Arleen Paré takes a Poetic Look at Two of Toronto's Most Influential Sculptors

Sculptors Frances Loring and Florence Wyle were dominant forces in the Canadian art scene of the early and mid-20th Century. Their sculptures, still on display across the country, and the Sculptors Society of Canada (which they founded), continue their legacy to this day. 

Inspired by Loring and Wyle, Arleen Paré has followed up her Governor General's Literary Award winning Lake of Two Mountains with a book-length poem, The Girls with Stone Faces (Brick Books), delving into both the sculptors' work and their lives.

Slipping into the role of a curator, Paré takes the reader on a poetic tour of the women's lives, work, and their decades-long romance. Using their work as a lens, Paré also weaves in discussions of gender, history, and changing trends in art. Deft and moving, the collection is an important new work from one of Canada's finest.

We're speaking to Arleen today as part of our Lucky Seven series, where we ask writers all about their newest book. Arleen tells us about falling in love with the sculptors' work in the National Art Gallery, how the book unpacks ideas around what beauty is, and why it's okay to have an erratic writing process. 

Open Book:

Tell us about your new book and how it came to be.

Arleen Paré:

The Girls with Stone Faces is a collection of poetry about two very talented Toronto sculptors, Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, who created vast amounts of public art in the first half of the twentieth century. This poetry collection is an attempt to memorialize these two women, their lives (using considerable poetic license), and their sculpture. 

I fell in love with their art, which was on display in the National Art Gallery in Ottawa a number of years ago. From that first sighting, I began to write, research, read, view their art in other galleries and online, and write some more. 

OB:

Is there a question that is central to your book, thematically? And if so, did you know the question when you started writing or did it emerge from the writing process? 

AP:

The question of beauty, what constitutes beauty, how humans identify and see beauty, how and why we iconize beauty, rose less as an aesthetic query and more as a political question, as I wrote poem after poem about Florence Wyle’s ‘beautiful’ Torso. In the same way, and based on the career trajectories of The Girls (as they were once  known in Toronto art circles), the question of fashion in art, how tastes change, why some art and some artists lose favour while other styles and artists rise in popularity, also haunts this collection.

OB:

Did this project change significantly from when you first starting working on it to the final version? How long did the project take from start to finish? 

AP:

I wrote this book for at least five years, I think. It’s hard now to remember when I first started, but I usually work on a few projects at the same time, so I might have been slowly approaching this collection while still writing The Lake of Two Mountains. The project took shape long after I had started writing; I had collected maybe two-thirds of the poems when I began to think what arrangement and structure the collection should take. 

OB:

What do you need in order to write – in terms of space, food, rituals, writing instruments? 

AP:

I write in an erratic sort of way. Sometimes days pass and I haven’t written much at all. But if I leave it too long, I become antsy. The bottom line is that I love to write; if I leave it, it’s usually only because life has interfered. I need a note pad, even scraps of paper will do, my computer in my very small pyramid-shaped room, and a pair of glasses. That’s all. I have no rituals, even though I do write in a pyramid; I eat no food while I write.  I write more in the evening than during the day, but that’s because life interferes more during the day than at night. 

OB:

What do you do if you're feeling discouraged during the writing process? Do you have a method of coping with the difficult points in your projects?

AP:

If I’m discouraged with one or two poems, for instance, I write more poems. I just keep at it, I guess, hoping that more will be better, and that, if I write enough, the writing will improve. Almost like piano exercises. I don’t write for hours, ever, at a time. I often walk away for awhile, distract myself and come back later. I love editing my work.

OB:

What defines a great book, in your opinion? Tell us about one or two books you consider to be truly great books.

AP:

I loved Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich. I loved The True Story of Ida B. Johnson by Sharon Reiss. I just read The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa, which was beautiful. I loved Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping.

I think two simple things make a book great: first, if the story is compelling, not necessary heroic or fast or strange or theatrical, just compelling, which means that the characters must be compelling, and second, if the language is poetic, not elevated or obscure or necessarily lyrical, just interesting and suited to the narrative, aligned. The other thing is short; I prefer a short book. Which may be why I enjoy poetry. 

OB:

What are you working on now?

AP:

I have two major projects on the go right now: I am almost finished a poetry collection about the street where I live in Victoria, Earle Street, and I am in the first throes of a new-ish manuscript, which combines both prose and poetry, about my first best friend, called First.  I also have a couple of minor projects but they are very back-burnered at the moment. 

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Arleen Paré’s first book, Paper Trail, was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay BC Book Award for Poetry and won the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize in 2008.  Leaving Now, a mixed-genre novel released in 2012, was highlighted on All Lit Up. Lake of Two Mountains, her third book, won the 2014 Governor General’s Award for Poetry, was nominated for the Butler Book Prize and won the CBC Bookie Award. Paré’s poetry collection, He leaves His Face in the Funeral Car, was a 2015 Victoria Butler Book Prize finalist.  She lives in Victoria with her partner of thirty-seven years.