Elana Wolff in Conversation with Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes
Elana and Mary Lou discuss her newly launched collection of poems, Slender Certainties
Elana Wolff: First of all, congratulations on the publication of your new collection of poems, Slender Certainties, Mary Lou!
Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes: Thank you, Elana. I’m looking forward to our conversation.
Elana: A new book is an occasion for celebration, and, speaking from personal experience, perhaps some discomfort or uneasiness as well! Slender Certainties, with Aeolus House, is your fifth collection. Your first, The Fires of Naming, was released in 2001 with Seraphim Editions; your second, Travelling Light, in 2006, also with Seraphim; Dark Water Songs in 2013 with Inanna; and Any Waking Morning in 2019, also with Inanna. You’ve been releasing collections in quite a regular rhythm—six years between each, with the exception of five years between the first and second. Enough time to have your readers eagerly awaiting your next! It’s interesting to note that all five collections follow the even format of division into four sections. Slender Certainties, however, is distinct from the previous four in that it includes a Preface. Can you speak to the importance of this newness—of how it sets up the reader for what you might want to say about approaching this collection.
Mary Lou: You’re right about the rhythm, the timing between collections, and also about a certain discomfort and uneasiness that accompanies the launch of a new collection. One hopes that it will be well received. That it will leave some small mark on the world. Touch someone. It would be even more wonderful if there were readers “eagerly awaiting”!
And “Yes,” somehow the poems seem to want to cluster themselves into sections, and four seems to be the structure they’ve chosen so far. Can’t say exactly why, but there’s a wholeness, a balance at play.
Slender Certainties seemed to call out for a Preface. I’m usually a very private person, more of an Emily Dickenson type of poet, “telling things slant,” but this time it felt important to reveal that there seemed to be a different imperative at play. Its starting point was different because the lens through which I looked at the world had changed. I experienced a stroke in 2019 that impacted my frame of reference. And as I wrote in the Preface, since then, “I’ve seen each day through mortality’s sharpened lens.” It seemed important for the reader to be aware of this.
Elana: I appreciate this, Mary Lou. Life can change on the flip of a dime. In your Preface, you also write, quite poetically, that “the stroke was a paradigm-shifting experience, where time tilted and certainties dissolved.” I seem to recall that in arriving at your title of Slender Certainties, you had considered Time’s Tilt and another title or two. Would you care to share something about your process in coming to your present title, and your views on the importance of titles in general …
Mary Lou: Titles do matter. I’m often drawn to a book, any book, by its title. Titles intrigue me. Especially where poetry is concerned, they seem to capture, hint at, and evoke the feelings, images at the heart the work. In a way, they suggest the “why” of the book. I write to make sense of the world, of my place in it, of the “why” of things. Often to express what seems inexpressible.
A title often springs from where my thinking is, where my life is at the time. My first collection, The Fires of Naming (2001), for example, began when I was in graduate school, taking courses in feminist theory, and becoming emboldened to explore through poetry, thoughts and experiences that had hitherto been private. I was beginning to realize both the power and the risks inherent in naming―the incendiary nature of words. The title for the collection was drawn from recurring lines in the poem “shells”: “in the fires of naming / all bridges burn.”
When it came time to choose a title for my second collection, Travelling Light (2006) it seemed right to look back to my first collection for an image, an echo that would link the two collections almost in an organic way. Hence the title, Travelling Light, echoing a poem in the Fires of Naming, by the same name. Since then, the titles of subsequent collections were drawn from lines or titles from previous collections. In each case they seemed to best express the heart of the new work. Interestingly, I would only come to that realization after having tested out several other titles that emerged directly from the book in question.
And Yes, I did consider several titles before landing on Slender Certainties.
For the longest time, Time’s Tilt seemed to hold, until it no longer seemed to encompass what the collection wanted to express. Smoulder was also an earlier contender, but while I liked the evocative image, and there are poems in the collection where the image fits, it seemed to suggest a more narrowly passion-centered focus than what actually pertained.
