World Poetry Cafe -El Mundo de la Poesia Radio Memorial

World Poetry Cafe - El Mundo de la Poesia
Time: 9 pm - 10 pm,  Tuesday, March 30th 2010
Vera Manuel Memorial World Poetry Café Radio Show  30 March 2010, 9 pm PST to listen. CFRO 102.7 FM Satellite: Star Choice 845 Listen on the internet: www.coopradio.org  Together, we will create a universe of love  Juntos creamos un universo de amor Dear poets and participants, Please join us for the radio show, World Poetry Cafe and bring a poem by or to Vera. We will talk about her life and read her poems. Also, we will talk about the tribute to Vera at Vancouver Public Library, on June 21st. Compartiendo poesia, notas creativas, entrevistas, y mœsica. Bienvenidos a ustedes el publico, los auditores, que son las estrellas de la noche, que brillan e iluminan el firmamento. Los poetas son los embajadores de sus paises, quienes leen en dos lenguajes.  Sharing poetry, creative tips, interviews, and music. We welcome you, the stars of the night, our public, our radio listeners. The poets are the ambassadors of their countries, who read in two languages. Consult Creativa Ariadne Sawyer and poet Alejandro Mujica Olea, ariadnes@uniserve.com for more information, and to take part.

Vera first set foot on a stage...

Vera first set foot on a stage when she joined the Chilliwack Players Guild in 1965. She was 17 and she was bitten.  She was a member of the Junior Guild and even when she wasn’t actively involved in a production, there was always something about being in that space that drew her back -  to pitch in wherever she was needed, watch as a play came together in rehearsal or just hang out amongst so much talent. She loved to feel the suspense of waiting for the show to begin and then feel the power and pleasure of reaching out to an audience, and absorb that creative energy that surely only theatre people bleed out of their pores. 

She loved every minute. The Guild was a family and she was home.  There was friendship, there was mentorship and there was the seed of what she would become: a storyteller with her own production company, a writer, an acclaimed poet, a playwright and a healer. She used her gifts, honed through her theatre experiences with the Guild, to spend over 20 years touring North America with her own special theatrical brand of counseling.  She used drama and poetry to help those silenced by trauma to recover their voices, to tell their stories, and to return any “secrets” they had gathered into the common pool of shared knowledge and memory, so that the burdens of history could be shared by the community and the individual’s heart lighter and more free.  She touched so many with her humbleness, her joy of life, her love for her family and friends, and her spiritual clarity: her wisdom was there whenever it was needed.  

 

She will be missed but Vera (Kulilu Palki – Butterfly Woman) Manuel will be held in the hearts of so many for so long.   

Joyce Johnson and Joanne Arnott, posted with permission of authors

Newsclipping images provided by Joyce Johnson

Where Poetry Comes From

Poetry became my way of telling a story about subjects too painful to talk about within my family, community, tribal groups and nation. Poetry gave me license to say out loud everything that others were afraid to tell. An elder told me once that "poetry is a gentle way of talking about painful things."

For years I used my poetry as a tool to help people to heal and never thought to publish it or to use it for any other purpose. As long as the words that came to me could help to open doors for others to get at their feelings and their own words that is all I cared about.

Both my parents and most people of their generation were residential school survivors. My father also spent a significant portion of his adolescence in a TB hospital. When I was a child no one talked about the past, but I grew up in a home full of silence, shame, violence, incest and rage. The way I survived was to keep silent like everyone else, but I always wrote poetry. When I look back on it now I realize I was not as silent as I thought, between the lines the stories are all there. Poetry helped me to find the words to tell,to connect and to resist my tendency to isolate. In the telling I have gained many allies. Poetry is a powerful source of healing.

My father was an orator who could hold the attention of huge groups of people with his passion and commitment to the land. My mother was a storyteller who passed on knowledge about the Kootenai culture and land. Their gift was their ability to speak from the heart where poetry comes from.

--Vera Manuel

Photo by Mona Fertig, Rocksalt launch in Vancouver
Poetics statement published in Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry Edited by Mona Fertig and Harold Rhenish Mother Tongue Publishing 2008


My thanks to Mona Fertig for permission to post photo and excerpt.