After being motivated by how well her first book was received, Nanaimo poet Joanne Dzierza is back with a new collection of poems.
Dzierza’s latest release is The Mountains Mock our Egos. The book comes two years after her debut poetry collection, Wild Love Raging, the success of which encouraged her to share more of her work with the community.
“I thought, ‘If you can do it once and people respond the way that they do and you realize there’s a niche for it and there are people who are actually really connecting with your work, why stop there?’” she said.
Dzierza said the poems in her second book are strung together by the idea that there are things to look forward to once one overcomes the obstacles in their life.
“The book is a collection of deeply reflective poetry that kind of journeys [through] one person’s life, somebody who’s been through some hard stuff, and then at the end recovers through wisdom, through learning about life and being inspired by nature,” she said.
Dzierza said, as her art form, poetry has always been important to her. In writing The Mountains Mock our Egos, she said she felt as though she was “putting a timestamp on my life” and acknowledging the things that that have happened to her.
“I wanted to bring some life to them because when you’re going through hard stuff it can bring you down,” she said. “But having poetry speak to events that have happened that you can’t really change, you can give new meaning to [them] with words or find a reason why that might have happened to you.”
Dzierza describes writing poetry as “opening a window” into her life, and although it can be difficult to be vulnerable and invite people in, she said it’s a feeling that’s shared by her readers.
“They’ll experience the same kind of truths or freedom or relief upon reading it, knowing somebody else has probably lived through exactly what they’ve experienced even though they’re such deep thoughts, and I think that’s so important,” she said. “You get a reflection of yourself through other people’s work and it makes living a little bit easier.”
The Mountains Mock our Egos is available here.
arts@nanaimobulletin.com
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