Some wonderful draft poems about creatures of all kinds were written last Thursday afternoon at the weekly summer poetry in the park workshop held behind the field house at Oppenheimer Park! I displayed postcards with images of various creatures from land and sea, as well as some of my son’s old toys (sundry plastic dinosaurs and bugs and wooden animal blocks) to inspire us to write about creatures that can delight, comfort or frighten us.

I read my poems, “Ode to a Crow” and “Wolf” as examples, and also shared terrific poems by others included on a photocopied handout, such as Margaret Atwood’s “Song of the Worms“, Yvonne Blomer’s “Barfly” (about a polar bear), Seamus Heaney’s “Postscript” (an encounter with swans while driving), and James Wright’s “A Blessing” (an encounter with two ponies). These poems illustrate how different points of view (first person, second person or third person) can be employed in a poem to good effect. We also talked about how paying poetic attention to chance encounters with birds, animals and insects can transform us in unexpected and profound ways.

The group wrote and shared draft poems about farm animals, former pets, dolphins, mice, cockroaches, and several other creatures, and created a list of creatures they might like to write about in future. The Oppenheimer field house staff generously provided us with a jug of refreshing iced tea and a lovely tray of assorted baked treats to sustain the group during three intensive rounds of writing.

I also co-facilitated a similar workshop the day before with Gilles Cyrenne, coordinator of the Downtown Eastside Writers Collective, through the Gathering Place Community Centre, which is holding weekly poetry workshops in July at Emery Barnes Park at 1170 Richards Street downtown. A bountiful array of fresh fruit, cookies and beverages was also served during this workshop. (See poster below for details.)

Please consider participating in these free, public workshops led by a different local poet each week. Each poet will employ various prompts and creative approaches to tap into writers’ creative potential. The upcoming workshops are sure to be stimulating and fun!

Oppenheimer Park Poetry Workshops, 1-3 pm

Emery Barnes Park Poetry Workshops, 2-4 pm

Thank you to Carnegie Centre’s Community Activities Coordinator, Nichole Lockwood, and Park Board staffers Jenn Taylor and Danielle Beaton (who took the photograph above), as well as the fieldhouse volunteers for assisting with the Oppenheimer Park poetry workshops. It was also great to work with Marnie Fleming, the librarian at the Gathering Place Community Centre who organized the Emergy Barnes Park poetry workshops. Thanks also to Brenda Racanelli, Community Arts Programmer with Department of Decolonization, Arts and Culture (Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation) for supporting these workshops.

Last Friday, October 27th, I arrived at the tent set up outside the Carnegie Centre at the corner of Main and Hastings Streets and plunked down my second-hand, manual Smith Corona typewriter on a checkered tablecloth. Festival workers John and Quinn set up a sandwich board with a poster for the Heart of the City Festival. Quinn stayed on to offer any ongoing assistance. Poetry booth coordinator, Gilles Cyrenne encouraged folks passing by to consider participating. We waited to see who would come by to take us up on the offer of a poem.

Inspired by the book, Writing Down the Bones by US writer Nathalie Goldberg, Gilles initiated the Spontaneous Poetry Booth event at last year’s festival, and hosted it on both Saturday and Sunday again this year. Gilles is a committed community activist, local poet, Carnegie Centre Board Member and coordinator of the DTES Writers’ Collective whose enthusiasm is infectious. He convinced me to join him at last year’s festival, my first time ever doing anything like this. Usually it takes me weeks, if not months, or even longer, to painstakingly draft, craft and hone a single poem. But this was an opportunity to try something that I had heard about other poets doing at Farmers’ Markets and hospitals in other cities. Toronto poet and psychotherapist, Ronna Bloom has written and prescribed poems on the spot in hospital and other settings. New Westminster’s Poet Laureate, Elliott Slinn is also renowned for typing spontaneous verse.

Twelve people had a turn to sit down at the poetry table to share memories, ideas, themes or prompts with me. The very first person was the festival’s artistic director, Savannah Walling, who requested a poem that dealt with the to-and-fro of ancestral grudges. A wide range of folks of varying ages and backgrounds followed over the next hour and a half. I listened carefully and tried to draft poems that integrated their thoughts and feelings, grateful for their trust in me and their openness. The poems that emerged ranged in length from half a dozen to a dozen lines, but each poem was unique, tailored to the person seeking the poem.

