Stratford Poet Profiles: Melissa Walker

Melissa Walker is one of the Stratford-based poets who are included in local poet Heidi Sander’s Canada Is Our Poem anthology, shortlisted in the contest of the same name.

CONNOR LUCZKA, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

As Melissa Walker told the Times, her poem “Sestina for a Canada Coming of Age” was born from the harsh political climate of today but hopes it speaks to the sunnier days of tomorrow as well.

“I wanted to speak to some of the polarizing viewpoints out there right now and some of the realities of poverty, homelessness, things like that that we see in our communities a little bit more now that inflation is so high and a lot of people are struggling,” Walker said. “But you know, there is so much talent here, and hopefully this too shall pass. And you know, the U.S. administration will not be forever, and hopefully some things will begin to recuperate and repair themselves after a period of harsh economic and political and cultural reality for Canadians.”

Walker’s poem was submitted to local poet Heidi Sander’s Canada Is Our Poem contest, a national contest that asked poets from coast to coast to coast to write what Canada meant to them. Walker, a teacher at Nancy Campbell Academy, has been writing all her life. Having gotten a master’s degree in creative writing, Walker toyed with the idea of going into academia, before pivoting into teaching and freelance journalism. Just recently she has gotten back into creative writing and has had some successes, even aside from the Canada Is Our Poem contest.

“Sestina for a Canada Coming of Age” is also Walker’s first sestina, a rigid form of six stanzas of six lines where the final word of each line in the first stanza are used as ends for each of the following stanzas. Walker’s uses the words due, cuts, cities, wind, heads and snow as her ending words. Walker said that the constraints of having to write in such a rigid structure lent itself to thinking about the issues modern Canadians face at this present time. She started by thinking of imagery local to southwestern Ontario, but didn’t pick those ending words ahead of time.

“I just wrote some lines,” Walker said. “Those were the words that just came up for me.”

For any aspiring poets or writers, for any of her students at Nancy Campbell who want to write in any medium, Walker said the most important thing is quelling the inner critic.

“That voice that is saying, ‘Who do you think you are? You can't do this. What do you have to say that's special.’” Walker said. “… I always like that quote from Shakespeare: ‘Our doubts are traitors that make us lose what we oft might win by fearing to attempt.’ … Set aside these doubts. You have to make lots of mistakes and you have to try a lot of times before you might create something that you're happy with.”

Stratford Poet Profiles is an ongoing series by the Stratford Times, casting a spotlight on some of the Stratford poets who submitted to Heidi Sander’s Canada Is Our Poem contest. An upcoming anthology with selected works from the contest will be out in spring.