Award-winning writers share the importance of human connection in challenging times

*Originally published on December 21, 2021.

Health comes first, of course. But to Tolu Oloruntoba, pandemic-induced separation feels like a kind of "person-thirst."

"We can't see the people we love, the people we like, so we're getting too little. It's thirst, it's hunger. We're not getting that nutrition that we need," he says. 

The Surrey, B.C. poet won the 2021 Governor General's Literary Award for English-language Poetry for his first full-length collection The Junta of Happenstance. 

He also wrote about connection in a poem called the longing machine. 

Oloruntoba, who grew up in Nigeria and has lived in both Canada and the United States, notes that travel restrictions have been particularly difficult, since "a lot of us have families who are flung across several countries or provinces." 

Connecting with people on a computer screen does help. Since Oloruntoba's day job is in virtual healthcare, he is both professionally and personally grateful for video conferencing. 

At the same time, he says it "cannot be compared to seeing people that we need to see and would like to see."

Tolu Oloruntoba is one of four Governor General's Literary Award winners that IDEAS spoke to about connection. Each created original writing on that theme, for an annual collaboration between the program, CBC Books, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

A chance connection

Edmonton-based educator and writer Norma Dunning won the English Fiction prize for her story collection, Taina: The Unseen Ones. 

Alienation and displacement affect her characters, who are often Inuit living in the south of Canada — an identity proudly shared by the author herself. 

Dunning's fiction is raw and direct in depicting the destructive impact of colonization and prejudice. The stories also mine humane moments of grace, humour, and bonding. 

"I have First Nations friends who read my work and say, 'I'm just so glad you're talking about these issues, because they're hard,'" Dunning told IDEAS.

While many of her readers may be non-Indigenous, Dunning embraces that fact as an opportunity to imaginatively engage them in daily Indigenous realities. 

"I can take reality, tuck it in behind fiction, and people will take it in. If I stood on the steps of Parliament and went into a big, long rant about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls — no, they're not going to take it in," she said.

In an essay, she describes making an unexpected connection last fall during a rare in-person visit to the Vancouver Writers Fest. A non-Indigenous stranger says that after hearing Dunning onstage, she's decided to read the author's story collection.

Dunning writes: "As she walks away, I think about how books make us reach out to one another. How they make us explore something we have never thought of. How they make us understand things that we have struggled with."

A primal connection

Sadiqa de Meijer's memoir alfabet/alphabet took top honours in the GG's English Nonfiction category. The Kingston, Ontario writer wrote about connection in a poem called Object Permanence. 

It's a meditation on a winter day, watching ice shift on a lake, while mist joins water with sky. de Meijer says the sight jogged a personal memory of absence and connection following the end of a relationship.

"Something that I'd experienced years earlier, which was adjusting to first being apart from my child after my separation, and the strange new feeling of being away from her."

As she says, "this is actually a very common thing to happen within families. But we don't necessarily read or talk to each other about it much. And so this poem is my articulation of that feeling."

A permanent connection

David A. Robertson is a celebrated writer for children and young adults, based in Winnipeg. 

He has been contending with one of the most difficult of all forms of missed connection: his much-loved father died just before the start of the pandemic, in 2019.

For the Swampy Cree author, his dad had been more than a parent: a "therapist, friend, mentor, and hero." He was a guide to Robertson, sharing stories of their family past, relating traditional ways, and taking him to the place where generations of their family lived on the land. 

Those conversations and experiences inspired much of Robertson's recent work, including a memoir, and his Governor General's Award-winning children's picture book, On the Trapline.

At the depth of his mourning, David Robertson listened frequently to his father's recorded voice, and on a podcast he'd made for CBC about the experience of connecting with his Cree identity. 

In an essay, he describes feeling the pain of unsurmountable loss: " I can't tell you how many times I listened to the fifth and final episode of Kīwew while driving, bawling my eyes out at a red light."

Robertson says he recognizes now that walking through that pain is part of the mourning process. For him, it has led him back to a different sense of profound connection.

"I am almost able to get to the point where I can imagine him there, still teaching me the things that he used to teach me, as I was recording him, and listening to those recordings to write my books."  
 

Guest in this episode:

Norma Dunning is a writer, and a professor at the University of Alberta. She is the author of several prizewinning story collections, including Tainna: The Unseen Ones, which won the 2021 Governor General's Award for Fiction in English. She is Inuit, and lives in Edmonton, AB.

Sadiqa de Meijer is the author of several poetry collections, as well as the memoir alfabet/alphabet, which won the 2021 Governor General's Award for Nonfiction in English. She lives in Kingston, ON.

Tolu Oloruntoba is a widely-published poet whose first full-length collection, The Junta of Happenstance, won the 2021 Governor General's Award for Poetry in English. He lives in Surrey, BC.

David A. Robertson has authored many books for young readers, including the children's picture book, On the Trapline, illustrated by Julie Flett, and winner of 2021 Governor General's Award for Young People's Literature — Illustrated Books, in English. The story of connecting with his Cree family history is told in the CBC podcast Kiwew. 
 

*This episode was produced by Lisa Godfrey.