Bliss
these
days my life sits
sluggish
and dumb
staring
at a screen
and
to be honest
it
makes me want
to
scream
– war and horror
mum wake up, mum wake up
horror and war –
oh,
to be twelve
again
and climbing
up
a tree, up high
and
reaching
reaching
for
the ever
everlasting
sky.
Q: How long were you in Ottawa, and what first brought you here? What took you away?
In all total, I lived in Ottawa for about 30 years, though not consecutively. Does anyone actually plan where they are going to end up? I initially moved to Ottawa in the late 1970s to work for an Indigenous magazine, which was supposed to last the summer. When that stint was over I began working for an Indigenous political organization, which was quite exciting in those days. I might add that while working there I was also attending the University of Ottawa. From there I joined External Affairs (now called The Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development) where I worked for seven years. it was a poor boy’s way to see the world, a great job for someone in their 20s. I eventually had enough though — I was finding it nearly impossible to write — and left Ottawa to further my studies and subsequently returned in the early 90s to teach in the English Department at Carleton. I finally moved to Kingston about seven years ago to teach at Queen’s. It was time for a change.
Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?
I actually wanted to study film making but coming from the north I didn’t have access to a film camera — there was no cheap video equipment in those days — and so I took photographs. That wasn’t enough to get into a film program, and I decided to study biology, which made sense, seeing I had spent my youth in the bush. For various reason that didn’t work out, and I drifted into a creative writing course. I was immediately hooked. I might add that I was always a reader.
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?
To put it in a nutshell, moving to Ottawa exposed me to a wide variety of writers, both local and those from afar. When I started attending U of Ottawa in the early 1980s, there was quite an active literary scene in Ottawa. There was the Tree Series, of course, which began I believe in 1980, and there were others as well. I remember going to various pubs, restaurants, the universities, and even peoples’ homes to hear readings. Both Christopher Levenson at Carleton and Seymour Mayne at Ottawa U, for example, organized regular readings in those days. Ottawa U also had a very active Writer-In-Residence program. I heard all kinds of people there, Michael Ondaatje, Patrick Lane, Irving Layton, etc. I think when one is young and starting out exposure is so important. One of the most surprising things that happened was when the playwright George Ryga came to see me while I was working for one of the Indigenous political organizations. He was a visiting writer at Ottawa U at the time, and I had sent him some of my poems. There he was knocking on my door. He was very encouraging. So if anything, all those experiences made me realize that writing was something that I could pursue seriously.
Q: What did you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What did Ottawa provide, or allow?
I guess I have to flip this question around, because it is what was lacking that made me take notice. What was missing were Indigenous writers. None of the readings that I attended in the early days ever had an Indigenous reader. We were really not part of the literary scene in those days. It wasn’t until the early 90s that things slowly began to open up. (Tomson Highway’s success had a lot to do with it.) That’s when I met a few other Indigenous writers, and we formed a loosely knit group called W.I.N.O and published a small collection called Voices From Home. A few years later, a coffee house called The Stone Angel, which was located downtown, began to host Indigenous writers. I read there with local songwriting legend Willy Dunn. All in all, Ottawa was a good place to hear and meet other writers.
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?
Because even after all these years my sensibilities are still very much grounded in the landscape of northern Ontario, I still tend to draw on that landscape for inspiration. Still, I published my first book Opening In the Sky while living in Ottawa and launched it at The Stone Angel. Undoubtedly, the city has had some kind of an influence on me. I think if you dig through my last collection Treaty#, you’ll find echoes of Ottawa. In fact, I’m sure of it.
Q: What are you working on now?
I’ve got two discrete books of poetry, as well as
a book of prose, in the works. What I
will say is that I’ve been thinking a lot more about form these days. So while the writing still works at some
level with narrative, I’m thinking more about the page itself. That probably
has to do with the writers I’m reading.
