Prince Albert author Lynda Monahan is combining two parts of her life in a new collection of poems.
The book of poetry The Door at the End of Everything was written while Monahan was the hospital writer-in-residence at the Victoria Hospital in Prince Albert. That role often had her working on the adult and youth mental health wards. That, combined with her work as facilitator of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Write for Life Group, inspired her new collection.
She said the experiences made her want to give a voice to people who are marginalized and do not have an opportunity to tell their story.
“I’ve come to know people suffering with severe mental illness through these experiences and I very much want to write as a participant, not as an observer, so often some of the poems include my own experience,” Monahan said.
“I thought, because poetry is the best way I express myself that this would be the way to write about what I wanted to write about.”
Monahan said that her experience also taught her that people with mental health issues often are not heard and are marginalized in the same way as homeless people.
“People with mental health issues often don’t have a voice or we tend not to want to look very closely at problems like that, and I think maybe lately people, are starting to realize the importance of mental health,” she said.
Monahan explained that she also wanted to write about the subject because she cares for the people she has come to know,
“I have been facilitating the Writing for Your Life (group) for over 12 years, and I’ve come to know the people well and care about them a lot,” she said.
“We meet twice a month and we do exactly what the name of the group says. We write for our life.”
In the group, Monahan gets participants to take part in timed writing exercises that allow people to share their stories. In September, the group will also be launching their third collection called My Heart is a Fancy Place.
“We do a lot of writing and we get the opportunity to share poems and stories with the public through public readings and through publication of anthologies and that sort of thing,” Monahan said. “I like to see that happen.”
Monahan added that sometimes the poems are quite dark in theme but her intention is always to write about hope and courage.
“Even though I write down into the dark, I write up into the light too, because hope and courage are such a part of it,” she said.
“Even on the mental health wards there’s so much hope and often a sense of humor, and I very much admire that, so I wanted that to be in the collection as well,” she added.
The book will be launching across Saskatchewan in September including Regina at Bushwakkers on Sept. 19, McNally Robinson in Saskatoon on Sept. 20 and Sept. 24 at the Prince Albert Public Library. There are also events scheduled for a few smaller communities as well.
“It’s going to be a very busy fall,” she said. “It’s very exciting to see this book happen.”
Several of the poems and poetry sequences have seen publication in various literary journals, including Grain, The Society, The New Quarterly, Transition, Bareback, and Dalhousie Review, and in the poetry anthologies Writing Menopause (Inanna Publications), Lummox Anthology of Canadian Poetry, Worth More Standing (Caitlin Press), the Apart pandemic anthology (Saskatchewan Writers Guild), and Line Dance (Burton House Books), and in
various tanka publications such as Atlas Poetica, A Hundred Gourds, and Gusts. A series of online readings from this collection, created with the help of a Canada Council grant, are available on YouTube.
The book was released this fall by Shadowpaw Press.
