Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her newest book, a novel, is The Donoghue Girl (Latitude 46, 2024). Her next book of poems, The Pollination Field, will be published by Turnstone Press in Spring 2025. She recently won first place for her CNF essay in The Ampersand Review‘s 2024 essay contest. As well, Kim was named as a finalist for the 2023 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize. She is the First Vice-Chair of The Writers’ Union of Canada (2023-25). She may be reached via her website at kimfahner.com
You can read Elegy in the April 2025 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?
I was taking an online poetry course with Victoria poet, Yvonne Blomer, and our class was discussing poems about the natural world, and how humans interact with it. One of our tasks was to choose a creature and research it, to draft a poem. I stumbled across an article in The Guardian in January 2025 about an orca whale in Puget Sound, the same one that carried her dead calf through the water for seventeen days in 2018. The whale is known as J35, or Tahlequah. Both of J35’s dead calves were female.
I started thinking about love and loss, motherhood and grief, and also about how the two incidents are reflective of the climate crisis and the reality of ecological grief. Orcas are at risk of extinction, especially given the warming of ocean waters, the decrease in salmon populations because of warming river temperatures, the impact of the shipping industry—including noise, and habitat destruction.
I also thought about how we process grief as humans, and how it’s often stigmatized and rushed through in western culture, while the creatures in the natural world intuitively follow their own instinctive rhythms. This orca mother made me consider the notion of connection, and—at the same time—disconnection. Her pod has stayed with her while she’s grieved; even as she expends a great deal of energy in her action of grieving, by keeping her calf afloat, the other orcas stay close.
In terms of poetic style or craft, is there a big question you are trying to find an answer for?
I think poets are some of the most interesting and curious people I know. We all seem to have our own unique questions or curiosities, and these work their way out in our poems. My underlying fascinations work themselves out thematically, but I’ve really begun to learn more about various poetic forms—and experimenting with them—in the last five years or so.
I’ve learned a great deal about form from taking part in Blomer’s courses. In summer 2022, I went out to Vancouver Island to take a weeklong immersion course with her on poetic line and form. It’s changed the way I approach my poems, and what I’ve learned from her has help me to strengthen my craft and evolve as a poet. I love learning new forms, and exploring them as I write has been really rewarding.
We love the artistic underdogs, the experimentalists, the lovely weirdos — who or what might you get creative joy or energy from that others might not be aware of yet?
I’m really fascinated by lino printing, something I learned when I took classes from Jodi Green at Levigator Press in Windsor when I lived in Southwestern Ontario back in 2018. I’ve taken some classes through the Art Gallery of Sudbury (AGS) in the last year, and have been strengthening my skill in that area. I’m hoping to create a series of prints that have poetic elements involved, but I’m still working it all out in my head. I also love taking photographs, and some of them are going to be exhibited by the Art Gallery of Sudbury this spring. The other thing I really love doing is rug hooking. I learned about it from my friend Catherine Banks when I visited her in Nova Scotia in late 2022, and I’ve completed a few pieces. I’m hoping to create some of my own designs and work from there, but I need to keep practicing first. I guess the thing I’m really enjoying about all this creative exploration is using my hands in a more physical way by making visual art. It gets me into my body and out of my head.
As a poet, what does creative success or achievement look like for you?
I want to constantly be learning more, which is why I keep taking classes on poetic form and why I read and review a lot of poetry books. I love reading other poets’ work and I feel like I become a better poet by reading widely.
I like seeing my work change over the years. If I kept writing the same sort of poem, I would feel bored. So, for me, creative success means that I can look back over my poems and see a sharpening of skill and craft, an evolution of style and a sense of curiosity that is constantly present.
Right now, I’m looking forward to seeing my latest collection of poetry, The Pollination Field, come out this spring from Turnstone Press in Winnipeg. I was so lucky to have worked with Alice Major as my editor on this manuscript of bee poems, and I learned so much from her about craft and revision, and to have had Sarah Ens offer editorial input, as well. I never imagined that my strange fascination with bees would evolve into a full book of poetry, and I’m thankful to Sharon Caseburg for encouraging me along the way. I was able to really explore my interests and stretch out into the space that’s provided by a full manuscript, so that’s my most current achievement in the genre of poetry.
What are you reading or watching or listening to lately that intrigues or inspires you?
When I’m writing, I listen to instrumental music so I don’t get distracted by the lyrics. Glenn Gould’s a constant favourite, and The Chieftains are always somewhere in the mix. I’m always spending time with visual art because I often write ekphrastic poetry, and lately I’ve been researching Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, so I’ve been working on a creative nonfiction essay based on that exhibit. In terms of what I’m watching, I love well-written things, which means I’m very taken by the surreal weirdness of the world and characters created in Severance. In terms of what I’m reading, I just finished reading Omar El Akaad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, and now I’m reading Chris Bailey’s new poetry collection, Forecast: Pretty Bleak.