O.P.P. notes

If you’ve ever lived in Ontario, you’re probably thinking this post is about the Ontario Provincial Police. But no, the O.P.P. in question here is ‘Other People’s Poetry’.

On Monday, I hosted an event that featured the work of the five poets who wrote the books in the photo above. Those titles were the finalists for this year’s Dorothy Livesay Award, the poetry component of our province’s BC Book Prizes. You can read more about them here (scroll down past fiction and non-fiction to the Livesay finalists). But they’re not the primary focus of today’s rather long post.

Not long ago, Cristy Watson, a writer friend in my community, invited me to participate in something called a Blog-Hop. That idea came from writer and blogger, Kristin Butcher. To see Cristy’s blog (worth looking at, whether you write poetry or fiction), click here. And while you’re clicking, check out Kristin’s too, as she’s the brains behind this whole Blog-Hop dance. 

The Blog-Hop process requires me to answer four questions, which I’ve done, below. But more importantly, the Blog-Hop gives me the opportunity to point you in the direction of three other blogs, each of them by other poets – in other words, they’re places where you’ll find out more about ‘other people’s poetry’ (O.P.P.)

Since I’d prefer to deal with introductions first, may I please tell you about Linda Crosfield. She describes herself modestly, mentioning several journals where her poems have appeared: The Minnesota Review, Labor, and The Antigonish Review. She adds that one of her poems became a miniature accordion book by UpDown Press, and that she produced a chapbook for George Bowering through her imprint, NIB Publishing. She acknowledges a few places where she’s read, including in 2013 at Nelson(BC)’s Elephant Mountain Literary Festival, but fails to mention that she was nearly the hit of the weekend at the recent CascadiaPoetry Festival in Seattle with her hilariously true poem, ‘Nobody Smokes Anymore’. She blogs at purplemountainpoems.blogspot.ca in Ootischenia, BC.

Another poet you'll want to meet is Mary Ann Moore. She's based in Nanaimo, BC. Her book of poetry, Fishing for Mermaids, was published by Leaf Press in April 2014. But she does a lot more than write poems. Mary Ann offers a mentoring program called Writing Home: A Whole Life Practice and a weekly women's writing circle as well as monthly poetry circles called Poetry as a Doorway In . . . and a Welcome Home. She writes a blog at www.apoetsnanaimo.ca and also writes books. It wasn't long ago that she and I shared a page in The Vancouver Sun, with comments each of us were making on new BC books.

The third poet (with blog) I'm introducing is Janet Vickers. A few years ago, she and her husband packed up house and moved to the lovely (though somewhat tricky-to-reach) Gabriola Island. She is a member of Poetry Gabriola and helps organize readings on the island, including one I participated in during National Poetry Month (April). Her first trade book, Impermanence, was published by Ekstasis Editions in 2012. She has long been active in the peace movement and has also been dedicated to other social justice causes. Janet is the publisher of Lipstick Press, which she claims is in the process of re-inventing itself -- very slowly. You can keep track of what those changes might be at the Lipstick Press blog. 

And now, down to my answers to the four questions – the same questions Cristy answered on her blog, and ones you’ll soon see responses to on the blogs of Janet, Mary Ann and Linda.

What am I working on? I’ve mostly been working on everything but writing – a state of being that makes me almost itchy. A week-long trip to Newfoundland saw me involved in networking with friends and colleagues, as the heart of the trip was The Writers Union of Canada’s AGM. (St. John’s – what a place!) I can’t wait to go back. And truthfully, while I was there – in fact, in the midst of the celebratory banquet, no less – came words for a poem about ‘home’. Not finished, still mostly scribbles in a notebook, but then what poem ever is truly finished?

How does my work differ from others of its genre? One of the ways my work differs from others of its genre (and here I’m speaking only of poems) is that I don’t seem to have ever caught on to being able to write to a particular project. The only exception to this would be A: The Amelia Poems, a chapbook published by Lipstick Press (to see more on this press, click on the link for Janet Vickers, above). This ‘poem-here, poem-there’ pattern of mine does not lend itself well towards organizing a manuscript, especially as it seems pretty well all poetry books published in the last decade place their focus on some particular event or at least subject or theme.

Why do I write what I do? I write what I do because those are the words/phrases/lines that I hear in my head. I nearly always start with a scrap of something I’ve ‘heard’ (please don’t call the men in white coats) and then – provided I can later find the physical scrap of paper I’ve likely scribbled it on – I use it as the basis of something longer. The 'heard' line or phrase isn’t always the first line, nor is it the last; often it’s something that turns out to be in the middle. And sometimes, that ‘scrap’ ends up being the title of the poem.

How does my writing process work? Oops. I think I just answered that in the previous response. But then, maybe that just serves to demonstrate that it really is the bit of inspiration that leads me into the actual work of the writing, rewriting and then rewriting some more. Sometimes I think we shouldn’t bother calling ourselves writers, because really, so much of what we do isn’t writing, but re-writing. Maybe I’ll change my business card to Heidi Greco, ReWriter.