Locate me
Sheree Fitch has been delighting readers young and old with her lyrical whimsy for decades. Silly, funny and outrageous, Toes in My Nose is the book that launched Sheree Fitch’s career as Canada’s premiere nonsense poet. From Popcorn Pete and Mabel Murple to Zelba Zinnamon, Toes in My Nose includes some of the best-loved poems and characters in Canadian children’s literature. On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary, Nimbus Publishing has released a special edition, illustrated by the award-winning Sydney Smith.
Sheree lives with her husband, Gilles, and together they divide their time between Dartmouth and River John. While Sheree’s uber fun and creative website (naturally) states she studies theology formally and informally, enjoys the outdoors, gym time, yoga and amateur gardening, and here’s a thing, or 21, that you may not know about the literary world’s beloved Sheree Fitch.
What do you consider your best quality?
Open-hearted perseverance.
A quality you desire in a partner:
Intrinsic kindness—a rare and sexy quality my husband has in abundance.
What do you appreciate most about your friends?
Tolerance towards my quirkiness and my disappearing acts—they take me as I am where I am if I am.
Your worst quality:
Forgetting that I must accept the fact that I must accept the things I cannot change.
Your favourite occupation:
Mine: Story-telling. Someone else’s: Astronaut.
What is your idea of happiness?
Chillin’ with small children outdoors.
Your idea of misery:
To get stuck in a state of rage or despair or self-pity.
If you could be someone else for a day who would it be?
Harriet Tubman.
Where you would most like to live?
Where I am. River John.
Favourite colour:
All of them. (Except beige.)
Favourite Animal:
My husband. Oops! After him, my dog Burnsie.
Your favourite poet(s):
So hard—so many! E.e. cummings, William Blake, Walter De La Mare, Fred Cogswell, Elizabeth Bishop, Mary Oliver, Sue Goyette.
Favourite author(s):
So many, many, many, here’s a random few: Alice Munro, Meg Wolitzer, Elizabeth Hay, Edith Pearlman, Alexander MacLeod, Flannery O’Connor, Joyce Carey, Alice Walker. New ones: David Bergen, Carrie Ann Snyder.
Your favourite fictional heroes:
Old: Gully Jimson in The Horse’s Mouth.
New: Hope Plett in the Age of Hope.
Your real life heroes:
Teachers, doctors/medical professionals, my mother and sister.
Your favourite food & drink:
Pesto pasta from home grown basil and a dry white wine.
What is your greatest fear?
The death of hope, which would mean, to me, the loss of soul and spirit.
A natural talent you’d like to possess:
Singing.
How you want to die:
Doing what I love and with pen in hand.
Your present state of mind:
After a sad few years, starting to feel reinvigorated—an eagerness and inquisitiveness returning.
Favourite or personal motto:
Kiss the joy as it flies (because it does).
This post is from the Holiday 2012 issue
