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Unfurling the process: an interview with Debbie Keahey
Debbie Keahey is the editor of a forthcoming anthology of female poets from the region. I am ecstatic about this because I have often worried about the overly testosterone-driven writing scene and how it might disadvantage women writers—enough so that I even started to organize a collection like this a few years ago. After a few fits and starts, Debbie has followed through and, after many months of work, is set to launch the new collection. Unfurled: Collected Poetry by Northern BC Women , published by Caitlin Press, will be released this fall.
RB: Talk a little first about the parameters of the collection.
DK: The book includes women from north and north-central BC, from Williams Lake to Fort St. John and Prince Rupert to Prince George, and is almost entirely new, previously unpublished writing. There are many excellent emerging writers as well as familiar favorites like Jacqueline Baldwin, Donna Kane, Laisha Rosnau, Sarah de Leeuw and NorthWord contributors Mary MacDonald, Gillian Wigmore and Sheila Peters. The writing covers the gamut from lyric, narrative, historical and experimental styles of writing; there is truly something here for everyone.
RB: Collecting the work of so many diverse writers from such a wide area must have had its challenges. What are some of the obstacles you’ve encountered?
DK: Finding the writers in the first place was the major challenge. Even just before completing the manuscript I was still trying to track some people down and getting newly referred to others. I ended up with 31 writers to include in the book, only about a third of whom I had known of when I started out. Because so many writers are working in relative isolation, I don’t think any of us knew how many of us there are out there! It was a real education working on this.
RB: What kind of similarities or regional consciousness did you notice in the writing? Were there some recurring themes?
DK: There’s a lot of variety in the subject matter, but nature featured prominently in many people’s work, both celebrating life connected to the land and lamenting the negative environmental impacts of human activity. Two things that surprised me were how many times the plant Devil’s Club appeared, and how little the domestic realm and children played a role.
RB: Did you mostly just collect the poems or was there editing involved? Did you find the process rewarding?
DK: I enjoy being an active editor and helping develop new writers, so I was able to put that to good use on this project. Several of the writers worked quite intensively with me on major revisions to make sure their work got its best possible presentation. In some other cases, I had long email discussions about a single word or punctuation mark. Though much more work than simply collecting poems, it was also very rewarding and I think resulted in a very polished book. Most writers crave that kind of feedback and dialogue, but it’s hard to come by sometimes without having to enroll in a creative writing program.
RB: How does this poetry differ from men’s poetry you know of in the region?
DK: I’m not sure I can generalize about this, since there is so much variety in the book, and in men’s poetry as well. The collection presents women’s experiences, perspectives and voices without reducing them to any stereotypical feminine or feminist content. If I had to point to anything, the poetry as a whole tends to be very embodied, very much of the flesh and materiality of life, very grounded. Much of the writing also manages to be both very tough and sensitive at the same time. In one of Marilyn Belak’s poems, a woman wrestles a trophy fish in her arms while grizzlies cross the river downstream and her baby sleeps peacefully on the bank behind her.
RB: Why Unfurled? How did that title come about?
DK: We wanted a title that conveys strength, energy, movement and a connection with nature, and that has some feminine connotation without being at all ‘girly.’ One of the contributors, Marita Dachsel, suggested Unfurled and it was perfect.
RB: How will the book be released and when can we expect it out? How will this book impact the writing community?
DK: It will probably be late August or early September. There will be a big launch in Prince George, and hopefully smaller launches in a few other places around the region, such as at Sweetwater 905 festival near Dawson Creek. Watch for notices!
Women generally live doubly-busy lives, and that, combined with the difficulties of distance and isolation in this region, have meant that, except for small pockets of mentorship and support, there has been little sense of a writing community amongst women here. My hope is that this book will function to connect writers, to give a sense of depth and continuity to women’s writing from the region, and to expand the audience for northern women’s poetry.
By: Alice Williams
12 August 2010