I Am YEG Arts: Rayanne Haines

Sometimes, you don’t know where you belong until you get there. For Rayanne Haines, that’s meant showing up, doing the work, and sharing what she’s learned and questioned. It’s meant writing. And has she ever! In addition to being a best-selling author of three poetry collections and a four-part urban/​fantasy series, Haines is the 2022 Writer in Residence for the Metro Edmonton Federation of Libraries, VP for the League of Canadian Poets, and host of her own literary podcast. By the looks of her next project, she’s also just getting started. Educator, hybrid author, and contemptuous doomscroller — this week’s ​“I Am YEG Arts” story belongs to Rayanne Haines.

Tell us about your connection to Edmonton and why you’ve made it your home.

I was born and raised on an Arabian horse farm about half-an-hour outside of Edmonton. My family still has their farm there, so I feel like I’m an Edmontonian-lifer. After leaving home and looking to find my way, I moved into the city to go to MacEwan University and have worked in various arts organizations throughout Edmonton over the past twenty-odd years. So It’s always been my home, and it probably always will be.

How did your love of writing begin? Were you always a storyteller, or was it a ​“detour” while on a path to somewhere else?

I think that I was always a storyteller but didn’t know it until I grew older. I have, for example, very vivid memories of telling stories to my parents’ horses. So rather than being really serious about practicing for horse shows, I’d go out into the back forty and make up stories and plays with my horses.

For the longest time, I actually thought I was going to be an actress or involved in theatre — and then I ended up working in the music industry as a detour. So it took me a long time to find my way to understanding that, for me, the stories behind the music and embedded in the theatre were what I was most interested in, and I wanted to be the person writing those stories and performing pieces that I’d created. So, yes, it was always there. It just took me the longest time to understand that that’s what it meant to me to be a storyteller — to be the one writing the story.

What themes are you drawn to as a storyteller?

I’m really drawn to the lived experience of women and women-indentifying people. I’m drawn to the stories of lived experience and the narratives that we women inhabit in this society that we live in. I’m also drawn to interrogating mental health within my work and looking at connections between mental health and womanhood and the empowerment that comes along with understanding or navigating those questions.

What is it about poetry that makes it your starting point for other forms of writing?

I think that poetry, for me, lets me put limits around the chaos — and not limits in the way of limiting what we’re sharing — rather, it allows me to use structure, and form, and shape, and what we visually see on the page as much as the language that we use. And I like that about it. It allows me from these places of chaotic discoveries around mental health or these really massive conversations surrounding women’s identities or queer identity to use the form of poetry to shape those ideas to further question what it is that I’m asking amongst those ideas. That capacity to use poetry to shape has actually allowed me more freedom in the questions that I’m asking — and it took me a lot longer to understand how to do the same thing within an essay form or a fiction form.

I also think that because so much of my work is personal, poetry lets me come at it from a lens that respects that personal nature and allows me to shape-shift what I want to say or question, based on how I go about putting it on the page or using my line breaks. Sometimes I can create dual or triple meaning around something just by the way I choose to shape it on the page. So there’s a lot of freedom that is offered in poetry, while also having these capacities for playing with form.

What’s been the biggest surprise lesson you’ve learned hosting your literary podcast, Crow Reads?

I think the biggest surprise for me — as a woman who talks often about the importance of inclusion, and representation, and decolonizing — was realizing just how white my lens has been. Coming from this place of being a good ally, because of the work I’m doing with that podcast and all of the diverse people that I speak with, has really highlighted that lived experience from that white lens and increased my desire or capacity to want to try to decolonize my view and to learn and question that as much as possible.

What role have awards and funding played in your career? And what doors do they open for artists?

That’s such a good question. I think that funding support has been huge for the advancement of my career. The validity that receiving a grant offers you as an artist is massive because what it tells you is that a group of people believe in the power of what you’re doing before it’s a done thing. They believe in the idea, they believe in you, and they believe in supporting your work — before it is finished. The legitimacy that that gives you as an artist is incredible because it acknowledges the work that you’re doing as having merit and importance to your peers.

