Angela Bowden Celeste Snowber

IN CONVERSATION

Angela Bowden Celeste Snowber

Both poets address intergenerational trauma in their new collections

ANGELA BOWDEN: Celeste, I want to begin by acknowledging the intergenerational trauma, the reclamation of power and the homage that UnSpoken Truth: unmuted and unfiltered and The Marrow of Longing pay to the living traumas of African and Armenian people.

The moment I began reading your book it was obvious why these two books and authors were chosen to be in dialogue; they are speaking in similar ways about these living his/herstories and intergenerational traumas that imprint today’s realities. The themes are obvious and connected in both works: trauma, resilience, identity, longing and belonging; Belonging is a yearning imprinted beyond experience, it lives in our souls, DNA and indeed our marrow.

It would appear that our books were constructed on the backs of that longing and I’m wondering if you could share your personal journey of longing and how it led you to write The Marrow of Longing. Why was it important to share the morsels of history and tradition fed to you around the kitchen table?

CELESTE SNOWBER: Angela, your work touched me deeply to the bone; even though our herstories are different, there are threads that speak to intergenerational trauma and cultivating resilience, risk and courage. I hum with resonance. I particularly connect to the “unacknowledged generational pain” of your own ancestry and moving through is central to healing, and recognizes love that forms our journeys.

My own personal journey is deeply connected to a sense of not belonging, and sorting out a life infused with beauty and moments of terror—the rage I witnessed in my mother, who escaped the Armenian genocide. Writing poetry became a way of excavating the unspoken trauma, but also embracing a culture which formed me to be a warrior and survivor.

The kitchen table became the embodiment of love and stories. Cooking with colour was everything and love was stuffed in the Armenian meals of grapeleaves, cheese boureg and eggplant. In unpacking the trauma inflicted on the Armenian people and my own ancestors, and owning the wonder in my culture, I embrace the longing within belonging.

I’m curious how your own writing becomes a place for alchemy and if the writing alone is a place of resistance? Here I see the poetic and prophetic working together and wondering if you see any relationship here between how poetry becomes a portal to transforming the trauma?

ANGELA BOWDEN: Thank you, Celeste. How humbling it is to walk around in ancestral trauma and be able to form tangible connections.

The mere telling of these unspoken travesties becomes a political form of resistance in a time and space where we grapple with the current damage of our historical shared stories. I embrace the responsibility to reflect these times and piece together the remains of our truths.

Poetry is a portal to innerstanding these painful truths, the transformation of trauma into something tangible where we feel and connect so deeply that we are motivated to change; this is what I call innerstanding.

The stories of my elders and ancestors exist in my veins connecting me in a way that motivates me to write and to illuminate a time erased, while granting space to Black trauma; an acknowledgement owed to Black folk and critical to their healing.

UnSpoken Truth is an act of righteous resistance! It is transformative in many lives because as humans we collectively begin to understand the trauma of our sisters and brothers by connecting to them on a deeper level. Poetry allows you to connect and coexist in the generational trauma, momentarily.

Similarly, I observe these heroic acts of truth telling in your work, and I wonder if the excavation of these traumas and traditions granted you an opportunity to heal and to build pathways to innerstanding for others. How has your work moved people? There are many pieces of poetry in your book that are in harmony and synthesize with my work. Are there any pieces in particular that you would like to ask me about?

CELESTE SNOWBER: I absolutely love what you say about innerstanding and “where we feel and connect so deeply that we are motivated to change.” This echoes my own lived experience and for so many years I struggled [because] I felt things so deeply and even what was not told.

Traversing the depths is the portal to writing and performing these stories, which breaks open the past, but announces the future. To let your words sit in my tissues is a profound gift. I am witnessed and witnessing.

UNSPOKEN TRUTH

Angela Bowden Pottersfield Press

THE MARROW OF LONGING

Celeste Snowber HARP Publishing

In terms of building innerstanding of others—I experience others who have intergenerational trauma are given boldness to tell their stories. This includes any race which experiences unspeakable injustices and now is the time for speaking.

I want to ask you about so many your poems I am carrying in my body: “The Field of Lies,” “Responsibility Resist” and “Here I am.” I wonder if the poem “Responsibility Resist” can be a poem for lifelong inspiration? Here the story of one becomes the story of many.

ANGELA BOWDEN: I agree, Celeste. My soul resonates with your words that are written with such brilliance and deliberateness; I see you; I hear you; I feel you.

The trauma that we have inherited and the making sense of such chaos through poetry is a divine gift. Speaking of poems that resonate, your poem “Imposter” reminded me of the way in which Black folk are conditioned to doubt who they are in white spaces, and always [being] asked, “where are you from?” clearly communicating “you don’t belong here.”

The “Magic in Pilaf” poem comforted me in a way that only soul words can; like soul food, the ingredients are not only edifying to the body but the tradition feeds the soul.

There are not enough letters in the alphabet to define longing

As this excerpt from your poem “An Alphabet of Longing” reminds us, the longing for connectivity surpasses words and lives inside our marrow. The remnants of who we were shape who we are and are key to who we will be—an illumination of who we once were before the fragments. Imagine!

CELESTE SNOWBER: I would love Angela for our two poems “Here I am” and “The Story of One” to be printed together (or some lines in each). I am so blown away how they companion one another, and so many lines in both our books are companions. I’m now thinking our ancestors are all together spurring us on!

ANGELA BOWDEN: I agree, Celeste, it is divine work and in fact they seamlessly tell the same story; it was easy to combine them and further reinforces the connectivity one finds in trauma, in each other, and in all time and spaces.

The Story of One—Here I Am

Standing in the rapture of time  caught between two places both the same  looking for new answers to old problems old answers both the same

If we only have fragments  aren’t all our pieces a whole  what happens to one  happens to all

Is it not all the same story on a different timeline The same struggle between good and evil Have they not always coexisted  since the dawn of time began

So much has gone missing Strands of DNA Whisper a mystery

Have greed and power not fertilized today’s soil From whence the perennials of dark deeds bloom with little effort  year after year  Annuals of hope spring forth an appetizer  Only to be eaten by the wild at night  And each flower falls silent to the ravage

Except one

One survived and bloomed

The story of one is the survival of a nation

Here I am

ANGELA BOWDEN is a descendent of the stolen Africans sold through the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Angela’s roots were preserved through the Black Loyalists arriving in Birchtown, migrating to Guysborough County, and later moving to New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, where she was born and raised.

CELESTE NAZELI SNOWBER, PhD is a dancer, poet, writer, award-winning educator and professor in the faculty of education at Simon Fraser University. She is also the author of Wild Tourist and the co-author of Blue Waiting with Sean Wiebe.