Kuya Minogue, resident teacher at the Creston Zen Centre and Advance columnist, is releasing her first book of poetry.
Zen Essentials is the culmination of more than a decade of writing that started when Minogue was taking a course.
“In 2003 I never imagined I was a poet,” she said last week. “I was a published writer, but certainly not a poet. I took a Zen writing course, writing every day — faithfully. Then, about three years later, I read a piece that I had written and a friend said, ‘This is a poem.’ ”
It was that observation that made her look at her writing in a different way.
“I didn’t have the capacity to see them as poems until then,” she said.
Earlier this year she stared at a stack of her writings — “a couple feet high” — and thought, “They are there. I know it.”
She took advice from another writer and started sorting the pages, culling them down to about 150 poems that might make a book. The experience changed her.
“I love my poetry,” she smiled. “Now I think of myself as a poet.”
Sorting her final selections into a presentable format turned out to be a, well, Zen experience.
“Once I started shuffling the poems the structure sorted itself out in an order that I really like,” she said.
Sections of the book — Early Zen Poems, Samsara, The Ancients and Zen Realized — roughly mirror Minogue’s embracement of Zen teachings and her commitment that has led her to teaching and writing about the ancient philosophy.
Minogue’s poems are light on structure and heavy on meaning, and each is reader friendly, inviting readers to share her experiences and observations without ever becoming heavy-handed or preachy.
Minogue’s Zen Essentials will be released at a book launch from 7-9 p.m. Dec. 11 at Black Bear Books. She will read poems, Simon Lazarchuk will do a movement piece called Visual Poetry and Joanna Wilson will perform on the keyboard. Refreshments will be served.