Q&A with award-winning poet Marsha Barber on Kaddish for My Mother

Award-winning poet and Journalism at the Creative School (Toronto Metropolitan University) professor Marsha Barber has launched her fourth book, Kaddish for My Mother exploring grief and loss. 

Barber shared the stage (or the screen, since it was virtual)  at the launch on November 27 with other poets, including the former Poet Laureate of Toronto and Canada's Parliamentary Poet Laureate, George Elliott Clarke, providing tributes and reading from their own work. 

J-School Now spoke to Barber about the universal themes of grief and loss and how her poems resonate with anyone from any religious tradition or background: 

How did Kaddish for My Mother come to be?

Many of the poems in this book were written in recent years as I cared for my mother whose

health failed after her husband died. It was as if she gave up after that. And in the last year of her life she sank into dementia. In the Jewish tradition we say the Mourner’s Kaddish when a close relative, such as a parent, dies. It’s an important way to honour them.

Why did you want to write this book?

I’m always writing. It doesn’t feel like a choice. I tend to write about whatever is going on in the wider world. But I also write about personal themes and nothing is closer to the bone than family.

Do you have a favourite part of the book?

It’s hard to answer a question about my favourite part of the book. It’s divided into five sections.The first section deals with childhood and family poems. The second addresses journalistic and travel poems, the wider world. I have a short section on pandemic poems. And the last two sections are about my mother, her illnesses and eventual death. It felt inevitable to write about that.

What do you hope people will learn from this book?

I hope the book will resonate with readers. We all deal with grief and loss and poetry is an

extraordinary genre for exploring the deepest parts of ourselves. I hope people will come away from the book somehow comforted and feeling recognized.

How was it writing this book alongside teaching at j-school?

I have a ritual where I write late at night and revise early in the morning. That’s my routine

almost every day before I start my work day at the j-school. I’ve been writing that way for many years.

What advice would you give someone wanting to get into writing?

Read widely, write daily. Don’t wait for inspiration, and never judge the first draft. Just do it.

After that, revise, revise and revise.

What inspires you to continue writing books?

I’ve written since I could hold a pen. I’ll probably continue to write for the rest of my life. It doesn’t feel like a choice.

Where is your work headed in the future? 

I don’t know but I’m excited to find out!

Kaddish for My Mother is available through the publisher Ottawa's Borealis Press or by emailing Barber.