Poetry Month: Johanna Skibsrud - I do not think that I could love a human being

Johanna Skibsrud’s first poetry collection, Late Nights With Wild Cowboys, was published in 2008 by Gaspereau Press and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award. Her first novel, The Sentimentalists, was published in 2009 by Gaspereau Press and was awarded the 2010 Giller Prize. Her second collection of poetry I Do Not Think that I Could Love a Human Being was published in April 2010 by Gaspereau Press. She is originally from Scotsburn, Nova Scotia, and now lives in Montreal.


TTQ - What role do you see poetry playing in an increasingly digital world, and do you feel the e-book will ultimately take the place of the printed page?

Johanna Skibsrud - I think that poetry's great strength is that it continues to evolve -- it is (must never be) static, and so I see many possibilities for poetry opening up with new developments in digital and communication technologies. I think our primary concern should be environmental, not an aesthetic or nostalgic one. Technology will continue to provide us with tremendous opportunities to improve our systems and our methods of interacting with, and storing information about, the world--but not if we stay locked into our current model of over-consumption -- if we only continue to replace what we consume with consistently more expensive and more readily disposable items.





I do not think that I could love a human being

I do not think that I could love a human being; I would not
know it if I squeezed too hard. I would be a great bear. I would
go rumbling through.

I would try to eat you. I would stand alone,
in the quiet centre of you, and roar. No, I
could not love you. I could not
love a human being.

I would get so
stuck on things. The small

flaws in you, like

the way that you will die;
it would stick in my throat, I could not love you.

And the way that, if you touched me, I would be
as if to you a solid object,
as if a boot, a stick, a stone.

And you to me. The way that I could

pick you up. That I could
hammer you against me; that I could
bruise myself on you, and still have only a

brief impression of you left there on my skin.

And, if I cried, that too would be
an imitation of the thing that I would feel.

And the pain itself, if it was real, would come as if
so separately from you that it might

equally have been a whip, a rope,
a rail with which I thrashed myself when I

thrashed myself with you.

No, I could not love a human being if they
could not leave a mark.

Even if I was a bear
and I ate you, you would
move right through me.

Even if you were a bear
and you ate me, I would
move right through you.

But I am not a bear. And will not eat you.
If I said I could, I could not.

And you are not a bear. And will not eat me.

And that is why I could not love you.
And that is why I could not love you.
And that is why I could not love you.


*Note – Photo of Johanna Skibsrud credited to Kristin Skibsrud Ross.






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