F or the creator, when the artistic pulse fades, the body becomes ravenous to reconnect with its creative essence. When Prince Edward Island’s current Poet Laureate, Deirdre Kessler, found herself without enough time to pen poetry and fiction, she took a leave of absence from her full-time teaching job at Vernon River School and went westward, to California, where she took up residence in her tent in the Mojave Desert in Death Valley. It was Death Valley that became her muse and Kessler was able to conceive and draft her first of what would become a series of children’s novels about a cat named Brupp. Since the conception of Brupp, Kessler has gone on to publish over two dozen works traversing such genres as children’s novels and picture books, poetry, nonfiction, and a memoir entitled Mother Country. Kessler spent a year living, camping, and thriving in the deserts of Death Valley before she returned home to Prince Edward Island, where she sold her farm and resigned from her teaching position. She then returned to the Mojave Desert with her tent and typewriter, and remained there for two more years. “The desert moved inside me, just as Prince Edward Island had become my inner landscape,” says Kessler. From her tent, Kessler moved into a friend’s adobe house, 42 kilometres from a town of 208 people. Her days were spent hiking, writing poetry, and continuing her work on a collection of adult stories entitled The Geology of Loss.
A highlight of Kessler’s stay in Death Valley was an assignment from the Eldorado Audubon Society; a non- profit environmental organization based out of Los Angeles dedicated to conservation. She was to track and write an article about the nesting and vocalization patterns of Bell’s Vireo, a small North American songbird. As part of her research, Kessler composed a song mimicking the Bell’s vireo’s distinctive song. It was the song of the Island — and the need to go back to paid work — that called the writer home again. Upon her return, in addition to working as a writer and broadcaster for CBC, Kessler began teaching part-time with UPEI’s Department of English, where she taught her first creative writing class at in 1992; she has been teaching the craft ever since. When asked about whether one can teach the art of creative writing, Kessler says, “Years ago I found a metaphor that fits the teaching of creative writing: It’s as impossible as nailing Jell-O to a wall. I tell this to students.” In 2016, Deirdre Kessler was appointed Prince Edward Island’s Poet Laureate for a three year term. She says her most thrilling engagement to date as Poet Laureate was writing a poem in English and French for Antonine Maillet. Kessler had been following her writing career for decades. Maillet is an Acadian novelist, playwright, and scholar with over 30 works credited to her name; several of which have won national awards, including La Sagouine.and Pélagie.
Kessler’s work is a testament to the power of creative nourishment, and the artistic rhythm of her pulse beats ravenously within PEI’s writing community.
Deirdre Kessler
SPRING 2018 www.pei-living.ca
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