In fact, I actively avoided writing poetry. There are SO MANY bad poems in the world. And I had to say, so many people who write bad poetry. And yet, even after writing a novel in verse and a book of poetry about the planets, I would be very hesitant to call myself a poet.
But poetry has always been a huge part of my life. I studied calligraphy when I was young, eventually becoming a full-time calligraphic artist. I spent countless hours lettering beautiful poems. As an actor, my voice training included work with vibrant poems of all genres, spoken, memorized and incorporated into performances.
But compose a poem? Never.
When I did my first residency for my MFA in writing for children and youth (VCFA), we were assigned Steven Fry’s book The Ode Less Travelled. This deliciously funny, wicked, irreverent book on writing and reading poetry forced me to realize that my years of reading, lettering and speaking poetry had left a mark. Words were deep in my cells –– the look of them, the sound of them, the rhythm, skip and beath of them, the feel of them in my mouth, lips and chest.
Words are the building blocks for any writer. But as a writer for young people, I needed to embrace my role as a writer who constructed meaning from little bits of sound. Children learn language through playing with words, and I needed to rediscover a sense of play. I needed to get over myself.
Still, I am more comfortable with boundaries. I need discipline around the edges, not a free for all wallowing in self-centred bliss. As I read more picture books, I discovered the American poet Joyce Sidman. Sidman writes nature books, combining information with the language of poetry. Her book Caldicott winning book Dark Emperor and other Poems of the Night is a masterful combination of sound that explores the world of night creatures. This is fabulous, I thought. I can do that!
I’m a regular listener to the CBC show Quirks and Quarks. Every week, there is something new –– some beetle, some volcano, some newly discovered moon of Jupiter, some surprising discovery that connects us to the universe around us. I began trolling through Quirks and Quarks for interesting subjects, doing further research. I wrote poems about the Wandering Glider, lowly Mites, and the newly discovered Dracoraptor and Therapoda dinosaurs. But it was when I discovered new findings from Pluto that I went crazy.
Poor little Pluto, bouncing between classifications as a Planet and a Dwarf Planet, little Pluto has a red, heart-shaped plateau on it that ebbs and flows as though it was a beating heart! It has skies that are bright blue! Who couldn’t fall in love with that?
But how to actually structure a poem? At that point, I was studying different poetry forms and had just discovered the Pantoum and voila! Alliteration! A Pantoum for Pluto! It was a marriage made in poetry heaven.
But one poem does not a collection make. And one poem does not make a poet.
I started discussing the idea of a book of poems about new discoveries in our solar system with Katie Scott at Kids Can Press. Because of my background in poetry, we came up with the idea of choosing a different poetic form for each planet. The characteristics of each planet would influence the choice of poetic form. Young people would learn about the planets AND learn about poetry. Brilliant, I thought. I get to learn more about poetry while I am learning about the planets! Bring it on!
Had I had ANY idea of how hard this was, I would have run away screaming. I am not a scientist nor am I a poet. What on earth was I thinking?
Eight years later, A Planet is a Poem is coming out from Kids Can Press. I am thrilled, and of course terrified. I’m confident in my facts (if you can’t trust NASA, who can you trust?), but aware that to aspire to good poetry is to aspire to divinity. You can see it, you can love it, but you can never achieve it. Still, it is a book I am proud of because if combines the logic of poetic forms with the wonders of the solar system. The discipline of art is married to the mystery of science.
I would still be hesitant to call myself a poet. I love the process, the puzzle, and the agony of working with words. But poetry is sacred. It is the purest form in which we can convey ideas, and I haven’t yet achieved that effervescence, that translucence that I aspire to. But I am no longer afraid to try. Because I will always love the bounce, thrum, wobble, and slither of language. It’s what we have that connects us to our world.
I’m posting an interview that I recently did for The Canadian Childrens Book Centre.
It’s a busy time! I am thrilled to be launching a new book for young people A Planet is a Poem, which you’ll hear more about in the coming days. In the meantime, happy reading…
You are a writer, calligrapher, and theatre artist, three creative pursuits which are built on the foundation of words. What attracts you to words? How do words inspire, motivate, challenge and/or change you as a writer?
I come from a word-obsessed family. My grandmother was a writer, editor, and bookstore owner. My mother was a book designer. My uncle was a journalist. I married a writer. Perhaps it is not a big surprise that words are the foundational tool in my life!
My mother enrolled me in a calligraphy course when I was a teenager. I went on to do extensive studies of the development of letterforms. For me, calligraphy was a gateway into cultural history and the whole concept of written language. It was also fundamental in giving me a tactile relationship to words. When you calligraph, you work very slowly. You focus on creating shapes and manipulating space on the page. On a good day, it is very meditative. You involve your breath and connect to the movement of your hand on the page. You go down into the bones of a word, and how one letter connects to another. It’s an intimate relationship between gesture and meaning.
