That’s the sun in my coffee.
Or it’s the ghost of my last good idea,
or the novel I’ll never write,
or the texture of my days
before Gilmore Girls flattened them,
the slowing of the roller coaster for an episode
or five and when I look up all the leaves
have fallen off my life.
That’s the ocean in my dream.
Or it’s a rumour I spread within myself
that my body’s a raft and won’t float
unless I make my mother
proud with my love
life or creativity,
or it’s romance, or the virus,
or both.
That’s an old oak tree in my yard.
Or it’s a new lover dropping seeds
or the fragrant edge of sleep
where I’m looking
at grainy versions of myself
through a Fleetwood Mac rainfall,
which is to say, I’m trying
to be vulnerable but it’s hard
or I’m trying not to dissociate,
and failing.
That’s the night sky in my phone screen.
Or it’s a ballroom dance class last
time Venus went retrograde
or it’s the glow of a story my mother
never told me about falling
in love with my father or else
it’s a glossy anthology
of Saturdays I flip through
when I’m lonely.
That’s wildfire smoke in my breakfast.
Or it’s another side effect
of Cipralex. Or it’s the hot sex
that’s changed the taste, or else
my microbiome’s devastated
and I’m wasting away
or my hometown’s phoning
with an emergency and I’m still
half asleep.
That’s the sun in my coffee
or it’s the physical manifestation
of Libra Season, or the vaccine,
or some gleam of maternal wisdom or
it’s my hottest smartest self
or my mother telling me I’m not plain
but I’m not pretty either
or else it’s the ghost of the future,
swimming quietly, saying don’t hurry,
but here I am, have courage,
drink me.
Ellie Sawatzky is an award-winning writer and poet, and the author of the poetry collection None of This Belongs to Me. She lives in Vancouver and works as an editor and poetry teacher.
Questions and Answers
Do you use any resources that a young poet would find useful? (e.g. books, films, art, websites, etc.)?
I find writing from prompts highly generative for my writing practice. I started an Instagram account a few years ago called IMPROMPTU (@impromptuprompts) where I post prompts both visual and text-based, writing exercises, and writing inspiration. Many of these prompts are created with poetry in mind, but they are very much open to interpretation and can be adapted for other kinds of writing or art-making.
Another great resource for prompts is Robert Peake’s prompt generator.
I’d also like to recommend a few poetry accounts I follow on Instagram. I love discovering new poets and poems this way, filling the cracks and in-between spaces of my day with poetry. Current favourites are @poetryisnotaluxury, @irshaadpoetry, and @grieftolight.
As a published writer, what are your tips or words of motivation for the aspiring poet?
Don’t take yourself too seriously. This is something I’ve been practicing lately. If I take myself too seriously, I don’t write, because nothing I have to say is good enough or meaningful enough in a world that aches with meaning, a world already saturated with language. There can be so many limiting beliefs around writing, so many things that keep us from sitting down at a desk and putting words on the page—“I don’t have time,” “I don’t have enough money,” “I don’t have enough energy,” “My ideas aren’t good enough,” “No one cares.” We live in a capitalist society that makes us question our worth constantly, and the worth of what we produce. I think this is the true cause of writer’s block. I’ve been practicing assigning value to all my thoughts and feelings and funny obsessions, no matter how silly or commonplace they may seem, trusting that my unique perspective is worthy, trusting that by following my instincts I might just end up somewhere new and exciting. My advice is to carve out sacred time, every day—even if it’s just a few moments—to be alone with yourself and your thoughts. It doesn’t have to be writing time, but words on the page are a bonus. Pay attention to how you feel, what’s bugging you, what hurts, what you feel grateful for. It doesn’t have to be profound or complex. It just has to be sincere. For example, I recently found myself feeling annoyed about a movie I’d seen that I didn’t like but that was spoken highly of by a lot of people. It was really bugging me, so I did some free writing around it and was surprised and delighted by where it took me. Sometimes the surface thing that’s present for you is representative of something deeper, or it can lead you to a deeper place.
What inspired or motivated you to write this poem?
“An Anthology of Saturdays” was an experiment in writing what was right in front of me. I struggled to write during the first year of the pandemic, partly due to anxiety and partly due to a perceived lack of stimulation. In this poem, I tried to write exactly what was going on for me in the moment, including the challenge of being present with myself. It started with a photo I took from my writing desk, a beam of light glinting off my coffee, the pleasure of the morning ritual, of sun and caffeine. A starting place. There was pleasure, yes, but there was also so much pain. I wrote it all down. What else was going on under the surface? I wrote my worst fears and deepest insecurities, my fondest and dreariest memories. It opened my mind again, and in a new way, to the possibilities of life and poetry.
What poetic techniques did you use in this poem? How much attention do you pay to form and metre?
The anaphoric repetition of “that’s” and “or” in this poem—”That’s the sun in my coffee. / Or it’s the ghost of my last good idea, / or the novel I’ll never write”, “That’s the ocean in my dream. Or . . .”—works to confirm the multifariousness of our experience, how one thing can be refracted into so many other things, how we can never be certain of anything. I decided to trust the associative leaps my brain was making here. The result is a kind of litany, a call-and-response, a catalogue of possibilities. I like to use metre and rhythm to establish a pattern and then surprise the reader by subverting that pattern, slowing down, or speeding up, or ending a phrase abruptly, or using enjambment in an unexpected way. In this poem I tried to emulate my disorienting experience of time: “the slowing of the roller coaster for an episode / or five and when I look up all the leaves / have fallen off my life.”
Something else I paid attention to was stanza structure. In order to capture the experience of “flipping through” an anthology of one’s life, I decided to write end-stopped stanzas. Here is an important moment in time. Here is another important moment in time. Here is an ending that is actually just the beginning.