Interestingly, it wasn’t until I returned to my earlier collections (the process that had worked before) to see if anything resonated, that I came upon the poem “Slender Certainties” in my third collection Dark Water Songs (2013) and knew almost instantaneously that the search for a title of my fifth collection was over.
Elana: Yes, interesting that you found your title by plumbing your own work, and that the title of a previous poem became the title of your new book. Sometimes titles readily suggest themselves, and guide the work. Other times they evolve in time, organically, out of the work. I’ve experienced both processes in shaping my own collections. There’s really no hard and fast rule. Time’s Tilt and Smoulder—titles you didn’t settle on—do nonetheless retain a presence in the collection. In section four, subtitled Hypotheticals, you have the poem “Time’s Tilt,” which (according to your Notes) is informed by cosmic considerations and also includes variations on lines from Emma Donoghue’s heartbreakingly beautiful 2023 novel, Learned By Heart. And “smouldering”—a gorgeous word—appears on the last line of the poem “No Such Thing” in section three, Working the Margins. This poem (according to your Notes) expresses a “Dream sequence” and is also informed by cosmic considerations. These outer-inner aspects are quite characteristic of many of the poems in this collection, and lend the pieces a kind of universality that embraces deeply felt private expressions as well. All of your book titles have a dateless quality too, yet Slender Certainties, in particular, has a cautiously hopeful ring to it—despite the world situation we find ourselves in, and your own more recent personal challenges. Would you say that these observations are accurate?
Mary Lou: Your questions remind me of how affirming it is for a writer to be “seen,” to be “heard,” to find an audience. When that audience is an insightful and informed interviewer, as is happening here, probing questions can help shed light on deeper truths.
So, “Yes,” the rejected titles do retain a presence … and as you so rightly point out, more than just a minor presence. Time maintains a presence, both immediate and cosmic, as do the outer-inner (I might say “inner-outer”) aspects you reference. I might also point out that the notion of words as “smoky-grey / & smouldering” in the poem “No Such Thing” (that you reference above) hearkens back to the title of my first collection and the incendiary nature of “naming.”
For me, private reality/experience are means of linking with/reaching for the universal. Ways of claiming/finding one’s place in the universe. And writing poetry is how/where I maintain my links with the spiritual, in my own lifelong journey to find meaning in existence.
There is a fine and permeable line between the person as writer, and her work. While the latter can, and should be able to exist, stand alone in its own right, its very existence is inextricably tied to/dependent on the writer.
I’m glad you intuited the “cautiously hopeful ring to” Slender Certainties. It is intentional. Even in bleak times I tend to see the half-full glass, search for glimmers of goodness, take the high ground. I’m a pragmatic optimist, and vice versa. While I’m not blind to negativity, I choose to focus my energies elsewhere, and am drawn towards hope. This stance imbues my work.
Elana: Thank you for this, Mary Lou. Your descriptor “pragmatic optimist” is fitting. I’m smiling over here—as I do know you to be pragmatic, also cautious, also super-organized! I don’t know anyone who is quite as organized as you are keeping records of alternate options and revisions. This practice of keeping versions on file must afford easy access to the ‘understory’ of the poem, as it were. There are references to ‘traces of the previous’ in a number of your poems on poems in Slender Certainties. In “The Past as Prologue,” for example, you write: “She thought them put to rest — that book those poems …”; in “Sometimes,” you have: “Time to tune the poem / let its pitch course through / lay bearings / hitch-pins …”; and “Some Poems” occupy corners of your mind / till you succumb to text / get serious / then / never-ending pruning / fine- / tuning …”; also in “Its Raw-Unknowing”: “Poems lower rope-lines / down well’s echoing shaft …” It seems that there’s a heightened alertness to the making of the poem in this collection, to the poem as palimpsest—wherein traces of earlier concerns and/or forms remain or resurface.
Mary Lou: In a way, the need to document the work as it evolves, to save various versions, comes from what I’ve discovered through reflections on my own writing process: for example, if I don’t save it, document it somehow, it will disappear forever. Later, I may find myself following a similar thread of ideas, of images, but that specific un-saved image, will be lost.