This may be why I write first drafts by hand. I love feeling the graphic line and how it dances across a piece of paper. It stimulates a particular part of my brain and opens me up to things that are not available to me through typing on a keyboard. My manuscripts would be illegible to anyone else –– they are filled with the movement of my hand and brain, working together.
However, the challenge for me is not to overwork words in the editing process. How do I keep the sense of freedom and lightness of the word dance on a page, when I want to work on word choice? How do you make something look effortless when it takes a huge amount of effort and skill? But that, I think, is the plight of anyone working in the arts. You must make it feel fresh and new, yet it must be crafted to the best of your ability. That’s where practice and rehearsal become essential. It’s not something you can achieve in a first draft.
Photo courtesy of The Ottawa Children’s Theatre
The theatre world is a place you know well. You served as executive director of Ottawa School of Speech & Drama as well as founded Ottawa Children’s Theatre and served as its artistic director. Your writing and theatre worlds united when you and your husband co-wrote Rosie Backstage. How else has your work as a theatre artist influenced or informed your writing for young people?
I can’t imagine being a writer without being a theatre artist. Words are a metaphor for communication, but not the sine qua non of communication. Movement, gesture, tone, inflection, silence –– we use all of these to communicate thoughts and feelings. In theatre. all of these tools are at your disposal. Theatre gives you the ability to create nuances that are harder to communicate with words alone. It uses movement and sound. It uses timing. It is so much more than a series of dialogue lines. So much more than a set. When you are creating for the stage, you need to think about what happens between the words and to the people as they move in space.
As a writer, I try to explore how to create this complexity on the page. I read everything out loud, many times. I listen for the beats, the pauses. I listen for the movements and gestures. I listen for what the character isn’t saying. I place each character in the scene, being aware of where they are and what they are doing when someone else has the focus of the scene.
I also use a lot of theatre exercises in my writing. For example, there’s a theatre game called “What’s Beyond,” where you work on coming into a space focused on what you have just left. You don’t try to tell a story, you don’t try to do anything. You just cross the space with a history. When I am writing, I think a lot about where my character has been before they come into the space, into the scene. It’s different from a backstory. It’s more immediate. A character must come on with their scene already in motion. They aren’t coming on from a vacuum. What they bring with them is going to affect their behaviour in a myriad of small ways that are never discussed.
Perhaps even more fundamentally, however, is how my vocal training has affected the way I work with words and my word choices. Writing is a stand-in for spoken words, so I need to always go back to the vocal source. Learning about breath, resonance, and articulation has given me a very deep physical relationship to words. There is some brain science that suggests that as we read, our mind and body recreate the physical sensation of making the words we are reading. I want people to not only hear the words on the page, but to feel them and recognize them in their own body.
On a practical level, I have taught theatre to young people for many, many years and continue to work in that field. Working with youth keeps me honest. They engage me in their concerns and in what matters to them. It is far too easy to get ghettoized in your own age group. Working inter-generationally is vital to me.
In These Are Not the Words, Missy and her father write poems for each other – poems that gradually become an exchange of apologies as her father’s alcohol and drug addiction begins to overtake their lives. How can we use poetry to communicate with others and to heal ourselves?
I think that writing can be a way of talking to yourself. Ultimately, you are having a conversation with your mind and your heart. But I think you need to trick yourself into going more deeply.
When you have a conversation with a good friend, you usually stay on a particular level for a long time. But after a while, if you are close and trust your friend, it morphs into something deeper. Those are the special times where you get closer and listen harder and respond more honestly. You have to give yourself time to go through the superficial things before you can get to the heart of the matter. Writing poetry can do this. You write too much and then you cut out all of the fluff. You see what words are essential. That’s when you discover what it is you are really trying to communicate.
I also think that poetry, like theatre or calligraphy, is a kind of game. It’s got some great rules that give us a context for deep exploration. You play with sound and rhythm, and in that playing, you can trick your mind into finding new meanings.
Writing is about asking questions –– of yourself, of your imagined reader. Questions can form the base for a dialogue. It’s the best way to talk to yourself. And when you talk to yourself, you can heal.
*Science and poetry may seem like strange bedfellows but they share commonalities such as formulas and patterns. What was your inspiration to write A Planet is A Poem, a collection of poems about the solar system?
