In Memoriam

The League of Canadian Poets has a large community that has stood strong for over 50 years. Over these past few months, the League has lost members and friends from the poetry community. We’d like to take this chance to remember Don Kerr, Lesley Strutt, Jeff Steudel, and Luciana Ricciutelli.

Jeff Steudel

Jeffrey Mike Steudel died in Vancouver on February 2, 2021, at the age of 54 after giving everything he had toward his healing. He took every opportunity to find a way through the challenges of cancer. Through these experiences he showed endurance, grace and much kindness. Jeff was a teacher, author and musician. He loved to read, run, swim, think, write and walk in nature. His steadiness of mind and calm demeanour were a strength to others. He is survived by his devoted wife of 25 years Susan Steudel, sons Christopher and Wil Steudel, parents Hildegard and Willy Steudel and sister Cecile Steudel (Peter Kochevar). He is loved by his extended family, friends and students in all directions. There will be an outdoor celebration of his life at a future time. In lieu of flowers please consider a donation to BC Cancer.

Don Kerr

Tribute by Scott Larson, CBC News:

Former Saskatchewan poet laureate, historian, playwright and English professor Don Kerr passed away on December 8, 2020. He was 84. “He had a huge personality,” said his son David Kerr.

“[He] was introduced to a bunch of painters and artists. And they were all talking at the top of their voices — practically yelling — and all smiling and having conversations. He

walked into the room and thought to himself, ‘I’ve met my people.’” David said Don talked loud, loved life and was open to all arguments and points of views.

Kerr spent 44 years as an English professor at the University of Saskatchewan. He wrote numerous books of poetry along with short stories, plays and even a musical. Born in 1936, Kerr spent most of his life in the Broadway area of Saskatoon. He received the provincial

Order of Merit in 2007 and became the province’s poet laureate in 2011. His musical Tune Town, with music written by Angie Tysseland, was staged at Persephone Theatre in 2006.

Don was also one of the founding members of the Saskatoon Heritage Society back in 1976. “You actually can’t talk about heritage preservation or anything to do with the heritage community without talking about Don Kerr,” said Peggy Sargeant, president of the Saskatoon Heritage Society.

“Without Don, there would not have been a Heritage society as early as the seventies. He was behind it all.” Sergeant said Don had a huge personality. “He was not afraid to say anything, which was quite wonderful for us,” she said. Sergeant said one of her favourite poems by Don is Capitol Punishment, about the demolition of the iconic Capitol Theatre.

“It was very sad and he was very upset about it,” Sergeant said “I think he never quite got over it.”

Fellow writer and U of S colleague David Carpenter said Don was a real influence in many ways. “He always stressed that in spite of the fact we were teaching the classics, we ought to show just as much attention to local culture, local history, local writing,” Carpenter said. “He lived those words in many ways.”

Carpenter said Don was a prolific writer. “Some of my favourites were his wartime plays. One is called Lanc, short for Lancaster, and The Great War.” Carpenter said another favourite is Don’s latest poetry collection, called The dust of just beginning. Bob Calder was a friend and fellow teacher at the U of S and has known Don since the 1960s.

Calder said he always thought of Don as “Mr. Saskatoon”.

“He loved the city. He wrote one of his greatest poems in a volume with the same name called In the City of Our Fathers. And it’s a paean, a poem of great love for Saskatoon.”

As much as he respected Don for his teaching and art, Calder said he appreciated him even more as a friend. “He was a wonderful guy to be with. He threw parties that were fun and, you know, enjoyable. He was very great and kind and supportive.” Carpenter said Don always had Saskatoon in his heart.

“If Don isn’t around to remember what happened to our city and to remind us and to write about it, it is like we will lose our memory,” Carpenter said. “I hope people will take up the slack.”

Remembering Luciana Ricciutelli-Costa

by Adebe DeRango-Adem

There are certain people who startle you with their kindness; who offer a soft place for you to land where you are heard, fully, and loved, completely. There are those rare people who startle you with how easily they embrace you, invite you in. To know them is to feel as cared for as kin.

