#3: An Interview with Stephen Berg
"...first, & above all, we’re relational creatures. The only originality we can count on is our interaction with the amalgam of thoughts & reflections of other beings."
Welcome to Archipel, an ongoing dialogue between me (Cara Waterfall) and other poets and creatives of all kinds, celebrating the ways we connect through mentorship, community and transitions.
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Today’s interview is with Stephen Berg. I first met Stephen in 2016 when we were part of the poetry cohort at The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University. We were in a 10-month, online workshop, taught by Vancouver Poet Laureate Fiona Tinwei Lam.
Our friendship has endured, because of our mutual love of poetry and his magnanimity as a sounding board for my poetic endeavours. I believe that Stephen embodies what Archipel is all about — a generosity of spirit, a talent for engaging with and building communities, and the humility to interrogate the status quo and himself.
Stephen is the author of two poetry books, Beacons, Blues and Holy Goats and There Are No Small Moments, and Growing Hope: The Story of Edmonton’s Hope Mission. He also writes a wonderful, thought-provoking newsletter, Grow Mercy.
Who are you and how do you express your creativity?
I’m a disappointed hippy, an approximate monk, a writer, who expresses my creativity primarily through poetry.
What keeps you coming back to creative work? Why is it worth doing?
It’s a kind of internal drivenness, as I know if I don’t write something everyday, things go wrong with me. Not to sound dramatic, but it’s worth doing for my own mental health, if I don’t write, it leaves a hole in the day. Also, it’s worth doing because a few others have found some worth in what I write.
What legacy do you hope to leave with your art?
I hope to leave some kind of an example of someone who tried to become a good and kind person, and used poetry as a means to that end. Even though he never quite caught up to what he wrote.
What are your biggest challenges when it comes to maintaining a steady creative practice, and how have you overcome them?
It’s a relative thing, a seasonal thing. Back when I was working and had a young family I experienced the everyday irregularity of any writer with demands on their time. So I cultivated a habit of rising early, and trying to go to bed early. Now, retired and growing old, I never think about maintaining a schedule, it’s deeply ingrained.
What advice do you have for someone who wants to start or maintain their creative practice in a new way?
Time, place, and space. Find these three things and honour them.
Time: it’s always been mornings for me. Several hours, or as much as possible according to life’s circumstances. This, without shortchanging your daily responsibilities, part of which is keeping physically active.
Place: cafés used to always work for me, I fed off the ambient energy of a small milling crowd. Now, not so much, just a comfortable chair and a laptop stand in a quiet part of the house. Although every time I enter a coffee shop I’ll look for that special table.
Space: whatever practice that removes the weeds of surface distractions, and tills the soul’s interior. What you want is inner tilth, open, arable inscape. For decades now I’ve read the Psalms and some poetry as way to attend to that. Very often, an idea, some inspiration, occasionally a whole poem, came out of this meditation, this personalized form of lectio divina.
Why does mentorship/ community support matter?
Because we’re human. Because without each other we are inert. Meaning, first, and above all, we’re relational creatures. The only originality we can count on is our interaction with the amalgam of thoughts and reflections of other beings. An understanding that begs humility and a noncompetitive spirit, and a more joyous writing experience.
Do you have a mentor?
I’ve had, and have, many writers, poets that I admire, and have modeled, but no formal mentor. However, if pressed for the most impactful approximation of a mentor, it’s Mary Sullivan. Poet, writer, deep reader, English teacher, school principal, and more. But these are roles, what she was and still is after 20-plus years is a source of motivation, an inspirational cheerleader.
How did you find your mentor? (or support structure/ community)
Accidentally, really. Mary had initiated the formation of a small group of creatively and spiritually diverse people. I was invited to the group through a mutual friend. The idea was to come together weekly, and share, compare, discuss, a word, a phrase, a topic, through whatever medium you wished. (Our little “Come and See” group met for eight years.)
How has your mentor (or support structure/community) impacted you?
I feel, now, that I was always destined to write poetry (I hope that doesn’t sound grand). But I’m not sure it would have happened without Mary’s early interest in my writing. She saw a potential I couldn’t see myself. She pressed me to explore myself and my world through writing. Through her patience and persistence of tenderly knocking down my self doubts, my inner resistances, she drew writing out of me. Mary cleared an inner path for me. And always, she was adamant in insisting I call myself a writer.
Who is your dream mentor, living or dead, and why?
That too is a question that depends on where I am in my life. My ‘dream mentor’ has often been the author I happen to be reading at the time.
To put the question another way: Who do I go back to most often? Tony Hoagland, Franz Wright, lately Andrea Gibson, Ada Limon, these are wonderful writers, worthy of emulating.
Why, is the more interesting question. I find myself most often in the company of poets who have been distilled, refined, by life; by sorrow and suffering, and by beauty and joy. You can feel their generosity, you can sense a deep spirit and an authenticity in their writing.
To conclude all of this, I’d like to go back to your first question and answer it with something I read recently in the diary of Etty Hillesum, something that struck me deeply: “There is no hidden poet in me, just a little piece of God that might grow into poetry.”
This is another way to say we are all pieces of poetry, all of us, nascent poets.
(Interview answers received September 6, 2024)