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Ottawa-born, long-time Vancouver resident and member of the TADS poets’ group (poet-laureate George Bowering, George Stanley, Jamie Reid, Reg Johannson, Wayde Compton, Chris Turnbull), Cath Morris has been writing stories and poetry since she was a child. Before her introduction to the Vancouver literary scene, she worked as a journalist for The Georgia Straight and VAM (Vancouver Area Music) Magazine. Besides her chapbook, Venus & Apollo (from Pookah Press in 2009), Cath’s poetry has been published in TADS, Urban Pie, and The Capilano Review, as well as online poetry journals, Ottawater.com (3rd, 8th, 10th, and 11th Issues), Poethia.com, and Bywords.ca. Her work was later published in Coach House Press’ special edition anthology for Poet Laureate George Bowering’s 70th birthday, 71(+) for GB, and Corporate Watch UK’s 10th Anniversary Anthology (2007) in Oxford, UK.
Besides Venus & Apollo, Cath’s second chapbook, Fish, Ophelia, and Other Broken Dolls, was published by Pookah Press (2018). Cath’s early self-published chapbook, After the Fall, awaits publication. More recently, her work can be found in the Seattle-based west-coast poetry anthology, Make it True: Poetry from Cascadia, 2015 (Leaf Press, Nanaimo, B.C.) Cath has worked as a university writing tutor as well as a television researcher/writer and script editor.
Her most recent book is the prescient piece called The Looming, published in 2022 in Cambridge, England, by Pegasus Publishers.
Q: How long were you in Ottawa, and what first brought you here? What took you away?
I was born in Ottawa but in my early teens, my family moved away to Arnprior but then we moved back to Ottawa, where I finished high school and went for first year at Carleton University, but then my father took a teaching job at a Confederation College in Thunder Bay, so I followed my parents there and took Theatre Arts at the same college, after which I went back down south to Guelph University for my Honours B.A., in Drama and Philosophy. After that, I moved out west to B.C. after my friend, artist, Norah Hutchinson did. My first job was as a box office clerk at The Arts Club Theatre on Granville Island.
Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?
After meeting Peter Trower, the logging poet of BC, and then some other poets, especially George Stanley, I joined a group of poets, called the TADS, who used to meet for drinks at a bar on Robson Street, and the group was basically Georg Stanley and George Bowering and some of their literary, poetic students and myself and Jamie Reid at times, etc. I had been writing poetry and stories since I was a child, in any case.
Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all? Have there been subsequent shifts due to where you have lived since?
I already knew I was a poet, but being in a community of other poets and writers was
an inspiration for me to keep doing it. I wanted to be a journalist but I found BC to be a bit of a cowboy culture, as, when I applied to be a journalist at both the Vancouver Sun and the Province, but didn’t even receive acknowledgement of my applications, which would never have happened in Ottawa or Toronto. And when I did do some writing for the Georgia Straight and a few other local music mags, it paid pennies. I said “What is this? A hobby for rich ladies?” But don’t get me started on that stuff. I missed places like Ottawa, which seemed so much more cultured and ‘Old World’ (European).
Q: What did you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What did Ottawa provide, or allow?
I remember I loved the old buildings in downtown Ottawa and the river and I think it’s nearness to Quebec added even more ‘Old World’ culture to its atmosphere. Also, I spent quite a bit of time at the Le Hibou Café, “Ottawa's unofficial headquarters of performing arts in the 1960-70's where Bruce Cockburn started his career”[1] and I saw other groups play there who were wonderful.
Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements here? How had the city and its community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work?
Well, I feel I was inspired by Ottawa’s cultural and physical closeness to Quebec and I think learning French, both in high school and university, broadened my cultural landscape and perspective.
And perhaps Pierre Trudeau smiling at me at the Parliament building one day made me more political, although I have always seemed to have the inquisitive mind of a journalist.
Q: What are you working on now?
I just finished launching my new poetry
book, The Looming (published by Pegasus Publishers in Cambridge, England
in 2022) which foresaw these troubled Dickensian times we now find
ourselves in, in which the space between the wealthy and the poor is so vast
and the younger generation are too much in love with looks (selfies), fashion,
and money – and have lost their connection to Mother Nature so much that they
don’t seem to care about saving Mother Earth.
My book talks about this – (you can buy it on Amazon). My next project
is to write songs, many of which are based on some of my teenage poetry, and to
maybe even get a movie made from a folk-tale I wrote at university (of Guelph,
Ontario), while studying Mythology.
Thanks for this, rob.
Cath Morris (Williams)
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