The M Word giveaway

Now for something completely different, I'd like to encourage those of you on GoodReads to join the giveaway for The M Word, a book in which I have an essay exploring parenting under the fear of loss.

The catalogue copy reads:

There isn’t a mother who hasn’t thought of herself as stationed far outside maternity’s central zone — that imaginary place where all the babies are cooing, bananas are never bruised, and every woman is comfortable enough in her own skin to disregard a magazine’s blaring provocation: Are You Mom Enough?

In this original and sometimes provocative collection of essays, Saleema Nawaz, Alison Pick, Nancy Jo Cullen, Carrie Snyder, and many others explore the boundaries of contemporary motherhood. There are the women who have had too many children or not enough. There are women for whom motherhood is a fork in the road, encountered with contradictory emotions. And there are those who have made the conscious choice not to have children and then find themselves defined by that decision.

Here some of Canada’s best writers face down motherhood from the other side of the picket fence. The M Word. It means something to every woman. Exactly what it means is rarely simple.

I'll be writing a bit more about the essay and the anthology in the next few months. I don't have my copy yet, but am really looking forward to reading it, some of my favourite Canadian women writers have essays in it and edited by the excellent Kerry Clare. Thrilled to be in such fine company!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The M Word

by Kerry Clare

Giveaway ends April 10, 2014.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

inspire and influence

When the always lovely Kerry Clare asked me to come up with a list of poetry books by Canadian women in honour of International Women's Day for 49th Shelf, I was thrilled. I love poetry by Canadian women! So I went to my shelf and pulled off about twenty titles, started to leaf through them and began to panic.

I panicked because I knew I wasn't allowed to have a list that long and I had to find a way to bring the number down to a manageable eight to ten.

I panicked because I had many books written by friends in that stack, knew I couldn't include them all, and worried over hurt feelings.

I panicked because I saw all the other poetry books on my shelf that I hadn't read yet.

I panicked because I thought of all the other poetry books that I don't even own that I haven't read yet, though I know I should.

I panicked because I thought I'm not nearly well-read enough to come up with a list that holds any authority.

And then I told myself to shut up, buck up, and get it done.

So instead of coming up with a list of poetry books by Canadian women that I proclaim to be the best or most important or about ________ (insert subject here), I decided to come up with a list of books that I keep returning to. I reread most of them again while writing the list (though not Elizabeth Bachinsky's God of Missed Connections--my copy went missing during the rehearsals for Initiation Trilogy. I need to get a new copy!) and while I was going through them, there were a few times when I would freeze on a poem. I could see how specific poems influenced Glossolalia and newer unpublished work.

I'll tell you a secret, dear reader. I'm a little nervous that these poets will pick up my book, read the poem(s) that their work influenced, be outraged, and call me a thief. I believe the connections are subtle and they were definitely unintentional, just great poetry doing what it often does: inspire and influence.

Not every collection has a clear line to a specific poem and I am curious to whether others will see the influence or not. I'm not going to be any clearer than this as I'm already feeling a little vulnerable mentioning it in this somewhat public space.

If you are so inclined, go read the list here and then come back and tell me which books by Canadian women you keep returning to.

talking about talking about

Over the last month I've been in an email conversation with the lovely Kerry Clare of Pickle Me This fame about talking about talking about motherhood. She asked some difficult questions and I wrote and wrote my way through trying to sound intelligent in my answers. I wish we could have been able to have this conversation over tea and scones, but unfortunately we live provinces apart and consequently we wouldn't have been able to share it with you.

While participating in this email exchange, I realized that there are some topics a person can talk about forever, and for me this is one of them. Here's is the start of our conversation. If you'd like to read the rest, you can find it here.

Kerry: Marita, I think I’m beginning to change my mind. You see, I’ve been fascinated by narratives about motherhood since before I was a mother, and as I prepared to become one, I devoured the modern “ambivalent motherhood canon”.

But I’ve been reluctant to pursue such narratives myself. When I interview writers, I insist that their work is what’s important, and I avoid questions about writing and motherhood that would probably fascinate me as much. I worry that such questions would undermine the writers’ works, would undermine the individuals as artists, would undermine me as an interviewer and a reader. But I can’t shake a suspicion that these questions are important, that perhaps we just have to carve out a time and space for them. Or not. I’m not sure.

Did you feel any similar qualms as you embarked upon your Motherhood and Writing interviews?

Marita: When I first conceived of the Motherhood and Writing interviews, I had no qualms at all. I think that may have been because I really wasn’t aware of all the books written about motherhood and writing. I’m sure if I had dug a bit, I would have discovered them and not felt the need to start the interview series.

The interviews came from purely selfish place. I wanted content for my blog, but more importantly, I really needed to know how other writing mothers did it. My boys are twenty-two and a half months apart. When my second child was born, I panicked. I remember clearly breast feeding him while reading a biography of Margaret Laurence and having the terrifying flash that I would never write again. I knew I wasn’t as driven as Laurence was and couldn’t make the choices she had. My nascent career was over.

After my husband helped talk me down, I realized that of course my career wasn’t over. There were many, many writing mothers out there who were kind, loving, stable mothers. I wanted to talk to them simply to know how they did it. How does a mother balance all those things mothers do and make time to write. And I wanted to talk to women who were in various stages in their careers–from award winning to not yet published.

The project was supposed to be just for a year, but I’ve managed to draw it out longer, partly out of laziness and partly whenever I think it’s time to shut it down, I’ll get an email or a comment on the blog from some writing mother out there to thank me. It’s important, especially in those early difficult years, for those in the trenches to be reminded that they are not alone, that there are other women out there who are struggling, too. And, of course, that it will get better.

That said, recently I’ve begun to have qualms. Maybe it’s because I’m no longer in the trenches, or maybe because I’ve become sensitive that I might be contributing to the creation of a “motherhood ghetto”.

We would never ask a man how he manages to write while being a father, so why do we feel it’s relevant to ask a mother? Is it because there is an assumption that the woman is at home with the babies and that the man is not? And that if she isn’t, she should be? It’s insulting to both mothers and fathers. But I don’t know what I’d rather see–interviewers asking fathers what they ask mothers, or stop asking mothers what they don’t ask fathers.

So, yes, I am now quite conflicted. I hope that in the context of my interview series, the questions I ask aren’t insulting because that is the point of the interview. But I don’t think if I was interviewing a writer in another context, I would feel comfortable about asking about their relationship between writing and motherhood, unless the writer brought it up or it was clearly related to the writing.