Rarer still are friends like Luciana Ricciutelli, Editor-in-Chief of Inanna Publications, who was all of these things, and more. To me and to many, as so many who knew her loved her like family from the start. Friends like Lu who knew me before I could write, or tie my own shoes. In rooms that always seem sunlit, even in stormy weather. Who weathered too many storms for one life, but also served as a lighthouse for countless Canadian authors as well as editors. Who was a fierce editor who read your work and took it to heart, the only way she knew how. And kept it there.

Luciana lived for women’s writing; both Inanna and the journal Canadian Women’s Studies / Les cahiers de la femme were both central to her life’s work. But if you’ve had the blessing of knowing Lu outside the publishing realm—of having received one of her safe, all-en-

compassing hugs, or eaten one of her extraordinary meals, or simply being in the presence of her light— then you may very well imagine how the loss of someone that rare is a loss like no other.

When I heard about Luciana’s fast decline, I felt myself thrown out to

space, floating in and out of various registers of grief and disbelief. Then when faced with trying to imagine a world without her, I began to pray for Tino and the family, Stefano and Claudia. But prayer, too, became a difficult endeavor. Language had mostly served me as a glowing vessel, waiting to be filled with words, with meaning. But how do you write about emptiness? The vessel that fills only with inconsonant words, if even words; muffled, incredulous sounds. As though a prayer in the mouth of one who does not believe.

And still, I can scarcely believe she will no longer be, let alone believe in these words as testament to her having been. Incongruent, too, trying to write about someone who was so life-affirming, so full of living—anima—in/as memory. And then the familiar shapelessness of shock that comes in, first, as a distinct wave that sets forth a smaller collection of crests, which dissipate amongst the hours we fill with the various modes of tending to and caring for, working on and surviving through. There is the attempt to continue, as usual, despite the tectonic shift in which even the linearity of days isn’t promised.

Still, you must try and navigate the new landscape. “I want to write a novel about Silence,” says Teret, a character from Virginia Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out. “The things people don’t say.” Woolf knew how to paint the scenery of lives who face (or will come to face) the emotional vicissitudes of loss. Of self, of others. But it mustn’t have been an easy practice or task for Virginia. Nor for Luciana, whose years of dedication to literature was her way of saying to her authors—I hear you, even what you don’t say. Go on and speak your truth. To carry on that echo is to know that writing and bringing justice to a suffering have something in common; they both “deal” in silence. And to be an activist, as Luciana has been her entire life, is to work on behalf of voices yet to surface. Luciana was also a

Woolfian scholar. And Woolf, like Lu, was lost too soon.

Not even the author’s own ability to delve into the psychology of things could deliver her from the shadows of her inner world. But Woolf gave coherence to the brutalities of life in a way that seemed to say, the pain is the truth.

Lu, losing you is painful and that is the truth. But say I am learning that being a strong editor means being invested in the delicate work of bringing a text closer to its truth. To the author’s truth. The truth is, writing is a struggle. But say the struggle itself is the source—the sand in the shell, the clearing after the storm, the abject beauty of broken, refractive light. Say metaphor— loved by multitudes of poets, if not all—is supposed to help us imagine new worlds. Say I refuse to imagine a new world without Lu. Sorry, Lu. Say I will spend the rest of my life trying to write about this loss, however irresolute the words show up. Say, even, that the grief returns in bigger waves; say I still show up.

Lu, let’s say this is a thank you for believing in the power of words. For being the best editor in the world. For believing in my words, which has meant quite literally the world to me. Say my discomfort is evidence I’m doing something right. Say I know you can hear me, Lu, even when I do not say a word. I love you, Lu, and I will say it again and again.

by Adebe DeRango-Adem

Remembering Lesley Strutt

by Claudia Coutu-Radmore

This article was first published by the Ottawa Poetry Newsletter.