Maybe it’s because I came to writing poetry later in life, I felt I couldn’t afford to lose an image or a word.
A prolific reader from my earliest years, I had always wanted to be a writer. Jo March in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women was one of my earliest role models. However, complex motivations, among them seeking a larger purpose for my life, drew me towards becoming a Catholic nun. There was very little time for pursuing my own writing during the twelve years I spent immersed in the life of a religious, in formation, taking vows, getting my first degree, working as a teacher of English and Spanish, and being in charge of the boarding school linked to the high school in which I taught.
I’ve always been interested in language and process, both as an educator and as a writer. When I began graduate studies at O.I.S.E, my main area of focus was on composing process theory and the teaching of writing. I loved both the notion of theory and its implementation. Those experiences had a profound influence on how I approached my work with students and with teachers in my various roles in a school board—teaching high school English & Writer’s Craft, and at the Board level with teachers through Inter-disciplinary Writing Workshop Series.
Encouraging and engaging students and teachers in the process of discovering and owning their voices through their writing, a power no one can take from them, were among my most satisfying experiences.
Elana: Mary Lou, I have to point out that as a Jamaican-Canadian, retired educator and former nun, you have a uniquely colourful biography. Not many, if any, can claim this particular hyphenated-background. In this collection—though perhaps less overtly than in previous work—I see facets of your distinctive bio wreathed into many of the poems: your Jamaican heritage in references to flora, family (your mother), weather, geography, even sport (your inventive weave-in of Cricket terminology!), and perhaps in reference to food too; I’m thinking of “rice with black beans” in the poem “Ecology of Days.”
And though it’s decades now since you left the “life of a religious” as a Sister of Mercy for life in secular society, a number of your poems feature language of faith and the Church: I’m thinking of “God” capitalized in different pieces, “canticles & lamentations,” “blessing,” “holy grail,” “choirs of angels,” “Mercy,” and also a general tenor of reverence embedded in your numerous science-informed and -sourced pieces. I find this mix a compelling and signal aspect of this collection …
Mary Lou: You’re right that spiritual and metaphysical themes are woven through my poems, questions about existence, why are we here. I do have a strong belief in the presence of a power greater than ourselves; that however insignificant we each might seem to be in the scheme of things, the world, indeed the cosmos would note our absence. Without our energy and gifts, it would not be the same.
In this sense, I would say that I am a spiritual person. Through poetry I try to lay claim to both body and spirit. To validate both. Poetry is my path to discernment. And I still feel a bond with the Mercy charism, in its best sense, as a way of being in and responding to the world.
Elana: Your “bond with the Mercy charism”—what a beautiful phrase, embracing as it does—correct me if I’m wrong—the Catholic notion that spiritual gifts are gifts given through grace. Though I suppose, with work, they can be earned as well.
I have to say that another signal feature of your work is your regular use of caesuras and em-dashes, along with less regularized use of other punctuation marks: hyphens, commas, ampersands, and periods. I find it noteworthy that in Slender Certainties—a collection comprising sixty-six poems—only four of the poems do not include possessives. You have “crumpling’s creases … shallow’s sudden leap / to deep” (in “What (we think) We Know—); “dawn’s promise / like uncertainty’s butterfly” (in “On deciphering); “shade’s dark / inclination … shade’s contrasting greens … hellebore’s baneful beauty … luna’s dusky- / rose & moon’s silvered grace … umbra’s / defiant flourishing” (in “Beyond Sun’s Reach”); “truth’s naked moments … Sun’s true / declination” (in “Orange among the Rocks), “ferries’ silken wake … rotors’ blade- / slap … shimmer’s reflection” … (in “Through the Narrows”), and “friction’s force” … bed-shear’s hungry water … arc’s / bend … abrasion’s scars” (in “On Letting Go”) to give just a few examples. Possessives are such a striking feature of this work: four in the latter twelve-line poem alone. Can you speak to the significance of punctuation for your poetry in general, and about the prominent role of the apostrophe ‘s’ in Slender Certainties in particular.
