Emily Abendroth is a poet, teacher, and anti-prison activist. Much of her creative work investigates state regimes of power and force, as well as strategies of resistance to the same. Her poetry book, ]Exclosures[, was just released from Ahsahta Press this past May. Her works are often published in limited edition, handcrafted chapbooks by small and micropresses such as Belladonna (New York), Little Red Leaves (Texas), Albion Press (Philadelphia), TapRoot (San Francisco) and Zumbar Press (San Francisco). She is an active organizer with Decarcerate PA (a grassroots campaign working to end mass incarceration in Pennsylvania) and is co-founder of Address This!, an education and empowerment project that provides innovative, social justice correspondence courses to individuals incarcerated in Pennsylvania. She was a 2013 Pew Fellow in Poetry and has been awarded residencies at the Millay Colony, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony.

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?
]Exclosures[, which just came out on Ahsahta Press in May of 2014, is my first full-length collection. I’m not sure if I would attest that it changed my life – or better to say – I’m not sure if it changed it any more than the way each thing we do or each set of choices we make informs and shifts the shape of what comes next. However, I would say that because that book consists of a single serial work that keeps revisiting certain questions and concerns across its duration, with the newly accumulated weight and resonance of the preceding pieces, it taught me a lot about the possibilities for an extended form of its kind to build layers of complication and density in unique ways. This is something that I’m carrying over and hoping to continue exploring and exploiting, albeit with a very different structural approach and set of contents, in the piece that I’m currently working on now.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I think I came to poetry specifically out of a desire for a certain kind of close attention to the individual word in all of its tactile, in addition to connotative, qualities. I appreciated the weight of the choices and possibilities as they were situated at the smallest phrasal and sonic levels. Later, in other periods since then, I have likewise found myself wanting to shift that some, to allow for different, more extended arcs of thinking and accretion and growth – but that initial and ongoing work around local phrasal concerns was (and still is) very important for me.

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?
It’s a slow process and on the formal level my pieces tend to change shape a great deal along the way, even if the driving questions that motivated it initially all still hover there. I tend to work on longer or serial pieces, and they often involve simultaneous research work, whose discoveries enliven, redirect, and transform the material content of the pieces. I’ve always really loved the following observation that Michel Foucault made in an interview with the Italian Marxist Duccio Trombadori in 1978: If I had to write a book to communicate what I have already thought, I'd never have the courage to begin it. I write precisely because I don't know yet what to think about a subject that attracts my interest. In so doing, the book transforms me, changes what I think. As a consequence, each new work profoundly changes the terms of thinking which I had reached with the previous work.”

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?
I definitely don’t work on a “book” from the very beginning, but it has also been many years since I’ve written a one-page stand alone poem. I tend to think of poetry as a place where I try to puzzle, muss up, divinate, muscle, and/or bungle my way through a set of doubts, concerns, interests, and perplexities whose layers seem to me to require precisely that and more. To pull apart an intellectual or political knot as it were. And I’ve never been one who can manage to do that to a satisfying degree (I’m not speaking aesthetically here, so much as conceptually), in a single nugget of condensation. There are many poets I admire who can, who find their strength of force in exactly that act, but I’m just not one of them.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I think because there’s so much sound work that happens in my pieces – and because there’s so much labor that goes into making sure they are a chewy mouthful with an aural complexity that is doing related, but distinct, work to the conceptual orientations – I do enjoy reading the results out loud. And so much of my secondary editing processes specifically involve reading them aloud over and over (whether alone in my bedroom or on a bench outdoors somewhere) as a kind of test drive of their construction, that it does feel appropriate to at some point be doing that same process of oral sharing before a living public of some kind. At that point, I also usually and happily feel just free or unselfconscious enough (although that wasn’t always the case) to simply be “the vessel” of those pieces, but with a kind of intimacy with them that can handle their many intentional tongue-twisters and consonant gluts.

