At the end of June, 2021, I retired from my position as Editor of Contemporary Verse 2: The Canadian Journal of Poetry, after twenty years. Established in 1975 by Dorothy Livesay, one of Winnipeg’s most famous poets, CV2, as it is more generally known, is one of Canada’s best known literary magazines and is today Canada’s oldest poetry quarterly. Its Editor since 2001, I had actually been involved with CV2 since 1993, and so it had been part of my life for almost thirty years. I can honestly quote Dickens here and say, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” The work of literary magazines can be very heady, but it is also complicated, difficult and never-ending.
As is often the case in the arts, working at a small literary magazine doesn’t pay all the bills, and so I was often supplementing my work at CV2 with other jobs in writing and publishing, including, for a time, working as the Assistant Managing Editor of a small Winnipeg book publisher, and after that, as a Submissions Assistant for another publisher and Winnipeg literary magazine. From 2007, achievements in my own writing, coupled with this previous experience, culminated in new work as a poetry editor for a number of small literary book publishers in the city where I had the privilege of working with several amazing Winnipeg poets.
But as proud and grateful as I am for these opportunities, none of it would have come about without the desire to write poetry—to become the best poet I had the capacity to be. Part of achieving that capacity was to learn as much as I could about the “business” of poetry publishing alongside my creative practice.
By the time I first arrived in Winnipeg, nearly four decades ago now, I had already been writing for years. While I had, over that time, experimented with other genres, including short fiction, poetry was my comfort zone. And as far as my writing practice, if you could call it that, it was at best on and off—on when it was on and very off when it was off. Sometimes for years.
Still, writing poetry was what I returned to when I wanted to make sense of the world around me—when I was struggling—when there just didn’t seem to be words capable of lifting experience from silence. Perhaps that’s why I like to say that rather than inspire, Winnipeg challenged me to take my writing—my poetry—seriously. I didn’t—couldn’t—write about the spectacular cold of its winters, the vast hush of the prairies that surround the city—they weren’t mine to write about. Instead, I wrote against them. Winnipeg’s challenge to me, as I would ultimately come to understand, was the challenge to find the poetry in my own experience—my own voice.
I don’t remember exactly when the prospect of publishing crept into the expectations for my writing. Mostly because for the first few years of living in Winnipeg, my new “writing practice” was just that, literally writing poems over and over again—often in pencil—until they felt like poems. Then I would type them up on my old electric typewriter–I didn’t have a computer back then. Once typed I considered the poem finished and would move on to the next.
Eventually or inevitably, there was a point that I thought my work was ready for publication. It seemed like the next logical step in my writing journey. But without any real understanding of how publishing worked, my first foray into publishing was a bit of a disaster, to me anyway. Rejections all around.
I didn’t give up on writing as I might have in earlier years. Instead, I doubled down, more than a little determined to prove myself to what I perceived to be a faceless, wall of “mean” editors who just didn’t get my work.
Fortunately, “getting even” has never been my strong suit, not creatively at any rate, and I soon found myself going back over my work, eventually coming to the understanding that it wasn’t ready for prime time, and not sure what to do about that.
I didn’t send out my work again for a long time after. Instead, I went in search of help. The Winnipeg writing community was very different back then. Finding writing resources was not as straight forward as it might be today. The internet was in its infancy and writing resources were still largely analogue.
Ultimately, I started with what I knew—university courses—enrolling first in a creative writing course at the University of Manitoba, and then one with Continuing Ed. at the University of Winnipeg.
It was through those experiences that I eventually discovered the Manitoba Writers Guild. Back then, the MWG was a much more vital organization than exists today. In those days, the MWG offered an amazing range of practical support for writers, including an annual conference, workshops, events for new writers, a mentor program and a host of other experiences for established and beginning writers like myself—including the opportunity to volunteer. Most remarkable to me though, was that it was where I found my people, other writers, many who would become lifelong friends, mentors and later colleagues.
It was through connections made at the MWG that I also became involved in publishing. What began initially as an effort to support my own writing, evolved into a deep appreciation for the symbiotic relationship between writers and publishers. However irascible or impatient one was with the other, it was the reality then and now: writers and publishers can’t survive without each other. Not long after receiving my first professional publication credit in Prairie Fire Magazine, I began to volunteer with them. Several months later, after a few of my poems appeared in CV2, I was invited to sit as a member of their Editorial Collective, then I was in charge of actually selecting work for publication.
In terms of my writing, all of this experience eventually coalesced into a successful grant to the Manitoba Arts Council. That grant changed my life entirely. I was able to leave my full-time paid work at a local community health clinic and devote myself to the creation of my first full-length poetry manuscript.
But just as I thought I had everything figured out, publishing threw me another curve ball. The local literary press, where I had submitted that manuscript, rejected it almost outright.
This time, rather than disappointment, I felt relief. This is because in the meantime I had written a poem and would go on to write several related pieces that would completely transform how I felt about my writing, what I wanted for my poetry and what I could do as a poet.
That poem was entitled “bombs” and it fused two pivotal experiences. The first, the detached horror/curiosity of teenagers forced to sit through an assembly on the danger of unexploded ordinance and what to do if you found it. It was, back then, a regular part of the curriculum in the junior high school I attended on Guam–my family moved to Guam when I was twelve—and it was possible to still encounter literal bombs on the island left over from the Japanese occupation and heavy bombardments by Americans during World War II to take the island back. The second experience was the devastating loss of my brother to AIDS in 1990 when he was only thirty-one.
I wrote “bombs” from start to finish in one sitting and when it was done I knew in my bones it was done and that it was perfect. Was it the best poem I‘d ever written? I can’t say. But what I do know is that it was the best writing experience I’d ever had and perhaps will ever have. It was an experience I came away from knowing better than anything else that I was a poet. From that piece came others that would eventually become my debut book of poetry, The Flame Tree[1]—poems that would also inform the work that would become my second book, The Ways Boys Sometimes Are and Other Poems[2].
And while I am very proud of my publications, and make no mistake publication is important, what I learned is that, ultimately, it’s not publishing that makes someone a poet—it’s all the work of making poetry or whatever a person makes of their passion—the living it—the challenging it and the letting it challenge back. Winnipeg taught me that and I am very grateful.
So, from this former “mean ol’ editor” to all those writers out there: I know that it doesn’t seem like it sometimes—but trust me, all those literary magazines, all those book publishers are rooting for you. Even the cold-worn heart of Winnipeg is rooting for you. So go write, poke, prod, bust those poems wide open, and then repeat. Like I said, trust me, it will all work out.
[1] The Flame Tree. 1998. The Muses’ Company, an imprint of J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing Inc.
[2] The Way Boys Sometimes Are and Other Poems. 2006. The Muses’ Company, an imprint of J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing Inc.
Clarise Foster’s family moved to Guam when she was twelve, and she has since lived in Hawaii, Seattle, and Vancouver but has called Winnipeg home for four decades. In 2021 she retired after 20 years as Editor of CV2, overseeing the magazine’s transformation into one of Canada’s most important poetry journals. Her poetry collections include The Flame Tree and The Way Boys Sometimes Are.
Clarise was the recipient of the 2016 Making a Mark Award, which celebrates the outstanding contribution of a Winnipeg artist or arts administrator to the growth and development of the arts in our city.