Transcript
Speaker: I'm Jane Williams. This is the Red Eye Podcast. You can hear our live broadcast on Saturday mornings from 10 till noon at 100.5 FM in the Lower Mainland.
Speaker: On the podcast today, Lorraine Chisholm speaks with Seema Shah and Pari Mokradi about a new anthology featuring writers with lived experience of mental health issues.
Speaker: Off the Map is a new anthology featuring writers from Vancouver with lived experience of mental health issues. The anthology includes works of creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry on a wide range of subjects.
Speaker: One reviewer has said, humor bounds in this multi-genre collection that packs surprise and insights within the circuitous strategies of literary craft. Seema Shah is a visual artist and writer and is one of the book's editors.
Speaker: Pari Mokradi is an artist and writer who contributed to the anthology. Hello, Seema. Hello. Hi, Pari. Hi. I so love the title Off the Map.
Speaker: And Seema, I'm going to ask you, how did you all land on that name for the book? and And what are some of the resonances for you? Yeah, the title, I have to give Betsy Worland credit for the title. She's one of the other editors along with Kate Bird.
Speaker: but Betsy came up with the title and we just really liked it. And it seemed to just fit. We were brainstorming ideas and that one just really landed. And so i think, you know, it can be interpreted in multiple ways and have different meanings to different people and even probably between the three editors. But I think one thing we agree on is The anthology includes a collection of writers, many who have not been published before or who have had you know very limited publication experience.
Speaker: So it's hopefully bringing some new literary talent to the community and increasing exposures of writers who maybe have not had that experience before. along with bringing a diversity of writing and writers, different perspectives and different ways of knowing and being in terms of the lived experience of mental health issues, and just in general, having a diverse representation of voices with that lived experience.
Speaker: Wonderful. Now, you're both part of a group called Professional Artistic Growth Made Accessible. Pari, tell us a little bit about that group. Yeah, first of all, thank you so much for having me talk with both you and Seema in conversation around the ah project. And really, yeah it came off of this community that Seema and Betsy had hosted.
Speaker: I was you know living in the downtown east side in Vancouver and really just looking for a community. And i think I saw this but through some social media ah writing session being hosted by Betsy. And I later met Seema at the session.
Speaker: And it's pretty much a community of ah writers who are interested in learning more about the craft as well as sharing. And I think early in those days, it was through Zoom. And up until then, i didn't, I would say I didn't really fully grasp how much a community of writers really helps because everyone really sees writing as a solitary act.
Speaker: But these sessions really helped me see writing as a relational act, you know as a way of being with others. And Betsy, she is such at the top of her craft. So the insights she shared through these sessions were so helpful writing.
Speaker: not only writing better, but also listening better. And I feel like one of the things that I really took away is that listening to others really make us better listeners for our stories and ourselves. So I i really cherish the gift of these writing circles that really helped turn my personal writings into shared kind of act that opened up new ideas for me and that I later was able to put forth in in a story.
Speaker: Seema, I understand that this in a way laid the groundwork for Off The Map. It did. it You know, everything evolved rather naturally. This project, Professional Artistic Growth Made Accessible, actually started January 2022 and was so focused on visual art.
Speaker: And it was the second year of the project in 2023 that it expanded to include writing. And Betsy came on as a partner. because she had been my long-time mentor.
Speaker: And yeah, we had done workshops, as Pari had mentioned, and you know Betsy had led these workshops and she just has so much expertise. I think there were like two things that came together. One was during the first year of the project, in addition to professional learning opportunities, such as workshops and consults with artists,
Speaker: The project included art exhibitions that I partnered with the gallery, Outsiders and Others, and the director of the gallery, Yuria Rice, and I co-curated some exhibitions to showcase the work of some of the artists who were participating in the project.
Speaker: And then, you know, the project expanded to include writing. it seemed like it would be great to have something that paralleled that in addition to the learning opportunities to have some way to have, ah you know, the professional showcasing of the writer's work.
Speaker: And when Betsy came on board and she did some consults, one-on-one consults with writers as well as workshops, she was really impressed with the writing, the talent and the uniqueness of the writing. And also noticed that ah many of the writers had not been published before.
Speaker: and given her years of experience in working with writers, she was like, this work really needs to be out there. And we were both keen on the idea of pursuing an anthology and then tried to look for a publisher and were really fortunate to find Bell Press.
Speaker: That must have been incredibly exciting. it was really exciting. it was, and everything happened so quickly. Now, Perry, how did you become part of this project and have your short story, Home Birth, included? Yeah, so kind of Seema touched on it, and it was pretty interesting because...
Speaker: The program itself is so multifaceted. It's not just writing. It has this art aspect to it. So as I mentioned, I started off in these writing circles. And I don't know if Seema remembers this, but I actually met her for the first time a random art exhibition happening in the downtown Eastside. And she was there to support the artist. And i think we connected together.
Speaker: And I mentioned that, oh, it's you, Seema. I see you over Zoom. And then I was able to finally connect with her face to face. And then she connected me to Yuri, who is the director at this gallery called Outsiders and Others.
