Speakers' Corner

A few questions to spark a writing oriented discussion:

Seminar Question #1

Our writing is often influenced directly or indirectly by the people and events around us. We write as an outlet for understanding our world and the relationships in our world. The question for today is:

Is it more important to safeguard the person depicted in a piece of writing - poetry or fiction - by not relaying these events, or to honour the writing as an art that needs to be shared? How would you approach this dilemma if there was a topic/person you wished to write about, but knew that the people involved may be hurt by it being published?

I have such a poem that I am still hesitant to show to the person who is depicted, my birthmother, but also felt a strong need to honour and share with others:

My Life Up North

She had told the girls, my half-sisters,
to stay inside with Pop.
That's what she called her boyfriend's dad.
She wanted some time alone with me,
our black hair reflecting the sun on a Prince George day.
Mid-July, no wind, and the heat making my throat dry.
So I only listened.

We held hands, walking along the main road,
and when we stopped to kiss - daughter and almost mother -
three teenage boys riding by in a jeep snapped their necks.

We sat across from each other in a nearby McDonald's,
not her favourite, but waht she could afford.
Her unkempt hair pulled into a low ponytail
reaching down her back.
Her missing teeth,
the lines around her eyes speaking for themselves.
The fact she was only 40.

Those who didn't know her would think she was hard as nails,
but I knew how softly she spoke,
and none of it kept her from smiling,
alth0ugh at times she laughed at the devil.

She told me about her father.
The day she came home sixteen and pregnant,
trying not to care. He soon bundled her into his lap,
while she apologized for me.

How he may have been disappointed, but never angry.
How he must have held us both,
thinking of her end and my beginning,
and cried with her.

She told me about my birthfather,
how he played the guitar, wrote poetry,
and threatened to punch her in the stomach
when she was eight months along.
In a panic, she cried, "I think I felt it move!"
And he drew back his fist and went out for a beer.

She had been drowning ever since
her older cousin
first made her aware of herself before she was ready.
The tender mounds on her little girl chest,
the place between her legs
where only misery and pleasure came from.
The place that made her forget everything above her heart.

Now, four children later,
and a man in her house who I've seen
pull her hair when she teased him,
wrapping it like cable inside his fist.
The way I've seen impatient passengers on buses
pull the cord,
wanting to end their ride and move in a different direction.
He wouldn't let go until she put her words into reverse.

Often she props herself up in the corner of her kitchen counters,
a place she feels protected or invisible,
the same place I felt most at ease
in my own home, for years.

I watch as she rolls her paper cigarettes from a box of tobacco,
lights the end, and sucks vacantly on the fumes,
trying to fill some small place.

published in A Mother's String by Ekstasis Editions

This is really a tribute poem to her, albeit gritty because that is real, but also tender and compassionate. This poem was a way for me to know her more intimately and understand her journey, as well as to explore my own role in the events of her life and how these events shaped us both.