Interview with author Beth Powning

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Our November pick for the Canadian Living Book Club is Edge Seasons, by New Brunswick author Beth Powning. (Click here to read an excerpt.) Edge Seasons is described as "a year-long journey of shattering and ultimately strengthening change," one which we can all relate to as we make our way through life. We chatted with Powning about her book and her inspiration.

Canadian Living: What inspired you to write this book?

Beth Powning: This book began as two separate projects. The first project was called Weather Walks, originally titled Animal Tracks. I began writing short essays about walks I took in our woods, pondering the way in which so much of nature ("the others") is found as faint smudges, leavings, tracks; and how I, as a human, felt like an outsider, privy only to the remains of the feast. I published these essays in our weekly provincial newspaper's insert, The N.B. Reader. My understanding of what I was pondering deepened, and broadened, and lengthened, and became a small book called Edge Seasons. This was composed of five long essays, ponderings about midlife. I combined all these writings into a manuscript, thinking to publish a collection of nature writing. My wonderful editors at Knopf, Diane Martin and Angelika Glover, encouraged me to weave a narrative thread into the essays. I realized that the essays were about the need for renewal, especially at points in a life when some things seemed to be ending, and so I thought of the story of renovating the sauna bath. This, I realized, would add human interest to the nature writing, and make the forward motion that every book needs.

CL: There has been quite a bit of controversy of late on the nature of the memoir and whether its content is fact, fiction or somewhere in between. Where does your book fit?

BP: This book is factual. The only thing I changed was the chronology of my son's life. I wrote so openly about my family in my memoir "Shadow Child" that I felt I could not put my son through any more public scrutiny. While everything I wrote about him is true, some of it did not happen in quite the sequence as it is represented in the book, and much is omitted.

CL: Quite a bit of the book's content is journal excerpts. Are these from the actual journal you were writing in during this period of your life?

BP: Yes, these excerpts are taken directly from diaries and journals I was keeping during those years.

CL: How important is journal writing in your life?

BP: For me, journal writing is essential. It varies in amount and kind. When I am deeply involved in the actual writing of a book, my journal writing drops off, since I am spending four to five hours a day putting words to paper, and have no energy left. At such times, my journal is filled with working notes, reminders to myself of what I need to do, insights about the book I am writing as it progresses. When I am between books, my journals become vehicles for a kind of ongoing discussion with myself about what I am feeling, thinking, reading about. I talk to myself about what I might write next. I celebrate the moment by describing, in a totally free and unselfconscious manner, the texture of the moment: frost, smell of the wind, dryness of leaves, animal sightings, river sounds. Sometimes I make an appointment with myself to write about exactly where I am in this stage of my life, since I know how valuable and fascinating it will be to read this 10 years hence. Journal writing is my way of dealing with the brief flame of life, a kind of stoking, like leaning forward and setting new sticks of wood on a bonfire.

CL: I love the cover image (of snowdrops breaking through snow). Were you involved in choosing the cover? How well do you think it evokes the content?

BP: I did not choose the cover, but as always, my publishers ask me what I think. The cover is the inspired work of Kelly Hill. It is so perfect and poignant, the thrust of new life through the snow. Edge Seasons is very dark in the winter months, like a bulb frozen in soil. The breaking through into spring light is the point.

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