Month: April 2022

Finding the Form with Brian Henderson

So, this poem, bent water light something: Does it ever happen to you that a feeling, seemingly out of nowhere, will sweep through you, an awareness of something but you’re not quite sure what it is? Standing at the kitchen window looking out into the sun-splattered cedars one spring morning while making coffee, that kind of strange sensation washed through me, a sort of wave-spell or possession, or perhaps dispossession, but a haunting certainly. A feeling of familiarity, almost nostalgic, but at the same time not, more like defamiliarization, like a déjà vu but not quite that either. A déjà rêvé? Certainly memory-like, but there was no specific memory, kind of like a timewarp in space – one of the dark pits in a Murakami novel perhaps, but luckily I was in our kitchen – I think. 

“Standing at the kitchen window looking out into the sun-splattered cedars one spring morning while making coffee, that kind of strange sensation washed through me, a sort of wave-spell or possession, or perhaps dispossession, but a haunting certainly.”

Maybe time really does bend around the gravity well of feeling, but it was a feeling in which the me of me was displaced. An immersion in a somehow fragilely sacred memory-ness filled with glimmerings and shadows. And as a result (and ha! once I’d recovered so to speak), the poem became central to the journey that turned out to be unfinishing, just published in the Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series at McGill-Queen’s.

Brian Henderson is a Governor General Award finalist (for Nerve Language, Pedlar Press 2007) and a finalist for the Chalmers Award for Sharawadji (Brick Books, 2011). He is the author of twelve books of poetry. His latest is Unidentified Poetic Object from Brick (2019). He has a new book, unfinishing, forthcoming from MQUP.  Visit him at brianhenderson.ca 

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Finding the Form with Emira Tufo

The Wisdom of Titles – and Onions

Once I’ve got the title, I’ve got the story.  Sometimes, the title comes from thin air because it knows the story that is ready to be told. This always intrigues me: that the title knows before I know, as if arising from the unconscious where some story, unbeknownst to me, has been brewing all along. At other times, months – or even years – of recurring ideas, images and memories finally coalesce into a title, and only then is the story ripe for my plucking. I have attempted to write stories while they were still nameless, and these were, without exception, fruitless efforts. Nor can the title be invented or forced or bent to my will to suit the story that I believe is worthy of being told. It is the title that decides, and I have only to follow.

I think of the title as a ball of yarn. I know the story’s wrapped tight and fully contained within it. I take the yarn between my thumb and index finger and I pull: and off it goes, unfurling into the story that I, as a writer, will discover as it’s being told. I trust that the title will guide me in the direction in which the story needs to go. Sometimes, I think of the title as an egg that I crack open into a bowl.

A title doesn’t last forever, though. Like once new books that have been sitting on the nightstand unread for too long, the story it contains can become covered in dust, superseded by other titles that arise and issue their own invitation. And so, every title is the gift of a story – and also a race with time.

“I think of the title as a ball of yarn. I know the story’s wrapped tight and fully contained within it.”

I’ve got a title beckoning now: The Wisdom of Onions. It is a story about my father. It takes place in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war when he took it upon himself to turn the cobblestone yard of his ancestral house into an onion patch. Or rather, onions were the only thing that thrived in the black unfertile soil which was revealed once he’d pulled up all the stone. He risked his life by going to the onion patch several times a week in order to harvest the onions and bring them home as flavoring for our lean and bland war meals. I have enormous respect for onions and all the improbable recipes we concocted with them at the time. One of them, which we simply called Onion, was the ultimate delicacy: chopped onions fried on a drizzle of vegetable oil and topped with powdered milk. Yuck, right? No, yummm!

Emira Tufo is a Bosnian Canadian writer based in Montreal and the recipient of the 2019 CBC/Quebec Writers’ Federation Writer in Residence award. Her essays have appeared in The Globe and Mail, the Montreal Gazette and on CBC. Her storytelling has been featured on the Confabulation podcast. 

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Finding the Form with Rachel Laverdiere

Year after year, I told my students this modern-day ghost story that also happened to be true. Even the high schoolers, who feigned disinterest in pretty much everything, were rivetted to their seats—predicting the origins of the mysterious light, betting on whether there really had been a ghost or whether I’d missed a detail on my perimeter checks. Many were convinced (as I’d been) that the dressers were haunted. Year after year, the students stayed with me until the end of the tale, and even the toughest crew was never disappointed by the ending. I knew that when I “became a writer,” this was a story I’d have to write. Easier said than done.

“I knew that when I “became a writer,” this was a story I’d have to write. Easier said than done.”

I hardly ever keep track of where stories start or how they evolve, but something made me keep this scribbled mind-map, which became the starting point of “Saturn’s Rings.” It was October 2019, and I was participating in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) through the Iowa Writers Workshop. By this time, I’d “become a writer,” and I’d been writing and publishing CNF for a year, but I’d been avoiding linear narratives. My brain doesn’t register stories chronologically, but this story protested becoming a lyric essay—refused to parcel itself into my typical triptych or diptych format, said no to collage, hermit crab and flash. This story needed its beginning, middle and end intact and a focus on the plot rather than language or I’d lose my readers.

Mind-mapping was a technique I’d rebelled against since high school, but I was determined to follow the MOOC prompts, to become a better writer. This stretch out of my comfort zone allowed me into this version of “the haunting” of our Rosthern house from a different angle. I wrote the first draft and posted it for feedback. Monica M. said, You lay the breadcrumbs in such a pattern that it’s impossible to stop reading. I also enjoyed your unusual premise. I’d finally captured the story.

The feedback and support of that MOOC, the years of students’ rapt attention, all of it forced me to persevere. My son is 24 now—a few years younger than the narrator in this story. My response to Monica M. was: This story is more linear than usual for me. It’s a true story, written for my son to capture a moment in our lives we often talk about. That 6-year-old in the story is now twenty-two, and indeed, love, our gravitational bond, doesn’t diminish with distance. Much has changed since we lived in that house on the edge of a field, but my son and I are as close as ever—he is still the son, and my world continues to revolve around him.

Rachel Laverdiere writes, pots, and teaches in her little house on the Canadian prairies. She is CNF editor at Atticus Review and the creator of Hone & Polish Your Writing. Find her prose in Grain, Atlas and Alice, The Citron Review and other fine journals. In 2020, Rachel’s CNF made The Wigleaf Top 50 and was nominated for Best of the Net. www.rachellaverdiere.com. 

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