I grew up politically active, became a sociologist, taught and did research in gender studies, was involved in the women’s movement. I had the authority of a PhD, my students listened to my lectures, people heard my talks. What I spoke about was always buttressed by research, bibliographies, footnotes. I had a voice, quite a public one. But I always felt that it was a voice that had to be somehow built and achieved by dint of hard work and study. I always envied those who were musicians, artists of some sort, who embodied a natural talent. Of course I knew that artists work hard at their craft, but I always imagined that their work derived from an inner wellspring that I lacked. More of the world seemed available to such people, I felt. My world was narrower, somehow limited, despite how capable I was and how well I did.
After a number of years of university teaching, I married and moving to the States, but could not find a teaching job in my field. The more I looked, the stronger the feeling became that I no longer wanted to be part of the academic world. Motherhood (and the accompanying sleep deprivation) did not call on my analytic skills, but awoke my intuitive side with a vengeance. I decided to try “creative writing” which I imagined would be opinion pieces on social issues, or perhaps family stories. What emerged were poems – and no one was more surprised than I. I took workshops, (most notably with Rose Solari and Rod Jellema at the Writers’ Center in Bethesda, MD) found a community of poets, and the poems continued to flow, with doubt and hesitation, but then with more confidence and trust.
We moved back to Canada, I continued to write, and found new writing companions. I began collaboration with Vincenzo Sestito, theatre director and voice teacher. This turned into a deep creative relationship, whereby we have co-written two one-woman plays, based on my poems. Hear the Crows’ Wings is based on stories moving across three generations in Montreal, the Eastern Townships and Ukraine. Minyan of One is a work commissioned to commemorate the Holocaust. Both plays have been performed in several venues in Toronto. A third play is in production and will be performed at the Paper Mill Theatre in Toronto at the end of March.
Poetry lives in the smallest and humblest of places, as well as in the grand political critiques. Teaching poetry to a third grade class where English was a second language for most of the students – now that was something! And exploring poetry with seniors, writers and non-writers, has been just as rewarding. The celebration of language, and the acknowledgement of the pleasure and power that accompanies it, is at the heart of it all.