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.
