Words Thaw

I'm honoured to have been asked to participate in this year's Words Thaw, a symposium at UVic that is billed as an “intellectual icebreaker at the cusp of spring.”

In addition to attending events all day, I'll be sitting on the panel The Inner Life of Our Words: Writing and the Human Spirit. The copy for the event is:

Is there a relationship between poetry and the inner life? And if there is, what form or direction—or directions—does this relationship take? Can writing and reading be a useful, even insightful tool to probe the spiritual life (or lives) of the self, of another person, of a community, or even of an age? With moderator Andrew Rippin as their “guide,” poets Marita Dachsel, Tim Lilburn, and Jane Munro, each approaching the inner life of our words from a unique perspective, talk about how poetry can be a catalyst to discovering and expressing not only “what we know,” but about “what we want to know.”

I'm hoping to listen more than speak, as I'm very much looking foreword to hearing the others' thoughts on this. It's such a wide subject and I know we're going to approach it in different ways, so it should be an enlightening and exciting conversation.

As a lead up to Words Thaw, Stephanie Harrington recently produced a podcast based on a conversation we had a few weeks ago. She's clearly talented as she took my 30+ minutes of babbling and crafted it into a concise six minute podcast. You can listen to it here.

the God of poetry

"Gloria closed her eyes and tried to imagine her God--an incomprehensible, impersonal, sexless force--the God of coincidences, of her dreams and mental floodings, of the strange leaps her mind made when she knew something absolutely without knowing how she knew it; the God of love, certainly, and of the created world when it had been given to her to see it with heart-stopping crystal clarity; the God of poetry, she realized with a sudden inner leap--true poetry, she amended it--the God who inspired the words when they were true words--and her mind, taking off on its own, found the breath in the root of the word 'inspire.'"

from Gloria by Keith Maillard

a room of my own

I've been interested in faith, spirituality, and religion for a very long time. Over the last few days, I've been trying to figure out when that interest started. At first, I thought it was way back in grade seven when I wrote an in depth essay on creation myths from around the world. It was extensive and I found the research fascinating. I loved it and I think that might have been the start of my love for research (thank you, Mr. Westie!).

But I think my interest in faith may have been earlier. In elementary school, my bestie was the daughter of a Lutheran Pastor and I occasionally went to their church and Vacation Bible School. Their worship was slightly different from my Anglican upbringing, and it was enough to make me start noticing differences and questioning why those differences exist.

Unlike most Anglicans, I wasn't baptized as a baby, but when I was around ten years old, my peers were starting their first communion lessons. I wanted to join in, and I will admit part of wanting to do this was so that I could sip wine every Sunday. I had to be baptized to do my First Communion, so they let me take the lessons and I think, if I remember correctly, that I was baptized and had my First Communion on the same day. At the same time, many of my peers were also on the track towards Confirmation. I knew that wasn't something I wanted to do, and not because there wasn't any food or wine related perks to it. Even then I understood that being confirmed to a church was the same as marrying the church, and I knew I was not ready for that kind of commitment.

Over the years, I've researched many churches and faiths. It is now less a search for the right fit for me (though, there are times that it is), but rather it has become more an study of faith and spirituality. I'm very curious about what people believe in and why. What the commonalities are, what is wildly different. I'm especially drawn to fringe sects and the more unconventional beliefs.

Even before starting on Glossolalia, I had been reading about Mormonism and other religions that started or flourished in the 1800s America. I'm especially interested in the role of women in these new sects. After six years of researching and writing about early Mormon polygamy, one would think I'd be ready to move on to something else, but I've found myself returning to that time and place. At first I was frustrated with myself. I don't want to pigeon-hole myself as a writer. I owe it to my craft to push myself in form and content. Plus, I thought, if I was going to do all that research again, I should get something for it, like a degree.

For about a month, I was actively looking into doing a graduate degree in Religious Studies. I even knew what the title of my thesis would be, but ultimately I decided against it, for now anyway.

About a month ago, I learned about the Artist-in-Residence fellowship UVic's Centre for Studies in Religion and Society. I applied with a project that I had been thinking about since working on Initiation Trilogy and whose subject matter I've been interested in for a very long time, over a decade. I hadn't talked about it with anyone, even my husband, until putting together the application. It was an idea that needed to ferment for a while.

I'm thrilled to announce that the good folks at CSRS thought it was a good idea, too, and I have been made the 2013/2014 CSRS Artist-in-Residence. I'll have an office in their Centre from September 2013-August 2014 and I hope to be there at least three days a week. I'll be researching, writing, and, this is really the best bit, I'll be part of their community, where a cross-pollination of ideas and disciplines is paramount. To say I'm excited is an understatement.

priests specialize in arrogance, the nuns in humility

"The Vatican has issued a harsh statement claiming that American nuns do not follow their bishops’ thinking. That statement is profoundly true. Thank God, they don’t. Nuns have always had a different set of priorities from that of bishops. The bishops are interested in power. The nuns are interested in the powerless. Nuns have preserved Gospel values while bishops have been perverting them. The priests drive their own new cars, while nuns ride the bus (always in pairs). The priests specialize in arrogance, the nuns in humility."

From Bullying the Nuns by Gary Wills.