Francine Cunningham lives
with constant reminders that she doesn’t fit the desired expectations of the
world: she is a white-passing, city-raised Indigenous woman with mental illness
who has lost her mother. In her debut poetry collection On/Me, Cunningham explores, with keen attention and poise, what it means to be forced to exist
within the margins. Cunningham does not hold back: she holds a lens to
residential schools, intergenerational trauma, Indigenous Peoples forcibly sent
to sanatoriums, systemic racism and mental illness, and translates these topics
into lived experiences that are nuanced, emotional, funny and heartbreaking all
at once. On/Me is an
encyclopedia of Cunningham, who shares some of her most sacred moments with the
hope to spark a conversation that needs to be had (via Caitlin Press).
Francine Cunningham speaks
with Shazia Hafiz Ramji about her latest BC Book Prize nomination, where poetry
lives, and where stories live.
Shazia
Hafiz Ramji: Hi Francine! Congratulations on On/Me – which has just been nominated
for the 2020
BC Book Prizes – the inaugural Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes!
You must be reeling? How does it feel?!
Francine Cunningham: It feels pretty amazing to be honest. You
never know if your words are going to have resonance with readers so
anytime you can get some hint that they are its a nice feeling. And to be
nominated for this prize in particular is pretty incredible. To have my book be
one that is considered to provoke is all that I could ever hope for. And the
rest of the nominees are pretty spectacular so its an honour to have my
book be included in a list alongside theirs.
SHR:
In the blurb for your new book of poems, On/Me,
Eden Robinson says:
“Cunningham
doesn’t pull her punches, but they are quick, stinging hits, capturing
difficult realities, the in-between worlds of belonging and not, of bearing the
assumptions that make us a part of a group or alone. The dangerous smoulder of
her mind is masterfully harnessed to clarity, illuminating pain and turbulence
without being tragic.”
What were some of the experiences you had
to confront to write this book? How did you begin writing about “trauma” and do
you see it as “writing about trauma”?
FC:
I guess I don’t really see this book as being about
trauma necessarily, it’s just my life, traumatic things have happened to me,
yes, but it doesn’t feel like what I think the phrase ‘writing about trauma”
suggests. I don’t dwell in the spaces of these poems all the time and for some
of them not at all anymore. For me, the biggest healing thing in my life is
when I realized how much power I had when I spoke words out loud. By that I
mean, I have a tendency to ruminate and before I wrote some of these poems my
thoughts were in an endless cycle of thinking about these events in a never
ending circle. But once I spoke the stories aloud, once I wrote them down, it
was like I took control back from them. “Them” being experiences relating to my
mother's death, which I held a lot of anger around, intergenerational trauma
resulting from residential school and basically “Canada,” and so much more. But
I also have to say that I did write love into this book, and I wrote about some
of the small moments of joy that I’ve experienced and I wrote some poems that
only my fellow Indigenous peeps will fully get.
SHR:
Has speaking aloud always been a part of your process?
How do you move between speaking and writing and how do those two acts inform
your poems?
FC:
For sure speaking aloud has always been a part my
process. There is a change, for me anyways, that happens when words that have
only ever lived in my head are suddenly heard, even if its just by me at my
desk. They become real. Until that moment they exist as figments. But once I
say them out loud I know I am ready to commit them to the page. And on a purely
craft side I need to hear the lyricism in the words. How do they flow? Do the
sounds blend? I use to be more self conscious of this stream of consciousness
talking to myself but now I don’t even notice it, even when I am writing in a
cafe, it's just my writing process.
SHR:
When did you know you were ready to write this book?
How long did it take you to finish writing? Who are some of your mentors and
how did they work with you?
FC:
Poetry is where my heart lives, where my personal
stories live. I always knew that the first book I put out into the world would
be one of poems because that is me. These poems are some of my most precious
memories, some of my greatest hurts, and they make up who I am. This book is
almost like an introduction to the world. When I first started to conceptualize
it I thought about it like an ‘Encyclopedia of Fran’. I put together a list of
themes; mental illness, grief, identity, love, family for example and then I
looked at the poems I had already written for the past few years and put them
into the categories. Then I started to think about what parts were missing,
what stories, memories were missing and then I took about a year and wrote the
additional poems. I didn’t work with a mentor or anyone really, this was a solo
endeavor. I had taken a poetry workshop way back at the start of my MFA which
was great, but poetry wise I’ve been just making my way through alone since
then. I’ve worked way more fiction mentors both during my MFA and after.
