Carolyne Van Der Meer on crafting a poetic voice and exploring life's profound themes

Born in small-town Ontario, Carolyne Van Der Meer now considers herself a Quebecer, having spent more of her life in Montreal than anywhere else. Her chapbook, Birdology, was published in May by Montreal-based micro-press, Cactus Press. Carolyne has written four collections of poetry, the most recent of which is All This As I Stand By (Ekstasis Editions, 2024). Her other collections are Journeywoman (Inanna, 2017), Heart of Goodness: The Life of Marguerite Bourgeoys in 30 Poems | Du cœur à âme: La vie de Marguerite Bourgeoys en 30 poèmes (Guernica, 2020), and Sensorial (Inanna, 2022).

Author Carolyne Van Der Meer

Carolyne graduated with a BA in English literature from the University of Ottawa, and an MA, also in English literature, from Concordia University. She then earned a graduate certificate in creative writing from Toronto’s Humber School for Writers, which led to the publication of her first book, Motherlode: A Mosaic of Dutch Wartime Experience (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014), a hybrid collection of poems, short stories, journal entries and essays. Carolyne runs a small PR consultancy practice in Montreal, where she lives with her family. In this Q&A interview she discusses the evolution of her writing and how her work explores life's profound themes.

OCW: Has your writing evolved over the years? If so, how? Through writing experience? Reading a lot? Writing courses or communities? A combination, or something else?

CVDM: My writing has absolutely evolved over the years, thanks to the great guidance of mentors and teachers, fellow poets and to constantly trying to figure out what kind of poet I am and want to be—because it is constantly evolving.

The most obvious way my style has changed is that I now rarely use punctuation in my poetry. I use spaces and line breaks to create emphasis and pauses, as I tend to feel encumbered by traditional punctuation. This decision came over a long period, but was encouraged by one of my mentors, upstate New York poet Michael Carrino. Another change has been towards a very economical style, seeking the hardest impact with the fewest words. My question is always “How can I achieve the most power in the shortest space?” 

Exploring life's profound themes

OCW: Can you trace any common themes across your writing?

CVDM: The common themes that run through my poetry are illness and motherhood. When I was 23, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease and went through several surgeries and staging tests, ultimately resulting in six months of chemotherapy. Processing this experience has taken a lifetime—I still write about it, some 30 years later, even though I am completely cured.

The other themes that run through my writing centre around a kind of quiet feminism that privileges the female experience and motherhood. I have explored these themes rather deeply in three of my books—my first, Motherlode: A Mosaic of Dutch Wartime Experience; my second, Journeywoman, and my third, Heart of Goodness: The Life of Marguerite Bourgeoys in 30 Poems | Du cœur à âme: La vie de Marguerite Bourgeoys en 30 poèmes. Each of these titles considers the phases of womanhood (which I define as the waif, the mother and the crone) in different ways. In the case of Bourgeoys, while not a mother, this founder of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame was arguably the first feminist in Quebec, educating and guiding girls and young women in New France in the 1600s. 

OCW: If you’ve been published, how did you find your first publisher?

A wonderful publishing journey

CVDM: How I found my first publisher was a little bit serendipitous. In 2006, I wrote a review essay for the Literary Review of Canada about Wilfrid Laurier University Press’s (WLUP) Life Writing Series. To write that review, I read all 26 books in the series up to that point (there are now 65), so I gained a deep understanding of the series and what WLUP was looking for. When I decided to write about my mother’s childhood in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, I wrote with the intention of submitting my manuscript to the Life Writing Series. After completing my graduate certificate in creative writing at the Humber School for Writers (where my mentor was the amazing Jamaican-Canadian poet and novelist Olive Senior) in 2011, I submitted Motherlode to WLUP and learned in 2012 that my book would be published in 2014. It was a wonderful publishing journey.  

Keep reading, keep exploring, just be you

OCW: What advice/guidance would you give to writers?

CVDM: For one, keep reading, keep exploring. It seems an obvious piece of advice, but I think reading widely helps us see what we are, where we fit—and what is possible. And while reading other writers, great writers, can be deeply inspiring, another piece of advice I would give is just be you. Don’t aspire to something to the point that you are no longer writing naturally, authentically. Because your authentic voice is your most powerful voice.  

OCW: Do you edit as you write, or write and edit later?

CVDM: I write and edit later. Often my poems come out in a great rush after having run around in my head for days. I write by hand in a notebook I like, and then keep going back to them, reading and re-reading, aloud and silently, making countless changes until the poem starts to sit comfortably with me. Only then do I type it up—at which point I may make more edits, but they are usually minor at that point.