‘A formative family legend’

Lord Roberts

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This article was published 11/10/2023 (777 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sarah Ens’s Flyway has won a national ReLit Award for poetry.

The longform poem, published by Turnstone Press, tells the story of Ens’ grandmother, a Ukrainian Mennonite refugee during the Second World War, and her journey to find safety in Winnipeg after her family was displaced. Throughout the piece, Ens relates this back to the migration of birds — especially those native to the prairies, as they face losing more and more of their natural habitat.

“It’s kind of overwhelming,” the 31-year-old said. “I feel really honoured and grateful (for the award). This book was a really personal project for me. It tells the story of my grandma and, specifically, her displacements from Ukraine during the Second World War and her arrival in Manitoba. It was really a story that was really close to me, my understanding of myself, and of her.”

The poem is a combination of many different facts, Ens said, all telling the same story. It uses the environment of the prairies, her grandma’s story, her mother’s life and elements of her own life that have been threaded into the story.

“The story of my Oma coming to Canada was sort of a formative family (legend),” she said. “I mean, it was true, but it was talked about with a lot of triumph … It was about, ‘Isn’t it so great that she got out, and then she can come here and then she could have her family here?…’ So I grew up with this sense (that) it was amazing. She’s so resilient, she survived, and has an incredible story.

“As I got older I started to realize that there’s more to that story and there’s more to her, and the way that she survived also shaped her and continued to impact her when she was here. It certainly helped me feel closer to her when I was writing it.”

Ens education and her interest in birding also inspired her. Her previous book of poetry, The World is Mostly Sky, also published by Turnstone, features a bird on the cover. Over time, she said she has become very focused on how the social and natural world blend together.

“Grassland birds are extremely endangered,” Ens said. “They travel such long distances looking for their homes, and then sometimes they arrive and their habitat is being destroyed and they can’t actually nest and breed, or continue to survive. So this was really impacting, and I couldn’t help but connect it to the notion of people. I think human lives and the natural world are so connected.”

Ens also spent time reflecting on the land her grandmother ended up calling home — on Treaty One.

“I’m trying to deepen my understanding of the place I call home … and think through the complexity of my Oma’s migration and resettlement story,” Ens explained. “The reason she could rebuild in Manitoba… was because of prior decades of Mennonite settlement in Canada, which displaced Indigenous peoples from their homes and land.”

Ens is now working on an audio adaptation of the book, in collaboration with Jamie Reimer, a local musician.

The adaption will include an audio recording of the poem, along with recordings of the Manitoba prairies, native wildlife, and stories told by their own Mennonite relatives. It’s set to come out in a couple of years, she said.

The ReLit Awards are Canada’s pre-eminent literary awards for works published by independent presses. Organizers announced last month that the awards would go on indefinite hiatus after the announcement of this year’s winners.