On Writing
Susannah M. Smith
I. Reading
Wonder and joy.
Two years old, memorizing
The Night Before Christmas.
Having poetry
read to me.
Reading poetry
myself.
The Illustrated Treasury of
Poetry for Children.
A Child’s Garden of Verses.
Time’s Delights: Poems for
All Seasons.
A Child’s Book of Poems.
Treasure chests of
cadence, language, imagination.
Illustrations lofting
the text.
Always delighting
and transporting.
While visions of sugarplums
danced in their heads…
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
Closeness of
damp air on my face
sound of
foghorns in the bay
misty halos
around streetlights at dusk.
Carl Sandburg,
baby.
The moon on the breast of
the new-fallen snow
Gave a luster of midday to
objects below.
Since I slipped
through the wardrobe into Narnia, things have never been the same.
II. Writing
Eleven years old,
tucked up in bed scribbling in notebooks.
I didn’t like
going to sleep.
Writing eased
the path.
During the day,
I sat on the floor with scissors and glue
surrounded with words
and pictures
collecting and
arranging
cutting and
pasting
playing and
making.
This is what I
did and this is what I still do.
Writing is
collage.
And the notebooks.
The smell and
feel of the paper.
The smooth glide
of the pen.
Carrying around a
world that belongs to you.
Knowing that you
are the shaper, the magic maker.
Lately, writing
is not publishing.
Manuscripts
tumble and grow fat.
Secret
compartments cascade.
Towers upon
towers.
Kingdoms.
Writing is a
pleasure palace.
III. Rising
Frances Glass.
In my early
twenties, when I introduced myself to strangers as Franny.
J.D. Salinger
and his crazy mysticism, baby.
There isn’t anyone out
there who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady.
I like. I like.
I like.
The story. The
story. The story.
This is a
thought experiment.
This is the joy
of receiving.
This is the
story told, the story growing old, the story told fresh.
Writing is
architectural.
It is a practice
of vaulting
of rising up and
out into the world and beyond.
There is no
staying small.
I like.
The story.
Writing is.
So much about
living.
Susannah M. Smith is the author of How the Blessed Live. She lives in Vancouver, BC.
Photos by
Susannah M. Smith. Author photo by Paul Sinclair.
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