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?
The collection of serial poems that make up ]Exclosures[ was driven by a set of concerns and explorations that have dominated my poetic imagination (as well as my community/political activism) over the last half dozen years or more. Through this writing, I was attempting to push myself to sound out the catastrophic and debilitating reverberations of living in a society that has effectively criminalized our most basic characteristics of livelihood and requirements for existence (our youth, our old age, our poverty, our needs for housing or a doctor’s appointment, our hunger) and fed them back to us as “dangerous” behavior and/or “unsustainable/unassuageable” demands. This is a set of conditions that has thus created what philosopher Judith Butler refers to as “those ‘unlivable’ or ‘uninhabitable’ zones of social life which are nevertheless densely populated.”

Although the focal points and curiosities/mysteries that are driving the piece I’m currently working on now are different, there are still these shared territories of inquiry and high stakes investment: revolving around questions about power, representation, self-determination, mutual aid, survivability, etc.

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’m not sure that question is a vital one for me as posed. I’m committed to our obligations to one another as people, guided by the principles of shared dignity and basic human rights (in keeping with and not erasing or trumping the rights of the larger natural environments we inhabit) – a commitment which I recognize that very few of us, human or otherwise, actually have the luxury to live under. Given that enormous discrepancy which is so deeply lodged in the current U.S. landscape of racialized capitalism, this commitment therefore obliges me to a variety of acts in my life as a human being, more so than as a poet. That my poetry reflects what I am wrestling with elsewhere (and what I maybe also have less luxury to probe as deeply or unhesitatingly elsewhere, given the constant need to quickly respond to conditions of acute emergency), makes sense to me. But I’m more concerned about the ways in which I and others “show up” and “can be counted on” as individuals in all our collaborations and relationships with others, rather than strictly in the artistic or poetic ones. Personally, I’m drawn to poetry because of my love of language and its capacities and malleability and evocational power, but I don’t place the writer or poet in any more critical or heroicized a role than other artists of any kind. Rather, given the relatively tiny cultural niche in which poetry tends to operate in the U.S., if anything I tend to understand its role as occurring within a pretty localized sphere – although I’m careful not to equate that localness with diminutiveness or lack of importance. Further, I don’t place artists in any more elevated a position in their grappling with the world than others who have found alternate mechanisms and means to do so. I think art is important and can offer a great deal by way of perspective and experience, but I don’t think it’s a pinnacle or exclusive terrain in that regard.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
My impression is that the editing process for poetry is, in the main, far less intensive on the line-by-line or page-to-page level than it is for fiction or criticism. There tends to be an effort to honor the writer’s intentions and choices – while at the same time offering suggestions – that I really appreciate. I’m a big fan of directed feedback, where the artist has some agency in framing what aesthetic decisions are up for negotiation or change, and where they’re seeking input, etc. And I’ve had the privilege to work with extremely generous, insightful, dedicated editors at every stage to date.

Perhaps because there’s little to no money involved in the publication of poetry, at least in my experience, all parties tend to be engaged because of their genuine investments in the experiment or investigation at hand, and thus to offer suggestions that they think will push that specific investigation forward, as opposed to being driven by questions of marketability or the like. This can be rough for poets in terms of their day-to-day financial solvency as humans, but I think it’s a gift in many other ways.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Avery Gordon: “Abolition recognizes that transformative time doesn’t always stop the world, as if in an absolute break between now and then, but is a daily part of it, a way of being in the ongoing work of emancipation, a work which inevitably must take place while you’re still enslaved, imprisoned, indebted, occupied, walled in, commodified, etc.”

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to essay to multi-media to visual collaboration)? What do you see as the appeal?
It hasn’t been especially easy for me, but it has been important. The piece I’m working on now, and that is very much still in-progress, is currently entitled “MICROFICHE / MICROFILCH / MICROMANAGE / MICROFEIGN: A Series of Reflections on the Experiences of Surveillance & Resistance.” This piece has been particularly exciting to work on given that presentationally it can be introduced to individual spaces and before distinct audiences in a range of different formats. To date, I have presented working portions of its contents (in their still-emerging form) as: a slide lecture, a performative talk, a geography lesson, a single component of a public skills-share workshop on practicing online security, and a poetic essay. This new (to me) experimentation with greater multi-media possibilities happily expands - beyond traditional poetry audiences - the range of locations and events in which this work can be seen, thus enlarging the scope of who it is in conversation with and how.

