In addition to writing poetry, Darya was a photographer and filmmaker. She also studied modern dance through most of her life, and its influence is evident in all her work. The photo in the banner of this site is part of a series Darya did with the late artist Kit Currie as her model.

Below you’ll find Darya’s poem ‘What Can’t be Helped’ which features in Reciprocity, and her experimental animation full service automation which was screened in 1998 at the prestigious Ann Arbor Film Festival, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The film’s original sound was created by the Vancouver-based singer/songwriter Earle Peach.

What Can’t Be Helped

I never think about my stepfather
Hopped a plane as he was dying
Enough for me
the bloody forehead
and the surveillance camera
eye
when his mind decided to flood
in the living room.

I passed the paramedics on the way out.

Where was I
When I heard the news?
I don’t remember.
In another city by now,
looking at another wall.

He had been a season
of darkness,
his heart stamped by
boots into the black
soil of Europe

His death to me was like watching
a battleship from shore
sinking below the horizon
men jumping
but no sound.

I barely stopped to look.

I remember it now like
It flickered on the screen,
in an empty movie theatre.