets through community, mentorship, awards, professional development, and advocacy. We gratefully acknowledge the support of Canada Council for the Arts and the City of Victoria and its poet laureate program. Tonight, I'm delighted to be joined by poets Junie Désil, Christina Shah, and Kim Trainor, as well as a wonderful live studio audience. Junie, welcome to the Poet Laureate Podcast, and thank you for being here.

Junie: Thank you.

Kyeren: Can we start with that really powerful poem we just heard? What original pressure or image or feeling did it grow out of?

Junie: Yeah. I think it started—I don't know if anyone else experienced or has experienced workplace stress, you know, after a while. Yeah. So you all know. Not unfamiliar. Um, but it started with this feeling and pressure in the chest that I couldn't quite understand, but I knew it was there, and it would show up on Monday. I'd get the Monday scaries. But I also got obsessed with the idea of how that feeling that a lot of people experience, sometimes we don't have a name for it, but I wanted to write to it and experience it moving out and throughout my body and putting it on the page. I don't know if I quite succeeded, but I know sometimes when I read some of these poems, people are like, "Oh yeah, I get it. I know that feeling." So yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah. The poem is moving through different parts of life and different parts of the body.

Junie: That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah. And so when you were forming that, you know, how were you working with it on the page?

Junie: Yeah, that's interesting because at first I was very much resistant to the idea of putting it on the page. I was trying to enter speaking about it first through, "Let's look at my medical documentation. Let's be a bit academic or didactic." And I just thought, "You know what? It is what it is. It's just gonna come out kind of diaristic." So this felt really personal. I was like, "You're gonna get what you're gonna get." So I just wrote exactly how it felt like, how it was moving through my body. So if it was a sinking feeling in the chest or a tight feeling in the stomach, or even that reminder of... um, several years ago when I had a pulmonary embolism.

Kyeren: Wow.

Junie: And it was that feeling of feeling out of breath...

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

Junie: ...um, for no reason. So that's what I was trying to sort of communicate, that compression and feeling.

Kyeren: Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. When you read it now, does, does any of that come back? Or have you moved it through your body with the poem?

Junie: I think every so often I go, "Oh, wow, that wasn't that long ago. That was 2017." Right. Um, I'm in a much better workplace that's way more supportive and, you know, not that kind of toxic place. Thank goodness. Right? Yeah. Um, but, uh, every so often I go, "Oof, that was a time," you know? Yeah. So I do feel that twinge, but I also know that I'm not there anymore.

Kyeren: Yeah. And we're good.

Junie: Yes. Yay. Yeah. Sorry to anyone else who's in that position.

Kyeren: Yeah. Get out.

Junie: Yeah, get out, right. Exactly.

Kyeren: Junie, what does poetry demand of you? And what must you bring to the page in return?

Junie: Yeah, that's a good question in that I think sometimes we think we have to arrive with an answer, and what I've learned so far in my two-collection situation is that, uh, come prepared to be challenged. So coming in with a preconceived notion of what we want the poem to say, what we think it's asking us, I think sets you up for, for problems, at least for me anyways. I had different plans for this book, and it did not pan out exactly at all how I had the plans. And I'm not one to do outlines, but I did do one. The outline went out the window. Um... so I think the one thing you can say to the poem or to the page is, uh, "I'm just gonna wait here patiently and wait for you to tell me what you want me to do." Betsy Warland, a mentor of mine way back, would always say, "Follow the scent." Mm. So sometimes you end up off the beaten path, but then you find what it is you need to say.

Kyeren: Right. So it's, it's patience. It's just being receptive and open.

Junie: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Kyeren: I'm so curious now. Like you had an outline for the book...

Junie: I did.

Kyeren: ...and poetry took over. It just was like, "No, we're, we're not doing this."

Junie: I wanted to be sort of didactic and academic sort of... um, because I thought that would be the best way to talk about something personal with, with some distance.

Kyeren: Right. That's not what it wanted. You're sort of layering something there but got ripped away and really raw, right?

Junie: Yeah. It was like, "That's not what we're doing. So good luck. This is out there." And you know, of course, what happens is the book gets published, and you're sitting there regretting, going, uh, "Do I wash dishes? What's the equivalent of washing dishes in the literary world when you want to say, 'Can you just get rid of this project? Don't put it out in the world?'" So yeah, uh, and then you just get over it 'cause Juliana Spahr is another poet who would say things like, "The poem is out in the world, and it will do what it will do out in the world." So I had to just let that go. Let it do.

Kyeren: And we can't control what a reader's gonna read or what they're gonna think of it.

Junie: Zero control. It's, yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah. Yeah, for people who love controlling words...

Junie: Yes.

Kyeren: ...it's quite a let go, isn't it?

Junie: It is. It is, and I'm a little OCD. I like things to look the way they need to look.

Kyeren: Yeah, I just... me too. Me too. But this recent work, this most recent work explores how structural pressures become bodily experiences. Like a lot of your work is doing that, right? It's really in the body. Once a poem gives language to harm, how do you keep that language from flattening or containing the lived experience?

Junie: Yeah, I think, I think that's hard because sometimes I think of language as kind of unruly and unwieldy. Like it will, again, it'll do what it needs to do and what it wants to do. Language can only take you so far, really, and language is not neutral, something Dionne Brand says. Yeah. So what does it mean when I'm putting words to an experience? It might resonate with a lot of folks, but it might also mean something different. I might have my particular lens with that language. The other thing I think of in terms of language is it can sometimes be exclusive, and so I really strive as much as possible to be plain language or at least plain in how I say things. So you'll see I'll literally say, "I woke up this morning. My chest was on fire." You know? It's like I'm not gonna try and find fancy ways to say anything because I want it accessible, you know, as much as possible. But I, I am a fan of Édouard Glissant who says things about opacity, so the right to be sort of opaque and not actually have your work understood in its entirety. So there's a little bit of holding back and letting language only take you so far and letting people just interpret as they need to.

Kyeren: Yeah. How do you make that decision? Yeah. I mean, it's obviously a question we poets are always looking at, you know? But like, how do you find yourself making those decisions on the page? Is that during the editing process, or is it, like, an instinctual thing while you're writing?

Junie: I think it's a bit of both. One thing that I've learned is that I can't make decisions up here, so I just have to write it out. And then make the decision after. Is this working? Am I saying too much, not enough? Do I need to cut something out? So a lot of it probably happens in, in the editing process, but certainly I try not to be in my head making that decision 'cause again, that doesn't work. So I've learned.

Kyeren: Do you find, I'm just so curious because you're so... so embodied with your poetry. And I find that's my experience, too. I'm curious when you go back and edit a poem that you haven't touched for a while... do you have to find that in your body again?

Junie: That's a great question, and I don't know if I'll answer it carefully, but what I find happens when I know the poem is doing exactly what I want it to do, there's like this sensation or thrill I get up my arm.

Kyeren: Mm.

