Poet thrilled first book on shortlist
Raye Hendrickson’s first Saskatchewan Book Awards experience will be livestreamed
We’re checking in with a different Saskatchewan artist each week to talk about their life and work during COVID-19.
This week, we hear from Raye Hendrickson, a poet in Regina. Hendrickson’s first book, Five Red Sentries, is shortlisted in two categories during Thursday’s Saskatchewan Book Awards — the First Book Award and the City of Regina Book Award.
Q What’s it like having your first book nominated for two awards?
A It’s absolutely amazing, awesome. I feel so honoured and proud to be recognized in this way. It really means — I can’t even tell you how much it means. It’s just awesome. I’m over the moon with it.
(Watching the livestreamed awards show,) It’ll just be my partner and I, and I plan to dress up and maybe, I don’t know, have a glass of sherry with me as we listen online to the announcement.
It is such a strange year and I know all of us who are nominated probably feel quite bereft at not having the gala. But, it’s just the year, so it’ll just be fun to hear the results and see what happens.
Q Tell me about Five Red Sentries.
A It’s actually a smattering of poems that I’ve written for over the last 25 years. And so it’s a mishmash of themes and topics: It’s about grief; it’s about family; it’s about relationships; it’s about nature; it’s about the cosmos. It’s just a whole wide variety of styles and topics. And it was just such a thrill to have the book published after gathering all those poems together over all those years, and finally deciding that I should see if a book could come from them all. And so when Thistledown Press said they wanted to publish it, I was absolutely thrilled and honoured.
Q What does your life look like right now?
A I’m fortunate to be able to be back to work. I’m a massage therapist, and I was able to return to work on May 19. But I had two months when I couldn’t work, when I was not allowed to do that. So life is returning to some semblance of normal. I found that when I was not working, I was kind of scattered actually.
I did some online training for my massage business and met with my writing groups online and over the phone, so we were able to keep touch that way. I did some writing, although I found it a little harder to concentrate. I’m able to get into that more these days again, for which I’m thankful.
And now that this summer’s here, we’re doing backyard projects and that’s fun, too.
Q What are you working on now?
A I have been working on an extended poem about my great-grandmother, and I’m writing it in her voice, so as if she were writing the poems. It’s kind of tracing her life from her move from Sweden in the 1800s to Minnesota, and changing countries, changing her whole life.
She had many sorrows in her life. And so just in her voice trying to describe some of those sorrows, some of those life events for her.
I had most of the poem done before my book was published, and so I’m trying to come back to it now with fresh eyes and revise it and do a little bit more showing in the poems rather than telling, I suppose I could say. So we’re becoming acquainted again.
Honestly, some of these poems I feel like she has just given them to me. … It feels like it’s in the hard part now, the editing part. But I’ve grown quite fond of her, and I actually also feel quite honoured that she has chosen me really to be her voice. Because she never learned to speak English, really, and I don’t feel like as a woman, in a strange country, that she had much of a voice. She had a fairly isolated life, and so I feel like I’m giving her a voice. So it is an interesting project for sure.
At this point, it’s called Empty Arms.
Q What has changed in your life since COVID -19 hit?
A Well, when I couldn’t work, I really missed seeing my massage clients. I’ve been doing that for 20 years and so I’ve gotten to be pretty close to some of them. And just missing that human interaction with people other than my partner, and I’m so grateful every day for her through this whole thing. I think that the biggest thing has been not having people into our home, not gathering with friends, not having that social routine that we had kind of built together … being so isolated from each other, physically, in person.
I was privileged to be a part of the virtual online Cathedral Village Arts Festival this year reading as one of the Book Award nominees during their literary evening, and it was quite fun to pick up my book again and choose poems to read out loud, because I hadn’t done that for months. And it’s like, ‘Oh, right, this is really fun to just get acquainted with my book again.’ It was kind of neat.
It felt very odd reading to a little green dot on a computer. I found myself more nervous at the start than if I’m in front of a whole crowd of people — I really enjoy reading in public. So that was an interesting experience for me.
There was no interaction there. It was just me reading to the technician and to Kam Teo of the Book Awards as my audience that I could see. So that really was a little odd.
It was just such a thrill to have the book published after gathering all those poems together over all those years.
Q What media are you consuming during self-isolation?
A I’m a fan of mysteries . ... The library lets you loan (e-)books on Libby. So I did some reading on my tablet, just some lightweight mysteries. I couldn’t get into anything really heavy duty; my brain just wouldn’t absorb it.
And I like to watch a lot of home renovation type shows and some Netflix shows, stuff like that.
■ To watch the Saskatchewan Book Awards livestream on Thursday, June 18, 7 p.m., visit Facebook.com/saskatchewanbookawards.