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In an interview with Tanis Rideout, a Canadian poet and writer living and working in Toronto, I asked her what it felt like to be nominated for the Bronwen Wallace Award in 2002.
"I think it is hard to grow up in Kingston and go into writing, particularly as a woman, and not read Bronwen’s work. I love it. I was just flipping through, actually, Keep that Candle Burning Bright. I think Bronwen was the first poet I read that I got that sense, ‘I can do that.’ Not because it was easy, but because it was about normal experiences.
"The collection called Common Magic, that was exactly what it was. I liked how she did that, how she found something very special in getting her son dressed in the morning and some of her experiences working at women's shelters, dramatizing that, and still managing to make these horrible things…not beautiful, but count, you know, and find really great ways to say them.
"Her articulation of women's relationships I think is really profound, but not heavy-handed. There are poems that are touchstones, that I go back to now and again. She was really something. It was one of the first things I was ever shortlisted for, and it was a big deal because it was in her name."
Merilyn Simonds, author and Artistic Director of the Kingston WritersFest, met Bronwen Wallace when she first moved to Kingston in 1987.
"It was clear when I met her," said Simonds, "that she was very much the centre of the literary community here – in quiet way. Not in a big, ebullient, forceful way, but in a very quiet way. She seemed to mentor everyone and be very supportive. She was very, very widely respected as a writer herself - a lot in the way of Paul Quarrington.
"I think she is remembered as a person who felt very strongly in the power of literature and conveyed that to other people. And for people just starting out as writers, I think that is one of the most important things - is to have some sort of assurance that what you are doing is valuable and valued. And I think she did that for people."
This is an excerpt from an interview with Alison Pick, a Canadian author who inadvertently discovered Bronwen Wallace's poetry. Pick was so inspired by Wallace that she began a serious writing career and later went on to win the Bronwen Wallace Award in 2002.
"She was one of the first poets who I read - almost literally. I wasn't an English student and I was fairly poorly read, but I had a roommate who was an English student. I remember just picking a book randomly off the shelf one day and it was Bronwen Wallace's Signs of the Former Tenant.
"I was totally blown away by the extent to which she could take the real slippery, elusive, ephemeral details of the human heart and externalize them on the page in a way that made me feel like she had seen the most private parts of myself - but she was a stranger.
"I remember just being incredibly moved by these poems, by the breadth of them, the way the stanzas took up their place on the page so bravely and with gusto almost.
"So it was especially an honour to win the award in Bron's name because her poems were really the poems that first gave me permission to call myself a writer and to believe that writing was a way of being in the world and something that I might do in the world.
"And they were the first poems that really moved me."
Bronwen Wallace's poem from her collection of the same name.
Your best friend falls in love.
and her brain turns to water.
You can watch her lips move,
making the customary sounds,
but you can see they're merely
words, flimsy as bubbles rising
from some golden sea where she
swims sleek and exotic as a mermaid.
It's always like that.
You stop for lunch in a crowded
restaurant and the waitress floats
toward you. You can tell she doesn't care
whether you have the baked or french-fried
and you wonder if your voice comes
in bubbles too.
It's not just women either. Or love
for that matter. The old man
across from you on the bus holds
a young child on his knee; he is singing
to her and his voice is a small boy
turning somersaults in the green
country of his blood.
It's only when the driver calls his stop
that he emerges into this puzzle
of brick and tiny hedges. Only then
you notice his shaking hands, his need
of the child to guide him home.
All over the city
you move in your own seasons
through the seasons of others; old women, faces
clawed by weather you can't feel
clack dry tongues at passersby
while adolescents seethe
in their glassy atmospheres of anger.
In parks, the children
are alien life-forms, rooted
in the galaxies they've grown through
to get here. Their games weave
the interface and their laughter
tickles that part of your brain where smells
are hidden and the nuzzling textures of things.
It's a wonder that anything gets done
at all: a mechanic flails
at the muffler of your car
through whatever storm he's trapped inside
and the mailman stares at numbers
from the haze of distant summer.
Yet somehow letters arrive and buses
remember their routes. Banks balance.
Mangoes ripen on the supermarket shelves.
Everyone manages. You gulp the thin air
of this planet as if it were the only
one you knew. Even the earth you're
standing on seems solid enough.
It's always the chance world, unthinking
gesture that unlocks the face before you.
Reveals the intricate countries
deep within the eyes. The hidden
lives, like sudden miracles,
that breathe there.