A Planet is a Poem came about through a series of coincidences. When I was doing my MFA in Writing for Children, I started a serious study of poetic forms. I hadn’t done that before. My previous schooling was, at best, pretty spotty. I began working my way through the delightful The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry, and challenging myself to try out as many different forms as I could. As we know, books for younger children rely on sound and word play, so I wanted to drill down and understand things that I had known about but had never tried my hand at. I had avoided writing poetry all of my life. I reasoned that there are so many bad poems out there, the world didn’t need mine as well. But this was a technical challenge I was setting myself, and I wasn’t thinking of publishing anything at that point.
At the same time, I was introduced to the American poet Joyce Sidman. Sidman writes non-fiction poetry books for young people. I love her work and it opened up a whole world for me. My first books had been non-fiction books for young people and truth be told, I am much more comfortable writing non-fiction than I am writing fiction. I became open to the idea that poetry could be a vehicle for young people to learn about nature. I thought that maybe I could write non-fiction poetry and it wouldn’t be as embarrassing as bad personal poetry.
The other influence was the CBC radio program Quirks and Quarks. I love that show and in one particular episode (September 11, 2015), they talked about the New Horizons space probe. It had just started sending images of Pluto back to earth and everyone was talking about these amazing things we were learning. On Pluto, the skies are blue! There are volcanos of slow-moving nitrogen mud! There’s a red, heart-shaped plateau that moves like a heartbeat! Who wouldn’t want to write a poem about that? I wrote A Pantoum for Pluto so that I could explore Pluto but also try that poetic form. Ultimately, we didn’t use that particular poem in the book, but the process was set in motion. Before I knew it, I was deep into researching (always my happy place), and the puzzle of writing non-fiction poetry.
*A Planet is a Poem offers readers multiple access points for interaction.There are its 14 poems which can be enjoyed on their own. Plus, there is accompanying factual information about each poem’s subject matter. And last but not least, there is information on the forms in which the poems are written. How did you decide to present the book in this format? And why was it important to you to create the book this way?
I had quite a few coffee dates with Katie Scott at Kids Can Press, where I tried to pitch her on the idea of non-fiction poetry about planets and/or insects (another area I was obsessing about because of Quirks and Quarks). But they already had a book coming out the next year on space, and one on bugs. The question was what might make mine unique.
I don’t know exactly how the idea of a cross-curricular book came about. I was pretty passionate about poetic forms, and somehow the brainstorming led us to a book that could give the science and the poetry equal weight. Both Katie and my editor Kathleen Keenan got excited about doing a book that could show kids both the magic of language and of the solar system.
Once we had the basic idea, I researched the solar system. I’m not a scientist, but I love astronomy and still remember being in the Hayden Planetarium in New York when I was a child. I researched each planet as though it was a character in a novel. I worked on matching those characteristics with a particular poetic form. For example, Mercury, which is the smallest planet, is incredibly fast. It travels around the sun more quickly than any of the others. So, I paired it with a very fast rhyming and rhythm scheme inspired by Dr. Suess, with only two beats to the bar.
Mercury’s tiny ––
Of planets, the smallest.
But named for a god
Who was known as the fastest.
I researched because I loved it. But as with my experiences in writing historical fiction, it became impossible to squash all of exciting things I was learning into each poem. So, we came up with the idea of sidebars to give more of the scientific information.
The more I worked on the book, the more I got excited about the poetic forms I was using. We came up with the idea of sidebars for the poetry too, just as there were sidebars for the science. It was designer Marie Bartholomew who had the tough job of pulling all of that together with the great illustrations by Oliver Averill.
*What advice would you impart to young people and the young at heart who would like to pursue careers as writers?
Read. Read everything. Listen to words, make them your friends and play with them. Sing them! Foster your sense of curiosity. Let your curiosity take you to new places. Always, always challenge yourself to try new things. Care passionately and let your writing follow your passion. Make it matter.
‘Focus. Click. Wind.’ rose out of the earlier book like an unsuspecting phoenix and Miranda Billie Taylor became as real to me as the memories of my own life.
Today is the official launch of Focus. Click. Wind ! As I mark the occasion, I’ve been thinking a lot about the book’s genesis. In some ways, this book has been in the making for fifty years. But practically speaking, there are some seeds of the book that started about fifteen years ago.
At that time, I had a job in a city that required me to live away from home for most of the week. I loved the job, but my husband Tim and I missed each other. I’m not sure how the idea of writing letters came about –– not writing letters to each other, but writing “in role” as characters. At the time, we were both interested in exploring issues to do with the immigration of American draft dodgers to Canada during the war in Vietnam. My mother had been very active in the “Underground Railroad” in Toronto, and our house was a haven for drafters and people in need. I think Tim has always been fascinated with this aspect of my life. We decided that his character, Paul, would be living at my mother’s house, having fled to Canada from the States while my character, Jill, was left behind. I’d spent a fair amount of time in California when I was a teenager and had cousins who were ready to flee to our house in Toronto if they were drafted. So, I decided that I wanted to give Jill California as a home base.
