3-2-1 Launch Interview: Trisia Eddy Woods launches A Road Map for Finding Wild Horses

Trisia Eddy Woods shares insight into her debut poetry colledtion A Road Map for Finding Wild Horses.

Congratulations on your debut full-length collection, A Road Map for Finding Wild Horses. How does the prairie landscape influence your writing?

Trisia Eddy Woods: The memories that have embedded themselves while growing up on the prairies are evocative of tangible things I return to often, it seems. Smells like fresh cut hayfields, or the creosote of railway ties under that particularly hot, late-summer sun. Or the way gravel roads suddenly become filled with grasshoppers when you walk down them, as they jump out of your path; these are images and sensations that I have a desire to keep revisiting. That means I often find myself seeking out spaces that awaken those memories. I suppose in one way it is an attempt to keep the prairie alive, especially as it is increasingly endangered by urban sprawl and oil and gas development. Perhaps the writing is an exercise in manifesting the survival of this landscape, documenting its remembrance.

Can you speak a bit about the title—A Road Map for Finding Wild Horses—and the role that equine language plays in this collection?

Trisia Eddy Woods: The title has both literal and figurative meanings; there is, of course, an actual journey of searching for and discovering wild horses on the Alberta landscape. Then there is the inner discovery that occurs, as well, throughout the experience. When I first set out on these trips, the horses were a destination of sorts, a kind of pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet, the more time I spent in the back country, the more I became settled in the process of not-discovering, and simply allowing. This is something horses themselves can teach us. As prey animals, they are beings who exist very much in the moment. The ability to be attuned with one’s surroundings, while simultaneously relaxed and absorbed in occasions of pleasure, excitement, or grief, inspired much of the writing I was doing. Observing them, alongside observing the phenomenon of my own internal states, deeply informed the language I explored.

Do you have a favourite poem in A Road Map for Finding Wild Horses?

Trisia Eddy Woods: I don’t have a favourite, but the pieces that relate to my daughter are very meaningful to me. Horses have been a way for her and I to connect throughout her life, and the experience of exploring and searching for wild horses together is something that I hold very close, particularly as she has grown through her teen years and into young adulthood. There are moments and conversations we would have never shared, had we not had this common bond.
I’m also very fond of the poems which involve more of a conversation with the horses; this was something my editor and I worked on quite extensively, and it was a challenge to create a structure which gave them a voice, without appropriating their experience. So much of that writing is sensual, which feels congruous with the horses themselves, as their existence is all about the senses: touch, smell, sight, sound, and energy.

Thank you! Looking forward to guests celebrating A Road Map for Finding Wild Horses with guests Shawna Lemay, Jenna Butler, and Simon Williams at Audreys Books Ltd. on Thursday, May 30th at 7:00 pm!


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E]xactly what the world needs right now —Shawna Lemay

Alongside the dramatic views of the Rocky Mountains lies a precarious ecosystem impacted by the industrial pressures of mining, forestry, ranching, and oil and gas extraction. Alberta’s wild horse herds can be found roaming these eastern slopes, existing in a liminal space as both wild animal and the domesticated companion we have shared so much of our history with.

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