Sometimes Lisa Shatzky carries around a few of her poetry books. She leaves them behind on a bus, at a train station or the airport. Once she got a phone call from a stranger who found her book in the Montreal subway. This is what her poetry is all about making connections. "Writing can be from a different place or a different time and suddenly, there is this bridge that connects us," Shatzky says. "The point is for one soul to touch another."
Shatzky's new book, Do Not Call Me By My Name, is one of six poetry books that have been shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award by the Canadian League of Poets. "The book was published by Black Moss Press in 2011. The publishers enter the poetry books published that year for the annual award," she explained, adding that the winner will be announced on June 16 in Saskatoon where the poets who have been shortlisted have the opportunity to present a 20-minute reading from their books.
Shatzky has lived on Bowen for 15 years. She had written poetry as a teenager but had stopped when she was 19. Eight years ago, she started again. Since then, she has been published in many magazines and anthologies. Her first volume of poems titled Wandering in Yesterday's Rain was self-published. And Do Not Call Me By My Name, published by Black Moss Press. came out last year. Shatzky says that the award has generated lots of interest in her work and it came at the right time as she has three manuscripts ready. One is a collaboration with Don MacLean entitled He said, She said. The second is called A Pail for the Blackberries and the third is Blame it on the Moon, a volume of 40 poems that explore humankind's search for connection and unity.
Shatzky's background as a therapist often plays into her poetry. "Therapy is paying attention to the moment it's a celebration of the moment. We realize that things are always in flux, always changing," she said. "But for a brief moment we connect. This is part of the therapeutic journey and art does the same thing. It looks at details and connects all of us through its universal meaning." This is what Shatzky loves about poetry that it examines the moment, that it can tell the story of a life by looking at a flower, or by describing a walk.
She says, "Our lives are made up of moments but we tend to live them in terms of weeks or years. But by the end of day, we realize that it was made up of 20 or 30 meaningful moments whether it's eating a strawberry or saying hello to a stranger."
Shatzky says that therapy focuses on the moment with the intention to bring unity and integration to bits of shattered pieces of life. Do Not Call Me By My Name is a good example. "There are 40 poems in the book," she says. "They are stories of different First Nation youth living with survivors of residential schools. They are different voices talking about the particular but looking at the universal meaning."
To Shatzky, these poems show that even in life's challenges, there is richness and a gift. "Some of these poems deal with the horrific and they show that even in ashes, even in the darkest moments, the human spirit can prevail."
She quotes a few lines from the book: "From the outside it looks like some fucked up people. But come closer... Listen, listen. There is music there. Even in the pain and sadness, there is music. Holding us together." Shatzky adds, "It's never just black and white. Even in the chaos, there is unity."
Shatzky says that the work on Do Not Call Me By My Name gave her the idea for her next book. "I was looking at the theme of our need for wholeness and the urge to belong to something greater than ourselves," she says. "For me, this is the underlying drive of all of our behaviours and we express this sometimes in beautiful ways and sometimes in terrible ways."
Blame it on the Moon starts with a poem titled Just Another Day on West Broadway. It has been published in the Vancouver Review, a glossy cultural magazine that picks one poem per issue. Shatzky says, "I like this poem and it's rare that I still like my poems after six months." She feels that this is an example of not being able to step "into the same river twice," that she's moved on from the place from where she wrote the poems. "And when I finally get a good poem, there is always the fear, can I write another?" she says.
