Episode 11 | Sheryda Warrener

"I think with a poem, you always want to have something at stake that you just are not going to be able to answer, but you keep trying to get at it in this way, in that way, in this way."

In this episode, Sheryda Warrener explores how poems anchor us in the world, the importance of making space for ritual, and how her students build material from sensory experience.

She discusses:

· Teaching English to children and adults in Japan and Sweden, and how the experiences shaped her as a writer and educator (0:50)

· Wandering the aisles of Home Hardware looking at form in the world and other student-led field trips in her Hybrid Forms class (6:13)

· Using the voice of a Russian cosmonaut in her collection Floating is Everything to explore shifts in perspective and the tension between delight and grief (12:03)

· Looking at visual art as a practice and a process and how it informs her new manuscript (16:52)

· Finding her footing in the 200-person lecture hall and using Window Swap as a way to explore outer and inner landscapes (19:40)

Guest Bio: 

Sheryda Warrener is the author of two poetry collections: Hard Feelings (Snare, 2010) and Floating is Everything (Nightwood, 2015). Her work can be found in Event, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Hazlitt, and The Believer, among others. She is a recipient of The Puritan’s Thomas Morton Memorial Prize for poetry, and recent poems have been selected for Best Canadian Poetry and The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21stCentury Canadian Poetry. She teaches courses in hybrid forms, and poem-making.

About the Podcast:

Parallel Careers is a monthly podcast about the dual lives of writers who teach. Few writers make their living from publication alone; many fill the gaps with teaching in both academic and community settings. Much of the work is precarious, and there are few opportunities for professional development.

Parallel Careers features writers with diverse practices and points of view—writers who are at the top of their game in both craft and pedagogy. Tune in to hear the big ideas and practical tips they take into their classrooms. Take their insights into your own class or craft.

Credits:

Parallel Careers is produced by Claire Tacon, in partnership with The New Quarterly Magazine. Erin MacIndoe Sproule is our Technical Producer and Story Editor. Music composed by Amadeo Ventura. Financial and in-kind support provided by the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, St. Jerome’s University, and the Government of Canada.

Access more information and recommended readings from Sheryda Warrener, at:

tnq.ca/parallel