Daniela Elza

A-F
 

Biography

Daniela Elza lived on three continents before immigrating to Canada in 1999. To date, her poetry collections are the broken boat (2020), milk tooth bane bone (2013), the weight of dew (2012), and the book of it (2011). In 2021 Daniela launched slow erosions—a chapbook written in collaboration with poet Arlene Ang.

Daniela earned her doctorate in Philosophy of Education from Simon Fraser University. Her thesis was nominated for the 2011 CAGS UMI Distinguished Dissertation Award Competition, and received the Dean of Graduate Studies Convocation Medal, recognizing her dissertation for not only addressing the long standing epistemological split between the philosophic and poetic, but attempting to heal that very split. 

Daniela has recently been growing her passion for the essay too. Some of her essays can be found in Riddle Fence, Grain Magazine, Motherwell, Queen’s Quarterly, About Place Journal and subTerrain. Daniela is a founding member of the Place Mattering Matters Collective (2022) and is actively engaged with her community on protecting affordable housing in Vancouver. She works as an instructor, teacher, mentor to writers of any age; she loves to inspire, and help birth poems and poetry manuscripts. Website: http://strangeplaces.livingcode.org/

Poetics Statement

“Each time I get discouraged with how small the world can become, I remember Heidegger thinking of poetry as that which brings us into the open clearing of truth, and Robert Bringhurst saying that poetry knows more than any of us who write it. I live this tension. Poetry as institution and poetry as freedom—

Poems were taught to me in a hurry. Somewhere along the clinical hallways of school they lost their souls. We do this to other things, like food. Instead of a carrot we need carotenoids in our diet. But, we still cannot understand what goes on deep down in the soul of a carrot. says Michael Pollan in In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. When food devolves to nutrients, we need experts to tell us how to eat. Poetry is at the mercy of such forces. But “you do not need to fathom a carrot’s complexity in order to reap its benefits,” concludes Pollan. So eat the carrot. Write the poem. Eat the poem, says the carrot—

Poetry knows language isn’t adequate for its needs, so it does something with language that language shouldn’t be able to do. To create intimacy with words we work with them, just like we would work on any good relationship. Language benefits from this attention—

Without poetic thinking, the world becomes too clear—and that’s dangerous, says Tim Lilburn. The poetic imagination is a species of knowing. It vaccinates us against narrow and petty mindedness, allows for paradoxes and diverse thoughts to co-exist. Poetic thinking, I believe, is crucial to our survival. After all as Mary Ruefle says: “The rose is not beauty. What beauty is is your ability to apprehend it.”

Try to define poetry and it will defy you—”

 

Sample of Poet's Work

:diagnosis:

a field  of snow.  a picture          of a tree.
the body hangs.                   a eulogy.

 

suspended       groundless            words fall
around            a simple question

                                                          (at first sight

 

black                on white)         so clearly
outlined—        a tree                a body

  

and a breath      between them.

 

                            * 

and the crows    they utter          their deadly caws
all at once          (as if                 trying

 

to explain.

                                                    they saw it all

 

with their sharp little eyes         but none
swooped down          to blind         the executioner.

 

                             *

 

their cawing          grows
                                             especially loud

                                   

at dusk                  when I hang         by that thin

 

noose
              of dying

                               light.

                       

                                                             alone.         

published in milk tooth bane bone (Leaf Press, 2013)

the weight of dew

can I fill these words with      what is not

 

intended.          with what the river keeps
hidden
                         under her tongue.

 

 

with the maps birds carve in my marrow
fill my bones                   with air

 

my eye                   with their dying. 

 

to wait         on the river bank

 

                                              long enough

 

to know what knowing             looks like
before                   it is disturbed.

 

stepped on.                         sanitized.
poked                   with a stick.
put         in a vial.

 

to know the shape of                  me

nameless—        
                          my given names left out
like shoes         I was meant to fill.

 

they gather dew     now

 

it slides down their tongues. I watch them
through this open door                where

 

even the clock                wipes its face clean.

published in the weight of dew (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2012)

autobiographies of grief: three fragments

The city legislates our movements
           paves the paths we are     supposed to walk.

 

there’s barely song here    in the footfall
        the negotiation of space—    the way we    avoid

 

bumping into each other
                              as we      bump     into each other.

 

each day     our together    wakes up
                    remembers itself into               not-being

 

                  raises itself from the ground up
like a city—                stunned          and unbelieving.

 

in the choreography of this struggling light

 

                       I never imagined       not loving you.

 

                                   <>

 

Your dreams have begun       to resemble reality.

 

your favourite lawn chair                  face down
                     in the backyard pond
                                                    is drowning itself.

 

the lily pads have turned     into        Pac-Men
eating up the koi     everyone wanted
                                                 but no one cared for.

 

though you were suspicious
                                            of those happy endings
you liked them—

 

read all the way to the end of the book
                            finished watching the bad movie

 

just    to see            that final kiss.

 

your dreams have begun       to resemble reality.

 

in the mornings     you feel
                                               robbed     cheated.

 

                                  <>

 

One way   and    for lease we paint our façades
in recognizable          acceptable colours.

 

boarded and shuttered inside ourselves.

 

I never knew        not loving you    was an option.

 

we are busy fighting the small crimes
                          the big ones are beyond us now.

  

the widows with the views     are elsewhere.

 

the mountains you imagined curious and peeking
have looked away.      stay       at a safe distance.

 

the sunbeams that so readily stretched themselves
like rugs on our afternoon floors

 

have been issued        restraining orders.

                   the doors of your shock     open wide.

published in the broken boat (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2020)

 

 

 

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