Berg Hill 32

Sharon Berg Interviews Debbie Okun Hill

(Beret Days Press, 2025)

Debbie Okun Hill

Sharon Berg: It feels like branching out for me to interview someone who has written a prize-winning chapbook rather than a full book, yet I recognize chapbooks as an important part of the history of writing poetry in Canada. It seems many Canadian authors, and perhaps authors elsewhere, begin their careers with a chapbook. In addition, this one has collected Second Prize from the Ontario Poetry Society’s recent contest, so it’s important for its association with that group of authors.

One thing I’ve noticed about your poetry over the years, and indeed about your reviews of other writers’ work on your blog, is that you delight in picking out themes. You’ve certainly done that again in When Floorboards Speak, which compares troubled relationships to the ravages of time in older homes. Can you please share how that particular theme came to you? It seems rather unusual, and yet it also makes perfect sense?

Debbie Okun Hill: Looks like you’re asking me for a blueprint for this theme. (Smiles here.) If so, that’s almost impossible because often what I plan and what finally evolves and is built are two different things. As my introductory poem begins, “Hear each creak and squeak…” That’s usually what happens. My muse spoon-feeds me ideas, and I just gobble it up. The editing and revisions come later.

So, when I first started writing poems about house building and renovations about 20 years ago, I was looking for some sort of framework to organize my work. This concept came naturally for me. My dad was a drywall contractor, so I was exposed to the field of carpentry at a very young age.

I decided to try writing poems about the various stages of construction: from the blueprints to the framing, to the drywall, painting etc. I was also going through a phase where I enjoyed experimenting with various voices including those of inanimate objects. What would a piece of flooring sound like? How would it feel to be a piece of insulation? I just played with the words.

I wasn’t initially thinking about haunted houses or broken relationships at the time.

SB: The squeak of those floorboards is so easy to hear in your work! I have to ask whether, at some point in time, you decided you were working on a collection with the theme of troubled relationships? Or did you pull When Floorboards Speak together by sifting through a pile of poems and looking for the ones that had similar enough themes to fit with each other?

DOH: For me, writing has always been a magical experience. I never know where I’m going until I get there. For example, I had no idea I was writing about troubled relationships. That was a last-minute decision, not planned at all. As mentioned earlier, I started playing with different construction images. The word “plastered” has two meanings, so I meshed them together: the plastering on the walls and the drywall contractors who were ‘plastered’ from drinking on the job.

I was also going through a phase where I wrote about the feelings of inanimate objects, which is where the poem ‘A Memory: Linoleum Meets Ceramic Tile’ was born. In this poem, two different types of flooring feel sad and rejected because a third type of flooring was selected and purchased instead.

One of the problems with entering contests is that sometimes the rules can dictate changes to a submission. For instance, when I decided to enter The Ontario Poetry Society’s 2025 Golden Grassroots Award, I was in a hurry, so I grabbed my old manuscript of When Floorboards Speak, which had been submitted and rejected in the same contest back in 2015. (It was blind judging and the judges were different.) Unfortunately, several of the original poems in the collection had to be removed because they had won awards over the years and were not permitted according to the rules. So, I added some newer poems and shortened or lengthened others to keep the manuscript at the required contest length.

It wasn’t until I was preparing my revised submission that I noticed with a bit of tweaking I could strengthen the house renovation theme with a parallel troubled relationship theme. It must have worked as the revised manuscript won second prize.

SB: That just proves that you should never toss a manuscript as it may need just a tweak or two to gain publication, doesn’t it? Now I’m too curious not to ask: Do the poems in this chapbook represent your observations of one or more actual relationships, or are they a fictional collective? (I’m sure you can answer without identifying any of the parties involved.)

DOH: It is indeed a fictional collective! Almost all my poetry stems from my imagination. I’ve always wanted to write a novel and when I first began writing short stories, members of my writers’ group said I should try writing poetry because my writing was very poetic. So, I forced myself to like poetry by becoming a rebel… telling fictional tales through poetic devices. I soon learned that poetry is like art or music. There are various types to suit different audiences. In high school and university, I was taught classical poetry that I didn’t like. It wasn’t until I started reading more modern poetry that I realized that rules could be broken, and I could still tell fictional stories but in a more condensed poetic way.