Junie: And then I'm like, "Okay, that's the one." The other thing that happens is that I must get in a state, because sometimes I'm like, "Wow, did I write that? 'Cause I don't recall writing that."

Kyeren: Right.

Junie: Um, and in fact, it happened once where I was having my work edited by Hari Alluri, another poet.

Kyeren: Amazing, yeah.

Junie: Yeah. Um, and I wrote back to him going, "You know, that's great, the edits you did, but, like, I didn't really write that. So I mean, I'm okay if you're okay using... uh, like I'll take your words. It looks pretty." He's like, "No, you wrote them." I was like, "Oh, yeah, okay." I really just did not recognize that those were my words.

Kyeren: Wow.

Junie: So I feel sometimes when I know a work is finished, it's saying what it needs to do, it's moved through my body, I almost am not in that, uh, physical presence. I don't know how to explain that.

Kyeren: You've disconnected somehow from it.

Junie: Yeah. Yeah. But not dissociated, so very...

Kyeren: Yes, yes.

Junie: ...very big distinction, yes. That's right, yeah, yeah.

Kyeren: Very big. Thank you so much, Junie. In work which is confronting racism and cumulative stress, where does the joy enter the poem for you? What does it make possible in the craft?

Junie: I always try to be careful to not frame work as joy is resistance. Like 'cause I, I'm sure sometimes folks get tired of that. I think, you know, my work sort of mirrors what's out in the world. We experience pain, we experience loss. We also experience joy. Like 5 million things can be true at once. So you know, it might not always be obviously there, but I know that I personally experience joy. I know in the third, like I do my, uh, work in thirds, the third part usually tries to resolve things, not necessarily neatly, but, "Hey, look, beauty out in the world." Don't focus on all the hard stuff I just mentioned in the first two-thirds of the book. So it might seem contrived, but it's to say that, yeah, I experience all those things all at once together, sometimes one after the other, sometimes simultaneously. Sometimes it's a season of not joy, and then here we are. So I try to make sure it's there without feeling expected to create joy for other people, right?

Kyeren: Yeah. For me, it felt like you allowed me to process what had happened in the other two sections by offering this... this lift, this rising up out of it.

Junie: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, because I literally experienced that. I had to go through that. And now I'm literally and figuratively touching grass, you know? Um, so I get to experience that and, you know, I'm taking everyone else on this journey that I've been through and continue to be on, so.

Kyeren: Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I wanna ask you about the gap between the language of care and the actual experience of being cared for. When you come to the page, can poetic ambiguity reveal something that institutional language tends to conceal?

Junie: Yes. I definitely want to distinguish between ambiguity and vagueness. And now, of course, I will bring back Mr. Glissant, the poet essayist that I absolutely love. Language will always have its shortcomings, no matter what language. You know, depending on where the language is coming from, it might come closer to what you want to say. But I also want to say, for lack of a better term, I want to fight for people's right to also not always be clear. To also not fall into the trap that institution demands us to say everything. So I like to be precise, which is different from being confessional and telling everything and going blah here. Um, and now you know everything, and now you understand and everything. I don't need that to happen with poetry or my work. I like to be precise and pick the words or the feeling or the thought behind it to be clear what I'm talking about, but I also want to resist that overarching desire, colonial, all of that, of using language to categorize, to say it must be so, to medicalize, to do all those kinds of things, whatever that does. So I don't know if I'm quite answering what you're saying, but that's...

Kyeren: No, I know. It's really well said.

Junie: Yeah? Okay, good.

Kyeren: Thank you so much, Junie. Uh, how do you know when a poem has found enough form to hold the material without containing it too neatly?

Junie: I would definitely be suspicious of a poem that's just too neat and tidy. At least for me. I, I'm not neat and tidy, so I mean, I am. I wanna be clear. I mean, you can come to my house. It's neat and tidy. With advance notice, 48 hours, so... We're messy. We're messy. We have messy lives. Some of us are very good at curating lives that look shiny and whatever, but I want the work to help us unhide from that, if that's proper English or whatever.

Kyeren: Unhide, I love that.

Junie: Right? And so again, it's that sort of feeling, that thrill when I'm like, "Yeah, I got this." Or even, like now when it's out in the world, when people are like, "You really captured what I was trying to say." And so I know, okay, that form worked. So like I said, this isn't what, what I was planning to do, but hey, you know, poems about me laying in bed on rumpled sheets for days on end, that seemed to work for people. Putting in, you know, the depression questionnaire that doctors will ask you in five minutes and go, "Sounds like you're depressed. Take some pills," that resonated, and I realized that that was an appropriate form for what I was talking about. Otherwise, I could have said, "I went to the doctor. He gave me pills." That, yeah, sure. But a questionnaire or a PHQ-9 that they whip out from their little drawer felt like a more appropriate form to...

Kyeren: An incredible form to...

Junie: Right? Totally. Exactly. And then parallel, I would just sort of write what's actually going on, what I would have answered if I could, if the medical institution or spaces allow you to actually say the things, right? It's, you know, saying that I don't wanna get up and go to work and participate in capitalism is not really something doctors really care about, you know, quite frankly. So you have to package it for them to be like, "Oh yeah, you've got a problem," situation or whatever is going on, you know? So I find that form really helps to communicate. And sometimes I find that I picked a form and I thought, "Yep, that's the one," and then I go back and revise and I'm like, "No, that's not the one." It's not really communicating what I want it to do. You know, for those of you who are writers or aspiring writers, you get that feeling. When you allow yourself to believe and trust in yourself and what you're trying to say, you start to see this isn't the form appropriate for the work, and you're okay with that. Just chuck it in the bin. Round file it.

Kyeren: And then the poetry book takes you on a different journey than what you intended.

Junie: Yeah, and you're like, "Uh, I guess."

Kyeren: Thank you. Wow. So this is my little trick question. Like a wild card question. What, if anything, are you protecting in yourself when you write?

Junie: Yeah, that's a great question because even with my first collection, I really wrestled with what I was putting out there. You know, the neat and tidy answer would be privacy. But, you know, the more complex answer is I do think about the people in my life who might be impacted by what I write and whether that's right or wrong, but that's my decision and, you know, you'll come to those kinds of decisions. Or rather I should say... what I'm protecting is the ability to make choices about what I put out there. So if collection two is deeply vulnerable and personal, that doesn't mean that collection three is gonna look like that either. And it doesn't mean that, you know, you're gonna be like, "Oh, I know Junie now. She's a depressed little mofo and she struggles and really hates the capitalist life." Yeah, okay, that's, you know, that's only a moment in time. I think it's that ability to protect what you want to say and know that this is just a moment in time, this collection. It is not the sum total of my experiences of who I am. And, you know, you have a little creative license because that line needs to kind of flow into the next one. So this is not entirely autobiographical, so protecting that ability to have the license to do what I need to do in service of the work.

