Sometimes survival takes over and writers do not write. This is the saddest of times. I have been writing since I can remember. I stayed home from school for 3 weeks when I was 14 and wrote my first book. I would answer the phone when the school called and pretend to be my mom. It was easy. Mom was ‘sick’ as we called it. Every once in a while she took to her bed with a bottle of Johnny Walker and did not get up for a few weeks. That drunk lasted long enough for me to scribble my novel in my room. Dad was working as a telephone con man then, and was gone most of the time. He was selling subscriptions to magazine for the blind. I always thought that was funny. It was a fake magazine that was never delivered.

Other times when I did not write came suddenly when life got too hard. That happened a lot. Yet somehow I have survived and published four magazines, worked for newspapers, written thirty plays and five books. I have to write. Like breathing you can only hold your breath for so long. My thoughts need to tumble onto the pages or my head will explode. Since my husband of 54 years had a stroke and went into a home, I have struggled to survive financially, emotionally and physically. And then my sister died. They were my two biggest fans.

When I put my last ten years of poems together in Coddiwomple I thought I was back. It has been a year since I published that book. I read from it at a public reading once. I have gone to three writer events and tried to sell my books. Sold copies of all of them except for my last chapbook. It is the forgotten child. I do not believe anyone I know has read it, or shown interest in it . . .except for my daughter. I always have to remind myself that long after I am gone my words will carry on . . .my books (some of them) are in the Library of Congress, I hear from people once in the odd while that one of my books was important to them. rampage: the pathology of an epidemic

This book took me six years of research on missing and murdered women and children in Canada. Brave women I know walked across Canada carrying the names I collected based on the work of Mary Billy to Parliament Hill. Where they went then, I do not know. In the paper shredder perhaps? My daughter painted the cover and glued the names from the book . . .over 4,000 of them in the strands of the woman’s hair. She won the People’s Choice Award from Amnesty International at a Vancouver event. The women from walkforjustice are still walking and fighting to end the violence. I only have four books left. Lost files, publishers . . .I do not have an online copy. But I know it is an important work. Someday, someone will find a copy and care. Like I did when I found Mary Billy’s Femicide List on the dusty shelves of SFU.

Even though I am upset the publisher for Unlocking the Tin Box did a lousy editing job, I am happy with the book. Maybe a bit too raw, a bit too much exposure but that is me. A short while before I published I found out the man who I thought was my dad was not my DNA dad. The whole book really was about who he was and how it affected my life. It sent me on another journey and a lot of research to write Through My Lens. It is my favourite book; part truth, part of it made up. That is how I live my life.

My poetry books bruises & bad haircuts and Coddiwomple are full of surprises, even to me. I wonder sometimes who she was . . . the poet. Did she really suffer that much pain? The Adventures of Bob & Boo is a self published little book written about my grandson and I, illustrated by my six grandkids. One of the few books family actually read. That is the hard part knowing people you love have not read your work and they pretend they did. Worse then the ones who did read your words and disputed them, hated them. People who love tend to hurt you more then strangers who have no personal attachment to your words.

The point is, I guess . . .is that writers need to write. Nothing should stop you. Even now, going through the worst of times with the loss of my sister and seeing my husband lose our precious memories, I write. I write everyday in a journal. I write poems. I write angry letters. There is another book I know. When it will escape the confines of my rigid mind I do not know. The beauty of being a writer is that you are never too old. I encourage everyone to write their story. Regardless of social media hype, people still read. Hard cover books are not so popular but they still exist. Buy a book. Go to the Library. Celebrate the writers. It is not an easy job.