On Writing Into The Silence
Kim Fahner
I write in a few places inside my house, but the one I
return to most often, where I can feel my feet on the floor, where I can feel
grounded—especially in uncertain times like these—is at my little round table
in the corner of my living room. From here, I can look out to the street as if
it’s a stage, and then out my side window towards the trees that hover above my
neighbours’ house. Daydreaming, for me, is part of the writing process. From
here, I can hear the windchimes and watch the crows, and I can catch sight of
the black squirrels that dance across the fence. My dog, Gully, sleeps on a
chair cushion on the floor next to me as I work. One of my friends, Trish
Stenabaugh, is a gifted artist—so I write with her beautiful peacock feather
painting behind me. She gave it to me for my 40th birthday and the
generosity of that gift made me cry. I have a ‘thing’ for birds and feathers,
and for all of the poetic symbolism that they hold.
I have a candle that I light when I work, and maybe
that’s part of the ritual of how I prepare myself to write, and I often have a
mug of ginger or rosehip tea that just goes cold when I am busy with words.
Next to the candle is an old photo of my mum and two of my uncles, Terry and
Michael, back from when they used to play on the rocks when they were little
kids in the 1940s. It’s an old Sudbury photo, one I’m sure that many third or
fourth generation Sudburians would likely find familiar to their own inherited bunches
of photos. Then, I have a cape I throw on if it gets too cold. I like to write
with the window open, which is the same way I like to sleep.
Lately, being at home during the pandemic, I am
grateful to have made a space that feels creative, beautiful, and safe. Lately,
though, the words I so wish would come aren’t coming as often. At first, I
watched people say ‘Now that I have time, I’ll write a novel’ on social media
when the self-isolation started in March, and I smiled and shook my head. It’s
hardly as easy as people think, if you write creatively. It takes a great deal
of energy, focus, and time. Now, being in this strange pandemic head space, I
have a hard time writing anything except task-oriented pieces like poetry book
reviews, or tiny reflections like this, or the smallest clutch of lines of
poems. Nothing seems to be working properly, creatively, in my head. It
frustrates me, and it makes me unbelievably sad. When you live alone, when it’s
almost too quiet and there is too much empty space, and when words are your
closest companions—alongside the dog, of course—their departure is a hard one
to bear. Even reading, which I usually love, isn’t something I can do easily
these days. I can manage poems, mostly, but I can’t focus to read anything of
length or complexity. I fill the emptiest and loneliest spaces with music.
These last few weeks, it’s been Tim Baker, Glen Hansard, Chopin, Bach, Thomas
Tallis, The Chieftains, Amelia Curran, Sheila Carabine, Sarah Harmer, and Cara
Dillon. They help make it feel less empty. 
I have a journal that I bought in St. John’s when I
was there last May to launch my book and write. I write in it every couple of
days, in green pen. It’s full of too true thoughts that I hope no one will ever
read. It’s full of my heart, my worries, and my mind. It sits next to me, too,
for the times when I need to just ‘speak’ to someone, to get it out. The artist
is Hannah Viano, from Winthrop, Washington. There are images scattered in
between the lined pages. I bought it because the cover’s got the image of a
woman by herself in a rowboat, on a lake, headed towards shore. The weather
looks to be full of movement and passion in the sky above her. She’s sturdy,
though, balanced in her rowboat, and trusting that the water will carry and
hold her. I like to think that’s me, even on ‘bad days.’ I like to think that
I’ll float and not sink, even in stormier weather. I’ve weathered storms
before. This is just another one I hadn’t expected…
I thought, the other day, sitting here and daydreaming
out the window, that it would be nice to know for sure that the words will come
back…but maybe, like the world, they’ve changed…and maybe I need to lean into that,
trust it, and the process itself. Maybe it’s more about ‘being’ than ‘doing’
for the moment. For now, I’ll just try and breathe deeply, feel my bare feet on
the hardwood floor beneath me, and listen to the birds singing outside while I
find small clutches of words, like islands where I can moor my boat.
Kim Fahner lives and writes in
Sudbury, Ontario. She was poet laureate in Sudbury from 2016-18, and was the
first woman appointed to the role. Kim's latest book of poems is These Wings
(Pedlar Press, 2019). She's a member of the League of Canadian Poets, the
Writers' Union of Canada, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of
Canada. Kim blogs fairly regularly at kimfahner.wordpress.com and can be
reached via her author website at www.kimfahner.com
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