The following interview is part four of an eight part series of conversations with BC poets. All interviews were conducted by Rob Taylor.
blasting accident
countdown to ka-BOOM!
rock face becomes crumbs
dynamite’s diatomic dope
and slick nitroglycerin in
pallid thermoplastic sticks
make a handy bundle of megajoules
expand by mighty coefficient
galvanic mishap—the blasting cap flips off
a couple of the mining engineer’s fingers,
and flings his iron ring in the misfire
Reprinted with permission from
(Nightwood Editions, 2025).
Rob Taylor: Many of the poems in if: prey, then: huntress speak about your work in male-dominated heavy industries. In the book’s title poem, you compare working in such environments to being “guests in our own home.” I was pleased, then, to see Kate Braid‘s name in your list of acknowledgments, as Braid was a trailblazer in both working in male-dominated spaces (in her case, construction) and writing about it in poems. Could you talk about your experience working in these environments, and how you came to write about it? Do you think the challenges around working in, and writing about, such spaces have changed since Braid was doing the same in the 1970s?
Christina Shah: That’s the acid question, Rob—it’s interesting, as Kate and I were just talking about this. It has been (and continues to be) a fascinating and extremely challenging journey, and I’ve learned so much. Working in these environments has allowed me to see some awe-inspiring places, meet a lot of great people, and to collaboratively solve problems while developing my own knowledge (and making a decent living). While I’ve certainly experienced some hostility and outright harassment, overall my experience has mostly been quite positive, and I’ve received a lot of support and some good mentorship. I’ve seen it all.
A friend of mine had told me about Tom Wayman’s (and the Vancouver Industrial Writers’ Union’s) work many years ago and I became interested in work poetry. I was writing work poetry before I started working in a non-traditional occupation. I was working in bars and meeting all sorts of people, including tradespeople (with whom I’d had little contact previously). If you work in a ‘people profession’ (the most immediate examples that come to mind are teaching and sales), then you work in a living lab. It occurred to me that my work environments provided ample opportunity to study the human condition up close. What more could a writer ask for?
Some things have changed, and some things haven’t. Kate was very much ahead of her time. While we still have a long way to go in terms of representation, there’s definitely less isolation now, with online spaces and school programs where women in non-traditional STEM occupations can connect and support one another, even if they are frequently alone on the jobsite. My friend Anna Lary (an electrician and former trades instructor at BCIT) founded the ConnectHer Hub at BCIT as a way to support women and gender-diverse trades apprentices who have often felt isolated on jobsites. Initiatives like this make a big difference in terms of attraction but also retention. There’s nothing formal in place in my field (unlike in the trades), but I’m fortunate in that my colleagues and my trades friends are very supportive.
I think the challenges around writing about these spaces have shifted since Braid started, mostly in that technological change has provided more accessible homes for industrial work-writing (e.g. websites, blogs) but also more formats/distribution methods (e.g. YouTube, Instagram), regardless of genre. We’re more likely to see creative expression with videos or on Instagram, rather than as page poetry. This acceleration is also happening with the spaces themselves becoming more automated and data-driven. For me, this means fewer sensory ‘hooks’, fewer face-to-face interactions, and more time at my desk. I have to make a concerted effort to jot down my poetry ‘seedlings’ whenever, and wherever I can.
If you work in a ‘people profession’ (the most immediate examples that come to mind are teaching and sales), then you work in a living lab. It occurred to me that my work environments provided ample opportunity to study the human condition up close.
RT: Do you have other influences who showed you a path for both working in, and writing about, male-dominated spaces?
CS: Tom Wayman (of course), Hilary Peach, and Lindsay Bird. I came to their work fairly late, but I’d be remiss if I did not mention Garth Martens, Susan Eisenberg and Joe Denham. There’s more of an established body of industrial work poetry in the US. Peter Oresick and Nicholas Coles edited a wonderful anthology called Working Classics (1990). Sue Doro’s Blue Collar Goodbyes also comes to mind.
RT: Yes, wonderful! Let’s stick with influences: another name in your acknowledgments with whom I sense you might have an affinity is Kevin Spenst. Like few poets I’ve read, you seem to share Spenst’s playful, sometimes operatic approach to sound in poetry: assonance, consonance, internal rhyme and end rhyme abound in your poems.
Over and over in your book I was taken aback by musical or delightfully strange descriptions of otherwise mundane objects and actions. Snoring becomes “apnea’s gap” and “the carotid zydeco of his breath’s seized engines,” borscht is busy “anticipating the cool sour cream torpedo,” Vancouver’s law courts are “the law’s glass plaza,” a wrench has “wrists twisted at angles from a Bangles’ song,” etc. etc.
What draws you to this type of writing? Is your interest in describing things slantwise born out of your interest in sonic play, or vice-versa? Or do the two desires emerge simultaneously, possibly from the same source?
CS: Thank you, Rob! That’s high praise. I love Kevin’s work (and hearing him read aloud is always a treat!). He’s also a wonderful teacher who brings those qualities of zaniness and musicality to his classes. The sonic element and the image collide in a moment of stillness. There has to be some kind of parallelism or third element connecting the two. I definitely connect with Kevin’s sense of irreverence. One poem in the book (‘the keytar’s lament’) was written as part of an object personification assignment in one of his classes! Yet despite our playful approaches, many of our topics are decidedly sombre by nature— family mental illness, corporate horror, death, and decay.
