Throwback: Excerpts from a Burned Letter by Joelle Barron

“Like Benedetta of Vellano, I grew up remotely. Arrived
 at Catholic sleepaway camp three months after the meningitis death
 of my sister, my throat full of grief-thirst that received

no answering gulp….”  (Sunny Cove)

Within a faith tradition that sees only two genders, and from the purview of a small northern community, what can a young person know about themselves and their possibilities? What I recall about my own small town upbringing is that “homosexuals” were men. Lesbians did not exist except perhaps as rumour. The closet was in my bedroom and was a good place to hide Hallowe’en candy from my thieving younger brother. Of course we knew the word “queer.” It meant odd, wrong, warped, unusual, other.

“I was at the mall, trying to write a poem
about a radish. It wasn’t going well.
For some reason, I had a boyfriend.”
(I’m Not a Human I’m Three Poems in a Trench Coat)

From the author photo and the dates on some poem titles, I’m guessing I’m a few decades older than Joëlle Barron. Times have changed. But not all that much: “We each knew one gay man,/ no lesbians. To be clear, / no one ever told us the man was gay./ To be clear, we saw women/ who our fathers, brothers,/ cousins, friends/ might call dyke.//There was no way forward;/thoughts could never fully form.” (How Queer and Quiet It Is)

To name oneself as queer and to understand that “queer” means positive identity may mean literally moving away from home. Or the road out of town may be a phone, computer, books. Finding compatriots and ancestors requires resourcefulness and enough courage to brave hidden corners, explore unknown territories, elucidate excised texts. Joëlle Barron’s Excerpts from a Burned Letter is part memoir, part historical research, part reclamation and part redemption. The book’s title and its poems place it within a lengthy and still-growing queer legacy of letters and relationships lost, burned, hidden:

“….I yawn, and his screaming is a mirror;/he can see the witch inside, my throat widening/ like a cervix to release her.” (The Witch in the Stone Boat).

Some of my favourite poems in this collection are multi-part and lengthy. How Queer and How Quiet It Is spreads across 17 pages at the heart of the collection, weaving Barron’s stories around and through references to Frances Hodgson Burnett and The Secret Garden. Burnett famously wrote “not to be married was Paradise”. The word queer, Barron notes, appears 61 times in The Secret Garden “…so we know/ our mothers’ voices made/ the sound, though we don’t/ remember hearing it…”.

Excerpts from a Burned Letter is one queer person’s story. Joëlle Barron lives in Northwestern Ontario, which includes about 1.6% of the total population in the province. In a crowd of 1000 people pouring on to Toronto’s subways at rush hour, that’s about 16 people. All of them are probably wondering why everyone is in such a big hurry so distractedly.

Those voices can be lost in the noise and bustle of the urban crowds. But residents of smaller communities have their own ways of speaking. Lifting up those voices so that they can be heard and highly valued matters. It’s about equity. It’s also about actively supporting and valuing the areas of Canada that we all depend upon, and the people who live there. No matter where we live in Canada, all of us depend on those lands, forests and waters and on their enlightened stewardship. The best responses to climate change and whatever else may come will require mutual understanding and strong support for the Indigenous and settler peoples of Canada’s sparsely populated areas.

If that wasn’t obvious before, it certainly is now, when a greed-obsessed administration to the south of our long undefended border has sets its sights on Canada. Its primary interest is not urban areas. It’s the resource-rich areas beyond them. The courage that wrote this book and its cultural and physical geographies give Extracts from a Burned Letter a relevance that reverberates well beyond the shadow and light of its poetry.

Sixty heated metal swords
fell from the sky
like a Joan of Arc dream,
sluicing the earth at every downbeat
of her puzzled heart. Rain drummed
the bright glass and a boy wound
magenta gum into her hair,
his fingers slick as pews.
(I Have To Tell Her That She Was Right)

Joelle Barron is an award-winning poet and writer living and relying on the Traditional Territories of the Anishinabewaki of Treaty 3 and the Métis people (Fort Frances, ON). Their first poetry collection, Ritual Lights (icehouse poetry, 2018), was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. In 2019, they were a finalist for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for Emerging LGBTQ2S+ Writers. Barron’s poetry has appeared in ARC Poetry Magazine, CV2, EVENT Magazine, The New Quarterly, and many other Canadian literary publications. They live with their daughter.

Publisher: Nightwood Editions (April 13, 2024)
Hardcover 8″ x 6″ | 96 pages
ISBN: 9780889714700

Susan Wismer

Susan is grateful to live on Treaty 18 territory at the southern shore of Manidoo-gitchigami (Georgian Bay) in Ontario, Canada with two human partners and a very large dog. Recent publications include a collaborative chapbook,Hand Shadowswith Michele Green and Suzette Sherman (Wintergreen Press, 2024). Hag Dancesis coming out with At Bay Press in Spring 2025.www.susanwismer.com