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’ve been doing project-based, freelance style work for at least a dozen years now – wherein my life on any given week consists of a diverse patchwork of paid teaching, multiple meetings in relation to community organizing work, unpaid (but gratifying and empowering) labor on a radical education project for PA prisoners, and creative work. How many hours are devoted to any one of those arenas each week varies tremendously dependent on diverse factors of urgency, finances, inspiration, and outside demands. Therefore, I rarely have a “typical” week. And I do go through streaks where I simply don’t and/or can’t prioritize my writing practice at all. And I make use of intensive spats like residencies (official or self-made) to try to achieve greater focus in the arena of the imaginative for a period.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
My physical body, if possible. As much as I value and wish to make space for writing, I often spend way too much time at desks or in front of screens. It can be wild how often physically moving somewhere (anywhere!) can help to literally move my thinking forward when it’s clogged up at an impasse on the page. I also turn all the time to other writing – although frequently, and especially when I’m really stuck, not to writing in my own genre. Sometimes a notably different kind of use and approach to language can help me find a new and unexpected way in. I also like to go on occasional obsessive learning forays into arenas I know nothing about and that resemble my daily life as little as possible – in order to try to deeply jostle my own thinking and approach. Like what can bacterial growth or moth migrations or so-called hysterical paralysis or the warning systems of prairie dog colonies reveal to us, by way of a wholly different model, regarding how we might multiply or travel or overcome mental hurdles or act in solidarity with one another.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Until my brother and I moved out of the house, my family heated our home entirely via the emanations of a single downstairs wood stove. It’s pretty easy for me to this day to conjure the dry heat, crackle, smell, and smoke of that bulky piece of cast iron machinery in the living room, and how one would try to cut against and moisten the parch it produced by placing a big pot of water atop with spruce branches inside to be evaporated into the air. That wet humidifying scent of spruce or cedar coupled with woodsmoke would, I guess, be my vote.

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?
Without question. I would say there’s plenty!! I look at or listen to or touch other art (that is not writing) whenever I can; it’s actually incredibly helpful to view work that in some way shares themes or questions or orientations with your own, but that has taken up a completely different set of means and materials and tools to approach them. And as I mentioned briefly above, moving outside my own species has on occasion been not only compelling, but critical. Looking to animal behaviors/culture or complex symbiotic ecosystems or other natural processes at moments when humans seem like such a disheartening model, can assist in bringing to the foreground choices that seemed completely illegible or immobile previously.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
James Baldwin, Herman Melville, Gertrude Stein. Queer theorists like Judith Butler and Eve Sedgwick. The kinds of brave, muddy and mutually generous conversations on race, gender and justice that Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich were able to have together across decades. The new feminist journal LIES out of Oakland – very helpful. Prison abolitionists like Angela Davis and Beth Ritchie and Andrea Smith, who also profoundly reframe our thinking about power and resistance. The list could get very long and should be so! And, of course, I’ve learned a tremendous amount and had my own narrow curiosities hugely extended by a million other folks working in shared terrains of either documentary poetics or hybrid genres of one form or another – Rodrigo Toscano, Amina Cain, Tisa Bryant, Juliana Spahr, Jen Hofer, Jena Osman, Claudia Rankine, Miranda Mellis, Dawn Lundy Martin, Christian Nagler, Amar Ravva, Catherine Taylor, Amanda Davidson, Fred Moten, Rob Halpern, Jacqueline Frost….and this is just a small fraction from what first comes to the head. 

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
More collaborations. I’ve produced so many collective documents with others in the realm of political organizing and strategy, etc and that’s been such a rich arena of my existence and such a profound and useful pressure to my own thinking. I’d like to find a way for more of that to happen in my poetic/creative work as well.

