My whole life I’ve been interested in connecting things that don’t appear to belong together. I wanted to create something out of the details and objects jostling around in my mind, to ring words out of my visually intense environment. Visual art always seemed the natural response when I strained at articulation. I was introduced to collage early on in elementary school and was compelled to arrange images to convey my desired meaning. Eventually I began oscillating between image and text, prompting an interest in how the visual and verbal function together.

Reading through The Kingston WritersFest program a few weeks before the festival, I came upon With Brush and Pen, Readings and Conversations with Lorna Goodison, Anita Rau Badami, and Diane Schoemperlen, all writers who have a parallel practice as visual artists. I can’t describe how excited I was to be in attendance at this event.

All of the writers agreed there’s something visually present in all language, a feeling under words. Anita suggested that “all writing should be painterly,” and that there is a, “mutually beneficial dialogue between literature and painting.” It is interesting to observe how each writer came to this dialogue between image and text: Anita recently returned to school to study fine arts, while Lorna Goodison started out as a visual artist and studied in New York at the Art Students League, and Diane Schoemperlen is self taught and has been making collages for many years. Their different approaches at different times seems to be evidence for the flexibility of experience and creation. These writers have taken up the invisible dialogue between the visual and verbal, and incorporated it into their work. It is a process of capturing, internalizing and expressing.

A member of the audience asked, “what do you want people to look at first, the illustration or the text?” Each writer agreed it doesn’t matter. It is not the approach that matters but the effect. I’d further this by acknowledging that one art does not consume the other—it is a movement. The Roman poet Horace wrote in his Ars Poetica (13 B.C) the dictum “ut pictura poesis”— “as is painting, so is poetry.” I think he is describing the movement of artistic composition, the performance of singular parts acting as a whole in the absence of a frame. The edges may not align exactly, but we can scissor them to meet in ways that expand our understanding of creation.

Anita Rau Badami’s latest novel Tell it to the Trees is available for purchase. I’ve included her book trailer, check it out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=860UdIpLdYU

Lorna Goodison is the author of eight books of poetry. For more information about Lorna follow the link:

http://www.mcclelland.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=10505&view=full_sptlght

Diane Schoemperlen has new work appearing in the Queen’s Quarterly: http://www.queensu.ca/quarterly/fal1108schoemperlen.html

A few years ago Paul Auster sent J.M. Coetzee a letter proposing they correspond to each other in an open ended dialogue on subjects that interested them, “let’s strike sparks off each other,” he said. Years later they find themselves on stage at the Grand Theatre in Kingston, Ontario, of all places. They each sit in their respective arm chairs. Auster puts his glasses on as Coetzee smoothly removes his own spectacles and places them on the table.

Lord Byron wrote, “letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company.” Surely this describes the sampling of work Coetzee and Auster read. The first subject they explored during their reading was friendship. Coetzee observes, “male friends tend not to talk to each other about how they feel. If you do not tell your friends how you feel, how can they know? Friends can exist in this ambiguous state for years.” Paul responds by sharing his experience of moving away from a boyhood friend. And how when he talked to his little friend on the phone, he felt what he could only compare to the way he felt speaking to girls he liked as a young man. He continues, “Before our erotic lives are formed we do not make the distinction between love and friendship..” Paul says that he believes that, “we always lose the friendship of those who lose our esteem and the best and most lasting friendships stand on admiration.” Coetzee then introduces marriage and relationships with his observation that, “A man takes a woman to bed to be friends with each other. A man cannot be friends first because there’s too much unspoken in the air.” With the introduction of women Auster offers that friendship outside of marriage is too static and polite. Marriage is above all a conversation, a constant work in progress.

Coetzee introduces a new letter on the “fittingness or unfittingness of names.” He relates, “Your name is your destiny—your name speaks your destiny. Only on your deathbed will you know what it is to be your name.” Auster responds that like a number, a name can evoke a whole archaeology of your past. There is so much in this discussion that I admire, namely their stark honesty. Their words enveloped like a tight embrace, allowing me as a listener to slow into contemplation.

