By Thandiwe McCarthy, Frye Correspondent
The person I’m checking in with today is Chimwemwe Undi who is a poet, editor, and lawyer living and writing on Treaty 1 territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She was the Winnipeg Poet Laureate for 2023 and 2024 and is the current Parliamentary Poet of Canada. She’ll be in Moncton at the Frye Festival 2025 sharing her book Scientific Marvel. We shared a great phone chat about the power of community in writing.
- What story had the greatest impact on you?
The stories that have the greatest impact on me are about place. The stories that we tell each other about what it means to call Canada home. In that there is a version of that story that my parents heard, and that’s the story that brought them to Canada. And then my sort of evolving understanding of that story shapes how I was on these lands and informed how I practice, how I write.
A recent book that I really loved, and it’s from a poet from your part of Canada, not New Brunswick, but the East Coast, is “The Work” by Bren Simmers. The book talks about, among other things, grief and recovering after slow loss, if I can put it that way, of her mother’s dementia. And as demonstrated in Scientific Marvel, I’m really interested in erasure as a form, and I think the way that Bren Simmers uses erasure in her collection is really novel and effective.
2. Let’s hear about the writing practice and why it works for you?
I think, like a lot of people who have multiple responsibilities, a lot of the time I’m writing in and around other commitments in my life. But some things that are really effective for me are trying to write early in the morning or late at night, which for some reason are times that I feel the world is more quiet and I can listen more carefully. Another thing that’s been really helpful for me is finding a dedicated community to write with. So I take a class that I’ve been taking for almost five years now. It runs in sessions, so not constantly since then, but on and off over the last five years, and having people also writing besides me, it’s really good for my practice.
I think hearing how other people approach the same material is important. The class that I take we read a passage of poems, then we’re given some prompts, and last we write at the same time and share whatever drafts we come up with. Hearing how the same reading is interpreted multiple ways by different writers is really helpful for me understanding my own perspective in writing and also how I respond in my writing.
3. What part of your writing career brings you the most joy?
I’ll cop out and say two things. One, I think something that I discovered in writing the collection Scientific Marvel was the pleasure of actually writing a poem. I had a lot of fun writing poems. I like poems because of how structural they are and how much of a difference it makes to change small things about poems and I find the process really difficult, but also pleasurable. And then the second thing is how writing has connected me with other people, with writers and also non writers. Even before I became Poet Laureate of anything I was really drawn to how reading a poem makes me feel more connected to the world around me. But also how sharing in poetry with other people, being in a room and talking about poems is one of my favorite ways to connect with other people.
4. Frye festival, what are you looking forward to?
I’ve never been to Moncton before so I’m looking forward to spending time in New Brunswick. I haven’t spent any significant time there and I’ve only been to the East Coast once before.
I had a fun time checking in with Chimwemwe and I hope everyone supports her poetry book, available at your local bookstore and online (already got my copy!). And if you want to run into Chimwemwe Undi and other authors, come to the 2025 Frye Festival April 24 – May 4 in Moncton, New Brunswick. Hope to see you all there,
With love and Respect
Works cited:
- Undi, Chimwemwe. Scientific Marvel. House of Anansi Press Inc., 2024. (see on Tidewater)
- Simmers, Bren. The Work. Gaspereau Press Ltd., 2024. (see on Tidewater)
Cite this article: McCarthy, Thandiwe. « The Frye Festival Check In: Chimwemwe Undi ». Discours/e: Digital Catalogue for Atlantic Literatures and Cultures, 27/03/2025. <https://discours-e.ca/2025/03/27/the-frye-festival-check-in-chimwemwe-undi/>
Follow Thandiwe on Facebook and Instagram.
To cite this article:
Bren Simmers
Bren Simmers is the winner of the CBC Poetry Prize and The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize. Her latest poetry collection The Work (Gaspereau Press) was a finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Awards. She lives on Epekwitk/PEI.
Chimwemwe Undi
Chimwemwe Undi is a poet, editor and lawyer. She is the former Winnipeg Poet Laureate. Her debut collection, Scientific Marvel, received the 2024 Governor General’s Award in Poetry in English.
Thandiwe McCarthy
Thandiwe McCarthy is a 7th generation African Canadian spoken word poet, writer, public speaker, and the culture correspondent for Maritime EDIT magazine, where he highlights Black community leaders and artists. Known for his unique “Vibe Harvesting” performances, he creates poetry spontaneously at events across the Maritimes.
Thandiwe has co-founded the New Brunswick Black Artists Alliance and organized the provincial event Emancipation Celebration. He played a key role in having August 1st recognized as Emancipation Day in New Brunswick. Though he has stepped back from volunteer work, his contributions have left a lasting impact on the community.
The “Still Here Initiative,” celebrating fifteen generational Black New Brunswick families, is gearing up for a national art exhibition at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and a globally distributed book published by Goose Lane Editions, both launching in July 2025.
Thandiwe’s memoir, “Social Oblivion: Raised Black in New Brunswick,” is available now.
