Renee Cronley Interviews Marion Lougheed

(Off Topic Publishing, 2025)

Marion Lougheed

​Marion Lougheed is a writer, editor, and anthropologist who grew up in Canada, Benin, Belgium and Germany.
 
I met Marion through the Canada Writes Facebook group, a community created and managed by CBC Books to provide support and encouragement to Canadian writers.  When I was scrolling through Canada Writes, I came across her poem “Pavane for a Dead Letter,” which the League of Canadian Poets featured in their Poem In Your Pocket Day booklet and postcard series, and I was deeply impressed by how she managed to convey so much meaning with just a few carefully chosen words.

For this reason, I was thrilled when Baggage Claim, her debut poetry book which is a poetic exploration of her life experiences growing up as a third culture kid, was published.  Her concise yet powerful poems explore the concept of home, belonging, the delicate dynamics of relationships, and the complicated journey of identity. So, I was eager to chat with Marion about her poetry book, shedding light on an experience rarely talked about.

Renee Cronley: What was the initial inspiration behind transforming your experiences as a third culture kid into a book of poems?

Marion Lougheed: The poems came before the book. Most of my writing happens in a chaotic, disorderly way. So, I had a bunch of poems and thought maybe I should try to turn it into something. I was inspired by Jennifer Mariani’s book All Forgotten Now, about growing up white in Zimbabwe and the sense of exile that comes from living elsewhere for the sake of a career or children. Jennifer is an amazing poet, and she collects her pieces into themes or topics as she writes them. Not I. I just throw a bunch of stuff in a heap.
 
Later, I watched a webinar about creating a chapbook where the speaker said that we all have themes that run through our work. We don’t necessarily have to come up with an idea and then make a book. If you look through all your poems, you’ll find some threads. And I did: moving, being between homes, the joy of discovering new places, the loneliness of dislocation, the bird’s-eye view and the insights and questions that come with it.
 
RC: Why did you choose poetry to express your experiences, rather than another form? What did poetry allow you to express that another genre might not have?
 
ML: I’m not sure I intentionally chose poetry. Sometimes when my mind is churning at night, I’ll write a poem to get out my thoughts. Or else when I’m on an airplane or train, I write. I’ve been trying to collect some of these poems into a book that made sense. I tried several iterations before I landed on Baggage Claim. An earlier version was called Flight Path and metaphorically followed the trajectory of taking a long-distance flight. After Sarah Balsley read some of the poems, she came up with the title Baggage Claim, which I absolutely love for its layered meanings. And her beautiful cover art pairs excellently with it! She’s such a gem.
 
I kept a journal for most of my childhood. People have told me I should write a memoir. But I just can’t find a way into memoir. I already know what happened, so it’s boring to spend all that time writing about it. Poetry is quick and snappy, and it’s based around language more than content, so it allows me to explore images and phrases without having to reveal too many facts. Poetry is more private. It’s like a diary that almost nobody can read, and yet it’s a way to tell my story. Because it’s sometimes nonspecific, it’s also a way to connect with others who grew up moving around, or who have moved a lot as adults. Identity gaps and feelings of unbelonging resonate with different people for different reasons.
 
RC: The original illustrations in your book are by Sarah Balsley, an artist who understands the themes of your poems, having experienced a mobile childhood of her own. Can you share some insights into your creative process and the reason behind pairing illustrations with your poetry? Did including her illustrations in your poetry book unexpectedly change its flow and structure?
 
ML: You make it sound like I had a plan! Ha! When she heard about my project, Sarah asked if I’d be interested in her creating paintings for it. She called them “postcards of feelings or experiences.” For nomads, postcards carry a lot of meaning, at least if you’re old enough.
 
We started with a couple images and then went from there, with some back and forth on ideas. I’m not a very visually artistic person, so I was mostly happy to let her use her creativity. Then I selected the ones I wanted to use.
 
