Shazia Hafiz Ramji

How Poetry Saved My Life — Winner of the 2013 Vancouver Book Award

After attending the 2013 Mayor’s Arts Awards in December, Sad Mag correspondent Shazia Hafiz Ramji caught up with the fiery but modest writer, Amber Dawn, to discuss her genre-crossing memoir How Poetry Saved My Life, which won the 2013 Vancouver Book Award. Having garnered numerous awards, including the Lambda Award for her previous book, Sub Rosa, and an award-winning docuporn, Amber continues to achieve more—by retaining a candid, engaged stance in How Poetry Saved My Life. Read on to share Amber’s thoughts on what it means to be a “Hustler,” ways of living and healing in Vancouver, and the role of genre in being “emotionally accurate.”

Sad Mag: In a recent article about The Vancouver Book Award in The Globe and Mail, you told the Globe: “I usually don’t say I want to win something, but I really want this.” Congratulations on having your desire come true! Why did you really want to win the 2013 Vancouver Book Award?
Amber Dawn: I’ve had some dark days in Vancouver, and I made a promise to this city that if it took care of me that I’d take care of it. I’m keeping my promise in the ways that I know how: using my voice, volunteering, activism and ongoing learning. How Poetry Saved My Life shows aspects of this city that not everyone sees directly; however, I believe issues of sex work, risk and violence against women are palpable in every Vancouverites’ mind. We know that the number of missing and murdered women in this city is inexcusably high. We know that the city is changing in ways that causes homelessness to continue to rise. We all wonder what to do, and how to heal from the traumas we collectively feel or witness. I wrote my book in part because I wanted to remind Vancouverites that there is always something we can do, there is always some way we can heal.

SM: Even though your book is categorized as a memoir, you employ many genres. Why did you decide to use many genres?
AD: I did not start of by saying, “I want to write a mixed-genre prose and poetry book.” But as I wrote, I came to understand that my story couldn’t be told through a single prosaic “confessional memoir” chronological narrative—from inciting moment, to so-called rock-bottom, to redemption. Whose life is really like that? That memoir formula is far too tidy to tell most of our life stories. To be emotionally accurate and true to my experiences I needed to use poetry, essay and short memoir. I needed the dynamism of all three.

SM: Please discuss the decision making process around using the word “hustler” in the title of your book.
AD: I love the term “sex worker.” I love the history of that term—the history of explicitly naming sex work as work. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Margot St James and Carol Leigh, aka The Scarlot Harlot, two early San Francisco-based sex work activists who have taught me to take pride in the history of our movement. But my book and my identity are about more than just sex work. Class, survivorship and queerness are prominent themes in the book too (they can’t be separated). I felt “hustler” encompassed more of who I am. “Hustler” can mean to move through something or to take a gamble, a risk. Sure, I hustled as a sex worker. I also hustled my way through university. I’m hustling my way up the class ladder. I’ve hustled French women in a Parisian dyke bar …

SM: How do you feel now that you’ve won the 2013 Vancouver Book Award?
AD: What does it say about our City to name a scrappy, queer, sex worker memoir as the 2013 Book? I hope it says that Vancouver wants to be inclusive, broad-minded and vocal. I hope it says that Vancouver wants to hear from under-represented peoples—and that we’re not afraid of topics like sex, poverty and survival. With this hope, I feel awesome about winning. I want to high five everyone I see.

SM: What are you currently working on?
AD: I’m working on a magical realism novel called “Sodom Road Exit”—set in Crystal Beach, Ontario (the former site of Crystal Beach Amusement Park) during the years 1990 and 1991. After dropping out of the University of Toronto and racking up significant financial debt, my protagonist, Bailey, moves home to Crystal Beach to live with her mother. Her arrival coincides with the aftermath of the amusement park’s bankruptcy and closure, which leaves Crystal Beach a ghost town, both financially and literally. It’s a ghost story. Magic and ghosts (and a few sex workers, too).