Speaker: And he really helped me to see my art and my writing through a professional lens. I think he also recommended that I create my own website, which I finally did this year with the help of Seema as well.
Speaker: So I think all of that kind of started snowballing and giving me more confidence into seeking out professional outlets to showcase my work. And then this opportunity was really presented at one of these writing circles as anyone's interested in getting their work out there.
Speaker: So I really seized that opportunity. I had some of these materials that I've been working in consultation with Betsy, And I really thought this would be a perfect opportunity for me to formalize the story I had into the story that it is now, which is called Home Birth.
Speaker: Tell us a little bit about Home Birth and then please read for us. Yeah, absolutely. So the story I published with the Bell Press in Off the Map is called Home Birth.
Speaker: And essentially it follows Jay, a recent immigrant, as he tries to build a new life in Canada. At the same time, he carries the weight of all the memories from India, ah his motherland, and really his body becomes both an archive and a battleground which holds the tensions between his past and present identities.
Speaker: And while I was working on this piece with Betsy and Seema, I really wanted to explore that you know fracturing sense of self that always comes ah with being an outsider and the quiet, often complicated ways that we cope with it.
Speaker: So this is an excerpt from that story. The last cigarette trembles between my lips as I dodge puddles in the DTS back alley.
Speaker: The sharp stench of urine rises around my feet, pools with the night's steady drizzle pattering along the path to Chinatown's Lakshmi Mart.
Speaker: Lakshmi, the Hindu deity of good fortune, often depicted sitting on a pristine lotus flower, is nowhere to be found near this run-down corner mart, its faded yellow and red signboard flickering under a faulty tube light.
Speaker: The entrance, with its rough splinters, is plastered with notices of missing women. The details of where they were last seen, what they were wearing accompany worn-out mug shots.
Speaker: Their eyes stare out into the bleak night. I head straight to the cashier, grab a king-size carton of Belmonts and light up as soon as I step outside, the deep inhale calming my nerves.
Speaker: Waiting for the rain to ease, I reflect on how my body too has been weathering a storm lately. Sharp gusts of nicotine start my mornings, followed by turbulent tides of caffeine.
Speaker: Evenings bring floods of THC to wash me into amnesia while a four-pack at night drowns the incessant buzzing within my cells. It feels like a bridge is straining under relentless weight inside me.
Speaker: groaning and creaking, its cables whipped down the corridors of my middle school in India, unleashing memories of the empty washroom where I rolled my first birri.
Speaker: The dried tembuni leaf delicately wrapped around the sun-dried tobacco, the quick spark insisting a deep inhale by the school window. The high school ritual turned to rapture when I graduated to cigarettes.
Speaker: The nicotine was sharper, carving our minds into a focused clarity while our bodies flushed out the anxieties of looming exams. Somewhere, somewhere between smuggling beeries down the hallways of my high school to staggering down DTS alleyways of Chinatown, escape revealed itself as anchor.
Speaker: Wow. it's It's incredible to hear you read that. To me, it seems to plumb deeply into the questions of life, death, suffering, birth, and also what is home.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely. And that's something... That is thematic in a lot of my writings dealing with being an immigrant in a new country with your entire family in India.
Speaker: So I tried to channel a lot of that in this writing, talking about how do you like unfracture your sense of self that has been broken through these journeys that are being taken and all the different parts of you that are, say, missing out on birthdays back home, funerals back home, right? And then when you go back, it's really a liminal space where you're not really sure what home is anymore. And so how do you create space for yourself to create new belonging and new ways of you know nurturing the parts of yourself that felt broken through this journey?
Speaker: I want to ask both of you whether you feel writing plays a role in sustaining your mental health as ah as well as perhaps wrestling with mental health challenges. And why don't I start with Seema here?
Speaker: I do, and in a way that might not be straightforward, I guess. I mean, my focus has been more on visual art. In the past, well, quite a few years, I started off writing and that really started with journaling and that planted the seeds.
Speaker: And I feel like that that type of writing for me is helpful for my mental health, journaling, but more when it comes to crafting a piece that I'm thinking of writing and maybe putting out there.
Speaker: That's a little bit of it. For me, it's a different experience. So, It's a different kind of challenge and focus for me, but I definitely find writing and working with words ah helpful, you know, for my well-being. I tend to approach my writing and art more from a point of trying to create something that but has artistic and and or literary merit.
Speaker: Yeah, but I do write for my own benefit as well. Absolutely. And when when I was thinking of that question, i I didn't want to imply that writing is therapy as if that is what you're doing it because there's this is such an incredible collection of pieces.
Speaker: Any thoughts on that, Perry? Yeah, for me, it kind of, again, ties back to that sense of community as well when you're writing and sharing with others what you've written. And I think Betsy here really helped me a lot in those sharing circles with her book called, i think, Breathing the Page, which is a very ah helpful book for all those who are trying to write and really...
