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A short interview with Sachiko Murakami, Jacket2
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Jordan Abel, Un/inhabited
uninhabited
Changing horses frequently, one day out I had left Red River in my rear, but before me lay an country, unless I veered from my course and went through the Chickasaw Nation. Out toward Bear Canyon, where the land to the north rose brokenly to the mountains, Luck found the bleak stretches of which he had dreamed that night on the observation platform of a train speeding through the night in North Dakota,—a great white wilderness unsheltered by friendly forests, save by wild things that moved stealthily across the windswept ridges. This done, they would lead the ship to an part of the shore, beach her, and scatter over the mainland, each with his share of the booty. How lonely I felt, in that vast bush! Except for a very few places on the Ouleout, and the Iroquois towns, the region was . This was no country for people to livein, and so far as she could see it was indeed . But for the lazy columns of blue smoke curling up from the pinyons the place would have seemed . It appeared to be a dry, forest. In the vivid sunlight and perfect silence, it had a new, look, s if the carpenters and painters had just left it. it was in vain that those on board made remonstrances and entreaties, and represented the horrors of abandoning men upon a sterile and island; the sturdy captain was inflexible. The herbage is parched and withered; the brooks and streams are dried up; the buffalo, the elk and the deer have wandered to distant parts, keeping within the verge of expiring verdure, and leaving behind them a vast solitude, seemed by ravines, the beds of former torrents, but now serving only to tantalize and increase the thirst of the traveller. It kept on its course through a vast wilderness of silent and apparently mountains, without a savage wigwam upon its banks, or bark upon its waters. They were at a loss what route to take, and how far they were from the ultimate place of their destination, nor could they meet in these wilds with any human being to give them information. They forded Butte Creek, and, crossing the well-travelled trail which follows down to Drybone, turned their faces toward the country that began immediately, as the ocean begins off a sandy shore.
Jordan Abel’s Un/inhabited (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks/Project Space Press, 2014) continues the reclamation project begun through his first book, The Place of Scraps (Talonbooks, 2013). Whereas The Place of Scraps was constructed as a collection of fragments, erasures, scraps, texts, visuals and concrete poems constructed out of Canadian ethnographer and folklorist Marius Barbeau’s (1883-1969) canonical text, Totem Poles, Un/inhabited is constructed out of the texts of mass market works of “frontier” fiction. As Kathleen Ritter writes in her essay “Ctrl-F: Reterritorializing the Canon,” included at the back of the book: “A browse through the collection shows that most of these novels were written around the turn of the last century and, with titles like The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories, Gunman’s Reckoning, The Last of the Plainsmen, Way of the Lawlessand The Untamed, they are stereotypical of the romanticism of the frontier, the height of North American colonialism and a time when the indigenous population was being dispossessed of their lands and driven down to their lowest numbers in history as a direct result of European conflict, warfare and settlement.” The back cover describes the project:
Abel constructed the book’s source text by compiling ninety-one complete western novels found on the website Project Gutenberg, an online archive of public domain works. Using his word processor’s Ctrl-F function, he searched the document in its totality for words that relate to the political and social aspects of land, territory and ownership. Each search query represents a study in context (How was this word deployed? What surrounded it? What is left over once that word is removed?) that accumulates toward a representation of the public domain as a discoverable and inhabitable body of land.
There is something quite remarkable in the way that Abel, a Nisga’a writer from Vancouver, utilizes work that now exists in the public domain to reclaim and critique a representative and cultural space, using “conceptual writing [that] engages with the representation of Indigenous peoples in Anthropology through the technique of erasure.” Un/inhabited opens with erasure of specific words (uninhabited, settler, extracted, territory, indianized, pioneer, treaty, frontier, inhabited) before shifting to an erasure that shows the text almost as a cartographic map, before stripping the erasure down entirely, comparable to a depleting printer ink or photocopy toner cartridge. The only way these texts hold together is in the ways in which Abel allows them to degrade, before collapsing completely in on themselves. In an interview forthcoming at Touch the Donkey, he talks a bit about the compositional process of Un/inhabited:
After I finished writing Un/inhabited, there was a lot of material that essentially fell to the cutting room floor. I had been writing excessively, and knew that there would have to be substantial cuts for the project to be thematically coherent. As a result, there were many threads that had to be removed entirely. Some of those threads (minority, oil, afeared, etc.) were closely related to main conceptual project, but, for one reason or another, didn’t fit perfectly. Those threads were probably the most difficult to cut. Other threads (maps, speakers, urgency, etc.) were interesting explorations and worked individually, but were easy to separate from the main project. However, as the project continued, there were several threads that emerged that had coherent and discrete themes that weren’t dependent on the pieces in Un/inhabited. One of those threads explored the deployment of literary terms, and, surprisingly, seemed to be supported by the source text. That thread included many pieces: allegory, allusion, connotation, denouement, dialogue, flash back, hyperbole, identity, metaphor, motif, narrative, personification, simile, symbol, and theme.
To be honest, after I cut those pieces, I wasn’t really sure what to do with them. The pieces in Un/inhabited (settler, territory, frontier, etc.) worked partially because they explored themes of indigeneity, land use and ownership. Those pieces were actively working towards the destabilization of the colonial architecture of the western genre. But what were these other pieces doing? What did an exploration of the context surrounding the deployment of the word “allusion” accomplish?
I think, if I were to guess at an answer to my own question, that the thread of literary terms engages with an aspect of the western genre that is, at the very least, unusual. You don’t often think about the western genre being rich with metaphors or allusions or symbols, and, perhaps, it isn’t. But those words are there. Those words are doing something that we don’t normally associate with the traditional foundations of literary studies. There is an exploration here that, I think, subverts the tendencies of literary analysis by compressing and recontextualizing common analytic diction.
Right now, these pieces are not part of a separate project. But they easily could be. I think there’s more there to dig through. Other approaches that could be taken.
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Boca Raton: trilogy,
Our third annual Boca Raton visit, at father-in-law’s condo. We spent a week in sunny Florida, arriving in April instead of our usual February [see last year’s reports parts one and two, and the year prior here, as well as a link to the recent chapbook that appeared with poems composed during that first visit], given some of Christine’s recent work-stuffs. Easter in Florida was interesting, although it flummoxed some of the plans that mother-in-law and dear sister might have had for us (Easter lunch/dinner), heading here on the immediate heels of Washington D.C. [see that report here]. Given that Washington was a work-trip, we of course had to return home before flying out again the following day. By the time we arrived on the Florida ground, I was so done with airplanes.
Upon arriving, we spent a few days with father-in-law and his wife, Teri, doing things such as going to lunch on the beach, going to the beach, and simply lounging about. We even found a park with a carousel [a park that, once Rose is a bit bigger, I imagine we’ll be spending plenty more time at]. Rose enjoyed the carousel and the running, the running, the running. She marvelled at the other children, as she does (somewhat confused and intrigued by them). And the running.
I poked at some poems, read some of the books [top photo: Susan Howe's Frame Structures: Early Poems 1974-1979] picked up on our Washington trip (among others), and generally tried not to move around too much. Worn out after an extended period of intense work (see my thirty Jacket2 commentaries, for example) and rather intense few days in Washington (again, see here). Once home, I plan to hit the ground running on poems and fiction and possibly some other schemes, both new and old, but for now, I am deliberately moving at a rather slow speed.
I move through Susan Howe, and Damian Rogers' second poetry collection. I had the wee lass colour upon a variety of postcards with crayon, to send to folk back home. Including a couple to big sister Kate.
We spent time on the beach. Rose, with her beach toys. Me, with my book(s).
Over the past week-plus, Rose was completely thrown off her nap and sleep schedule. Had a meltdown through the Ottawa airport coming here (which really never happens). Full-blown meltdown. At least they shoved us through security super-fast (an unexpected benefit, I suppose). Washington was what it was, so attempting to get her at least closer to her proper schedule while we’re down here. Hoping. Nearing the end of the week, we were starting to return to almost-normal. A couple of wee meltdowns. Hoping we can calm her within a day or so of home.
And then, of course, on Tuesday, we drove down into the bowels of Disneything.
I could have lived without Disneything, and had to be convinced. We spent the entire day there on Wednesday, with the morning at the Magic Kingdom and the afternoon into the evening at Epcot, and I enjoyed it far more than expected. Rose, of course, loved it; she eventually managed to sleep in her stroller, but didn't really let us sit down at all. At all. After ten hours of walking and wandering, rides, feeling overloaded by park and/or attempts to wander through gift shops, we were bone-tired. Sore upon sore.