Kyeren: Yes, yes. Yeah, really well said. Thank you. My final question is about the League. As the League marks 60 years of advocating for poets as workers, where are writers most vulnerable, and what kind of advocacy actually makes a difference?

Junie: I think we continue to be vulnerable in the perspective that cultural work and arts are still seen as a side thing, a little project, a little, "Oh, that's cute," or whatever. Um, so not seen as serious work. But then, you know, we see out in the world in other places how cultural workers are often targeted, so clearly they do important work if we let people do important work. But also investing in writers. I see constant cutting and eroding of funding, and writers aren't making more money. I'm not saying we should be bajillionaires, but should be able to produce work under conditions that are adequate, you know? The other thing I wanted to say is that on top of just writers in general needing the support, funding, opportunities, particularly in Canada where resources are quite thin and stretched, if you're a writer occupying multiple social locations, you also become that spokesperson for free. You're now working for free talking about poetry, you know? But generally even all of us, like I know your time isn't paid for prepping to do this, right? You know, your travel time isn't necessarily... you know, there's something, but any other worker might potentially have their time respected, valued, and their output. To the degree possible in this capitalistic da, da, da. But as writers and cultural workers, that might not necessarily be the case. And finally, what I want to say is that advocacy has to actually meaningfully improve and materially change the conditions. And so it means nothing if we're like, "Yeah, advocacy," but what does that mean?

Kyeren: Do you feel that that change or that advocacy, that speaking out has happened?

Junie: And we shouldn't be afraid to actually fight for those things, right? I think we're very genteel protesters here. You know? And it's like, well, what's that gonna do if no one's uncomfortable? Like, it's like, "Oh, okay, you're annoying." You know? But no material change has happened, and we know as we look at history for anything, for civil rights or whatever, discomfort is what actually makes change happen. Nothing ever happens because it was like, "Oh, they were sitting at my door? Okay." You know? It's like they were sitting at my door demanding answers for 40 days, 50 days, or whatever. So that sustained engagement and advocacy, and we might be uncomfortable with this, but a little bit of personal sacrifice if we all actually participated equally in personally sacrificing, if that makes sense. I mean, there's also nuance, but I won't get into it. But not everyone can do, but what I'm just trying to say is... let's, you know, shake things up a bit is what I would say.

Kyeren: Well, you have so much experience in this area. That's why I wanted to ask you, 'cause I knew you'd have a lot to say. It's fabulous. Thank you. Thank you, Junie, so much for being on the podcast today, and for your incredible answers, and your beautiful poetry. Would you please leave us with another poem?

Junie: Absolutely. On my nth visit to yet another medical professional...

[JUNIE READS POEM #2]

[CHRISTINA READS POEM #1]

Kyeren: Christina, welcome to the Poet Laureate podcast, and thank you for being here.

Christina: Thank you for having me. Such a pleasure, Kyeren.

Kyeren: My pleasure. My pleasure indeed. Uh, can we stay with that poem for a moment? Uh, did it begin with something seen or heard or handled or remembered?

Christina: I, I would say it's a pastiche of remembrances, and it was interesting. My husband, who had worked in that mill, actually went up for a funeral for a guy he grew up with, and he was describing me... You know, it's a small town, Powell River, up the coast, right? And you know, how the town had changed since the mill had closed, which is interesting to be talking about that today because, um, that's what we're still experiencing in this province. And because I still do some work in forestry, it's a very real conversation I have every day. So it's a remembrance, uh, you know, because things have been slowing down for so long, but it's also very present. And what's interesting is so then it becomes this weaving of different stories across generations. You know, my own husband, who hasn't worked in that mill for 30 years, uh, me, who was in a paper mill last week, and some of the people who've worked in these places for many years, even their fathers had. And so it becomes a way of collecting all these stories, trying to kind of be a bit of an archivist for this industrial world that is changing so rapidly as we see all the things, you know, that are going on in the world.

Kyeren: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So many things. It seems to me that you're collecting things that you'd like to be archived and remembered.

Christina: Sure. I, I like... My shorthand is, uh, you know, wild stories from the bad old days, right? I mean, it's a good thing that people don't get away with some of these things anymore. You know, there's safety requirements, and people aren't all drunk on the job. Like, it's some wild stuff. But it can be quite hilarious, too, you know? Stick around afterwards, you know.

Kyeren: When you're gathering these things to record, how do you know when you've got a poem, or are you looking to archive particular things from your field?

Christina: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, sometimes it's just, you know, you see textures in the environment, or you have a, a moment and have a laugh with someone, or there's some kind of spark. And what I love to go back to, I've said this before, is seeing a flower growing out of the concrete. Seeing poetry where you don't think it belongs, right? That's kind of my thing. I want to bring poetry into those little spaces, but I also want to, to take it from those spaces and capture people's stories who may not have been heard before and make something new with it. You know, I like to use the, uh, the analogy of fermentation, right? We're taking things from the environment. It's bubbling away. It's brewing. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it's kind of funky, but, you know, it's always interesting, and sometimes it's delicious, right? So I think it's a good analogy for poetry, and it's life-affirming. It's life-affirming. It's health-giving. It's, poetry is old, just like these traditional foods. So, yeah.

Kyeren: That's a great analogy. Christina, what conditions do you need, like do you personally need, in order to really enter the work of a poem?

Christina: Well, to, to riff off your previous question, I think, you know, silence, a moment of stillness, that spark, that contrast. Yeah, it feels sort of like lightning passing through me to some extent, and then there's just, like, you definitely don't wanna read my first drafts, but when I look at them, it looks like a spiderweb. So I have a little image. You know, I'll see something, you know, on a dock or in a yard or a passing comment in a conversation with someone that reveals some kind of intimacy or vulnerability, and then that will just spark something. And then I will kind of build around it like a spiderweb or some kind of, of weaving, and I am a, a knitter and a crocheter, so I think that's a great analogy. You know, that kind of handwork and I'll, I'll start by just writing on the page. And to be in these environments where people work with their hands so much, I think there is some connection there as well.

Kyeren: So are you writing longhand first?

Christina: Longhand first. Then I try to read it, sometimes with mixed success. And then, and then I can type it out and then start continuing the hand editing process with a red pen, and then, you know, shaping it. Yeah. It's a very physical process, but, uh, yeah, organic and seems to work, right?

Kyeren: Yeah, yeah. Amazing. You, you write about forms of knowledge that live in the body. Like a worker knowing by touch or sound that a machine is failing, for example. If you treat industrial sites as a living lab for language, what has working with concrete and steel, et cetera, taught you about the architecture of a poem?