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’m trying to think of that occupation every day these days! And certainly being a writer has never successfully “supported” me in any significant way in the financial sense (except via the related, but by no means identical, gesture of “teaching” writing). I’d like to learn an answer to this question in the next two years that is other than “adjunct professor.” I’m open to suggestions in that territory – really, I mean it; no leap is too large, no option is too ridiculous! In general, I don’t’ have the tiniest bit of trouble discovering valuable, meaningful ways and projects on which to spend my time. I do have terrible trouble finding the realm in which that neatly coincides with “an occupation (paid)” of some form.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I don’t think of myself as someone who is only or solely a writer and I don’t think I would be good at (or well fulfilled by) that kind of pure mono-focus. I write because I need a space to interrogate, think through, poke holes in, expand, and revitalize my relations to all of those other “somethings and someone elses” that make up a substantial portion of the fabric of my daily existence.

19 - What was the last great book you read?
I was really struck by Catherine Taylor’s APART and her new poetic essay “Inanimate Subjects” (which evocatively pairs an investigation of the current deployment of drones by U.S. military forces with an exploration of the use, history, and hypnotic effects of puppets – asking difficult questions about our collective notions of autonomy, agency, substitution, accountability, security, and infatuation). If I had a different extension of time available to me right now than I currently do, I’d love to be writing an essay/review that placed Taylor’s APART and Amar Ravva’s American Canyon in conversation with one another, particularly in relation to the questions they variously raise around cultural memory, history, and identity. For a more conventionally formatted historical analysis and critique, I’m also really loving the incredibly rich research and commentary to be found in Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States– which I just started reading last week.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I mentioned it briefly above (in #10). There are a series of things I might have said about this work three weeks ago, if asked, that I’m not at all sure would be true today in terms of the form I imagine the piece will ultimately take. As noted above, it’s presently titled “MICROFICHE / MICROFILCH / MICROMANAGE / MICROFEIGN: A Series of Reflections on the Experiences of Surveillance & Resistance” – but that title too will likely change. It tries to use a bunch of examples, both contemporary and historical in nature, as a platform for thinking about: representation, opticality, security, structural racism, monitoring, and more. Each of these terms is of course sweeping and huge – so the job of the work itself must necessarily be to linger and ground and swarm and search and microscope in enough on these concerns for generative contact, acute tactility, and lively friction to emerge.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

My little review of Pattie McCarthy's x y z & &(Ahsahta, 2015) is now online at The Small Press Book Review.

Andrew Forbes was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and attended Carleton University. He has written film and music criticism, liner notes, sports columns, and short fiction. His work has been nominated for the Journey Prize, and has appeared in The Feathertale Review, Found Press, PRISM International, The New Quarterly, Scrivener Creative Review, The Journey Prize Stories 25, This Magazine, Hobart, The Puritan, All Lit Up, The Classical, and Vice Sports. What You Need, his debut collection of fiction, is available from Invisible Publishing. He lives in Peterborough, Ontario.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Well, as this is my first book, I suppose whatever changes it’s to bring are currently underway, and I won’t be able to view them fully except in hindsight. Can I take a raincheck on this question?

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I think I came to fiction because it was the form that gave the most to me as a reader. I write non-fiction too, though not, as yet, in book form. Poetry is another language, the faculty for which I seem to lack entirely.

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 always have something on the go, usually many things. Stories, essays, baseball writing. If something isn’t working I move onto something else. Some stories happen all at once, while some take two or five or seven years of effort, then abandonment, then effort, etc. When things are really working, I’m a pretty fast writer, I think. As for the differences between first and final drafts, I’d say that I’m a prodigious tinkerer, always fiddling with the smallest things until finally walking away. My starts are quick, generally. I make a few notes and sit on an idea for a period of time, and then leap in. Essays are like that, too. Once I’m rolling the thing seems to unfurl itself out in front of me. That’s a nice feeling.

4 - Where does a 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?
For me a work of fiction often begins with an image, or a setting. Occasionally it’s a line, which generally ends up being the first line, though it has also become the last, in a few instances. I am a big believer in using past failures as stock material, stripping them for parts -- scenes, settings, dialogue -- for newer, hopefully more successful things I’m working on. It’s a way to convince myself I wasn’t wasting my time.

