Photo by Stephen Davis
Interview by Kate Finegan
The poems in Claire Caldwell’s second collection, Gold Rush (Invisible Publishing, 2020) have something in common with the wilderness—they beg to be revisited. They artfully layer and interrogate the concept of wilderness through the intersecting lenses of settler-colonialism, gender, and environmental destruction. I spoke with Claire over video chat in March.
Kate Finegan: What prompted you to write about the wilderness, specifically women in the wilderness?
Claire Caldwell: It started with my own experience. Growing up, I was really lucky and got to spend a lot of time in the outdoors. I went to summer camp for nine years, where I did a lot of canoe tripping, and my family also went on outdoor trips. Into my adulthood, I’ve continued to go backpacking, go hiking, go on more canoe trips. When I started to write this book, I was thinking about those experiences, but also about my conflicted feelings about the enormous privilege that I have and why I have that privilege when others don’t. I was thinking about who has access to wilderness—in my experience, summer camp was quite white and middle-to-upper class.
I was also thinking about how my experiences in the outdoors shaped my relationship to my own body and girl- and womanhood. Physical strength was not something I ever really had in my everyday city life. I wasn’t really into sports. I was more of a bookish kid. But in the summers, I was able to see that side of myself and push myself in physical ways. At camp, there was also the dynamic of girls sizing each other up and bodies being very on-view in some ways that weren’t the case in the city. All of this got me thinking about how women have been portrayed—or portrayed themselves—in relationship to wilderness, beyond just my own experiences in the 90s and 2000s.
KF: One thing I wanted to ask about is the separateness of wilderness from our everyday life as city dwellers in the 21st century. We have this idea of wilderness as something that’s created and separate and kind of sacred, and the very concept of “wilderness” is really complicated and has a long history. One of the pieces that highlights that is “Frontier Diaries,” and what struck me is how you put narratives of actual, historical pioneer women alongside modern-day bloggers who are seeking wilderness in their kitchens and their homes. Why do women still seek to own this title of “pioneer”?
CC: I think it’s a place where women feel like they can explore aspects of physical challenge or access a rougher side of themselves that they might not be able to experience in a city setting or in a more modern setting. Going back to the more traditional pioneer memoirs, wilderness was often portrayed as this scary place to be tamed and held at bay. But when you read modern blogs and more contemporary voices, there’s almost a reversal. There’s a mindset of, “I’m going to challenge myself in this, but not fight against it; I’ll return to some of those skills and some of that domesticity that’s been ‘lost’.” But a common thread through all these accounts is pushback against gender roles or from what’s expected in an urban society. But there’s also an embracing of these very traditional roles of motherhood and gardening and cooking and making things from scratch. I’m not saying that to put a value judgment on it, but it’s a very interesting tension between all these roles.
KF: The collection speaks to this tension quite a bit, with lines like, “I contain a canyon / of roaring horses / and a small tent / for rest”— the dichotomy of what a woman has to be and what she has to contain, and the different contexts in which she gets to explore those dualities.
CC: In a setting like a homestead in the wilderness, there is that constant pressure of the wilderness: the animals, the elements, all of these things that require self-sufficiency, like are my plants going to grow? or am I going to be able to feed myself? All of that is right there. It’s so immediate. But at the same time, there’s something very safe and cozy about this image of a little cabin that is totally self-contained, which is far away from these other types of perceived dangers that might be in other parts of the world or more densely-populated areas.
KF: I found it interesting how in the final section, “After the Gold Rush,” the idyllic symbols are really turned on their heads. You bring in the internet and more distinctly modern and apocalyptic themes. For instance, “Canadian Ninja Warrior,” asks, “How’s your grip strength?” bringing back the physicality of homesteading. It also mentions a boil water advisory. I wanted to talk about the complications and fraught nature of the idea of wilderness in Canada, as we explore our history and what wilderness has meant to different groups in Canada over the years.
