On Sept. 11, Katherine Bitney, one of the founders of the Manitoba Writers’ Guild and Prairie Fire Magazine, provided us with an engaging book chat. She noted that it was many years ago when they started the Guild and an extremely exciting time, a virtual “explosion of literature in our province.” She felt they had virtually no idea what they were doing and mostly “flew by the seat of their pants.” I suspect they had some concepts about what they were doing, which are clearly evident as the Guild and Prairie Fire are both flourishing some 45 years later.
Ms. Bitney’s most recent publication of poetry is called Firewalk. Listing them in reverse chronological order, her books of poetry include Singing Bones, Heart and Stone, While You Were Out, and her only non-poetry publication, The Boreal Dragon, a book about living on the land, something she says she tends to write about.
Her introduction took only a few minutes but it caused me to do considerable research due to the immense amount of the information she put forward. Firewalk contains poems that she started a few years ago but was shoved aside when her husband passed away, and which she only recently decided to revisit. It is based on a volva, which means “staff or wand carrier” in the Norse Pre-Christian religious folklore going back as far as the first century AD.
A volva is considered to be a type of witch or seeress who practiced a shamanic and prophetic priestesshood where the priestess would “sit out and commune with spirits or elements” in her environment. They were highly respected members of Norse society, known for their contributions to important decision-making in Viking communities on matters such as war, childbirth, and harvest. Their prophetic abilities were believed to come from their connection to the spirit world, where they communicated with the gods and other supernatural beings. The role of volvas in Norse society highlights the importance of women in Viking culture, as they held positions of power and influence that were highly respected.
Ms. Bitney followed her introduction with the reading of several poems from Firewalk. Following the readings some inquiries precipitated a lively discussion. “Would you see yourself as a naturalist?” to which she replied “In a sense yes. Not in the sense of science but in the sense that it totally absorbs me and my language.”
She was then asked, “What are your views on climate change? What is your hope?” to which she replied, “The world has gone through five major extinctions. My hope is that we don’t tip ourselves right over and it scares me. But nature is resilient and hopefully it will recover. It is all about greed, we need to see that we are part of nature and not the controller of nature. It is our job to help the Earth heal itself but it is difficult because we have this idea we own it. It is not here just for us, we are just another creature, but an animal that can do better than we have for the Earth. It is for all of us to be cognizant that we are just another creature and not something special.”
“When you talk about your shamanic journeys, how do you prepare yourself?”
“At one time, we had a person teaching us and I suddenly found myself in rock, so before you go into something like that you need to have some protection, like a guide. In this instance it was funny because I found myself embedded in this rock and didn’t know how to get out. My partner could see part of me in the rock and finally I pulled myself out. It can get dangerous so you have to be very careful dealing with spiritual journeys.”
“Do you drum and chant as preparations?”
“Yes, but sometimes we will just drum or just chant, or sometimes we sing. Sometimes others drum or chant for you to have your journey. The drum is the most useful.”
And finally, she was asked about her role in establishing the Guild, “What drove you at the time to establish the Guild so long ago?”
“It was not just me, it was a bunch of us including my husband. At that time Saskatchewan had a really good Guild going and we felt Manitoba could use a similar service. It took a long time to get it all going and somewhere there should be pictures of Aubigny (1981). Victor Enns came to my house and said, ‘Let’s get this going,’ so everyone came out to Aubigny and we inaugurated the Guild. Present were Robert (Kroetsch), Dennis (Cooley), David (Arnason), Armin Wiebe, Sandra (Birdsell), Victor (Enns), and some people from SK came to give us some ideas and to support us. We had music and discussions, it was beside the river with so many mosquitoes but it was so much fun. We started arranging services and endorsements, soon after we started Prairie Fire so we could publish works by our members which attracted people for workshops and meetings. It just went kaboom, it expanded so quickly. It was like an explosion of writing, a very exciting time.”