Rose, who slept during the period between Magic Kingdom and Epcot.
The "Small World" ride was rather iconic, admittedly (I'm one of those who believes it was all 'better before Walt died,' and have good associations with some of the older films, productions, etcetera). I may be aware of some of the newer characters, but could really care less.
The gift shop overwhelmed. Every time I entered one, I felt as though I was beginning to shut down. Too much, too much, too much.
The gift shop overwhelmed. Every time I entered one, I felt as though I was beginning to shut down. Too much, too much, too much.
Don Quixote in the "Small World" ride, tilting. Ever tilting.
I saw Quixote references in Washington the week prior, also. Is this a push that I should be working to re-enter that novel-in-progress? Finally?
I admired the efficiencies of the Disney landscape. The workmanship and the cleanliness. They must employ a million billion people.
I felt overwhelmed by the range and the scope of their reach. Too much, too much. An American version of the city-state, much like the Vatican. Too much.
We wandered the park and rode the monorail (singing, "monorail. monorail. monorail..."). We ignored the characters, given that Rose doesn't know who any of them are anyway. She was happy to run, and sit on the occasional ride. She enjoyed eating.
She enjoyed looking at the fish in the "Finding Nemo" ride.
She enjoyed running. Running. Running.
And in the German Pavillion, where Christine had booked us dinner: misreading the menu and discovering we'd ordered MASSIVE MAGICAL BEERS. The food was incredible, as was the space and the music. I could have ignored the rest, and simply spent the day there.
Back, to hotel: where we almost immediately crashed. Removed footwear as in a cartoon, peeling back layers like a banana, hot steam rising from our sore, red toes and feet. Wooo-ooooo-ooooo-ooooshhhh.
Three-plus hour drive each way from the condo. Two nights. Rose and Christine some time in the kid-pool before we got into the car. Aiming the drive each way to her afternoon nap (which mostly worked).
Our final two days: as little as possible. Sleeping, occasional walks, quietly existing in the condo, aiming to get the wee babe back to some kind of schedule. Slow,
slow, so very slow.
And to Ottawa: to hit the ground running, perhaps. See about re-entering some of those fiction projects...
slow, so very slow.
And to Ottawa: to hit the ground running, perhaps. See about re-entering some of those fiction projects...
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12 or 20 (second series) questions with Amber McMillan
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1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Having made a book at all means that what I wrote will make it into the hands of someone other than me, and that makes me feel grateful. My most recent stab at things is a collection of short fiction that I haven't finished. I don't know how it's different yet because it has a lot of the same feelings as a book of poems. I know it is different, but I can't figure how just yet.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I'm still thinking about the distinctions between those genres and what they might mean, but put simply, poetry generally comes in smaller, more manageable sizes, and for that reason, was a good starting point for me. By contrast, a novel is a pretty daunting undertaking to my mind. I don't know how people write them, actually. It's very impressive to me that they do.
On a more personal level, the thought has crossed my mind that I prefer to write poetry because I don't have the creative or intellectual stamina to commit to anything longer, and that this might point to a character flaw in me that is worth considering.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
The "project" and the writing can come quickly. The slow parts are the periods where doubt comes in and I'm forced to turn over, defend, and sometimes toss out things that can't be pushed through to the other side for any number of reasons. But that's not really about writing; that process happens in all kinds of different areas in a person's life.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
The beginning is usually a line or a few particular words that I then try to bed into some coherent context. I haven't yet been able to begin a poem with the first word or first line and then write it to the end. I don't think I even want to do that. And I usually write a bigger poem then what I end up with. I write a bunch and then cut out a bunch and then it's done. I can't speak much more on the subject because I've only written one book and I'm not 100% sure how that actually happened.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I realized early that I would never make a good criminal because I'm a person that gets very nervous and clumsy when I feel there are too many eyes on me for any reason, like a public reading or a noon-hour bank robbery, for example.
I hope reading in public gets easier for me, and with that, comes with more pleasure than it does now, but I'm not convinced it ever will. On the other hand, I've noticed that there are folks that seem really comfortable reading in public and what they give is so confident and full that I can't help enjoying the experience of watching. These are people with a lot of practice and some natural talent for humour and sincerity, and that is something to see.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Maybe the current questions are something like: What's important to say? What's worth putting out there? Why? Then what?
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
It's just one way to talk about things. One way among lots and lots of ways.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I think it's essential because everyone needs an editor, but I also think it can be difficult. But so what. Difficult is good too.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
For all its simplicity, "People will always do what they want to do" has turned out to be a very complicated truth, and has given me understanding into many of my life's frustrations. That one's from my mum.
Also, "Just be a nice person." - The Flaming Lips
10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I don't have a routine. A typical day is about getting my kid ready for school, going to and from work, grocery shopping, sweeping, feeding the cats, paying bills, and sourcing out ways to get time to myself.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Alcohol, insomnia, vulnerability, quiet and boredom.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Wood stain and varnish. My Opa was a carpenter and had a furniture store in London, ON where he built chairs, tables, etc. He also used the store to show off the unfinished Mennonite furniture he would drive for hours to pick up in his truck. My cousins and I spent a lot of our weekend and after school hours in the furniture store because it was a family-run business and all of our parents worked there. Needless to say, Opa's workshop at the back of the store, the store itself, and the inside of his truck, all smelled like wood shavings, wood stain, and varnish. Even years later, when I no longer went to that store anymore, those smells were always around: on my family's clothes, in the garage, in Opa's second or third workshop that he kept in my mum's backyard. Just all my life.
13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
My ordinary influence is to address my own troubles by writing them out and trying to solve some menacing, nagging question. So, in that way, nature or music or science can be rigged up to serve any manner of metaphor to achieve that solution. Or to appear to solve. Or to come close to solving.
David W. McFadden also said, "Neither apologize nor forgive," which helps too.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I'm probably in the minority here, but reading criticism at university was the single most important reading I've done. I'm talking about scholarly essays by hardcore academics and theorists. Then later as an instructor, re-reading and discussing that criticism with my students doubled its importance. That kind of reading taught me how to organize my thinking in ways I have leaned on ever since.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I just really want to get over my fear of dogs. It's so inconvenient and makes me feel like such a weirdo.
16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Since I was a teenager, I wanted to be a doctor. I didn't have the grades though and so my parents encouraged me to go to art school.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I tried a couple of other things first like being in bands and studying drawing in college. These decisions brought good things and I don't regret them, but there's something unobtrusive and civil about writing poems that I couldn't achieve in my earlier attempts at art.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
So, I live with a man who had written a book before I met him. This book contained a life story close to his own. When it was published, I didn't read it and then I didn't read it for a year after it was published. The next year I read it and it was the last great book I read; Nathaniel G. Moore's Savage 1986-2011, which has since won the ReLit Award in the category of fiction, so I guess I'm not the only one who thought it was great.
19 - What are you currently working on?
A collection of stories about living on Protection Island, BC where I've just spent a year. This looks like non-fiction/fiction/poetry and it's hard to do. I've had to face and tread through a lot of questions about the ethics, integrity, goals for, and hidden motivations of having chosen to write this.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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12 or 20 (second series) questions with Shannon Webb-Campbell
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Still No Word just came out yesterday, so it’s hard to say how it’s changed my life. It feels like encountering something extraordinary and peculiar, like swimming backwards inside of a whale.
These past few weeks leading up to the release, I was met with an unexpected storm of anxiety. I oscillated from wanting to throw up, to collecting rocks to fill my pockets for my farewell walk into the cold sea. I searched for escape routes, faraway places where I could reinvent, change name, become another. I wanted to crawl out of my skin, drink myself blind.
Apparently, this is all normal behavior of first timers, typical of vulnerability even. The book has been unleashed into the world, and I am still here. Now I’m more worried about the whale.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I began as a poet. I’ll die as a poet.
Though, I’ve previously published several creative non-fiction pieces, letters, poems and fictions in anthologies, including: Where The Nights Are Twice As Long: Love Letters of Canadian Poets (Goose Lane 2015), Out Proud: Stories of Courage, Pride, and Social Justice (Breakwater Books 2014), MESS: The Hospital Anthology (Tightrope Books 2014), She’s Shameless Women Write About Growing Up, Rocking Out and Fighting Back (Tightrope Books 2009) and GULCH: An Assemblage of Poetry and Prose (Tightrope Books 2009).
My next piece is a non-fiction story of rape and isolation set in Malta published in This Place A Stranger: Canadian Women Travelling Alone (Caitlin Press 2015).
