National Poetry Month : Adele Graf,

 

 

 

If you find a samovar 

 

in a pandemic, what might you mourn?
Its brass polish blue in tight corners.
The oval shape your palms expect
too narrow for these square sides.

Your sister’s thirty years of reunions:
you buffing her samovar. Next year, if
families can gather, will she be
too old to host?

Your mother’s death. You
and your sisters choosing
to apportion her things. That prickle
as the samovar passed to your sister.

In 1907, this samovar E. V. Salishchev
forged and stamped in Tula.

The same year, a pogrom that uprooted
your grandfather. Later, this family of ten
in New York: two bedrooms, the Spanish Flu.
Your four months indoors, high-risk

group, your wait for a cure. Public health
headlines against touching objects.
Your exercise hour up Keays Road
on garbage recycling day.        

These soft lawns, the silent street, dormant time.

Your vanity: you alone recognize this urn.      

Dollar-store gloves that stay in your pocket.  
Your qualms that they’d shield           

your hands from germs. A look
around the block near Keays, to dither

over sprinting home    
for thicker gloves, minutes maybe
squandered. And could you prize
an unknown family’s heirloom?                                 

Right then, a pickup truck
that’s cruising for metal scrap.                       

The two blocks you plod home, arms   
clutching nothing. The years
since you would have swooped
and grabbed sudden treasure.

This pandemic that upended you.

Its shove. Your lurch.
This free fall
into the new world.     

 

 

 

Adele Graf grew up outside New York City and immigrated to Canada in 1968. She has worked as a writer and editor, and taught writing in the public and private sectors in Halifax and Ottawa.

Her first book of poetry, math for couples (Guernica Editions, 2017) was shortlisted for the Archibald Lampman Award. Her second book of poetry, buckled into the sky, was published by Guernica in 2021. She has also published two poetry chapbooks: a Baltic Friday early in grey (above/ground press, 2017) and Directions to Suffern NY circa 1950 (Tree Press, 2018), which won the Tree Reading Series chapbook prize. She lives in Ottawa with her spouse.

Six Questions interview #65 : Adele Graf

Adele Graf grew up outside New York City and immigrated to Canada in 1968. She has worked as a writer and editor, and taught writing in the public and private sectors in Halifax and Ottawa.

Her first book of poetry, math for couples (Guernica Editions, 2017), was shortlisted for the Archibald Lampman Award. Her second book of poetry, buckled into the sky (Guernica Editions, 2021), has just appeared. She has also published two poetry chapbooks, a Baltic Friday early in grey (above/ground press, 2017) and Directions to Suffern NY circa 1950 (Tree Press, 2018), which won the Tree Reading Series chapbook prize.

She lives in Ottawa with her spouse.

Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here? 

I came to Ottawa more than forty years ago, drawn by its size and connectedness. A small city with big connections to the arts. Ottawa’s arts were (and are) accessible – close by, affordable, and easy to become part of. I still love that.

Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here? 

I started writing seriously when my first grandchild was born. Becoming a grandmother lit up my world. Within a week, my first poem came to me, almost whole. I’d said for years that  I would never write poetry, because both my mother and my sister had. But here I am, twenty years, two books and two chapbooks later, still writing poems.

Right from the start, I looked for a place that felt comfortable in the writing community here. I was looking for, and found, camaraderie, stimulation, feedback and a broader view of the writing world.

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?  

It keeps on shifting my thinking. Seeing the range of other writers’ subjects and styles clarifies how I see my own writing – what I like or would like to change about it. Plus the pleasure of hearing new kinds of expression, hearing of writers new to me, and how others manage the twists and turns of their writing process.  

Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow? 

It’s a great writing community here. I’ve found it welcoming, inclusive and supportive to someone like me who started writing later in life. Can’t really compare it with anywhere else, since I’ve only lived here since I started writing.

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? 

No writing projects directly about life in Ottawa. But this small, connected city often gives me time and the mental and physical space to write. A privileged situation, which I appreciate. 

Q: What are you working on now?

For the first time in a decade, I’m not working on a large project. Since 2011, when I started putting my first book together, I’ve had projects on the go. There were chapbooks and long poem series, and now my second book, buckled into the sky, which has just been published.

At the moment, I’m writing a lot and enjoying the focus on individual poems –

whatever feels urgent at the time. An overarching project seems to be forming for these poems, but I’m sitting back and watching to see what shape it takes.

I’m also excited about my new book, buckled into the sky. Looking forward to reading from it, and sharing these poems about what led me away and then took me back to home. Glad to be here now.