The launch of Force Field: 77 Women Poets of British Columbia, edited by Susan Musgrave, will be held Sunday, May 19 at 2 p.m. at the Seymour Art Gallery. Free. Info: mothertonguepublishing. com or seymourartgallery.com.
WALKING her dogs on a North Vancouver trail Monday, local writer Aislinn Hunter found herself immersed in a conversation with a passerby.
As part of their chat, the woman offered insight into her family's history, particularly her roots in the Ukraine.
"I was saying we're so influenced by the past," says Hunter, 43. "It's all around us shaping our life on a day-to-day basis. I think that archives and anthologies and documents and this kind of way of gathering up ideas and putting it out there, I think it's crucial in a society that's increasingly disposable."
The importance of recording our history, both personally and culturally, is a topic that Hunter is continuing to explore in her poems, novels and nonfiction essays. It's fitting then that she's among the emerging, mid-career and established poets featured in new book Force Field: 77 Women Poets of British Columbia, the first anthology of its kind in more than 30 years.
A local launch event for the telling work, edited by Susan Musgrave, is being presented Sunday, May 19 at 2 p.m. at the Seymour Art Gallery and a number of the featured writers will be on hand to read their poems.
"As time goes by we lose a lot of our literary record," says Hunter, who will be in attendance on the weekend.
She references poet Louise Morey Bowman, an early modernist who wrote primarily in the 1920s. Recently Hunter, who is a year away from completing her PhD at the University of Edinburgh and also teaches writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, undertook an extensive search for Bowman's works, combing through a number of Canadian poetry anthologies from the late 1800s and early 1900s.
The absence of Bowman, and female writers generally, shocked her.
"I think that there still sometimes is a bias in anthologies towards the great male writers that came out of the '50s and '60s," she says.
Anthologies like Force Field are important as they draw attention to current writers as well as ensure future generations will likewise have an opportunity to experience their efforts.
The theme of the importance of recorded history is at the heart of Hunter's upcoming novel, due out in summer 2014 with Doubleday. The yet-to-be-titled work of fiction, set in a contemporary museum in London, England and a Victorian era asylum, is a mystery of sorts, following an archivist's search for a woman who went missing.
"It gets back to the point about Louise Morey Bowman," says Hunter. "Someone falls off the record because there's no documentation."
Another North Vancouver writer who's featured in Force Field is Fran Bourassa. Bourassa, 59, who is serving as the event's MC, is proud to have her poems featured in the new anthology. "I think to be included with these women is just unbelievable," she says.
Bourassa's two award-winning poems, "East side Diary" and "Visit to my Mother's Grave, Chateauguay River, PQ" explore her feelings towards her mother who passed away when she was very young.
"One of the reasons I started writing was because I didn't have a voice," says Bourassa. She's grateful to her Grade 9 teacher who, by recognizing her talent, helped her find hers.
"From that moment on I think I sort of found a place to put all that grief, that loss, that shame, all that, and to make it into something beautiful and that's what art does, it takes the human experience and makes it into this beautiful thing if you can find the right medium. I think these poems touch other people, at least that's what they tell me."
Hunter has a series of three poems featured in Force Field: "Attempts to Know the Past"; "Attempts to Know the Present"; and "Attempts to Know the Future." They were previously featured in her last book of poetry, 2004's The Possible Past.
In addition to the anthology and her upcoming novel, Hunter is anxiously awaiting the expected fall release of a feature film adaptation of her 2002 novel, Stay, starring Aidan Quinn and Taylor Schilling. "I met the main actors and thought that they had popped out of my head or something, they really seemed to get what I was after," she says, adding she's pleased with the screenplay, which does a great job of capturing the novel's themes and humour.
The feature was filmed primarily in Ireland with some additional scenes in Montreal. Hunter had an opportunity to visit the set last summer and served as an extra in an Irish pub.
"I'm sure they'll cut it as they often tend to do those things. Like 'Why are we looking over long at that woman drinking Guinness? That can go,'" she jokes.
Nonetheless, she has thoroughly enjoyed the experience of seeing her story go from the page to the screen.
"It's a little sexier than the poetry world I have to say," she laughs, "on the set of the movie that's made from your book. Poetry's got its own thing," she adds, in her beloved form's defense.
Hunter also just found out that a poem she had published in The Fiddlehead magazine has been selected for inclusion in the Best Canadian Poetry 2013 anthology.
In addition to Sunday's book launch, both Hunter and Bourassa have upcoming readings scheduled in the Lower Mainland. Hunter is joining with Daniela Elza, whose poems are also in Force Field. Hunter edited Elza's new collection, Milk Tooth Bane Bone. They'll read together May 23 at Cottage Bistro in Vancouver.
Bourassa is appearing at a Poetic Justice event May 26 at the Heritage Grill in New Westminster at 3 p.m. with Wilhelmina Salmi and RC Weslowski. She also leads writing workshops in the North Vancouver school district, as well as a monthly writing group at the Silk Purse Arts Centre through Pandora's Collective (pandorascollective.com) called Word Whips. Those in attendance write to prompts, then share their work. "Because there's no time to edit and there's no time for the critic to come, there's unbelievably honest writing that happens," she says.
"I love seeing what writing can do for other people and how it really makes people feel good about who they are," she adds.
Bourassa encourages North Shore residents to attend, especially as writing can be typically "such a lonely business."
"You have to find people who are in your tribe," she says.
Hunter is excited about the opportunity Sunday's launch event will provide to do just that. Originally from Ontario, Hunter, who has been living on the West Coast as of late, is a relative newcomer to North Vancouver, having been calling it home for the last four and a half years. "I've been with my head down and so I'm excited to start contributing more to the literary community here," she says.
Bourassa encourages writers and literary lovers to attend as well as the community at large. "It's a great opportunity to, first of all, if you've never been to a poetry reading to come and see if you're going to like it, and to listen to some of the best poets, I think, in Vancouver and in British Columbia," she says.
