War Poet.ca - A CFAP Project by Suzanne Steele

but who will witness the witness

Jan 27, 2012  ·  No comments

today lots of tears. so many tears. fatigue. jet lag. my work. the aftermath of 36 intense hours of workshop, performance, meeting new people. the father of a fallen soldier. I am tired yet strangely energized.

and today, someone lovely was witness to me. she heard me. she cried too.

my PhD is on The Art of Witness. but who, who, will witness the witness?

from the mountains, from that amazing place where artists are valued, not judged, I send my greetings and am thankful for that person today

— smsteele

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Requiem Preview at the High Performance Rodeo

Jan 26, 2012  ·  No comments

what can I say but thank you?

thank you to the amazing Michael Green for contacting me in the summer of 2010 after hearing me on the CBC, and then asking me to come to Calgary after the In Arms performance, and I did, to chat about my work and see if anything I was doing could fit with his High Performance Rodeo, Calgary’s International Arts Festival. and thank you to Heather Slater of the CPO for believing in this.

I remember being exhausted getting off the bus from Edmonton after some of the most intense and incredible few days of my life, and meeting this energetic, firey light with wild hair, wireless glasses and an awesomely cool goatee (I think that’s what one calls them!), and being taken for luncheon at a Vietnamese restaurant and Michael ordering for me because he knew exactly what would be perfect, and it was. but that’s the deal with Michael Green, Calgary’s national treasure, he just seems to know what’s going to be good.

Michael and I yacked, and over lunch I told him about May Day, about my writing, but that my dream, my REALLY BIG DREAM, was to write a Requiem for a Generation because I believe Afghanistan will influence an entire generation. it has made and broken a generation as war always does. I repeat, it has broken but it has also made a generation.

Michael got on the phone and immediately set up a meeting with Heather Slater of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and the Requiem began it’s way to reality. together we listened to Jeffrey Ryan’s music and the rest as they say…

so yesterday was the culmination of years’ work and there is still so far to go before the premiere November 10, 2011, but those four gorgeous singer – Julia Millen, Julie Crouch, Oliver Munar, Timothy Shantz (chorus master and singing the baritone yesterday), the pianist Heather Klassen, and the four young and fine actors, Genevieve Paré, Mellany Murray, Aaron Zeffer, and Johathon Brower, helped us take the Requiem to a whole new level, and I thank them and everyone involved for believing in this. for walking this section of my personal camino, because this is a road that at times has been so damned lonely, and only my fellow artists can truly understand.

and today in attendance, the father of a fallen soldier. and an Afghan.

thank you.

— smsteele

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you gotta love them

Jan 25, 2012  ·  No comments

OMFIK wrote. he kept my spirits up with his KAF Haikus when my spirits were so far down. now the thing is, my work isn’t done yet. I still need his morale boosting… I’m not letting him off the hook… do you hear that OMFIK??? keep those Haiku coming!!! oh, and by the way, the “old” clerk is 24 years old!!! funny boy

my poet lady
all grown up and in college
no time for old clerks =)

OMFIK

— smsteele

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Requiem update

Jan 24, 2012  ·  No comments

spent the day with singers, actors, producers, and my collaborator Jeff Ryan. it’s amazing

thank you Calgary Philharmonic for commissioning this. it takes a great leap of faith. I think Jeff and I will do you proud.

— smsteele

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requiem

Jan 24, 2012  ·  No comments

to my army colleagues. I now have a bit of an understanding of how you felt the night before your first patrol, your first mission. though this is NOT life and death,
but today I am hearing some of Afghanistan: Requiem for a Generation, my work based on YOUR work, sung by opera singers, and read by professional actors.

I’m sweating buckets already.

I hope I can do 1/1000th the job that all of you did. thanks for keeping me alive at Suffield, Shilo, WWx, A’stan, bouncing around in the gunner’s hatch of the LAVs, in the herc, in the helo, Edmonton (the Officers Mess, the Senior NCO’s mess, the Men’s Xmas Dinner in the Lines!!!)

this is the first workshop. tomorrow I’ll hear 5 minutes of performance at Christ Church Cathedral. then the premiere in Nov. 2012

— smsteele

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lazarus (34)

Jan 19, 2012  ·  No comments

across the years your kiss
is dropped in me, the pebble,
the stone, dropped in the wadi
skipped, that kiss embed,
embedded in a heart
not a desert, but heart sown
with almond trees,
and sweet, sharp fruit,
white mulberry, you picked
on patrol, so tall, the mulberry
beaded that you hung,
above my sleeping head,
alive with me alive, not dead,
that kiss, that fruit, that gorgeous
stone.

— smsteele

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should I or shouldn't I continue to write?

Jan 18, 2012  ·  3 comments

my inner struggle. everyday I think I’ll flick the switch off this site. though thousands read it. every day I try and understand what the search for the colour of the dust of Afghanistan, way back in 2007 when I wrote my first line of Elegy for an Infantryman and got stuck on the colour… white, brown, red?… has led me to. a life unrecognizable from that of domestic cosiness in a little cottage on the west coast of North America, to this foray into PhD-land in a new country, and oh yes, with an 18 month, no three year really, excursion into the heart of a battalion, then a war zone, then home again to a different kind of home, all of this along the way.

I wonder why I expose my poorly-written prose, unfinished thoughts, when my colleagues are so very careful. well-trained. and I am so wanton with words and thought. and I think to myself, -“enough’s enough, time to get serious. time to learn your craft. time to understand theory, form etc. etc., enough of amateur hour blah blah blah”_

and sometimes, especially after a particularly unpleasant piece of mail (and there have only been 3 or 4) that chooses my private property, this site, as a Blue Rocket (!) for their insecurities, I doubly wonder…

until I receive a letter over the electronic transom which touches me. touches me deeply. especially as I, in the early throes of PhD-land am exploring the flip sides of the coin called witness.

this morning, so unexpectedly, a letter from a widow. we’ve never met. I won’t give her name (I always guarantee anonymity unless people wish me to identify them). her beloved was lost in A’stan. she has children. here’s what she wrote me:

I am glad you write, that you care to share the pain of war, of soldiers and our families. I am glad you care. Thank you. Keep writing, the world needs to know, to understand, to get it. He and I and his children need the world to get that his life gone, his mission, his sacrifice, our sacrifice was not in vain. That more than anything, is why I say, keep writing, your words are balm on our wounds. God Bless you and your good heart of compassion.

this astonishes me and humbles me. all I’ve ever done is try and find the correct colour of the sand in Afghanistan. honestly.

that I’ve also been allowed into the centre of the hearts of families, soldiers (one in particular), their friends, has been perhaps the most surprising of all. and one I struggle with. daily.

— smsteele

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my fellow war artists

Jan 17, 2012  ·  No comments

without a doubt, I have the best colleagues in the world. they are SO generous with their ideas, their time. I sent out a call to them as I wish to write about our very specialized, often fraught with personal danger, profession as I navigate PhD land. I sent out a blanket email and received the most amazing responses.

I’ll share my brilliant colleagues with you asap. I’ll ask permission to link you to them.

and I’ve been thinking about the title ‘war artist’ and wondering if it’s apt. because all of us have practices much wider than that (I previously wrote about life on a traditional croft raising sheep on the Outer Hebrides!). but I wonder if once one is a war artist one isn’t always one. maybe yes. maybe no. and this is a question I’d like to ask.

meanwhile, thank you colleagues. only you know what it’s like to sit in a LAV or in the belly of a Herc. or on a ship. or in the high Arctic. or Sudan. or Somalia. or…

and only you know how we risk for something we seem called to. quaint as that sounds.

thank you all of you

— smsteele