National Poetry Month: Guest Post from Catherine Owen: Writing Through Grief, Grieving Through Writing

ECW Press, April 2014.

Writing DESIGNATED MOURNER over a span of four years prior to and following my spouse’s death from an addiction-induced heart attack has been both the hardest and the most obvious act I have undertaken. Obvious because, well, that’s what writers do, they write. In the face of everything. Even when they don’t want to, when they are exhausted to the core from crying.

Hardest as it feels at times like reduction, false transcendence, impossible closure. Now that I have the book in my hands I sometimes recoil at the notion that it has become this – text – instead of him- living being. And then despite the beauty, terror.

There are many form poems in this book, both strict and adapted, and it was form, old fashioned and tinged with predictability that, perhaps ironically, made writing about such post modern sufferings like crack addiction possible for me. Form also contained my grief at Chris’s death in a way that looser styles couldn’t, enabled a singing in that seemingly relentless, at times, darkness.

Excerpts from DESIGNATED MOURNER:

“The Crackhead’s Palindrome”

It comes right down to this. Just one more hit

and he will be cured of the need

for this frenzy in the dark, this scrounging:

things he can pawn, lies he can tell.

She will know then; all will be revealed.

Something will save him from the sharp,

tight hankering in his brain, this net

he’s cast around the world: the feel

of pressing the glass mouth full, sucking

and the sense that he is everything

in that one split second rush.

Now he is Hercules eternally, is he not?

So surely this time that will be it.

O surely this time that will be it.

Now he is Hercules eternally, is he not?

In that one split second rush there

is the sense that he is everything, sucking,

pressing the glass mouth full, the feeling

he’s been cast around the world, a net

tight & hankering in his brain.

Something will save him from the sharp. She

who will know then; all will be revealed —

those things he’s pawned, the lies he can tell.

All for this frenzy in the dark, this scrounging

to be cured of the need.

It comes right down to this. Just one more hit.

“Sonnet on You Not”

So I am still in the world of things

& you not, no longer needing to select

the latest brand of cereal or car,

to choose whether to sit on chair or couch,

use a glass or mug, the thousand everyday

moments of purchase & desire, now I am

left in the world of things while you

have lifted beyond the weight of coverlets

& seatbelts & the body, that even in loving,

how heavy it can be, yes, you are unclothed

and outside of your cartilage & skin & all

that bric-a-brac of bones; you have flown

into the lightness where dust & the dream

conjoin and I am left behind, another thing

in the world of things.

Catherine Owen.

Catherine Owen is the author of nine collections of poetry, the most recent being TROBAIRITZ, SEEING LESSONS, FRENZY, and the chapbook STEVE KULASH & OTHER AUTOPSIES. Her collection of memoirs and essays is called CATALYSTS: confrontations with the muse. FRENZY won the Alberta Book Prize and other collections have been nominated for the B.C. Book Prize, the ReLit, the CBC Literary Prize, and the George Ryga Award. Owen lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.