The following interview is part of a series of conversations with BC poets. All interviews were conducted by Rob Taylor.
Faint symptoms of improvement
There were signs on the wall
there were signs from the animals
a small bird saw me and never moved
she pecked at the ground
searching for small snacks
searching for a few seeds of life
there were signs in the sky
the everlasting half of a moon
the lone star and the clouds of grey
no rain for a few days was a sign
the coldness of November
the ice on the dirt road
there were signs she was here
a lone deer across the yard
one eagle that soared to the tallest tree
she screeched and she whistled to me
telling me she was there
there were signs when we left the graveyard
the smell of rain and the smell of the river
she was there and we knew she was
there were signs that she was now gone
a spirit who had become a spirit
she was in the flames of the one fire
she was floating in the smoke
there were signs she loved me
I keep those stored somewhere
the fallen tears are somewhere as well
there were signs that I could have done more
there were signs that told me to be aware
I think I looked the other way
as we sometimes do
Reprinted with permission from
I Would Like to Say Thank You
(Nightwood Editions, 2025).
RT: I’d like to start by asking you about your mother. In “Warm yellow moon” you say she was “was more a saint than any of those painted on the ceiling.” Could you talk about her role in your life?
JD: She was never allowed to be a child. Sent to residential school when she was 5. Graduated when she was 18. There was nothing for her back home so she joined the Air Force, where she met my father. She would always come to visit or bury a loved one. She came home after my dad died. I left home when I was 14. She tried her best to protect me from my old man. We stayed in touch, but she was not much of a mother.
RT: In “Shattered,” you write “I made it to twenty-six / a drunk and addict / then woke one day and said fuck it / I want to live / I want to write.” Could you tell us a little more about that day, more than 30 years ago now? Why do you think wanting to live and wanting to write are intertwined for you?
JD: Yes, I remember the day. I had quit drinking when I was 19. Too many blackouts. I was on my way to either death or prison. I then continued to smoke hashish as that was all you buy out east. Weed was more of a West Coast thing. I was also smoking cigarettes. Anyways, smoked a joint and then had a massive anxiety attack. Thought I was dying. Scared me to being sober. And writing for me now is what I do. It is me. I am it.
RT: You write about wanting to be an actor when you were younger (I was the same, switching paths in my 20s). In what ways do you see that desire and the desire to be a poet as aligned?
JD: I have always been involved in theater since I was little. I do love readings. I love the silence after a poem. I love reading for little ones when there is also silence. I know I have them. They are inside the story or the poem.
I have worked with museums and other history academics. I have had to tell them to stop freezing us in time. And that we are still here, were here, will be here.
RT: In “Voices driven to whisper,” you write “they came to destroy us / through pages in a book about history.” Are your books, in their way, alternate history books? Or perhaps tools to destroy that other history book?
JD: I think so. Not on purpose. I have worked with museums and other history academics. I have had to tell them to stop freezing us in time. And that we are still here, were here, will be here. I am not as political as I was when I first wrote poems. There are no books for me to read of my people. We are oral. Nothing written down for me.
RT: Could you tell us a little about your work at the Kwantlen Cultural Centre? Are there ways in which the work you do there, and the work you do in your poems, overlap?
JD: My work here is slowly coming to an end. For now, I make sure the wood stove is lit. We do teach kids and adults portions of our culture. It was first built as a place for all of our artifacts. I do storytelling. It is a safe place to be. I always need safe places. Just the way I am.
RT: In “Hearing my voice,” you write about the serenity of fishing, but note it “has its problems. / It is that I am all alone. / All I have is this fucking mind of mine.” I’m curious if you view the act of writing poetry as containing a similar mix of serenity and aloneness, the joy and horror of being able to go deep into your own mind. Or is poetry different from fishing in this way? More social, perhaps?
JD: Fishing and being on my boat and being on the river is another safe place for me. I truly believe that I am quite insane. But a happy insane, if that makes sense. I love being alone. Always have. Yet I need humans. I watch everything around me. When a fish hits the net. When the sun rises. I notice it all. Safely.
I write one chapter every morning. Fishing too is very much repeated. But your fate is never known until you pull your net in and see your catch. Sometimes you have fish and sometimes you have zero. But you keep going. My words will keep coming until I no longer breathe.