That being said, I also have a bit of a love-hate relationship with it because it’s a competitive thing that we get forced into in order to be able to create. So I wish we lived in a world in which we didn’t have to rely on grants or compete against each other to do our work and receive funding. I certainly think that winning awards does shift things for you as an artist, but more than that it acknowledges the work around your craft. Speaking from a literary world, being able to look back at these awards tells me that I’ve done the work to elevate my craft to such a point that it is acknowledged by other writers or experts in the field. And for me, that’s been huge because it allows me to see myself differently — to get away from the imposter syndrome that all of us artists live with. It lets me step beyond that imposter syndrome to say that I do have value to offer others and to then go back to my community and offer that support, knowing I’ve done the work to have my artform seen in that capacity.

Tell us a little about the non-fiction collection of essays and poetry you’re working on.

The idea behind the collection is that I really wanted to pull away from form and create a hybrid text because I’m looking at the in between spaces that women inhabit when we don’t know who we are, or are questioning our identity, or our capacities around grief. My mother was diagnosed with cancer a couple of years ago at the beginning of the pandemic, and we were told it was not a cancer she would beat. She has now passed, so I think the genesis for the collection came from who I am now as a grown woman who needs to grieve my mother but is not allowed to grieve my mother because my mother is not dead — even though I know. So I am in this in between space. The in between space of motherhood and aging — as an aging woman, what does that look like? The in between space of academia. The in between space of my own identity — questioning my identity when I have conversations around queer identity or bisexual identity and what that means as an aging woman. All of these spaces that we inhabit or are trying to understand how we inhabit come with a lot of chaos and questioning. So the idea behind the collection was to work within that chaos and interrogate those questions in many different forms and many different spaces.

What’s your favourite way to procrastinate?

It’s a horrible way to procrastinate, and it’s social media. I’m a doomscroller. It’s not cooking, it’s not cleaning — it’s none of that. Just scrolling through the crap. I have a good friend who puts timers on her phone and locks it all up, but I can’t quite get there.

What does community mean to you, and where do you find it?

Community to me means the support of people who care about you and that you care about — both in terms of human connection and your artistry. I think I came to the arts community as a single mother trying to figure out my place in the world, and this city and community lifted me up, and held me, and helped me find my way. So, for me, that’s what it’s about — service, and supporting others, and the work you can give back in order to build a stronger community.

Where do I find it? I think I find it by showing up — and not just physically — but by showing up when someone is looking for support, or asking for guidance, or even an ear to talk to. That’s going to look different for everyone and every art community, but certainly in Edmonton and around the literary world, it means showing up for new writers and being someone who can offer supports or mentorship in a way that feels healthy, while also placing boundaries on our time and what we can give. So, for me, at the end of the day, community means showing up, doing the work, and lifting people up on their journeys.

Want more YEG Arts Stories? We’ll be sharing them here all year and on social media using the hashtag #IamYegArts. Follow along! Click here to learn more about Rayanne Haines. And visit the Edmonton Arts Council’s website to learn more about grants and awards that support YEG artists.

About Rayanne Haines

Rayanne Haines (she/​her) is an educator and hybrid author. She is the 2022 Writer in Residence for the Metro Edmonton Federation of Libraries and a best-selling author of three poetry collections—The Stories in My Skin (2013), Stained with the Colours of Sunday Morning (Inanna, 2017), and Tell The Birds Your Body Is Not A Gun (Frontenac, 2021) — as well as a four-part commercial market, urban fantasy/​romance series. She hosts the literary podcast Crow Reads and is the VP for the League of Canadian Poets. Her poetry and prose have been shortlisted for the John Whyte Memorial Essay Alberta Literary Award, the Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry, and the National ReLit Award for Poetry. Tell The Birds Your Body Is Not A Gun, a hybrid poetry collection that interrogates grief, won the 2022 Alberta Literary Awards, Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. Rayanne is a past Edmonton Artists Trust Fund Award recipient. She’s had work published in journals and online in Canada, The U.K., and the USA. Rayanne teaches in the Department of Arts and Cultural Management with MacEwan University