Their collaboration investigates the apparitional relationship we have with others and our customs. They delve into the regular movement of our lives, of our memories and bring their ideas and discourse to a wider audience. Their inquiry cuts deep into the things that most define us and the ways in which we seek to define ourselves in relation to others. Coetzee and Auster have created a volume of work that establishes letter writing as a genre unto itself, like poetry or novel writing.

I’m still in awe a few weeks later, and thank Kingston WritersFest for making this event, and many more, possible. Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing about each individual event. I have a loaded notebook full of ideas. I encourage you to return in the coming weeks to get a sampling of the magnificent writers and events from Kingston WritersFest 2011.

Yi-Mei Tsiang (also known as Sarah Tsiang) was kind enough to answer some questions about her debut book of poetry, Sweet Devilry. I first read it a few months ago, and I find it is a book I often go back to while writing.

Tsiang has compiled poems that make the reader want to live more intensely, with a greater awareness of life. The variety of ways in which the poems struggle free of convention and simple reformulation is impressive. With an emphasis on individual experience, this collection speaks to a world wider than it creates, to a world whose coherence can only be approached through man made gestures: poetry, an experience beyond thought.

Can you tell me a little about your new book of poetry?

It’s called Sweet Devilry and it covers a range of subjects, from motherhood to dealing with death. I don’t know why I find this question so hard—sometimes each poem seems so separate it’s hard to find the common thread that runs through it all. Whenever I think of what I’d like to do though, I think of Susan Musgrave urging her students to write with tenderness. That’s what I’ve tried for.

Can you tell me a bit about your editorial process? How important is a writing group to the process?

My husband is almost always my first reader, and he’s the best, most intense reader I’ve ever had. I’ve grown as a writer at the same time that he’s grown as an editor and so we waste no time on niceties. He may be my harshest critic, but he’s also my greatest support and my biggest fan.

My writing group is my lifeline to sanity. When I first moved to Kingston, not knowing anyone, I decided that I could really use a writing group. So I made up some posters and stuck them in the public library. That was 5 years ago, and my writing group has now flourished into an amazing tight-knit group of great writers (and fantastic editors). The group, christened The Villanelles, doesn’t hesitate to have a ten minute discussion on an individual word in a poem. There’s no cosseting or false praise, but the group is very supportive and always aims to help the writer find a way into the poem they were trying to write. I have poems I never would have written if not for the deadlines of my writing group. We hold each other to account and that’s a great thing; it’s rare to find this kind of mixture of love and no-holds-barred critic outside of a family unit.

Your work seems to suggest a strong engagement with your environment rather than uphold the Romantic notion of the solitary writer. Is the reciprocal movement in your poetry attempting to address certain persons or a community?

I’d like to think that poetry is more dialogue than soliloquy, though I don’t know how true that is. When I first fell in love with poetry I had that sense of recognition, the tingle you get when you meet someone and you know you’ll be good friends. There’s this great poem by Roo Borson in which she’s arguing with George Bowering about why she loves a poem by his dad.

“…after dinner we all went over to the reading, where George read a wonderful poem about his father and a bowl of tomato soup. When I told him I loved the poem he said everyone has memories of a father eating something, even if not tomato soup: that is, the poem could be lovable only if people made their own substitutions…whereupon deep inside me a miniature person stood up and shouted No! — not so loud as to disturb anyone, mind you, but No! — because love won’t abide substitutions, and what the poem made me love was his father, not to mention tomato soup.” — “George Bowering” By Roo Borson

So in that way, I think, most of us writers are trying to reach out and connect with others through our own experiences; experiences which are simultaneously shared and unique.

What was the motivation behind the devastatingly beautiful fairytale poems?

