Elizabeth Philips is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Time of the Great Singing. Her novel The Afterlife of Birds won the City of Saskatoon Book Award and was a finalist for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. She lives in Saskatoon.
The poems in The Time of Great Singing observe the changes that mark the natural world – the diminishing woods, the surging birdsong in spring – as well as each stage of human life. This collection sings our astonishment and our fear at how life makes and unmakes us through every love and every grief.
Interviewed by Samantha Adkins
Samantha Adkins (SA): I was touched by the stories of loss in your poems. “The Last June” is heartbreaking, yet filled with hope, good humour, and optimism. Thank you for putting these deeply learned lessons into words. How do you feel about sharing these with the world?
Elizabeth Philips (EP): I write always with the intention of publishing, so the risk and exposure inherent in revealing deeply felt perceptions and insights is second nature to me. Having said that, a level of discomfort is always important—almost a test of how successful I have been in writing honestly and honouring a kind of contract with readers to take them where I am afraid to go. This particular poem, I find, is really resonating with audiences when I read it to them, and it seems to connect listeners to their own mothers, which is very heartening for me as a writer.
SA: Many of your poems are filled with glorious natural elements. The stanzas in Migrations likening a bat’s movements to a conversation is deeply pleasing. A 2025 study found that nature words have been disappearing from our language, causing a recent petition led by Margaret Atwood to reinstate nature words removed from the Oxford University Junior Dictionary to make room for modern inventions. Why is nature so important to you and your poetry?
EP: This is a huge question; I can’t really separate nature from the rest of life. And I can’t separate nature from myself, since nature owns me, so to speak. I can’t live without the air, the earth, the complex web of interconnected life—and, of course, neither can anyone else! I draw imagery from the wild because wilderness confounds us. Nothing is more deeply surprising and unfathomable to me than what a bird is actually doing when it is singing. I have always been mesmerized by the unknowable quality of birds, wild animals, forests, grasslands, rivers and lakes. And poetry is about mystery, about the unanswerable questions.
SA: The “Work Bench” is rich with sensory details. I have never considered what a person’s garage says about them. Is setting the largest inspiration for your poetry?
EP: I think my largest inspiration is the challenge of distilling lived experience into imagery, metaphor, insight, rhythm and cadence—making the moving and changing world stay still and observable for just a moment.
SA: You seem to be a huge bird fan. In “Elegy For The Willows”, you mention looking up birds in bird books. Do you still use books to identify birds, or have you switched to birding apps?
EP: Yes, I use bird books to identify birds. I use The Sibley Field Guide to Birds mainly. I also have recordings of prairie birds that I listen to so that my ear, and my echolocation skills, improve.
SA: I was captivated by the image of a father reading books “like a plate full of words” in “My Shadow’s Long-Legged” as he deals with the loss of his wife. Is reading a good way to deal with grief?
EP: Reading has always been a balm to me, a way to soothe the agitation that life inflicts on us, and that would include grief, anxiety, fear… Reading takes us out of ourselves, out of our obsessions, short-sightedness, out of our ruts and habits of mind. But it doesn’t really lessen grief, in my experience. Reading can provide a respite from grief, but maybe only when grief is not at its worst.
SA: I notice you have also written a novel titled The Afterlife of Birds. I am curious about the similarities and differences between writing poetry and fiction. How do you approach each genre?
EP: I am more naturally a poet, so I find poetry more rewarding (but not financially, of course!) to write than fiction, because you can write a poem in a short period of time and that’s very gratifying. My novel took ten long years. Poetry comes to me as a way to understand the world and my life, and although I spent ten years not writing it, I fell back into poetry naturally and gratefully. It is still very difficult to write, but when I consider another prose project I am wary of the time commitment. If I write another novel, I want to be compelled to do so by the work itself. I’m not sure that will or can happen.
SA: Finally, people sometimes tell me they find reading poetry difficult – they feel they don’t understand what they are reading. As an editor, writer, and director, what advice would you give readers to help them find joy and meaning in reading poetry?
EP: I feel that it is important not to fight with poetry to find meaning in it. I think it’s more useful, as a reader, to surrender to the work, to let it carry you and offer up meaning where it’s available to you. Also, to be committed to rereading, which is a very particular kind of joy where poetry is concerned, because a really fine poem will offer up insight, solace, revelations, the more often and the more deeply you read it. Poetry is not meant as a “one and done” kind of read. It’s like walking the same path up a mountainside; the path is never the same twice. The best poetry is its own wilderness, full of surprising vistas, sounds, and experiences. We don’t understand life in its entirety as it happens to us; the same can be said of poetry.
SA: Thank you so much for your honest and thoughtful answers, and for reminding me to slow down and consider everyday natural mysteries.
Interviewer Bio: Samantha Adkins is a writer currently living on Vancouver Island. Her novels include The Jane Austen Contest, Expectations, Suspiciously Reserved, The Banff Springs Abbey, Emmy in Harding, Enough, and After His Heart.