In an interview with Carolyn Smart, writer, professor of creative writing/contemporary Canadian poetry at Queen's University and one of Bronwen's closest friends, I asked her how she met Bronwen and if they (both being writers) inspired each other's ideas. This is what she told me:
"Bronwen was hosting a reading series that took place in the first Printed Passage Bookstore on Princess Street in Kingston. She was the editor of the excellent magazine "Quarry", since gone the way of many fine literary magazines, and she encouraged emerging writers very warmly. We met after the reading (I had driven the featured reader from Toronto for the event) and knew almost instantly that we would be close friends.
"I would drive down from Toronto to spend the weekend with her and her partner and son Jeremy whenever I could. We had huge fun, shared our poetry, and often gave readings together. She was a tremendous mix of playful and political - strong-minded, very clever and analytical, always supportive and warm.
"We would paint our faces with Hallowe'en makeup and go on the Kingston tour train, then eat ice creams and walk around the streets laughing. In the meantime she'd be making pithy comments on class structure and inequality, meanwhile greeting everyone she knew on the street with warmth and humour. She seemed to know every second person!"
Carolyn Smart, writer and professor of creative writing at Queen's University, is invested in nurturing aspiring writers attending Queen's. Carolyn talks to Open Book about the literary culture at Queen's and the students who have a deep passion for literature:
"Over the 21 years that I've been at Queen's I've seen the literary scene grow exponentially, with wonderful student run magazines such as Ultraviolet, the Queen's Feminist Review, the Undergraduate Review, and Lighthouse Wire, Outright, and others.
"My creative writing workshops fill every year with long waiting lists and the readings that take place on campus are intense and often very moving.
"The English Department supports readings for the Giller and Griffin prize winners every year and over the last four years we've had a formal writer in residence in place. This year, it's the fabulous Stuart Ross who is on campus for the first term."
Lara Bozabalian on the influence of Bronwen Wallace on her writing and life:
"She is, you know, this amazing poet that I came to...if you can say late in life. In spite of my English degree in university, I wasn't reading Canadian poetry or any poetry other than Shakespeare when I was growing up. So to see how profound an influence she's had, not just on Kingston, but on women in general, women poets, has been really loud for me. I have not come across too many other poets who seem to have so deeply influenced other people's memories as well as their writing."
Bozabalian was part of the intimate tribute to Bronwen Wallace before the unveiling of the plaque bearing her poem, "Mexican Sunsets", an event that she was honoured to be a part of. She read her poem, "Different Cities", which is largely inspired by Wallace.
"And I read that at the opening, kind of, just to honour how she inspired me to speak out loud, you know. And I was lucky to go out for coffee with a couple of the other women who were presenting and just to hear their stories about how they had spent parts of their lives with her and how she was just a really authentic person. And I felt lucky that just by reading her work I could nod and say, 'Yes, I know. I can only imagine, but I feel like I know what you mean'.
"So I think that she is a very living poet still, and I just think that as a writer, she comes across as very generous in her wisdom and that is the highest praise I can think of, you know, when someone is no longer with us and yet still seems to be living to those around her."
We asked Bronwen Wallace's son Jeremy, "If there is one thing that would be considered Bronwen's 'legacy', what would it be?" He said:
"Tough question. But I guess it would be her ability to connect with people. In life and in her writing she was very approachable and people felt comfortable talking to her. I think that was her "Common Magic". Common in that she talked about things that we all share and relate to - a connection - and common as in everyday and ordinary.
"Her work as an activist, teacher and social worker as well as a writer were all ways in which she formed connections with people. She had an ability to illuminate the most simple things (a person, an object, a moment) in a certain way and make you see the magic within them."
Merilyn Simonds announces the headliners for the Kingston WritersFest 2010, which took place from Sept. 22-26. Visit their website here.
You come to Kingston for the first time to attend the Kingston WritersFest and you want to explore the city outside of festival events. Here are a few suggestions from local authors as to what to do as a tourist in the city.
A tribute to Bronwen Wallace featuring her friend and former student, Joanne Page, and excerpts from her poem "Common Magic" from her collection of the same name. To see the poem in its entirety, go to the Field Notes section of this scrapbook.
During the Kingston WritersFest, Merilyn Simonds and Barbara Bell took the time to sit down with us and discuss Kingston's vibrant literary scene.
Therese Greenwood, writer and Manager of Communications for the City of Kingston, talks to Open Book about the history of crime writing and the Scene of the Crime Festival on Wolfe Island in Kingston, which takes place annually.