I had the opportunity to sit down with Vanessa and discuss her work and recent UK tour in more detail:
Being a francophone Canadian is a key part of your identity. What does it mean to you to be able to share both your language and identity through your poetry? And how has this shaped your voice as a writer?
I have felt so blessed over the course of the tour to be able to come to another country that does not speak the language I write in, sharing my work and receiving so much enthusiasm from different audiences. Being a part of the UNESCO sub-network has really been the key in allowing me to do this. The most important aspect of this is friendship, and particularly connection through words.
I always see my voice as being better in French than in English; the flow is more interesting when I can perform, compared to if I performed the same poem in English. Despite me reading the poems in French, the language doesn’t matter, and that’s what I love about poetry, it’s like music, they’re so closely related, and all the people who have come to my performances are so sensitive to the music of it. By being able to perform in French and give written English translations, I am able to remain true to my voice whilst still inviting discussion and engagement. Also, the great thing about poetry is that it is something that should be first felt, then it can be understood. And so, wherever I do a reading in French, even if people don’t fully understand what I’m saying, they still get a sense of the emotions and ideas I am trying to communicate.
What is so interesting about this is that there are a multitude of themes in literature that are linked, but we rarely discover authors or literature that resembles what we do as authors, because we don’t write and speak the same language. Doing this tour has not just allowed me to build bridges and make connections with my work, but also to shed light on all the work done in Québec. I see opportunities such as this as not only good for me but also as a gateway toward Québec’s literature for new audiences.
Quebec is also a City of Literature. How has being part of the UNESCO City of Literature community impacted your work and your sense of belonging?
Being a part of the City of Literature network has changed my whole work and my reach. I was fortunate enough to already have a successful international career before engaging with the network. I’ve been able to have several residencies and tour my books in countries like France, Belgium, Switzerland, and North Africa, where French is a prominent language.
Being a part of the City of Literature network, though, opened even more opportunities; it meant language was no longer at the centre of how my work could travel and be experienced. The network really is all about community. It’s easy to think of literature as a solitary act, but that couldn’t be further from the truth; it’s all about the people you’re chatting with, or reading or the art, the music you’re listening to that inspires your writing. All the influences and friendships you make from the 53 cities of lit from all over the world bring perspective, but also support and love, and I feel when you have this grounding, you can achieve so much! I’ve found this is so true in the creative aspect of it, the support I got in my work from the network changed my life, but it also means I have the opportunity to support other writers, not just in my home city but across oceans. I am able to amplify their voices to help my network in the French communities, too, and that is so important to me. Through the network, I get something, and I can also give something back. I think people in my community often see me as a facilitator, so I tend to become a conduit for information to connect people. This role isn’t something I have to do, but I do love doing it as it makes me feel so enriched as a human, but also as a part of a community that is so diverse, but knitted together by one key focal point, literature.
One of the amazing opportunities the sub network has given me was a residency I did in Sweden last November via AIR Litteratur Västra Götaland (Göteborg, city of literature). It was just me for a whole month in a small village on the West Coast. Most people were about 65 plus years old, and it was very remote. It was one of the most quiet, beautiful times of my life. Whilst I was there, I wrote so much for my novel. I have been working on it for at least 3 years, but had hit a barrier because I was afraid of it, and how the book might hurt me in some way. Just being in that heavenly place with vivid wind, rocky mountains, and the fjords, and having such wonderfully amazing people host me -much gratitude to Eva Dal Norlind and Michael Norlind from the Scenstudion in Gerlesborg- just reminded me so much of love and security. That opened the door to dive back into the story again. Without the subnetwork and the residency opportunities and time to meet new writers (hi Isabelle Chereau, David Hartley!) I wouldn’t have found the courage to return to that text that I really care about, but had feared.
You’re doing a poetry tour. How has it felt bringing your work to different audiences on this tour? What have been some memorable moments from the tour?
The tour was so different, and I got something valuable out of every city I visited. I will pinpoint something in every city for you. But first of all, I would like to underline the generosity, enthusiasm, and professionalism of all the teams in the cities of literature who welcomed me, particularly Anne-Marie Kelly (Dublin), Ivan Wadeson (Manchester), Peggy Hughes (Norwich), and Hannah Trevarthen (Nottingham).
