Six Questions interview #244 : Janine Eloise Larsen

Janine Eloise Larsen is currently writing a poetry chapbook, and her first novel. "På Tirsdag," is her first published poem, and appears in Bywords.ca, July 2026. Janine Eloise is the 2026 John Newlove Award winner. She holds degrees from University of Alberta in English & Psychology, and in Secondary Education, and has published classroom research on student self-description metaphor, in The Canadian Journal of Counselling, 2004.  Retired from teaching high school English in northern Alberta, she happily writes from her balcony perch overlooking the community of Lindenlea in Ottawa. A sense of curiosity and adventure have her on comfy ships following Viking ancestral routes. While at home, she enjoys long distance swims, nature walks surrounded by bird song, inventing knitting patterns, charcoal drawing, creative baking, and watching Nordic Noir.

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

A: I’ve been living in Ottawa since 2021. I moved during the pandemic. It wasn’t the easiest time to move 4000km from northern Alberta, but the opportunity was there and I took it. My feet first hit Ontario and Ottawa as a kid on a family road trip across Canada. I had a feeling of home that I'd never experienced before. After a quiet moment on the land, I looked my dad in the eye and said "I'm going to live here someday”. I was dead certain. Forty years later, almost to the day, I was back to stay.

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

A: I remember loving essay assignments in school, I thought my writing was amazing. It was more of a feeling than reality. Hahaha. Fortunately I’ve gotten better. During my midlife I wrote during times when I needed a creative break from the relentless grind and extremely heavy workload of teaching English. Once retired and in Ottawa, I went to pick up some Above/Ground Press chapbooks listed for sale in my community. Turns out I was at the doorstep of Frances Boyle. I had no idea who she was. After a short chat she invited me in and we talked about writing poetry. Frances recommended many places to get engaged and learn. One of the recommendations was taking a course from Sophie Anne Edwards. That course taught me loads, and led to connections with many writers. Recently, I got a chance to write a couple pieces with Pearl Pirie of Wakefield, who’s work I admire. I look for opportunities everywhere and take them.

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

A: The stuff published by bywords.ca and above/ground press make it feel like publishing is possible, because it's local. Readings, small publisher fairs, free courses online, VERSeFest, Ottawa International Writers Festival, are all right here, and usually just one bus ride away. And when I didn’t have much courage, I got a few poets together and we read our work at the local Beechwood community coffee shop, Cafe Miracle. The whole community here is so open to poets.

Things I’ve learned from the Ottawa writing community:

Writers support writers; it's a soft place to land.

Find folks you vibe with.

Read books of craft.

Write through the crappy work

I am allowed to consider myself a writer

Honour my own work and writing needs

Go to a variety of hosted readings everywhere.

Read my work at open mic opportunities.

Writers will always cheer you on.

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

A: Unique to Ottawa is the number of folks who work to make the writing community flourish with donated time and experience. The number and variety of events and opportunities here is exciting! Writers are a bit more supported here than the much smaller city I came from in northern Alberta.

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?

A: I belong here in Ottawa, and I knew it at just 14 years old. My sense of place is everything to my writing. I’ve written in many places in the western hemisphere. My best stuff has been written in Ottawa, because the land here knows me in a way that nowhere else does. There is no reason that should be true but it is. The trees and bushes here, the shield, the tiny fungal work, insects, birds, the way water moves through the landscape, all speak to me. I also move from the land to inside Ottawa’s galleries/museums and respond to, or generate work from, visceral experiences of art. There are artworks here that I wouldn’t have access to anywhere else.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Currently, my focus is building the chapbook the Newlove prize generously granted me. Peppered in, is work on a novel as ideas reveal themselves. My main character is persistent and impatient for attention. She kind of scares me a bit, so I indulge. I have a visual poetry/anecdote, fiction/nonfiction book about 1/2 written. I’m playing with how to pull that together. So either the novel or the hybrid book will be next. Sometimes I go to a movie theatre solo, to clear my head of poems/stories. Often in the dark theatre, I work out a writing challenge, but it's a tricky choice because I also get new ideas that don’t fit into a current piece or project.