Paulette Dube has no difficulty expressing herself, in person, or on the page. The Jasper teacher and writer has recently returned from Montreal, where she was presented with a CBC Literary Award for her collection of poetry “First Mountain.”

“You never think it’s going to happen to you,” Dube says of the honour. “This is pretty cool.”

The prize winners were selected from a pool of more than 5,000 entries from around the globe.

“Anybody who gets CBC radio is eligible, so it’s national and international,” Dube says.

The 30 short poems that make up “First Mountain” are a series of observations collected and created by Dube after daily walks in and around Jasper.

“It’s broken up into steps, step one, step two, step three all the way to thirty and it’s all about walking every day in the mountains, what do you see, what is the sky like, what animals are like,” she says. “Because I do walk every day then that was part of the whole experience, getting out every day and then coming back and writing about it.”

Poetry is just one form that Dube’s writing has taken.

“I started in university doing creative writing courses, and although I really like writing prose and essays, things like that, poetry for me is so immediate. 

Because of time constraints and stuff like that, I think it suits my life.”

Dube has been living in Jasper for 13 years, but is just starting to become comfortable writing about the mountains.

“It feels kind of weird to be writing about the mountains because it doesn’t feel like I’ve been here long enough and you have to kind of earn your way. But what I did was make a smaller, more personal loop rather than the whole Rocky Mountains,” she says. As well as being particularly conscious of her environment, Dube was careful to separate herself from her work as much as possible.

“I learned after two or three years how to step really away from everything I write. So these poems are probably the most objective things I’ve ever written,” she says, admitting that this comes as a bit of a surprise, given the personal nature of poetry as a literary form. 

“That’s one of the things that I was anxious to see if it worked or not, and that’s one of the reasons that I sent them to the CBC,” Dube says. “I thought if I’m going to send it out I might as well send it to the top.”

Now, Dube is looking for a willing publisher for “First Mountain.” That’s something that’s not very easy to find, she acknowledges.

“Sometimes it’s very very hard. The more that you’re published, the easier it gets,” she says.

Dube has published a novel, “Talon” which was well received when it was released in 2003.  

“With the novel I had absolutely no idea whether anyone would take it, if it was any good. Then in three days I got these three most lovely letters, so it just depends. It’s just like Russian Roulette.”

“Talon” tells the story of a family growing up in a small francophone community in Alberta, mirroring Dube’s own upbringing in the village of Legal. 

“I guess when you’re growing up in a small French-Canadian town in Alberta that’s fairly odd anyway. We were pretty insular, I mean, we were raised by Grey Nuns, we only spoke French and it was like a little Quebec,” she says. 

The women central to the story have the ability to heal through prayer and traditional remedies, and this, too, was typical in Dube’s own experience.

“I thought everybody knew somebody who could heal or fix bones, because there weren’t a lot of doctors around. When I was in university I started to do a little research ... so I did a lot of interviews in about three different towns about people who had had experience with healers and then I interviewed the healers themselves,” she recalls. “I found it fascinating yet very commonplace; I was really comfortable with that kind of stuff. It wasn’t weird.”

With her own life and this additional research in hand, Dube set about putting pen to paper.

“It took a really long time to get the words together to be able to present it that way,” she says. “I had about a 300 page poetry manuscript that I brought to a writer’s retreat in Saskatchewan one summer and the guy who was helping me out said “I don’t think it’s poetry.” There’s a thread and you have to find that and start pulling. Two years later there was a novel. It was not easy, you know people who say you just write it up, send it out boom done, no. Forty years man, it takes forty years to write a novel.”

Dube is currently working on a second novel, but she doesn’t find the writing process any easier this time around.

“There’s another one that’s been bugging me for about two years now. I think what I learned from writing a novel is that you write one novel at a time. Talon was written, it’s done ... but this next one, there’s no formula, I have to learn how to write a novel all over again,” she says. “The whole thing is just laid out and it’s like a movie almost, like a script, and I can see the characters, but its the getting through to that on the page so that other people can see it too.”

Whether it’s walking in the mountains or recalling a childhood on the outskirts of Edmonton, Dube confirms that it’s crucial to write what you know.

“Absolutely, and that’s something I tell students all the time. Even if it’s fiction- there still has to be that grain of truth. You can write anything, even if your character is a terrible, horrible monster, a serial killer, if there’s even one little thing that people can relate to, then your story is going to work. If they’re just stereotypes, then nobody cares.”

Dube is teaching Grade 8 humanities this year and incorporates creative writing as often as she can into her lesson plans. The education system should do more to provide opportunities for students to explore this side of language and learning, she says.

“I think that a lot of it is the system. A huge part of our system demands that we are numerically accountable, so quantity is very important. Is that always the most important thing? No, I don’t think so. I think that they forget that if a kid can write one incredible story or one poem, that sort of saves their faith; whether they can write a provincial exam is two totally different types of writing.”

While her mornings are spent at school, Dube has the afternoons to focus on her writing. She’s consistently surprised by what comes out as she works on her latest project.

“There was a part that I was writing for the novel I’m working on where two characters were talking and the one pulls out a box. Then I had to stop and make supper and stuff and I was telling my husband and my son “I’m so excited, they found a box,” and my husband goes “What’s in it,” and I said “I don’t know,” I mean you’re writing the story, you get to decide,” she says after a hearty laugh.

“But it’s like that, you never know what you’re going to find the next day. It’s not scripted, there’s no formula. It’s just so much fun.”