Poetry: hobby or passion? [Career?] Poetry has had various roles in my life, depending on what else was going on at the time. It’s flexible like that – sort of. It makes room for all the stuff that goes into making a life: the demands of family and home, paid work, and health issues, for example, as well as moments of serendipity and connectedness and beauty. Poetry is a primary means of expression for me; of deep self communicating with my self-in-the-world (as well as with others). It keeps me flowing congruently with myself and the world. Getting over-busy and neglecting poetry for too long usually results in emotional or spiritual congestion for me. So, I would say that while poetry has at times been a passion and at others, an avocation, it has always been a necessity in my life.
Does love help? (If so, what kind?) Love always helps everything! Any kind; all kinds. My poems often are born out of strong emotions that need to be expressed. I’ve found that the very act of writing – of sussing out what the poem is attempting to articulate – helps me to process the emotion on a personal level. Very often, the thing that needs to be expressed is complex and nuanced and can only be expressed in a poem, or perhaps in some other form of art. I seldom feel I’ve got it precisely right.
Is the creative act political to you? Inherently subversive? Inherently a social service? In a sense, everything is political. So yes, I guess you could say that the creative act is political, and subversive, and a social service, in the sense that, in my view, it springs from an irrepressible impulse to bring to light, to bring into the world, to unveil what is hidden or dark or as yet unknown.
How does inspiration work for you regarding individual poems? Often, a line or two comes to me as I’m walking out in nature, or when I’m in that liminal zone between sleeping and waking. I try to keep a journal or pen and paper with me so that I can catch those lines when they come. They often express something currently going on (whether consciously or not) in my emotional or spiritual life, the way dreams do. Then I’ll let the lines sort of simmer for a while, and eventually, if I’m lucky, more lines occur, or else the body of an idea about where the poem might be going. I play around with what’s there, and sometimes end up with a poem. Sometimes not.
Who or what triggered you to begin writing? I discovered The Song of Solomon in the Bible while sitting in church as a child, bored out of my mind by extremely long and monotonous sermons. I was swept away by the beauty of the writing, and struck by its contrast with the mind-numbing droning of the minister. It was as though a whole new world had opened up, a truer world hidden in plain view within the more superficial one. I was hooked.
Creatively, whom do you look up to, if anyone? Many, many people, past and present. Rumi. Mary Oliver. Shakespeare. Tomas Transtromer. Jan Zwicky. Neruda. Carol Ann Duffy. Don McKay. The list is too long to write! And that’s just poets. There are so many brilliant artists in every field, and so much incredible art to be inspired by!
Walk us through your typical creative day. I don’t really have a typical creative day. Sometimes I’m ‘in the zone’ and I’ll write and rewrite and write and rewrite for hours. Other times no inspiration at all. On those days, if I want to write but have nothing on the go and no creative download, I’ll open my file of incomplete poems, or the file of poems requiring editing. Sometimes, just working on one of these will get the creative juices flowing, and the revising becomes revisioning. Other times, it just doesn’t happen at all. In that case, I’ll try to do non-writing work like organizing poems into a sequence, or sending some off to a publisher. Or, just as likely, go for a walk.
This from a young poet: Any tips for staying motivated when discouragement hits? Read poets whose work inspires you. Discover new poets to read! Journals and anthologies are good for this. Spend a day in an art gallery. Go to a play, or a reading, or a live musical performance. Hang out with children. Hang out with other artists. Go for a walk in the woods. Join a writers’ feedback group, or start one. Take a writing class, or any sort of art class. Meditate. Sing. Try making a sculpture or a painting to unblock the word flow. Do something different; take a risk. Sit in a café, or on a park bench or a rock by the river; write down everything you observe with your physical senses. Open yourself to the world you’re experiencing and it may resonate with the one inside you; that resonance may result in a line or two, the beginning of a poem. Get a good sleep and find a new perspective the next day... xxx
BIO.
Joanne Stryker is a Canadian poet living in London, Ontario, who spent a number of years in the UK where she became a member of the British Poetry Society. Her poems have won or placed in numerous competitions, among them the York Literature Festival Poetry Prize, the Canadian Heritage Creative Writing Award, & Cinnamon Press International Poetry Chapbook Award. Joanne's poems have also been published in many journals and anthologies both in the UK and in Canada and a selection of her work was featured in the UK anthology Quintet and Other Poets. Her chapbook After (Cinnamon Press, 2018) was published in Wales and launched in the UK in both London and in York. Governor-General's & Griffin Poetry Prize winner Don McKay (O.C.) said that After "accomplishes one of the prime directives of poetry: to sing the unsayable music of pain. For that astringent music, and for its unsparing candour in articulating the serrated edges and blank voids of loss, this is an elegy to cherish." Joanne's work-in-progress includes a collaborative music/poetry performance piece, and two full-length poem collections. One explores healing in the aftermath of extreme grief. The other, The Swedish Death Purge and Other Poems, explores our relationship with the world of objects.