In the case of this, a book of short stories, each piece is built on its own, though I’d say that for several years I had been aware that I was putting together a collection. That meant that certain stories were left out, not because they weren’t “good enough,” but because they simply didn’t fit.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Public readings are a peculiar thing, seemingly at complete odds with the impulse which drove me to writing in the first place, as a very young person: I’d always seen writing as a way for me -- a pretty shy kid, prone to mild social anxiety -- to say things I couldn’t say aloud. Flash forward a decade or two and see me being asked to stand in front of a roomful of people and read those things. Seems like a bit of a cruel joke, doesn’t it? But I’m getting better at them, I think. A bit more comfortable.

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?
If form is theory, then I’m certainly concerned with that, insofar as I’m interested in using the constraints of the short story form to my advantage. As for questions, they remain specific to each piece, for now, though I suppose that if you were to view them all in macro you’d see the same questions repeating: what does this person want? what are the forces which prevent them from getting it? etc. The broad human questions. What am I doing? What’s the point? That sort of thing.

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?
On the one hand, I think there’s some danger to anointing ourselves spokespeople for a culture, assuming that our concerns are in any way universal. Writing is a privileged act, when you get down to it. But on the other hand, yes, I think we can strive to be sentinels, loudspeakers, canaries in the coalmine, squeaky wheels. Writers can and should say difficult things in the hopes that those things become easier for everyone to say.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I think I’ve been lucky with editors, overall. I’ve been edited by a few people at the magazine or journal level who were obviously interested in bringing out the best in a piece. I have been largely spared the horror of a personality clash with an editor. And while I had extreme trepidation over handing over my book to an editor, the experience turned out to be uniformly rewarding. I had a great working relationship with Michelle Sterling, and there’s no question that she made the book better than it was when it was given to her.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
“Read, write, push.” That’s the mantra of Rick Taylor, writer and teacher, and friend, and it pretty much sums up the whole thing for me.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
I’ve done a fair bit of non-fiction work now, mostly writing about sports, and music, and movies, and I enjoy those things. Fiction steps in when the precise truth of a thing is in some way narratively inconvenient to me, but for a lot of stories--the way Ichiro Suzuki goes about his business, say, or the circumstances of Albert Ayler’s life--the truth is simply so much better than what I could come up with, so I deal with the material in a non-fictional manner. The subjects have a way of telling you whether they’re best suited for one treatment or the other.

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’m up early, which is something I’ve done for a long time. The first house my wife and I owned, in rural eastern Ontario, had a sunroom on it which faced east. The whole thing was windows, basically. It was lovely and quiet. I had a chair out there, and I’d be up in time to get started before the sun came up, a pot of coffee close at hand. I could get a fair bit of work done before going to work-work, which at that time might have been in a music store, or it might have been an internet company which rented DVDs to subscribers by mail, depending on just when this historical vignette takes place. That schedule proved very productive for me. I produced, even if I produced little of value. I pumped out drafts, the necessary bad, early ones, which are prerequisite to better stuff. So getting up early has remained my preferred method. If I can get a couple of hours in before the first kid stirs, I’m happy.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I look to writers who are way, way better than me. I’ll go to the shelf and pull down a collection by Lorrie Moore or Alice Munro or Jim Shepard.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
A flowering lilac bush. That’s two-staged. My grandmother’s house in Pictou, Nova Scotia had a big old lilac tree outside, and the scent, alongside the damp earthen smell of the cellar, defined that place for me. Then that house in Eastern Ontario had a lilac bush on the property, and the smell of it in May or early June, when summer was just coming into its lush fullness, was about the most comforting thing in the world to me. Coming through an open window at night. Then I’d clip big bunches of it and put them in water on the table, but in a matter of hours they’d begin smelling rank. The scent of it on the breeze couldn’t be duplicated. There’s probably some deeper lesson in that.

