Garry Thomas Morse is the 2024-2025 Saskatoon Public Library Writer in Residence.
From old movies and Russian literature to the sights and sounds of downtown Prairie cities, Garry Thomas Morse aims to “capture everything” in his novels and poetry.
He is a two-time nominee for the Governor General’s Award for English-language poetry. His poetry collections include Discovery Passages, about the history of his Kwakwaka’wakw Indigenous ancestors, and Prairie Harbour, a poetic epic set in Regina.
StarPhoenix reporter Julia Peterson recently met Morse at the Frances Morrison Central Library for a Q&A about his work and his plans for this year’s residency:
Q: As you head into your term as the SPL’s Writer-in-Residence, what sorts of projects will you be working on? What areas or aspects of Saskatoon are intriguing you, or inspiring your writing?
A: The main project is a novel, and it’s about an aspiring scriptwriter. It’s a little bit inspired by my day-to-day wandering around downtown and that general area. But in his case, he writes these scripts — these fragments of scripts — that are in all sorts of different styles; a space movie, a heist, an art film, and they all in some way reflect his day-to-day life and where he is.
So it’s meta-fiction. There’s an extra layer of distortion of his reality, but you still see how his characters are forming from the people around him that he sees every day. That’s the main part of it.
Q: Is this a story you’ve been wanting to tell for a long time, and you just happen to be telling it here? Or did you want to come here specifically to tell this story?
A: The setting came first. I decided to move to Saskatoon first.
Q: What was it about Saskatoon that drew you in?
But then, I just felt that Saskatoon seemed like the place to be in the country right now. Everything was really nice here. So I’ve come running back to Saskatoon. I wanted to be here. I wanted to be in the setting.
Q: What kinds of classes and workshops do you plan on offering to writers in Saskatoon this year?
I enjoy a lot of these esoteric kinds of things, and I’m trying to bring these techniques and forms to people, so they can write in a way that’s not just spilling all over but can find some different ways of giving shape to their work.
Q: A few of your previous books are set — in whole, or in part — in Saskatchewan. What keeps drawing you back?
A: I lived in Regina for over a year, and then I moved to Winnipeg for quite a lot of years. But when I came back, even though I wasn’t here that long, it felt like a homecoming here — in Saskatoon, as well as Regina.
Regina and Saskatoon and Winnipeg are all very different, so one thing I’m writing about is this weird cultural shift between the places. Even though people might think they’re all the same, the people who live here behave very differently in each place.
And I find capturing all this stuff really fun, in a decadent kind of way. When I say ‘decadent,’ it’s a bit of frivolity and a bit of excess. I’m always trying to capture everything, even though it’s impossible. I want to jam-pack as much stuff as possible and wrap it in a taco, to keep everything bursting with flavour and texture.
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