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I start by circling myself. I stare out the window. I question my fate. I discourage myself before I even begin. And these are good days.
Often words and lines come when I’m not thinking about writing. This morning, shuffling around like an out of shape ballerina on Halifax’s iced-laced sidewalks, a stanza came. I can be at yoga, making lunch, or driving down the highway. Poetry has its own time clock; it never punches in or out.
Many lines come after crawling into bed, the time we’re most adrift, somewhere between worlds. Rarely do I cough up a poem. They all start unexpectedly. Most go through several drafts, weather systems, moods, and typically begin or end around the first libation of the day.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
Poems happen. My job is to keep the channel open, to listen, witness, and document. I didn’t know the poems in Still No Word would ever become a book; they were orphans who needed a home.
I’m thankful Breakwater Books gave my poems a roof over their heads, and food in their bellies. These poems belong to Newfoundland. I suspect the next book will be written with a different intention, from another vantage point.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Astrologically, I embody Gemini, so duplicity is a constant state. I crave solitude and wildness. Poetry befits this calling. I enjoy the tucked-in nature of my work, spending hours, days, seasons playing with words, but I struggle with the solitary aspect. Many days, it goes against my nature.
Readings are a wonderful excuse for poets to gather, honour craft and community. We need to hear one another’s voices in order to find our own. We need an excuse to get outside ourselves, and witness one another’s tragedies and belly laughs. We need our tribe.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I live my life close to the bone, sucking on its marrow. Sometimes I’m on the brink, other times looking over. All I know, I’m a seeker. Poetry is both call and answer. It saves my life over and over.
Many of my questions reel around identity, ancestry, belonging, that constant nagging notion of home, rivers of grief, fragments of abuse, sexuality, and longing. I think we’re all poems.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Writers offer cardinal direction, we are the compass of a culture. Some of us are mythmakers, mapmakers, others schemers. Call us documentarians, or even translators, but we’re all witnesses here in the universe’s grand symphony.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I love the editorial process. Susan Musgrave catcalled me, created a safe space both dangerous enough for poetry and an incubator for a closeted poet. My editor James Langer at Breakwater was rough, yet insightful. He wanted more of a fight, but we both got our way in the end.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it,” Martha Graham to Agnes De Mille.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
All forms inform another.
Last year, as Canadian Women In Literary Arts critic-in-residence 2014, I was given a platform to examine how poetry informs criticism, and how criticism informs poetry.
I wrote several book reviews, examining works from Amber Dawn’s How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir (Arsenal Pulp) to Sylvia D. Hamilton’s I Alone Escaped To Tell You (Gaspereau Press). I labored over critical essays, which led to attending the Scotiabank Giller Prize Gala in Toronto, and published An Incomplete Manifesto for CWILA. Criticism relies on analysis, close reading, and creative nerve. So does poetry.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I wish there were hours allotted, strict routines, and diligent follow through. But I’m more of a wildcard. Mostly, I write when I force myself to. Most days begin with coffee, a notebook, and eventually, I open my computer.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I let go, and stop forcing myself. In stepping away from the words, I return to the living. Eventually, I exhaust myself with life’s carousel, and wash ashore, find myself back on land, looking out to sea, ready to write.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Cigarette smoke on fresh laundry (the smell of my grandmother).
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Atlantic Canada is instrumental in my work, whether it’s the harsh, rugged coastlines, or the vast, merciless ocean. Everything is hardship and endurance, the essentials. It’s my ancestral lands. I often threaten to move away due to weather extremes, yet never stray long enough to lose my place.
Though, to keep with McFadden’s insight, several poems in my book have kinfolk poems, including “Last View of Bell Island,” a sister to a suite of poems by Sue Sinclair and her various views of Bell Island. “Wintering,” gives nod to Rainer Maria Rilke, and my poem “Doubles,” is a sibling poem to a stanza in Sue Goyette’s “Psychic,” from her stunning book, Undone (Brick Books).
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Sylvia Plath’s work, especially her poems and journals, though The Bell Jar has a forever place in my being. Winter after winter, I return to Mary Oliver, especially when the living doesn’t go so easy. Writers like Simone de Beauvoir, Leonard Cohen, Zoe Whittall, Brian Brett, Lisa Moore, all the Susan’s (Musgrave, Goyette, Sinclair), Elizabeth Bishop, Shalan Joudry, Joseph Boyden, Anne Carson, Ivan Coyote, Anna Camilleri, Amber Dawn and Jeanette Winterson all call out.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’d like to go for a hot air balloon ride. Visit Greece. Learn another language, especially Mi’kmaq. Live in a foreign country. Write a novel. Swim with mermaids. Sing a duet. Sail around the world. Maybe visit the moon.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I’ve worn many hats. I’ve been a photographer, a bookseller, shopkeeper, camera sales person, barista, art teacher, and nanny. Some days, I think I’d like to be a synchronized swimmer, own a dress shop, become a chef, or a milliner. My deepest aspirations are to teach creative writing at a college or university, so perhaps, in my own way, I can become all these things.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
The writing made me write. I blame the words.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I’ve just finished reading Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water: A Memoir (Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts), where she writes, “ In water, like in books – you can leave your life.” Words to live by.
Sarah Mian’s debut novel, When The Saints (Harper Collins), could be my favourite book out of Atlantic Canada this year.
As for the last great film, I’m still basking in the glow of Bruno Barreto’s Reaching For The Moon, the love story of Elizabeth Bishop and Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares. I can’t even admit here how many times I’ve re-watched it.
20 - What are you currently working on?
Currently, I am working on a collection of linked stories, and attempting to write my first play for Queer Acts Theatre Festival. The odd poem, letter or fragment seems to intervene.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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A short interview with Sachiko Murakami, Jacket2
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Jordan Abel, Un/inhabited
uninhabited
Changing horses frequently, one day out I had left Red River in my rear, but before me lay an country, unless I veered from my course and went through the Chickasaw Nation. Out toward Bear Canyon, where the land to the north rose brokenly to the mountains, Luck found the bleak stretches of which he had dreamed that night on the observation platform of a train speeding through the night in North Dakota,—a great white wilderness unsheltered by friendly forests, save by wild things that moved stealthily across the windswept ridges. This done, they would lead the ship to an part of the shore, beach her, and scatter over the mainland, each with his share of the booty. How lonely I felt, in that vast bush! Except for a very few places on the Ouleout, and the Iroquois towns, the region was . This was no country for people to livein, and so far as she could see it was indeed . But for the lazy columns of blue smoke curling up from the pinyons the place would have seemed . It appeared to be a dry, forest. In the vivid sunlight and perfect silence, it had a new, look, s if the carpenters and painters had just left it. it was in vain that those on board made remonstrances and entreaties, and represented the horrors of abandoning men upon a sterile and island; the sturdy captain was inflexible. The herbage is parched and withered; the brooks and streams are dried up; the buffalo, the elk and the deer have wandered to distant parts, keeping within the verge of expiring verdure, and leaving behind them a vast solitude, seemed by ravines, the beds of former torrents, but now serving only to tantalize and increase the thirst of the traveller. It kept on its course through a vast wilderness of silent and apparently mountains, without a savage wigwam upon its banks, or bark upon its waters. They were at a loss what route to take, and how far they were from the ultimate place of their destination, nor could they meet in these wilds with any human being to give them information. They forded Butte Creek, and, crossing the well-travelled trail which follows down to Drybone, turned their faces toward the country that began immediately, as the ocean begins off a sandy shore.
Jordan Abel’s Un/inhabited (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks/Project Space Press, 2014) continues the reclamation project begun through his first book, The Place of Scraps (Talonbooks, 2013). Whereas The Place of Scraps was constructed as a collection of fragments, erasures, scraps, texts, visuals and concrete poems constructed out of Canadian ethnographer and folklorist Marius Barbeau’s (1883-1969) canonical text, Totem Poles, Un/inhabited is constructed out of the texts of mass market works of “frontier” fiction. As Kathleen Ritter writes in her essay “Ctrl-F: Reterritorializing the Canon,” included at the back of the book: “A browse through the collection shows that most of these novels were written around the turn of the last century and, with titles like The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories, Gunman’s Reckoning, The Last of the Plainsmen, Way of the Lawlessand The Untamed, they are stereotypical of the romanticism of the frontier, the height of North American colonialism and a time when the indigenous population was being dispossessed of their lands and driven down to their lowest numbers in history as a direct result of European conflict, warfare and settlement.” The back cover describes the project:
Abel constructed the book’s source text by compiling ninety-one complete western novels found on the website Project Gutenberg, an online archive of public domain works. Using his word processor’s Ctrl-F function, he searched the document in its totality for words that relate to the political and social aspects of land, territory and ownership. Each search query represents a study in context (How was this word deployed? What surrounded it? What is left over once that word is removed?) that accumulates toward a representation of the public domain as a discoverable and inhabitable body of land.
