Q: How long have you been in the Ottawa
area, and what first brought you here?
Perhaps a cliché reason: I moved to Ottawa
for a job with the federal public service in 2017. In 2021, I moved outside the
city to a little farm near Vankleek Hill with my partner Noel. I still spend a
fair bit of time in Ottawa for work and for fun – like poetry events!
Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the
writing community here?
I've inconsistently written or wanted to
write my whole life – unfinished short stories, scraps of fantastical
world-building, and all sorts of attempts at poetry. After I moved to Ottawa, I
submitted a few poems to Bywords, and eventually one got accepted. At the same
time, through a friend I contributed to an anthology of poetry. These little
successes encouraged me to keep writing and to keep putting my poetry out
there, a little bit at a time.
I also volunteered at VerseFest and attended the Writers’ Festival. Events like these exposed me to the writing community here in Ottawa.
Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking
about writing, if at all?
I am, at heart, a self-conscious
observer and a tentative introvert. Writing has been a personal undertaking for
the most part. Writing as a community activity for me started with an
occasional writing group made up of me and three of my close friends,
encouraging each other, responding to prompts, and just trying things
out.
Here in Ottawa, writing as community happened through festivals and attending readings, and reading myself a few times. The first time I read my work aloud to people was through a flo. launch. That, I think, signalled a shift for me, to thinking about writing not just as the act of creating and expressing, but taking the further step into sharing (in person!) and being truly vulnerable. That is in part what my poetry is for: I am sharing bits of myself and hoping it resonates with someone in some way. I’ve also joined a creative writing group in my town to continue building community into my writing practice.
I’m somewhat on the periphery, popping in here and there, but even so, the community here is very open and welcoming. For me, Ottawa is the community in which I am becoming a writer, a poet, and I’m very grateful for that.
Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What
does Ottawa provide, or allow?
Like my hometown Winnipeg, Ottawa is a
small big city. That’s part of why I feel at home here. And I think what that
means for writers and other creators is that it feels warm and accessible. It
isn’t as daunting or perhaps disconnected as I imagine it might be in our
country’s bigger cities. But at the same time, Ottawa is big enough that there
is variety, and there is always more to discover and contribute to.
Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements
here? How have the city and its community, its environment, if at all, changed
the way you approached your work?
Yes, in the sense that my environment
inspires and feeds into my writing. When I lived in the city, I walked
everywhere I could, and during those times I was also thinking and observing,
feeling and avoiding my emotions. So, the canal and trees and squirrels and
cracks in the sidewalk certainly made it into some of my poems. This is often
how I start a poem: what am I seeing and immersed in, what is around me –
particularly nature – and how does that relate to the story and the emotions I
want to communicate.
Q: What are you working on now?
Quite honestly, just finding the time and
energy and persistence to write. But I always have a few ideas vaguely formed
and percolating. Right now, poems around existential guilt and hope and,
always, birds.