For the structure of the book, the poems always came first. The images accompany the text, not the other way around. I decided on the order of poems and then inserted the images where I thought they’d fit. I like how they provide a mental pause between poems and they echo some of the imagery. Some poetry books have too much sameness, and I was worried that Baggage Claim might be like that. So having paintings to break up the monotony of poems worked great! We did agonize over having the paintings printed in colour in their full splendour, but the cost would’ve been too high for readers to buy the book. So, we put the pictures online for people to see there.
 
RC: Can you recall a particular moment, conversation, or experience when you first became aware that your perspective was different due to growing up as a third culture kid?
 
ML: When you’re a foreigner, you always know your perspective is different. It’s harder when you’re not officially a foreigner—when you go “back home” and you don’t know all the things that people expect you to know, like whether you should open a present when someone hands it to you or wait until they’ve left, or how much you’re expected to smile or laugh so people don’t think you’re unfriendly.
 
I came back to Canada after five years away, when I was twelve. I didn’t know any of the popular music and I hadn’t seen the right movies. I had a habit of staring, since that’s more normal in Benin than in Canada. When you’re foreign, people expect you to be weird. But when you’re what’s called a “hidden immigrant,” people just think there’s something wrong with you. A hidden immigrant is someone ostensibly from a place but who hasn’t lived there much.
 
I left Canada for another five years and came back for university. One time, I casually mentioned something about the UN to another student.
 
“What’s the UN?” she asked.
 
Taken aback, I said, “You know, the United Nations?”
 
She’d never heard of it.
 
Or the way that some people think everyone who goes to Africa gets sick and dies. On the few occasions when I talk about my life in Benin, people’s eyes kind of glaze over. It makes me sad that so few people have a frame of reference for such a brilliant, complex continent.
 
The biggest thing is that people often think we must’ve been rich to live “abroad” or that my life was glamourous. But my mother was a teacher. One year, my mom worked at a call center. Sometimes when I recount some experience I’ve had, people respond as if I’m bragging. But it’s just my normal life to me, with good and bad, like anyone’s life. I do think I was lucky to experience so much of the world. It’s given me a broader perspective. I’m grateful for that, even if it makes it hard to settle down.
 
RC:  Your poem “Please Fill Out This Simple Form” captures the uncertainty and hesitation when required to name a specific “hometown.” Could you tell me more about this poem? Specifically, regarding the ambiguity surrounding the term “home” often felt by third culture kids.
 
ML: This is one of my favourite poems in that I think it’s the most successful at conveying what I was trying to convey. It was inspired by graduating from university. They announce all the graduates in the newspaper and you have to state your hometown on the form so they can say where you’re from. My sister put the town in Canada where we lived before we left for Benin. A few years later, I put the city where the university is. We talked about how hard it was to answer such a supposedly simple question.
 
When I’m outside of Canada, it’s easier, because I can just say I’m from Canada. When I’m in Canada, people want to know what part. I’ve lived across the country and feel connected to many places, but no single place is my home. I usually say, “I was born in PEI, but I grew up in a lot of places.” Usually people are just making conversation, so I don’t need to launch into the whole saga.
 
Every once in awhile, there’s that beautiful moment when someone says, “Me too! I moved a lot too!” and I know I’ve found a kindred spirit.
 
I don’t worry about home. I don’t have one. It’s other people that feel the need to tether me to a place-based identity.
 
RC:  I noticed the lines in your poem “Someday I Will Travel There” seem to capture the transformation shaped by growing up on the move: 

The coming and the going are
the stitches, interstitial
where I know the dance and how to say            
goodbye.

Could you expand on this poem, especially focusing on the themes of home, attachment, and belonging, while also sharing your personal feelings about saying goodbye?

ML: Wow, so much packed in here! Let’s see. I’m lucky to have met a few people along the way who have remained close friends. A lot of people are mobile now, so it’s not uncommon to leave people behind. Maybe it never has been. The history of humanity is a history of migration and mobility.
 