There is something quite remarkable in the way that Abel, a Nisga’a writer from Vancouver, utilizes work that now exists in the public domain to reclaim and critique a representative and cultural space, using “conceptual writing [that] engages with the representation of Indigenous peoples in Anthropology through the technique of erasure.” Un/inhabited opens with erasure of specific words (uninhabited, settler, extracted, territory, indianized, pioneer, treaty, frontier, inhabited) before shifting to an erasure that shows the text almost as a cartographic map, before stripping the erasure down entirely, comparable to a depleting printer ink or photocopy toner cartridge. The only way these texts hold together is in the ways in which Abel allows them to degrade, before collapsing completely in on themselves. In an interview forthcoming at Touch the Donkey, he talks a bit about the compositional process of Un/inhabited:
After I finished writing Un/inhabited, there was a lot of material that essentially fell to the cutting room floor. I had been writing excessively, and knew that there would have to be substantial cuts for the project to be thematically coherent. As a result, there were many threads that had to be removed entirely. Some of those threads (minority, oil, afeared, etc.) were closely related to main conceptual project, but, for one reason or another, didn’t fit perfectly. Those threads were probably the most difficult to cut. Other threads (maps, speakers, urgency, etc.) were interesting explorations and worked individually, but were easy to separate from the main project. However, as the project continued, there were several threads that emerged that had coherent and discrete themes that weren’t dependent on the pieces in Un/inhabited. One of those threads explored the deployment of literary terms, and, surprisingly, seemed to be supported by the source text. That thread included many pieces: allegory, allusion, connotation, denouement, dialogue, flash back, hyperbole, identity, metaphor, motif, narrative, personification, simile, symbol, and theme.
To be honest, after I cut those pieces, I wasn’t really sure what to do with them. The pieces in Un/inhabited (settler, territory, frontier, etc.) worked partially because they explored themes of indigeneity, land use and ownership. Those pieces were actively working towards the destabilization of the colonial architecture of the western genre. But what were these other pieces doing? What did an exploration of the context surrounding the deployment of the word “allusion” accomplish?
I think, if I were to guess at an answer to my own question, that the thread of literary terms engages with an aspect of the western genre that is, at the very least, unusual. You don’t often think about the western genre being rich with metaphors or allusions or symbols, and, perhaps, it isn’t. But those words are there. Those words are doing something that we don’t normally associate with the traditional foundations of literary studies. There is an exploration here that, I think, subverts the tendencies of literary analysis by compressing and recontextualizing common analytic diction.
Right now, these pieces are not part of a separate project. But they easily could be. I think there’s more there to dig through. Other approaches that could be taken.
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12 or 20 (second series) questions with Yvonne Blomer
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book came out in 2006, titled a broken mirror, fallen leaf. I got the first copies the day before my son was born, so my life changed with that book but in ways beyond the book.
a broken mirror, fallen leaf was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert and I was utterly surprised by that, so in that way I think I gained something, perhaps encouragement or courage, because of that unexpected recognition.
Anyway, the book was my first, and one needs a first in order to get to the second and third which were piling up behind me.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Through an interest in the play of language over narrative or story. Narrative and story can also be in poetry, but language and line, metaphor, image and play are what drew and still draw me to poetry.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
My first and most recent books are contained either by place or theme, so they each provided a space within which I was writing. With my first book, I began writing as I was experiencing life in Japan through journaling. As if a Raven, my most recent book, started as my dissertation thesis, so I had to have a project, and I wanted a series of poems that were linked, but I didn’t know how they would be linked when I started.
As far as drafts of poems, anything is possible and they begin in a myriad of ways. Sometimes a poem in a first draft with few edits, sometimes notes, or the first few lines are on paper and I carry them around and build, sometimes the first few lines and I stall and return.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
My second book was made of poems that built over time and then I looked at them together and drew on common themes. As if a Raven was built over time as a book and I’m beginning a new project which is the same…it is a question or a series of questions so the writing that comes out will likely be linked. That said, there are always those free poems that just appear and they build into their own something.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I enjoy doing public readings and enjoy attending readings and lectures by writers. Readings provide food for thought, or fertilizer for future poems. Touring a book of poems and working on new writing at the same time is tricky to juggle. Even a five minute appearance at a festival takes a lot of energy to prepare for. I take it seriously, it is a performance, and part of the job so it takes focus, time and energy.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Yes, I do. I’m not sure what the current questions are but as a newly appointed Poet Laureate I’m concerned with how politics and poetry can merge and work for real change. Naively I want to use poetry to protect the Pacific Ocean. I think poetry is not simply image but image married to idea. The poet is concerned with/obsessed with/ has a question about something that leads to the images. Those images lead back to the concern or question and hopefully to some thought, an opening of thought and understanding in the writer and reader.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
This question carries on from the previous a little. I think a writer should draw attention to – a thought, idea, concern. A writer can open a door for readers. They also entertain, bring beauty, and bring attention to the moments of life.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Both. That engagement and back-and-forth on the poems or the order of the poems is vital to the end product and is part of the process. Engaging with an editor is another step in the process of making it as close to finished. It is often a deeper engagement because it is the last step in the process so there is more or a different kind of pressure on the writer, me, and the poems, to be their best.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Mark what you love in a poem with a highlighter and see what you have. I tend to mark what I don’t like. Focusing on what is working allows you to highlight the positive parts of the poem, even if it is just one line, and build from there. Also at Whistler Writers Festival last fall, Sue Goyette mentioned that she was allowing herself to take a break. It was superb to hear that. I was touring a lot and trying to write and feeling pretty worn out.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to creative non-fiction to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
I think it is not that easy. I feel like I bring poetry with me into nonfiction, which is fine, except sometimes I want to write a “true” essay, or in my mind I think I do, and then I begin writing and it leans toward the lyric. For many many years I’ve been working on a travel memoir, but not consistently until the last year and a half. I was letting myself get pulled to poetry projects and in order to finish this memoir, I needed to allow myself to refuse poetry for a while. Now as I’m getting closer to being finished, and beginning to write more poetry, I’m finding my lines are long and narrative so am trying to pull myself back toward the poetry. One way of helping to do this was I took a one day workshop on form poetry with Kate Braid offered through Wordstorm in Nanaimo. Just spending a day working on forms helped remind me of what I know, and push that different way of organizing my thoughts and words back to the foreground.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
Well I have an 8 year old son. Once he’s at school, on an ideal day, I take a brisk walk around Cedar Hill Golf Course then head home to gather papers from the cluttered kitchen table and go out the back door to my studio. I stay there as long as I can, usually until 2 when I come back in to get ready to pick my son up. At some point between 10-2 I nip in for tea and a bowl of random snacks to crunch on. Crunchy food is good for writing (so says fiction writer Julie Paul).
On a more typical day, with Planet Earth Poetry and Poet Laureate duties there is a fair amount of emailing between gathering papers and laptop and getting out to the studio (where the wifi is weak).
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
A walk helps. Jumping around on-line further stalls me and shuts down the thinking self. Reading poems by Steven Price, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Meira Cook, Cornelia Hoogland, Iliya Kaminsky etc…helps too. Picking up a magazine like The Malahat, Arc, TNQ is always great to inspire.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Rain, earth, light fragrance of cherry blossoms/magnolia (spring in Victoria) The damp air.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Everything influences my work. A question. Students’ work. Prompts I give to students and their responses sometimes open a response in me. Books I’m reading. A passage or an entire book, for its tone or how the author approaches the subject. I feel like I’m a composting worm...I take anything and everything. Who knows where it might reappear years or days or minutes from now. I think that is part of the process. Art, science, a word, a walk, an animal (my dog), a scent.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I love reading fiction, mysteries, really good fiction, anything (even vampire stories) before bed. During the day I read nonfiction and poetry. I sometimes read poetry before bed, but it often over-stimulates me. A powerful nonfiction novel can be just as good as a book of fiction, but I love sinking into a novel. Right now I’m reading Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay, which is set in the Northwest Territories. I started it in the Yukon (when I was up there reading), so I have partly stayed north due to reading it. It is a wonderful story with sublime descriptions and a creepy/unsettled feeling throughout.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Work in translation. French and Japanese. Have my poems translated. Finish my travel memoir.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Spy. Well, I doubt I would have been a great spy. Maybe a bicycle tour operator. When I first moved home from Japan I was beginning to start a cycling company called Pacific Pedals. My sister reminded me and encouraged me to keep at the writing, so I did.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
That is a tough one to answer. I’ve always loved writing, communicating with myself in the written word. I think that love lead to a desire to communicate in a larger way. I started with journalism courses at College and then took poetry with Patrick Lane at the University of Victoria a fair while ago. He scared me. Fear and passion are cousins to nerves and excitement.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Boundless by Kathleen Winter, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and Wild by Cheryl Strayed.
