Features

May 2004

 

 

Portrait of a Poet

 

Barbara K. Adamski
Features Editor

“A poem_begins with some particular
idea or image,” says North Vancouver
poet David Zieroth. “Something
comes to me.”

Zieroth has been writing poetry
since he was in the eighth grade. His
first poems focused on life in rural
southwestern Manitoba: the northern
lights, the month of October. “There
was something about that time and
those situations that made me want
to write it down,” he says. “I don't
really know why I started writing. I
just did.”

An avid reader as a child, Zieroth
has always been interested in lan-
guage, words, pictures, and content.
But poetry, first introduced to him
through the big, fat, elementary-
school readers of the 1950s, “just
caught my fancy,” he says.

His first published poem appeared
in The Western Producers Youth Pages,
a section that for years featured the
poetry of young Canadian poets. “It
was rewarding; it was fulfilling; it was
sustaining—it was all those things,”
Zieroth says of seeing his work in
print, even though no one outside his
family knew that Mr. Whippoorwill,
a pseudonym under which the poem
was published, was young David
Zieroth.

Of his earlier work, Zieroth says,
“The poems were pretty awful. But
they were a step towards something—
to what I didn’t know.”

The nostalgia evoked by a rare let-
ter from his father detailing a pending
hunting trip provided a turning point
for Zieroth, in his 20s and living in
Toronto at the time. “All that stuff I'd
left behind just shifted into a differ-
ent focus,” he says. “Not only could I
write about it, but it was waiting for
me.” The new focus inspired Zieroth
to continue writing about other sub-
jects and feelings, and a major change
took place. “As a writer, you have to
believe in inspiration,” he says, “that

you do make breakthroughs. For me,

20 | OtherPress

that was when I found my writer's
voice.”

Writing poetry is a three-part
process for Zieroth. The first stage
involves a version of a poem that is
often “gushy, sentimental—goofy,
even,” he says.

The next stage, which usually
occurs the same day as the original
draft, is a bit more polished. “You
have to mine it, dig it out,” says
Zieroth of the process of extracting
the valuable gems from “a bunch of
words.”

The third stage, he says, often
occurs the following day, when he can
objectively look at the product and
find what takes the poem further, to
the next step. “You're never really sure
youre going to get there,” he says.
“There is the anxiety in writing. You
just have to live with the anxiety, and
hope for the best.” Much of creating
a poem is luck, he notes; much is per-
sistence. After that, it’s rewrites. “You
hope that when everything is done,
youre happy with what's there.
Sometimes poems are little water-
colours, as opposed to big oil canvas-
es.”

Before submitting poems for publi-
cation, Zieroth also requests feedback
from several friends, many of whom
are fellow poets. While publishing is
an important part of the process for
Zieroth, he doesn’t write with the sole
purpose of publication in mind.
Zieroth, who has seven published
books (six of poetry and one autobi-
ography) behind him, emphatically
states, “The thrill of publication has
been muted; the thrill of writing has
not.” He writes because he wants to,
and he writes poetry because it allows
him to speak to others in a way fic-
tion does not.

An instructor of poetry at Douglas
College in New Westminster, BC,
Zieroth has quite a bit of advice for
young poets. “Read a lot, and read
widely,” he says. “Read beyond the

Barbara K. Adamski | features @otherpress.ca

 

 

‘As a writer, you have
to believe in inspiration,
that you do make
breakthroughs. For me,
that was when I found
my writers voice.”
David Zieroth

 

area you are presently reading in.
Read not just poetry, but novels,
short stories, and non-fiction.”

He is also quick to stress the impor-
tance of grammar, likening a lack of
grammatical knowledge to playing
hockey without a blue line. “You
need to know what the rules are,” he
says.

But his most important piece of

advice to poets shoots straight to the
heart: “Always protect what it is that
got you going in the first place. Be
careful that you don’t lose it to some-
body’s criticism. It’s a very private,
precious thing.”

David Zieroth’s website:
www3.telus.net/dzieroth/