Slam jams and healing through verse
Reflections on Word Vancouver, poetry, and loss
This weekend I had the great privilege of attending Word Vancouver. As a new mom, I leaned into the unexpected gift of exclusive pumping—it gave me a whole day to tend to the writer in me, while Daddy (and Uncle Robert) tended to Nora. I hopped on my bike with laptop and breast pump in tow and headed down to Robson Square for a full day of workshops, readings, and chance encounters.
The first event I attended that morning, "Free Verse," was hosted by K.L. Shilling whom I met at another writing event I wrote about recently. She brings creative writing classes to those who are serving sentences in minimum and medium security penitentiary through Pandora’s Collective. The event was an opportunity to hear prisoners share their poems through recorded readings of their work.
At the risk of sounding crass, hearing their voices was a poetic reminder how for many of us, whether we are “on the inside” or “the outside,” writing is a way to free our spirits and express a truer, perhaps better, version of ourselves to the world. It’s been like that for me at least. Writing memoir specifically has challenged me to be honest—most of all with myself. It’s required I dig through the mud of my life to grow my lotus. It’s required I face myself on the page so that I can heal myself—and perhaps even others who read my work.
The rest of the day at Word Vancouver felt a bit like Burning Man. I wasn’t sure where I was headed next, but guided by the great Principle of Immediacy, I simply showed up wherever the energy felt right. And for some reason, on Saturday, that energy kept leading me to poetry.
At a slam poetry workshop facilitated by the incredible Lindi Nolte, my spirit marathoned through timed free-writes with incredible appetite. There’s nothing quite as instantly satisfying as following a chain of words to write free-form poetry.
A poem never quite feels finished, yet a first draft is so sacred—like it’s the shortest path between self and something divine, a form of expression and art that we haven’t yet sullied with all our cognitive editing and editorializing.
Usually at these types of festivals I’m drawn to listen and be inspired by the words of other writers, but this time around, it seems my heart wanted me to produce something myself. In one hour, I wrote three pieces, each of which had me careening through a minefield of emotions only to find that I was writing about one thing: Motherhood.
Paid subscribers can read the first poem I wrote at the slam jam, “A basket of knots.”
An hour later, in a different workshop, led by Kevin Spenst, I found myself folding paper into a chapbook. Chapbooks are small, self-contained publications that trace their roots to the humble literary booklets of 16th- and 17th-century Europe, which were sold by street sellers (or “chapmen,” from Old English ceapmann, meaning “trader” or “merchant”).
For some unknown reason, without any prompting, I decided to take one of the poems I’d written that morning and give it physical form:
This chapbook is also about motherhood. It is a poem written to Nora.
I won’t lock this one behind a paywall though, because... well, I’d like to set this one free.
[CW: miscarriage, pregnancy loss]
Notes from the other side of grief
September 21, 2025 | Vancouver, BC
I met grief before I met you
and she told me what it was I truly wanted.
I met grief
and she hurt me
but then I grew wiser
and befriended her
and she offered me solace
in the shape of a rainbow
reminder
that my dreams were once tugged from under me
into cracked earth.
A life apocalypse.
A black and white image,
Grief handed it to me with her black and white hand,
scratched at my skin with her black and white claw
and drew blood.
First red, then blue, then clear
of tears burning
cleansing the skies
of my wants and dreams,
until there was you: A rainbow
and me on the other side
holding you,
in the space of my loss,
my greatest treasure.
The timer went off as I was writing the last few lines. I’m not sure where the poem would have gone had I kept going. But I’ll venture to reflect on these words a bit now, use prose as a way to continue where the poem left off.
What is my greatest treasure? Is it Nora? Or is it the loss that helps me appreciate the miracle that is her? I think that maybe I meant to leave it ambiguous.
Not everyone who has experienced pregnancy loss goes on to have a baby. And for those of us who are fortunate enough to welcome a rainbow baby, we know that joy doesn’t erase the grief. Our relationship to it only changes with time.
Nothing ever fills the hole grief makes. Yet it creates so much room..so much fits inside.
For me, with every moment that passes, my own pregnancy loss grows more poignant because it helps me understand the magnitude of my gain.
And this gain, too, helps me to better understand the magnitude of such loss.
Final words, and a haiku
It is a strange life, this. Everything is entangled in everything else—no emotion simply this or that. Every feeling has two sides. And for me, writing has been the instrument with which I unlock this potential for wholeness.
I write so that I can press myself into that swell, so that my life can be richer for it, because eventually, life, however we live it, will present us with something we will need to heal from.
Writing is my greatest form of self love. Free writing is a path to knowing myself better. Sharing what I write with others is my way toward healing.
We are scar tissue,
written upon this earth, healed
one wound at a time.
xx
Vish