The internet can keep us connected, which is good and bad. Sometimes staying connected to people from our past can make it harder to be truly present in a physical locale. In Naomi Klein’s book Doppelganger, I learned about the Jewish idea of doikayt, or “hereness.” There’s a branch of thought within this diasporic community that home is where you live. Rather than seeking a homeland, there’s merit in making home wherever you are. I’m not Jewish, but that idea resonated with me. I’m trying to turn away somewhat from an online life and become more deeply integrated into wherever I am, to really live “here.” But honestly I find it hard, since I can always see another shiny place I could be.
 
One downside of growing up on the move is that there’s a lot of grief, often unrecognized. You have to say goodbye all the time. I met a refugee who had to choose which of her kids she could bring to Canada, because of federal quotas on how many children she could sponsor. The rest had to stay behind in a war zone.
 
I’ve never had to deal with that kind of horror show. But there’s still those threads being snipped. That snipping has made it easier for me to say goodbye, in the sense that I’m used to emotionally detaching myself. On the flipside, saying goodbye stirs up leftover sadness from the past. It becomes exhausting trying to build new connections in a new place, especially if I think they’re only short-term anyway. It’s hard not to be in a grass-is-greener mentality. If I can imagine myself on a hundred other life paths, it makes it hard to close those doors and just pick a lane.
 
RC:  I felt your poem “My Name Is” beautifully encapsulated the many layers of a simple name, its spelling, and its enduring presence in your life. Particularly, the lines: “has travelled with me all these years / unspeakable, unspellable in nearly every language / every nation, every school.”
 
And the lines: “for years I’d been spelling my middle name wrong. / It’s on my legal documents like a scar, / except my birth certificate, I guess.”

Could you elaborate on how this poem captures the complex emotions tied to identity for a third culture kid?

ML: The “third culture” is our shared experiences of moving from one country to another. There’s some confusion about what the term actually means. It’s not a combination of two or more cultures (say, the parents’ and the places you’ve lived). The third culture is its own thing; it’s that culture of mobility and international experiences. And of course, culture isn’t something static—in his ironically titled book Europe and the People Without History, anthropologist Eric Wolf describes the erroneous way that “cultures” are often spoken of like billiard balls: solid with hard edges that bounce off one another. The terms “culture” and “TCK” are a shorthand with limitations. Like all labels, it’s useful because it gives us a way to talk about a kind of experience. But culture is what we do, not something we are. What we do changes and therefore so does culture.

So I can only speak to my own experiences, not some abstract third culture experience. We are as varied a group as you can imagine, from diplomat kids with chauffeurs to the children of artists seeking out a landscape on the other side of the world. Not to mention those forced to move to escape poverty or violence. To be clear, Baggage Claim is for all the serial migrants, not just TCKs.

So that’s my lengthy preamble! This poem is less about being a TCK and more about the fact that I have a name that’s hard for people to say or spell. It’s pretty simple really. I play a game where I’m always curious what I’m going to get when I order coffee. My last name is Scottish. My sister and I have gotten everything from Lockheed to Longhead. It doesn’t bother me in the least; it’s just funny.

I do have a fascination with naming traditions, so that’s probably why I think about my own name. I feel detached from my own name, which might be related to the way I grew up or it might not be. When I write fiction, I find it hard to come up with character names and I love authors who can imbue their names with meaning without being heavy-handed.

RC:  My favourite poem was “To My Brothers and Sister,” with each line packed with thought, but the full meaning could be found in the undertones. Could you discuss this poem further, especially in the context of growing up with challenging family dynamics common to many, and the unique liminal space experienced by third culture kids? And has your experience shaped the way you perceive the meaning of family and long-term relationships?

ML: Most child migrants don’t have close ties with extended family. Even with video calls or whatever, it’s not the same as living nearby. I’m the youngest of four children, so they all left home before me. Which means they lived in a different country. At the end, it was just me and my mom for a few years.