I loved the film version of Wild, as well as The Lunch Box. I also loved Paddington my son’s new favourite.
20 - What are you currently working on?
Did I mention a memoir?
I am beginning a new project and ending (hopefully) an old one. I have been (re)reading Virginia Woolf and Gwendolyn MacEwen and reading about Janis Joplin. I watched part of the Downton Abbey series and began to wonder how we went from Pre-WWI and how women’s lives looked to creating Virginia Woolf and how we got to Joplin in the 1960s and where MacEwen and her genius came from and how it fits in. So I’m exploring female artists and how one led to the next and whether society can or does support genius in women. I’m doing this in poetry or lyric prose. I kind of hate to say I’m doing it as I’m so so so at the beginning. Truthfully, I’m reading a lot.
And I’m finishing a memoir set in Southeast Asia where my husband and I cycled for three months from Vietnam through Laos, Thailand and on to Malaysia.
And I’m a new Poet Laureate with Poetry Month fast approaching so feel more like an arts organizer (plus PEP) than a writer many days. I think that balance between writing time and planning events will get easier (I hope).
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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A short interview with Christine Leclerc, Jacket2
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"The Alta Vista Poem," Queen Mob's Teahouse
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12 or 20 (second series) questions with Alexandria Peary
Alexandria Peary maintains a dual career in Creative Writing and Composition-Rhetoric. Her third book of poems, Control Bird Alt Delete, won the 2013 Iowa Poetry Prize and was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2014. Her other books include Lid to the Shadow (2010 Slope Editions), Fall Foliage Called Bathers & Dancers (2008 Backwaters) and Creative Writing Pedagogies for the Twenty-First Century (forthcoming, co-edited with Tom C. Hunley). Her work has received the Joseph Langland Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Slope Editions Book Prize, the Mudfish Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2012 Theresa J. Enos Rhetoric Award. Her scholarship has appeared in College Composition and Communication, Rhetoric Review, Pedagogy, WAC Journal, Journal of Aesthetic Education, and New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing. Her poems and nonfiction have recently appeared in New England Review, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, New American Writing, Volt, Verse Daily, Map Literary, Guernica, Hippocampus, and The Chariton Review. She is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Salem State University and maintains a mindful writing blog at alexandriapeary.blogspot.com.
1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Fall Foliage Called Bathers & Dancers was published by Backwaters Press in 2008. The publication seemed to correspond with other life changes (my first child, my decision to enroll in a doctoral program). Life was forcing me along to write. It’s something I describe at a guest post, “Water Breaks, Writer’s Block,” at Mother Writer Mentor: http://www.motherwritermentor.com/2012/05/07/water-breaks-writers-block/. The first book allowed me to enclose in the amber of publication writing I might normally have hesitated over. So the book made poetry low-stakes and informal in my own perception (all that really ever counts for a writer). I’m currently writing my fourth book of poetry, and it feels like a joy because I’m at last able to take on certain themes that I’d looked longingly at since the late 1990s.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Purely by accident. As a pre-teen, I was intent upon going to medical school. One day after school while dissecting a suicide goldfish using an ancient microscope a neighborhood physician had given me, I looked out at the April rain and the sheen of green on the leach field. I put down my tweezers and wrote my first poem.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I don’t usually “do” drafts. I also don’t predetermine the length of any writing project or separate actions into “starting,” “continuing,” or “finishing.” My writing comes out of a mindful process; it engages the language that occupies the present moment.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
A poem begins for me with a fragment from my internal voice. This fragment is mindfully perceived and written by hand in an ordinary $1 composition notebook.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
It’s interesting to have one’s audience a few feet away (as opposed to the separation of space and time that occurs when doing the actual work of writing). The best readings and audiences make me feel like I can sing duende.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I am interested in the presence of language—so meta language or references to writing frequently occur in my poems.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Don’t we all play a role in a larger culture just by purchasing, expressing, and breathing? I’m not sure writers are all that different except that they have the potential to give other people inner experiences, ones maybe not easily found in the social world.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
It depends. I’ve been blessed with working with several extremely professional and insightful editors. Actually, I plan on posting shortly at my blog (alexandriapeary.blogspot.com) about the experience. Last summer in the Roman Colosseum, I learned the etymology of the word “editor,” and it’s one that will put a wry smile on any writer’s face. See my blog in a few weeks.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I was working on my dissertation and had told my adviser that I was planning on quitting the program. This admission was not said lightly since I (and my family) had sacrificed tremendously for five years for me to obtain a doctorate. But I was finding it impossible to proceed with the writing of the dissertation—not because I wasn’t excited about the subject but because of what felt like the manhandling of my potential ideas by one of the faculty readers. This person inserted the most unkind, sarcastic comments in his/her pink “Comment” balloons—the kind of relentless critique I myself would never ever perform on a student at an early stage in their composition. I still recall one comment: “This is one birthday party to which I don’t want to be invited!” I told my dissertation adviser I was thinking of dropping out of the program but would finish the dissertation regardless as a book outside of academia. He understood that what was under attack in my perception was my integrity as a writer. He told me, “From now on, don’t write a single word you don’t believe in.” I copied his emailed advice on a Post-It and proceeded to write the dissertation at a running pace.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
That ability to move between genres is essential to the mindful writing I practice. Genres are ultimately preconceptions; they shortchange the offerings of the present moment. I do not limit myself by genre during any given writing session and now write poetry, creative nonfiction, and scholarship.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
An early rise (between 4 AM and 5 AM). A cup of espresso. A mindful observation of my breathing and physical-psychological state. A jump-start poem by another writer (currently John Ashbery, Caroline Knox, or Wallace Stevens). The opening of my notebook and retrieving of my fountain pen. Sitting in the reflective pool of writing until around 6:30 AM when one of my two daughters invades my study.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I permit myself fallow periods and turn to another genre or project.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
The scent of lost time that is emitted from the question, “What fragrance reminds you of home?”
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Most definitely visual arts. In addition to consulting poetry before I write each day, I look at paintings by 20th century artists—Roy Lichtensteinand Fernando Botero right now. Or a book on the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Caroline Knox, Wallace Stevens, John Ashbery, Italio Calvino, Francis Ponge, Jean Follain, W.S. Merwin, Paul Celan, Pablo Neruda, the Buddha, Emily Dickinson, oh most definitely, Emily Dickinson.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I have a current prose project that means a great deal to me. It’s based on years of observing people struggle and succeed with writing. It’s about mindful writing and the sources of writing anxiety or blocks. I would like it very much if my theory of mindful writing could be of use to others, and this might entail a couple of sidekick projects branching off this main theoretical one.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
The other occupation is one I made up: a writing psychiatrist. I adore classroom teaching and would not want to give it up, but I have a dream of starting a private practice where I could meet one-on-one with individuals from all walks of life who struggle to write. I’d like to start a whole field—writing psychologists. My approach as a writing psychologist would mix mindfulness and various theories from the field of Composition-Rhetoric.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
As a child, writing allowed me to have an inner life. That inner life afforded me chances for insight and awareness that seemed greater than what could be found from other types of activities or professions. So now I use what I learn from my writing practice in other activities during the day—teaching, parenting, being a colleague, being a friend.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Film: The Great Beauty
20 - What are you currently working on?
I like to balance multiple projects at multiple different stages; it’s part of mindful writing. I do a sort of call & response, asking my internal voice each writing session, “what am I honestly interested in working on right now?” When I have a variety of interesting projects, that variety corresponds with the fluctuation and quantity that can be found in the internal voice. I just wrapped up an academic article and sent it out, and my co-editor Tom Hunley are on the cosmetic proofreading last stages of our forthcoming Creative Writing Pedagogies for the Twenty-First Century (Southern Illinois University Press in June 2015). So I’m working on a poetry book, various individual pieces of creative nonfiction, and a longer creative-scholarly project on mindful writing.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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A short interview with N.W. Lea
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Sarah Mangold, Electrical Theories of Femininity
The Machine Has Not Destroyed the Promise
Around 1800, the costumed nightmare on the sofa. Dead brides
and mountaineers. For me they are grammatical. Frontier cleaners.
