My Life Changed - Lesley Strutt

“Your life changed because of that poetry workshop you took with Patrick Lane, Lesley,” my best friend said to me one day. She’s not given to hyperbole. What she said was the simple truth. That first poetry workshop with Patrick changed my life because he challenged me to listen deeply to myself. 

I wasn’t even supposed to be in that 2005 Booming Ground workshop at UBC. I’d applied to the beginner’s class but there weren’t enough students, so I was invited to the intermediate class with Patrick. I accepted the offer, though I was shaken. I didn’t feel I was good enough. 

He was a tough teacher, at least for me. The poems I brought to class in the first few days were overworked pieces of shit, and he said so, though not in those words. He would pick out one good line and tell me to drop the rest. The other students were far along in their writing careers and produced beautiful work. I heard the difference and learned from listening to their work. I learned from listening to Patrick listen. 

Once when I was reading my latest piece in a clipped, too-fast voice, he slammed his hand down on the table to stop me and said, “Never disrespect your poetry. Start again.” 

Finally, I began to really listen to myself. I dug deep, deeper than I’d ever dared, and there I found parts of myself I’d denied or ignored or buried. The poem I brought to class the next day after a long sleepless night, wasn’t pretty, or poetic, or romantic the way I thought my poetry should be. It was a stark poem portraying an abused woman, the moment she realizes she’s abused, and she stays. 

Water Boiling

The pot is boiling on the kitchen stove.

Into it she drops:

two hands small as butterflies

two eyes wide open

two flat feet

and something hard, something heavy –

        turned to stone.

The sudden splash of water, quick

as his last slap,

snaps her head back.

She is so still

in the fading, the light

then. She lifts a spoon and

stirs

until

she’s done.

When I finished reading that poem, the class was silent. Patrick let out a deep breath and said, “Now, that’s a poem.” I published that poem in the 2007 issue of the Canadian Woman Studies Journal devoted to ending woman abuse. I had turned a corner. 

When I began to listen to that inner voice, I could no longer put myself back into the closet and hide. I started to tell myself the dangerous truth. I left my marriage of 20 years. I started my life over with the intention of listening to myself no matter what the consequences. I wanted to live my life with the kind of honesty that asks everything of you, without compromise. But even the best of intentions can be abandoned, and I did so many times. 

I took other workshops with Patrick over the next 7 years. He held my hand to the fire each time and though I was often angry at him for doing it, I was grateful. I came away with another part of me peeled back, and each time I’d produced at least one poem that stood the test. With practice, I believe I’ve become the kind of person who tries to live as honestly as possible. Toward the end of his life, and at the time I met him, Patrick was certainly trying to be that kind of person. But all through his life, he wrote poetry that told the truth. He couldn’t hide when he wrote. It mattered too much.