A Snapshot into the Past
I witnessed an earlier verison of myself last week. At least seven years younger, sitting in 
a small room in Buchanan building at UBC with a group of women poets and George McWhirter navigating us through poetic territory (sidhe instead of siren, the luminous title blue salt, the reminder that an image always speaks the loudest). Pen poised, notebook filled. Busy, hot years; prolific. A new intimacy with words – especially grief, which kept inexplicably appearing on the white page.
This was me when Natural Disasters was written. And how did I come across this alternate? How did I manage to wade, again, into the murky past? A book launch. Or, more specifically, the launch of Natural Disasters, some seven years after it was completed.
The collection was first scheduled to appear in Fall 2003, only months after the publication of my first novel, When She Was Electric. What happened? The strange world of publishing. There were delays with the original publisher, promises that it would appear in the next season, then the next, and the next. After some time – and mounting frustration – it was revealed that the publisher would no longer be producing poetry books. Then, that it might go to the publishing house that took over the list. Then more uncertainty.
Natural Disasters found a new home with Palimpsest Press in 2006. It appeared like a magic window to the past this summer, in some fated manner, just months after my second novel, Beyond the Blue, was released. And there I was, as clear as a rubbed photo, smiling into the lens. It reminded me of who I had been, who I had come to be, and who I might turn into in another seven years. When I read a few of the poems at the launch, I realized I could see myself more clearly than I had before. A strange and wonderful gift, this snapshot, this moment in the past.