The Hermit Poet

PR:  How does being Canadian give you a poetic advantage compared to being a wine-swilling urban American?

Me:  Although I’ve lived in many places around the world, Canada remains a strong influence on my work.  I spent much of my childhood in Saskatchewan where the land stretches out flat in all directions, the sky, clear and unpolluted, seems to go on forever.  As does the horizon.  Outside the few cities, the population remains small, even today.  It’s easy to get lost in such vastness, easy to discover just how small, how almost invisible your are in comparison with the rest of the universe.  And yet, with your hands in the earth pulling weeds, or your face half-frozen in the winter blast, you are also made aware how intimate and close you are to the physical world, how impossible it is to separate yourself from.

If there’s an advantage, it’s that it’s helped remind me that broader patterns are at work, deeper resonances to consider than simply the elevation of the personal to the mythic or the celebration of the physically knowable world.  On still nights, under an uncountable array of stars, there are things that can be learned which elude the senses, which strike and stir the silence deep within, making the unseen and invisible for a moment real and near.