"These are poems of unspeakable bravery. Out of this grieving comes a spiritual renewal and hope for us all. Read them with all your heart." These are the words of Patrick Lane, one of Canada's leading poets, describing Lisa Shatzky's release of a powerful book of poems, Do Not Call Me By My Name, published by Black Moss Press.
Shatzky has lived on Bowen Island for more than two decades. She is a poet and a trauma therapist who has worked extensively with First Nations communities in British Columbia. On Sunday, October 2, from 4 to 6 p.m., Shatzky will launch Do Not Call Me By Name at the Gallery at Artisan Square.
With music provided by local musician Ruta Yawny and various members of the community giving voice to Shatzky's poems, along with her own, the readings will stir, disturb and soothe the soul.
"These were poems I wasn't going to keep," Shatzky says with a smile. "I was done with them, they had served their purpose and I was going to throw them away. But then I showed them to a friend and the friend encouraged me to keep them."
The poems, just like the people they reflect, are not ever meant to be throwaways. They are meant to be protected and shared. Each poem contains the heart of a child, a woman or a man fighting for survival and justice. We watch as "the boy shooting up on the street corner is looking for exaltation" and we picture "the bag lady waltzing the grocery cart with a giant cactus in the middle, blooming a strawberry-gold flower, like passionfruit suckling the sky." We observe as "in an alley, a girl with black moon eyes hugs a cello with missing strings and still some notes manage to rise in the wind's ecstasy and turn the afternoon almost beautiful."
Sandra Lynn Lynxleg, child of a residential school survivor and District 22 principal of aboriginal education, says, "Lisa Shatzky writes in gunmetal residue-evidence bagged from Canada's largest crime scene of the residential school era. As she opened the vaulted doors into each child's memory, she was slashed by tormented truth, laughter at lost blood, lost stories."
In a poem called "Children Lost", Shatzky asks, "What do I do with their faces, the faces of those children whose stories have entered me by chance, like the small rain of a coastal forest, early in spring?" What she has done, in writing these poems, is to provide a safe harbour, a signal of understanding, to the many voices of members of the Native community who fell silent or to those who are still screaming to be heard.
"Perhaps these poems have been my way to honour the brave and courageous journeys of the generations that continue to struggle to survive," says Shatzky. "These are terrible and sad poems but they are also human and necessary."
Do Not Call me By My Name will be available for purchase at the book launch on Sunday, Oct. 2.
