Kayla Czaga

“The Peace Lily,” p. 52

“I’ve been working a lot on grief lately and writing about the unexpected death of my father a few years back. Being able to talk about that in poetry, through a flower that I found at a grocery store, opened up a lot of possibilities for me. Since the pandemic started, I’ve gone back to this poem as an easy entry point to more writing because it can be harder to find meaning when you’re not in a community. Focusing on what you do have and what you can try to control, even if it doesn’t go anywhere, can be really powerful.”

Kayla Czaga is a mentor for online workshops at The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University. Dunk Tank, her latest poetry collection, is a finalist for the 2020 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.