Christina: That is such an interesting question. I would say it has taught me to appreciate both of the big, mighty, heavy things. It could be brutalist architecture. It could be a cathedral. It could be a giant hydraulic ram on, on a ferry. I mean, those things are massive. They're great feats of engineering. But even when you see these really old legacy structures, which I do a lot, there's also something very small and subtle and sophisticated driving these. Like, I have been to a grain terminal, and you see these old ship loaders that were built in the '60s, and they're all, you know, old weather-beaten steel, right? You know, or sheet metal. And then you see these very sophisticated controls. You see all of that hidden underneath. And, and also the people who operate these are very knowledgeable, have very sophisticated knowledge bases. I liken it to lichen, actually, because that is a symbiotic organism, right? And it can, it can grow anywhere, and it is, um, very subtle, but it also can chemically break down these mighty, these materials that are very tough, right? Poetry underlies all of that because it can capture the great and the great themes, but also very subtle aspects of the human condition or even landscape.

Kyeren: Wow, well said.

Christina: Yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah, yeah. And the lichen gives that image of the spiderweb again. But poetry can get in anywhere. I mean, it can break down any barrier, you know, any tough hide. And even, even if people sometimes don't think poetry is for them, well, lyrics have moved us. You know, no one would argue that songs aren't, you know, that most people enjoy music, right, for a reason. Well, that's how poetry was delivered for so long. Millennia, right? So, yeah.

Christina: Yeah, totally.

Kyeren: There's a, a deep affection in your work for machinery, craft, labor, alongside an acute awareness of danger and precarity. What draws you to write from inside a contradiction rather than resolving it?

Christina: Yeah, that's such a great question. So much to unpack, but I would say I, I have a front row seat to life's absurdities. Right? Probably be good for a playwright, too, actually. Yeah. I would say that, and I mean, when you operate in an environment with an awareness of danger, right, I think that is where so much that dark humor comes in. And yeah, just to, to speak to what Junie said so eloquently, you know, life is messy. I mean, you haven't lived until you've been in a slaughterhouse, right? Like, you see the underpinnings of life and, you know, our industrial production environment, like all the things that people maybe don't wanna think about. Right? And to be up close and personal with them, like of maybe how a surgeon would be, there is something that is very profound and even sacred about that, and it is a kind of intimacy and vulnerability. I guess the danger is a kind of vulnerability, but then that brings you into proximity with people in a very intimate way, where they look out for each other and do very complex work. Because if you don't have that trust, you know, you could die or be seriously maimed. People tend to be very direct in this world, right? And, and there's a lot of real dark humor, and it's, uh... I will take it over a sanitized version of what we are fed, right? And so I feel I'm a bit of a field reporter for all of you and for readers, and I hope that they appreciate those environments and maybe, you know, see that other slice of life.

Kyeren: Yeah, there's a lot of human story in your work.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah, and ponder our mortality, right?

Kyeren: Yeah, yeah. Right? There's a way to see it up, up close and personally. And the dark humor and that hyper-utilitarian language that you seem to navigate and use to show us the real.

Christina: Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, and it's a way to kind of upend the status quo and to also maybe invite the reader in where they might be unfamiliar with the environment. And I guess it's a way to break the tension again when you're in those kinds of environments. You know, it certainly has, um, helped being a woman in those environments right? Because already you're kind of disrupting typically what people are used to seeing. So if you can have a few laughs, then that can take the tension out and, uh, also be a wonderful way to get to know people and just have a conversation and, and just enjoy the moment. You know?

Kyeren: Yes. There's so much magic. I'm wondering about humor and is it also sometimes a survival mechanism?

Christina: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, no question. Yeah. No question, yeah. Quite, uh, yeah you have to use what you got. It's never dull, and it's good to have it in poetry, right? We write about such serious topics, and I mean, there is no question. But it's also wonderful to laugh at life's absurdities and quirks and, you know, find that humanity in maybe the most unlikely places.

Kyeren: So when you're writing humor, are you finding that it's coming out of you from your experience or are you crafting it?

Christina: That's a good question. I think it just, it, it follows its own kind of wellspring. Uh, yeah, I would say it's... It would be fairly organic, I think, and just sort of spontaneous. It could be what sparks a poem, I suppose. It's hard to say because I think it, it kind of comes up differently every time, right?

Kyeren: Sometimes it's laugh out loud. Like, are you laughing when you're writing these things?

Christina: Sometimes, sometimes, yeah. Because it c- I mean, sometimes it's like you just can't make this stuff up, right? Sometimes it's that. It's that. And I have a few of those, like, probably every week. And I'm like, "Oh, wow, I need to get somewhere and write this down," 'cause you just can't make it up. But then part of the challenge I think with this is, is, you know, how do you distill it for an audience who wasn't there, right? Because then it can be a little bit too esoteric, I think. So I, you know, how do you, how do you do this without setting up all the scaffolding, right? Yeah. Yeah, and have the reader in on the joke, right? And maybe be something that they can, they can relate to or take out into their life, right? Or have a laugh out loud, like, wherever they are. If they're having a work break at their desk or, you know, enjoying sitting reading poetry in the park and be like, "Oh, wow." They share that, but yet it's a different world that is, um, brought in front of them, so yeah.

Kyeren: Christina, uh, when you're assembling a collection, how do you know your poems are no longer just accumulating, that they've begun to build an argument or a world together?

Christina: I would say they have to have something of an emotional arc, you know, a move, any- or if there are any album listeners in the room, right? An album will have a, a natural kinda arc, kinda like a wave, right? And that was real- I really struggled with that with this collection because it is kind of eclectic. It's not all work poetry. You know, there's some... some oddities. There's, there's food poems. There's, uh...

Kyeren: Object poems.

Christina: Yeah, object poems, um, urban scenes. So I'm like, "Oh, okay, well, you know, how is this if it isn't really a, a tight theme?" And, and it... And then I just started to dig in and try to, to find that, you know, like you described, Junie, that, that emotional range. And some of it would be chronological, too. The more mature poems tended to find themselves at the end. That had to reveal itself to me, but I also had some wonderful help, um, you know, from my editors. Um, I worked on this with Peter Norman, who was wonderful. Um, Janine Young, um, at, uh, at Nightwood. So I had a lot of support as well.

Kyeren: Very cool. Wow. Can I ask you what can a poem hear that a photograph can't see?

Christina: Oh, wow. Yeah, that's wonderful. Textures... I would say. Um, what is not said. Yeah. So a different concept of negative space, I think. Yeah, I would say that. Um, yeah, quite a few things. Yeah.

Kyeren: What are you looking for when you're editing? Like, when you're diving back into work that you've done, what are, what are you following? What sort of are you, what are you sleuthing when you're trying to find the shape of your pieces?

Christina: I follow the, the sound. I follow the sound. The images need to link together. But still, I think the original spark has to remain, uh, remain. That, there, there's a kernel. I love to use the analogy of a seed, and everything kind of grows around that. I will know right away, as I like to say, if it's got legs. You know? And so that is established very early on. And after that, a lot of it can be a bit of landscaping, pushing stanzas around. Is this a prose poem? Compress or elongate and, and make the breaks. But there's a kind of a burst at the beginning, and then everything kind of evolves around that, you know? Right. And then I start doing kind of some picky editing and everything like that, right? Yeah. And just making sure, you know, everything's in place. But it's almost a very binary process, which is kind of, um, interesting, I think.

