Compelling Calgarians: Richard Harrison

Article content

For Richard Harrison, having someone not only appreciate the words he writes but honour him for them is a novel experience.

“The analogy that people love to make about art itself is painting,” he explained. “You hang a painting on a wall and there are all sorts of things that have to go right for that painting to be seen properly. The wall has to be the right wall and the room has to be the right room and the moment has to be the right moment. In a sense, poetry is a very small wall of art. I’ve never had a wall like this.

“When the attention comes . . . to a very private spot of my life . . . it becomes a shared public happiness. It means so many things on so many levels.”

Harrison, a poet and essayist originally from Toronto, was awarded the Governor General’s Prize for Poetry for his book, On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood, which also won the Stephan G. Stephansson Alberta Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize.

Harrison, 60, came to this city in 1995 to spend a year as the University of Calgary Distinguished Writer. He never left. The proximity to his wife’s family in Regina was also a plus.

“Calgary was a smaller city back then,” Harrison explained. “There were several factors, with both the city that size and the attitude of the literary community. There was a really supportive exchange going on and that made me intrigued about staying.”

Harrison, who teaches at Mount Royal University, has written a lot about his father; he will next turn to the story of his mother, who died in July through a medically-assisted death.

“I was there with her and it was a completely different experience for me,” said Harrison. “Most of our attention is on the person making the choice, but we don’t really have much writing on what it’s like to be the person witness to that.”