CC: This goes back to what I was first saying about reflecting on my own experiences––the access that I’ve had to wild spaces––and how that access is by definition exclusionary. While writing, I was thinking about that gap between who has access to “wilderness” and who doesn’t and how that connects to class and race and Indigenous sovereignty. The idea of wilderness as a vast, open, unpopulated place is a settler concept that has been used as a justification to take land from Indigenous peoples and continues to underly much of the colonialism that persists today. As we know, many land disputes are still ongoing, and Canada’s not doing enough, in my opinion, to give land back to its rightful occupants.
KF: Going back to our discussion of women in the wilderness––wilderness and survival skills have often been a very male realm. So it’s complicated to talk about women and wilderness in particular.
CC: A goal of mine as these poems came together was to give space to that complication and not necessarily try to resolve it. I tried to be as frank as possible about my role as a settler and someone who has absolutely benefited from these long-standing concepts that have been so terrible. I extend that to climate change, as well. Having an appreciation of the wilderness and having had the chance to be close to the planet at its most raw doesn’t absolve you of anything. There are a few poems, for instance the one about Everest, which touch on the outdoor industry itself and the attitudes that go along with what some people seek in the outdoors—like extreme experiences, or reaching for the next record or the next highest achievement. This mindset of conquering or challenging nature to prove one’s own strength and power seems related to the issues we’ve been talking about, like the subjugation of women.
KF: One thing that I really admired in the collection as a whole, as well as in individual poems, is that there’s a great sense of narrative drive. The speaker is witnessing what’s happening and telling the story. To what extent do you see yourself as a storyteller, in addition to or alongside being a poet?
CC: That’s really interesting. Narrative has often been a starting point for me, but it’s not necessarily how I’ve always thought about my writing. It’s on my mind more now. I like that poetry can tell a story, but you don’t have to adhere to a narrative arc or tie up all the ends. There’s an ability to lean into that structure when it’s helpful and to pull back when it’s not.
KF: The verse form can also help to tell the story. You can use line breaks to heighten tension and use the actual physical layout of the narrative in a way that prose doesn’t always offer.
CC: The really condensed, pressurized language of a poem is fun to play with.
KF: How did your time in Dawson City impact the content and form of the book?
CC: A ton. I lived in Whitehorse when I was a kid, so a lot of my very, very early experiences with wild spaces and nature up-close were in the Yukon, very early childhood. So, a lot of this was already on my mind when I went to Dawson for the Berton House residency. There was a feeling of being dropped back into my childhood.
One thing that I noticed in Dawson is that there is not the same sense of distance from nature that there seems to be in Toronto. People here say, “Oh, I’m outdoorsy” or “I’m not outdoorsy.” Or people will say, “Oh, I’ll go glamping, but I’m not going to go on a canoe trip.” But in Dawson, everyone is just living right next to the outdoors—in it, almost. It touches everyone’s life. It’s not something that sets you apart if you go berry picking or have survival skills. Having a relationship with wilderness seems much more a part of everyday life. Once you are outside of town, you immediately lose cell service, and the housing density drops right off. That helped me understand this sense of something wild looming right outside your door. That’s when I really started thinking through and piecing together a lot of these feelings around wilderness that I explore in the book.
KF: What are some of the questions or ideas that are inspiring you right now in your current work?
CC: I’m circling around a few different things, but I don’t think I’ll stop writing about the outdoors and about climate change. The natural world has always compelled me. For now, I’m trying to stay in that space where I’m just writing poems, and not yet writing a new book.
Claire Caldwell is a writer, a children’s book editor at Annick Press, and a kids’ writing workshop facilitator. Her second poetry collection, Gold Rush, is available now from Invisible Publishing. Her debut, Invasive Species (Wolsak and Wynn), was named one of The National Post’s top five poetry books of 2014. Claire was a 2016 writer in residence at the Berton House in Dawson City, Yukon, and the 2013 winner of The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize. She lives in Toronto.
Kate Finegan is editor-in-chief of Longleaf Review and novel/novella editor for Split/Lip Press. Her work has appeared in PRISM International, The Puritan, The Fiddlehead, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. She lives in Toronto. You can find her at katefinegan.ink or on Twitter @kehfinegan.