Kyeren: And are you the sort of writer who is making time to write and, uh, working on the things that you've sort of jotted down, or are you writing on the spot?

Christina: Often writing on the spot. I do make some time to write, and I'm still trying to adjust my own writing process. And it, it's always hard to make the time. But at the same time, you know, I'm, I'm given to finding little snippets in places. So it's—I like to call, again, the fiber arts analogies, right? Wool gathering. You know, going out into the world, whether at work or other places, and just gathering little bits and collecting them and then, and then assembling them. If you've read my book, a lot of my poetry is ver- fairly short. You know, I'm not given to the long poem. I'd be terrified of writing a novel. I mean, never say never, but man, that is a long... That's like marathon running, you know? I was a sprinter in track and field, so.

Kyeren: And a swimmer, right?

Christina: There you go. Yeah, if that answers your question. Yeah. To make a long story longer, as my husband likes to say.

Kyeren: You're such a tactile person. And you're, you're using your hands, and you're so physically attuned to the world and your world. How does that translate when you're writing your poetry?

Christina: I think by my, my process and my methods for sure. And, and sometimes, like, using the really rich words c- I can have a lot of fun with, and playing with texture in the poems. Like, I had a wonderful conversation with Silas White at Nightwood, you know, talking about that high-low. Uh, yeah, there'll be, like, argot from, like, the guys in the yard that, you know, all have a conversation, right? And that, uh, somebody on an industrial site would be like, "Oh, yeah. Okay, totally." And then there'll be, like, you know, a pretty erudite word in there, but, like, how does that all connect and add a certain richness and some details without either being overwrought or, at least for me, too prosaic? It's kind of that balance that I think is my, my special sauce to some extent.

Kyeren: That special sauce.

Christina: You know? So that is where that texture comes in, you know, that... those different rhythms and those different textures of languages and that, as Karen, uh, Solie described it, you know, as code switching. Like, she would really understand this if you read her work and, you know, some of her poems about farm life in Saskatchewan. You know, you read her work, and she's a very sophisticated writer, right? And how do you, how do you do that but do that like the Dutch masters paint beautiful paintings about ordinary scenes or ordinary people and bring them to life with all their beauty and, and their flaws, right? And I mean, I hope to... I hope to do that in my work. That is, that is what I try to do.

Kyeren: Yeah, there's a warts and all feeling.

Christina: Warts and all, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because it is beautiful. It is. Yeah, it doesn't need to be airbrushed, you know?

Kyeren: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Christina, that's so great. You know, as The League marks six decades of creating spaces for writers to connect across regions and generations, what do you think gets lost when poets don't have those dedicated spaces?

Christina: Oh, wow, so much, you know. The ability to form lifelong intergenerational friendships. I mean, look around this room. We have people of all walks of life, you know, who've come to appreciate poetry, different generations, people who were born in Canada or elsewhere, and it's such a beautiful thing to have. And I, I think it's so important for the health of an open and democratic society to have these spaces where people can meet, to have this kind of support, to mentor people, for emerging writers to develop themselves through workshops or open mics or, or just the opportunity like your podcast or to have more established poets on talking about process and, and exposing people to our work and why, why this is important for a healthy culture. You know, yeah, The League has done so much, and, uh, you know, I'm, I'm very grateful for your work and for yours.

Kyeren: I'm grateful for yours, too. Thank you. Thank you. Christina, would you please leave us with another poem? And if you have anything to say about it, of course, you can.

Christina: Well, I've spent a bit of time in the scrapyards. There's one word in here people might not be familiar with, uh, rogiapas. I was very fascinated by part of the process for through auto recycling. Um, there's, there's all different stages, and this one reminded me very much about the Tibetan burial, um, rituals. Because there is no permafrost, the body is put on a platform, and the Ti- and the burial master performs rites for three days, and then the vultures come. And, and I thought that was absolutely amazing. And then you put a scrap car on a platform, and they, they drain every part of the, the recovery process. So there's a lot about death and decay in this book, which is... yeah, again, the dark humor, right? You know, and so, but I just thought, "Wow, what a fascinating process putting those things two together." So, uh, this one's called "Car Pad."

[CHRISTINA READS POEM #2: "Car Pad"]

[KIM READS POEM #1]

Kyeren: Kim, welcome to The Poet Laureate podcast. Thank you for being here.

Kim: Oh, thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure.

Kyeren: Thank you so much for that poem.

Kim: My pleasure.

Kyeren: Would you tell us where that poem began for you and what first caught your attention strongly enough to think poem?

Kim: I tend to write very much from my life, so it came from, uh, being in a long-distance relationship where, um, my partner had gone to work in the prairies to study the, the boreal and, um, actually Skyping. You know, so it was that, that moment, just that sen- And so in part it was like inscribing absence. I mean, that's what language is essentially. It's like holding space for that which isn't actually there. Like, a poem is a trace of what is no longer there. We're always, like, recording an imprint of what has already gone. So I think the, the impetus there was to try to record that moment just for myself, first of all. I, Christina, I write in a notebook, so I always li- love to write firsthand, uh, in a notebook, and I love that material sense of, um, it's coming through your body, it's going onto the page. The page is material. The ink is, the letters themselves are material as well. You know, even the, the fiber of the paper and that idea of an imprint on the page in the way that a, like, analog photography, or even digital really, now that I've looked into it a bit more. But analog photography is, like, capturing the light reflecting off of a body, and it's that it's actually touching the body in a sense and then touches the photographic paper. So I like the idea of a poem as doing something quite similar in its own way.

Kyeren: Oh, so well said. I'm wondering, though, when you're, you're transcribing these life experiences, when you're making them into a poem, what's the first thing that comes?

Kim: There's a wonderful, m- one of my favorite novels is Dr. Zhivago, uh, by Pasternak, and it's one of the great novels about a poet. Dr. Zhivago is also a poet. There's a scene very early on where he's, he's a younger man, he's still in medical school, and he's, he's been to a funeral of his mother, I think it is, his stepmother. And he's starting to realize as he walks that he's started to collect all these little fragments and pieces of things in his life that sudden- somehow there's a, a coherence, like they're starting to resonate together. So there's, like, the, an image seeing the people together at the funeral and then something that his father said, and then there's something about he was at the medical school earlier in, in the day and looked through the microscope. And somehow he knows there's going to be a correspondence between all of these little scraps. And it's something about you're like this container or basket and you're collecting these details and then suddenly they start to think, "Oh, yes, they're, they're starting to come together. There's, like, emergence." Yeah. I think that's how it is for, I think, I think that's true for a lot of poets, actually.

Kyeren: Yeah. That's beautifully described. Thank you.

Kim: Yeah.

Kyeren: What does poetry ask you to surrender, attend to, or make room for in order to receive it?

