Jacqueline Turner is a poet who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. She founded a literary magazine called Filing Station that has been publishing international writing for the past 10 years. She starts off her mornings with coffee (her one constant) and creates lists of words. They don’t have to mean anything. They don’t have to be her next poetic success; they just have to be words in a list. Next she sits at her laptop and writes, being careful so as not to spill coffee onto her laptop, and every time she gets stuck she looks down to the list and it helps her continue what she is writing.
I first read her book “Seven into Even” in class when Ms. Parrish was handing out these random poetry books to each of our groups. It was the first book that grabbed my attention, maybe because of the odd looking key on the cover, maybe because of the title. Honestly I don’t know why, I just grabbed it. It was interesting from the start and the one thing that I remember catching my eye and sparking my interest was its table of contents. Each separate section of the book had a theme to it, and each theme had a list of words for each poems title. After finding out that Jacqueline actually makes lists of words before she starts writing it all makes more sense and now I actually wish I had the book in front of me so I could read it again knowing a little more about her. I do however distinctly remember one section of the book which had all the days of the weeks as titles and then complementary poems. I really do plan on reading that book again.
A poem that I found online by Jacqueline Turner and liked is called “A Brisbane Poem”:
dawn is a hazy light
I don’t always get to see
suffuse with the blush on the palms
of the sun slowly rising
here on the other side of the earth
from where we came
earlier the southern cross
emerged as clouds pushed past
hello scorpio’s vivid immensity
across a dark sky rushing
along the river
to get to where we always end up
not home, but welcome
not altogether free, but wanting
to capture what’s in front of us
that will someday be far away
leaning up into a different night sky
a glimpse back
arms out
