Building community

Outgoing laureate says poetry is vital to helping us understand, process feelings

As part of her duties as Calgary’s poet laureate, Sheri-d Wilson spoke before a group of precision oncologists eight months ago.

The gathering was, strangely enough, called POET (Precision Oncology Experimental Therapeutics) and it brought together some of the finest minds in the field. Wilson wrote an epic poem based on the experience, a piece that she has continued to work on in past months and hopes to get published.

“I look out into the room and I stopped,” says Wilson. “It was like a sci-fi film. I could see their brains. They were so smart, that their brains were extending from their head. I learned a lot from them about life and what’s happening with cancer and how the environment is causing all these cancers and how it affects your DNA and all these things. It was amazing to write for them.”

Three days later, she was asked to attend a conference put on by the Alberta Ecotrust Foundation. She used the experience to compose a “collective poem” that brought in hash-tagged lines from other attendees.

“One group was talking about how the environment causes cancer and the other one, from another point of view, was talking about creating a more holistic Earth,” Wilson says. “The two back-toback were phenomenal as a poet. It was almost like I was walking on a dream. I was learning a lot and taking in all of this beautiful information about the things I’m most keen on, which is the environment and how to create a more holistic environment to live within.”

It’s just a few of the ways that Wilson brought her own personality and gifts for performance and community-building to the role of poet laureate, the city’s fourth since the program began in 2012. Earlier this week, the City of Calgary

announced Mount Royal University professor and playwright Natalie Meisner as the new poet laureate. The baton will be passed in October, which is also when Wilson will be releasing her legacy project representing her two-year tenure in the role.

The book YYC Pop: Portraits of People has been described as “extraordinary stories of ordinary people; ordinary stories of extraordinary people” and will be made up of the work of 77 poets, some firmly established while others are offering their first published works.

“I asked the community to write a portrait of somebody that they know, someone who without that person the city just wouldn’t be the same,” Wilson says. “I got some beautiful pieces in and that is going to be in a book by Frontenac House. There is also an online exhibit for people who didn’t make it into the book. Because there was such amazing poetry I thought we had to show this. So there’s an online exhibit on my website as well that has about 80 poets there and you can go there and see those poems.”

Some lines from the published poems in the book will be part of Poetry in Transit in October, where they will be published on city buses. Since then, Wilson has also put a call out to Calgary students of all ages to write a portrait. That will also eventually make up an online exhibit.

“We might even turn that into a book, just to keep it going,” Wilson says.

Wilson said she enjoyed her role and being a cultural ambassador for the city. During her tenure, she was appointed to the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest civilian honours, for her contributions to spoken-word poetry and the community as a whole.

As the world self-isolates and, perhaps, begins to ask fundamental questions about our nature and society, the role of a poet will continue to be valuable and essential, she says.

“It makes me dig deeper and reach higher,” Wilson says. “I think poetry is often written about the extremes in life and that’s what makes us feel those wider feelings. I think it’s time to really look inside and to observe how we live and what we’re doing. That goes for personal and universal.”

Along with the aforementioned projects she has on the go, these concerns continue to keep her busy.

“I’ve been inspired to write a huge amount and also to write about other things because I have time,” she says. “I have a lot of time. It’s like a writing retreat, so I’ve been treating it someone like that.”

“I’ve also been able to do a lot of gardening,” she adds with a laugh.

I think poetry is often written about the extremes in life and that’s what makes us feel those wider feelings. I think it’s time to really look inside and to observe how we live.

SHERI-D WILSON