Dublin was the first place I visited on the tour, and it was just unbelievable because it was the first international literature festival I’ve ever attended as a writer. Being on the program and being featured on stage alongside other authors, authors like Anne Michaels, who is a legendary Canadian poet, whose works have been translated into more than 50 languages and has a career spanning 40 years. I just couldn’t believe it. It felt amazing to be considered worthy of sharing a mic with such a prolific Canadian poet; I felt like a fraud! But within this, it wasn’t just about the prestige of being on stage with Anne, it was about actually meeting her and having a very heart to heart open conversation and knowing her not just as an artist through her work but as just the most down to earth, humble person I’d ever met. It was like being in an accelerated master class of just being an amazing human.
Then Norwich, which was just an in-and-out visit, unfortunately, but not without its memorable moments. I was able to see Dragon Hall, which I have been dreaming of seeing for so long! I was so impressed just to be in that space, which carries so much history, art, and thought, and just such a loving community. Whilst I was there, I was invited to feature on an episode of the podcast The Writing Life by the National Centre for Writing with Peggy Hughes, and again it was a real humbling moment to be considered as an important enough writer to be interviewed and to have attention paid to my work. Plus, I met some incredible women and artists: Karen Reilly and Ali Smith. Moments like this really bring everything into perspective. This is something I have been saying for so long: I’m doing good things but there are much better writers that do not get those opportunities, so I have to recognise that even if I do work 7-days a week and all week long, even if I don’t really take holidays, and I have worked hard for where I am at the moment, luck and who you meet and are connected with also plays a big part in career’s trajectory. And that is what is great about the UNESCO sub-network, again.
Manchester Festival of Libraries was outstanding! I got a lot out of it, and as a writer, some of the very beautiful moments I had were two discussions held in the Manchester Poetry Library. Can I just say how amazing it is to have a whole library dedicated solely to poetry! The discussions that stood out to me the most were from Roy McFarlane and Jordan Stephens: two men at very different stages of their careers, and very different ages. Listening to their way of connecting and thinking about art, communities, poetry, and music was an awe-inspiring moment for me.
Then, finally, I came to Nottingham, and honestly, I had no expectations. Sometimes at the end of a tour, you’re tired and thinking, ok, just three more gigs to do, then that’s it, but I
have been so surprised by how much I got out of being here. As soon as I arrived, on my first day, I went to work at Bromley House library with Andrew Tucker Leavis, with whom I enjoyed learning about various literary projects in the city, including the New Nottingham Journal, of which he is the editor. Then there’s the Branching Out Project, which I’m very proud and honoured to be part of and whose mission is so important to give quantitative and qualitative information regarding our present and future through nature and trees. They have a real impact on politics and decision making that is happening at the moment, and also I feel able to sustain something for future generations. In Québec, I work with Indigenous writers as an editor. I’ve always been touched by and attracted to the way they make decisions, thinking not only about their immediate impact, but also about how the next 7 generations will be affected by the choices they make. It’s a wisdom, a way of being present in the world, to oneself and to others, that I try to integrate into my own life. I feel the Branching Out Project to me followed that same idea, and it makes it meaningful to me. Then also – and I’m not saying this to just please you – but meeting your all-women team is one of my favourite things. Feminism nowadays can sometimes just be seen as trendy or easily taken for granted. So, to be really welcomed by a full women’s team, I again just felt so much love and support. That is something that can really switch the way you end a tour.
This all feels like a bit of a love letter to all of you.
Your newest poem was written for the Branching Out project in Nottingham. How did the theme or context of this project shape your approach to this poem and the ideas you conveyed?
My work is usually water- or motherhood-related, and to be honest, I have never really thought about trees for poetry or inspiration. When I was writing the poem for the Branching Out Project, which now has a title, ‘In this Version of the Story’, I was talking to Alma, from the project and she told me “everyone has a story with trees” and that began my thought on how trees have been there at points in my life. In Canada we have huge trees and forests, which go on for days, so it’s easy to take them for granted, but then again I was raised in the city and I remember being a young girl living in the poorest area of the city, which was all paved and deprived of trees, I do remember a few trees on my way to school and every morning as I passed them I would tell myself stories. The arch of the trees was like protection, bringing me comfort, and that was the beginning of it.
