(Pent

Gillian Jerome, who read and moderated panels at the Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference, is a poet and instructor of
Creative Writing at Douglas College. We asked her about her work and her poetic life in Vancouver.

How have the places you’ve lived in
shaped your work in poetry?

I’m from a French-Canadian
farming town called Orleans, which
is east of Ottawa. I’ve written about
that place in Red Nest, I wrote a longer
poem called “Evolution.” I just read a
poem today called “The Far Away” in
which I’m writing about the fields of
Ontario; the fields of wildflowers and
weeds that you see everywhere when
you drive along the Ontario highway.
As a kid we lived on a ravine and I
played in fields all the time. I kind
of forgot that when I came here, I’m
definitely a person who moves place
to place, and I try to absorb the place
I’m in and when my dad got really
sick in April I thought a lot more about
that place and when I went back it was
great to revisit it and remember how
important that landscape is to me.

Here in Vancouver I’ve very much
been influenced by the neighbourhood
of East Vancouver. Emily Dickinson
said, “the world is my circumference”
and wherever I am I try to take in
that world of East Vancouver like
Commercial Drive and Trout Lake.
Trout Lake was a huge setting fora
sequence in my book, Red Nest, called
“Neighbourhood.” There’s rusted cars,
ducks, and a few syringes... but Trout
Lake is a beautiful oasis of nature in the
city. I don’t want to make a distinction
between culture and nature, it’s simply
that most of the beautiful areas have
been raised down so humans can
inhabit and build houses and we’re left
looking at trees.

Have you seen your Poetry in
Transit?

Yeah, I was actually on a bus in
Coquitlam and I saw my poem and
thought, “holy shit!” It was very odd
and quite lovely experience to just look
up and say, “there it is.” It’s an excerpt
from Red. It’s a real compliment.

Have you learned things from
instructing at Douglas?

I’m always learning things from
teaching. I’m always learning about
people’s vulnerabilities. Even at this
conference you have these poets who
are really famous, well, in the world
of poetry they’ re relatively famous
and successful. I watch them go up
to read as a moderator and I was able
to see the flush on their faces and
their hands go white. Even the most
accomplished people doubt themselves
and are nervous. I always, always try
to be conscious of the tremendous
bravery it takes to put your work out
there for other people to talk about,
and I always try to find a nice balance

between giving people constructive
feedback that will help them but I’m
always conscious not to wound people
because every writing teacher who is
any good at all wants people to keep
writing. I want to bring more poets in.
If a student wants to read more poetry
then that’s fantastic. That’s everything,
even if they don’t write it. So I guess
I’m learning to be a good teacher, to
bring people in and make them feel
like they can create things and translate
their world through art.

When did you first start writing
poetry?

When I was a kid, because I
spent so much time out in the trees
and the ravine and maybe because of
my temperament I like spending time
alone. My dad and my mom had books
around the house everywhere. My dad
would read poems to me and stories.
He was a real storyteller and would
even make up stories or tell fairy tales
from memory. He had this great voice,
“fee-fi-fo-fum I smell the blood of the
Englishman.” I can still hear that in
me, from Jack and the Beanstalk and
he was an English teacher so it was
my world. I don’t know when exactly
I started writing poems but I do have a
poem that was published in my school
yearbook in grade five and it’s called
“The Sea Queen” about mermaids. It’s
terrible... but I was ten!

Do you prefer hearing poetry aloud
or having it alone, on your desk and
exploring it that way?

I like hearing it aloud. A huge part
of teaching for me is letting students

hear poems aloud because it’s such an
intimacy to hear the voice, the whole
human voice coming from the human
body. It’s the oldest tradition we have
but we’re contemporary poets. We no
longer live in an oral culture, well at
least as a white, western person, I don’t
live in that culture. We’re limited by the
page so I do work on the page and go
back to my writing. Sometimes solitary,
but I’m trying to bring more social
elements into my text. I’m doing a lot
of sound recordings of my house and
my kids and I record what’s happening
inside a bus, and lineups. So if you see
me on a bus, be careful what you say!

What’s your favourite season to write
in?

The American poet Lucie Brock-
Broido talks in an interview about how
she takes everything in all spring and
summer and writes in the fall. I can
relate to that because partly because
part of the weather here, rain, makes
me more introspective and I find fall
really generative. I find it hard to write
in the summer though I’m trying more
as I’m paying attention to funny poets
and more social poets I try to take

in more stuff in the summer when

it’s really bright and everyone’s like,
“Woo-hoo! Want to go to the beach
and drink margaritas?” The seasons
affect me, no question. You can even
tell in Red Nest, there’s a poem called
“Mid-summer,” and there’s another one
called ““Mid-winter”.

When, or where, do you prefer to write?

I have two kids so I’ve written
through two early childhoods and when

they were babies it was easier to write
when they were asleep and babies sleep
a lot so that was really great. Because
I’m a mom, and often sleep deprived I
would sometimes get up in the middle
of the night and write. Now, I struggle
to write really consistently so I do when
I can. I go away sometimes to be able
to write. More and more I’m trying
write outside and I’m trying to adapt
my compositional practice to being
outside and listening to things and
watching things out on the street.

Who do you imagine reading your
poetry?

Well, this question has come up
at some of the panels and some people
say they don’t have a reader in mind
but I do! I’m not sure I have a person
I’m thinking about but sometimes I’m
writing a poem for a friend, a poem of
direct address or for a family member.
I always want to affect a reader. I’m
always thinking about, “will someone
be able to enter this?” I guess there’s a
big leap of faith you make as a writer,
about a reader. You hope someone is
going to read it and someone will be
moved by it and you know that some
people think it sucks and you have the
courage and tenacity, plod on and keep
writing.

Who do you first show your poems to?

With Brad [Cran], my partner.
My friend, Elizabeth Bachinsky, who
also teaches at Douglas, and Suzanne

Buffam, she’s a wonderful poet and I’m
so grateful for her.

This interview has been condensed and edited.