news | Thursday May 1, 2025

An Interview with Cecily Nicholson

Rob Taylor interviews Cecily Nicholson about her latest poetry collection Crowd Source.

An excerpt from their conversation:

“RT: Crows aren’t the only crowds that gather in Crowd Source, which contains crowds of crowds … Coming together are also protesters, mourners, consumers, salmon, blackberries, trees, cars, pollution…

Did studying Vancouver’s crow migration spark your thinking about the ways the city “collectively amasses”? Or was it the other way around, your interest in crowds leading you to the crows? What can the crows teach us about how Vancouver does, or doesn’t, come together?

CN: My work often touches on collectivity, perhaps now more than ever in our precipitously balanced world. I’m aware of a range of ways that people gather, how some forms of crowd are sanctioned and encouraged, for commercial consumption say, and how gatherings to counter a status quo are often stigmatized and policed. An outlined body suggests an absent one, a death perhaps. I was thinking about how crows gather when one of them dies. Also, about how deaths at the hands of police or as a result of state violence require ongoing rallying cries.

Studying crows’ movement, communication, and relations was a grounding experience. They informed my thinking significantly; I tried to stay open to that influence and to take lessons from their ancient ways of gathering and dispersing.”

To read the interview in its entirety, click here