John La Greca reads from his recently published book, Homeless Memorial

(SHELBY THEVENOT / iNFOnews.ca)

VERNON - With a long grey beard, torn running shoes and a tattered old jacket far too warm to wear on a hot summer's day, John La Greca's appearance speaks of the life he's lived in the corners of Vernon most people do not see — or simply choose to ignore.

For more than four decades La Greca has crafted thousands of poems, chronicling his experiences in the parts of the city frequented by drug addicts, prostitutes and undesirables. Now 45 years after he scrawled some of his earliest poems, La Greca has published his first book, a collection of 120 poems titled, 'Homeless Memorial'.

"It's too damn bad it didn't happen early," he says when asked how it feels to be a published poet, then adds, "it's kind of anti-climatic."

And why wasn't La Greca published decades ago?

"Maybe I was meeting the wrong people, maybe I was asking the wrong questions," he says.

La Greca hasn't been mixing in the city's literary circles, he's been rubbing shoulders with the city's drug addicts and prostitutes. He is hazy about some aspects of life — crystal clear about others. Born in 1954, La Greca grew up in Vernon in a poor, blue-collar family and says he never fit in. He wasn't interested in sports like the other working-class kids but says the bookish, arty and intellectual types came from wealthy families and viewed him with suspicion.

He finished high school and went to Okanagan College. Over the years he continued his education with spats at the University of Guelph, UBC and McGill but never graduated with a degree. He held down three years of employment working as a labourer on the railway but hasn't had long-term employment since 1983.

His living arrangements paint a similar picture. He's lived in more places than he can remember and has never stayed anywhere for more than two years, "because of the neighbours [and] the landlords are screwy."

He currently calls a converted hotel room 'home', although talks of wanting to leave. He talks a lot about wanting to leave Vernon.

And where would he live if he could live anywhere in the world? The Orkney or Shetlands Islands off the north coast of Scotland, "where people are close to the elements." The one constant in his life is poetry and he's always thinking about poems.

"There's all this stuff going through my head and having this dialogue with myself," says La Greca. The late Vernon artist and intellectual Sveva Caetani was his first mentor. "I wasn't very serious about it until Sveva told me... [to] write."

He thinks that conversation happened in 1973. And over the last 45 years, La Greca has written thousands of poems.

"I used to sit down for a weekend and write 60 poems," he says. "I used to send them out but I found that futile, I didn't seem to fit in anywhere except for a few places."

But the rejection letters from publishers never stopped La Greca from writing.

"[I thought] I'm not getting anywhere with my life so I may as well write."

La Greca's big break came a few years ago when he met award-winning writer and poet Harold Rhenisch at the Vernon library.

"He came to me with a poem and he came to trust me and pretty soon I discovered he had two boxes full of poems," said Rhenisch.

A professional writer for more than 40 years, Rhenisch was enthralled with La Greca's poems.

"They're very well-crafted, they're very smart, they're very wry and ironic and self-observing and they speak very directly and honestly about a part of Okanagan life that is generally not publicly visible."

The then-writer in residence at Vernon Library, Rhenisch met with La Greca once or twice a week to work on putting together a book. Through Rhenisch's contacts and knowledge of the Canadian literary scene, Victoria-based Ekstasis Editions agreed to publish La Greca's work.

La Greca's poems focus largely on the city he's called home for most of his life.

"I liked Vernon; that was before I was 5 years old. I've always felt after that that I should get away from it," he says. "I think they've been progressively ruining it since I was five years old."

He describes Vernon as "cliquish" and "dysfunctional," calling the city a Potemkin village - a term used to describe something that's sole purpose is to deceive and to make people believe the situation is better than it is.

"The people I know are on welfare, or take two or three different jobs, people crammed three or four to an apartment. In the place I live in the people have drug and alcohol problems."

These social issues feature heavily in La Greca's poems but Rhenisch says some of the poems still a have an optimistic air to them, although La Greca doesn't agree. His poem mocking a job application cover letter is genuinely hilarious. He's written plenty of them. Rhenisch calls them "works of art." He also writes love poems largely influenced by a six and a half week relationship La Greca had with a woman called Brandy, a prostitute and "one-woman crime wave." There's also a poem about a pregnant woman he recently slept with.

Rhenisch's hope is that now La Greca is published, he'll be invited to writers festivals and be eligible for grant money. Homeless Memorial recently had its book launch and packed Vernon's Gallery Vertigo and sold all 60 copies of his book on offer.

And how did he find the event?

"It felt too closed in," he says. "I gave somebody a very funny autograph and they didn't even look at it."

And will being a published poet change the direction of his poems? He shrugs at the suggestion.

"Vernon for me is what I've written about."

And Rhenisch says there's nothing else like it.

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