Disney. They do such an awful job of removing the philosophical from children’s stories. The original telling of The Little Mermaid, for example, is so much about sacrifice and the promise (or desertion) of the eternal. As a mom, I find myself reading these original tales and then seeing the mangled corpse that Disney movies leave behind. So I think it was part a indignant reaction to Disney and partly just because we’re naturally influenced by what we’re reading. I’m not the first to re-write fairy tales (by a long shot) but I couldn’t resist engaging with the beauty and terror of fairy tales.

What book of poetry do you most often go back to while writing?

I’m going to cheat and name two books: Earth After Rain by Sheri Benning and Common Magic by Bronwen Wallace. They’re books I’ll never get over.

Tell me about some of your current literary influences?

I’ve been exclusively reading poets named Sue. You know, Sue Macleod, Susan Elmslie, Sue Sinclair, Susan Musgrave. I am currently working on putting together an anthology for Oolichan books called “Desperately Seeking Susan (poems)” due out in 2012. I’m passionate about encouraging more people to expand their Sue-based reading.

What role do you think art/poetry plays in a childs development? I ask because you frequently mention how much motherhood has sparked your creativity/desire to write poetry.

I think art, poetry, literature, and bug study are all essential in a child’s development. I often think it’s funny that so many people find poetry inaccessible since we’re weaned on it. Our first introduction to language is in the beautiful lines from Margaret Wise-Brown and Dr. Seuss. Children understand that poetry is meant to be felt before it’s understood. I love that about kids.

You also write children’s books. Can you tell us a little about that?

My first published book was A Flock of Shoes with Annick Press. It was actually inspired by a line in the last poem of my collection Sweet Devilry. That seems to be a bit of a pattern because I have another picture book coming out in 2012, Stone Hatchlings which was inspired by a poem from the always brilliant Jason Heroux. Picture books and poetry are inexorably linked for me, they’re simply two sides of the same coin.

I’m launching Dogs Don’t Eat Jam and Other Things Big Kids Know at the WritersFest this year. It’s a book that celebrates the amazing accomplishments of young children, as well as the bond between siblings. I feel very lucky to be paired with the amazingly talented Qin Leng. It’s a strange and wonderful thing to see your thoughts painted for you. I’m really looking forward to the launch because there’s simply nothing better than reading to kids.

Recently your daughter held a fundraiser for famine victims in east Africa. Tell me more!

Abby constantly makes me feel unproductive! She’s 6 and this summer she held an art show/lemonade stand/cookie sale to raise money for famine relief in the horn of Africa. She decided on Doctors Without Borders and got all of her friends (as well as children we didn’t know) to donate art for the show. The people of Kingston were incredibly generous. In a few hours she had raised over $1,500, which was matched by the Federal government. We’re thinking of doing another one next year!

Lucky for us, Sarah is involved in several events this year with WritersFest. I’ve provided the event times and a little description for all four.

Saturday September 24
Sarah will be running a writing workshop for teens. She’ll help you learn to read like a writer, find mentors within your community, navigate the intimidating world of publishing and give you tips on what to expect from a career in creative writing. This event runs from 11:00am to 12:30pm.

Later on the same day, she’ll be leading another writing workshop, How to Start a Writing Group. I highly recommend this workshop. I’ve been a part of The Villanelles for almost two years and am ever grateful for Sarah’s brilliance and initiative. If you’re thinking about starting a writing group, you’ll want to be at this event. It runs from 4:00 to 5:30pm.

Sunday September 25
As Sarah mentioned in the interview, she’ll be launching Dogs Don’t Eat Jam and Other Things Big Kids Know at WritersFest. It’s a free event that includes a book-making session in which the kids can write their autobiography or an advice book. This event runs from 11:00am to 12:30pm.

Right after her book launch, Sarah will share the stage with Amanda Jernigan, Sandra Ridley, Michael Lista, and moderator Lorna Crozier. Listen to four of Canada’s most important emerging poets, unified by youth, yet differentiated by voice, language and content. This event runs from 12:00 to 1:30pm.

