Renowned Canadian poet at Wintergreen

Aug 25, 2011

Photo:  Rena Upitis of Wintergreen Studios with poet Lorna Crozier

Canadian poet Lorna Crozier was recently elected as an Officer of the Order of Canada, and last weekend, August 19-21, she led a three-day writing workshop titled “A Passion for Words” at Wintergreen Studios on Canoe Lake Road.

After dinner on Saturday evening, Lorna read excerpts from her latest book of poetry titled “Small Mechanics”, which she will be launching at the Kingston Writers’ Festival this fall. The small book includes poems that showcase her prowess as a wordsmith and include ruminations on both serious and not so serious subjects.

Crozier, who grew up in Swift Current, Saskatchewan but who now resides in Victoria, BC, is at home considering the small details in the world and lives around her. She began by reading “The New Day”, a poem that balances the hugeness of the setting sun with the relative smallness of a mother fly who has taught her children to “wash and wash their faces until they shine”. She included heart-rending poems about regret like “The Unborn”, which harkens back to unknown and unlived lives - “hauntings” she writes about that usually take place in the garden where, “a wind that is not a wind fingers the bamboo, a blurred face, perhaps a child’s appears below the surface of the water, a fish rising where a mouth would be.”

Recalling some of the ground covered in the Wintergreen workshop, which is her second to date, Crozier spoke of the importance a writer must place on facts, metaphor and precision. “If a reader is going to accept the strange, unbelievable metaphors that you offer them in a poem, you also have to be secure with the facts.”

Her poem “Facts” begins with true facts: “Did you know an ant has four olfactory organs on its antenna: the female mouse a clitoris.... that grass has legs and feet? That's why it's never still but runs on the spot like a child in an old gymnasium.”

Another poem titled “Lichen” brought her back to her grandparents’ farm in Saskatchewan as she remembered a huge buffalo stone rubbed smooth by countless buffalo, which use it regularly to scratch their itchy backs. In “Lichen” she also writes of the more common lichen-covered stones there, those “covered in those beautiful orange and yellow spatters... the kind of scab, round and desiccated a child would pick bit by bit feeding himself on a rock’s small wound...Patch of eczema, an itch the rock can't scratch though the wind’s scouring pad of grit and sleet brings some relief. Something that comes close to holy, you must fall on your knees to see it clearly....”

Crozier also tackles the onslaught of aging with humour and wit as demonstrated in “My Last Erotic Poem”, which was inspired by the erotic poetry she and other author friends have written and read at regular fundraisers over the years. In it she describes the act of lovemaking in a most humorous way.

“Who wants to hear about two old farts getting it on in the back seat of a Buick....our once not unattractive flesh now loose as unbaked pizza dough hanging between two hands before it’s tossed. Who wants to hear about two old lovers slapping together like water hitting mud … my bunion foots sliding up your bony calf?”

Equally amusing was her poem based on errors she has seen written in resumés, titled “Grief Resumé”, which ends on a hilarious final note that I will not give away here.

Crozier refers to the form that part of her new book takes as “a series of stretch/guzzles” – that is, a series of couplets that have to stand on their own, lacking the structural logic that most lyric poems have. “You have to think of the couplets as pearls on a necklace, each its own thing and having its own luminescence that can be moved around.” She read sections of one poem written in this particular form titled “Our Good and Common Bones”.

Crozier feels very much at home at Wintergreen and spoke of the inspiration the place gives her. “I so believe in the idea of this place to build and encourage community and to connect artists from across the country. It's a very special place here and a great place where adults can discover the flame and spark inside of them.”

Crozier summed up her new book this way. “I think probably there are more poems in this book about getting older, and about loss, so there is a shadow of grief in this book that might not be in my others. I've always had a sense of humour in my work and now I am laughing at the older body. Perhaps in my earlier poems I had more of a feminist and ecological message, which I still have, but it’s just mellower, softer and more integrated.”

Crozier loves giving workshops. “It’s really wonderful to watch the lights go on as I throw out various ropes for the participants to grab on to and to take off with on their own. The people I'm teaching here have gone through a lot in their lives and have stories to tell and really strive to put their whole heart and soul into being here and learning.”

Crozier currently is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Victoria and has been teaching there since 1991. Regarding her recent appointment to the Order of Canada she said, “It was a wonderful surprise - it came out of the blue and was something I was not expecting. The first thing I said was ‘Wow’. My only regret is that I wish my mom were here to see it.”