The Planet Earth poetry afternoon with Garry Gottfriedson, that I posted about a few days ago, proved inspiring. Days later, I am still moved by the gift of his presence, and the stories and poems he shared.
It was the first afternoon poetry session in almost three years. Because of that, we were small in number. The room had been set up in a traditional style — a lectern facing rows of chairs. The first thing that Garry did when he arrived was to suggest that, with our small number, we could sit in a circle. What an immediate change of energy in the room! We became a whole, each person a part, weaving images and stories with our words.
Garry read from two books of his poems. The first, Skin Like Mine, has a cover painting of a striking man with long hair. Someone in the circle asked about it. “That was me,” Garry said. He had painted it — another skill, beside poetry! He then talked of how, in his Secwepemc culture, it is a tradition that when your grandmother dies, you cut your hair. He cut his long hair part-way. Then, when his mother died, he cut it the rest of the way so that now his hair is cropped short. The act of cutting the hair symbolizes the severing of the umbilical cord between a woman and her descendants. It was a moving story; there were many more like it.
