'Good writing feeds the soul'
Hobsbawn-Smith is Saskatchewan's 10th Poet Laureate, and will serve as ambassador for writing and poetry in the province until July 2025.
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As a child on the Prairies, dee Hobsbawn-Smith began a lifelong love affair with poetry.
“I distinctly remember memorizing poetry when I was in third or fourth grade,” she said. “I remember falling in love with meter and rhythm and rhyme, and the sense of the sound of the words and the beauty of what language could do.”
Soon, she was studying English literature and writing stanzas of her own. When she was a teenager, Hobsbawn-Smith particularly remembers coming up with ideas for poems while out riding her horse. Since she had a pen with her, but no paper, she’d scrawl her verses up and down her arms.
Decades later, with a lifetime of adventures and many writing awards behind her, Hobsbawn-Smith continues to celebrate her passion for poetry as Saskatchewan’s 10th Poet Laureate.
“Poetry isn’t always wonderful,” she said. “Sometimes it’s disturbing and stirring and upsetting. But it’s something that moves me to my heart. It doesn’t have to be a beautiful thing; it has to be something that’s meaningful.
“It’s our job as writers, I think, to put art into the world that is a reflection of possibilities; that reflects who and what we are, and what we can become.”
As Poet Laureate, Hobsbawn-Smith will serve as an ambassador for writing and poetry in Saskatchewan until July 2025.
When she found out she had been chosen for the position, she was “entirely snowed,” she said.
“It was a big surprise. It was wonderful news, and I am thrilled.”
Fellow writer Judith Krause, who served as the province’s fifth Poet Laureate, was delighted to hear Hobsbawn-Smith would be taking on the role.
“I think she’s a great choice for the position, because she is very outgoing and lovely and dynamic,” said Krause. “She’s multi-skilled and works in a variety of genres, and I think her ability to promote poetry across the province will be very strong — in part because of her personality, and also because of her talent. …
“Each Poet Laureate has brought something unique and exciting to the world of poetry in the province, and I think dee is another one in the line that’s going to do a great job.”
For Hobsbawn-Smith, taking up the mantle of Poet Laureate is a chance to give back to the literary community that has supported and championed her work.
“I want to serve — which maybe sounds outdated — but I’ve been wanting to serve and I have a wish to pay it forward,” she said. “The province has been really good to me since I moved back here 13 years ago, and the literary community has been more than supportive.”
She is also eager to share her love of language, and her belief in the power of poetry, with all of Saskatchewan.
“Poetry, for me, is a vehicle for more than just place and landscape,” she said. “It’s a place for my politics and my beliefs and my feelings and my frustrations and my hopes. It’s a very lived and emotional kind of writing. …
“Poetry is a very big tent. There is a lot of room in poetry for politics, and for exploring our differences and how we’re similar, and exploring all of the issues that make us human. That’s what poetry has done for millennia.
“Part of my role is to help reacquaint people with the power and the lyricism and the beauty and the importance and the magnitude of what poetry can be in daily life.”
She is especially eager to bring more conversations about poetry to rural Saskatchewan, where she spent significant years of her childhood and has now returned to live with her partner and fellow writer Dave Margoshes.
“I want to spend time in the province bringing poetry to people outside the cities — and in the cities as well, but also small towns,” she said. “I live rurally, and I think rural life continues to be an important thing. Poetry matters to people in the rural just as much as it matters to people who live in town.
“So I want to read poetry and perform poetry with other poets in their own areas of the province. I want … the role of the Poet Laureate to become a larger magnifier for the role of poetry in the cultural life of the province.”
Throughout her life, Hobsbawn-Smith’s love of poetry and language has always been shared with her love of food.
When she left the family farm near Langham where her parents lived, it was to become a chef, and she trained in B.C., Alberta, France and Ireland before returning to spend the next 27 years working in Calgary.
“While I was in Calgary, I lived food,” she said. “I thought about food. Everything I did revolved around that huge and important axis of food as a cultural, political and social necessity. Food is in my DNA. It’s in my bones.”
It wasn’t until she was in her 50s that she went back to the University of Saskatchewan to study writing and earn her MFA. She then continued on to earn her MA in literature as well.
“I’ve done a lot with my life and my career,” she said. “I’ve fed people. I’ve taught people to cook. I’ve run a restaurant. I’ve owned a restaurant. This is along the line of that continuum. Writing … is another form of making things with my hands. I come from a family of makers and artisans and craftspeople and artists; we make things. And writing is another way of making things that matter, and creating something that I hope is going to last.
“Teaching people — children and adults — how to feed themselves is a lasting contribution. And I think putting language into service to create something beautiful and meaningful matters in the same tangible kind of way. Good writing feeds the soul.”
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