By Peter Christensen

Op-Ed Commentary

Writing is more often than not the telling of personal stories. It is a method for discovery, first for the writer then if the job is done with care and persistence, for the reader. Inevitably, at some point writing leads to facing the blank page and not being able to think of a darn thing to put down that might be of interest to others. Does that sound selfish?  I had run out of things to say. And so, I waited.

Then a miracle occurs.  A book arrives in the mail. A book by a friend and compatriot in writing poems.  What Is Broken Binds Us by Lorne Daniel.  Lorne and I met at the University of Lethbridge, and being naïve and full of ourselves we started our writing careers writing poems. As it turned out, a good discipline for restless minds.

As a young person I thought of poetry as a dissident undertaking, a method through which new ideas would be interpreted. To heck with Canadian Literature! Up until that time ‘Canadian Literature’, what there was of it, took place Down East and maybe a little on the West Coast.

The U of L was three years old. It was mostly staffed by American professors, at least the English Department, who had been motivated by post Vietnam War disillusionment to leave their United States and move to Western Canada. We got the idea that we could be poets from them? They inspired us.

With the help of these immigrants, we started a magazine called Canada Goose; a name chosen to stick a thumb up the behind of the eastern Canadian ‘Establishment’ as well as call attention to our first efforts at writing. We believed that our stories had value, that we did not need to migrate Down East and beg the attention of an established order: we would find our audience.

It was the late seventies, unknowingly we were part of an awakening, a new identity was brewing. The American’s they knew what was happening and pushed us. Western identity was happening in literature, art and business.

Lorne and I published our first books with a new Saskatchewan Press (Thistledown Press) and soon discovered that we could not make a living publishing poetry. Poets became university professors and taught English!  That did not fit our identities. Both of us pursued other careers.

After graduation Lorne became a bureaucrat working in Edmonton for the Alberta Government in Emergency Services and put his newly acquired writing skills to work writing Emergency Preparedness Plans. I got caught up in a ‘Back to Land’ endeavour, building a homestead, I worked seasonally as a Guide and eventually as a Park Ranger.

I did not put my acquired and learned writing skills to use making a living until Land Use Planning became a big deal in the East Kootenay and I was contracted writing for government. There was a need for someone to articulate the concerns of stakeholders and not a lot of people living in the rural areas had studied writing.

The ‘cowboy poetry revival’ of the late twentieth Century made us laugh at ourselves. And thank goodness, for after decades of struggling out from under the burden of ‘English Literature’ we unloaded ‘High English’ and set ourselves free from the medieval closed thinking shoveled into us as education during our early school years. Neither Lorne or myself are ‘Cowboy Poets, but we are Poets. Western Canadian Poets. Lorne wrote on the title page of his new book that came in the mail, “for Peter, partners in poetry for over 50 years.” That is a while.

Lorne’s published three poetry books early in his career and then there was a long period where he wrote reviews, newspaper columns and commentary.  In his new book, What Is Broken Binds Us, Lorne lives out in the open and bears witness to his life.

He writes about his troubled child, about estrangement, about repairs to a broken body, about his family.  He shows us how humans find their way with the help of story, reflection, discovery and friends. What Is Broken Binds Us is not entertainment, it is confession, it is simple and direct. It was a long time coming and is beautifully written and thought out.

What I love about Lorne’s writing is that there is no pretense, it is not academic posturing like so much ‘creative writing’ today. Lorne writes with conversational assurance that is bound to a personal form that carries what is being said forward without drawing attention to itself. There is much to admire. His poems reveal in- depth human experience; it lets us know that we are not alone.

To be sure, poetry is not to everyone’s liking and when one chooses to call themselves a poet and pulls together a book of poems it is a forgone conclusion that there will be a small audience.

Yet poets persist in publishing; they are compelled to share their experience. Every once in a while, a writer/poet comes to the table with honesty and perception rather than ambition. Maybe that’s all we can ask? That is what got me writing again, being reminded that writing is first an act of discovery. Thank you, Lorne.

– Peter Christensen is a Columbia Valley based writer and poet.

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