A duo of Canadian literary notables engaged in a breathtaking reading of their works at St. Peter’s College Library on Thursday night. Jane Munro, who hails from Vancouver, and Katherine Lawrence of Saskatoon delivered pieces from their latest works and dug into their catalogues for other passages. 

Jane Munro has frequented St. Peter’s Abbey during writers’ retreats for decades, and she expressed appreciation at being back to read. During the pandemic, Munro published three books, one of which was False Creek, an examination of both the physical and ecological area of Vancouver marked by inlets, creeks and ravines, important in culture, history and environment. Some of the poems put traditional Indigenous culture and presence in stark contrast to what characterizes Vancouver today. Her poem “When Vesuvius Blows Up” reimagines the modern urban centre built on the ancient core buried underneath, its subterranean truths hidden from the light of day. “Walking Home from Vanier Park” sets the traditional homeland of the Squamish, then a settlement of 15,000 people, against the backdrop of King Lear in a Shakespeare in the park performance, a haunting example of colonial culture supplanting what existed. With lines that include “I didn’t know, I didn’t notice” and “in languages I don’t know, spirits I can’t see,” the poem is revelatory in its search for the truth behind recent revelations of missing children and lidar scanned gravesites.  

In a post-reading comment, Munro reflected on what poetry brings as a lens for a further examination of a personal or collective search for Truth and Reconciliation. 

“I think poetry provides an architecture for the imagination of the reader, and it’s something a reader needs to move into and furnish with their own memories and feelings, attitudes and experience. The poetry has to be spacious enough and clear enough that it’s something that can be claimed and moved into and lived in by someone else.” 

Munro shifted from her luminous poetry to a haunting and loving recollection of her mother’s struggle to recover from injuries sustained in a house fire, relayed in her memoir Open Every Window. Listeners were left breathless through the account of the harrowing experience of a woman’s will, in the face of hopeless odds, to live, the spiritual bedrock on which her hope lay, and the love of family bracing against the inevitable.  

Much of the memoir addresses Munro’s experience with her husband’s dementia and coping with that inevitable slipping away.  

Katherine Lawrence is no stranger to St. Peter’s Abbey as well. She noted that much of her work had been produced during writer retreats. 

A good portion of Lawrence’s presented work centred around relationships, particularly with her mother. Lawrence’s remarkably ability to present recollections with such vibrant immediacy and rich imagery drew listeners into a world that they recognized, but at the same time felt as a uniquely personal experience for the writer. The poem “Fabric,” from her collection Lying to Our Mothers, literally wove stitches and seams of colourful imagery, connecting reminiscences of sewing and fashion into an understand of the bond and the struggles between mothers and daughters. 

From her latest collection, Black Umbrella, the poem “My Beautiful Mother” took the listener back to 1964 and the nervous anticipation of a parent-teacher encounter with such remarkable sensory relief and detail, that the listener almost has memories of the writer flooding back. The detail is a hallmark of Lawrence’s approach. 

“It’s the ability of poetry to really still the mind and focus the mind, and in doing so, when I moved into that still and necessary place, I am looking for, with all my senses, detail. I am mining for specifics, and the more specific I get, the more the work is loaded with sense. As soon as I imagine the smile on my mother’s face, I can see the powder on her face, the floral scent of her hairspray. At the end of the day, if those specifics translate to a listener or reader, then ‘Hallelujah’.” 

The reading marked a welcome return of literary events, this one sponsored by the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild. Organizers say there will be more to come in the new year.