Ronna Bloom is a poet and psychotherapist who has performed her poetry at festivals including Word on the Street, Ashkenaz and MayWorks as well as in numerous schools and libraries. She has three published books of poetry. Fear of the Ride (Carleton University Press, 1996, shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry), Personal Effects (Pedlar Press, 2000, acquired and translated by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind) and Public Works (Pedlar Press, 2004, shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award). Her poems have been used in anthologies and textbooks and broadcast on CBC radio.
These poems are from Permiso which will be published in 2009 by Pedlar Press.
Permiso
There's a tree in my heart
and I don't know its name.
It stands straight behind my breasts
like a closed tulip.
Permiso, it says.
Allow me.
Last Night
Last night. He said. After I said.
He said: if that's the case, I can't stay.
Neither of us moved.
The candles on the table stayed lit.
Though they flared a bit when I began
they did not go out. They rang
for the whole conversation.
In the fireplace, too, the fire stayed on.
I waited for something to happen.
There was no symbolism in the room.
Only us.
Want
The grey cat came and lay down on my chest
like a fifteen pound bag of warm sugar.
Soft. Heavy on my heart
like the hands of a master.
Canadians have an odd relationship to the U.S. We define ourselves against them, first of all. Many of us in urban centres find guns appalling, our history is closer to compromise than conflict, possibly born out of the need to accommodate both French and English, and the same need has introduced a greater love -- at least in theory -- of diversity, and a recognition diversity is a strength, not a weakness. There is a distinct Canadian identity that Canadians...continue reading
Your second collection of poems, The Cold Panes of Surfaces, is out now. Your first book, Bonfires, won the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award in 2004. Did winning a national award for your first book bolster your artistic confidence while working on your second, or did you find it daunting, as though you had more to live up to than other poets working on a second collection?
I think it certainly gave me a boost of confidence and the permission I needed to do what I wanted to do artistically with the second book. I didn't feel any outside pressure because of winning the CAA award, or feel that I had any expectations to live up to. Winning the award was terrific, and it was good publicity, but it was also an education on how fleeting such praise can be, and how it leaves your writing life virtually...continue reading