Kim: I think my answer would be very similar to what Junie and Christina were both saying, is there's, like, letting go of control. Like, if the left hemisphere of the brain is trying to grasp and control and organize and codify, the sort of right hemispherical impulses are to let go and release and have that broadband reception, so you can just allow things to enter and not worry so much about where they land. So you're like a, like an ear, right? Like, you're receiving all of these different, um, sounds. Since this is about the League, somewhat, or a celebration of the League, one of the early, uh, co-chairs of the League was Pat Lowther, who's a really favorite poet of mine, and she has a poem called "Hotline to the Gulf", and there are these amazing images of, like, uh, antennae or, like, a hot wire that's being extended out into the void, and then what signals will it receive? And I've always been very fascinated by, by radio in particular. It's a very intimate, uh, medium. And podcasts are sort of a modern-day... you know. But especially the old analog radio, where you could tune in a voice and you knew that you were picking up a translation of an actual radio wave that was traveling through space.

Kyeren: Space. Yeah. Exactly. Like a live human.

Kim: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

Kyeren: So cool. You've argued for attention as a moral act, but attention can also become possession. You know, the poet looks, names, records, uh, turns the ob- observed thing into material. How do you approach a lichen or an ancient tree without turning it into a metaphor for ourselves? Like, where does ethical attention end and appropriation begin?

Kim: Hmm. Yeah. I mean, just to continue with this idea of being receptive or listening and being open to receiving sounds or voices, I think there's that idea of creating that space for a co-making, I suppose. I think a lot of, a lot of my work since being at Fairy Creek has been sort of that intersection of ecology, activism, and poetry, right? And I think a lot of the poets I know who are working at those intersections are very conscious of that concern about that idea of taking the natural world as resource and chunking it up and consuming it, 'cause that's what we do. That's what contemporary humans do. We have, you know, Christina, you were talking about the supply chains, right? Everything's opaque. So you look at your cellphone, it's like this black box, but if you really did a little deep dive into it, every single phone in this room probably has some cobalt in it that came from child labor, slave labor in, in the Congo, for example. If you trace the chain and where it goes to and the labor that went into it, I've completely lost my train of thought along the supply chain. Now we're talking about Congo cobalt. How did that happen? No, hang on. We were talking about ethical attention earlier.

Kyeren: Right. Okay. Yeah.

Kim: Okay. There we go. Um, how was I going to connect that to e- oh, ethical attention, of course. So yeah, that idea of not wanting to sort of see that the natural world or, like, my real interest right now is speckled belly lichen, and like that, it's just becomes this commodity that you scrunch into the pages, and it becomes part of a poem that then goes into a book, and then it goes out into the, the supply chain, right? Now, poetry tends to, for better or worse, avoid those supply chains because, you know, maybe a print run is 500 books. That's been subsidized by the government and maybe by the more wealthy sister genres, and the press is, like, running the little poetry imprint 'cause it's prestigious, but it makes no money. It's, it's in the red. I know you had on your podcast recently Rob.

Kyeren: Oh, Rob McLennan. Yeah.

Kim: Rob McLennan. Yeah. And I lo- I love him 'cause I used, I used to run, um, Poet's Corner out of Vancouver, right? And we had so many poets come and read for us, and he—we couldn't bring him physically here, but he, he read for us online, and he, there was this giant, like, video screen, and then he would do this thing where he'd come in with his big eye, and you could just see his eye sticking out of the screen. It was fun. I love how he does kind of circumvent that whole process because he just makes zines, and he's mailing them out, and he's just...

Kyeren: Sharing poetry with people all over the place and...

Kim: Yeah, and being so generous in that time. And I think that's what's beautiful about poetry is it, it can subvert that, that capitalist mode of production because it's like you put love and time into it, and so it's about just sharing things. Like I did a, a chapbook seminar once just decades ago with Tim Lander who, um, would sew, um, chapbooks on BC Ferries. And so his, his thing was like always use a knife to make your chapbooks that is like a, a knife you use to prune your, uh, tomato plants with. And if you, if you prick your finger and blood gets on the pages, don't worry, you can use an eraser and, um... you know, make sure there's love in your poems. And then he would, you know, and, and so that's how he was making his poetry and sharing it, and I, I love that idea. So I think when it comes back to this idea of ethical attention, wanting to be mindful of all of those, the, the sort of material foundations that our poetry comes out of. There are a lot of poets doing really interesting ecological experiments. So I've been doing some collaborations with, uh, Sophie Anne Edwards out of Ontario. And she has a new book out called Conversations With The Ka Gawa:ng. And it's really beautiful, like she's-- She would go... This was during COVID, and she would go to the river every day and sort of commune with it and speak with it and listen to it or her. I don't know if we, if we wanna use it anymore as a, as a pronoun for rivers. She would leave, for example, Sharpies hanging from trees and let the wind blow them, and then capture the movements of the wind on the riverbank...

Kyeren: Oh, that's so interesting.

Kim: ...to see what image would come. Yeah. Or she would leave letters trailing along the banks and then see, when she came back a few days later, where had the, the letters gone, what animal tracks had moved them around, how had they f- sunk into the ice or not, and so on. Um, so doing kind of interesting things like that. There's an older book by, uh, Stephen Collis and Jordan Scott called Decomp.

Kyeren: Hmm.

Kim: Uh, and so they took copies of Origin of Species, and they left it at five different, uh, eco sites around BC, and they left them for a year.

Kyeren: Oh, wow.

Kim: Yeah. And they let them decompose, uh, hence the title of the book. Which seems very literal, actually, doesn't it, for a poetry collection? It does. Decomp. And then they went and they took photographs of the books if they could find them, and then they write glosses in response to the books.

Kyeren: Oh, how interesting.

Kim: Which is very cool. It's very hard to find, but if you're interested, they ha- there are, there are copies around. I really recommend it. It's quite interesting. That's sort of what my current work is trying to think, how can I co-make or work, like create a space within my own writing to... And that, that does become, it does become a little bit specular though, like you, because they're taking photographs. Right? How do you listen to lichen? What voice does lichen have? And then how might you transcribe that? I don't know. So I, I work with a sound artist, actually, 'cause I make little poetry films and we're doing a lot of talking about that too, like doing sort of filter swept, uh, audio scapes and things like that. The other thing I'm working on is, um, anthotypes, and they're like where you make an image from, say, it can be a photograph, like a positive image printed on acetate, and then... uh, the sunlight prints it. It's very cool. It's like a cyanotype, but it's like made with plant dyes. So you just, you just grind up the plant. Sorry, now it sounds terrible, like I'm destroying and murdering plants. Um, but, or, or you can use spirulina, which is cyanobacteria, which is really cool too. And you, you mix it with, um, say, water or rubbing alcohol, and then you can paint a piece of paper with it, and then you put the transparency on top, and you just, a piece of glass, stick it out in the sun, and it creates the most ghostly, ethereal image. It's very cool.