SHR:
What was your MFA experience like?
My MFA experience was one that I would
definitely do again. Before my MFA at UBC, I didn’t have any idea of how to
write a novel for example. I am someone who needs steps, who needs one on one
guidance and I found that through my thesis advisor, who took a lot of time
with me through the process. I actually took four years to do my degree because
I loved it so much and I wanted to take every single class the program offered.
I almost managed it. What I loved about my MFA was having the dedicated time to
focus on my writing and being around people who loved to talk books all day was
pretty dreamy too.
The only thing that I wished was different
about my MFA experience was for there to be some Indigenous faculty on staff. I
was lucky enough to have a supportive thesis advisor who was able to secure an
outside hire of an Indigenous writer to be the second reader of my thesis
because she knew how important it was for me to have an Indigenous writer
helping me along in the process. It would have also been nice to have more
Indiegnous students in the classes with me because it can be hard to write
things that you have to explain to people who aren’t always your audience, like
sometimes I just wanna write stuff for us, you know?
But I was lucky that right after my MFA I
did a writing residency at The Banff Centre as part of the Indigenous Arts
program. To be able to sit in a room with only Indigenous writers at the top of
their game was pretty amazing and really helped me leave any disappointment I
felt about my MFA behind and leap into the world of writing I wanted to be
apart of.
SHR:
Who are you writing for, if anyone, and how has it
changed since you started writing?
FC:
I once saw a tweet that asked the question, ‘When was the first time you saw
yourself on film?” And my answer was and still is —never. I have never seen a
mixed Cree, Metis, Scotish, Belgium white-passing Indigenous girl from the
prairies trying to figure out who she is on screen. I have never seen her struggling
with her mental illness watching her mother be denied health care until the
tumours in her body are so far gone they can’t be denied anymore just because
she is Indigenous. So I write for those kids like me who never saw ourselves on
the screen, or read about ourselves in books. This is where I started from and
this is where I still am.
SHR:
Who are some of your favourite poets, writers, people?
Okay, so this is a huge question that I
always have way too many answers for and one that is constantly shifting. I
started a podcast called REAL
conversations with ACTUAL friends so that I can share with the world some
of my favourite writers, stories, movies, and TV shows. But a few that leap off
the top of my head right now are Leanne
Betasamosake Simpson, Tracy Lindberg, Karen Russel, Heather O’Neil. One of my
absolutely favourite short stories is The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu, it will
seriously break you open.
FRANCINE CUNNINGHAM is a Canadian Indigenous writer, artist and
educator. Her creative non-fiction has appeared in The Malahat Review, the anthologies Boobs: Women Explore What It Means to Have Breasts (Caitlin Press)
and Best Canadian Essays 2017
(Tightrope Books), and was longlisted for the 2018 Edna Staebler Personal
Essay. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Grain as the winner of the Short Grain Writing Contest in 2018, The
Puritan, Joyland, Echolocation, The Maynard and more. She is a graduate of the UBC Creative Writing
MFA program, winner of the 2019 Indigenous Voices Award for unpublished prose,
winner of The Hnatyshyn Foundation’s REVEAL Indigenous Art Award, and a
recipient of Telus’ 2017 STORYHIVE web series grant. On/Me is her first book and has been nominated for the 2020 BC Book
Prizes. www.francinecunningham.ca
Shazia Hafiz Ramji’s writing has appeared in Best
Canadian Poetry 2019, THIS
magazine, Best Canadian Poetry 2018, and
is forthcoming in EVENT, and Maisonneuve, and Gutter: the magazine of new Scottish and international writing. Her
poetry and prose have been nominated for the 2020 Pushcart Prizes by Poetry Northwest and carte blanche, respectively. Shazia was named as a “writer to
watch” by the CBC. She is the author of Port of Being, a
finalist for the 2019 Vancouver Book Award, BC Book Prizes (Dorothy Livesay
Poetry Prize), Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and winner of the Robert
Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. She is a columnist for Open Book and is
at work on a novel.