Jacqueline Trieber Willcocks is a writer and poet originally from Calgary AB who currently resides on the Ancestral Lands of the K’omoks First Nations. She is a graduate of The Writers Studio certification program at Simon Fraser University mentored by Joanne Arnott and completed their graduate program under mentor Aislinn Hunter. Her poems have appeared in Line and Lens and Emerge 19.
You can read Recall in the October 2024 issue.
Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem? For instance, how or why you wrote it, or perhaps provide some extra context?
Recall was written around the time I found out my dog was deaf. She is a white boxer and was around 7 months old when we figured it out. Recall is to call something back; my dog and I were obviously having a hard time with that command. Recall also means to remember. Through the significant experience of losing my mom, how do I remember her? How do I live with the reality that she is not coming back? That everything we were meant to do together is finished? How do I walk forward in time and away from that last time I saw her? There are details about the house, the garden, the trees, things pulling me forward into the present and away from her yet she is always there, in the grief that threads itself through everything. When a star dies, it glows brighter, then explodes and becomes the stuff that feeds other stars. That’s how I am thinking about her death at the moment, it gives me comfort to know she is a part of everything.
As a poet, what does creative success or achievement look like for you?
To make lots of money obviously! No, honestly that would be nice, but success to me would mean getting my poems read by people. And for those poems to do to them what my favorite poems do to me. To add something meaningful to the tapestry of the world, especially in the world of grief and grieving.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a full-length book of poetry that orbits ideas about grief, mental health, midlife and how spirituality intersects those things, (or not!) When my mother died relatively suddenly in the midst of covid-19 I didn’t just lose her, but so much of my faith and what I believed about myself and the world. I’ve been in the healing/wellness industry for so long and had very strong ideas about what it meant to be healthy, about what healing meant. Life continues to strip away what I think I know (particularly at this stage in my life) about death, trauma, and that healing does not always come with a cure. Writing these poems is a way to show how a life can blow apart and also how with patience and care, come back together in a new form.
How or where or with what does a poem begin?
Sometimes it begins in a dream, or a question, sometimes it begins on the beach when I’m walking my dog or in the forest under the tutelage of the trees. Sometimes it begins in a song I hear, the feeling it inspires, or a beautiful sentence I come across reading. Sometimes it begins in a wail that needs to be put into words.
How do you make space for poetry in your daily routine?
This is always the hardest part! I think about poetry a lot. I make sure to read poems regularly and listen to poems when I can online. I carry paper and a pen with me to jot down lines when they come, or write them in my notes app on my iphone. I try not to be hard on myself when I have times where I’m not writing as much and use that time to compost the stuff that will go into the poems.
What are you reading or watching or listening to lately that intrigues or inspires you?
My favourite poets at the moment are Ada Limon and Maggie Nelson, I could read anything they write. I love reading women writers that think about the world in complex and hopeful ways; Sarah Polly’s run towards danger, Toni Morrison, Patti smith and Aislinn Hunter to name a few.. I also find much inspiration from writers Maggie Smith, Joy Harlo and Ocean Vuong. I love writers who compel me to fall more in love with being human, and live in this incredibly beautiful and challenging world more fully. I feel like that is the purpose of poetry, to drop us into the centre of life’s beating heart so we can have a deeper experience of being alive. I’ve also just watched the show Undone on prime and absolutely loved it!
Have you ever received advice (or has there been something you’ve learned on your own) about writing or revising poems that has made you a better poet? What was it?
Some advice that has been helpful to me is to end the line with a strong word to keep the reader engaged, to read the poem out loud in the editing process, and to watch how/if/when I use punctuation.
How did you begin writing poetry? Was there a specific inspiration or reason?
Looking back, I have always written poetry. Being a certain type of teenaged girl I would write poems on bits of paper and stuff them in books to find later. Later, as a yoga teacher and spiritual practitioner I found much inspiration in the works of Hafiz, Rumi and Mary Oliver, among others. I wrote poetry but never considered myself a “poet” until I was accepted into The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University and placed in the poetry cohort. At first I was surprised to be placed there, but soon discovered that it was exactly right. A part of me that I had been searching for was there all along, I just couldn’t see it.