A circle of tickets this freckled body. But I should be untrue to
science loitering among its wayside flowers. Pulled out and shut
up like a telescope. Let us try to tell a story devoid of alphabetic
redundancies. Immortality in technical positivity. If motion
caused a disagreement of any kind we are regarding the same
universe but have arranged it in different spaces. That is to be
the understanding between us. Shall we set forth?
I’ve long been an admirer of the work of Washington State poet Sarah Mangold, so am thrilled to finally see the publication of her second trade collection, Electrical Theories of Femininity (San Francisco CA: Black Radish Books, 2015). The author of a handful of chapbooks (including works self-published as well as works produced by Little Red Leaves, above/ground press, dusie, Potes & Poets Press and g o n g), her first book, Household Mechanics, was published in 2002 as part of the New Issues Poetry Prize, as selected by C. D. Wright. Electrical Theories of Femininity, much of which saw print in earlier chapbook publications, is constructed as an extended suite of short poems and prose-poems writing “the history of media archeology” to explore the place where human and machine meet. In an interview posted in issue #6 of seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics, she describes the collection as one that “contains three recent chapbooks, plus the shorter poems written around the same time as the longer sequences. There is a bit of connecting sections and selecting what fits and doesn’t fit to make a ‘book.’” She later writes that “For Electrical Theories of Femininity I had three chapbooks to incorporate plus individual poems which led to more movement and structural overhauls compared to the one long poem and several shorter poems in Household Mechanics.”
In poems such as “How Information Lost Its Body,” “Electrical Theories of Femininity,” “Every Man a Signal Tower” and “The First Thing the Typewriter Did Was Provide Evidence of Itself,” Mangold explores how systems are constructed, manipulated and broken down, even as she manages, through collage and accumulation, to move in a number of concurrent directions. Through the collection, the “Feminism” she writes about articulates itself as a series of conflicts, observations and electrical impulses, such as in the opening of “An equally deedy female”: “She gathered up the scattered sheets / a non-geometrical attempt to supply information // about what was far and what was important / bringing it down into life [.]” Throughout the collection, Mangold’s language sparks and flies, collides and flows in poems that fragment the lyric into impossible shapes.
Setting the Landscape in Motion
As soon as the incoming stream of sounds
gives the slightest indication
consider the real act of moving
when we figure time as a line or circle
when mechanical gesture takes the place
when automatic operations are inserted
into the automatic world
vowels are uninterrupted streams of energy
and thought is a movement
from acoustic signal to the combination
of muscular acts
saints and pilgrims
sewing machines and machine guns
made their appearance
This is as much an exploration of perspective, authority and various forms of both real and imagined power, composing her mix of fact, language, theory and obvious delight in regards to sound, shape, meaning and collage. As she writes in “I expected pioneers”: “What people forget about the avant- / garde forwards and backwards. The Pre-Raphaelites wanted / to bring the background forward. The tyranny of perspective / they wanted all views at once [.]” Further on in the collection, she opens the short prose-poem “Mothers Must Always Prove Their Readiness” with this dark bit of information: “Most missing girls are dead girls.” Mangold’s poems might be filled with an unbearable lightness and sense of serious play, yet remain fully aware of, and critique, what women are still forced to endure.
Custodians of a Fractious Country
They are depicted with great scientific suit sleeves
A single faculty, dandelion, don’t get him started
She’s on pasting chunks of text, sewing collars from the wool of country life
Repeated tones: white bread letters accent
philosophical hedgehogs
But for Spencer evolution was going somewhere
His requests to see the surface tailored but unobtrusive opened my jaws rubbed my neck
Riots erupt
The improbably handsome
A welcomed guest
Insincerity in a culture brings to mind the most mysterious numbers
Three volumes of German-language units to say: (blanche your beans, then ice them)
Her parcels supplement mules with shows of sincerity still in combat
He saw American movies fell for them
You nervous this one is dancing Be a woman
You’re not striving to think of Darwin but he’s thrown in
My stomach was pages and gaiety
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Profile of Rhonda Douglas, with a few questions, at Open Book: Ontario
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12 or 20 (second series) questions with Susan Paddon
Susan Paddon was born and grew up in St. Thomas, Ontario, attended McGill and Concordia in Montreal, and lived overseas in Paris and London before settling in Margaree, Nova Scotia. Her poems have appeared in Arc,CV2, The Antigonish Review and Geist among others. Two Tragedies in 429 Breaths (Brick Books) is her first book.
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book has helped me move through a lot of grief. I wrote it after the death of my mother. I am currently working on a novel. I am working with a lot more characters than I did in my first book and the work is very different because I am telling these lives in a different form. I suppose, however, like in Two Tragedies, my current work does offer a series of snapshots – no, perhaps, it’s not snapshots. Maybe, I could say that before I was writing in snapshots, but I am now working in my novel with a series of short home videos (not my own).
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I have always been attracted to poetry. I do write in other forms but for this book, poetry seemed to find its way into my vision of how to tell it. That was the voice that came.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I think I usually have ideas that develop very quickly, but it is the finishing – the fine-tuning – that really takes the most amount of time. Sometimes an early draft will resemble the finished work and other times, maybe only a line will remain. I make copious notes on anything that can be written on.
4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I think for my current project, I do have a few smaller ideas that have come together – found their way into this novel. And they keep coming, which is good and not so good. I need to say stop at a certain point because not every new direction is a good one. I often get a line in my head or a situation that I want to explore and the work is trying to get to and from that place.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I just finished a tour for Two Tragedies. It was an amazing experience. I was really nervous about doing so many readings but in fact, the experience made me way more comfortable with sharing my work and saying, yes, this is what I wrote.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I have no idea what the current questions are. I try to question time (how it is changes – particularly, how it is different when you know you have a limited amount left), faith, mourning, public and private death in my work. I think those were my main thoughts writing this first book. I will never forget being in a grocery store line with my mother when we saw a magazine with Farah Fawcett on the cover. The caption said something like, “Only Days to Live!” My mother was also dying.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I think I write because I can’t not write. I don’t write to publish, although, when it happens it can be wonderful. But what is the role of the writer? Maybe to take us somewhere we couldn’t get to on our own that day. That hour. Maybe somewhere we know well, or have never seen before. When I read, I want to be taken somewhere and to feel like I know that place for the time I’m there. The place can of course be just a new emotion or way of seeing.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Both. Barry Dempster was a fantastic editor. Stephanie Bolster was also instrumental in getting this book out of my head and onto the page. Of course, I think we are always afraid of being told that something we love has to be let go. But it is also so amazing when someone inspires you into writing something better.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Do your best. I find that very comforting.
10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
It changes. Generally speaking, I like a clean house and to work at the kitchen table. I covet beautiful desks, but I never use them. One day I’d like to have a huge set of drawers for all of my files and notes. I need to be alone (or if I can’t be alone, I should be in a café with strangers.) I like music. Background music. Too much coffee doesn’t work. Wine usually puts me to sleep. Food doesn’t really work either – while I’m writing, that is. It isn’t good for me to depend on anything that could run out (like almonds, say) or that I could over do it on (like almonds, say).
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
A walk. A playlist. A drive. I always write while I drive. But of course I can’t write anything down until I stop, so I have to go over it over and over again until I have the line or the idea memorized.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Hmm. I don’t understand certain fragrances – like where they come from. My grandmother’s china cabinet, for instance, that I have, still smells like her old house. But what made everything smell like that? I can’t identify the smell. What the heck does it smell like? I live in Cape Breton now. Home smells like fir trees and wood smoke. We have a puppy. Her smell now also reminds me of home.
13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
“La Traviata” by David W. McFadden is one of my all-time favourite poems. For me, film, painting, photography and music all influence my work. I wrote my first book listening to Philip Glass’s “Metamorphosis 2” on repeat.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Robert Altman, Raymond Carver, Chekhov, Paul Thomas Anderson. “My Heart is Broken” by Mavis Gallant. Anne Carson. Sharon Olds.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Make a stained glass window.
