Arteles Catalogue 2023-2020

Enter Text program / DECEMBER 2021
Amanda Merritt
Canada
amandamerritt.ca
About
I am a poet and creative writing instructor from the West
coast of Canada. At the Arteles Centre I will be working on
my second collection of poetry, which builds on the themes
of my debut collection The Divining Pool (2017). This book
was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial award.
Presently, my work is concerned with the relationship between
shame, (self)belonging, and embodiment. It emerges from an
imperative to heal a collective legacy of intergenerational
trauma and social inequity that circumscribe our connection
to self, land, and one another. Guiding this work is a curiosity
about the dualistic nature of human perception—a function of
language, biology, and inherited cultural beliefs—specifically
as it concerns the concepts of Self and Other, mind and
body, the spiritual and the material. When false dichotomies
such as these are internalised over generations, they play a
significant role in fomenting populist attitudes and reifying
polarised discourses, which, in turn, are exploited in the
suppression and exclusion of ‘others.’
Poetry
At 8 a.m. I joined in on the morning meditation, then shared
coffee and breakfast with the others. The rest of the day
was spent revising the poetry in my second book-length
collection. I was grateful to have a room with a view, as I was
able to watch the sun arc above the horizon and tame the
day. Before it set I would walk the back roads and explore the
woods, crusted in snow. The evenings spent with the others,
making dinner, preparing the sauna, and gathering for a movie
or a discussion, are among my most cherished memories of
Arteles. These grounds inspired in me a renewed sense of
peace, and for that I truly grateful.
My creative work is thus guided by an imperative to uncover
the roots of systemic shame, as it relates to both recent
and formative experiences of trauma in my own life, and
my matrilineal line. My belief is that if shame entrenches
calcified world views, then acts of creation generate
paradigmatic shifts. These shifts can disrupt pernicious
cycles of disconnection and exclusion within and across
communities, creating space to re-imagine a civic society
that fosters equity and celebrates diversity, that honours our
shared humanity.