Speaker: ah the the main point of that book is put it out on a page, actually write something. And then in that writing, I feel a lot of new discoveries come out, whether that's, you know, you're talking about therapy, you know, the aspect of when you put thoughts on paper, it makes everything less overwhelming. So instead of circling endlessly in your head,
Speaker: you really get perspective in the way you're writing, what things are coming out, and helps you process a lot of painful experiences or untangle these complex emotions.
Speaker: It also helps with your self-awareness. I feel like when I was listening to other people share their writing in these circles organized by Betsy and Seema, I started noticing patterns in what I write. And then I start trying to understand my triggers, my habits more clearly And i think this awareness makes it much easier to make healthier choices in my normal life and as well as communicate but better with others. So I think like these are really crucial things outside of writing that is really informed by your writing.
Speaker: Seema, this this might be a good time to ask you to introduce the story you're going to read from. Sure. My piece in the anthology is called Waiting for the Greenhouse Effect.
Speaker: And it's piece of creative nonfiction. And it's based on my experience in a creative arts inpatient program that I've called Meadowside in this story.
Speaker: And it's it's about horticultural therapy. So horticultural therapy wasn't what I'd envisioned. It didn't seem much like a horticultural experience, nor was it particularly therapeutic.
Speaker: Session number one, aromatherapy. I realize aromatherapy uses essential oils derived from plants, but calling it horticultural therapy seemed like a bit of a stretch.
Speaker: And it wasn't like we spent the session learning to make essential oils. The instructor just passed around vials of different oils, which we sniffed as he explained their healing properties. He also showed us a few meadowside-made products, such as lotions and spritzers, that contained various combinations of essential oils.
Speaker: We didn't make any of these concoctions, although we were given a few recipes to make at home. However, we could buy them directly from the horticulture department if we wanted to shell out $20 for a small container.
Speaker: After learning about these products, we moved on to the next step, giving each other lengthy step-by-step hand massages using Meadowside hand cream. As we sat across the narrow table from each other hand in hand, curious passerby stopped and stared down at us from a large window that overlooked the greenhouse.
Speaker: They were probably as confused as we were.
Speaker: I love this story and it really made me smile when I when i read it. And love the sense of humor that came through. Thank you. Now, some writers in the anthology talk about mental health directly. And one piece ends very powerfully with the words, stigma is real.
Speaker: What are your hopes for how the book might create openings for readers to glimpse or to understand or to have a lens into the experiences of people who have faced mental health challenges?
Speaker: I can go real quick. Seema might be able to add more context with all the different you know editing processes. And she was my editor. So I think but what I took away from the editing process while working with Seema was it's so much multifaceted. It's so multidimensional that your mental health experiences may not coincide or relate to someone else's.
Speaker: So I think we need a project that can showcase all these different dimensions. And even within my story, right, there are these different dimensions and figuring out which dimensions to highlight and might fit better with the flow of my story as I was doing, doing the editing process.
Speaker: really opened up my eyes to, there's just so many ways you can experience mental health, experience the stigmas associated with mental health. So I think if we can have ah projects that uplift all these stories at the same time, I think we'll empower a lot of those individuals in different stages or different, like I said, dimensions of these challenges that they're facing.
Speaker: I agree with what Pari said. I mean, the words multidimensional and multifaceted really apply. i think for the anthology, I think one of the beautiful things about anthologies is that bringing together ah many different perspectives around a given, and in this case, featuring writers with lived experience of mental health issues. And many of the stories do do connect to that experience in some way. And i think because, like Pari said, everyone is so different in how in their experience.
Speaker: I think the stories also give a lot of context. So I think for readers, it gives a deeper level of understanding of how how different people may experience, you know, what their lived experience of mental health issues might look like, and also different ways of dealing with and coping with different challenges in life.
Speaker: So I think it it's a way of bringing that together. And and anthology itself is like, but you know, a little community between the covers. It's community. Hopefully it will connect with people who may have some sort of, the experience might resonate with them personally, or they may know someone or might give a deeper understanding for those who don't have that experience.
Speaker: Well, i I really enjoyed the book and i think it is a book for everyone. And i really appreciate ah both of your contributing to it and and joining me in conversation this morning.
Speaker: Thank you so much for inviting us and for your interest in the anthology. Yeah, thank you so much for having me as well as ah as a contributor. I really enjoyed this conversation and thank you to Seema for us.
Speaker: helping me through this process as well, looking at this through a professional lens. Wonderful. Thanks. I've been speaking with Seema Shah Pari Mokradi.
Speaker: They're both writers and visual artists, and their writing is included in the anthology Off the Map. Seema edited the book with Betsy Worland and Kate Bird, and it was published this past summer by Bell Press.
Speaker: You can find them at bellpressbooks.com. And the project we discuss, Professional Artistic Growth Made Accessible, offers free opportunities specifically for artists and writers with lived experience of mental health issues.
Speaker: You can find them online at pagma.ca. That's P-A-G-M-A dot C-A. You've been listening to the Red Eye Podcast, produced by an independent media collective based in Vancouver.
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Speaker: To keep up with the show, you can subscribe to Red Eye wherever you listen to your podcasts. And you can follow us on Blue Sky at Red Eye Radio. I'm Jane Williams.
Speaker: Thanks for listening.
