I’m sharing the stage with two poets in Abbotsford on July 8 and then more poets on my northern tour in August. (see dates here)
What do you think of multi-genre writers? Would you read a writer’s poetry if you’ve enjoyed their novel or their non-fiction? Do you follow the type of writing or the author?
Since many people know me from my work as a journalist, some are curious how I came around to writing a novel and it’s an intriguing question for me too. Especially, when in fact, I started my writing career with poetry! Back in Gr. 6, I won a creativity award for a poem I wrote about an island, and this may have set me on the path of believing I could be a writer. Still I don’t think I ever considered myself a poet. I thought I’d be an investigative journalist, cracking stories to inform and change the world.
I remember the first time I was blown away by a poem though (besides the Wraggle Taggle Gypsies from one of Hilda Boswell’s Treasury books) It was “The Windhover” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. A professor at the University of Calgary, (I wish I could remember his name), read it out loud. He turned off the overhead fluorescence and plugged in a little incandescent lamp before he started. I’m not sure I would have been as impressed if he hadn’t read this and other poems in his passionate and sonorous voice.
Anyway, where am I going with all this? I guess to say that I’m a poet too, published most recently in Prairie Fire. Some of my other poems are on the Other Works page of my website. I’ve been working on a collection of my poems, with the aim of getting them published in a book. A journalist, a fiction writer and a poet. Oh and how did I get to writing fiction? I’ll have to continue that thought in another post.
