Boxer versus poet

Winnipeg poet Kerry Ryan spars in her new poetry collection

The fighter: Poet Kerry Ryan took up boxing as a workout on her lunch breaks and documented her experiences in the ring in her new book of poetry, Vs. Kerry Ryan

Surprise fellow bookworms: you can learn from physical activity, too.

Winnipeg poet Kerry Ryan’s new collection of poems, Vs., released by Anvil Press, tells the story of her foray into the mentally and physically challenging world of boxing.

Ryan, who had never before been in any sort of physical altercation, never mind punched someone in the face, took up boxing out of convenience: it was the closest workout option available on her lunch break.

And surprisingly, she was pretty good at it and won her first real boxing match.

Ryan, a University of Winnipeg alumnus, started writing the poems in Vs. as a way to help her understand the new challenges of boxing.

“I could understand in theory how to throw a punch, but to actually be able to do it was a whole different thing,” she said. “I kind of fell back on one of my learning techniques, which is to write things out.”

Although she admits it’s a lot harder for her to punch someone in the face than to write a poem about wanting to, the battles Ryan had to fight while writing this collection were internal.

The biggest struggle was in questioning herself about why she, a quiet, gentle poet, would want to be a boxer.

“My perception of myself was that I like to read books and bake muffins, but then I also liked this boxing thing so I thought, ‘Does this say something about me? What does this mean?’” she said.

Though one might expect a collection of poems about a female boxer to make a few feminist jabs, Vs. takes Ryan’s experiences in the ring and makes them more about the universality of personal fights.

Vs. deals with the struggles everyone must go through in trying to make their mind and their body work together, a theme encapsulated in a poem called Dual/duel.

“It’s just these little snippets of ‘Brain does this, body does this.’ Somewhere in there it says what I was feeling the whole time,” explained Ryan.

Ryan thinks that her experiences in boxing expanded her horizons on what a poem can be written about.

Her first collection, The Sleeping Life, often explores themes of nature, dreams and birds, so the drastic change of topic in Vs. warranted a change in her approach as well.

As a poet, Ryan believes a boxer symbolizes economy.

“When I think of a boxer ... everything is just sheer potential, no waste of movement, of breath, of time,” she said.

Ryan used this lesson in economics and applied it to her poetry, keeping language direct, simple and focused, like a boxer.

“I started using capital ‘i’s which I had never done before,” she laughed.

Published in Volume 65, Number 19 of The Uniter (February 10, 2011)

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