Joan Rivard is an Ottawa writer with pieces published in The Malahat Review; flo lit mag; Blank Spaces; jmww (my poem "Sestina Still Waits Behind the Sofa" nominated for Best of Web 2024); The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls; and Abergavenny Small Press.
Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here?
I was born and raised here, but worked for a year in South America in my early 20s. I returned to Ottawa but moved with my new husband to Cornwall, Ontario for his job with Parks Canada. We were there for ten years; we had our babies there. We moved back to Ottawa with our two little Cornwellians in 1991. My six-year old was most impressed with the “castles” on Wellington Street.
Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?
I wrote a little growing up - I remember a murder mystery with two carefully interwoven plots that won a prize in Grade 8, and then some angsty teen poems. But mostly I just read, read, read. I was always so embarrassed when I had to list my “hobbies”, because all I really did was read.
As an adult, I didn’t write creatively at all. But I did academic writing while getting my MA in English at Carleton University, which I loved. After I retired as a legal editor at the Department of Justice, I realized that I wanted to write. I was accepted into a two-year online diploma in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. I wanted a program I thought might be really rigorous. At my age I felt I had a lot to learn and no time to fiddle around!
I graduated last spring. So I am a new writer and have so far only dipped a toe into Ottawa’s writing community. I’ve attended a few readings, both in-person and Zoom. I want to get more involved, but don’t quite know where to start. Everyone I’ve met has been most encouraging, though.
Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?
There seems to be a fairly well-established community here. I see the same names over and over as I prowl through the Ottawa resources online. It’s a bit tough as a shy person to plunge in. But I know that the clear-sighted feedback of a writing group is invaluable.
There’s no doubt writing groups are have been valuable to me. Absorbing someone else’s reactions to my work. Trying to defend a certain path I’ve chosen. Attempting to provide thoughtful feedback to someone else (and learning a good deal in the process). I think that writing not exposed to the knock and bustle of other opinions remains a paler version of itself.
Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?
I may not be well positioned to answer this; I only have my fellow students from the university program for comparison. Students were English-speaking, from all over the world. Only a few of us wanted to specialize in poetry but, as our tutors rightly pointed out, what we learned about screenwriting, life-writing, long fiction, etc., increased our capacities as poets.
Regarding what happens elsewhere, one of my classmates, a poet, has not been published at all and has no interest in that. In her part of the world there are frequent and highly popular reading events. She travels all over to them. This is what she writes for: performance.
Imagine! There may be themes at these events. There may be prizes. They may become raucous – sometimes the audience is allowed to shout you off the stage if they don’t like what you’re giving them. But she’s thriving! She just pulls on her thick skin suit and climbs that stage.
I haven’t seen this kind of thing in Ottawa, exactly. From what I’ve seen - and I’ve only been to a few events - spoken poetry is held in esteem here. We recognize what it takes to get up and share. At the events I’ve attended, the poets are treated with courtesy.
I’m all for courtesy! But there’s also something intriguing about a less reverential approach, no? Do you think you could cope with being shouted off the stage now and then? Terrifying, but it secretly sounds like big fun to me.
Having said that, one amazing thing I’ve noticed from Ottawa readings is the huge age range! People of every age and stage turning out to read and to appreciate the words of others. This is a great thing - something we shouldn’t ever take for granted.
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?
Again, I’m probably too new to answer this well. But Ottawa teems with anguished memories for me, and this has inevitably found its way into my writing.
Q: What are you working on now?
I’ve just finished a Long Poem: a collection of poetry, prose and art about my mother and my daughter.
Alzheimer’s disease began to dismantle my mother at the same time my teenaged daughter began to manifest the delusions and psychosis of schizophrenia. They’d been great friends, those two. It was a complicated and difficult decade. In differing ways, their voices were lost to illness, and this is what prompted me to take up writing. I want to reclaim the voices of these funny, plucky women. Some individual pieces have been published so far, but I’m trying to find the whole collection a home.
Then I’d like to write more flash fiction. I’m a prosey-type poet anyway, and find myself eyeing that sassy little genre with interest. We’ll see!
Thank you for these questions, rob; I’m very appreciative.
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