How do we keep working?
For more than a decade I have allowed teaching to define me. It’s wild. The institutional mechanism becomes a constraint. You start to remove yourself from equations, which is not always a bad thing. We need to create space for students. That’s what we do. The danger is that this tendency can pull us out of balance. Service becomes s a one-way street. How does a writer remain free? Creative? How does a writer keep their own writing practice alive (exciting, innovative) while spending so much of one’s time (and energy) nurturing others? Particularly–let me add—in a time when we are all being exhausted by fascism & genocide & attacks on freedoms. This is so draining for everyone & everything. “I am beginning to doubt that I should be making art,” a friend emailed me to say a few weeks ago. Hell yes, you should, I replied. This is precisely the time to make art.Thanks to the The Malahat Review, a lifelong favourite journal of mine. I only ‘finished’ one ‘new’ piece last year. I used the CNF contest deadline to motivate me, and it did. Also having a few days before the faculty part kicked in at Banff was the clincher–I would not have done it without that time. So thanks Derek. Thanks Banff. Thanks Malahat. Thank you students. Thank you trees, and love, and coffee…
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