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?
All of it, I suppose. Music, certainly. Whether through lyrics or melody or both, music has always fueled something. I often wish I possessed some musical ability, because it just seems like a much more direct route to whatever emotional truth I’m trying to tap with words. I use it when writing, usually instrumental, often John Coltrane. I’ve also had stories spring from songs -- Neko Case inspired one of the stories in the book, for example. Movies contribute too, as does photography. News items. Everything, really. As a writer you’re kind of a sieve of information, aren’t you? Nature is the calming force, the healer. If I can steal the opportunity to swim in a lake I’m recharged for whatever labours lie ahead.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Five years ago, when my twin boys were born prematurely, and they were housed in the hospital’s strange clear boxes, with ultraviolet lights trained on them and tubes running into them, computers hooked up to them, I would go in there at night, sit in a rocking chair, and read them Whitman.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Attend the World Series.

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’d like to do something with clearer, more tangible results. A contractor, maybe. Something where, at the end of the day, I could point to the wall I’d put up and say, “That. That’s what I did today.” Paragraphs, word counts, they seem a little inconsequential as compared to a wall.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I’ve shown very little aptitude for anything else. Once, deeply concerned for my prospects, my father sent me to a career coach guy, and footed the bill. This man was straight out of central casting -- cigarette-chomping, slicked-back greying hair, Italian suits. He had no idea what to do with me. At one of our meetings, he simply had nothing to say. He put his hands behind his head and his feet up on his desk, exhaled heavily, and then, nodding toward his feet, said, “Business tip: your socks should match your pants.” He subjected me to a battery of personality tests, and when the results came back he slid a folder across his desk to me and said, “It says you should be a writer.”

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I just reread Birds of America by Lorrie Moore. Genius. And it was a few months back, but one night TCM was showing Smiles of a Summer Night. I turned it on and my daughter, who’s eight, came and sat with me, and she was engrossed. On the one hand it was a bit beyond her, I guess, this subtitled Bergmann film about sexual mores in turn-of-the-century Sweden, but though outside her frame of reference she seemed to relate to it, maybe most strongly to Anne, the sort of caged-bird character, that uncertainty over what the world’s offering you at a pivotal point in your life. She also really liked the costumes. Anyway, that movie, and the experience of watching it with my kid, was memorable.

20 - What are you currently working on?
Dinner. A bacon and broccoli rice bowl. Should be ready in about twenty minutes.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Emily Ursuliak was kind enough to interview me over at University of Calgary's CJSW radio program Writer's Block. You can now listen to the interview here.

My short review of Pearl Pirie's the pet radish, shrunken (BookThug, 2015) is now online at The Small Press Book Review.

Amish Trivedi's first book, Sound/Chest, is out from Coven Press, LLC, and his chapbook, The Destructions, is out from above/ground press. Recent poems have been in Open Letters Monthly, The Kenyon Review Online, Entropy and soon in The Laurel Review. His reviews have been in Sink and Pleiades. He is the managing editor of N/A (www.nalitjournal.com) and his website is at amishtrivedi.com

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Well, first things first, the hair on my head started growing back! But seriously, I guess I don't know yet? I feel like one of the main things I have noticed (at least my ego urges me to say this) is that people seem to be more willing to ask things of me? Like to do things or whatever. It's pretty neat to be liked though I'm hoping people thought I was a swell guy before!

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Hard to say. Music? I'm not sure really, but I know I spent my teens years writing really shitty poems. And then Johannes showed me that people were still alive writing poetry and that I could be one of them.

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?
Tricky question. I think sometimes it will start with a line or just something someone says. I think the current manuscript I'm working on started with Jessica Smith saying something about milk thistle and then 30 minutes reading random wikipedia articles that branched off milk thistle. You never quite know, I guess. For me, it's usually something simple. That said, now I've come to understand the value of sitting on something. I'm more or less done with the main writing on a new manuscript and while I've sent out poems (thanks for taking some yourself) I feel like I can't start organizing etc. for a little bit.

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?
I guess this goes with the last question a bit: a poem usually starts with some clever line (or clever to me, at least) and then goes from there. I think I said in our other interview something about thinking in manuscripts now but I kind of don't want to do that at the same time. It's a push pull but I guess I always move towards the next big thing, however well that's worked out at this point.

