Our words become us beautiful.

I went last night to a Writer’s Festival event where I got to see my creative writing teacher for the first time in 17 years. He was in town to read along with eight other writers from the UBC writing program – all of them illustriously published and awarded. I thought they were all quite fabulous, though if I had to pick favourites I would say they included Jack Hodgins reading from his novel-in-progress, Joan MacLeod reading from her play Another Home Invasion and Kevin Patterson telling a tragically funny story from his childhood (he elected not to read because apparently he is bad at reading from his own works).

And then, of course, there was Terence Young – the most influential teacher I had throughout my whole educational career (including university) – who I was just proud to see read in the funny, possessive way you can be with people you have known.

Terence started the creative writing program at Claremont Secondary in my Grade 12 year. A brand-new class with unorthodox methods that involved a lot of listening to Leonard Cohen, using profanity, and sitting atop our desks – it turned out some pretty phenomenal writing. It was a super exciting class for me, rebel teen always on the verge of dropping out, because it was the one place you could go in the school and say what you wanted to say. Write what you wanted to write. Be just yourself, in a class where you didn’t have to deal with the jocks or the assholes crowding you out the rest of the time.

And it’s funny remembering this now – and realizing how safe I felt in that particular classroom with those people – some of whom were friends, some not. But it of course is the teacher who creates the environment, and the one Mr. Young modeled for us was respectful and fun. Both in and out of class – we were always welcome to join him and his poet-wife Patricia outside of the school for evening poetry readings and other literary events. Terence introduced us to local writers, esoteric writing, and the realization that being an adult didn’t have to be a terrribly uncreative thing. He also introduced some of us to the idea that our thoughts and output mattered as much as anyone else’s did (a lesson I am still trying to master today).

That class really did make a better writer out of me – and to this day I use writing exercises introduced to me there – free writing or basing a poem off the first line of a song. The poems I published in that year’s Claremont Review (founded in that year also by Terence and still going strong today) are ones I can even find the quality in now (as opposed to a lot of other crap I wrote at 19 and 20 which I find embarassing). Not only that, but I took the editing lessons to heart so much so that I use a lot of those same editing techniques today in my professional life.

After seventeen years I finally got the chance to tell him what it had all meant to me. Just a ten-minute conversation was all it took to honour this person who had such a positive impact on who I would become. And likewise, after seventeen years it was gratifying to hear how much that first creative writing class he taught had meant to him – turns out we were a bit of an experiment to prove if you just gave people some tools and encouragement they would make beautiful things out of them. And become beautiful people through them too. I remember how special that class felt, and am pleased to discover that feeling shared by even its originator.

And it’s huge inside of me, this reunion, especially these days when I am writing seriously again every morning forcing words onto paper that may still go nowhere despite the dedication…. I was so very proud last night to see my teacher reading his fine work, and be able to answer to him honestly “Yes, I am still writing”. I suppose it’s just that, to produce in this world is a difficult thing and I’m so pleased with all of us who do. I’m so pleased I met someone early in my life who taught me how to.

Thank you. Thank you.