On the weekend of August 19, I had the opportunity to work with veteran poet Lorna Crozier at Wintergreen Studios. Wintergreen is a year-round education and retreat centre in the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Reserve in Southeastern Ontario, offering a variety of short courses in the fine and domestic arts, as well as retreat and meeting facilities for individuals and groups. I can’t stop recommending it to family and friends.

Lorna travelled from Victoria, BC to Ontario for the weekend event. This is the second year I have participated, and this time was as thought provoking as the last.

The workshop is run differently than most. A few weeks prior to the event, each participant receives the same assignment. This year’s assignment was to write a poem about an occupation. Typically in writing workshops poets bring copies of their poems to hand out to the entire group so they can make edits directly on the page. In contrast, for Lorna’s workshop, participants are told to bring only a blank notebook or a computer, along with the assigned draft, and each poet reads her draft aloud to the group without showing it to anyone in advance. The aim is to tune the ear. “Poetry needs to be in the air,” Lorna stressed as she led a discussion on diction.

The scenery at Wintergreen can carry one’s creative mind through the year. All we had to do was step out of the front doors and gaze over the wind-swept meadow that rolled down to the pond. Percy Bysshe Shelley famously wrote in his Defence of Poetry that the language of poetry “is vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates their apprehension.” The connection I felt between the poetry, myself, the landscape, and most importantly the many bright minds in the workshop, could only be described as apprehending the little noticed relationship between things.

Lorna said, “writing poetry is being alive twice. It’s a constant state of attention, of alertness.” If there was any place I felt this, it was walking back to my cabin from the main lodge at night. I could only see what my flashlight beam would allow, and in that little circle of light I could focus on the fungus blanketing a log, or the way dew dived off the tip of a leaf.

Lorna asked us how we will stay in poetry when we leave. I like to stay in poetry (or writing) by attending readings, workshops and writing festivals. I’ve learned a great deal from Lorna, more than I could ever say. That’s why I am so glad she is launching her newest book, Small Mechanics, at Kingston’s WritersFest. Along with Merrily Weisbord and Molly Peacock, Lorna will be giving a reading and later a discussion on things such as women, aging, and the creative impulse. I hope to see you there at this must attend event.

Click the cover of Lorna’s latest book of poetry, “Small Mechanics”, to view her WritersFest author page. Here you can find a little bit about her, as well as a list of WritersFest events she will be participating in. As an added treat I’ve included a poem written by Susan Wismer, one of the participants of the Lorna Crozier Workshop.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR TAKING A POETRY WORKSHOP AT WINTERGREEN STUDIOS

Susan Wismer

Innana        stands at the gate, lifts off her heavy jewels, prepares to descend to the underworld

Odysseus        at the prow of his ship, holds rope in his hands and listens for Sirens

Alice        head down the rabbit hole, falls toward Wonderland. The Queen of Hearts awaits, shouts, “Off with her head!”

The young initiate, brave and fearful, steps forward to ask, “Whom does the Grail serve?”
 

Any mythic, world-changing purpose will do.
And, you must love language
Unconditionally, passionately, without restraint.
 

Leave home earlier than you need to. Plan to arrive later than you expect.
The road,
While much improved, remains
A wild and looping creature of uncertain direction and multiple surfaces –
Time traveler shape shifter twists about bogs, rocks, lakes, forest.

If you come by car, turn carefully into the laneway.
Do not collide with the deer, which are plentiful
If you meet a vehicle heading out as you go in,
Strenuously imagine the narrowly possible.

At the flat rock on the small rise by the pond, stop.
Deposit all cell phones, hair dryers, electronic distractions
in the receptacle provided. We are
Unplugged.

The deer and the many snakes are harmless. No bears
Have been seen lately. The wolves
Stay our of sight. We have not yet seen cougar tracks.
We believe you have little to fear.