I don’t know what family means. One effect of my childhood is that I question everything (I’ve definitely been accused of overthinking). It’s a kind of benign nihilism. It gives me a lot of freedom in my life choices but also means there are few guidelines. I’m not talking about morality, which I believe is innate to the vast majority of humans, although we may interpret it differently. We all have some sense of justice and kindness, etc. It might only include those we deem worthy of it, but it’s still there. I’m talking about things like how frequently you should be in touch with your family, or what a family even looks like. These days I live with my partner. It’s just the two of us. If I didn’t move so often, I would get a cat.

Long-term relationships are vital to a continuous sense of identity. That’s what I think. It’s important to be around people that care about you. Occasionally I encounter someone from my past who remembers something that happened in another life. It gives me a weird feeling that I can’t describe. Like my poem “Remember that time?” At a writing retreat I organized, I met a doctor who remembered Lariam and knew about its effects. It felt like a washed-out dream had suddenly reemerged in full colour. Shared references tell us who we are and where we’ve been.

RC: “Suspended,” the concluding poem of your collection, has the effect of making the reader feel as though they are in a liminal space. Can you share more about this poem and why you selected it as the final piece?
​
ML: I like “Suspended” because the title literally says it’s not really an ending, it’s just a resting point. Unsurprisingly, the motif of the airplane returns throughout this collection. Here it’s juxtaposed against the image of the droplet suspended on the edge of a leaf. I enjoyed this macro and micro imagery. Life is made up of those big transitions, like moving to another continent, as well as tiny moments, like looking at a leaf on a rainy day. Most of it is out of our hands anyway. We just keep going as best we can. No one knows much, and yet we can learn so much from one another. That’s why I used “we.” This poetry collection is about my life, but we all have moments, big and small, that shape us and compel us forward. And childhood is not the end of the story. We are always on our way to landing, but we never really land. No matter how stable a person’s life is, they experience upheaval. A blizzard that knocks out the power or the birth of a grandchild or the onset of a degenerative disease or a change in government that overturns your right to healthcare or marriage. We are each tiny in the face of all this. I don’t think my story is any more or less significant than anyone else’s. We are all droplets on the edge of a leaf.  So this poem brings us all together in this turbulent, joyful, scary experience we call life.
 
RC: How do you hope your work will resonate with other third culture kids?
 
ML: There’s a lovely quote from Nigerian-born poet Ijeoma Umebinyuo that circulates among TCKs: “so, here you are. too foreign for home, too foreign for here.” Some readers told me they cried because they finally felt seen. That’s the dream. To know there are others out there who get it. That you don’t always have to explain yourself, and perhaps most importantly, that we don’t have to hide who we are. We’re always a bit on the outside, but that doesn’t mean we have to be perpetual outsiders. We have strengths from our experiences, along with the scars. And we have each other.
 
RC: What understanding do you hope to share with readers who aren’t third culture kids through your poetry?
 
ML: I’ve spent a lot of my life only telling the bits that resonate with local people, especially in Canada where people identify me as an insider. I’ve always tried to find the shared ground. But that means hiding parts of who I am. If you don’t understand my experiences, that’s fine. We’ll have other common ground—maybe we both like swimming or we have a sensitivity to bright light or we love weird novels. There are lots of points of connection between any two individuals if we make an effort to find them.
 
With that in mind, Baggage Claim is dedicated to “everyone whose hometown is a suitcase.” If you relate to that in any way, the book is for you. For people who don’t already get it, I don’t have a particular message. It’s not a message book.

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​Marion Lougheed grew up in Canada, Benin, Belgium and Germany. She remains hard to locate, although sightings do occur.  She has contributed to Psychology Today, Writer's Digest, and others. Her writing has won or placed in several competitions and has been anthologized in print and published online. Marion runs Off Topic Publishing and ML Edits. Baggage Claim is available wherever books and ebooks are sold.

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Renee Cronley is a writer from Manitoba.  She studied psychology and English at Brandon University and nursing at Assiniboine Community College.  Having stepped away from nursing to prioritize her children, she has been channeling her knowledge and experiences into a poetry book about nursing burnout.  Renee can be found at https://www.reneecronley.com/