NOW's Best Emerging Author: Lauren Kirshner

OB:

What was your first publication and where was it published?

LR:

My first publication was in the University Hill School Annual, The Praecursor, in grade two. We had been asked to present the teacher with our best poem. I thought she meant “favourite,” so I transcribed Robert Louis Stevenson’s “At the Seaside” and handed it in. She duly turned it over to the annual editors as a fine example of seven-year-old writing.

One of my astute fellow classmates pointed out her error and mine. “Plagiarism!” Damn. I should have given him the neutered doughnut man he’d been needling me to trade for his overripe banana in the lunch room.

It all came full circle when my CanLit prof at UBC published an essay I had written under his own byline in The Dalhousie Review. Having been given a reprieve in grade two, I let him off the hook, but I do have a dim view of plagiarism. It is so pathetic.

I still love “At the Seaside,” which has all the ingenuous clarity of Leonard Cohen’s “As the Mist Leaves No Scar.” Ha ha.

My holes were empty like a cup,
In every hole the sea came up,
Till it could come no more.

My cup runneth on…