So what’s all the fuss about Lesley Strutt. A poet has died, not one who had published a hundred books, or even poems, or been awarded any of the great prizes. A poet who does not yet have a trade collection out. We haven’t seen or heard from her much recently. And I say there hasn’t been enough fuss yet, there hasn’t been a parade, balloons or banners strung across roads.

I say bring on the parade. The drum majors and majorettes, the floats, the banners.

I wasn’t fortunate enough to have known her for a lifetime, only since 1998, but since then on so many occasions we would sit and catch up with each other. I had to pry things out of her, because she wasn’t one to spend time talking about herself. When we talked family or relationships, we delved deep. Perhaps I knew more about the interior Lesley than the exterior.

Lesley was, for several years, the Associate Members representative on the League of Canadian Poets council. There’s not enough being done for the associate members, she declared and so started Fresh Voices, a space on the League’s website for poems only by associate members. She was one of its first editors, and then found others to keep it going. The League council never knew what trouble she would stir up next, trouble meaning the council’s work to get her ideas going. She had a way of expecting that you would do what she suggested, but it was always for the good of the League. Her voice was strong in the League’s Feminist Caucus.

Outgoing, she struck up conversations with poets at League conferences. Joanna Lilley of Yukon was struck by her vivacity and vibrancy. Alice Major wrote that Lesley has been a gift to this world; Brenda Siberras, League of Canadian Poets representative from Manitoba wrote to Lesley ‘what an impact you made in this world. You will be missed and thought of often’. Lynn Tait, a poet from Southern Ontario wrote that now Lesley is part of everything, which is perfect, because that was her ultimate goal, to be one with the earth, the sky, the universe.

Ottawa poets have loved Lesley for many years. Nina Jane wrote about the little conversations they had about poetry in cramped book stores. Doris Fiszer wrote of the impact she made on everyone who knew her. Sneha Madhavan-Reese said Lesley was one of the most beautiful and compassionate people she knew.

Another League council member says that she was a powerhouse, and I know that from experience. Lesley had an idea to have the League representative of each province edit a section of poems on trees, and that the books would

be sold with profits going to The League of Canadian Poets, and Heartwood: Poems for the Love of Trees was born. She went on to launch it with a film by Diana Beresford- Kroeger, Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees where many included Ottawa poets read their contributions. She knew Ms. Beresford-Kroeger and asked for a blurb for the cover of Heartwood. She gave a presentation online recently; on the shelf behind her was her copy of Heartwood, which Lesley saw when she was at a low point. It was exactly what she needed, she said. Lesley supported TreeSisters, an organization that plants trees all over the world. Please feel free to leave a donation at https://treesisters.org.

Lesley won the Tree Reading Series Chapbook Contest in 2015 with Small as Butterflies and was a featured reader at Tree. I have an elegant handmade chapbook, White Bowl, printed in New Haven, a series of poems about her parents.

She and Chuck had joined Kado, Ottawa’s Haiku group, for a while. They both had haiku hearts, and wrote haiku, but the reason they left it was because they had discovered how difficult and how long it would take to learn to write a good haiku, and they wouldn’t do it unless they had a chance of writing good poems. She knew herself so well, and made wise, thoughtthrough decisions. Haiku was not her form. She had other things to do.

Other projects involved going to reading series and launches, and spreading poetry in the community she then called home. She held workshops in Merrickville for poets, started a poetry group, produced a chapbook of their work, and made plans for further workshops and readings. She and I and Jessica Heimstra also formed a group we called Poets Three that was so stimulating I would drive home in an almost euphoric cloud.

Inanna Press published her Young Adult novel, On the Edge, in 2019, and she blogged about the research she’d done for it. I read the novel and was entranced even though I know nothing of sailing. I suggest it to anyone, not only young people, who are interested in sailing, as Lesley has done a great amount of sailing in her life. She knew the sea and what to do when one is on top of them.