16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I would love to be a potter. I also wish that I had some carpentry skills. I really admire people who can build what they can imagine.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I just started doing it and never stopped. You don’t need fancy equipment or expensive insurance. I get a lot of pleasure out of trying to write what I can imagine.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Johanna Skibrud’s Quartet For the End of Time. I saw Charadeon a flight recently and thought it was fantastic.
19 - What are you currently working on?
I’m currently working on a novel.
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the return of rob mclennan's poetry workshops: May-June, in our wee house,
The workshops are scheduled for Wednesday nights (with one Monday): May 6, 13, 20 and 27; June 1 (Monday), 10, 17 and 24.
$200 for 8 sessions.
for information, contact rob mclennan at rob_mclennan@hotmail.com or 613 239 0337;
An eight week poetry workshop, the course will focus on workshopping writing of the participants, as well as reading various works by contemporary writers, both Canadian and American. Participants should be prepared to have a handful of work completed before the beginning of the first class, to be workshopped (roughly ten pages).
Previous participants over the past few years have included: Amanda Earl, Frances Boyle, Roland Prevost, Christine McNair, Pearl Pirie, Sandra Ridley, Marilyn Irwin, Rachel Zavitz, Janice Tokar, Dean Steadman, Nicholas Lea, David Blaikie, James Irwin and Marcus McCann.
For those unable to participate, I hope to run another workshop later in the fall, and still offer my ongoing editorial service of poetry manuscript reading, editing and evaluation.
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Lance Phillips, Mimer
Wouldn’t measuring, with index finger and thumb, the slight wall between the anal cavity and the vaginal cavity of a woman require a more fixed and intimate understanding of not only the body, but possibly the methods one has of imagining space? Circling this line of thought down to a moment of establishment in the ear ever so long ago would have the effect of a cold towel on him as he sits with legs and arms crossed, breast folded into knees so that making himself small would in turn enlarge everything which is not him.
I’m curious about the floating, meditative, lyric accretions that make up North Carolina poet Lance Phillips’ Mimer(Boise ID: Ahsahta Press, 2015). This is his fourth poetry collection, after Corpus Socius (2002), Cur Aliquid Vidi (2004) and These Indicium Tales (2010), all of which have been published by Ahsahta Press. The prose poems and lyric fragments that make up Mimer manage to hold together so easily and seamlessly that it would appear that Mimer is less than a poetry collection than a single, extended, fragmented lyric, composed across an enormously broad canvas. His “Author Statement,” included as part of the press release, includes:
I think of the book as a collection of parables, but in the sense that Crossan uses the term, as disrupters. Parables are meant to attack the status quo, to enact the “kingdom of heaven” on earth, to speak metaphorically. A parable is an orgasm, or so I take it to be, which allows the body to arrive at its own disruption. Those disruptions present authentic reality.
Constructed in four sections, two of which, themselves, break down further into poem-sections, there is something of the collage in his lyric mediations, playing off each other like cards, not entirely sure where they are headed, but seeking out and searching, constantly, for comprehension. This is a book that can be opened at any point to begin reading, and read in any direction. Through the prose-poem, there is something in Phillips’ work of Phil Hall’s bricolage and lyric koan, approaching wisdom through accumulation, consideration and the pause, itself on the very edge of hesitation.
He was dumbfounded at the minutiae, at the sheer will of that process which seemed to force his hand with regard to the graph. Prius, he could call his mind there in the diffuse light. Primus, which painted the walls and added grain to the floorboards; Primus, the sense made of the marks on the graph, the sense of imagining to speak; Primus, whatever animal heart was a scourge to him in his socks and deep in memory. Goose-pimples all the while he was repositioning the graph on the ceiling and all the while he wrote Primus over the outline of his body as a continuous barrier, dipping and rising in small letters and touching the horizon of skin just as a hand in the sea.
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12 or 20 (small press) questions with Jared Schickling on Delete Press
Delete Press publishes work by established and emerging poets. We ask ourselves the question: what does it feel like to be set on fire with an odorless accelerant? We respond by building chapbooks that are letterpress printed and handbound. Anti-gravity ephemera is also floated.
Jared Schickling edits Delete Press and eccolinguistics, and has served on the editorial board of Reconfigurations: A Journal for Poetry & Poetics / Literature & Culture, among others. He is also the author of several books, recently Two Books on the Gas: Above the Shale and Achieved by Kissing (Blazevox, 2014), ATBOALGFPOPASASBIFL (2013) and The Pink (2012), The Paranoid Reader: Essays, 2006-2012 (Furniture Press, 2014) and Prospectus for a Stage (LRL Textile Series, 2013). He lives and works in Western New York.
1 – When did Delete Press first start? How have your original goals as a publisher shifted since you started, if at all? And what have you learned through the process?
Crane Giamo, Brad Vogler and I started Delete Press in 2009 when we were all living in Fort Collins, Colorado. We’ve done ten paper chapbooks since then, and the only thing that’s really changed for us is the medium. Crane is the press’s bookmaker (I edit, Brad is webmaster) and as his skills have crystallized the intricacies of the objects have changed. As this has increased the cost and amount of time between each book, Brad and I decided to launch an e-book series. We’ve published four titles so far. We also have our own projects, aspects of Delete—Crane is the proprietor of the letterpress Pocalypstic Editions, Brad publishes Opon, an online journal of long poems and process statements, and I do eccolinguisticsin the mimeograph tradition. One thing I’ve learned is the importance of distancing yourself from the presswork—it’s the only way a writer will trust you and the only way to properly present another’s work. Another is what it means to arrive at that point where all involved will trust that someone else’s idea is a good one, what it means to build something with people you admire.
And also this: produce, produce, produce, be irreverent, and keep promises no matter how embarrassingly long it may take.
2 – What first brought you to publishing?
As far as Delete is concerned, a desire to be of service publishing great work and the belief that this could be done with Brad and Crane.
3 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?
To change the face of literature.
4 – What do you see your press doing that no one else is?
I think we’re unique. After all, we’re not doing what other wonderful operations are.
5 – What do you see as the most effective way to get new books out into the world?
To be honest, my primary concern in this regard is to make sure we’ve made something that when read brings pleasure. The rest seems to take care of itself.
But certainly digital transmissions and friendships are the most effective way to get the word out. That’s difficult too, though, as it requires a fair degree of diligence keeping up with what’s what. Basically, I participate in various forms of reading and listening and that natural curiosity makes the connections I cannot.
6 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?
I stay utterly faithful to the work. In the case of small press poetry, submitted materials tend to arrive in rigidly precise form. The editing in that regard has much to do with finding the correct shape and feel of the book object or page, or screen, the space around the content. I certainly have made my fair amount of text edits, though. But even there, it has tended to be in response to some imposition of format.
I am presently editing a book in which the next-to-last line of the manuscript needed to go. I deleted it and explained politely to the author why it was necessary. I was right, and the author was agreeable. It’s not always so easy.
That’s another thing I’ve learned—more often than not (no one is perfect), trust your editor.
7 – How do your books get distributed? What are your usual print runs?
Editions of Delete Press paper chaps have ranged from 40 to 120 copies. The e-books have gotten a few hundred downloads each. 300 copies of the eccolinguistics mailer go out periodically, for free.
8 – How many other people are involved with editing or production? Do you work with other editors, and if so, how effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?
I think I mentioned my wonderful experience working with Brad and Crane, so I won’t say too much. Really I would just like to see them more. We live in different parts of the country now.
9– How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?
Utterly. I primarily edit my work.
10– How do you approach the idea of publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he still ran Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Press’ editors had titles during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman and bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see the whole question as irrelevant?
Well, I’m not against it in principle, but one who goes that route needs to be very careful. The offending person’s stature in the poetry market must be such that the ego can be overlooked. In the case of coterie, I think a shared critical apparatus has to be there or else the cliquishness doesn’t make much sense.
I suspect that self-publishing through one’s own operation didn’t always carry such a stigma, when the technology and means of distribution were more prohibitive of an over-saturated field of publishing writers and when the aesthetics we’ve inherited were just beginning to take shape. Perhaps it is that the vast good and cheap publishing opportunities for poets today means the expectations for model behavior have changed.
11– How do you see Delete Press evolving?
I don’t know. To be honest, Crane’s bookmaking abilities have reached a point where we are reassessing what the chapbook line should be. I suspect that we will also be doing full-lengths in the near future. Brad is pondering a new website. Delete Press has changed and will change again, I know that.
12– What, as a publisher, are you most proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have overlooked about your publications? What is your biggest frustration?
