There’s an image that’s been with me for awhile now — actually, it’s a composite of two images. One is a photograph of melting glacial ice that I took at Athabasca Glacier, when I was there to work on my project a frail history: thirteen poems disguised as a passage. The other is a photograph by an unknown photographer (that some believe could have been Saibei Kashima) from the Meiji Era, of a young woman riding a stuffed crane. I worked with this image initially in my project until my body says sleep (Kokyo). In recent years I began to see these two images in my mind as one … as a lingering … as something still in me, unfinished.
Many years ago in Montréal, I woke up from a dream of kanji characters inked down the side of my left hand. Since I can’t read kanji, I wasn’t able to understand what was written. And in getting out of bed, searching for a pen to jot down their shapes, some of what I saw was lost. This dream continued through the years to linger in my thoughts, as if it was trying to tell me something — something about acts of writing, something about language and practice.
Now in my seventies, I wanted to give myself some space and time to return to that dream and the composite image … and this return became the start of my process of working on this still, not still project. While I didn’t know what the outcome would be or what forms any new works would take, my approach was to follow my curiosity and wonderings, my intuition and exploratory play, to trust myself, to listen, and to be attentive to what surfaced. I didn’t doubt that there would be tangible works created, but my focus with this project was more on process. I spent a great deal of time reflecting on things like resilience, history, and what it means to work with the felt and the found. I went out text walking in neighbourhoods where I live or have lived in the past, and in neighbourhoods where my paternal grandmother used to live prior to her being forced to leave Vancouver, along with many thousands of other Japanese Canadians in 1942.
The following are some of the pieces that were created during the roughly two year period of working on this project.
some postcards & poems
more than an apparition
she is, part of my landscape
reminding me of
the interconnectedness
of the visible and the invisible
of the sensed and the tangible
of what can be articulated, even shaped into
poems, sometimes
and that which evades the verbal, heard
language of words
reading, from within
in this place of flesh and roots
rotting leaves and blood lines
composting a story…
morning blossoms
crispy, fried rice and morning blossoms
whose petals curl a sweetness
that returns me to remembering
here and now
not there and when.
skyward, almost an even grey
while colour pops upon the plate
an odd but lovely kind of beautiful.
The photographs of me doing performative readings to ravens, in Yoho National Park in British Columbia, that I used in the composite images for the postcards (beyond reading), (it’s in my blood) & (so many questions I never asked, back then) were taken by J. D. Brown.
* * *
what was
The poems that are written with my text walking process, use only words that I come across and photograph on a particular walk.
The images visible in this first unfold of the piece, is the first stanza.
The rest of the poem is found in the images on the next unfold.
* * *
not the end
These images are the start of this text walking poem not the end.
Below are the images for the rest of the poem.
* * *
pigeon on Powell
The 3 haiku that are a part of this folded broadsheet piece were written with material gathered while text walking from our hotel in Yaletown to Oppenheimer Park, and back again in Vancouver, British Columbia on August 1, 2024.
* * *
(a fieldwork sketch)
(a
fieldwork
sketch)
healing the seeds of
a little line, the angler
watches
for
arrivals
to enter beat
&
foldable
fable,
to scan instinct
at this intersection &
forge
open wings
and
pop-up
cloud
to
ground
today’s
local
etcetera
exchange.
I made periodic trips back to Vancouver, as I continued working on this still, not still project. While there early in March 2024, I decided to revisit the route I took ten years earlier, when I first went text walking.
To get over to Main Street, I took the SkyTrain from our hotel to the Broadway – City Hall Station and then walked along Broadway to Main. (a fieldwork sketch) is a text walking poem created from images along Broadway, before starting my text walk along Main Street..
* * *
still, and more (a pop-up assembly of text on Main Street)
still, and more
(a pop-up assembly of text
on Main Street)
1.
little things, roaming the footnotes
foraging memories of a Vancouver story.
2.
a psychic, reading uneven ground
travelled down a rabbit hole and found
vintage tale, etched in exile
laminating the death and life of
love, live, local
liberty.
3.
here, there’s no simplified understanding —
water & prairie, smudge secrets
and ignite a lowercase reminder
of poetry & exchange.
4.
what began in a playful practice
with girl and bird
cut mute roots, to hear
soundtracks in archives
moving to share a collective cloud
of scented light, on the fringe.
5.
today a sound experiment
drawing with noise —
open lines, making vulnerable
to see inside the small.
Since it had been almost ten years since I started text walking, I decided on March 7, 2024 to return to Main Street in Vancouver, to re-walk my initial route. This five part poem is the result.
* * *
some Polaroids
From across the street, looking towards what once was a rooming house. Pecking at crumbs.
There’s some leakage — like a topographical map, offering a watershed of so many unknown seasons.
a texture of time
peonies on Granville Street
demarcating a spatial ache —
and returning a memory.
her hands, carefully shaping
crêpe paper peonies
that my young hands would later carry
in the procession
at the start of Hana Matsuri.
* * *
RAINS HEAL, unfinished
The three black & white Polaroids and the one line text walking poem is a/n un/finished piece.
Maybe no more needs to be said or written, but I still find myself wondering what might be heard in/from this Polaroid poem. My struggles today, different than they were thirty-four or fifty-six years ago. What might have been, does not easily slide out of my consciousness, and I find myself now, here, with these three words and a comma — RAINS HEAL, unfinished. Past lives and histories remembered in our bodies, etched in a place that carries a scent not easily forgotten. And as I hold the unfinished image in my hands, the slightly washed out, overexposed tone feels somehow right. Strange how this happens. How the what is, that I didn’t plan for and couldn’t have predicted or known, is as it needs to be — fading but still present.
(This Polaroid text walking poem was photographed/written on May 28, 2025 in Montréal, Québec.)
* * *
some Montréal text walking poems
résonance,
(une collaboration de still)
hidden in dreams
& street
a fish flip-flops, to walk deep breaths
arching this grandmother spine
comme bird murmuration, that strange cloud
of eternal mourning
est made fragile
à la main.
blood & water, a soft oblivion —
writing the belly.
amour et paix.
* * *
unbecoming histoire(s)
again & again
une expérience de bird verse
found offering a simple prelude.
now, scribe partners
in spirit
getting to know release.
thoughts on language —
ligne, pattern, invisibles
circulating by the photographed
listened to, in body.
(un nomadic trance edition
still unfinished …)
wish you were here.
XOXO,
* * *
everyday improv
within the chaos
we spill scraps
recycle sound
fish tarot
sketch l’espace
to take back
ache
&
strange dwellings
to face the truth
et mirage
conundrum.
* * *
stations d’eau
1.
oscillating dreams, yet to find the message
nommé à la mémoire
2.
fleeting
poésie
3.
dots . . .
bloom and tiens ta langue
4.
tirage de joints
the smallest espace temporaire
5.
hommage for a heard bird
empowering through the insondable
6.
we converse on camera
gab a transformation, which opens a tear
7.
2nd edition —
you hear the veil pierce, and remember.
* * *
le fleuve
something raw
coming together, in real time
30 ans, in search de visible signs —
missing wings, écouter
to soft spaces
de chances
and forget too soon,
the inseparables.
* * *
sweet curiosités, wilding language
building confessions à espérance
listening à pause & jouez
we bury know
and trust ongoing years
of the possible.
* * *
the heart heard
photography
mappers of a river, looking for unexpected
histoire, felt inside les angles morts.
grimey, still
with sounds you savoir —
waves and résonance, of the accessible
crumb.
I want to acknowledge and thank the Japanese Canadian Legacies Society for their support of my still, not still project and for their dedication and efforts to offer support across the community.