One man wanted a poem to honour his deceased parents. A young woman wanted a poem about the multiple questions she faces daily from her four-year-old child. There were requests for poems about identity, transitions to a new city and the loss of a previous home, a favourite ring encircled by carved hieroglyphics, a dialogue between poets, and even about a doughnut (is a poem like doughnut, is a doughnut like a poem?). One of the last poems requested by a cyclist (see the photo above of the cyclist in red beside Gilles and a bicycle) was a blessing for the entire world. Of course, I was pleased to oblige!

Whether or not these were “literary” poems, they felt “true”–meaningful words I could assemble on the page (albeit with more than a few typos) and offer as a kind of gift. It felt in a way like trying to conjure rabbits from a hat!

Just like last year, Gilles was extremely busy concocting poems for the Spontaneous Poetry Booth over two days. He told me of memorable poems he was asked to write for a woman who had left the war in Ukraine, and for another woman whose daughter had died of a drug overdose, leaving behind her daughter’s two young children.

It was an honour to work with Gilles again, and to be part of the over 100 diverse cultural events at the Heart of the City Festival. It’s a wonderful festival with something for everyone. Kudos to the hard-working organizers, coordinators, artists, performers, and volunteers!

Last Thursday afternoon, Downtown Eastside writers gathered around five tables set up behind the Oppenheimer Park Field House as part of the Create & Share Workshop and Open Mic event during the Downtown Eastside Writers’ Festival. The Festival is in its second year and provides a wide range of stimulating and engaging activities and events, including readings, author talks, workshops, panels and much more.

At my table, I set up my old manual typewriter (appropriate given the festival program cover!) and laid out several art postcards and ordinary objects as writing prompts. I also wrote out some writing prompts on a flipchart. It’s always fascinating to see who is drawn to the typewriter and the sounds of typing. I urged passers-by to try it out. One fellow pulled up a seat and slowly, painstakingly typed out a delightful prose poem based on one of the postcards that skillfully integrated the vantage point of the viewer. (I wished he’d typed or signed his name before he left!)

Award-winning DTES poet, Henry Doyle sat in front of the old manual typewriter I’d set up and typed out the start of a short ode to one of his antique typewriters purchased years ago at a store uptown on Main Street.(He grew this short stanza below into a longer poem later at home.)

The Typewriter

I have it on a throne.

As one walks into my place

down a small hallway. It is there.

A 1912 Remington typewriter

that weighs 50 pounds.

Somehow, surfing the waves of creative intention generated by all the assembled writers, I also managed to draft a quick poem.

Writers’ Picnic 

            –Dedicated to DTES Writers and staff at the Carnegie, Megaphone and Oppenheimer Field House

Time to write a poem

under the trees, sunlight raying through

the lush filigree of green leaves onto thirsty pages.

Around each table, writers as focused as sunlight, 

filtering words through fingers and pens— 

bare words    scraggly words    lavish words

Stuttering     muttering      fluttering       uttering

a feast of quickening metaphors

about to burst into verbilicious harvest.

I read this short piece that afternoon as well as a tweaked version the following Friday evening at Megaphone Magazine’s launch of its yearly Voices of the Street anthology.

Congratulations to the contributors to this year’s Voices of the Street anthology and to the dedicated team who organized the DTES Writers’ Festival, to Megaphone staff, plus staff at the Carnegie Centre and Oppenheimer Field House, along with all the participants who made the DTES Writers’ Festival such a success!

Ten keen writers came out this past Thursday to the Oppenheimer Park Field House to participate in a monthly free public workshop run through the Poetry in the Parks program! It was a busy afternoon at the Field House with three concurrent workshops being held there! I loved the Lunar New Year and Valentine’s decorations that decorated the windows, creating a welcoming and cheerful space. A large jack rabbit (a local resident’s pet) even hopped around and beneath the tables!

This month, the writing theme was sustenance. As I chatted with local resident Carl about his Ontario sister’s love of poetry while they were growing up, I set up the room and arranged a display of fruit, vegetables, plus other food items and eating implements at the centre of the table to inspire the group. I distributed photocopies of some superb food-based poems by a diverse range of acclaimed poets such as Joy Harjo’s poem, “The World Ends Here” that reveals the symbolism of the kitchen table, Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Blackberries,” Lorna Crozier’s “Onions” (from her Sex Lives of Vegetables collection) and others which I read aloud at the start of the session to invoke these poets’ lyric vision and stimulate our own flow of words. A platter of frosted sugar cookies was kindly provided by staffer David for us to snack on.

