Collab/orations: Three Poems-Between-Two

the frame

written between Daniela Elza-and-Leanne Boschman

last night’s conversation spills
out of the corner of my eye.
 
today syllables dissolve.
September sun    dries up doubts.
 
you tell me how
the yellow orange maples
 
set your heart      aflutter
in the city breeze
 
a few last moths flit upwards
as leaves drift down
 
unzipping this moment.
 
your words dance around
the fire we started—
 
the stiff lengths of logs
what rises from such paltry love.
 
the frame still contains the parts
we can explain.
 
these frames are to die for.
 
the rains return and blur
the (sharp) edges of our lives again.
 

process notes with Leanne Boschman

Daniela: I invited Leanne to collaborate on a poem with me in 2010 after we visited the Vancouver Art Gallery gallery and sat in a cafe with table tops that had little tiles on them. I sent her a couple of lines.

We sit at the tiled table. Chipped, uneven
our thoughts settle at right angles

She was very busy at the time taking courses at SFU and commuting from Vancouver Island. It never took off, the poem. When Leanne moved to Vancouver in 2014 our gallery visits became more frequent and so became our writing dates. After one such visit in 2016 it happened. Later we polished over email and phone.

Leanne:  For some reason, I was ambivalent about sending lines back and forth by email. Somehow, the process seemed a little pale, drained of life and mechanical. I think it was the technology, little plastic clacking keys and space between us. After one of our art gallery meet-ups in the Arteggiano coffee shop with the history of little hearts in the milk foam at the top of our lattes and the familiar stone-tile table tops, the process took on life. We passed lines of poetry back and forth and, for me, there was a spark of trust in the process. A natural weaving with the strands of our conversations that preceded those lines. We borrowed from the weather of the day, images that presented themselves, like shaking little grains from a sugar packets that were there on the table. Something about the importance of presence.

Daniela: I typed up what we wrote on paper. And then we went back and forth in email, until the poem took shape to both our liking.