Pierrette Requier is city’s new poet laureate
Pierrette Requier named poet laureate
Edmonton’s newest poet laureate is an intense Franco-Albertan educator known for mentoring young writers.
Pierrette Requier was named Edmonton’s sixth poet laureate at a ceremony at the Stanley A. Milner Library on Tuesday. The 65-year-old says poetry allows her to explore eclectic styles and an innate interest in language and spirituality. Most of all, it helps her manage her prairie-bred restlessness.
“Poetry has always given me pleasure,” Requier said. “I’m really, extremely intense. I’ve had to manage that intensity my whole life, and I found poetry to be that space, the avenue, the way for me to manage and to really be a happy person.”
Requier came to Edmonton at 18, having moved from Donnelly, a small francophone village “on the flat, flat prairie” roughly 65 kilometres south of Peace River. She studied at the University of Alberta, then taught for five years in northern Alberta and Australia. She’s lived in Edmonton ever since, raising a family in the Ritchie neighbourhood.
For years, Requier taught elementary school language arts in both English and French. She loved the work, but began to crave intellectual stimulation. In the 1990s, she returned to the U of A for a master’s degree at St. Stephen’s College, a theological graduate school where Requier explored her own Catholic roots and goddess spirituality.
In the two decades since, Requier has encountered many “fellow mystics” and mentored numerous female writers. She’s served as a writer-in-residence at MacEwan University and organized the French Twist events at the Edmonton Poetry Festival. The new two-year poet laureate term begins July 1.
Requier will replace Mary Pinkoski, a 38-year-old slam poet champion who composed 30 pieces and performed 200 times during her stint.
In an emotional speech, Pinkoski spoke to the honour of holding a mirror up to Edmonton’s hidden corners and well-known spaces. She also helped create a youth poet laureate. But her most important moment, she said, was her recent poetic commemoration of Const. Dan Woodall, the officer killed on June 8 in southwest Edmonton. Pinkoski’s response was read on two TV networks and became a “permission of sorts to grieve.”
The position of poet laureate was created in 2005, following a campaign promise of former mayor Stephen Mandel. Alice Major, Edmonton’s first poet laureate and president of the Edmonton Poetry Festival, was initially skeptical about the idea, but was gradually won over as she worked with the Edmonton Arts Council to define the job. Rather than an honorific for an individual artist, Major says the position is to advocate for Edmonton’s diverse literary arts scene.
Major’s successors have been diverse, including Ted Blodgett, Roland Pemberton (a.k.a. hip-hop artist Cadence Weapon) and Anna Marie Sewell. Every year, the poet laureate reads “works of significance” to Edmonton City Council, to at least one citysponsored charity or fundraising event, and at least two other city functions. Edmonton’s poet laureate also receives an honorarium of $5,000 a year.
Requier has watched Edmonton change. Having worked to bridge Edmonton’s French and English arts scenes, she’s glad to have the stage to show another side, another language and voice of the city.
“Choosing a Franco-Albertan means there will be an openness,” she said. “I think this city is becoming really international in flavour.”