In her last weeks she arranged with Inanna that I would see the publication of her new collection, Window Ledge, accepted recently,

through its last steps. Imagine my answering a phone call from this amazing woman who was barely able to speak for the cancer taking over her throat, asking me if I would do her that favour. Yes, Yes, I’ll crawl up mountains for you…

Louise Schwartz wrote of how Lesley contributed a piece on James Strutt’s Magical House, on the Mountain Road, for a History Journal called Up The Gatineau, how Lesley was exceptional and such a pleasure to work with.

Friends wrote that they felt blessed to have known Lesley and the bright, beautiful light she was. Another friend who had met Lesley while they were becoming certified as journey practitioners, wrote of how they recommended books to each other, how Lesley shared wisdom and knowledge, how she always found ways to include laughter, how they would laugh and laugh until they cried. Another tells how Lesley’s lovely energy held her in a warm embrace through difficult times, another wrote that she was encouraging and illuminating, still another notes how selfless she was and generous, full of consideration of others.

How many people referred to the light in her. Jazz musician Alrick Huebener wrote that she was a literary and loving light.

Mike Beedell, internationally known conservation photographer, wilderness guide and outdoor educator, writes that when he was working with the film maker John Houston developing a virtual reality platform celebrating the Arctic world, Lesley brought together professors and departments, and sought funding. He was amazed at her energy and commitment, saying she was a fount of ideas.

Nate Mayer told how he and Lesley worked together at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. As Program Officer, her role was to go over grant applications from the top Canadian minds in Social Sciences. Her extensive knowledge and brilliance in literacy was invaluable, that she had made him, as a young man, feel at ease and comfortable in the corporate world, making sure his voice was heard.

Heather Sims tells of Lesley’s being Program Officer for the Canada Research Chairs Program, a government funding agency, how she had such excellent relationships with colleagues and stakeholders,

and always welcomed new staff with open arms, just a sweetheart of a lady with the kindest soul and amazing spirit.

I was at Lesley and Chuck’s wedding, held in their beautiful back yard. Nearly the whole town was there. I heard comments such as She should run for town council! Because having moved there, she and Chuck became so involved in community activities, and were especially active in the Merrickville Artists’ Guild (MAG). Chuck is a photographer, while Lesley constructed intricate painted paper vases that contained poetry. She had a leading role in organizing literary events for MAG.

The Guild has started the Lesley Strutt Poetry Prize fund, and I’m pleased to be associated with that project. Should anyone wish to contribute, please go to the MAG Facebook page.

Lesley had a PHD in Linguistics and taught sessions at the Ottawa Universities, but her heart lay in counseling. She started a new blog in the last two years. In Living Starts with Love, the publication now on Kindle of her blog posts, she offers suggestions for when we feel life is perilous and full of disappointment. She’s had much of that in her life too, but suggests that life is an incredible adventure, and we can live it fully. She believed that to her last morning. And I am devasted, lost. My hours with her when, perhaps we talked poetry and read it or listened to her daughter Dee Dee Butters’ latest recording, perhaps played with Farley, her dog or discussed the birds in her garden, were almost magical. Her husband, Chuck Willemsen, wrote that she gave to all who asked of her willingly with kindness and grace which they gave back in abundance. She lived her life filled with joy and love in her heart. He wrote that her joy was infectious, that she never ran out of it. Two days before her planned medically assisted death, I texted her that I would give anything to see her face once more.

Her answer was Me too! Me Too! followed by three heart emojis, and a smiley face.

Years ago, a friend of mine was dying from cancer. She and her husband had loved New Orleans music and so, in her memory, a New Orleans Brass Band made up of musicians from all over the city, along with hundreds of friends, paraded along Bank Street.

I say bring on the bands and the balloons and the floats. Parade to be held when the pandemic is over. Or for now, let’s have that parade in our minds.

by Claudia Coutu-Radmore

Don Kerr is survived by his wife Mildred and their three boys Bill, Bob and David.