An interview with Valerie Senyk

by Kim Davids Mandar

“Dost thou reckon thyself only a puny form when within thee the universe is folded?” quotes Senyk. She goes on to reflect “and I feel as we age, the universe that we are grows larger, or should grow larger as we encompass more and more experience and feelings and people and loves and so on into our lives. I just love that idea that everyone is a whole universe of stuff.”

Valerie is a performance poet, actor, director, painter, and instructor, whose poetry collection Stick has recently been produced by Vocamus Press.

A committed gardener, Valerie engages in all manner of community development work in Guelph, between visits to family in Winnipeg, Vancouver, Sudbury and London.

In today’s conversation, Valerie shares poetry readings, personal journey insights and reflections on the need for poetry in our “rhetoric-filled” modern day language environment