Prince Albert writer brings northern voice to Saskatchewan Poet Laureate role

The Saskatchewan Poet Laureate program, managed by the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild and held under the patronage of the Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan, celebrates the province’s people, spirit and land through poetry and writing.

As a person who lives outside of the two larger cities in the province, Monahan said she plans to use the role to promote a love of poetry and creative writing while making sure more remote communities get more opportunities to hear and share the written word.

“I believe in bringing poetry to the people,” she said. “That’s what I plan to do, is take poetry off the dusty library shelves and bring it out to the public.”

That means continuing work she has already done with marginalized people, residents in hospitals and care homes, newcomers, and public poetry projects in Prince Albert, including poetry along streets and riverbank trails.

It also means looking north.

“It’s important to me as a person living in north central Saskatchewan to bring poetry to rural and northern communities,” she said. “I really want to celebrate north central Saskatchewan and bring writing out to more northerly, more rural communities.”

When paNOW spoke with Monahan, she was already making plans to travel, starting with an open mic reading in Meadow Lake.

“That’s what I can do with the poet laureate position, I think, is spread the word, spread the poetry word,” she said.

Monahan is the author of five poetry collections, including A Slow Dance in the Flames, What My Body Knows, Verge, the co-written A Beautiful Stone: Poems and Ululations and The Door at the End of Everything. She has also written a chapbook, The Book of Bill.

Her work as a writer has taken her into schools, libraries and health-care spaces. She has been writer-in-residence at St. Peter’s College, Balfour Collegiate in Regina and the Prince Albert Public Library, and has worked as writer-on-the-wards at Victoria Hospital in Prince Albert.

Those experiences have helped shape her view of what poetry can do.

“It’s through time spent in the sharing of creative writing that we learn to understand ourselves and others,” Monahan said. “We can say, ‘This is me, these are my thoughts and feelings.’”

For Monahan, poetry is “a really big tent” that can include many forms and many voices. She said she wants people to see poetry as inclusive, rather than elitist.

“It’s a chance to say, this is me, this is who I am,” she said. “My hope always is that my poems might hit somebody in the heart, make them feel what I feel.”

Monahan said the lakes, forests and landscapes of north central Saskatchewan have long influenced her writing. She spends part of each year at a cabin, and said the north central region is core to how she sees the province.

“This is my home,” she said. “There are many very talented writers in our area. That’s what I want to do. I want to promote writers from our own area.”

Monahan said she expects the next two years will bring plenty of time on the road, and she plans to take advantage of the opportunities that come her way.

“A little bit, yeah,” she said. “Opportunities, they’ll come my way. So I plan to take advantage of them.”

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com

by Susan McNeil

Prince Albert writer brings northern voice to Saskatchewan Poet Laureate role

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