Kelly Shepherd has been a construction worker in northern Alberta and a kindergarten teacher in South Korea. Dog and Moon, forthcoming in spring 2025 from Oskana Poetry & Poetics (University of Regina Press) is Kelly’s third poetry collection. He is part of The Land and Labour Poetry Collective, an editorial group currently working on the book I’ll Get Right On It: Poems on Working Life in the Climate Crisis (forthcoming from Fernwood Publishing). Kelly’s second poetry collection, Insomnia Bird (Thistledown Press, 2018) won the 2019 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize. He has written eight chapbooks (most recently Sleep Is a Deep Pool with The Alfred Gustav Press, 2023), and he is a poetry editor for the environmental philosophy journal The Trumpeter. He has a Creative Writing MFA from UBC Okanagan (with a thesis on the intersections of ecopoetry and work poetry—supervised by Nancy Holmes), and an MA in Religious Studies from the University of Alberta (with a thesis on sacred geography). Originally from Smithers, BC, Kelly lives on Treaty 6 territory, in Edmonton, where he teaches in the English and Communications Department at NAIT (the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology).
We met with Kelly to discuss his book and to get some insight on his writing process.
Tell us about your new book, Dog and Moon.
Dog and Moon is not really “about” any one thing, because with this book I’m trying to resist closure, and I’m trying to contain multitudes. But some main themes, or threads, include an embodied relationship with the natural world, my fascination with wildlife, and an ongoing engagement with other poets and writers. As the University of Regina website describes it, these poems are “a series of juxtapositions: nature writing placed in conversation with the language of poetry workshops, mythology and childhood memories, and sensorial encounters with the natural world colliding with images of home and belonging.” I’m trying to dig into the mythical and symbolic nature of things. The title Dog and Moon comes from a line in one of the poems, and dogs and the moon also appear frequently throughout the book.
What was your process in researching and writing the book and working with an editor and publisher?
On the one hand, it’s fair to say that I worked on this book for over twenty years! Because many of the lines and images I use in these poems come from notebooks, which I’ve been writing in for a long time. But on the other hand, there was also a lot of spontaneity and even improvisation involved in the process.
My experience working with the editor (Randy Lundy) and the University of Regina Press has been fantastic. This is my third book (the first two were published by Thistledown Press) and I’ve enjoyed the entire process immensely each time, and with each different editor. Putting poems in order, and deciding which poems go and which should stay in a manuscript, all of this is a lot of work, but it’s also fun. It’s been a real honour to discuss my work with some truly talented editors, book designers, and publishers. Honestly, I feel very lucky.
Tell us about your time at UBCO as a student in the MFA program.
I enjoyed the cross-pollination that happened at UBCO. Both socially and creatively, it seemed like there was always this mix of undergraduate students, graduate students, and professors doing things together. I went there for the Creative Writing MFA, and Nancy Holmes was my supervisor. As Nancy’s research assistant, I had the opportunity to work on some really interesting things, including the Woodshed Readings poetry series at Woodhaven, and the “Dig Your Neighbourhood” community art project. It was also amazing to study poetry with the legendary Sharon Thesen!
Did you always know you wanted to be a writer, or how did you decide that doing an MFA was right for you?
I did always want to be a writer, but of course I had no idea what that would look like. And technically I’m still not a writer now, if by “writer” you mean someone who makes a living from their writing. And if that (money) was my goal, I certainly wouldn’t be writing poetry! I do teach writing these days, albeit the non-creative kind.
And I didn’t know much about MFAs, to be honest, before I started doing mine at UBC Okanagan. But I wanted to pursue writing in a more focused environment, and that degree was a great fit. Part of the decision-making process for me was seeking out a supervisor with similar interests and aesthetics.
If you could start university again, would you do anything differently?
I would wait longer before starting university! And I would try to travel first, try to see more of the world, so I could make better-informed decisions. As opposed to getting into debt with student loans before I even knew what I wanted to do, straight out of high school, which is unfortunately what I did. I’m happy with the degrees I did get, of course (including the MFA from UBCO!) but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the long and winding road that I took to get them.