It's been a fantastic summer of exploring what it really means to be an artist through this project. One thing that I have not talked about in my blog was the writing process for creating Genesis, and I suppose that is because it is a hard thing to describe or explain with real clarity. Especially in talking about poetry. One of my favourite poetry critics, David Orr, of the New York Times Book review said poetry is more like a place that you go and explore than something you, as a reader understand. Poetry, he says, is more like Belgium. If you are going to Belgium you don't memorize the phone book to understand the culture. Instead, you hang around and enjoy it, learn about it through being with it and in it.
When I was setting out to write this chapbook, I wanted to write about fish because fish are a very rich cultural symbol. Fish are often said to symbolize fertility and abundance, birth and rebirth. The journey of exploring this metaphor, translated more into an exploration of myself and the season of my life that I am in. As a collection of poems, I was surprised at how things came together. I feel, now that the book is complete and printed, that it was really an act of coming into adulthood in some ways. The process helped to teach me how to take a thought or idea or image, and explore that thing, and even now I feel like I only just scratched the surface.
It was an absolute pleasure to work with Briar Craig this summer. He is a very generous teacher and an incredibly talented print maker. Likewise, it goes almost without saying, that it was a pleasure to have Nancy Holmes as my supervisor for this project. I am so lucky to have such talented teachers, who have supported and mentored me.
I will be launching this book as a joint launch and gallery exhibition with another book that I worked on in the past year. The show is called Baptism - A Happening and will feature Daylighting (a collaborative book of poetry about Rutland, (Kelowna) written by myself and Sarah Megan Hunter), Genesis, and artworks that were inspired by these two chapbooks. Baptism - A Happening will be taking place in the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, here in Kelowna, and the opening will be held on October 3rd, 2014.
