It has been a long road for Creighton-based poet Brenda Schmidt – one that has led to her publishing her sixth book of literature.
Called Culverts: Beneath the Narrow Road, the book combines quotes from interviews with original poetry, prose, essays, photographs and other work. It took Schmidt 15 years of on-and-off effort to finish the project. The book has been published through Saskatoon-based Thistledown Press, which has also printed two other books written by Schmidt.
“I really pushed myself for this book. There were a lot of interviews with people that took place, about what their memories are and if they had any stories, their experiences,” said Schmidt.
“There are so many people out there with stories.”
The interviews conducted for the book include people from multiple different cities, towns and provinces. That includes people from the Flin Flon and Creighton area too, she said, but good luck picking them out – Schmidt published the anecdotes anonymously in the book.
“Some of the people I interviewed I know very well and some of the people I interviewed I didn’t know at all. It’s about the ways we find commonalities between our experiences and our experiences with the world,” she said.
As the title suggests, the initial starting point for Schmidt’s book is the culvert, the common buried water pipe found in ditches and gullies around the province. Using that as a starting point, the work branches out, extending to larger themes.
Those themes are as wide-ranging as the province Schmidt currently represents as Saskatchewan’s Poet Laureate.
“We’re all on the road so much in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. There’s a lot of time between point A and point B. There’s a lot of stuff in here that people can relate to. There’s discussion of conception, love, birth, death, all of these things, photography, bird watching, there’s stuff, there’s music. It’s just got the stuff of life in it that we encounter when we travel,” Schmidt said.
One of the author’s motivations came from far away from her homeland – 17th century Japan, to be precise.
Some of the pieces and the subtitle of the book pay homage to hallowed haiku writer Matsuo Basho and one of his major works – when translated to English, the title is “The Narrow Road to the Deep North”.
“There’s a riff off of Basho, the first essay is much like Basho, the way he wrote ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North.’ It’s like a playful, modern take on it,” said Schmidt.
“There’s a lot of road trips in this book and, of course, a lot of roads. It’s sort of a modern take on his travel sketches.”
It appears the diverse approach has paid off for Schmidt, who said she has felt immense satisfaction in seeing the book hit shelves.
“I was so excited. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited about a book. It really means a lot to me,” she said.
“I tried to take a selfie and I was shaking so much that everyone was blurry.”
One of the interview subjects in the book, a mentor of Schmidt’s, has reached out to her to compliment her on her work.
“It’s such a relief to see the kind of feedback you’re hoping to get, that someone saw what you were doing.”
Schmidt, who was named Saskatchewan Poet Laureate in January 2017, will conclude her term this December. While the position takes her across the country to promote Saskatchewan literature and arts, Schmidt is still plotting the next step for a local project she helped found – the Ore Samples Writers Series.
The series received rave reviews from the Saskatchewan Arts Board, which issued the group a grant when it was founded in 2016. The program has brought a number of prominent writers to Flin Flon for readings, including now-former Parliamentary Poet Laureate George Elliott Clarke.
While the readings have attracted regional interest, the next step for Ore Samples isn’t fully known.
“We’ll see what happens,” said Schmidt.
“This is one of those ‘step out into the blue’ moments – what are we going to do now? I think it’s such an important program; it certainly is to me and to anyone who wants to be part of the larger literary arts community. It’s really important to bring in people and connect in hat way. It’s something I really believe in and we’ll see if it’s felt by others.”