All through that winter, Tim wrote to me as Paul, in Toronto, and I responded as Jill in Santa Cruz. We didn’t pre-plan anything. It was a writing exercise. We were playing to see where it would lead us.
Which was basically nowhere. The letter writing fizzled out.
Ten years and several books later, I was preparing to go to a writing workshop. I had just finished a full draft of a semi-autobiographical middle grade, a book that became my novel These Are Not the Words. I had no idea what I would work on next. All I needed for the workshop was two scenes, but the days were getting closer and I had nothing. I was close to panic when suddenly, unbidden, Paul and Jill burbled up into my consciousness. It was time to bring them together.
I figured since I was bringing these two characters together for the first time in their fictional lives, the first scene should be a sex scene. Then, since their relationship was built on the war, the second scene would be at a protest. The protests at Columbia University in 1968 were considered the epicenter of the movement that year. Two scenes, two rough characters. In bed. At a protest. In New York. Phew! I could head to the workshop.
But These Are Not the Words was still in my head. In that book, the central character, Miranda Billie Taylor, aka Missy, lives in New York City. She is steeped in art and trails her father to jazz clubs and bars. It is set in 1963 and she is twelve years old. Missy had some rather difficult things to deal with and it was a relief to be in a workshop playing with Jill in 1968. After all, she, too, was in New York and surrounded by music, although this time it was rock and roll. I knew that she’d be about seventeen years old in 1968. I suspected I might take her to Toronto at some point. Jill became more and more real to me as the workshop progressed, and I began to seriously think about her role in a new book.
When was it that I did the math? Certainly, it was long after I’d left the workshop. Missy was twelve in 1963. Jill was seventeen in 1968. Both were in New York. Both were struggling with their relationships to men (father/boyfriend). Both were a product of their time (jazz vs rock and roll, Mad Men vs hippies.) How long did it take me to realize that Jill was Missy? Or rather, she was Miranda Billie Taylor, now known as Billie.
These Are Not the Words became, essentially, a hugely detailed backstory. A prequel. This realization was a gift to me as a writer. Focus. Click. Wind rose out of the earlier book like an unsuspecting phoenix and Miranda Billie Taylor became as real to me as the memories of my own life.
People ask me if I’ll write another book with her as the protagonist. I find it hard to imagine. She’s been through so much and worked hard to come out the other side. I don’t want to make life hard for her again. But there’s a lot of living that still happens after you turn eighteen. It’s never clear sailing, and although Billie knows where she is now, she might still have some adventures ahead.
We’ll allow the fates to decide what we see, to allow our experiences to be a series of synchronous events.
On our last day in London, we decide that what we want more than anything is a dose of city life. We realize with a shock that we haven’t been to the Victoria & Albert Museum since our first trip to London in 1976. We’ve changed a lot since then, and so has the V & A.
The Victoria and Albert Museum (photo from website)
The V & A is a learning museum, originally dedicated to improving British industry by educating designers, manufacturers and consumers in art and science. That’s an ethos that still runs through the museum’s collection of over 2 million artifacts. One of the 10 largest museums in the world, the V & A is a constant source of inspiration. It’s a museum that you can spend a lifetime revisiting. This is the first of what I hope will be many revisits.
We don’t have a lot of time, so we decide not to plan. We’ll allow the fates to decide what we see, to allow our experiences to be a series of synchronous events. (I’ve just looked up the word synchronous and found that one of its meanings has to do with Astronomy: “making or denoting an orbit around the earth or another celestial body in which one revolution is completed in the period taken for the body to rotate about its axis.” This is a perfect metaphor. It takes time for an experience to turn and manifest itself within my thoughts. In the orbit, I can see the experience from all sides. But I digress…)
In the vast and somewhat overwhelming V & A, it seemed that with each corner I turned, with each new room I entered, I saw an object or a piece of art that felt like it was put there just for me. Something that reminded me of what I care about, about what matters to me. Something that showed me facets of myself and helped me remember and recognize the “person I take myself to be.”
Original Music and the Mirror score
We started our V & A ramble at the show “Re:Imagining Musicals.” Among the trove of records, playbills, sets, costumes, and curios, I saw an original handwritten score for “The Music and the Mirror,” from A Chorus Line, a musical that I saw in its first Broadway production. As with all aspiring actors, that song, in particular, was the anthem I sang as I headed off to theatre school. The manuscript was complete with changes made by both the composer and lyricist (Yes, the changed line “Let me wake up…” is better than “Let me awake…”) I was off on my journey.
