First, some randomly assembled facts of her life as a Canadian maker.
Sandy Shreve wrote, edited and/or co-edited eight books and
four chapbooks. Her last poetry collection was Waiting for the Albatross (Oolichan
Books, 2015). Her previous books include Suddenly, So Much (Exile
Editions, 2005), Belonging [Sono Nis Press, 1997], Bewildered Rituals
[Polestar Books, 1992] and In Fine Form, 2nd edition - A
Contemporary Look at Canadian Form Poetry (Caitlin
Press, 2016, co-edited with Kate Braid). Sandy also edited Working for a Living, a collection of poems and stories by women about their work (Room of
One's Own, 1988). After receiving a BA in Canadian History in 1973, she worked in communications for 15 years and, before
that, as an office manager/conference organizer/student
advisor, secretary, union co-ordinator, library
assistant, and reporter.
Born in Quebec, she was raised in New Brunswick and made her home in Vancouver for four decades until moving to Pender Island in 2016. Most importantly, perhaps, Sandy founded BC’s Poetry in Transit program, an initiative that’s still going strong, and, through the Vancouver Industrial Writer’s Union, among other avenues, she promoted the cause of work poetry, women’s poetry and form poetry. In her last decade, she turned to photography, then painting, her geometrically abstract work in acrylics and oils appearing in juried shows and being purchased internationally.
One of the things she said about poetry that means something to me: “Poetry…that meticulous balancing of ideas, through image, metaphor and other devices; and the music of it—meticulous, again, that selection of words and their order until they sing.” BC BOOKWORLD
Music. Singing. YES!
And now my own recollections of Sandy Shreve.
I met Sandy in my early twenties in Vancouver. Living with an outgoing impresario who was forever running events around town, I encountered so many poets I might not otherwise have met. The impresario was, however, 13 years older than me and so my age was regularly being, if not called into question, then announced with some suspicion. That was my first memory of Sandy, how she would say to me, “But you’re SO young!” And I would be irritated at the possible presumption that this number meant I had less to contribute. I told myself I would NEVER say that to any young poet in the future. Have I? I can’t recall if I have kept that promise ;)
At any rate, my first impressions of Sandy were not particularly warm. And yet, I kept bumping into her in the scene, and eventually, she got over my youthfulness (or I simply got older) and it didn’t matter anymore.
Really, I met Sandy first at the library, where I read her Bewildered Rituals book as a teenager in 1992, part of the process of my determination to read all the books of Canadian poetry available. Here’s one from it that struck me at the time for its unromantic melding of a filing cabinet and a recycling bin with blooms.
SPRING
CLEANING
Sandy Shreve
From: Bewildered Rituals. Polestar Book
Publishers, 1992.
weeding the files I pretend
the cabinet into a plot of land
as if through this thinning
it will blossom
and everyone who walks in
will admire my new bouquet
lean into each drawer
and breathe deeply the scent
of sorted papers, no longer
ragged edges crammed in every
which way and poised to slash
at skin in vengeance
but petal soft and quivering
to the gentle nudge
of noses seeking fragrance
instead of sneezing dust
now billowing up as I shred
pile after pile of paper
bound for some recycling bin
and bound to come back to me
again in more superfluous copies
to be stuffed and wedged and jammed
into the spaces I've created
for flowers.
I then read her in Tom Wayman’s 1991 work poetry anthology Paperwork (Harbour Publishing) and through Shreve’s poetry was introduced to other poets who soon became important to me like Kate Braid. By 2004, I was submitting to (and being rejected by) the initial (Raincoast/Polestar, 2005) edition of In Fine Form, the Canadian Book of Form Poetry, and, though disappointed, being reassured by the text’s validation of my own fascination with form poems, and especially, by those now being written in my own country!
You see, the work of Sandy Shreve (and Kate Braid) on this anthology perhaps began my understanding of my own duty to the Canadian poetry community. Or maybe it was a few years prior, when Sandy initiated BC’s Poetry in Transit program, 28 years later still presenting poems on buses and the Skytrain. The work she did to advocate for poetry as an essential part of everyone’s lives was vital. Artists can’t only make art, as I argued in my 2015 compilation The Other 23 and a Half Hours or Everything you wanted to know that your MFA didn’t teach you (Wolsak & Wynn). Artists also need to contribute in some way to their artistic communities, whether by reviewing, hosting events, serving as mentors, editing anthologies and otherwise elaborating the language via which we can more deeply comprehend, and grow in, our creating.
In that compilation, Sandy contributed to the section called “Free Range Writers” where she talked about the value her day jobs had on her writing:
[these jobs] put me in environments where I was exposed to several of my interests (literature, feminism, justice) …. [and] being in the workforce… [offered me] a bit of distance from the intensity of writing and studying poetry…it gave me connections to other people, other lives and experiences I would not have otherwise come across.