I’m proud that we’ve sold out of most everything. That might sound superficial, but it’s not. The generous response from readers has helped confirm my faith that, contrary to a popular belief, people actually doread poetry.
But you have to be realistic about it. I wouldn’t say we’ve been overlooked—we’ve been too busy making and publishing to notice in any case. You have to be tactical in your methods and output depending on the work you are publishing. And you have to be willing to accept anonymity.
For me the frustration is with trickle-down poetics. I’m not looking for laurels but I wish the embalmed would get out of the way. I just read a rather smug response by Ron Silliman to the identity politics happening in poetry lately. The gist of his blog screed is that humankind is headed for a cliff of epic proportions, so there’s no sense getting riled up. Plus, he says, if the targets are institutional then they’re misguided. Hell, even the police are our friends—verbatim! We’re just too far gone for any of that to matter, says Ron Silliman. The problem is that unless he’s rapture-bound, which he very well may be, who can say, then Silliman is as stuck here in the only place we got as anyone.
The life of poetry and of literature is always small press. Always. Chris Fritton printed these wonderful broadsheets for the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair that are tacked to my office walls: “Small Press / Everything for Everyone Nothing for Ourselves.” The words are Mike Basinski’s, or so I hear. An original Basinski gifted me is tacked next to one of the broadsheets. I kind of live according to that advice.
13– Who were your early publishing models when starting out?
Frankly, I didn’t have any. I read voraciously and saw all manner of things. But later on, dirty mimeo, Fuck You, The Marrahwanna Quarterly, the Aldine Press, Grove, stuff like that.
I did learn a great deal from Stephanie G’Schwind at the Center for Literary Publishing at CSU, where I interned, and from David Bowen of New American Press, whose Mayday MagazineI helped launch (issues 1 and 2). I learned a great deal about what not to do as an editor and publisher at Alice James Books. That shouldn’t be taken the wrong way, as AJB is very good to their authors and their own venerable history doesn’t need me.
14– How does Delete Press work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What journals or presses do you see Delete Press in dialogue with? How important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?
Well, at one point I think Compline, LittleRed Leaves, Punch Press, and Delete considered getting a small corner of AWP. That was maybe five years ago, I don’t remember. I still dig what those three are doing.
But honestly we at Delete are omnivores. I know I am. Ugly Duckling Presse is stellar, of course, and I am particularly fond of their translation series. michael mann’s unarmed is a powerful little journal. One of my most cherished possessions is a tiny, nondescript, side-stapled bit of ephemera from Luc Fierens and François Liénard, PAPER WASTE SHOOTING! Boaat Press’s Some Simple Things Said By and About Humans by Brenda Iijima is a book whose physicality furthers what’s there in the poem. Projective Industries, Further Other Book Works, Cuneiform Press—there are some master bookmakers out there, all specializing in poetry.
15– Do you hold regular or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other events?
We don’t organize launch readings or sell wares at book fairs as we don’t have any stock to speak of. All the books are gone. I’ve organized readings, but not for Delete. Readings are very important.
16– How do you utilize the internet, if at all, to further your goals?
We advertise on the Internet and otherwise read it. Reading is essential to a publisher, for all the obvious reasons and more.
17– Do you take submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for?
Generally speaking, yes. We are fluid and keep ourselves open to what comes in. We like adventurous work and we know we want it when we see it. We are in every way an experimental bunch. We also solicit most projects that we end up taking on.
18– Tell me about three of your most recent titles, and why they’re special.
PORCHES by Andrew Rippeon
Dancing in the Blue Sky: Stories by Geoffrey Gatza
ROPES by W. Scott Howard and Ginger Knowlton
All of these literary works advance an internal poetics while stimulating the senses. Each of them invokes their respective traditions while managing to transcend lineage and enter into dialog with a contemporary moment.
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12 or 20 (second series) questions with Raoul Fernandes
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book is barely a month old at this date, so I'm in the dazed and delighted stage. But comparing my writing to my old chapbooks or online livejournal writing, I think I've become less overtly sentimental, and yet probably a bit more open to real feeling. Less cloaking. More attentive to syntax and the rhythms of the line. I think I've also allowed myself a range of new subjects I probably wouldn't have touched back then, flowers, computers, other people.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I started writing through that common angsty teenage pressure release valve. Lyrics in songs played a part too. I like how saturated in meaning some lines felt when strung together. And just being able to get in and out on a single page was appealing. I don't think I have the attention and capacity for fiction or non-fiction. Also when I was much younger, my elementary school teacher once complimented the first poem I wrote. That kind of thing goes a long way.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I've never seen my writing as a project. Most of my poems begins as messy unformed things, buried somewhere in sessions of automatic writing. If I see something that might survive, I keep working on it until it comes alive. And yes, this is after filling copious notebooks.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
My poems begin as tiny elements: an image, a phrase, a question. It grows from there. I told people I was working on a book for a while before it came out. But I was mostly only working on poems until near the end where I had to sequence. I think I still have to learn how to write books.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I really like them despite the nerves and rarely being as good as I want. It's very important for my work to connect with people. I write my poems towards that. It's such an intimate thing to have people sit quietly and listen to you, to have that trust. Especially with something as potentially volatile or bewildering as poetry. After, I want to kiss all their foreheads and say “sorry” and “thank you.”
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Oh goodness. Well, I think I can speak only for myself. I find myself getting obsessed with certain human qualities: how we perceive things, how we try to make sense of this life. What is this sensation I have no words for? How do we get through the day? Why did that person set himself on fire? Do I want to set myself on fire on occasion? Things like that.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I imagine that a lot of poets who get to this question, pause and squirm a little. My first response is “I have no idea.” But if I pushed myself to get heady, this is what I might suggest: We all use language to make meaning out of life. And disrupting or charging that meaning-making machine, can make it spark and whir in really lovely ways. Maybe this ensures you're not taking it (or life) for granted. And we get to connect with each other on new playing fields. Even if it only happens in fleeting moments. I don't know if it is good for everyone, but it's been good for me. I think there are writers who write more overtly political and such--and that's terribly important--but I feel most of them still start with that simple function of lighting up your imagination.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Both. It really has to be a good fit or the dynamic can be very difficult. My editor was pretty hands off with my book, which was nice because I had already worked it through quite a bit with my first readers.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Doesn't it seem most good advice is what you already know, but for some reason haven't permitted yourself to follow? It's nice to hear it from another person. With writing it's probably the advice that suggests being very conscious of a reader. That and write much and often. Focus on quantity before quality.
10 -What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
If we're pretending it's my day off and somehow my 3 year old son has run off happily into the woods, you'll probably find me heading to a coffee-shop soon after breakfast and filling up a few pages my notebook. It's not very complicated. I try to (and have to often) write at different times of the day, but the morning is ideal.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
In the scenario above I have another book of poems beside me to dive into if I lose steam. In general, art, music and film helps too.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Probably an earthy post-rain garden and the smell of my wife and child. Though I don' t think I am reminded much of home unless I am home.
13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
All of the above, I'm sure. Music is probably the most emotional of those forms for me and probably has a direct connection to my writing more than the others.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
A handful in no particular order with apologies to the hundreds I am omitting: Bob Hicok, C.K. Williams, Dean Young, David Foster Wallace, Mary Ruefle, Matthew Zapruder, Lydia Davis, James Tate, Frank Stanford, Anne Carson, Gerald Stern, Raymond Carver, Charles Bukowski, Kathleen Graber, David Mitchell, Zadie Smith, Alden Nowlan, Richard Brautigan, Thomas Lux, Rachel Zucker, a lot of old Japanese haiku poets, a lot of my peers, too many to note.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I'd like to make a little film sometime. And write a book for children.
16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I don't call writing my occupation (I work as a maintenance worker to pay the bills). But if I devoted myself to another calling it probably would have been one of the other arts, a painter or a musician. I'm also considering going back into school to be a library technician.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I have played around with some other arts (painting and music) but it's probably the simplicity and accessibility of the materials for writing that have made it the most appealing. A pen, a piece of paper, this blob of grey matter. It costs very little and one could do it anywhere.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Probably Mary Ruefle's poetic collection of lectures Madness, Rack, and Honey. And the Swedish-Danish film We are the Best! by Lukas Moodysson. Both very alive with wonder.
19 - What are you currently working on?
Nothing, happily. Well, getting ready for a cluster of readings. I'll probably start getting back into writing again once the buzzy stuff settle down a bit. Or even take a longer break from writing and create some music. Make some new pathways in my head.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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"Meteor" (new poem) : Cosmonauts Avenue,
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