Small biting insects are plentiful. Mosquitoes, deer flies, gnats
Often cause visitors to dance ecstatically before
Dragonflies, build altars to the long flickering tongues
of toads and frogs, at nightfall pray fervent for bats.
 
 

Late evening is distinguished by exorbitant stardom
Closer to ground, the darkness that settles from treetops
is thick, can be felt in the palm of your hand, pulses
with cricket and frog song

We recommend headlamps, a walking stick, surrender

Of course, there are dragons
They guard the doorways, breathe fire and mist
Stand naked before them and enter
With nothing but song.

_____
August 21, 2011

With deep thanks to Lorna Crozier, the staff and volunteers at Wintergreen and all my poetic companions.

On July 7^th I had the amazing opportunity to see Merilyn Simonds’ extensive garden. Merilyn, Kingston WritersFest Artistic Director, hosted a get-together for the hard working people organizing WritersFest this year. Before attending this gathering I read A New Leaf: Growing with my Garden, Merilyn’s newest book. After reading the book and then seeing her garden (made up of twenty-six garden beds) I am in complete awe. I’m lucky if I can keep my basil alive.

This book is important for many reasons, in particular its ability to inspire hope. Many youths my age can barely name the vegetation growing in their own backyards. How many of us nourish a relationship with the land that goes beyond extraction— let alone planting and caring for twenty-six garden beds?

These thoughts blazed through my mind as I photographed Merilyn’s garden. Overhead storm clouds lengthened out over the two-hundred-year-old acreage as thunder announced another incoming summer storm. Luckily the rain held off and we all ate lazily under an aged apple tree. To visit such an enchanting place in person was quite a treat. I’ve included some photos I took and a link to Merilyn’s website where you can view more pictures of her garden, read an excerpt from her new book, and if you like what you read, buy a copy!

I’d like to hear from some of you writer gardeners out there. In 200 words write something inspired by your garden and paste it into the comments section at the bottom of this page. I will feature the top one on the blog in the coming weeks. Below I’ve included a poem by Liz Zetlin that I think is absolutely gorgeous. Makes me wish I had a lawn. Happy writing!

MY SWEET LOVE

Elizabeth Zetlin

Each fall I separate your heads
into hundreds of white jacketed cloves.
I press you index finger deep
into cool trenches and cover you
with a blanket of straw.

You don’t need me now.
Unseen, untended, alone,
you perform underground miracles —
from one as many as nine or eleven,
anchoring yourself to the earth
with thin white lines of rain
and root until suddenly one day
you are forced into green.

By mid summer you’ve snaked
into a field of green tipped commas
that would stiffen into exclamation points
if I let you,
but I don’t.

I cut your tops off, drape
your charms like the necks
of swans over my wrist.
My first taste of you sweating
olive oil, coating
my tongue and lashes.

When you begin to age
I pull on you and you
come away from the earth
with a deep sucking sound,
like a lover withdrawing
before he softens.

Hands gloved in soft red leather
I brush away your dirt and
toss you, long as my arm,
into the wheelbarrow. Saturated
with your smell and I haven’t even
sliced into you yet.

I immerse you in rain water,
your head and roots
cupped in my hand. Your neck
a handle in the other,
I scruzzle you back and forth
the way I caress my lover’s beard
as I lift him to my belly, damp
whiskers tickling my palm.

How intimate we are —
palm to chin, hand to bulb
as I push back your purple-veined skin
until you lie silky, naked.
I place you carefully on top
of pleasures to come, all lined up
stiff and gleaming, heads to the sun.

You pose for me
propped inside a window,
laid on a bed of purple thyme,
in front of a limestone column.
I kneel before you, my sweet love,
dreaming of evenings you will spend
flavouring me, the memory of you
warm and hard in my palm.

_____
one of the “Gourd Poems” from Taking Root, Seraphim Editions

Elizabeth Zetlin’s works copyright © to the author.