The Coffee Guest   Bonnie Nish interviews ~ Ariadne Sawyer (The Dream Builder)   Ariadne Sawyer has always had two things in her life to one degree or another; one is poetry and the other is a deep commitment to helping others. Add to this a caring nature and you have the right mix for someone who is able to move mountains and build dreams brick by brick. These factors are exactly what was needed to turn the World Poetry Reading Series from a meeting of a few people once a month at Miles of Beans in Burnaby (with just the coffee guy as audience as Ariadne loves to tell the story) to an ever growing event hosted by the Vancouver Public Library, a 260 poet membership, a monthly newsletter which reaches 2,006 readers, a World Poetry Radio Show and a (possible) TV show on Channel M. One has to wonder if she ever sleeps. Ariadne, who is a clinical therapist, listens well. Each year on the anniversary of the World Poetry Reading Series she asks the members what they would like to see next. And each year she has complied. But it takes more than good listening to build the kind of things she has been able to accomplish. There is a lot of backbreaking work that most people never see. Phone calling, organizing, PR. You name it she does it. The result of all this work? She delivers dreams. Why this deep commitment? Ariadne’s love of poetry started early. At the age of one and a half her mother wrote down her first original poem. She still has it. “ My parents celebrated their anniversary every Thursday. They called this night two in one. After I was born and I was a bit older I joined them and it became known as three in one. After my brother was born it was four in one.” These candlelit dinners were filled with poems and music and after Ariadne and her brother came along they became wonderful evenings of concerts, painting and poetry recitals. Living in California, her parents who didn’t believe in the school system introduced her to Aristotle, Plato, Chaucer, Gandhi, and the Romantic poets. These great minds became her friends, her constant companions. As a child Ariadne also loved ballet. She danced for six hours a day until the age of fourteen when she was struck by polio and the doctors said she would never walk again. Her life changed dramatically. “I was supposed to solo the next week. I went to a concert of my mom’s friend who was a classical pianist and in town. I was feeling lousy. I went to bed and when I woke up there was no feeling on my right side. If it weren’t for the polio I may be teaching dance at this point of my life.” It took her 6-8 months to be able to walk again. She started to take three or four steps at a time. She had to re-teach herself and she had to do a lot of falling down in order to achieve it. While in high school Ariadne’s family moved to Costa Rica. She attended the University of Costa Rica where she studied pre-law and felt at home on the small campus. Later when she switched to UCLA to study anthropology, she experienced a shock when she found herself thrown into a huge impersonal environment. She missed the quaint world where she knew everyone. From here she moved to Berkeley to study Anthropology and Psychology. During these years she wrote sporadically. She fondly remembers a good friend at Berkeley, a bongo player, who would take her on the back of his vespa to various places around town to meet up with friends who were all drummers. “They would go to Laundromats or peoples houses, where ever they could find a space. I couldn’t talk so I would sit there and write poems and stories while they played these intricate pieces.” Another twist of fate took her away from academia for a quite a while. After her undergraduate years Ariadne moved to Alaska to work in a cannery, the main objective being to earn enough money to go to graduate school. With long hours and a boring job that she was able to complete quickly, she took to writing poems and songs. Then she met her husband and her graduate school would have to wait. They had a daughter but while she was pregnant with their son, her husband developed encephalitis. Ariadne reluctantly left for Costa Rica with her daughter. It would be a lot of years before she was able to get back to Alaska and a lot of years of making it on her own with her family. Ariadne. did everything from selling the first sour dough bread in Costa Rica to starting a newspaper and teaching Montessori kindergarten, all to keep her young family afloat. Then when her parents decided to move to Canada she followed. By this time her husband had moved onto a new life and so did Ariadne. She became a substitute teacher in the Vancouver area while finally getting her Masters in Clinical Therapy. She lived for three years in Victoria until her father took ill at which point she moved to Salt Spring Island to be closer to her parents. Eventually she moved back to Victoria so her daughter could go to college and she practiced privately between Salt Spring and Victoria. Ariadne was also running a show about the immune system. She would have people wear big foam masks depicting different parts of the immune system. At this time two things happened. In her business life she began giving workshops, teaching memory tools, giving bully proofing workshops and going to conferences around the US and Canada. She also met Alejandro Mujica-Olea. As fate would have it Alejandro Mujica-Olea, who would become Ariadne’s long time partner, was the face behind a mask of a cell in one of her shows. After becoming established together they moved to Vancouver. Alejandro, a well-known Chilean Canadian poet had been trying to get his poetry heard around town but most places wanted him to read in English. Because he had been beaten as a political prisoner in Chile he had a hard time mastering the English language. “The response was sometimes abusive when he read.” Ariadne remembers. “Chad Norman who was doing a program at Miles of Beans got Alejandro in and after that we thought that we would try for the World Poetry Café. Some of our first poets such as Nadeem Parmar and Anita Aguirre-Nieveras and Angie Ruben are still with us. And of course we have our first and longest fan Paul Hayes.” After three years at Miles of Beans the audiences got used to hearing other languages and World Poetry was ready to move on, finding a new home at El Cocal and Vasco Da Gama on Commercial Drive, then three years ago moved to the Vancouver Public Library. Here, along side Alejandro, they have built a wonderful space for poets of all nationalities to come and read and for audiences to fall into the magic of language no matter how it is spoken. With this great structure in place, the organization has just bloomed over the last few years. Ariadne maintains that the injustice which Alejandro experienced trying to get his poetry heard kept her going to build what the World Poetry has become. “It is unjust what immigrants are going through. It is justice to create a venue for this. The concept of bringing people together from different cultures, religions, all of them having common needs and concerns.” She pauses. “ It is so joyful for me to look out and see a miniature United Nations. We would love to build a center.” And we are sure that some day in the not to far off future she will. There is not much time for her to pursue her own poetry these days. But she is writing a series on Remarkable Woman. She also has her own company doing Peak Performance Training helping, as she does in all aspects of her life, people be the best they can be. Like The World Poetry she is building this business into a dynamic creation. Hopefully she will take sometime to get her 200 poems out, but in the meantime this one woman has helped to create a valuable place in Vancouver Society for so many people who need to be heard and all because she was willing to listen and act upon these peoples dreams. For more information on her on line coaching site and workshops, go to: www.ariadnescoaching.com Previous Interviews: Johnny Frem ~ Re: Bolts of Fiction Liars of Orpheus ~ Re: The Intentions of Orpheus Estelle Bogoch ~ Re: Crosswords for Gardeners Byron Sheardown ~ Re: Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine Home