Unmarked Graves, shortlisted for the Wells Festival of Literature
The second of my poems shortlisted for the Wells Festival of Literature, was Unmarked Graves. This piece was inspired by a recent trip to Vancouver to visit my eldest son and his fiancé, Alyssa. They have two crazy dogs: Augausta the Bernadoodle (Gus to her friends) a big, shaggy ball of erratic energy and Penny a miniature poodle with a terrifying side-eye. We spent some time on the dog beach in Kitsilano and I became obsessed with the layers of paint, flaking off the sea wall. Vancouver is a city reeling from the discoveries of the unmarked graves of indigenous children at residential schools set up to forcibly assimilate them. Standing on the foreshore with my boy who has become a man I considered how nothing is really ever in the past, no matter how many coats of paint slosh over it. Unmarked Graves, was the poem that resulted.
