The poet M.C. Warrior discusses his collection of poems Disappearing Minglewood Blues (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2020), with Joseph Planta.

Disappearing Minglewood Blues by M.C. Warrior (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2020). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: Ground Truth

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, British Columbia, at TheCommentary.ca.

M.C. Warrior joins me now. The veteran poet has recently published a new collection of poems, Disappearing Minglewood Blues. They are of the coast, of the land, of the water. A lot of the poems in the book are infused with Mark’s more than three decades experience working in logging and commercial fishing here in British Columbia. You get a real sense of the air, the water, the trees, the logs, as well as other notable smells I’ll bring up later. There’s a real sense of the hard work that built a lot of this province. We overlook how much the extraction of natural resources in British Columbia shaped how we view this land and how we’ve been perceived outside the province. I ask Mark about the work he’s done, the long hours and the wisdom he found in it. I’ll ask him about how he writes poetry and we’ll touch on some of the challenges of writing. We taped this interview earlier this month, and like much else COVID-19 and this coronavirus era was something we touched upon. M.C. Warrior was born in England and educated at UBC. He has worked as a logger and a commercial fisherman. He was also executive director of a Habitat for Humanity affiliate on Vancouver Island. He is a lifelong trade unionist a member at various times of his life of the International Woodworkers of America, the IWA, as well as the UFAWU, the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union, LIUNA, the Labourers International Union of North America, and he was a founding member of the Vancouver Industrial Writers’ Union. He lives on one of the Gulf Islands. This book is from Mother Tongue Publishing. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, M.C. Warrior; Mr. Warrior, good morning.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (19.8MB)

Subscribe: RSS