Interview with author Beth Powning

CL: I was struck by this quote on page 51, which I think many women can relate to: "Peter suggests that I give up some of the things that I do. I'm offended and incredulous. Everything's under control. No one else can do these things as competently as I can." Have you learned to let go? How?

BP: Yes, I have learned to "let go," although I have to keep reminding myself to leave space in my life, not to do too much, not to "care" in that obsessive way that is less caring than imposing. I no longer make lists. If I can't keep it in my head, then it's not worth doing. This way of working and living is how I create my gardens. I make no plans, write nothing down. I take my tools and go there. I do one thing, and then let it lead to the next. This is how I cook, as well, using recipes only for baking. (Start with cilantro and buttercup squash, see where it leads...) I still do a great deal; my husband complains that I'm a whirling dervish. But there is so much I love; granddaughters, ponies, gardens, writing, singing, harvesting, walking. If I find myself doing something in the wrong way, however (working without seeing, my mind only on the next task), then I stop, breathe, make myself see. Walking, yesterday, with my granddaughter, she said, "Let's sit down." We sat in the grass. "Blue," she said, looking at the sky. "Blue, with white, and then grey." We lay and watched the clouds. Remember this, I said to myself.

CL: What is your favourite part of this book?

BP: There are certain sentences, or phrases, or paragraphs, that come into my mind like gifts; they make my scalp prickle. They are like keys to unlock a box of treasures. One is on page 25: "...I'm the bear who can lumber into the forest seeking her own berries. I'm the goose who can fly south, unfettered. I'm any woman whose arms and hands remember the shape of a small body, pressed close."

These words were gifts, risen from my subconscious, and as such are like my gardens, whose beauty I take no credit for.

I don't have a favourite part of the book. That is why it is so hard to select readings. To me, a book is the sum of its parts, although a bit of the whole is in every part. A book has a kind of aura, something that emanates from it when you have put it down, like the silence after music.

CL: If you were organizing a book club meeting about your book, what are some things you would ask readers to discuss?

BP: I might ask: what is the role of the sauna bath? What is the role of the river? How does the narrator's concept of time change over the course of the book? Discuss the uses and importance of ritual. Discuss the relationship of humans and nature: in what ways is it comforting and sustaining, in what ways terrifying? Discuss the need for woman to believe in themselves. Discuss ways in which not believing in oneself is subverted into anger, overwork, frustration, a sense of emptiness. Discuss the desire for permanence, the fear of change.

CL: What books and authors are you inspired by?

BP: I am inspired by poetry, and by poetic prose, wherever it might be found. I love books that are deeply informed by specific places. Writers that I read hungrily as a young reader (in my 20s) were Tolstoy, Lawrence, the Brontes, Virginia Woolf, Dickens, Dylan Thomas, Gary Snyder, Tolkien, Hemingway, George Eliot, Jane Austen. I return to many of these books, as touchstones: Anna Karenina, for example, and To the Lighthouse. Lately, I read mostly Canadian literature, especially the wonderful novels that have come in the last 20 years, too many to list. I studied with E. L. Doctorow in the early 1970s, and so was influenced by both his teachings and his works. I have recently discovered Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, a beautiful book. I love books of nonfiction, memoirs of place, such as Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen, or Cider with Rosie, by Laurie Lee. I have to acknowledge the profound influence of childhood reading. I did not have a television as a child, and do not have one now. Sometimes I recognize certain rhythms in one of my own sentences, and pause, realizing that it came from a children's book that I may have read 40 times as a child: the books of E. C. Spykman, L. M. Boston, Edith Nesbit, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Mary Norton or Kenneth Graeme, whole pages of which I have unwittingly committed to memory. I recommend life without television, especially for children. Nothing to lose, much to gain.

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