To Show Up For Others: Writers On Kate Braid's Mentorship

In September 2016, I had the privilege of introducing Kate Braid at the Pandora's Collective Literary Awards, where Kate was recognized for her work mentoring her fellow writers. What follows is the full text of that introduction.

Kate Braid

I was recently hired for a job teaching creative writing, and within, oh, five minutes of hearing this, Kate Braid had sent me dozens of files: course syllabi, lecture notes, exercise ideas, etc. This was a sign of her generosity, no doubt, but even more so it taught me that Kate likes to meticulously write out every word she says in a lecture. In that spirit, and in her honour, I’ve decided to read my own meticulous notes meticulously off this piece of paper. So I apologise in advance if I rarely look up over the next few minutes.

 

I’ve spent the last four years working with Kate Braid as two of the co-coordinators (along with Christopher Levenson and Diane Tucker) of the Dead Poets Reading Series, and that experience has  helped me in preparing to present to Kate this year’s Mentorship Award. Not because I’ve learned a great deal from her in that time – though I have, of course – but because running a poetry reading series teaches you how to herd cats. To have five poets show up in the same place at the same time and stick to their time limits, is a formidable task. To round up the myriad ways in which Kate has mentored those around her feels equally formidable.

 

OK, let’s start the list: Kate has taught at SFU (Women’s and Labour Studies), UBC, BCIT, and, for ten years, at Malaspina in Nanaimo (now UVI). She’s been a key member or organiser of a wide array of community groups, as well, from the Vancouver Industrial Writers Union, to the Writers Support Group “Sex, Death and Madness,” the Prosody Group “Compossible” (yes, a writers group devoted to the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry. This woman is not messing around), the Non-Fiction Writers Group “the Memoiristas,” and a series of poetry salons she has run in recent years. Many of these groups, such as the Prosody group, were born – in part or in whole – out of questions or challenges Kate faced in her own writing. Most introverted writers would read a book or the internet in search for answers, or simply hide our ignorance and fears deep down inside us in hopes they might eventually turn into diamonds. But Kate builds communities around her questions, and generates answers not just for herself, but for whole groups of people beset by the same questions and same fears. 

In Fine Form,
2nd Edition

OK, back to the list. Really, we’re only getting started. On top of her teaching and her writing communities, there is the Dead Poets Reading Series, which Kate has helped run for the last four years, and the In Fine Form Anthology, which Kate edited with Sandy Shreve a decade ago, and which has been reissued in a second edition just this last month. That book has been an endless source of insight for writers, students and teachers throughout the country. 

And we haven’t even gotten to her work in the construction industry: from 1977 until 1992, Kate worked as a labourer, apprentice and journeywoman carpenter. She was one of the first qualified women carpenters in British Columbia, the first woman to join the Vancouver local of the Carpenters’ Union, the first to teach construction full-time at the BCIT, and one of the first women to run her own construction company. But damn it, Kate, this is a writing Mentorship award, so you can forget about me praising all that groundbreaking work! You see, the cats run off everywhere if you let them. But I have learned the discipline to reign them in.

Rough Ground
Revisited

Similarly, I could get bogged down in what a talented writer Kate is. I could list her five celebrated poetry titles, one of which (Covering Rough Ground) was recently reissued by Caitlin Press. Her memoir Journeywoman, her anthologies, and her many essays, academic and otherwise. But this isn’t an award for your writing, Kate! So you can forget that!

I’m just talking about mentorship. Which, of course, is as impossible as cat herding. Because the way Kate mentors is through her actions, her life. By being Kate Braid, in her totality, and in doing that showing a path for the rest of us, inspiring to be ourselves, in our totality, which is an incredibly difficult thing to do.

I reached out to a few people who were mentored by Kate, or worked alongside her in mentoring others, and asked for their favourite memories of Kate. It should be noted (and it’s no small note!) that every one of them replied quickly, with a precise and detailed memory. These are poets, remember. And they were organized and punctual. It says more about Kate, and her role in their lives, than it does about poets, I assure you.

Marilyn Bowering

Marilyn Bowering, who worked with Kate at Malaspina, noted that:

Kate’s care of the students who were in her classes, when we taught together at Malaspina, was outstanding. It was never a matter of doing a job; for Kate, teaching was a trust; and she took seriously the idea that helping students discover their creativity would open their worlds. Kate’s core value is compassion.

Susan McCaslin spoke of how she met Kate in 1997. She said:

Almost immediately after conversing with Kate, the word “integrity” sprang to my mind, and integrity it has been to this day: integrity in the sense of words matching action, words and acts moving from wholeness to wholeness. Kate has a gift for listening and responding honestly, the listening always preceding the response.

Elizabeth Bachinsky

Elizabeth Bachinsky remembered a time very early in her own writing life when Kate, at a reading, dedicated a poem to Liz. She said: 

I was so beside myself in the audience. That small act sure left an impression on me. Kate has always been so generous with all of us young writers. She's taught me that even a small gesture like that can mean so much to an emerging poet; so  that when I have the opportunity to reach out and acknowledge people, I do. What a lovely person Kate is. What a fierce writer. A force and an inspiration. 

Amber Dawn’s very first writing class was with Kate, at UBC. She said this:

I was terrified of the creative writing classroom. Kate's warmth and rigor as a mentor taught me to be an engaged peer. She taught not just to respond to poetry, but to show up for other writers. To let the collective knowledge of the classroom lift us all up as poets. To this day, being taught to value my sense of belonging within literary communities has been a lesson even more powerful than being taught about craft itself.

And that is the point, isn’t it? To be taught, through writing, lessons that exceed the craft itself. Writing means a whole lot, but it's far from everything. It’s one room in the house (yes, that will be my one terrible construction analogy).

I was at a talk a couple years ago, where poet Kwame Dawes was speaking about Obsidian, a literary journal for African-American writers. He was asked why he worked tirelessly on it, all his years as editor, when few people read literary journals. His answer was that he was building a home for writers. And, he said, “If you build a home, you can live in that home.” 

It was so simple, yet it struck right through me. And that line comes back to me again and again when I think of Kate, who has for decades been showing us how to live a full life, with writing as a key component. She creates communities that sustain others, and that in the process sustain her as well. She gives out to gain. And what better lesson is there for all of us to learn?

For all these reasons and more, I’m incredibly honoured to present Kate Braid with the 2016 Pandora’s Collective BC Writer Mentorship Award.