We went around the table mentioning our favourite foods or dishes (e.g. oranges, Campbell’s mushroom soup, squash, mac and cheese, sushi, shish kebab, kibbeh, congee, roast beef dinner, chicken) which generated some terrific and evocative draft poems. For the second round, we went around the table to state our least favourite food (e.g. stinky durian, an inedible mush served at school, watery slimy Lebanese moussaka, mushrooms). This definitely inspired some vivid writing based on strong memories. We even managed to squeeze in a third round of writing!

Next month’s poetry workshop facilitator will be Vancouver’s wonderful past poet laureate, Evelyn Lau (March), followed by former Thursdays Collective Coordinator and present Vancouver Manuscript Intensive co-director, the warm and engaging Elee Kraljii Gardiner (April) in advance of the eagerly anticipated Downtown Eastside Writers Festival that will be held at the Carnegie Centre on May 25-27, 2023.

Thank you to Oppenheimer Field House coordinator Jennifer Taylor and Carnegie Centre coordinator Beverly Walker, as well as all Oppenheimer Park Field House staffers for their invaluable support and assistance over the past three sessions!

I am so glad that the Poetry in Parks program has resumed since past poet laureate, Rachel Rose initiated it in 2015! Kevin Spenst and Natasha Sanders-Kay have recently facilitated a few of these free monthly community workshops now being held at Oppenheimer Park. I offered to facilitate the winter monthly writing sessions on December 1, January 5 and February 2.

This afternoon, ten Downtown Eastside writers came by to participate in writing exercises on the theme of ordinary objects. (Next sessions will be on ekphrastic/art-based poems and on food/famine.) Several participants were members of the Downtown Eastside Writers Collective that meets weekly on Thursday afternoons at the Carnegie Centre nearby, including its coordinator, Gilles Cyrenne who is working on his second collection of poems. I loved seeing many familiar faces from my past visits with the Collective over the years, and really enjoyed meeting new writers too!

After introductions, I began with Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Ode to My Socks” and my poem, “Utility Pole”, and talked about Don McKay’s poems about a knife, fork and spoon We looked at how imagery, structure and sound work in synergy in a poem.

We then did two rounds of writing and sharing. There was some great writing inspired by objects that had been set out on a nearby table or were already nearby. There was writing about a glow-in-the-dark star ornament, a tiny wooden canoe, a yellow plastic toy shovel, a clam shell, a pen, a baseball, a mango, and a paper cup among other items. I asked the participants to use personification, i.e. to take on the persona of the object they had chosen, using the first person “I” which clearly demonstrated how even the most everyday item could have quite a personality!

The second round of writing involved participants drawing from a bag of folded pieces of paper, on which each of them had written the name of an ordinary object that might be interesting to write about. This time I asked them to write a scene from the any point of view using the prompt, “the way…” (for depicting a process), “he/she/they/you/we don’t remember…” or “ “he/she/they/you/we will never forget….” Items included a picture frame, a cell phone, a plank, chalk, and a table—objects full of symbolic potential!

Thanks so much to Carnegie Centre coordinator Beverly Walker, and Park Board staff Jennifer Taylor who arranged for photocopying, and getting me a flipchart and markers, plus Field House staffers David and Rui who helped set up a small Christmas tree, chairs, tables, plus coffee, tea, hot chocolate and donated sweet and savoury pastries. The group and I felt very well-supported (and well-fed and hydrated) throughout the two hour workshop!

Afterward, I stuck around to play the outdoor upright piano which was in pretty good shape and mostly in tune except for a few lower keys (F, G and A in the bass), but it was close to 0 degrees Celsius, and my fingers were pretty chilled after stumbling through a few easy preludes (Bach, Chopin and Debussy). I soon walked back over the icy sidewalks to climb the famous winding marble staircase past the stained glass windows of Shakespeare, Milton and Spenser inside the Carnegie Centre (a historic building built in 1903 as one of 125 Canadian libraries funded by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie) to return the unused pens and paper pads to the office, before hopping on the #16 bus on East Hastings to get home before dusk.

These free poetry workshops helmed by diverse local poets will continue to be offered from 1-3 pm on the first Thursday of each month, well into the spring!