Twelve poems each, three times.
I printed the chapbook manuscripts as one document the night before, then assembled them on my bed the Saturday morning of Poetry Weekend 2024, shortly after almost forgetting to and shortly before beginning the hour and a half drive to Fredericton. It was early October. I had not signed up to read at the event, but I am convinced of the importance of community. Those familiar with the annual event know it is not one to be missed. I wanted to hear other poets read, but I also had marking to do. My students had recently completed writing the rough drafts of their short stories and they needed my feedback before committing to their final copies. I set Sunday aside for marking, Saturday for being in the company of poets.
I had been submitting batches of two-to-five poems and getting some published in literary magazines for over five years, and poets (also editors) I know and admire had asked in previous years whether I would send a group of poems their way. I knew they would be at Poetry Weekend. It was as good an opportunity as any to submit to them all at once, to each a distinct set of poems. It was equitable. It was a Carpe Diem moment inspired by my friend, who had died a little over two weeks earlier. If not now, when? The worst they can say is no. If my internal monologue told me anything, it was probably these banal platitudes. I don’t exactly remember.
Previously, I had thought of submitting a chapbook manuscript as being a goal for the next five years. I was happy to continue appearing occasionally in lit mags. An acute workshopper and friend, fellow Egg Poet Amie Kitts has been a tremendous encouragement. In an essay published to Rob McLennan’s periodicities, Amie describes the journey towards publishing my debut solo chapbook Poems for Burning from her perspective, starting (appropriately) with a reading we did in February 2024 at Word Feast’s Poetry Bash.
Word Feast began as Ian LeTourneau’s legacy project when he was Fredericton’s inaugural Cultural Laureate. In Fredericton’s literary corner, everyone knows everyone. Amie’s essay is accompanied by a photo of the now-produced chapbook resting atop the brown manila envelope in which it was handed to her—a page of the manuscript sticks out, offering a glimpse of the long lines McLennan writes about in his review. And in the top right corner, a sticky note, much the same as in the envelopes I hand-delivered to Jim Johnstone and Ian LeTourneau for consideration at their respective chapbook presses: “[Amie/Jim/Ian], please let me know whether you think [Gridlock Lit/Anstruther/Emergency Flash Mob Press] can do anything with these 12 poems. Thanks.”
Smaller batches of poems are submitted with longer, more detailed, and more formal cover letters, but I am grieving and in these cases I know I have the luxury of not needing to make introductions. These manuscripts were also submitted impromptu without titles. Thanks go to the editors for their patience and collaboration in working with me. While the others remain to be seen, in the case of Poems for Burning, credit goes to Amie for “the artful sequencing of [these] poems” (Catherine Walker, The Miramichi Reader).
Most recently, Amie had asked to publish my previously-published poems. I assembled these, plus a few new ones, to include in my submission to her. The theme of anxiety—concerning (among other subjects) the climate, age, mortality, relationships, and the passage of time—which runs throughout the chapbook was both surprising to me and not. Compartmentalization was the cognitive strategy suggested by the doctor who diagnosed me some years ago with stress-induced insomnia. Throughout my working life, I’ve been involved in helping professions. During this appointment, I described the stress of my work. At the time, I worked in the same residence building on campus where I lived. Prior to that, during summers throughout high school I lived and worked at a camp. I have a history of being unable to separate what I do with who I am; my labour is inalienable. In the same conversation, the doctor described assessing a young patient who arrived on a stretcher after a horrible accident, closed fracture and essentially decapitated. Somewhere in there, there is an irony: the doctor tells me to compartmentalize, disclosing an anecdote of their own compartmentalization. Yes, I imagine that was traumatizing, though I’m not sure how that story helps my situation.
Some family and friends who have read the chapbook published by Gridlock Lit in December 2024 have expressed concern. My surprise, again, is both new and somehow has always been there: I thought we were all on the same page about how alarming these things are, operating under the impression that we’d collectively decided to just ignore them. That may still be the case; regardless, these anxieties inform and make appearances throughout Poems for Burning. I am rediscovering that this is what it means to be vulnerable as a writer: The concept I have of myself is different from the concept others have of me. But as much as this chapbook is a reflection of me, an expression of my past anxieties—some of these poems are seven years old—for me, it is also an expression of my present grief, inextricably linked to the memory of my friend. Submitted, as with the other two, in the aftermath of my friend’s passing. Grief, which—as we know—is also an expression of love.
That weekend in October, I did not mark my student’s short stories. Instead, I responded to an activation for a Search and Rescue operation in my hometown. In the month that followed, I heard back from all three editors of the presses to which I had submitted my chapbook manuscripts. I also repeated, on separate occasions, the first and last hikes my friend and I ever did together. The last one is a beautiful coastal trail, with views of eagles, seals, and real geological marvels. It is November, and I share the news of my chapbook with the friend with whom I am now hiking. We talk about the friend I have lost, and it turns out they knew each other. They had once attended the same bachelor party. Coincidentally, I also met the friend I am now hiking with at a different bachelor party. How else to make friends as an adult?
Ahead there is a lighthouse, then hikers have the option of continuing along the coast or beginning a loop back to where they parked via a gated road. Only my second time continuing along the coast, and the friend I am with now remarks that this trail is named after a stranger who lost his life unexpectedly, dedicated by his friends who (to the best of my knowledge) we also do not know. I missed it the first time, but on the trail there is a telephone nailed to a tree. It is not plugged into anything. It invites hikers to listen, to connect to those they have lost, to hear them in the wind. The installation includes an unattributed poem.
Spencer Folkins (he/him) is thinking about writing a poem under the glass of a mirror. He has served as a Board Member for the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick, First Reads Editor for The Fiddlehead, and currently serves as a member of the AX: Arts & Culture Centre of Sussex Literary Committee. His writing has appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, QWERTY, FreeFall, The League of Canadian Poets’ Poetry Pause series, the Newfoundland Quarterly, Riddle Fence, and elsewhere. Spencer is a member of The Egg Poets, a poetry collective—their debut collaborative chapbook “All Things to Keep You Here” was published by Homerow, an imprint of QWERTY. Spencer is a proud member of his local and Provincial Ground Search and Rescue Associations, in which he has served as President and Board Member (respectively). He teaches in his hometown. “Poems for Burning” is his first solo chapbook.
The Woodlot 