***

Follow Amber Dawn @AmberDawnWrites, keep apprised of independent publishing at Arsenal Pulp Press, @Arsenalpulp, and visit Shazia to keep cool @Shazia_R

From November 23^rd 2012 to January 18^th 2013, Satellite Gallery curated (e)merging Art/Music/Poetry: The Vancouver Artpunk Archive of Doreen Grey, an inventive, interdisciplinary exploration of Vancouver’s emerging punk scene in the late 1970s. Centered around environmentalist, artist and videographer Lenore “Doreen Grey” Herb, who died in 2010, the exhibit delved into a vast archive of Herb’s creative works and memorabilia. Satellite Gallery’s curator, Jaime Clay, recalls Lenore Herb from both a personal and curatorial perspective.

Shazia: What was your first encounter with Lenore Herb’s work like?
Jaime Clay: My first encounter with Lenore was as she was filming one of the local music shows. I was in one of the bands and was introduced to her formally by our singer. It was from then on, as I played and attended those shows in the late 1970’s that I would see Lenore often recording. She would be there with all her gear, usually alone, trying to get some of the band’s music recorded on video.

As for seeing her work (product) for the first time, I would see it presented at a pop-up art gallery around the same time. Pop-up art galleries were a recurring event back then: they gave an outlet for both artists and musicians.

But seeing her work for the second time, 30 years later, was more of a revelation. I lost contact with her (and my lead singer) in the intervening years, so finding her again proved a little difficult. Once I did, then looking at her video footage, it was all pretty exciting – having the patina of 30 years.

How does her work compare and relate to her contemporaries? Who were her contemporaries?
There were really no contemporaries to her in this genre, and she pretty much worked by herself, a decision she made and kept to. Some contemporaries would be artists Paul Wong, John Anderson, Elizabeth Vander Zaag, who specialized in video at that time. Lenore made enemies easily. She marched to her own beat, so her ideas never met eye-to-eye with any of the other artists working in the same genre. Their paths met for sure, but no collaborations ever occurred, nor the sharing of ideas. Lenore wasn’t a conceptualist. She was more of a realist. Capture the moment.

What is your favourite piece by Lenore Herb?
I have many favourite pieces from her collection. From the show at the Belkin Satellite, I could stare forever at the picture or Lenore with her video camera, taken circa 1979. She looked so engrossed in her art, unaware a film camera was near her, capturing her image. I love all her musical video work. It is very difficult to pick out one piece. Yes, they stand out well on their own, but if you take many of them together (the compilation music video was done by me) you get a sense of the awesome power of the media and how it explored and exploited unknown territory from that period.

What is the significance of her work in a cultural and historical context?
Lenore’s work is historical; an important lost document to a period in Vancouver’s (and the West Coast/BC) art movement. There was no connection to New York, London or even San Francisco or Toronto’s art scene here in Vancouver. Lenore, having grown up with the local poets in the early 1960’s, and then the counterculture to the late ’60’ and early 1970’s, felt there was a need to record these short, undocumented times. At first she used film cameras, but it soon became evident, with the punk movement, that she needed to capture more than just still images. It was a catharsis on her part, and luckily the new medium of videotape was available in Vancouver.

Lenore Herb also ran an art collective in “Metro Media”. This was in the mid 1980’s. The storefront was a revolving door of artists, musicians and poets. She was active with “Mail Art” and received (and sent) mail art worldwide. She was also active in the new medium of colour Xerox, and the reciprocation of this art worldwide.

Her video footage alone contains rare performances of many local (and international) musicians from a time when no one else dared to record it. In addition to her music videography, she has hours and hours of poetry, again both local and international (Allan Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, etc) as well as many hours of political events, especially around the theme of sustainability – at a time when such a word barely existed.

How was her work interdisciplinary? How is this relevant to artists now, and has anyone been inspired by Lenore Herb’s work in the recent past?
Lenore straddled many genres. Video, color xerox art, poetry, film, mail art, music…the list is immense.

Up until now, she kept her work very private. Part of the problem was her video was on old formats that were difficult to transfer to newer formats. And this is true today. Her archive is in dire need of preserving, as the tapes are quickly deteriorating. So not too many people have seen her body of work, especially as completely as was shown at the recent Belkin Satellite gallery.

Author Archives: Shazia Hafiz Ramji

Q and A // Vancouver Book Award Winner Amber Dawn

Interview // Jaime Clay on the Legacy of Lenore Herb