In 1976, Patrick Friesen’s first book of poetry, the lands i am, was published. Five decades and 19 books later, his latest collection, Sightings, is now available.

“It’s exactly 50 years since my first book with a Manitoba publisher, Turnstone,” says Friesen, who grew up in Steinbach and lived in Winnipeg for 30 years before moving to British Columbia in 1996. “I thought it a good idea to return to a Manitoba publisher, and also come back, in a way, to my roots by going to a Mennonite publisher, CMU Press.”

Friesen had seen some of CMU Press’s recent titles and liked the feel of them. 

“Publisher Sue Sorensen is a very sharp reader of poetry; she spotted things I hadn’t noticed. The whole process of working with an outside editor, Nathan Dueck, and with Sue as both copy editor and publisher, went extremely well. They didn’t impose their poetics. That can be a problem with some editors/publishers.”

Friesen refers to Dueck as the outside editor because Friesen’s resident editor is his wife, Eve Joseph, the author of four books of poetry, including her latest, Dismantling.

“Eve is an invaluable editor for me,” Friesen says. “She has a reputation of being Atilla the Editor with her friends. She zeroes in on technical difficulties and is amazing at entering the ‘feel’ of a poem, critically. She understands the whole of a poem and sees where problems lurk.” 

Friesen enjoyed working with Dueck, himself a Mennonite poet who moved from Manitoba to B.C.

“His poetry is very different from mine, and I liked that,” says Friesen. “What I wanted was for his sharp intelligence to offer me a ‘take’ on poems, how they felt overall. I didn’t ask for close editing. He read quickly and responded with very valuable insights almost overnight.” 

And while he has been publishing poetry for 50 years, Friesen can trace his roots in poetry even further back, into his earliest childhood.

“Poetry has been with me my whole life,” he says. “Not written in childhood, but experienced. I believe most children, if they’re fortunate in their environments, experience the physical world poetically, with immediacy. That usually vanishes as they grow older for various reasons. In some it doesn’t. It didn’t with me.” 

Friesen was deeply influenced by his mother Margaret Sawatzky Friesen, who wrote poetry, sang, and played piano.

“She saw the world poetically, and she didn’t have to teach me that,” he notes. “I saw it in her, heard it. She sometimes wrote poetry; I still have one of her poems. She sang a lot, in every room of the house, and sometimes as a soloist in church. There was non-stop music.” 

Eventually, the form Friesen’s poetic approach took was words. But he has continued to be influenced by music and to collaborate with musicians, including his son, Niko, and jazz pianist Marilyn Lerner.

Over the years, Friesen has developed methods of invigorating his poetic practice.

“I have sometimes spent a month or more trying to write a good haiku,” he says. “It has never worked, but I returned to my usual poetry with a different slant, a greater feel for precision and surprise.”