Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here?
I have lived in Ottawa since 1994. Originally from the U.S., I met my Canadian partner when living in Nicaragua in the 1980’s during the Sandinista Revolution.We lived in Toronto for a while, but wanted to live within reach of green spaces.
Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?
I have always had a passion for writing, but didn’t give myself permission to develop craft until recent years. There was work, family and a world to change. It was when a cherished friend, an artist herself, died nine years ago, that I finally heard her plea to give writing the time it deserves.
Art too is a way of creating a caring, compassionate world, she would say.
I immersed myself in courses, workshops and writing retreats. I remember attending the first Versefest event, thrilled to consider that the strangers walking in with me would all be poets or lovers of poetry. I was fortunate to be welcomed into two monthly poetry groups, both with skilled Ottawa writers.
Three years ago, I became certified as a creative writing facilitator in the AWA (Amherst Writers and Artists) method which is based on the belief that we all have a creative writer within us. I facilitate workshops with multi-cultural, multi-racial groups of women and youth, mostly refugees or immigrants, creating a safe space to find their own artist voice. Focusing on themes of belonging, identity, racism and colonization, often using poems of Indigenous or racialized poets as prompts, while encouraging writers to draw on their own first languages, writers learn craft through positive affirmation.
Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?
The mentorship and support of seasoned Ottawa writers has been a treasure. As we strengthen craft for one another, we seem to be writing one great poem. At the same time, facilitating workshops with emerging writers, from different countries of origin, widens my perspective and helps me to embrace the tensions of beauty and pain, of memory and imagination, writing through trauma into empowerment.
Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?
As a a medium-size city, there are opportunities to build communities of writers that support one another. A recent example is the reading series, In Our Tongues, dedicated to nurturing poets and writers, who are Black, Indigenous and People of Colour, including people with different abilities and across the gender spectrum.
Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements here? How have the city and its community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work?
During my career working with women from marginalized communities to have a voice in Ottawa’s municipal decision making, I was aware that as a white, middle class woman, I could not speak for them. However, it is often their life experiences and courage that sparkles in my writing.
Q: What are you working on now?
Footfalls:
Poems of the Camino, scheduled to be released by Shanti Arts Publishing in September,
is a collection of poetry written when I walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain.
Very exciting, as this is my first published collection. I hope it will speak
to those who have walked the Camino, dream of walking it or walk their own
pilgrimage every day. Also, I am working on a manuscript of poetry inspired by the
years I spent in Nicaragua, at a time when my government, the U.S.
administration, was on a winnable mission to unravel the revolutionary
movements of Central America. I write to help keep alive moments in history
that have shaped who we are as humanity.
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