SB: I’m shaking my head as it is so difficult to think of you as someone who had to force yourself to like poetry. But that’s very revealing, and it makes a great segue to my next question. Readers are often interested in knowing how much of a work is invented and how much is autobiographical. Would you care to share your approach/thoughts on this aspect of your readers’ curiosity?

DOH: As I mentioned earlier, most of my work is invented. As an introvert, I like to keep my private life private, and to be honest I’m not sure readers would be interested in my life.

As a creative writer interested in writing fiction, I enjoy using my imagination to see what new characters and situations I can dream up. Perhaps that is why I like to experiment with different voices. Some readers may criticize me for not being authentic but as a trained journalist, I am used to doing research and looking at small details to ensure that the information is recorded correctly. I am like the abstract painter playing with paint, except that I am playing with words and creating something new from my imagination.

SB: Every book takes a stance in the midst of the contemporary social and political concerns it presents. How do you describe the position of When Floorboards Speak and its areas of concern in today’s world?

DOH: I wouldn’t call myself a political poet or an advocate for a particular cause. As a Libra, not that I believe in astrology, I have always been open to listening to both sides of an argument, realizing that people have come from different backgrounds and what is true for one person is not necessarily true for the other person. As a trained journalist, I’ve also been conditioned to listen and to present both sides. This is how I learn.

So, what is When Floorboards Speak trying to tell us? My perspective is that it will “creak and squeak” differently for each reader. That is what poetry and art and music do. The creator builds the creation and then sends it into the world. How the world interprets it, is also part of the magic. Readers have seen meaning in my work that I have never noticed before and I welcome that.

So yes, if I may quote the back cover of my chapbook. When Floorboards Speak “offers a metaphorical maze of old and recently reconstructed homes where the memories of broken people continue to haunt those who are still wandering the halls.”

If I were to dig even deeper into Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the most important physiological need is for a home or shelter and the middle need is for love. I don’t have the stats in front of me but for a large portion of the world, people are struggling to find food/shelter and the concept of true love and community acceptance has also escaped for so many others. For those individuals it may be impossible to fully appreciate poetry or the realization of their full potential at the top self-actualization level. I find that sad.

The world needs healing. So many of us are getting old and tired but I hope that there are still infants and younger people who will eventually examine all the haunting and historical brokenness, find a better way to live, so that the future can be fixed.

SB: Okay, we’re going from perfect segue to awkward leaps, but I do want to know—Where do you live? Is it an urban or rural setting? Do you feel there’s anything about the environment surrounding you that impacts your writing? Open spaces? Crowds of people? Please explain how the environment affects your approach to writing.

DOH: For the first five years of my life, I grew up in rural Manitoba in a small home with no running water. I can still remember the open space with the wildflowers and rabbits adorning my play area. I had few toys, and my sibling and I were encouraged to use our imagination by playing with sticks and other elements from the environment. It was a simpler time and that open space gave me plenty of room to explore.

To this day, I am still drawn to rural areas, and I feel fortunate that I currently live in a quiet area where I can continue to garden and play with words, away from the distraction and noise of crowds and city living. The fresh air and Mother Nature inspire me.

SB: Titles for poems or books are often difficult to come up with. Yet some authors seem to begin there. You started to speak to this a little earlier. What was your experience in developing the title for this manuscript? How did you decide it should be When Floorboards Speak?

DOH: What a great question! I studied advertising, promotions, and marketing so I knew how important a headline or title had to be to encourage a reader to pick up the book. In the internet era you also need a title that no one else has so that your book immediately appears on the top of the search engine results.

For this collection, I wrote the poems first and then waited until the right title magically appeared. This can be a slow process but eventually after reading the work several times, I could feel the haunting of the voices and that reminded me of how older homes have stories to share and how their floorboards creak and squeak, and that made me play with the rhyming word speak…and then I knew I had a title I would be happy with.

SB: Authors will often speak about the necessity of writing multiple drafts for a book. What was your experience with this one? You mentioned some changes from an earlier version of the chapbook. Did the length of the book change dramatically at that point in time? Please explain how you approached the work.

