Wolseley poet’s first book gets four award nominations

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This article was published 23/04/2003 (8443 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FOR poet and mother Chandra Mayor, there is something magical about language and something magical about her daughter.

A blend of both types of magic went into August Witch, her first book of poetry. The Wolseley resident’s book has been nominated for four Manitoba book awards this year: the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award; the McNally Robinson Book of the Year, the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer, and the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book.

The award winners will be announced at Brave New Words, the Manitoba Writing and Publishing Awards, which will be presented on April 26 at the Hotel Fort Garry.

Mayor will be reading selections of poetry from her book, as well as some of her more recent work, at 2 p.m. on April 26 at Winnipeg Centennial Library as part of Manitoba Book Week (April 20 to 26).

“For me, poetry is an emotional shorthand,” says Mayor, 29. “It doesn’t have to rhyme. It’s not necessarily about a historical moment. Even an accountant (like her father) can find meaning in poetry. Most poems work on various levels. Hearing them spoken gives them life. But you can keep digging.”

The title poem, August Witch, plays with language. It’s about Mayor birthing Julika, her eight-year-old daughter (born in the month of August), and it also gives birth to the rest of the book. Overall, the book is about mental illness. It explores mental health, body boundaries/using the body as language, and communicating and miscommunicating with others.

“It’s about depression and emotional collapse and everyone’s been there and taken that ride, to some degree,” says Mayor. “That’s what’s key to poetry, the emotional connection to the reader.”

Mayor has been writing poetry for as long as she could write, with the encouragement of her parents and teachers. She won her first poetry award as a Grade 3 student at Nordale School, and dreamed she could be famous.

“I enjoy poetry. In poetry you can express feelings in a few lines, in an image,” says Mayor. “It’s more immediate than prose. You can read a poem in a few minutes and carry it with you.”

She continued to write poetry through high school and what she calls “a very intense adolescence.”

“Writing poetry kept me sane through the turmoil,” she says.

At 15, Mayor moved from home and lived with a roommate. She also got involved in an abusive long-term relationship. She is currently working on a new collection of poems tentatively called Cherry, which explores domestic violence.

As a teen, Mayor took a couple of workshops with poets Maara Haas and Anne Szumigalski. She also took creative writing with poet/novelist Catherine Hunter. It was there that she met Jon Paul Fiorentino, now the editor of Cyclops Press, which published her book.

Mayor says grandmother is very supportive of her work. Her grandmother had always wanted to be a reporter, but her father would not have that. Instead, he sent her to Winnipeg from their hometown of Amaranth, MB., to finish high school. Mayor’s grandmother would go on to teach school, get married and work at The Bay.

Mayor continues to slowly pursue a degree at the University of Winnipeg. She is the Manitoba representative for the League of Canadian Poets, and sits on the board of Prairie Fire magazine and the Board of Regents at the U of W.

Fiorentino has encouraged her to write a novel, but Mayor is not sure about that.

“I don’t know that I have a long enough attention span,” she says. “I really believe in poetry.”

For further information on Manitoba Book Week, call the Association of Manitoba Book Publishers at 947-3335 or visit their web-site at www.bookpublishers.mb.ca.

PHOTO LINDA VERMETTE/WINNIPEG FREE PRESS