Local Poet Visits Redeemer

On Wednesday, March 31st, local poet John Terpstra visited Redeemer to share a cycle of his poems which was written for Holy Week. The fourteen sections of “This Orchard Sound” correspond roughly to the fourteen “stations” of the cross, drawn from the traditional Roman Catholic mode of telling the story of Jesus's life during Holy Week, culminating in His crucifixion. English students and interested visitors heard the entire cycle and engaged in a lively discussion with the genial poet, while the wider Redeemer community benefitted from his contribution of the last poem to our Holy Wednesday chapel. Much of Terpstra's poetry was written either specifically for worship or about community formed around worship, and though the morning's reading did have an almost liturgical sense about it, the poem he read in chapel seemed to have found its natural home in the context of worship.
Not only is John Terpstra a local Christian poet, but his roots share the same soil as Redeemer's. He attended high school in Hamilton, and returned to this city with his wife after his graduation from the University of Toronto. Although one of his poems, published in 1997, confesses that “I moved to Burlington in my sleep”, he has in fact lived in Hamilton about as long as Redeemer has (and, according to the poem, doesn't even like Burlington in his waking moments).
One thing that he does like is our local geography, and this makes the phrase “local poet” more meaningful than simply “a poet who, like us, lives within scent of the harbourfront on a sticky summer's day”. For example, the escarpment figures large in his poetic vision. In “Flames of Affection, Tongues of Flame”, the poet huffs and puffs his way up the old flight of stairs from Dundurn St. to Garth St.: “and though they are wooden stairs / that make a nice wooden sound, and though / they lean endearingly to one side or another / in a manner steel could never comprehend, / there are still two hundred and forty-six of them” (lines 6-10). Having made the effort, however, he is captivated by the lights of the city gradually coming out as night falls. In one of my favourite Terpstra imaginings, he tells how, millennia ago, there were giants who lived here – who loved living here – who would sit on the edge of Hamilton Mountain and try to skip the smoothest stones all the way across the bay.
John Terpstra is a friendly, down-to-earth sort of man, as much the cabinetmaker (his day job) as poet, and is a good example of the sometimes-overlooked fact that poets are people too, people with often quite ordinary lives outside their writing studios. “I've written in every room in our house,” Terpstra told us that Wednesday morning, and paused thoughtfully. “Except the bathroom,” he finished with a smile. Perhaps this personality is why much of his poetry tells a story or centres around an ordinary experience, and his artistry is evident in the twist that he gives that experience, a twist that completely alters the way you see what he has to show us.
The Holy Week series “This Orchard Sound” is a major part of The Church Not Made With Hands, which was recently republished; the bookstore carries several of Terpstra's other recent works – check them out if you're curious, and if you take a good look, perhaps you'll see a few of his visions for yourself.

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