RT: At last year’s Fraser Valley Writers Festival, I was in the audience when you talked about how you write early in the morning every day, and only write first drafts, chucking out whatever doesn’t work for you. I’m tempted to see the parallels to fishing in this practice, too. Have you written like this from the beginning, or did you develop this practice over time? Does it serve any non-literary purposes, akin perhaps to morning meditation/reflection?
JD: I write poems. My style now is to write one poem a day. I have just completed a new 300 page manuscript of poems. I’m 11 chapters into my first novel. I write one chapter every morning. Fishing too is very much repeated. But your fate is never known until you pull your net in and see your catch. Sometimes you have fish and sometimes you have zero. But you keep going. My words will keep coming until I no longer breathe.
RT: At a Dead Poets Reading Series event in early 2026, you read poems by Charles Bukowski. It reminded me how Bukowski would bang out poems on his typewriter and send them off to magazines without saving carbon copies, which seems at least somewhat in the spirit of your own routine. In what ways did Bukowski inspire your approach to writing, and thinking about, poetry?
JD: Buk was given to me from a friend in university. I loved the way he wrote. Simple. I had already been a drunk and addict. I have kept my work simple. Little punctuation. Simple words. Simple style.
RT: Speaking of style, I’m curious how you determine where to break a line, and if it’s consistent across all your poems. Your line breaks seem to me to be tied to spoken pacing, breaking where one would pause for breath. Is that the case?
JD: Yes, I write how they would sound out loud. So when I get to read them I am able to break at the right moment for a breath. I struggled with editors for years as I use the word “and” way too much for them. I do not write by rules or what is appropriate.
RT: Ha! Thank goodness you aren’t always “appropriate.” Thinking about navigating the “appropriate” world of poetry, in “As if a transparent cloud enveloped me,” you write:
I sit on the stage and they introduce me
I say hello make a few small jokes
and they laugh and I have them
as I read the first piece and I have them
I am their drug for the night
and when I am done I take their money
You end that poem by referencing your “liar’s tongue.” What within the performance of your poetry do you consider to be the lying? What within there do you consider to be the truth?
JD: I think my work is the reason for why I am there. As if I am not even needed to be there. It is hard for me to accept the applause. Yet I yearn for it. I enjoy laughter more than tears. Yet all my work is so tragic and sullen. I think I lied coming in the door. As I am just a man who writes words. I am not a great man. I am not greatness. Is that a lie?
RT: No, that makes sense to me. I often feel like an ambassador for the poems, which are their own creatures, and not their owner or creator (even if I remember writing them, which I don’t always). Continuing along these lines, in “A shaming encounter,” you say that you did not “want the infamy of being a poet.”
You started writing poetry in the early ’90s, and have been publishing books for decades, but the “infamy” really seems to have ratcheted up in recent years, with a flurry of new books, awards and attention (including a 2021 shortlisting for the Griffin Poetry Prize and winning the 2022 Latner Poetry Prize). I’m curious about these last few years, where attention to your writing has expanded so greatly—what have you enjoyed about this new infamy? What would you rather do without?
JD: Yes, I felt my early work was very good and deserved prizes but I never won. And then I began to win. Began to be recognized. Signed with a publisher. Won a few dollars. Think I hated being seen more than not being seen. I endure the public. I work hard. It has gone quiet. I thought my last book would do well. I have not heard a word about it. My kids books do well. It is to do with the artist more than me. I am ok with what I have. Any money I make I divide it by three and give to my kids. I have enough.
RT: In the closing poem of I Would Like To Say Thank You, you speak about the “boredom and repetition of being called a writer,” and note that you are “so close to walking away from this.” What would you rather be called?
JD: Yes, words. Now when people ask me what I am I tell them I am a writer. I both love and hate repetition. You can call me a writer, a poet, a playwright, a man, a loser, a winner, a friend.
Joseph Dandurand is a member of the Kwantlen First Nation, located on the Fraser River about twenty minutes east of Vancouver, BC. He resides there with his three children. Dandurand is the director of the Kwantlen Cultural Centre and the author of several children’s stories and books of poetry including The East Side of It All (2020), which was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. In 2021, Dandurand received the BC Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence.
Rob Taylor’s fifth poetry collection is Weather (Gaspereau Press, 2024). He lives with his family in Port Moody, BC. You can read more of his interviews on his website.