Kyeren: Wow.

Kim: Um, so I was up at what used to be Heli Camp in Fairy Creek, but it's cut block 8022, and I, I was up there last summer and I took a lot of pictures. Like, I wanted to capture the kind of damage that was done post-clear cutting. And, um, I've been developing those images, uh, m- making anthotypes. So now I wanna move from that to can I make a poetype? But I don't know what that will be quite yet.

Kyeren: Ooh. Oh, it's so interesting. I find it amazing how you're, you're not just citing data. You know, you're, you're collaging all of the ephemera—the blueprints, the emails, the satellite dates—like directly into the lyric. So what does physical ephemera do for a poem that pure metaphor cannot?

Kim: Well, you know, Adrienne Rich said metaphor is like the beating heart of poetry. Like, it's very powerful, and I love metaphor. It can, it can be, and it is truly crucial in many times, in many instances for a poem. But I also really love the documentary poem tradition. Um, like Muriel Rukeyser has a wonderful poem about the Hawk's Nest disaster. It was like a coal mine that collapsed. Recording, like, names and a lot of the ephemera that she discovered in the archives. I like that idea of the, the poem as archive. And to come back with Christina was talking about lichen. Um, I mean.

Kyeren: Yes. Lichen is your heartbeat right now.

Kim: Yes. But lichen, Trevor Goward, who's a well-known lichenologist, he has this wonderful collection of essays called, like, 12 Essays on Lichen, something like that. But he describes lichen as being like...

Kyeren: A portal.

Kim: It's like a, an archive though also, or transcription. So because lichen are so slow to grow, um, like the speckled belly that was found up in Fairy Creek was felt to have been there since the last Ice Age. So it's been...

Kyeren: Holy cow.

Kim: ...continuously growing for the last 10,000 years.

Kyeren: Wow.

Kim: And wiped out by clear cut, right? So like bringing the loggers in with the helicopters, just chopping it down.

Kyeren: That's mad.

Kim: But the idea of them as a transcript that they're recording in their own bodies, that presence, that continuous presence as a community, because they are multiple as well. Like multiple communities, and they're recording that in their bodies in the slow dispersal a- as they move from tree to tree. So I, I love that idea that the lichens are recording things in their bodies, and I like to think of poetry can do that too, and maybe the bringing in all the sort of ephemera is a cool way to do that as well. I'm be- I'm becoming pretty eclectic in my old age. You know, like your grandma sent you newspaper clippings. It's like, oh, that, that goes in the poem. Like, you know. So, yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah. Poetry can hold it though if it, if it's accumulated and presented in the right way.

Kim: I think focus on as a narrative frame is very helpful. Like I, most of my books la- have been long form. Like... it's a long work. It's not a s- a discrete poem so much.

Kyeren: Yes. You can hold, yeah, like quite a stretch. Do you, do you find, uh, when you're writing in that long form that, like how do you hold it? Do you get to the place where you can hold the whole thing in your mind and...

Kim: I think at some point there's like a, a, just a s- a sense of a shape. But you know how it is, like you have an idea for a book or a sculpture or painting, and then you make it, and then it's like, oh, well that happened. That's not what I was really going for, but it is what it is. I tend to have an idea of where it might go, but sometimes it just gets completely abandoned. And so I think the first book where I started doing a lot of archival and ephemeral incorporation was my second book, Ledi, which was in part documenting the discovery of an Ice Age, uh, Pazyryk woman, warrior woman, who was, uh, probably a storyteller as well. And I was just fascinated by, I mean, at, uh, on one hand there was this incredible damage that was done to her by the archeologist, so I was trying to sort of interrogate that damage. But there was also... And that comes back to your question about attention, right? Like, and appropriation. Like, am I simply replicating that damage by going back to her story and trying to understand it through poetry? Maybe I am, right? I don't know. That's not, maybe that's not for me to decide. Like, I'm trying my best to be ethical in my approach, but it's ultimately for the readers to, to decide that, I guess. And hopefully it brings up interesting conversations as well.

Kyeren: I love that you don't know.

Kim: Mm. Yeah. There are so many things I don't know, Kyeren.

Kyeren: There's so much room. There's so many things.

Kim: There's so much room in that, you know? You know, I tell my students I- they ask quest- they ask really good questions. I, I don't know, and they'll be shocked. What? The instructor doesn't know. I say, "No, let's look it up."

Kyeren: Yeah. Or discover it.

Kim: Or discover it, yeah. Yeah. Let's, let's, let's discuss it. Yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah. I think I don't know is such a great opening to discovery.

Kim: Well, that's one thing, you know, I say to them with, with poems, 'cause I do teach poetry with them. Um, I'll say, "Don't worry about, like, se- there's a secret meaning or something. Like, it's what's on the page, and then ask questions." Like, questions can lead you in beautiful, to beautiful places.

Kyeren: Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. You've already been talking about your experience at Fairy Creek, you know, as a forest defender, like, you're actually out there on the, on the front line. And what changed, you know, in your poetic line or your breath when ecological concern moved from obsession into bodily action?

Kim: Well, I mean, in terms of poetry, poetry, it's become, it's just become part of the fabric of what I write now. I think there's a tendency towards despair when you think about all of the damage being done. But my feeling was I felt more hopeful actually going out and being on the blockades, for example, helping to build a soft block. I was part of Save Old Growth in Vancouver. I glued my hand to the highway. You know, that kind of thing. Like, it- you're willing to put your body on the line to try to stop the unraveling that's happening. Like, we've reached seven out of nine planetary boundaries. There's, like, forever chemicals. There's microplastics in Antarctica.

Kyeren: We could go on and on and on.

Kim: And on. And on. Exactly. And then it was just the other day, like, I think the, the Mark Carney and the Liberals had now decided they're going... So I'm gonna get a bit political here. Um, but they've decided to, um, overturn ecological concerns if they feel that a project needs to be begun for national security or na- nation building, right? So of course, we've got TMX now that's coming, so the Trans Mountain, uh, pipeline being tripled, I suppose, and that will go out to, like, the new, like, the second Deltaport Terminal, like the Roberts Bank Terminal.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

Kim: I think you had mused when we were writing back and forth asking me, "Well, what can poetry do or how does poetry intervene in such a thing?"

Kyeren: Yes. You said, "Replace the poetry in this."

Kim: I, I mean, I think it's one of many, many things. Like, it's, there's a toolkit. Right? Like, I did actually mail a poem to Steven Guilbeault when he was...

Kyeren: You did?

Kim: I did. Well, when they were trying to put in the second terminal. It hasn't gone in yet, but they were going through the approval process. Could submit statements, right? So I submitted an artist statement, like how it would impact my practice. Never mind, like, destroy the southern orcas and all the shore birds that rely on the, the mud banks and the biofilm and so on. So I s- I sent him a poem about salmon. I never heard back, sadly. I think his heart's in the right place. Like, I think he was thinking, "Can I do this from a policy perspective as opposed to scaling the CN Tower?" Right? Like move from stunts to policy and see if that works, but clearly he's decided now, no, not working anymore. So he stepped down because he couldn't support what, what the Carney government was doing. I think there is a lot of mobilizing against TMX, and I think there will be more art projects as well.