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 readings but I see them almost as a platform for being funny and not necessarily for people to listen to me read poems. I always wanted to be a comedian but it's ok when a joke at a poetry reading fails. I also like going to readings. My friend Rob McLoone once said about conferences that it's like reading months worth of journals very quickly. I think readings are great that way.

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 can't come up with an answer here that doesn't make me sound like a college student in their first philosophy class so I think I'll just lean into it: I think my concern is being. Maybe I should type that with a capital "B!" I'm really interested in how we process things through language and I think for me, poetry is about processing everything going on around me. Digital brains turn processing into zeroes and ones and I think my analog brain turns them into poems. I think a current question is how we manage to go on living in a world with language as our artifice. It's used to lie to us but it's also how we display the truth. How do we understand both sides of our words and how do we use them? As someone who is really fucking good and fucking things up when I speak, I'm amazed by my own inability to master something that seems so simple and innate.

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?
Again, I'll lean into college philosophy: I think it's the goal of the writer to really reflect back on society. I really earnestly believe that, however much of a jerk that makes me sound like. I think writers do it but I think stand up comedian do an even better job of that at this point in time, partially because we all enjoy laughing and partially because we we can stomach things from people who are making us laugh. I am, however, ridiculously fascinated by the role of poetry in modern society. I think that's why I like Robert Archambeau so much and hope he doesn't mind that I am in the trailer of the truck he's driving on this front.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
With reviews, I find it easy, especially as that person, of late, is Dan Magers, with whom I get along really nicely. No one has really much asked me about changing poems around lately and I think we've gotten away from THAT writer/editor relationship. If things aren't working, they move down the submission list.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Johannes, any time I turned in good writing in his class, would always tell me to write a thousand more. I've totally stolen this and tell my students that as well. If something is working, then keep doing it until it's dead. I don't know if he even believes that anymore but that's what I still do. I keep trying to work on the things that are still working and try to side-step anything that isn't. Determining that, however, is still really difficult for me.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
Well, I think in terms of review writing, I was doing that anyways. I mean, we all do, right? Maybe not all of us, but I guess for any writer worth their salt, they are constantly turning a critical eye to everything they read. The only hard part after that is articulating it in such a way that you make sense to people. I'm unsure if that's been the case with my prose things. Outside of that, I've always had a hard time with genres. Fiction and I seem to be miles apart. Playing music has always been critical for me but I've always had a hard time switching back and forth between song writing and poem writing.

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?
My gut response is to lie and say I have some routine but I really don't. I've tried, I really have, but mostly, I write when I want and I don't write when I don't want to. I don't stress not feeling the urge to write (other than when there's a review deadline or something like that). That said, when I am working on something and I am going, I'll blow off a lot of things I should be doing. I spend a lot of time in my office on campus since my wife and I have opposite teaching schedules. As a result, I have spent a lot of that time writing when I could be, you know, grading or something else.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
For me it's always movies. Bergman. Godard. The Big Lebowski. Sometimes just mindlessly binge-watching Netflix. Music has worked sometimes, but nothing I can think of specifically. I generally don't stress getting stalled. I think that writing shorter poems means I spend most of my time being stalled.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Ooooh- hard to say. I think probably the spices my Mom keeps in a drawer for my childhood home. Hard to say about my grown up life. My wife is home and we've bounced around enough that I'm not sure how that works for "smell." Her candles, her meals, her Cafe Du Monde.

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?
Well certainly movies. I think that if I could manage to work with other people creatively, I'd have stuck with filmmaking so movies continue to be my main thing. Nature is to be protected again (I just read a study that minorities don't do things outdoors...I am certainly with my fellow minorities there).

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Oh gosh- tricky to answer as ever. Ceravolo (who is very nature oriented, hilariously enough); Armantrout and most of the language folks. I guess I always love writers who use philosophy in their creative work, specifically Kundera and, of course, Camus.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Hard one- at 32 I feel like I've done so little. I want to see more of the world before I am unable to physically do it. Right now, I either have the time or (barely) the money but never both at the same time. I guess I'd like some kind of financial situation that occasionally affords me both together but that seems a long way off, sadly. But yes, seeing more of the world. Just wandering small towns in places. I keep a list of ghost towns I want to see in the Americas. Less stress there in terms of finances but I need the time to go do it, you know?

