April is National Poetry Month, and last night, the Victoria Writers’ Society acknowledged and celebrated that with an evening devoted to poetry. We met at Russell Books in downtown Victoria, an amazing bookstore with some bookshelves almost two storeys high!

The night opened with a talk about poetry by Zoe Dickinson, accompanied by Zoe reading several of her beautiful poems, all taken from her second book of poetry intertidal – poem from the littoral zone.

Zoe’s opening poem, I’d like to start by acknowledging, moved people throughout the room. Here are the first few lines:

I’d like to start by acknowledging that this poem is being written on the unceded

territories of the Lekwungen speaking peoples: the Songhees and Esquimalt nations.

I’d like to start by acknowledging that I have no idea what that means—

I have the luxury of continuing to live my life

without understanding what I’ve stolen.

Zoe spoke about what poetry has meant to her. Through poetry, she said, she builds a relationship with what is in the world. And, in writing a poem, she will never see something the same way again. Poetry is transformative, and shapes the way we see our world.

She also talked about how there’s a mystique about poetry, that it’s hard to understand, and we need to help dissolve that mystique. And she talked about what it means to “be” a poet – as opposed to someone who writes poetry. Most of us in the room put up our hands to say we write poems from time to time, but far fewer saw ourselves as poets.

Zoe outlined some of the conditions that she sees are necessary to be a poet.

• Solitude, time and focus. Those are all in short supply; the most important, she said, is focus.
• A notebook. Ideas and images come at times we are least prepared for them, but if we have a notebook (or some other way of jotting notes, like into a phone) then we don’t lose our ideas, or the images that float through our imagination
• Community – critique groups, other poets
• Read the poems of others
• Persistence – write, write, write, and if you are looking to get published, submit, submit, submit.

It was an inspiring evening. After Zoe spoke, we had a short stretch break, and then an open mic. Eight poets read a poem each. I read one that I started many years ago, when I lived in the Shuswap. I’ve worked it, and reworked it. Here’s the opening three lines of Foreshore Walk, Shuswap Lake:

sweet poplar unfurls spring

its heady scent hangs and

conjures long lost prairie coulees

I’m enjoying working with the poems I’m writing. Having the date of May 26 as poetic opener at Planet Earth Poetry is a wonderful motivator.