Lake St Clair, Tasmania, September, 2009
Rain drummed staccato on the metal roof, waking me before dawn. I lay in bed listening,
my nose like a dog’s, cold to the touch. Wind gathered itself in a gust, dropped, then rose
again. I rose too, ate a late breakfast and left the cottage as the sun came out, splashing the
smooth trunks and wet leaves of black peppermint gums, flooding the world with light.
Everything glittered. Ten minutes later more rain.
It falls again now. But even while water drums on the roof and pours from its corrugations
to splatter on the duff of eucalyptus leaves and bark, sun streams through the canopy,
highlighting the forest with drops of pure light, rippling along branches, down trunks,
pooling on the ground.
Does light behave like water? I say “flooding,” I say “streams,” I say
“light rains down, flows into the room, washes across the floor, ebbs out
the other side”…
“What part has CV2 played in my writing life? It was among the first journals to publish my work, beginning in spring 1986, when I was full of uncertainty. It has been hospitable to work that attempted something different from what I had been writing, sometimes accepting it, sometimes returning it with useful comments and suggestions. Its themed issues and calls have led me to explore topics and write poems I would not have written otherwise. Its contests have taught me how writing within constraints of theme or vocabulary is like play, and can open into the unexpected and surprising. And it has led me to writing by others I’ve learned from and enjoyed.
I admire, applaud, and am grateful for CV2’s ongoing commitment to beginning writers and to the exploration and articulation of varied poetics. When I was a librarian (in an earlier life) I would have been delighted to discover the interviews with contemporary Canadian poets — in many cases the only source of information about them. As a poet I am encouraged by reading about the practices and strategies of others — the territory of the possible expands and shifts through such reading.
Thank you CV2. And congratulations. It’s no mean feat for a so-called little magazine to make it to thirty-five! May you keep on keeping on for at least another thirty-five years.”
— Maureen Scott Harris
