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Write on: One man’s ‘unflagging commitment’ to the DTES’

Gilles Cyrenne stands up for the community, and its writers and storytellers

October 3, 2024

“Ever since I have known Gilles [Cyrenne], his unflagging commitment to the Downtown Eastside community has shone through. He has been the backbone of the DTES Writers’ Collective that meets weekly at the Carnegie Community Centre. (Thursdays from 1-3 p.m.). His persistence, determination, positive energy and enthusiasm kept the group going through the challenges of the pandemic.

“He convinced me to join him in running a Spontaneous Poetry Booth at Main and Hastings during the Heart of the City Festival two years in a row to generate poems on demand for interested passers-by. He’s a passionate advocate for the written word. He’s an inspiration to many — including me.”

 — Fiona Tinwei Lam

Vancouver’s Poet Laureate

These are kind words from one of Vancouver’s finest poets. Gilles Cyrenne, born in 1945, has built a life for himself in the Downtown Eastside literary community. He has self-published a book of poetry, Emerge, and has completed a Vancouver Manuscript Intensive Program, fine-tuning a book-length manuscript of poetry interspersed with short memoir pieces with Elee Kralji Gardener as his mentor. Kralji Gardener was the lead facilitator for the Thursdays Writing Collective for about 10 years. She helped Cyrenne find his voice and inspired him to reach another level. 

In 2014, at the Word on the Street Festival, d.n. simmers (Neil to his friends), recommended Thursdays Writing Collective to Cyrenne. The late simmers was a poet and a friend to poets. When Cyrenne told him that he was trying to transition out of a life as a carpenter/builder, simmers urged him to try Thursdays, which met in the third-floor classroom of the Carnegie Community Centre.

It gave Cyrenne a reason to take Thursdays off, away from carpentry. In short, order, he produced a series of reflections about life on the farm in southwestern Saskatchewan, told from the point of view of a child and a young man. These remembrances were nuanced, measured and powerful, showing the impetuous emotion of youth, combined with the carefully considered memories of a mature man. One of these, Bringing Home the Cows was selected for the tenth anniversary anthology of Thursdays Writing Collective. Here is a sample:

 Path  cows  freshet breath  nature blooms

                birds     the way he walks

                     feels like flight

                             like its all in him and him all of it

          A first meeting   awe   wonder   oneness

                                        path and dream

In the midst of all this unity

Comes birth of a separate identity

                 I am a little man

                doing a good job.

— From The Heart of it All: Ten years of Writing From Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside

I asked Cyrenne if sharing these thoughts was part of his new mission as he moved away from a career as a builder. 

“No,” he said. “But there must have been something inside me that needed to get out.”

In fact, he had an earlier interest in writing. Depression and addiction issues sidelined that interest, which led him to work in carpentry and building instead of pursuing a career in education, which he had started as a young man.

Sometime between 2015 and 2017, the Carnegie Community Centre Association (CCCA) asked Cyrenne to join the board of directors. This was another step in his transition — another day or two each week to move in a new direction. In 2019, Phoenix Winter retired as president of the CCCA and the board asked Cyrenne to step into the role. Since then, Cyrenne has said yes to four more one-year terms.

In 2017, Kralji Gardener stepped down as facilitator of Thursdays Writing Collective and Amber Dawn took over for one year. Cyrenne and three co-facilitators founded the Downtown Eastside Writers’ Collective. Within a year or so, Cyrenne and Winter were the last facilitators still standing.

As Lam notes above, Cyrenne became the backbone of the new organization. He has maintained a practice of using a guest facilitator for most sessions of DTES Writers’ Collective, keeping it fresh, and including folks who were there throughout the years of Thursdays Writing Collective.

Creation of an annual writers’ festival is another one of Cyrenne’s many accomplishments. The third annual Downtown Eastside Writers’ Festival took place last month.

These are all examples of the ways Cyrenne regularly stands up for, and mentors, local writers. Cyrenne was published in Megaphone’s Voices of the Street literary anthology in 2022 and 2023. And he was recently invited to join Megaphone’s peer newsroom, The Shift. We are going to be thrilled to see how he works as a peer reporter — when he can slot us into his otherwise busy schedule!