Mary Lou: Possessives: very interesting … the use of possessives! I trust your count. Maybe what’s even more interesting might be the focus of the possessive (objects, feelings, etc.). They clearly matter, your questions leads me to wonder “why”. It’s not something I’ve thought of before.
Is the use of the possessive an attempt to apprehend/explore the concepts, objects, feelings more fully? To discern them more deeply by that which they seek to possess?
As for punctuation, I’ve never been a poet who conforms to/uses traditional punctuation. In my first collection, there were no capitals starting sentences, no periods to end them, and no commas, semi-colons or colons in between. The grammar of the poems was the grammar of voice, the rhythms of breath ― pauses evidenced in the caesuras within lines, in line breaks, and the shapes, the architecture of the poems on the page. As I’ve often said, I am a painterly poet, the page is my canvas, and I paint in words.
Emboldened by the work of Emily Dickenson, I began to add the long dash—followed by a caesura, or a long dash at the end of a line. I discovered its potential to open space for thought, to signal a sharper break in a line, a longer pause between thoughts, or to signal the inexpressible. A long dash could also jar the reader into taking a second/closer look at the preceding line or the line that follows.
In my last two collections, before Slender Certainties, I became more radical, including a comma within a line, followed by a caesura. I also used a capital to signal the start of a new thought/cluster of thoughts, usually at the beginning of a line.
The work in Slender Certainties continues this radical conformity—more confident in my craft, I choose to blend both freedom and conformity, without sacrificing either. As I mention in the description, “the page is a radical space, where poems are freed to touch, to grieve, to desire and to wonder.”
Most of my external life has been lived in conformity with norms, rules and rituals. On the page I choose degrees of revelation, and my mind roams free.
Elana: I’m smiling at your use of the word “radical” in reference to including a comma within a line, or a capital to signal the start of a new line! There’s a sense, it seems, in which you had to break away, if not completely, then to your own extent, in order to gain a new kind of self-assurance—to embrace conventions (typographical) on your own terms. In Slender Certainties, I read a poet who has arrived at a full and confident, even, if I may suggest, a somewhat more unshielded version of Self.
In this regard, I’d like to point to four poems in Slender Certainties that include epigraphs: a comment by Mary Oliver that precedes “Sight-lines”; lines from a poem in June Jordan’s collection, Directed by Desire that precedes “Contours of Possession”; lines from Dionne Brand’s, Thirsty, preceding “Spilling Her Wild”; and lines from a poem in Louise Bogan’s collection, The Blue Estuaries, that sets up “Fluid Residues.” I’m wondering how you see these quotes as informing your poems. Are you linking into a literary context generally, or are the quotes meant to be more specifically thematic and/or tonal in intent?
Mary Lou: I mentioned earlier that in Slender Certainties, “the page is a radical space, where poems are freed to touch, to grieve, to desire and to wonder.” The poems that you site are examples of those that probe more sensually playful, and possibly disruptive concepts. Poems that speak to that “somewhat more unshielded version of Self” that you intuited earlier. The epigraphs serve to set them up, to free them to “touch, to grieve, to desire.”
While there is a nod to the literary tradition just by their use, it’s also by virtue of the poets whose work I quote. I would also say that the epigraphs are both specifically thematic as well as tonal. They create a path that the poem can step into and then follow its own inclinations. They provide an emotive tone, as well as a shield for the feelings and images expressed in the poem. They situate the poem as both universal and particular.
They could also be thought of as a form of validation for what the poem is grappling with—whether it be exploring episodes of desire, experiences of grief, the touch of a lover, her gaze. Love’s many forms and incarnations, its absence and its loss.
Elana: Mary Lou, your clarity here brings to mind an interview with Mary Oliver I heard on National Public Radio online in which she expressed her feeling that “poetry must be clear,” that “whatever isn’t necessary should not be in the poem.” I must say that your responses in this conversation, no less than your poems carry the kind of distilled lucidity and polished thoughtfulness that offer the reader/the listener fresh recognition of the “slender certainties” pulsing this world in which we live.
