The man who tried unsuccessfully to become Castlegar’s poet laureate has now made a short documentary about the experience.
Tristan Wheeler 13-minute film, Poet Laureate, will have its local premiere at the Old Castle Theatre on Dec. 21 along with a “curated selection” of short films by him and other Canadian filmmakers.
Wheeler, who grew up in Castlegar, explained in an interview that in 2021 he had recently completed university but was unemployed and feeling lost.
After watching a documentary about Ernest Hemmingway, he joked that he was “kind of like the Ernest Hemingway of Castlegar because I don’t know any other writer-types from Castlegar.”
“That’s obviously not true,” he adds. “But I wondered if I could be the poet laureate of Castlegar. I don’t know who else would be in the running.”
He decided he would pursue it “until someone says no.”
Wheeler did not, however, have much experience writing poetry outside of a few poems he composed in elementary school. He has a degree in English literature, so he was familiar with poetry, but not as a creator of it.
That didn’t stop him from trying to kick-start his poet career. He forced himself to write poems and published a book featuring 60 of his works.
He then appeared as a delegation before city council and campaigned for the position of poet laureate online and in person. The city looked into the matter, but opted not to take Wheeler up on his offer, noting it wasn’t part of their strategic plan and they had not budgeted for an honorarium.
Wheeler, however, said he was more interested in the title than the money and would do it for free.
All the while, he filmed the experience, although he wasn’t sure whether it would amount to a five-minute video on YouTube or an hour-long documentary. In the end, it was neither.
His film has already been screened in Toronto and online. The event at the Old Castle Theatre will also feature a music video he made for a friend’s band and a project that has never been seen publicly, whose content he’s keeping secret.
Wheeler said he did “a fair amount of very-DIY filmmaking” leading up to this project, but while previously he’d “just been dabbling,” he took things more seriously this time. He has also continued to write poems, which he finds therapeutic and fun, “especially when I cast off the worry about them being good and was just trying to get them down and done.”
But has Wheeler given up his dream of becoming Castlegar’s poet laureate?
“I’ll remain cagey on that, but I have formally invited all of city council and the mayor. If they’re all in the same room, maybe there will be some desperate pitching from myself.”
This is one of Wheeler’s poems, entitled “City Hall 2007”:
They built city hall
Out of red brick and cement
We watched it go up
If we’re lucky
Maybe we’ll see it come down