When Jordan Trethewey was collecting stories for his legacy project as Fredericton’s poet laureate at the Garrison Night Market in 2022, he was approached by a woman named Diane, who he believed was homeless at the time.
“[She] wanted to talk to me because she felt a connection without even knowing me,” he said.
She told him she was a writer herself and caught his attention when she compared love to a bungee cord.
That story, and many more, are included in Trethewey’s book These Are the People in Your Neighbourhood, launched Thursday, Jan. 25 at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. For the past two years, he has collected stories from Frederictonians and written poems based on them. The experience has taught him, especially in this time of so much isolation and despair, the importance of connecting and collaborating with others.
The book has been available since December.
“Every city has people you see again and again,” he said. “And you always wonder… what’s their story?”
The inspiration came from his curiosity about people he would often see walking by, the common street characters on the outskirts of his life.
To collect these anecdotes, Trethewey set up shop in the Garrison Night Market for the past two summers—and at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery during the winter—where he would sit and encourage people to share a story about themselves or something they had experienced. In between these exchanges, he would write.
“Eventually I did see patterns,” he said, stories about near-death experiences, how people met their partners, family history and pets were the most common.
“I want to know about people and what makes them tick,” he said. “That’s newsworthy to me.”
He not only wanted to reintroduce himself to the Fredericton writing scene but to foster empathy.
“Unless you talk to somebody, you don’t know what’s going on in their lives.”
“A lot of times we don’t say ‘hi.’ We’re busy with our own things and don’t get a chance to chat at the time.”
Each poem is dedicated to the original storyteller and while Trethewey may have added rhythm or personal flourish to them, he says he stayed as true to the source material as possible.
Though some of those featured in the book were in attendance at the launch, Trethewey’s thoughts returned to Diane.
“Because of her transient nature… I knew that she would never probably see [the book] without me giving her a copy,” he said.
Luckily, he had a connection that was able to reach her.
“I was told that it made it into her hands and that she was happy,” he said. “That was one of my favourite experiences. It was nice to be able to do that for her.”