I’d also like to compliment the engaging visual presentation and high production quality of your Aeolus House book. It’s a pleasure to hold this book in hand—the equable weight, the crisp clear typeface, the silky, textured paper, and the smooth matte cover featuring a luminous photograph by artist Judith Davidson-Palmer.
Mary Lou: Thank you, Elana. I’m so pleased that you mentioned the qualities of the book as an artifact—the care that went into every element of the design and the all the printing choices involved. In my view, they all come together to create an object of art—the work of the publisher, Allan Briesmaster, the designer, Julie McNeil and master printer, John Dejesus of Coach House Printing.
Also, I was particularly pleased to once again have Judith Davidson-Palmer’s creative work on the cover of one of my books. My fourth collection, Any Waking Morning (Inanna, 2019), also has her artwork on the cover. In that case, it’s her painting, “Tao: The Path to Good Fortune,” 2005, Acrylic on Canvas, 16 x 16 inches.
The choice of a cover is important, it’s the outward manifestation of the work—the first thing a reader sees—the skin, if you will, within which the poems live and breathe. There’s a particular depth in the way Judith perceives the world through her lens and in her art that resonates for me. In the case of Slender Certainties, her photograph, “Stairway to the Unknown,” seemed particularly fitting. The decision-making process is always an iterative one—she reads the manuscript and suggests some images. We discuss possibilities, how images and poems might speak to each other, and narrow down the choices. As you know, the choice of the cover image ultimately belongs with the publisher. I shared my choices, and was delighted when the decision was mutual.
Elana: A fine choice. The nuanced layering of the image and even the title of Judith Davidson-Palmer’s photograph resonates with your work. I agree—the cover image is signal. And one wants one’s book—especially one’s book of poems—to be an objet d’art, which yours is.
And now I’d like to ask you to read one of the poems from Slender Certainties.
Mary Lou: I’d like to read “Hypotheticals.” This is the poem from which the last section of the book takes its name.
But before I read, I must thank you again, Elana, for inviting me to join you for this conversation. We’ve known each other for over twenty years now, and as members of the Long Dash poetry group we’ve given feedback on each other’s work, held annual readings together, and participated in an eleven-year-long ekphrastic project with Studio Artists of the Women’s Art Association of Canada. It’s fair to say that you know my work.
However, being in conversation with you in this way has opened up new insights for me into my own work. As I mentioned earlier, your questions remind me of how affirming it is for a writer to be “seen,” to be “heard,” to find an audience. When that audience is an insightful, informed and generous interviewer, as has happened here, probing questions can help shed light on deeper truths.
Elana: Thank you for your kind acknowledgments, Mary Lou. It’s my pleasure to be a reader of your work, a listener, an interlocutor, and, if I may say, a kindred spirit.
Mary Lou reads:
To order a copy of Slender Certainties, email info@aeolushouse.com
About the Author
Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes is a Jamaican-Canadian poet, retired educator and former nun. She’s the author of five collections of poetry: Slender Certainties (2025), Any Waking Morning (2019), Dark Water Songs (2013), Travelling Light (2006), and The Fires of Naming (2001). Her work reflects her interest in ekphrastic poetry, poetic inquiry, and more recently, science as poetic inspiration. It includes poetry and essays in journals and anthologies, and chapters in edited books. A member of The League of Canadian Poets and The Writers’ Union of Canada, she was a Fellow at Scotland’s Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers in 2009, and is an alumna of the 1998 Banff Writing Studio Program. She lives and writes in Toronto.
About the Reviewer
Elana Wolff's cross-genre Kafka-quest work, Faithfully Seeking Franz (Guernica Editions, 2023), received the 2024 Canadian Jewish Literary Award in the category of Jewish Thought and Culture. Her eighth book of poems, Everybody Knows a Ghost, is forthcoming in 2026.
Book Details
Aoelus House
ISBN: 978-1-987872-71-2
100 pages
$20.00.