Musicals segued into the museum’s theatre and performance collection. Sir Laurence Olivier’s iconic costume for Henry V is here, beside Vivien Leigh’s Cleopatra. Fred Astaire’s tails for Top Hat keep company with Charlie Chaplin’s tramp hat and cane.
Costumes worn by Sir Laurence Olivier in Henry V and Vivien Leigh in Cleopatra
Costume worn by Fred Astaire in Top Hat
Full of emotion, with songs in my heart, I do a soft shoe out of the exhibit into the next room ––a collection of paintings donated by Constantine Alexander Ionides –– and come face to face with “The Day Dream,” a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. When I was in my twenties, I went through a huge Pre-Raphaelite phase, and this was a favourite.
The Day Dream, by Dante Gabrielle Rossetti, at the V & A
Rossetti was also a poet and often calligraphed a verse on the frame of his paintings. The poem on The Day Dream ends with:
She dreams; till now on her forgotten book
Drops the forgotten blossom from her hand.
Dante Gabrielle Rossetti
A young woman is quietly sketching the painting. My heart aches with love for her youth, and for her devotion to art. I am that dreamer again.
I meander. There is so much to see but I don’t want to choose. On this, our last day in London, I want to be surprised. And so I am. When I stumble upon the Cast Court, I almost collapse. There is a full-size plaster cast of the Trajan column, commissioned by Napoleon. I’m knocked sideways by memory.
Cast reproduction of the Trajan Column (in two parts)
In 1990, I travelled to Rome to study Roman lettering. The lettering on the Trajan column is the pinnacle for anyone’s study of the form. Completed in 114 CE, these letters are considered the perfection of letter design and creation. When I was in Rome, we climbed scaffolding to get up close. The column was being restored, and we washed the inscription lovingly before making rubbings to take home. It was an act of devotion.
Lettering on the Trajan Column, originally carved 114 CE (reproduction)
Seeing it again brought back all of the passion I felt at the time. It was as though the person who I used to be walked into the room to hold me, remind me. My heart aches with love for that young woman, and her devotion to art, too.
And so somehow, the afternoon at the V & A has become a metaphor for everything I had hoped the trip would be. It’s been a time to be with friends and family, and a time to discover new places. But importantly, it’s been a time to reflect on where I’ve been, where I am, and where I’m going. It’s been a liminal space, a transitional moment, where I have been turning in my own revolution, while revolving around the themes in my life.
I don’t know what is coming next. But I am ready to find out.
We say goodbye to the city, head back to the Southbank and home.
“History is most often written from a distance, and rarely from the viewpoint of those who endured it.” Chris Killi
The National Portrait Gallery is one of my favourite places to visit in London. It is a gallery of humanity, of how we see ourselves and understand each other. If you have never been to the Portrait Gallery, you may think of it as a stuffy place that shows paintings commissioned by stuffy people to show off their status. I know I did. But The Portrait Gallery is filled with images of people from all walks of life. When done well, these portraits reveal inner lives, truths, and sensibilities. Whenever I come to London, it is top on my list of places to go.
So I was broken-hearted to learn that it is closed for renovation until June 2023. However, I resolved that this was a good excuse to discover something new.
The Photographer’s Gallery is not far from The Portrait Gallery. I’m passionate about photography, especially black and white. My father was a photographer in the 1950s and I have spent much of the last two years pouring over his portraits of people and places in New York. The protagonist in my next book, Focus. Click. Wind, is an aspiring photographer. Yet I have never gone to The Photographer’s Gallery in London.
When I turned down Ramillies street, I was greeted by the sight of thousands of people, queuing. Were there really that many people lined up to go to photography exhibits? I cursed myself for not buying a ticket online and began to turn away. But I found it hard to believe that so many people had come out to see “Chris Killip: A Retrospective.” So I ventured on a bit further and saw the sign for the gallery with no line up out front.
a small fraction of the people queuing outside the Photographer’s Gallery
Inside, it was calm. People were enjoying Sunday morning coffee and cakes. “What’s going on out there?” I asked as I bought my ticket. “Auditions,” a young man smiled. I thought briefly about how years ago I would have eagerly joined that line up. And I thought about how much happier I was to be doing what I was doing.
I am embarrassed to say that I had never heard of the Manx photographer Chris Killip (1946 – 2020.) He is known as the chronicler of the “English De-industrial Revolution,” and his photographs that show the stories of those who, in his words, had history “done to them” –– the men, women and children who lived in North Yorkshire, Northumbria, Tyneside and other harsh rural landscapes in the 1970s and 80s.
“History is most often written from a distance, and rarely from the viewpoint of those who endured it.”