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 was really set on going to law school for a long time. I still think I'd make a great lawyer but, as my friend David pointed out, I'd probably be working to make the world a better place and STILL be broke. Go figure. Further, I think if I had kept my hair, I would have gone towards politics. That was my dream (and my Dad's dream for me) since I was a kid. Sometimes I still think I'd make a fine politician but of the Paul Wellstone variety. Outside of those boring options, I think, if I could really have done anything, it would be to write for TV. Either working on series of some kind or more happily writing for a late night show. That's one that keeps creeping up for me and I think if I ever get an "in" there, I'll give it a go. I never WRITE funny things, but I think in terms of humor at all times. I think that would work in a writing room of some kind. That said, seems like everyone wants to do that these days so I'm sure I'll never manage to make my way that direction. Besides, Tony Tost seems to have cornered the poet/tv writer thing.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I don't know, honestly. I think I was, to an extent, a writer from the time I physically learned to write, so hard to say. Besides being a Biden-esque gaffe machine in most conversations, writing has that luxury of time. I like the ability to mull on something rather than having to just have an answer.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I've been getting so many poetry books in the mail of late. Michelle Detorie's After-Cave is under serious consideration for this answer. I'm about to teach Didion's Year of Magical Thinking so that has to be mentioned. A film that I must mention, despite initially being torn on it is Frank. I watched it once, thought it ok, but then I watched it again. And then a third time. And then I started talking about it and telling everyone to watch it and couldn't stop. I don't know what it is about that movie: it's infectious. And, of course, you should watch it. Twice at least. I may have to watch it again just writing this.

20 - What are you currently working on?
A few reviews plus the latest manuscript, called FuturePanic. Plus teaching, of course. Just trying to keep my head above water at the moment.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Anticipating the release next week of the fifth issue of Touch the Donkey (a small poetry journal), why not check out the interviews that have appeared over the past few weeks with contributors to the fourth issue: Stan Rogal, Jessica Smith, Nikki Sheppy, Kirsten Kaschock, Lise Downe, Lisa Jarnot, Chris Turnbull and Gary Barwin.

Interviews with contributors to the first three issues, as well, remain online: Susan Briante, derek beaulieu, Megan Kaminski, Roland Prevost, Emily Ursuliak, j/j hastain, Catherine Wagner, Susanne Dyckman, Susan Holbrook, Julie Carr, David Peter Clark, Pearl Pirie, Eric Baus, Pattie McCarthy, Camille Martin and Gil McElroy.

The forthcoming fifth issue features new writing by: Edward Smallfield, Rob Manery, Elizabeth Robinson, lary timewell, nathan dueck, Paige Taggart, ryan fitzpatrick and Christine McNair. And, once the new issue appears, watch the blog over the subsequent weeks and months for interviews with a variety of the issue's contributors!

And of course, copies of the first four issues are still very much available. Why not subscribe?

We even have our own Facebook group. How magical is that?

Randall Potts is the author of Trickster, published in 2014 by the University of Iowa Press, Kuhl House poetry series. His previous collection, Collision Center was published by O Books in 1994. A chapbook, Recant: (A Revision) was published by Leave Books in 1994.

His poems have appeared in: American Poetry Review, the Antioch Review, Canary, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Five Fingers Review, Iowa Review, Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, O/4 Subliminal Time, O•blek, Poetry Flash, The West Marin Review, Unsplendid and other periodicals.

He received an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa and has taught creative writing at the University of San Francisco and California College of the Arts. He lives in Berkeley, California.

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?
My new book, Trickster is very different from my first book, Collision Center. As Andrei Tarkovsky wrote, “The greatest thing is to be free in your work.” Trickster depends on clarity, simplicity and song. It’s a poem cycle intended to be read from beginning to end like a novel rather than as a traditional collection of poems. It engages with the world as a place where all things are equal: “a blade of grass/equal to the suffering/of a lifetime.” And also “where a fly with one wing, keeps/tipping over in the grass, where/the ants will have him.”

My first book, