Well we are facing 2024 this Siberian-cold-like January, with temperatures outside that feels like in the - 20's with the wind factor. After an amazingly mild December, with little snow so far, I thought Abbotsford had gotten off easy. Well we were in for a surprise with some of the coldest weather in my memory including a -15 and I have spent quite a few winters driving around in the snow. I can't help but think it is related to the death of 2,840, 545 hectares of trees from the 2, 245 forest fires on record in British Columbia last summer.
Last year was a prolific year (even though the writing occured mostly on weekends) with the fruit being a small volume titled Odes released in the fall. The subject of the book leant itself to dealing with all manner of botanicals, selected in part from the Celtic Tree Calendar, in honour of the twelve nieces and nephews of my extended family. I started the year by pitching it to them as a game, to see who could guess whose poem, but the poems were so varied and mature in their subject matters, that I ended up writing them by the month in which the children were born. Indeed, the poems are not intended to be children's poems, but written to them to have meaning throughout the course of their lives and in all they might encounter...
"We seek out literature for inspiration to eschew control. We seek out the prophetic for protection in the spiritual realm. There is a need for visionary gifts. There is a need for seeing into the past and future with redemptive eyes. There is a yearning to stand on a hill and see all the possible tragedies that could befall any individual, and to fashion an amulet, to give hope in dark times."
I wrote a brief introduction in September as accompaniment for the $15 edition. It begins ...
"I have long wondered whether our love for trees is what drives us to buy recycled paper. There are so many facets of connection, made real and renewed every time we are in nature. The throwback to animism, where we acknowledge a higher power that has given soul to nature, and spirit to trees, endears us to them like friends. Indeed, the sacred bond between trees and people goes back to the beginning of poetry, and in essence the beginning of poetry could not exist without a tribute to trees."
This slender book of just over a hundred pages was meant to be a Christmas gift to my family members in lieu of gifts in a spartan year that required a certain amount of frugality. It was launched in September at a live performance in the Clark Theatre for the residents of Mission at their new annual variety show. Along with other perfomers from various art forms, it made a stunning debut on the stage which was reported in the Mission Record.
We later had a release party for Odes at the library in Clearbrook with the Fraser Valley Poets Society. I sold them the illustrated edition, as it was all I had in print, with the non-illustrated versions and hardcover coming out by Christmas. The three editions were given as gifts to the four other familes that make up my extended family, and close relatives. By the time it was published there were thirteen grandchildren as my younger sister gave birth to a healthy baby girl named Vienna, with her second husband. Needless to say, Vienna is as cute as a little doll and already a family favourite.
The end of the pandemic escalated into a Baroque like coronation of splendour and pomp. Yes, it was the last year of the pandemic, which ended in May. It was declared officially over just in the nick of time as I was writing "Requiem for a King's Coronation March", and needed that information to complete the poem. Were we in a pandemic or not at that very time, was quite relevant.
Although the word "requiem" refers to a funeral mass, I adopted this term as a name for a form of seven stanzas of Italian Petrarchan form, with a modified rhyme scheme. The King's coronation was not meant to hearken to a funeral by any means. The end result, with the video made and finished by 5 pm PST the night before it was to air, was a miraculous work: that I was inspired and had the energy to write and produce it was completely spur of the moment, a shocking admission. I have since accepted that it might as well be one of my life's most significant works, as the occasion seldom presents itself to anyone to write for a royal coronation in Great Britain in their lifetime.
As for the rest of the year, I continued on in spite of my fear that it might be my last. I thought my poetry writing would end too. As I approached turning 48 I thought I would be dead before the year turned. Yet I lived on. I did not die. This was a truly new reality for me that I would live to be 48, as I had such a strong sense that I would die young and unprepared. I say this as I have so many projects still unfinished, and no one wants to die in such as state as to have so many works of potential for development on the back burner. (You'd think I have a massive stove.)
So I continue on with the sense that God has been merciful. I may be living on borrowed time, but I have decided for the year of 2024-5 to do a 2-year study in the Women of Waterhouse. I am writing poems every weekend about Shakespearean women, and those of Greek myths. I look forward to sharing here in this blog what I am learning, and what these studies entail.
Yours,
Emily