Chris Killip
Killip spent years with people he photographed, and their trust in him is evidenced by the honesty of these pictures. They allowed him to access inner truths. These are profoundly moving portraits of isolated communities devastated by change.
I came away from the exhibit changed and deeply grateful for the ease and good fortune of my life. And for the serendipity that led me to discover a new Portrait Gallery.
We did a lot of soul searching before deciding to go on an overseas trip.
Tim and I did a lot of soul searching before deciding to go on an overseas trip. We know that Covid still haunts us and are taking precautions. But the hardest decision about travel has to do with environmental concerns. It feels irresponsible to take to the skies these days.
We weighed our social responsibility against our need to reconnect with family in England. It’s been over three long years. Children have grown, elders have become elder. The joy of being hugged by friends and family is a powerful magnet.
As I write, we are sitting in the airport lounge. We have balanced some of our guilt by giving a donation to the Guatemala Stove Project, which reduces carbon by building efficient, non-toxic stoves for rural populations in Guatemala –– thus improving the lives of the people who cook over these stoves and reducing carbon in the atmosphere one stove at a time. It isn’t much, but it’s what we can do.
We also decided to spend a lot of time in the UK –– five and a half weeks –– to maximize our visit and reduce our guilt. If the last three years has taught us anything, it is that we can’t predict what is around the corner. Who knows when we will next have a chance to make a trip like this.
Eleven years ago, we went for a year-long excursion. I was fleeing job burn out, Tim was pining with a deep nostalgia for England, and we both wanted to dig our hearts into European culture. It was a trip that changed us both profoundly as humans and artists. While this journey is much shorter it feels as monumental. Fighting the inertia of the last years has been hard. We’ve sheltered in place and been safe. But now we are stepping out into the wide world again, opening ourselves to the fates. It is exciting, thrilling, and somewhat terrifying.
I look forward to sharing the road with you. And I look forward to the changes in store.
My new novel These Are Not the Words was officially released in North America on April 5, 2022.
Me with Scatty in our apartment in Stuyvesant Town, circa 1960. Self portrait taken with a timer.
These Are Not the Words is a semi-autobiographical novel.That means there are real people in it who do imaginary things, and imaginary people who do real things. I am not Miranda Billie Taylor, but we share a lot of history.
I started writing the story from a memory. I was taking the Picture Book Intensive at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, Writing for Children and Young Adults program, and we had been given the prompt to write from an early childhood memory.
What came out was a memory of walking through the living room late at night to get a glass of water. The dark stillness, the flicker of the TV light, the sound of the record, the smell of cigarettes and marijuana are vivid. I was probably about four years old.
Nothing “happens” in that memory, but the assignment was to turn it into a picture book.
Because it was a picture book, the language was spare, evocative, and poetic. It didn’t work as a picture book, but it inspired me to begin writing vignettes, initially as prose poems and then as verse. As I began to drill down, more memories began to bubble up. I found myself writing a novel in verse.
Although I was writing from personal memories, I wrote in third person. I made the character older, and distanced her from me so I could tell, I thought, a larger, more interesting story.
It took a couple of years and many re-writes, but finally I started sending the book out on submission. The reactions were positive –– editors and agents told me that they thought it was beautifully written. (“Heartbreaking and lovely.”) But it wasn’t for their list, it was historical fiction and hard to sell, the character seemed too sophisticated. But one response really stuck out. An editor I respect they said that it felt as though the story was told from the perspective of an adult, not the child. It was verging on nostalgic. Clearly, I wasn’t “in” the story.
Out of frustration, I decided to try to write one chapter in first person. I’m not a big fan of first person and feel it is easily overused. But I chose the first chapter, the one that had started the process, just as a writing exercise. I was totally unconvinced that it would be possible. “I hate writing in first person,” I said to myself.
I remember starting to shake as I re-wrote that first chapter. Suddenly it was real, vibrant and alive. And suddenly it was a bit close for comfort.
I’ll confess to a lot of tears in the months that followed. But being a writer is not about being comfortable.
I created a book trailer forThese Are Not the Words. I used some photos that my father took and a recording of Billie Holiday singing Tell Me More, recording it from a vinyl LP that belonged to my parents. I recorded myself reading a chapter of the book and then worked with a technician friend, AL Connors, to bring it all together.
Putting the trailer together was hard. The photos pull me back to those years. The living room is the one where that first memory came from, where I hear Billie, always. It’s the image and the sound that started me writing the book.
I am not Miranda Billie Taylor. But we share a lot of history.
In March, I marked a year of online programs at The Ottawa Children’s Theatre. I had to try to figure out what to plan for this summer. Last summer was the first summer OCT had done summer camps. We launched into running 17 online camps that were wildly creative and hugely fun. Everyone was thrilled to leap into online programming and our campers had a fabulous time.
A year later, we are all weary of our isolation and our online lives. But I had to think carefully about whether OCT was ready to make the transition back to in-person programming this summer. I had to try not to be impatient. Not my long suit.
I thought long and hard about whether to take a risk and pivot to in-person programming. I desperately want to be with students and instructors again! But in the end, there were too many uncertainties. I decided to keep the business online and stay committed to the virtual world for, hopefully, one last semester.
And yet my non-virtual life is thriving.
My writing life has taken off. I have a novel and a picture book in final edits. (I can’t wait to tell you more about them soon!) I’m working on new manuscripts, and a lecture for Canscaip for the fall. I have a wonderful and busy family who I want to spend more time with. My garden calls daily.
It’s a bit of a schizophrenic existence. I’m not entirely sure where I am at my most “real.”
I find myself wondering if this summer’s virtual camps will be the last gasps of my pandemic adventure? Or will life retain some of the positive elements that have come from my virtual life? Or, God forbid, will the variants take off and force us to endure another pandemic year?
The future is opaque. But whatever happens, I don’t want to pretend these past 16 months didn’t happen. They have deepened my relationships and priorities and made life richer in so many ways. They have helped to open new paths. Not always places I wanted to go, but places I returned from wiser.
Classes started up again at The Ottawa Children’s Theatre last weekend. Teaching drama virtually is, for me, a constant challenge, both technologically and conceptually. I definitely miss our beautiful studios at Carleton Dominion Chalmers (check the profile of me and OCT at CDCC) But it is wonderful to have the opportunity to meet vibrant and thoughtful adolescents, and to get a glimpse into what the world looks like from their perspective. And the only way I can do that right now is through Zoom boxes.
My online drama classes have different rules from online schooling. I keep reminding students to keep their microphones ON, instead of muted. I WANT to hear their voices and make some noise! I WANT their unique contributions. I WANT them up on their feet, bursting with energy.
I’ve been searching out new materials that will work well in this format: group poems, where everyone can take a line and pauses don’t destroy the flow; neutral paired scenes, where students can work in Breakout Rooms to create characters and scenarios; treating each box like its own stage, with proscenium edges for entrances and exits. I’m also discovering ways of teaching drama skills that I wouldn’t do in a studio. Small movements become magnified on camera and they create moments of truth and honesty that do my heart good.
Someone said to me recently that the most important thing about the pandemic is what you can learn about yourself. That’s certainly my case. It’s a rich time. Working with my wonderful drama students helps me to reflect and articulate what I am discovering about myself. I hope the classes do that for my students as well. As I look forward to a Thanksgiving like no other, I am grateful to be in such a caring and supportive community.
…the really exciting and unexpected benefit is that not only can our students come from all over the world –– we have students from Europe and across North America –– but our instructors aren’t tied to a location…
Recently, I was asked to do an interview with theHumm. theHumm is a great journal, both in print and online, that is dedicated to the arts in the Ottawa Valley. The questions that they asked gave me a chance to think about the process that we’ve gone through at OCT to make our conversion to online programming. Below is a transcript of the interview, but you can also read it online at: https://mailchi.mp/thehumm/h9si4v29uh-2052385?e=fb3712bb99
Dramatically Different: an interview with Amanda West Lewis
theHumm is reaching out to members of our Ottawa Valley community to ask how they are finding ways to use their gifts and skills in these challenging times. Today’s subject is Amanda West Lewis — actor, author, and founder of The Ottawa Children’s Theatre (OCT). We contacted her to find out how the OCT is rising to the challenge of providing creative instruction to kids during this time of social distancing.
theHumm: You live in Brooke Valley but have been active in the Ottawa youth theatre scene for many years now. Are you finally getting to work from home? If so, what have you enjoyed about it, and what are you missing?
I’ve been lucky to have Brooke Valley as my base for the last 30 years. But I’ve also lived in Ottawa off and on, which has allowed me to be part of the vibrant arts community in that city. For the past six years running The Ottawa Children’s Theatre, I’ve worked from home during the week then gone to Ottawa to work in the studios with the kids on the weekends. It’s really been the best of all possible worlds.
Now, with isolation, my schedule is basically the same, except that everything happens from my Brooke studio. I’m not travelling anywhere. I love that I’ve lowered my environmental footprint and that I have a bit more time to get into my garden.
