Donna Langevin talks to Sharon Berg about her latest poetry title.
SB: About a third of the way through my reading of Timed Radiance I realized I was having a difficult time posing questions for you. Your poetry seems to anticipate each question I would raise and answers the question in following poems. Yet you talk about difficult things: aging, your relationships with issues. Are you aware of developing an alertness to the questions outsiders might raise about your personal experiences? Or is this just happenstance?
DL: No, I am not aware of developing any alertness to the questions an outsider might raise about my personal experiences. I assume the reader has their own private experiences and questions they might bring to bear on each poem. Their questions may or may not correspond with mine. Either way, they can be drawn into my work. The truth is, I usually don’t have any audience in mind when I set out to write a poem. I try to let the poem just “happen” to me and let it take the lead. Later, when the poem is finished and I must consider whether to try and get it published, I may worry about what the reader might think about me or want to ask if I’ve explored difficult issues or revealed things other writers might have chosen to keep private, but that is a different and complicated matter.
SB: What themes and inquiries are you pursuing in this collection?
DL: I didn’t have any themes or inquiries in mind when I began writing this collection. I try to write every day and I like to discover what each day brings me. After a couple of years, I had quite a few new poems, and some of them felt like keepers. As I kept reading, I realized many of them centered around the themes of ageing and mortality. Some of the Ekphrastic poems, especially the series about sculpture, also deal with these issues. I began to see that I was looking for a philosophy or explanation that would make my own ageing and mortality and that of my late husband and friends more bearable. For a long time that was impossible and there were no comforting answers. I couldn’t figure out how to end the collection in any positive way until I got news that my youngest son’s partner was pregnant. The anticipated arrival of my grandson became an answer of sorts to mortality: “I won’t see the day/ when you fully fledge, / but you’ll carry me on/past my last page/as you ascend your own arc.”
SB: Did you have an intended audience for the book?
DL: When I am writing, I am much too focused and caught up in the process to think about an intended audience. Once I have a viable draft, the editor in me kicks in, and I become my own audience that I must please. I do the best I can and then I subject my work to an “audience” of the toughest people I can find to critique it. These editors are usually accomplished poets whom I admire, and I always respect their critiques even if I don’t always use their suggestions. Once the book is published, I hope it appeals to other poets, and to the general population. I am told my writing style is accessible and clear, and I know my subject matter is close to home, so I believe most readers can identify and “invest” in my work by bringing their own experiences to bear. Of course I am always thrilled when another poet tells me that one of my poems inspired them to write one of their own!
SB: What would you say is the most fundamental difference between your earlier work and this new collection?
DL: The most fundamental difference between my earlier work and this new collection is simply a function of my age. I was 57 when Improvising in the Dark was published and 79 when Timed Radiance came out. Of course the themes of ageing and mortality became more relevant and pressing to write about the older I got. Another factor that influenced my latest collection is that I became fascinated with theatre midway through my career. I wrote several plays and five of them were produced either at the Toronto Alumnae Theatre New Ideas festival, or by Toronto Metropolitan University at their Fresh Picks Festival. My interest in playwriting influenced Timed Radiance. “How to Tell the Doctor There’s Blood in Your Pants” and “Shoulder to Shoulder” are written in the style of dramatic monologues. The last difference is that I like to think my craftmanship has improved over the years. For me poems don’t just drop from the sky. Although some come more easily than others, crafting a poem properly demands a knowledge of form and a commitment to make every line count. I read a lot, study other poems, and attend workshops such as Kate Marshall Flaherty’s Stillpoints and James Dewar’s Sanctuaries to further my development.
SB: One of the things you do beautifully in your poetry is to speak of place, grounding your observations in a specific location so the reader almost feels they are standing where you stood. Of course this includes imparting your feelings and thought in the moment of the poem. Can you speak to why grounding the poem in a specific location is important to you?
DL: It is important to me to ground the poem in a specific location because the setting often provides the raw material for my feelings and thoughts. For example: in 2006 I was visiting my mother who was living in New Orleans when hurricane Katrina stormed in. My mother had refused to leave and our narrow escape at the last moment inspired a sequence of poems for my book, “In the Café de Monde.” In “Timed Radiance” the poem Poyntz Street was jump-started by the van “careening/ crunching bones/ spattering blood/half a mile south/on a Toronto sidewalk/ killing 10, wounding 15/ all the way to Poyntz Street/where the van turned and jerked to a stop near the house/where I once lived with my four-year-old son and new baby. Place is essential to me because it sets the poem in motion, elicits memories; and reveals the character of the speaker and others who inhabit it. One of my all-time favourite poems is Chicago by Carl Sandburg. He creates a portrait of city and its members that is raw, vivid, sensual, and memorable.
SB: How did you arrive at the title? What is your intention for the title to do?
