A renowned Stratford poet is spearheading an initiative to give Canadians a creative outlet for their feelings that may be bubbling under the surface in these turbulent times.
Heidi Sander is inviting Canadians to reflect on their identity and what makes Canada unique as part of Canada Is Our Poem Prize, a national competition that encourages people to share their thoughts through poetry while fostering a deeper understanding of what it means to be Canadian.
Launching the initiative on March 4 – the start of a trade war between Canada and the United States thanks to US President Donald Trump’s tariffs – was something Sander saw as fitting since it marked a day full of stress, anxiety and turmoil for a great many people. And while that may seem contradictory, her intent is just the opposite.
“I felt today in particular it was something we needed, and any initiative that has a collective action behind it really does inspire and boosts hope and solidarity,” she said. “That was the intention behind this. I find that through arts and culture, we understand ourselves and poetry is such a synched emotive direction that it can simplify complex problems and just lead to a better understanding. So, I really believe that poetry is cathartic in that way.”
Sander’s hope with the initiative is to amplify those bonds that unite us, and her hope is that people will respond by putting how they’re feeling into words in an unvarnished way. By using the written word, she believes that will allow people to explore their own feelings on the issues this has stirred in the country’s collective consciousness while offering a multitude of perspectives.
“The poem they end up submitting might be a reflection of days or weeks or months of writing as they venture through this, and that’s part of the hope,” she said. “But I also hope that this poetry prize is just the beginning. I would like to see it as a celebration across Canada of Canada and what it means to be Canadian. Because when people come together and read their work, they understand each other. There’s a kind of collective consciousness of the nation that starts to happen, and I hope the prize is the first step toward that.”
In addition to collecting a $1,000 prize for winning the competition, the selected author will join the top 200 entries in an anthology to be published by Blue Moon Publishers this year. The winning entry will also earn a one-year access to Sander’s multimedia online Pathways to Poetry course. Sander is excitedly anticipating what will come in from her fellow citizens, helping her to gauge where the country is at collectively.
“I’ve written a lot of poetry about this over the last month and maybe even a little bit more than that because poetry is very cathartic for me,” she stated. “Writing is an opportunity to express myself, and if I have this opportunity then maybe it can help others. This month I’ve been volunteering poetry workshops at Wellspring Cancer Centre and we had a series this month where this topic came up a lot, so we workshopped different poems. It’s on people’s minds, and there was just this collective lift when someone would read a poem related to the situation Canada is facing. I thought that this was something we needed to take across Canada.”
Sander is anticipating that she and others will see the full spectrum of emotion with the entries, ranging from optimistic to downright angry, but it’s those different perspectives that allow for creativity to take hold – and those are voices she says need to be heard.
“I’m not sure what we’re going to see, because we haven’t had another inflection point like this in my lifetime,” she said. “But it’s in trying times like this that the arts surface and serve as inspiration as a point of healing and connection. That’s the beauty of the arts, and I wanted to do my bit for Canada. I’m probably at the starting point of this conversation, so I hope that a lot of people reach out with different ideas – but right now, I don’t know where this will go, but a lot of people are interested and they want a platform to share their ideas and their voice. Hopefully when the prize wraps up and the anthology is launched, we can start celebrating it across Canada and hopefully other people will step up and share their ideas about what’s going on.”
The competition is open until Thursday, July 31, at 11:59 p.m.