But I do miss being in the same physical space with people – I miss the spontaneity and energy that is generated by the live space. Before Covid, we had twenty-seven classes happening every weekend. The studios buzzed with energy! I loved seeing what all of the different groups were doing. There is nothing more inspiring than watching kids create and share their stories! But now that the courses are taking place on virtually platforms, I don’t get a chance to pop in and watch what others are doing. I’m excited by the classes I am teaching, but there is that sad moment when I hit “end meeting for all” button, and everyone disappears.
I also miss talking to parents. We were very much an extended family, all dedicated to giving the children and youth the best experience we could. I miss those personal interactions.
You and your team of instructors have been busy pivoting from live classes to “LIVE Online” classes. What can people expect from this new format?
I’m working with the same core team of dedicated instructors that I’ve worked with for many years. We’ve developed a really strong curriculum that is both fun and teaches specific skills. None of that has changed. Converting to online has meant we’ve made the class sizes smaller so that we can focus on each child as an individual. We’re making sure to take time to listen to each child’s needs.
We’re running Musical Theatre, Drama, Acting, Improvisation and Writing camps this summer. We’ve designed the camps to be really interactive. There is a lot of physical and vocal activity. There is a lot of ensemble and shared work. Even the breaks keep kids occupied ––we’ve designed off-screen breaks where campers do theatre crafts. No one is just sitting and watching.
How has the technology been treating you? Have there been unexpected benefits, or major challenges you and your team have had to overcome?
The great advantage of teaching drama from home has been how personal it is. I have weekly Zoom meetings with my instructors, and it’s made us really close. We are sharing all of the joys and frustrations of our lives in isolation, as well as brainstorming how to teach drama online. It’s pushed us to be really creative problem-solvers. Also, the virtual medium is more intimate –– we’re talking to each other from our homes, with our art on the walls, our books on our bookshelves, and our pets, children, and partners in the background.
Some of this immediacy carries over to our relationships with students. You need to be attentive at all times when you are teaching online. There isn’t a moment of downtime. So the classes take on a different kind of bonding.
But the really exciting and unexpected benefit is that not only can our students come from all over the world –– we have students from Europe and across North America –– but our instructors aren’t tied to a location. I have some fabulous actors, writers and composers from New York City teaching for us this summer! They are inspiring all of us with their talent, passion and commitment.
The technological challenge in Lanark County, however, is bandwidth. I get my internet via a satellite and as those of us who live in the country know, it isn’t exactly a consistent signal. I cross my fingers every day that there won’t be a storm while I’m teaching. I’ve also had to make a decision to buy a new computer. I’ve been working on a 10-year old laptop which was fine for admin but not the best for online teaching!
Why is it important to try and keep young people engaged in artistic activities and pursuits even when we can’t physically get together?
Oh, my goodness, where do I start? Drama is all about communication. We work with language and gesture. We work with our voices, bodies and our minds to tell our stories. Is there anything more important for young people than the ability to communicate their ideas, fears, hopes and dreams? Especially now, when their voices are diminished because of isolation, young people need the opportunity to be seen by someone who isn’t a parent or teacher. Someone who can hear them and give them tools to express themselves. Someone who can help them to keep their heart and mind open.
Do you think that both children and adults will continue to perform (and watch others perform) while we are not allowed to gather in person?
I think that stories are more important than ever. I think we will always need to watch and listen to other people’s stories. Through story, we come to understand who we are. Story gives us a way to put the puzzle pieces of life into some kind of coherent whole. And I think that people will always need to share their stories, as they have done since the beginning of human times. We became a story telling species the moment we created language, the moment that we understood the concept of time, of birth and of death. I don’t think that isolation will stop that. In fact, I think the need has been exponentially increased.
What are you personally most concerned about at this time?
I’m concerned about the children who have fallen through the cracks. There are countless children who have no access to computers, let alone the kinds of opportunities I am talking about. When we were on site, I was able to give scholarships and bursaries to kids of need. But now? Who is looking after those children? Who is enriching their lives? There are so many children whose isolation is a nightmare. They are falling behind socially and academically. It is taking a terrible toll on their formative years.
There is a huge disparity between people in terms of how they are able to navigate the pandemic. This inequality in society will, I think, become even more apparent as we transition to the next phase, whatever that phase is.
What are you optimistic about in terms of what happens to the arts during and after the pandemic?
As I’ve said, I think the arts are necessary to give people the skills to understand and appreciate the world around them. I’m incredibly moved by what artists are doing online right now – the kinds of things that are being shared are powerful testaments to the resilience and empathy of human beings.
We are going to have huge challenges coming out of the pandemic. We won’t be going back to the way things used to be. Covid and the deep inequalities of our society require us to make major changes. Re-imagining our lives is not going to be easy. But I think that the arts will give us a voice to build that new world.
Stepping off the Treadmill 