Raven Creates People

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I shared this new version of the old Haida creation story — the one in which Raven creates humankind on North Beach — with Grade 8 and 9 students in White Rock on Monday.

It looks like he's still watching from that beach, too! (Or is that out of the side of his head?)

Just say the whole poem out loud, and you can hear him telling you the whole story. Still laughing.

The Haida knew that laughter made for serious literature, and that a four dimensional world could be represented in two dimensional art.

My first poem on the coast!


The view from Tao Hill, Haida Gwaii.

Readings and Workshops in White Rock

Put your foot on the gas!

I will be in White Rock, B.C., on January 20 and 21, 2008, for a bit of mid-winter post-turkey and truffles celebration of writing. It is going to be a special pleasure to bring my poem Song for a Beached Whale at White Rock to town. She was beached there on the sand a few years back, and after she lay there, beached again, in my mind for a few years, she came out in this poem. A bit of the old testament, a lament for lost innocence, and a prayer for the voice, ah, I love this poem.

On Sunday, January 20, I will offer morning blue pencil sessions at the South Surrey/White Rock Community Arts Council Gallery. Editing doesn't have to be painful. Sometimes it's like this:



See, that's not so bad!

In the afternoon, I will present a writing workshop, that I call Getting Unstuck Without Coming Undone

I mean, what with the fog one day and the stars that night, this is no time of the year for getting stuck in the back eddy of a plot. To get us all out of that, I've designed this workshop, to get us into the new year with style.

So, if writer’s block is peering at you from your breadbox, like this:


July 1, 2007, Spences Bridge, B.C.

or if you have a character that has taken over and left your story behind, or if you can’t find the turning point to get your plot moving again, or have a poem that just won’t end, or can’t get an opening paragraph that will grab your publisher by the collar, or are writing a non-fiction piece that threatens to run away into fiction, well, nothing new there, is it. It's just any other day in a writer's world. I've been facing these ghouls down for 35 years, and have created a toolbox of techniques to get past them, and even to use their difficulties to drive my writing forward into new (well, I hope so!) directions.

So, bring a piece of your writing, or several pieces – or work on one of my many hand-outs, or on a piece you write in class. By the end of the day, I'll have passed along a good number of my own writing tools. By the time the day is over, you'll have a path to follow, and a good walking stick, too.

For more information or to register for the workshop or editing sessions, call 604-536-8333.

Hey, there's more!



I'll also be reading from my work at the Community Arts Council Gallery on Monday, January 21st. This event begins at 7 pm and is free of charge. Expect to hear my whale sing, selections from Return to Open Water, my selected poems, and from The Wolves at Evelyn, which won the 2007 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in BC Literature.


Thanksgiving Sunday, 2007, Penticton, B.C.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Can a Story Change?

According to traditional stories, in the dreamtime a grizzly bear tried to jump across the water from the mainland to Vancouver Island. It almost made it, too, but, unfortunately, landed just on the edge of the water, which instantly turned it to stone. This is that rock. It's in Campbell River, a 30 minute walk from my house, and right across Discovery Passage from Quadra Island.

But look what's happened to it! I walked there last week to take pictures of the graffiti, because I think graffiti is the art of our time: so many people just wanting to write their names, to get some kind of permanence. I mean, how honest!

Since the tide was low, I walked around to the water side of the rock, to see what was painted there. When I saw this eye, I just had to take a picture of it, but it was only when I put my own eye to the camera lens that I saw the salmon, instantly take shape from the rock. When I lifted the camera away from my eye, the salmon vanished; it needed the camera to flatten the depth of the rock, like looking at a constellation deep in the night sky.

Well, that's the news from here in Campbell River. I'm making notes to write a book about the dreamtime. Up in the Interior of British Columbia it happened along the rivers. These megalithic rocks, beasts turned to stone, line the Fraser and the Thompson Rivers, and the salmon that fight their way into the grasslands to spawn must swim past them all. Here, the dreamtime took place under the sea, and in the tidal zone.

That's where the dreams are. That's where civilization started here. And art.

If you have any stories about the undersea world, I'd love to hear.

Happy New Year!