DOH: Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. I can’t believe any professional writer would ever submit an original first draft of any piece of writing. For me, writing with a theme is a challenge I enjoy. I love free-fall writing where you toss words onto a page without thinking too much about where it is going. It’s only when the words are on paper that I begin to edit and rewrite and watch the magic happen.

Yes, this chapbook, like all my manuscripts, changed in length to either suit the contest or the publisher’s requirements.

SB: Many authors will say that a writer never feels they’re finished with their work, that they would always wish to adjust and tweak their writing. Do you feel that way about When Floorboards Speak? What would you change?

DOH: Definitely. Many of the poems in When Floorboards Speak were written over 10 years ago and I feel over the years my work has grown and evolved. As I mentioned earlier, several award-winning poems were removed to shorten the length of the manuscript due to the contest restrictions.

One day I hope I can include those removed and what I consider stronger poems and republish the chapbook with other work to create either a larger collection or another trade book, like my sports-themed book Tarnished Trophies published by Black Moss Press in 2014.

SB: It would be interesting to see the chapbook expanded like that. So, please tell me, how does this work fit it the stream of your literary creations? Is there a fundamental difference between When Floorboards Speak and your prior work?

DOH: Another good question! I’d like to think that, over the years, all writers evolve and hopefully become stronger or at least more confident in their work.

When I first started writing, I tended to imitate the work of other successful poets. As an apprentice you try different styles until you find something you are comfortable with but even then, when you get bored, you try something else. Also, when I first started writing, I wrote what publishers and editors were looking for. While this led me to the publication of my first trade book Tarnished Trophies, I would never have written about sports if I hadn’t been encouraged to do so. Perhaps that is why I wrote about the negative aspects of competition versus the rah-rah positive cheerleading that is normally associated with athletic books.

As I get older, my love for arts and crafts consumes me, so most of my newer work focuses on those themes. I am especially drawn to creating ekphrastic poems, which combine my love for art as well as words. I am also leaning towards more prose poems, again because I’ve always wanted to write fiction. Some of my current work is even becoming more autobiographical in my attempts to preserve history for my family and other relatives.

For me, the best part about growing older is that the pressure to publish and to try to earn a living off writing becomes less important. Artificial intelligence troubles me as it encourages us to think less rather than more. The world may indeed be changing but it’s how you help others to heal and create new memories that really matters to me now.

SB: Thank you, so much, for taking the time to answer my questions, Debbie. I hope that our exploration of the details behind your chapbook’s creation will inspire readers of this interview to read it.

Debbie Okun Hill is a Canadian poet/blogger with over 495 poems published in over 175 different publications. She is a member of the Writer’s Union of Canada and the League of Canadian Poets, plus she is a past President and Life Member of The Ontario Poetry Society (TOPS). Her first poetry collection Tarnished Trophies was published by Black Moss Press in 2014. When Floorboards Speak is her fifth poetry chapbook, and it won second prize in TOPS 2025 Golden Grassroots Award Contest.

Sharon Berg attended the Banff School of Fine Arts Writing Studio in 1982 and was accepted to Banff’s Leighton Artist Colony in 1987. She taught in Ontario after studying to become a teacher with a focus on First Nations Education: B.A./Laurentian U.; B.Ed/U of T; M.Ed/York U; and D.Ed/UBC. She received a Certificate in Magazine Journalism from Ryerson U and is an alumni of Humber College’s Writing Program. Sharon founded and operated the international literary E-Zine Big Pond Rumours (2006-2019) and its associated press, releasing chapbooks of Canadian poets as prizes for the magazine’s contests. Her poetry appears as full books with Borealis, Coach House, and Cyberwit, and she has four chapbooks with BPR Press. Sharon’s short fiction is with Porcupine’s Quill, and her nonfiction appears with BPR Press. Her writing appears across Canada, the USA, Mexico, Chile, England, Wales, Netherlands, Germany, Siberia, Romania, India, Persia, Singapore, and Australia. Her 3rd poetry collection Stars in the Junkyard was a Finalist in the 2022 International Book Awards, and her narrative history The Name Unspoken: Wandering Spirit Survival School won a 2020 IPPY Award for Regional Nonfiction. When she retired from teaching, she opened Oceanview Writers Retreat in Charlottetown (Terra Nova National Park) Newfoundland.