The year after this book came out, a form poem of mine, a villanelle from Trobairitz (Anvil Press 2012) was finally chosen for the 2nd edition of In Fine Form in 2016 (Caitlin Press). Sandy wrote to me, addressing some confusion I had expressed: “no you ARE in the book…guess your publisher didn’t let you know…we’re delighted to have it in any case…the one where you use Beziers as a rhymed end word. I adore this poem.”
As part of that beautiful circle, I now use this edition to instruct my Concordia University students (as did Kat Cameron prior to me!) in the eternal art of form poetry, both lauding and quibbling with the text’s selections, as one must.
Prior to the anthology, Sandy’s poem “Fidelity,” along with a playful photo of her by Patrik Jandak, had appeared in a calendar honouring 14 Vancouver poets, called Hot Sonnet, that I and another ex had produced through Above and Beyond Productions. And we had also both appeared in the anthologies, A Verse Map of Vancouver (Anvil Press, 2009) and Forcefield: 77 Women Poets of BC (Mothertongue Publishing, 2013). More recently, I had asked Sandy to do an interview on my podcast, Ms Lyric’s Poetry Outlaws on Spotify (2021-2024), but at that point she shared that she had been writing, “very little poetry for the last five years” and had been concentrating on painting. However, she finished by enthusing, “It’s a great idea, what you are doing!”
She was just as enthusiastic, albeit necessarily critical (so wonderful not just to hear gush or see a thumbs up but to hear real engagement), when I showed her a few documentaries I had been making in 2025 with my Clio Project, an initiative designed to honour the art and lives of women over 65. I wanted her to be part of this vision, suggested visiting her in December to do a shoot and she was excited, but sent reservations couched in the calmest terms possible in her situation: “I hope things will settle down soon…things went a bit sideways as my husband Bill is now in hospital” and then, months later, with utterly realistic chagrin, “one thing about Stage 4 cancer is that there is no getting well, just trying to stabilize and achieve quality of life…so I will have to bow out of this project…for now.” And then the generosity of “Very exciting, what you are doing!”
We chatted for a few more months about the widow’s loneliness, the continuance of art, the beauties of Pender Island. The last thing she said to me when I sent her Lyn Westfall’s documentary was, “That’s a good one, Catherine.” And I knew her praise did not come easily and that maybe I was still the young, unformed one in her mind, but I was happy we finally had this bond, knowing we were both passionate about forms, about living our lives fully, about creating community in our tiny fierce world of makers.
Here’s one of my favorite poems by Sandy Shreve, a glosa that responds to PK Page, who in her own glosa was responding to Elizabeth Bishop. That’s how it is, or how it needs to be, that passing and passing and passing down.
BIRD WATCHER
AT DORCHESTER CAPE
Sandy Shreve
From: Belonging. Sono Nis Press, 1997.
But occasionally, when he least expects it,
in the glass of a wave a painted fish
like a work of art across his sight
reminds him of something he doesn't know
"Poor
Bird" P.K. Page
How could she miss them, pale tan on the mud flats
A myriad of peeps here somewhere, come from away to feed
she stands at the edge of a gravel road straining to see
The tide nibbling in and the bright bluebells
twitching with Queen Anne's lace in the wind, at first
fill up her eyes Then the land begins to lift
Again and again, all those birds, blurred air, composed profusion
the perfect music of a fugue, this synchronicity
in a winged field Something inside her shifts
But occasionally, when she least expects it
a lone sandpiper stays behind, too intrigued
with its small patch of tidal land to fly
off in the hope of finding what it already has
Dashing this way and that, it drills in familiar ground
each spot offering something
undiscovered, something the whole flock missed
The solitaire scatters prints along the shore
until suddenly, in the wash of the oncoming tide
it halts Stares at the water as if
in the glass of a wave a painted fish
appears, brilliant fins stiff in its liquid home
An exotic body rising from the depth of somewhere else
and with each breath of the bay, drifting closer
to the sandpiper's feet, a colourful puzzle
She observes the stillness of the bird
imagines it will soon take flight
half hoping it will find
its designated place in the flock, returning now
a curvature of movement, brown and white
like a work of art across her sight
a restless sketch, sunlit into diamonds and topaz
the radiance luring her gaze away
from the odd sandpiper enchanted, she thinks, by the tide
She blinks in disbelief at jewelled air
the like of which she's never seen before
The glitter flutters briefly, then the show
dissolves to camouflage Her heart beats wild as wings
when the solitaire breaks its trance to race
straight into the multitude, whose safe shadow
reminds her of something she doesn't know
Catherine Owen, born and raised Vancouverite, is the author of seventeen collections of poetry and prose, including her latest, Moving to Delilah (Freehand Books 2024) which was nominated for the Al Purdy and the Robert Kroetsch prizes. Her first book was published 28 years ago and she still keeps given'r from her 1905 house in Edmonton, where she also teaches form poetry, edits, reviews, juries, runs a performance series, and creates documentaries (and gardens). This Fall, Wolsak & Wynn will release her hybrid-memoir, 16 Homes.