RT: Your poem “rig veda” has been made into a video poem, which feels like a fantastic medium for your poetry, in which image and sound compellingly “collide,” as you put it. Your poems feel like they are meant to be heard, performed. Do you feel that way, or do you think of your poems as being first and foremost designed for the page? Is performing (even if just to yourself in your living room) an important part of your compositional process?
CS: Such fascinating questions! I love videopoetry, and agree with your assessment! My poems begin with my ear and initially land on the page, but the vast majority of my work is meant to be read aloud. I do read them aloud during the editing process, but that happens fairly late in the process, and at that stage reading aloud serves as a sort of level to ensure I’m not tripping over any of the words.
RT: I’m intrigued by your object poems, which establish, often in their titles, an easily-accessible, grounded “thing” (say, “asparagus” or “gel nails”) then move from there into more complex, sometimes surreal, descriptions. The poem “asparagus,” for instance, opens “spring’s sentries / shrill with chlorophyll,” while “gel nails” describes how a “new keratin carapace / slides the old opalescence / forward, shifting the lithosphere.” What draws you to writing so closely and inventively about small things? Do you have notebooks full of fun lines about this and that, some of which you eventually expand into poems, or do you set out to write about a specific object (others in the book include “bra,” “banana,” and “botulinum toxin”) and find your way to such lines in the process of thinking deeply about it?
CS: It’s my way of slipping into the water. The object serves as a frame, and then I try to stretch and bend those boundaries to make it newly recognizable to the reader. Usually, I set out to write about a specific object (or I have a spark about a specific object), and then I let the object take on an irreverent life of its own. It started years ago when I wrote haiku on a variety of themes. I thought it would be fun to write about very unlikely subjects (typically supremely utilitarian objects) for haiku: parking meters, lanyards. I polled friends as to their pet peeve objects, because there was some emotional energy there (even if it was only minor irritation), which served as flint.
The object serves as a frame, and then I try to stretch and bend those boundaries to make it newly recognizable to the reader. Usually, I set out to write about a specific object (or I have a spark about a specific object), and then I let the object take on an irreverent life of its own.
RT: Ah, haiku! What an excellent training ground for writing image-centred poems. Speaking of developing your craft, as a former instructor in SFU’s The Writer’s Studio program, my chest warmed up when I learned of the “Harbour Centre 5,” a five-member poetry collective you are a part of, which released a chapbook together in 2022. I’ve seen so many wonderful friendships form in the classrooms and study alcoves of that campus, but never a full-blown chapbook-publishing collective! Could you tell us more about that group, how it formed and what you’ve been up to lately? How has being part of a collective helped you in your development as a writer?
CS: We’re still going six years later! HC5 consists of Rebecca Holand, Jaeyun Yoo, Robbie Chesick, Jimmy Wang, and myself. We were all in the same Poetry Series for The Weekend Student course taught by Fiona Tinwei Lam and Evelyn Lau in early 2019—right before the pandemic hit. We’ve gone on to publish our own chapbook anthology, solo chapbooks, make videopoems and in my case, publish a full-length collection. Jaeyun went on to win the Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Award in 2024 and has a chapbook forthcoming with Baseline Press in 2026! Being part of a collective has been extremely beneficial: regular meetings to keep us motivated, a safe place to critique sensitive material, a way to share news and opportunities, and to maintain momentum in the face of rejection. I’m grateful for the friendship and generous feedback we give one another, and for Fiona and Evelyn’s continued encouragement.
RT: In your acknowledgments, you compare the “poetry ecosystem” to a mangrove forest, “composed of a dense tangle of prop roots that make the tree appear to be standing on stilts above tidal waters, protecting the shoreline and providing an oyster habitat.” I love this idea and was hoping you could expand on it. If poems are pearls grown in a mangrove forest, how do we preserve the forest? How do we encourage it to flourish?
CS: I love how you ran with the analogy! Well, I’d love it if funding the arts were more of a priority in this country. So many vital literary organizations are facing serious financial challenges right now. That said, I’m grateful for dedicated people such as yourself who, despite your work and family obligations (and your own writing), contribute generously to this ecosystem. It’s heartening that so many poets continue to support each other, the trade publishers, local independent bookstores, the literary journals and festivals so that an organic literary culture can continue to exist. Community outreach also presents great possibilities for cultivation. Seeing poetry on the bus (e.g. Poetry in Transit), in the park or at school has the potential to bring joy and comfort in a single encounter. Who knows—that chance encounter might inspire a new reader or writer!
Christina Shah lives in New Westminster and works in heavy industry, where she drinks from the firehose of knowledge. Her poetry has appeared in numerous Canadian literary journals. Her work has been shortlisted for the Fiddlehead’s 2021 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2023. She is one-fifth of the Harbour Centre 5 poetry collective, whose chapbook, Brine, was released in 2022. Her first video poem, “rig veda” (in collaboration with videographer Mark Mushet), was translated into Spanish and screened internationally. rig veda, her first solo chapbook (Anstruther Press), received an honourable mention for the bpNichol Chapbook Award in 2024. if: prey, then: huntress is her first full-length poetry collection.
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 at http://roblucastaylor.com/interviews/