Course:River Woman by Katherena Vermette

CRWR 501P 003
Advanced Writing of Poetry
	Instructor:Dr. Bronwen Tate; Email: Bronwen.tate@ubc.ca; Office: Buchanan E #456;
Important Course Pages
	Inspirations & Influences;
Categories
	Sources of Inspiration and Influence Aardvark Book of Poems Book of Poems by a Living Poet Choufleur Conflicted, Ambivalent, or Antagonistic Feelings CRWR 501 People Encountered Before Twelve Essay Fiction Films Fox Gemini Music Orchid Otis Places Poem Composed Before 1945 Poetic Prose Sadcactussometimesblooms Song, Painting, Film, Etc. Souris Yarrow Yellow Silver

River Woman by Katherena Vermette

This book of poems came out in 2018. I fell in love with someone really special shortly thereafter. We lived and loved inside of these poems near the river from which they emerged. We were both looking for something that had been lost. Different somethings, but were simultaneously in pursuit. Falling in love with this person and these poems reignited my love of finding language for a feeling. Reaching for the right word, phrase or cadence to tell something beyond a story. Like in Katherena's poems, seemingly inanimate things came to life. And even though this person and I didn't last much past the new year, I think I was one of those things.

Here's a favourite from the book:

black river

fog tumbled
all around the highway that
very mild winter
february wet
and warm
your heat vents
set low
you drove slow

look at this
you said
look
night spread out
we listened to all our favourite songs
sang and held hands
because you didn't have to shift gears
on the highway
look!

the light-smudged sky
a wooly blanket
on either side of us
trees heavy with hoar frost

we're going to remember this
you said
and turned down the music
to say the words
one day
you're going to tell our kids
this one time I was driving up to black river with your dad...

you laughed
but I could almost see it
a whole life
laid out before us
as sure as the flat
Manitoba earth

only hidden

as if by fog

"Reignited" really is the right word. I got back into writing poems in a big way after reading this book, and my practice hasn't waned since. That summer I was offered a job in Toronto writing poems to be woven into a dance show, spoken by the dancers throughout. It was the first time I had done something like that, and the first time in a long time I had done any in-process writing: providing words alongside and in response to other artists building story. River Woman had a tremendous influence on my writing for In the Abyss. I don't know that I would have been as equipped to support such an elegant art form with my words if the feeling of Katherena's words hadn't become a part of me.

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