Q&A: Art and social activism: An Interview with Bud Osborn: CrossCurrents Spring 2003
CrossCurrents
Bud Osborn is a well known West Coast poet, musician and teacher who lives and works in Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside.
A long-time political activist, who once collected 26,000 votes in a run for Vancouver city council, Osborn has been a driving
force behind various anti-poverty and harm reduction organizations that today serve residents of Canada's poorest neighbourhood.
After a long struggle with heroin addiction and alcohol dependency, Osborn has been free from substance use for 10 years.
His intense, graphic poetry exposes the pain and despair of poverty, homelessness and addiction. But dark and raw as his poetry
is, it promotes the need to create an inclusive community and pays tribute to the amazing resilience of the human spirit.
Osborn has published several poetry books, including Keys to Kingdoms, which won him the 1999 City of Vancouver Book Award.
What forces shaped your creative life?
I had a very unstable, violent childhood. My mother had a lifelong struggle with alcohol and mental illness, and my father,
who was also a heavy drinker, committed suicide in jail when I was three years old. My mother married five times and our economic
circumstances depended on the men she lived with. By high school, I'd made three suicide attempts. I guess you could say it
was a pretty loud cry for help when, as a kid, I overdosed on aspirin and had to have my stomach pumped. But nobody was listening.
What led you to become a poet?
One of my few safe relationships as a child was with my grandmother, who read nursery rhymes to me. That ended when my aunt
shot my grandmother and herself. But books were always part of my childhood. My mother kept my father's large book collection,
and I was desperate to learn how to read so I could go through those books and try to find out who my father was. You could
say I first really discovered poetry in a record store when I was drawn to an album cover depicting a scene of desolation
in the Chicago ghetto. When I first heard Junior Wells singing: "Baby, you've got to help me, I can't do it by myself," I
was blown away. It was the first line of poetry that really spoke to me. I think that's when I found my vocation. I wanted
to reach people with my words and experiences, to write poems that might help someone else survive.
What is your poetry about? What message does it send?
I'm trying to save lives by giving a voice to the voiceless. I'm also trying to put humanity back into a world that has become
extremely dehumanized. Very early in my life, I was completely written off by family, counselors, police, judges and psychologists
who said I wouldn't make it, and I believed them. My message is one of hope. I'm living proof that even when life looks horrible
beyond belief, situations and people can change. To find hope, you have to stay alive and connect with some kind of community.
You were addicted to heroin for more than 20 years. How did that lifestyle affect your creativity?
In the beginning, heroin seemed like the perfect solution. I could sleep and didn't think about suicide every day. Heroin
blocked out my pain. But writing was always difficult: you need money for paper, pens, envelopes and postage stamps - not
easy when you're a homeless junkie. For many years, poetry seemed to explode out of me, but I sometimes wondered what I was
talking about. Still, writing poetry was the only thing I could do. When I did get straight and sober for five years in the
1970s, I wrote sections of poems and haiku that were close to what I hoped to achieve.
When did you realize your poetry could make a difference in people's lives?
On a reading tour of northern British Columbia, I read my poem "When I was 15," which described one of my early suicide attempts.
After the reading, a young girl, who had just come out of hospital after taking a massive overdose of aspirin, approached
me. She identified with the poem because someone had shared her sense of hopelessness about life'. We talked for some time,
and when she went home that night, she was thinking of living, not dying. That was a significant experience.
What prompted you to publicly advocate for social change?
My relatives were politically active as coal miners in Illinois, where my mother was born. We have a history of being stubborn
and tenacious, and standing with the oppressed. As a poet, I also believe I'm part of a larger community. I've always tried
to put a human face on people who come from marginalized and impoverished circumstances because I don't want them to be scapegoated
or written off like I was. We need to increase awareness of the pain that people experience through such experiences as neighbourhood
gentrification and homelessness, mental illness, drug addiction, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. Whenever possible, I'll read my
poems in bars, homeless shelters and out on the streets because those audiences are the critics I care most about.
How did your social activism in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside begin?
I knew the Downtown Eastside didn't have the resources to stand and strengthen itself on its own. In the 1990s, I was a part
of a group that used various art forms to connect with more affluent neighbourhoods. We also held what would be the first
of numerous political demonstrations in the Downtown Eastside, such as "detox not jail," as well as the first Killing Fields
event in 2000, which commemorated the lives lost due to overdose in the Downtown Eastside. I helped form several community
organizations, such as the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, which gives drug users a voice in the community, and From Grief To Action, a support group for parents of addicted youth outside the Downtown Eastside.
Not long afterwards, the provincial government appointed me to the Vancouver/Richmond Health Board, which was an unusual place
to find a poet. My reputation as a poet and activist gave me a big opportunity to raise awareness of the serious health issues
facing my community. In 1990, I ran for council and later served on the mayor's task force to find a solution to Vancouver's
drug problems. I think I achieved quite a lot for a bum from the gutter.
Two years ago, you withdrew from the political stage. Why?
After eight intensive years of community activism, I fell off a cliff emotionally. It was time to stop and look after myself.
I never really expected to be alive at this stage. While I still go through roller coasters of emotion, I do care about my
life and the lives of others. Through my poetry I'll continue to work on behalf of people in my community who are powerless
and voiceless.
What do residents of the Downtown Eastside think about your work?
I think they like it a lot. I still get asked to write poems for special events from memorial services to groundbreaking ceremonies
for social housing. I feel very honoured that my community appreciates what I do. Apparently, my poetry books get stolen from
the library all the time. That's a huge compliment.
Vicki O'Brien
Centre for Addiction