DL: Choosing a title for a new poetry collection is somewhat like choosing the perfect name for a new baby. It is exciting and fun but can sometimes be frustrating. (See my poem “Nameless”, dedicated to my grandson). In my five former collections I’d skim and scan my manuscript and choose about a dozen possible titles and try each out for a few days or weeks. Each title had to pass a test. It must be short, roll off my tongue, be melodious, evocative, and relevant to my theme. A tall order to say the least! This time around it was easy. I happened to glance out the window of my apartment in the Toronto Historic Distillery District where I was then living. Night had just fallen and the electronic sculptures in the February Festival of the Lights had just been turned on in their full luminous glory. At 11 pm I knew their power would be shut off. Our lives were like this “timed radiance” I’d written about in my poem “Under the Same Constellations.” That title encapsulated my mortality theme. I was ready to christen my collection.
SB : What was the most satisfying aspect about writing this book (other than perhaps the satisfaction of finishing it)?
DL: The most satisfying aspect about writing this book was working with my wonderfully sensitive and astute publisher/editor, Allan Briesmaster. I was having trouble making the sections work together and something felt off to me. Allan was able to pinpoint the problem right away. The original manuscript contained a section of prose poems about Arizona where I spend considerable time visiting a friend. While Allan liked the poems, he felt they didn’t belong here and would work much better by themselves as a chapbook. What a relief to hear this! I realized that this chapter consisting mainly of poems grounded in the Arizona landscape didn’t fit stylistically or even emotionally in such a personal manuscript. What would fill the gap? How could I end the book? Then a wonderful thing happened. As I looked forward to the birth of my grandchild, I began writing like wildfire. As I looked at various ultrasound images, I wrote about new life and death. I began to see my own life in perspective, and the manuscript hung together at last.
SB: There are six sections to your book, and the second section devotes itself to ekphrastic poetry. However, you seem to have focused on interacting with sculpture. In fact, you’ve brought such a wealth of attention to sculpted forms you have painted pictures in my mind with your words. It is a parallel building of those structures with your own medium. Can you comment on this? Was that a goal?
DL: I love the visual arts but lack the talent to create them. My youthful efforts to draw, paint, make pottery or sculpt resulted in dismal failure and total frustration. In grade school my most hated subject was the art class where we had to draw objects “in perspective.” My only success was in the simple crafts of making gimp bracelets or sewing miniature birchbark canoes when I was an adolescent at a YWCA summer camp. That being said, I enjoy going to art galleries or watching others create. I love standing next to an outdoor sculpture I can touch or caress like Henry Moore’s Large Two Forms. So yes, it was a godsend when I discovered that I could create art with words. I can step into a portrait and pretend I am the subject and write from their imagined point of view. I can paint my own “wordscapes” or hew out “word-sculptures.” So yes, in answer to your question, my goal was to indulge in a parallel building of those structures (sculptures) with my own medium. The installations at the annual Toronto Light Festival in the Distillery District provided me with delightful opportunities. I loved going out at night in sub-zero weather and basking in the light of a giant electric dandelion or sunflower. The animated birds helped make my words fly and dispelled my own darkness. The neon light sculptures that were switched on and off every night gave me a sense of my own “timed radiance” and the possibility of parallel creations.
SB: Which aspects of the book are autobiographical? How did you consciously deal with your intimate material (i.e. experiences – emotional and physical) in a way that avoids the dangers of straight autobiography?
DL: Many aspects of “Timed Radiance” are autobiographical in the sense that these experiences really happened. The death of my husband, birth of my grandson, difficulties in relationships, my feelings about war and art are the raw material that I write from. As for the dangers of “straight autobiography, I think most mature readers would realize that we all see events through our own lenses. Put two or three people on the same witness stand, their accounts will often vary. A novice model in a life-drawing class might be surprised at how wildly the artists’ perspectives vary. I learned on a David Suzuki program that as we age our brain alters our perceptions and our stories change to minimize cognitive dissonance. If you accept this theory, then autobiography can never be “straight.” It’s always a blend of fact, fiction and altered memories. In any case, whatever you believe about autobiography, there’s one rule that applies: the poems must be well-written, accessible, full of arresting imagery, tropes, twists, and insights. In the end, that’s all that counts.
SB: Are there any aspects of the book you would like to change/tinker with?
DL: Timed Radiance went through lots of weeding, editing and changes in the process of getting it ready for publication. Now I am proud of and pleased with the finished product. I wanted to have a holiday from writing after it came out, but my so-called “vacation from writing” lasted less than a week before I was itching to write again.
Donna Langevin is the author of six poetry collections including Timed Radiance, Aeolus House 2022 and Brimming, Piquant Press 2019. Published in many Canadian and American journals, she won second prize in the 2014 GritLIT contest, first prize in the Banister Anthology Competition 2019, and first place in the Ontario Poetry Society Pandemic Poem contest, 2020. Winner of a Stella Award (second place) from Act II Studio, Donna’ play Summer of Saints was produced by Toronto Metropolitan University at their Fresh Picks: The Sandra Kerr New Plays Festival 2022. A Story for Sadie is forthcoming from Piquant Press in 2023.