Patrick Jamieson, Victoria

Genine Hanns, poet, author and artist died in Kelowna of kidney failure in January. A close friend of mine, and lifelong resident of Victoria, she was relocated to West Kelowna in her last year by her daughter Teresa for her final time. She died in the Cottonwood Nursing Home after being diagnosed in hospital and put in palliative care.

Genine was a lifelong creative spirit, writing, painting and studying toward the end of artistically expressing herself. Her breakthrough came in her early fifties. After studying for a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Victoria, her poetry work was recognized by being published in the prestigious literary journal Descant and then her excellent volume of poetry The Language of Water was issued in 2009 by Ekstasis Editions, Victoria’s preeminent literary publisher.

As a sort of crowning glory, she was included in the BC Anthology RockSalt in 2008 where she joined the likes of famous and established poets Susan Musgrave, Marilyn Bowering, George Fetherling, Carla Funk, Patrick Friesen, Kim Goldberg and the publisher of Rocksalt Mona Fertig. Other luminaries included were PK Page, Catherine Greenwood, Tim Lander, Susan McCaslin, Jane Munro, Rhona McAdam, DC Reid, Daphne Marlatt, Linda Rogers, Peter Trower, Derk Wynand and the other Rocksalt publisher veteran poet Harold Rhenisch. My sense at the time was that Genine had arrived.

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I first met Genine in 2004 when I was invited to work with her toward her publishing goals. Along the way, I was struck by how she did not seem to fully appreciate her joining this august company in Rocksalt. She didn’t really look sideways very much.

My father and I drove her up to Nanaimo for one of the Rocksalt readings. I remember having coffee with poet Leanne Smith McIntosh, the four of us.

Writers are an eccentric lot in my experience. Always a driven perfectionist of sorts, she even republished The Language of Water to her own specifications and precise liking, a residue of her decades of self publishing activity prior to the breakthrough. I have to say I’ve never met anyone quite like her in her walking and waking contradictions. She never seemed to be quite pleased by anything, especially her own level of recognition or ability.

She was not able to get similar recognition for her many semi-autobiographical novels, but that did not slow down her constant creative productivity. With titles such as Innocent Origins of Sorrow, Armadillo Cafe and Love Juice she mined her life experience and imagination. Genine pressed on, self-publishing her work through ICN publishing. She truly sacrificed herself on the altar of art.

Spiritual rather than religious, by her own self-description, you could say we made an odd couple, so to speak. Our separate and distinct symbolic systems; me with my progressive Catholicism, she with her new age sensibility, tapping into everything from astrology, dream therapy and even a one-time membership in the Rosicrucian California Temple. I must say she was the only Rosicrucian of my experience. Our common ground was a deep mutual respect for Carl Jung’s psychological analysis.

Many of our times together consisted of conversation focused on dream analysis. Genine’s constant obsession, personal and aesthetic, was her desire to pierce the veil of the future through self-analysis, tarot card readings, astrology and fortune tellers and Ouija boards.

Partly it was driven by her regular and devastating periods of chronic depression, and her desire to avoid these pitfalls as best she could. Her own synchronicity adventures from these investigations regularly made their way into her writing for Fate Magazine. When those cheques arrived, it called for a special celebration at Ross Bay Pub or the Four Mile House.

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I met Genine through poet David Burke, who brought her to my poetry book launch in December 2004 at O’Beans Cafe at Stadacona corner in Victoria. O’Beans was was a uniquely charming Irish Coffee House, owned and operated by Irishman Trevor Bennett who enjoyed putting on literary soirees.

The Gray Door was my collection of poems from my period in Cape Breton (1983-86) prior to relocating to Victoria to start Island Catholic News. It too was published by Ekstasis Editions. The cover art was by Victoria poet and painter Ken Horn, who along with David Burke, and Sheila Fitzgerald McKenna read from their own work that evening.

Also performing was old friend from the 1960s, the musician Dave Gallant who coincidentally had been Genine’s near neighbour in the 1970s when he first moved to Victoria from Prince George. I found all that an interesting if not significant synchronicity.

As a result, I was more than casually disposed when Genine approached me after that to help get her work published. ICN published her volume of poetry Cross-eyed Virgin on a Tightrope which was cover illustrated by Ken Horn. This book included “The Beekeeper’s Daughter”, (see the Poetry Section) which had been previously published in Descant magazine, her proudest literary accomplishment to date at that time. She kept a framed copy of their payment cheque for $100 on the wall at her work station in her writing room at her house on Forbes Ave.

David Burke’s nickname for her was thus Mrs. Forbes. They shared a birth date March 31, two fiery Aries. Genine and David for a number of years celebrated their birthdays together at her home, including one memorable occasion when my father attended but was driven out from all the cigarette smoke when it seemed everyone there was a smoker and had one going in each hand. David Burke has included Genine in his dedication of his latest book of poems titled Inkrements. (See Poetry Section)

Genine and I become fast friends through it all. Very sociable she loved to attend Dave Gallant’s music events and poetry readings at The Martin Batchelor Gallery sponsored by Ekstasis, hosted by publishers Richard Olafson and Carole Sokoloff for their established and emerging artists.
On the more difficult side, she was regularly admitted for psychiatric Depression, where she named me as her advocate within the rather arcane bureaucratic procedure that involves regarding treatment.

Fundamentally Genine needed to be listened to as key part of her creative process. She, like most writers, had definite ideas about the working of reality. Her self-description in Innocent Origins of Sorrow, her first semi-autobiographical novel reads in part: “Genine Hanns was born in Vancouver in 1945 and grew up on Vancouver Island with a great love and appreciation for nature and the beauty of the west coast. An accomplished acrylic artist, she paints landscapes, animals, butterflies and birds. As a connoisseur of fine education, she enjoys Greek and Roman Studies, Shakespearean Comedy, Jungian Psychology, Philosophy, Mysticism and Tribal stories of all kinds. She has travelled abroad to England, Scotland, France, The Hawaiian Islands, and has toured much of America. Two grown children, a son Michael and daughter Teresa both live central to her in British Columbia.”