The Fraser Valley Literary Festival is an annual event celebrating the literary scene in the Fraser Valley. This year, the keynote speakers are Adèle Barclay, Dallas Hunt, and Rob Taylor. Panelists are Junie Désil, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Keith Maillard, Hope Lauterbach, Shashi Bhat, Aaron Chan, Molly Cross-Blanchard, and Kyla Jamieson.
This year’s festival will take place on Nov. 5 at 6:00 p.m. and Nov. 6 at 11:30 a.m. at UFV’s U-House. You can register at their EventBrite page to attend.
The Cascade sat down with keynote speaker Rob Taylor, a poet and short story writer, to learn more about his writing process and the literary festival. Taylor teaches creative writing at SFU’s Writer’s Studio and formerly taught at UFV.
How did you get into writing? What started you on this path?
My father was a minister and I always knew that wasn’t the path for me. But I knew that the path I wanted to follow was adjacent to his, at least. Somewhere along the way, I started bumping into one poem here, another poem there, that would stay with me, that I would think about a lot, that would give me companionship and insight and peace.
I realized that those types of interactions were what I really loved about my dad and my dad’s work, in terms of being in communion with people and helping them think through big ideas and helping them come to some peace and understanding about those big ideas.
At some point, I just kind of made the commitment to writing and teaching and editing and making that the centre of my life, and I have not regretted it.
Do you find that your dad’s work and the church make [their] way into your poetry?
Yeah, I mean, the Bible is an incredible resource for storytelling, but also, if you read the King James version, the language is very beautiful. It’s elevated language, and it has rhythms and just amazing word choices. So, that absolutely had an impact on me growing up as a minister’s son and hearing passages from the Bible.
But also, my father would deliver sermons, and sermons and other kinds of rhetorical speech are full of rhythm and repetition and all sorts of devices that you see in literary language as well.
Thinking about the Fraser Valley Literary Festival and how that has an audience, what do you think the importance of a literary festival is?
I think that the work of writing is done very quietly and in private, most often. So it’s easy to underappreciate how complex and vital and vibrant the web of connections that’s being formed is … When we read books, we’re making connections with so many other people and with so many parts of ourselves. And all of that happens privately and usually completely invisibleinvisibly to everybody else.
I find [with] readings and festivals, the main thing that they do is they make visible this invisible web of connections, right?
So, readers can come together and talk about their experience or share a space where they all love a certain book or a certain author. That author can connect with those readers and with other writers who inspire them. And then all the conversations that come out of that can tie together all the threads of personal history and politics and whatever else it might be that [is] happening — all that happens within the conversations of the festival.
You are a keynote speaker for the festival. Do you have an idea of what you’re going to be speaking on?
I’ll definitely be speaking about … how literature and literary language connect us in this more direct and intimate way than everyday speech.
I’ll be talking about why I write: that writing makes me feel less alone and more connected to my fellow human beings. I’ll be considering how literary language, with its elevated attention to rhythm and its surprising associative movement, mirrors the rhythms of our bodies and the thought processes of our minds. Because of this, when I read literature, I not only see another human being (the author), but I merge with them: their words become my words, their thoughts my own. I’ll be talking about how this phenomenon has helped me get through difficult times in my own life, and how it has helped so many of us deal with COVID-19-related isolation.
Is there something that you’re most looking forward to for the festival?
Oh man, I’m looking forward to everybody. Adèle Barclay and Dallas Hunt are two of the finest writers in the province. They both have a great deal to say about writing, but also about politics in the world, and I’m very excited to see what they have to say.
And then all the poets and writers — Shashi Bhat is one of the funniest short story writers and Molly Cross-Blanchard is one of the funniest poets out there. Junie Désil has a tremendous first book, eat salt | gaze at the ocean, which is one of my favourite books that I read last year
I’m looking forward to seeing all those people, and I’m really looking forward to coming back to the campus and to seeing some people who I haven’t seen in a long time. There’s just such a lovely energy on campus. There [are] so many enthusiastic young writers, and getting to know them and bringing out some writers to do readings and events in the time I was at UFV was one of the highlights of my teaching career.
To be able to participate in an event that is bringing so much talent to the campus and to connect with the students is something I’m really looking forward to.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Image: Marta Taylor
Danaye studies English and procrastination at UFV and is very passionate about the Oxford comma. She spends her days walking to campus from the free parking zones, writing novels she'll never finish, and pretending to know how to pronounce abominable. Once she graduates, she plans to adopt a cat.
