Outcast Perspective

Kerri Cull asks Shoshanna Wingate about the peripatetic nature of her childhood and its influence on her first book, Radio Weather:

“This wandering lifestyle meant I didn’t have a static set of images or experiences to draw from. I didn’t even have a consistent personality. I had chaos. Fractured memories. Home was not a place—it was a yearning.” This outcast perspective shows in Shoshanna’s poetry. The dual sides to every story, the different ways one can look at the world and truth. “I wanted to write poetry that rested between certainties, as life did, without resorting to literary games or tricks. Memory is elastic, so why pretend it’s neat and tidy?”

The Murderer

In June, the Nickel Film Festival in St. John's screened the results of the first-ever cinepoetry project which paired local filmmakers with local poets to create short films. One of those films, The Murderer, was based on the same-titled poem by Shoshanna Wingate that's included in her debut, Radio Weather.

Titillating Material

Shoshanna Wingate discusses the experience of working on her first book, Radio Weather:

“There are so many writers, especially when they’re young, who use titillating material as a way of getting attention for their work, and that’s what I was afraid of,” she explained. “I was afraid of using murderers and AIDS and I was afraid that if I didn’t have the skills to do it well, it was just going to be a wreck.