In a month-long act of resistance, poets remind us that poetry can push back against forces that marginalize voices, erase stories, and impose control over how we live and imagine.
An interview with Chelsea Coupal
ALL LIT UP: How would you describe U ALIVE to someone picking it up for the first time?
CHELSEA COUPAL: This collection is concerned with time—how the past constantly collides with the present, how we’re still kids and teenagers and young adults, even as we age.
These poems contain calendars and seasons. They explore intersections and transitions, changes and patterns, mortality and loss.
These poems are full of bars and parties, and prairies, stars and sky. They ask: “What is holy? If we don’t believe in god, how do we pray?”
ALU: How do you see poetry as an act of resistance?
CHELSEA: Poetry resists by telling the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable or hard.
ALU: What role does community—readers, poets, teachers—play in your writing?
CHELSEA: Community is incredibly important to my writing.
I owe my teachers everything. I believe deeply that I wouldn’t be writing today if I hadn’t encountered so many generous, encouraging teachers along the way.
The Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild does a great job building community and I have personally benefitted from their services. I’ve used their manuscript evaluation service. I’ve attended writing retreats facilitated by the Guild. I’ve attended events.
Readers and other writers have provided me with valuable feedback and support as well.
ALU: How do you sustain a practice of writing poetry in politically or personally challenging times?
CHELSEA: I don’t put pressure on myself to write regularly or every day.
Sometimes I’m productive. Sometimes I’m not.
Sometimes I’m just observing and reading and thinking—but that’s all part of the writing process too.
I write when I can—usually in the Notes app on my phone.
Read a poem from U ALIVE
What We Leave Behind
The taste of his lips, mostly spit and mint. The unusual coolness
of that night in August, the stars stunningly clear. The heft
of his body next to yours and you like how he makes you feel
short, small. How you vomit in your bed after a night
of partying at Strawberry Lake—more slough than lake—and
sleep in stomach-acid-vodka stench, the tips of your hair
damp with it. You’ll do anything not to wake your parents.
The time you wake up on a beach, soft sound of breath
and Pacific Ocean waves smoothing the shore—
pale-wet, pale-wet. Rose-coral morning sky, conch shells,
plumeria. And a boy from California lies beside you,
his blond hair full of bonfire and marijuana smoke,
sand freckling his arms, his face. When you drive
to your boyfriend’s farm, late summer afternoon,
same drive a thousand times, he asks you to pick up a pizza
from town on the way, and the sun pours so warm
through the window, you shiver. And you know,
you know, it’s the last time you’ll make that drive.
And you’re going to tell him that. And you call your friend
to say you can’t stop crying. The way a person, eyes closed
and mouth open, dying and on morphine, will gulp and gulp
at the air, never quenched and never swallowing. Their lips
the most chapped you’ve ever seen. Your aunt’s cabbage rolls,
her borscht. Your mother’s tiger lilies, swarming, freckled,
full of fire. The lady beetles blend into them. Your mother’s
lilacs, the neatly mown lawn, the empty lots behind it.
The crow’s call. The happy family dogs and
the matted farm dogs. The cattle, the canola,
the lentils, the scent of insecticide. The gravel.
The wild rabbits. The sky, the sky, the sky.
Reprinted with permission from Thistledown Press.
Watch Chelsea Coupal read a poem
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Chelsea Coupal’s first poetry collection, Sedley, was selected for an Indigo Exclusive edition and shortlisted for three Saskatchewan Book Awards. Her poetry has won the City of Regina Writing Award, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appeared in more than a dozen Canadian publications, including Arc, EVENT, The Fiddlehead, the Literary Review of Canada, The Malahat Review and Best Canadian Poetry.
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Thanks to Chelsea for answering our questions, and to Thistledown Press for the text from U ALIVE, which is available to order now (and get 15% off + FREE shipping Canada-wide with the code POETSRESIST until April 30!).
Thanks for following this year’s NPM series! If you missed it, don’t fret—you can catch up on all of our featured interviews and poems here.