Kyeren: You also have the poem Film. I'd love to hear you talk about that and its place.

Kim: Oh, about Film. Yeah. Um, well, I, I mean, I've been following you as poet laureate. I've been following all your amazing projects like the Poetry Dispenser. Is that still happening right this moment? Like...

Kyeren: Doing a second one, yeah.

Kim: Okay. I, I love that idea. I just love the idea of a poetry dispenser. Like, you're getting poetry out into the world in different, interesting ways, and I love that. And I think... Okay, I've just, I've just lost my train of thought again. It's the cold medicine. It's not me. I'm not going insane. Um, films. Films. Thank you. I was thinking how can I do poetry differently? Like, so I did Poet's Corner, and we had in all these amazing poets. It was during COVID. You know, sometimes we'd have, like, 60, 70, 80 people joining, which was awesome, online. Not as many in person, but it's harder to get out.

Kyeren: It's harder to get out. Yeah.

Kim: Although, Planet Earth Poetry has a wonderful, wonderful turnout, I have to say.

Kyeren: It's, it's easier when you have a 30-year community.

Kim: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But what wonderful series that is run here. We did one-minute poems. So we thought, well, let's do a poem in under a minute and just get, like, not fast food, but, like, a quick poem that we could send out on Instagram and people could share on their feeds and things like that. So we did that. Um, and I was thinking, well, I'd really love to do something a little more, like bring in music and maybe some visual as well. And I just started putting together images and made little poetry films on my computer. And then I work with Hazel Fairbairn, and she's a fiddler. She, um, also teaches with me at the college, and she does the soundscapes for me. 'Cause, you know, as poets, we work alone a lot of the time.

Kyeren: A lot.

Kim: So it's so nice to be able to work with someone else, and who's working in a very different area, and then just see how our, our work can interconnect. But I have one poem about specklebelly and about Fairy Creek with some, some of the images I shot when I was there. Lots, lots of different things I'm working on.

Kyeren: Yeah. I love all your projects.

Kim: Oh, thank you.

Kyeren: Poetry films. I think poetry and film together, uh, is, like, a nice doorway for a lot of people. You know?

Kim: Yeah, for sure.

Kyeren: So here's my left-of-field question. What has poetry taught your body that your mind couldn't?

Kim: I don't know, Kyeren. That's a really, that's a stumper. I feel like it's a dissertation question. Like, where are the professors? They're staring at me.

Kyeren: You're one of them.

Kim: No, no, no. I pretend to be one. Oh, I, you know, I came to poetry very late. Like, I didn't start writing until I was, like, 38 or something, writing my first poem, and literally it happened overnight. I had been writing fiction and I didn't really enjoy it. It was a bit of a drag. It's like that marathon. I don't like marathons. I'm not a runner. And then I was like, I couldn't sleep, and I had this image and a sound going through my head, and I just woke up and I started writing. And it, you almost go into a meditative trance sometimes, I think if you really hit the zone. And I think that's what poetry taught me, is that, that idea of letting go. Like, just letting yourself go and meditate and what do, what, what comes to you, as opposed to that need for knowing where things are going to end up...

Kyeren: And what the answer is. Yeah, the relinquishment of control.

Kim: Yeah. Absolutely, which is what meditation does, too. And then you don't know what voices you'll hear or what might come to you.

Kyeren: See, you knew the answer.

Kim: Oh, I did. But is it the right answer? I don't know.

Kyeren: Absolutely, 100%. And so I wanted to ask you about your collection, Ledi, which was shortlisted for the League of Canadian Poets' Raymond Souster Award. What did that recognition mean to you, and what role do League awards play in illuminating poetry for the wider public?

Kim: You know, when my first book, Karyotype, was accepted by Brick Books, Kitty Lewis was the, um, managing editor and she was like a force of nature. And she said, "Well, you have to join the League of Canadian Poets." And I said, "There's a League of Canadian Poets? What?" How awesome. Sounds like there's a union of poets. What? Um, so I did join it, and yeah, no, that was wonderful. Like, there's such a small readership for poetry. And so it's wonderful when someone takes the time to read your book, to pay attention to it, to ask questions. Like, it's such, it's such a loving act, I think. And then to have the League recognize it is wonderful as well, and just to be on the shortlist was amazing. It was fabulous, yeah. Yeah, it just, it just makes you feel like th- there's a little bit more attention and maybe a few more people who might read your book, and that's, that's wonderful. I mean, and also for Poets Corner, of course, like, we relied very much on the f- the grants for our poets. So it was wonderful. If we knew a poet belonged to the League, then we could for sure, you know, make sure we could pay them a decent amount of money to come to do a reading. To show that we value their labor and their time and that they're coming to, to talk with us. So that was always wonderfully helpful as well. I think the League sort of evolved, uh, hand-in-hand with, um, you know, Canada Council. And so there is a kind of underlying, like, nation-building, maybe somewhat spurious professionalization process. And I wanna resist the professionalization part of it 'cause I love the idea that everyone can write poetry. Like, my students write poetry, and th- they haven't been published. They don't belong to a league. But they write poetry, and it's, it's wonderful that they care about it enough to do that. And it reminds me, like, there's a great book about Pat Lowther, actually, to return to one of the early co-chairs of the League, and, uh, Chris Wiesenthal, I think, about Pat Lowther's life. And it, it's a wonderful documentary as well of the poetry community on the West Coast in the '70s, and talks about the League and when she became the chair, co-chair, and she, she got a briefcase. Right? And so I, I thought, "Oh, I've gotta get a briefcase." So I actually have a poetry briefcase, but I didn't bring it. I didn't bring it tonight. I don't know where I was going with that either. Um, so...

Kyeren: Just a wonderful story about the League and, and Pat. Kim, thank you so much for being here tonight. Thank you for your beautiful poetry. Junie, Christina, Kim, it's been such a pleasure and an honor to bring you together for this conversation and to celebrate 60 years of the League through your work. Again, we gratefully acknowledge the support of the League of Canadian Poets, the Canada Council for the Arts, the City of Victoria and its Poet Laureate program, as well as Jordan Dack and the spectacular Haus of Owl Creation Lab for hosting us. Biographies and links to the poets' work can be found on the Poet Laureate Podcast website and in the show notes, and their books can of course be found or ordered through your local independent bookstores. Thank you for listening to the Poet Laureate Podcast. Please pass this episode on to someone who might need poetry. Kim, would you please read us a final poem?

Kim: This one is called "Widgeon", which is set in, on Widgeon Creek, which is, um, I guess Maple Ridge in, on the mainland.

[KIM READS POEM #2: "Widgeon"]