kim trainor

Was it two years ago I met Liz Toohey-Wiese at a Summer Solstice party on Westham Island? That night I read a poem called “Paper Birch,” while an image of a smoky pink sun was projected on a sheet strung across the houseboat as a make-shift lantern show. Later, we began to talk and realized we were both working on climate change and wildfires in our creative work: Liz, painting wildfires around BC, and me writing poems about the wildfires. She showed me a book that had come out, the latest volume of Dark Mountain, which featured work on wildfire, and the idea for her was sparked that evening.

She and her co-editor, Amory Abbott, decided to create a book of art and writings on the subject, and put out a call for submissions. The book, Fire Season, was published last month. It features two of my poems, “Little Mountain” and “Wild Fire.” I feel honoured to be included in this anthology, alongside the beautiful images of Katie Ione Crane, photographs of the “scorched boreal forest along Alaska-Yukon borderlands.”