So then the poem follows me at different ages I’ve been through, and how trees have been a part of that. The first version of the story I’m a very young girl, age 5, listening to music with my dad, and in my favourite song, an olive tree is mentioned. But as a girl in Canada, I didn’t know what an olive tree was, and there was no internet to just quickly search it up, so we had to go to the library and find out what an olive tree was because I had to know, just loving that song so much. Then the school girl comes next, and I’m with my great-grandmother, who I was so close to and just love writing about, I always try to find a way to just sneak her in my work. That was such a lovely memory to revisit: making maple syrup with her, only women in a small cabin in the woods behind her house, and I haven’t thought of that memory for I don’t know how long. Then I become a mother, and it’s about the placenta I kept for so long because I wanted to bury it under a tree. It ended up staying in my parents-in-law’s freezer for about 3 years, and at some point, I was like “do you still have my placenta?”, and they did, so we dug up the ground and buried it. Because the placenta is so rich and full of life and nutrients, we used it to nurture a lilac that we planted on top of it. So this is what the line ‘I exchange my pain for a life, crowned with lilacs’ means. It is really about my son coming into the world.
Then the end of the poem is about the stage of life I’m in right now. Over the last year, I have been seeing this weird shift in myself, and I’m slowly coming away from water and moving towards the forest. That’s what I wanted to capture. I’m not sure yet what is shifting in me and how it will shape me as a writer and person going forward, but I can feel myself moving into that space slowly. So, the ending of the poem is about a mother bear, and I am her cub. I say mother, but in fact, I’m talking about one of my adoptive mothers – in this case, my adoptive kukum, this beautiful Eeyou writer who I am working with, Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau. Her totem animal is the blue bear – a powerful healing symbol-, and working with her really changed me as a woman, as a mother, as a lover, as a writer, and has allowed me to now approach literature through the lens of love and no longer violence which was the easy way for me before. The last stanza is a testimony to all of that.
What was amazing about writing this, though, is all of these episodes in my life involve trees and I hadn’t even realised!
Your latest collection, Monuments, has been inspired by your travels to Newfoundland and your connection to nature and music through this. How did your experiences shape the poems in this collection?
The book came out in 2022, and at the time I was making it, it was really a love letter to the land, but also to my husband. Doing this tour with Monuments, I have just felt so privileged to revisit the text once more and revise things through the translation into English. Usually, once a book is printed in final form, that is it, it doesn’t change. For the translation, though, I was lucky enough to work with a brilliant poet and writer from Louisiana, Chase Cormier. Prior to our time translating Monuments, he and I had a brief but very powerful love affair, which from that has blossomed into a wonderful friendship. Working on a translation with someone who truly admires and knows your work as well as yourself in the most intimate way is such a beautiful gift. Knowing that this person you’re working with loves both your work and you as a person is just truly special and powerful for the literary project. Because of this, because of him, the work I am presenting on this tour represents my truest voice in the translation, as well as who I am now, 3 years since the work was first published.
During the tour, I was also travelling with envelopes containing the English translation, photos from the book, and a few keepsakes. I handed them out at all my readings, and these were so important to me because they represented the new stage that I’m at in life as a writer, as a performer. And I immediately saw that the audience shared my enthusiasm for this way of sharing and rethinking the text, but also the whole universe of Monuments. The book itself, which I am so proud of and think looks stunning, was designed by a male graphic designer, Maxime Rheault from Criterium Studio in Québec, whom I worked with back in 2022. For this tour, I worked with a woman, Dominique Rivard, a Montréal-Glasgow-based artist, and this was so, so important to me. While touring the UK, I wanted to work with someone who knows the land and its people. But also working with a woman, I felt was the best way to capture both the tenderness and boldness of the old and new work, especially as I have grown and moved in my womanhood and begun to perceive myself in a more tender way. The pictures are in risography and were all printed by hand at Good Press in Glasgow, which is amazing. This work and design Dominique and I did together brings me back to love, again. It might be my name on the book, but so many people came together over the years to make my project something bigger and more complete than just my ideas alone. I’m so proud of this refreshed version of the book that I have been able to tour with as I feel it has evolved with me. What started as a love letter to the land and my ex-husband now feels like a love letter in every aspect of my life. I’m very happy with it.
It has been an absolute pleasure welcoming Vanessa to Nottingham. Her readings and workshops were truly awe-inspiring, from the supportive and intimate atmosphere at the Women’s Library, where women came together to hear her voice and share in creative solidarity, to the Branching Out project, where Vanessa shared her powerful new poem about growth in life through the lens of trees. And in the Creativity and Careers workshop, which gave encouragement and support to help inspire the next generation of young writers.
To read Vanessa’s new poem, ‘In this Version of the Story’, in both English and French, you can head over to the Branching Out Project’s website.
Book design credit: Daphné Rouleau
Envelope design credit: Dominique Rivard
Grace Sanders is a Classics graduate and emerging writer. She recently completed an internship with Nottingham City of Literature, where she now contributes regularly to their blog. She has also written for Her Campus, and is currently working on a piece for LeftLion.