In the middle of a run, Rob Taylor had an idea for a poem.
As he weaved through cars and foot traffic along Rocky Point Park a few years ago, Taylor, a Port Moody native who lives in the Klahanie neighbourhood, picked up his pace — running faster and faster to make his way home and scribble down the fleeting thought for his next book.
He planned to write one poem every week for the first three years of his daughter’s life and didn’t want to miss a chance for inspiration.
But when he passed a dog park, a few blocks from his home, something else popped into his head.
“I completely forgot the poem I was trying to remember,” Taylor said. “And the new one was … ‘running home past the dog park, a poem in my mouth.’”
The incident is one of many reversals that Taylor took in the four-plus years it took to write his latest book, Weather, which is being launched in Port Moody later this week.
Prior to the pandemic, Taylor, author of The News, a poetry collection that was written throughout his wife’s pregnancy with their first son in 2016, set out to write a continuation of his first book.
He wrote 156 poems in three years following the birth of his second child, a daughter, in 2020. (Taylor also wrote 36 poems — one per week — for The News prior to the birth of his son four years earlier).
Initially, his goal was to write a book about parenthood and raising two children.
But when the pandemic ramped up, the trajectory of his book changed to highlight the natural beauty of Port Moody’s Shoreline Trail.
“I was really stealing time [away from] an insanely noisy apartment,” said Taylor, who teaches poetry and English at both Simon Fraser University and the University of the Fraser Valley.
The pandemic forced him to work from home to grade assignments and provide feedback. Working from home forced him to work in the city’s parks and trails.
“That was my office.”
Whenever something caught his eye, a bird turning its head or a squirrel jumping off a tree branch, he jotted some words in a notebook — Taylor’s first step toward crafting a poem.
“The natural world took over as the book goes along,” he said. “The first year is very intensely about my daughter. She’s still there throughout but the heron and salmon come in and end up starring right alongside her.”
One of the biggest criticisms of The News, he says, was that it didn’t cover climate change, despite talking about other heavy political topics such as famine, war and other acts of violence.
“It was true that missing [climate change] was a loss because that was the social political event that gave us the most pause about having children,” Taylor said.
He is far from the only person that expressed hesitancy to have kids because of climate change.
A 2021 study found that 36 percent of teenagers and young adults were afraid of having kids because of climate change. It was a report that built off a 2020 study which found one in four childfree adults in the U.S. said climate change was a factor in the decision to not have kids.
At the time, climate change was such a big topic that Taylor didn’t know how to distill it into a poem, which usually only cover a few short lines or less than one page.
But through writing about the animals, ocean and luscious greens along the Shoreline Trail, Taylor was motivated to draw attention to the climate crisis by getting people to stop and appreciate nature more often.
“This book was about seeing places that will be flooded by rising tide water, seeing plants and animals that will be affected by rising temperatures,” he said. “And just relishing in this moment we have right now.”
There is a similarity between writing about a young child’s life and nature, Taylor said.
When you’re a parent of an infant or toddler, a large portion of your time is chronicling as much as you can — first step, first word, first vacation — because so many of those moments pass so quickly before they grow up to an adult.
And, throughout the years he wrote the book, like a small child, Taylor observed how the natural world is always undergoing changes. For example, he noticed that Inlet Park — the place where he wrote — is undergoing changes such as the introduction of a new soccer pitch and boardwalk.
“There is a pre-sentiment of loss in terms of raising a child, but also in terms of looking at the natural world,” Taylor said. “You’re trying to praise but in praising you’re also mourning in some way.”
Ultimately, he said he hopes the book will help people look at nature in a new way. Or, at the very least, stop and smell the roses.
“If we do stop and look at what we have, how precarious it is, then maybe we’ll do more to protect it,” Taylor said.
Weather was published at the beginning of May by Gaspereau Press. A book launch featuring Taylor and other acclaimed writers is slated for this Friday at 7 p.m. at the Old Mill Boathouse in Port Moody.
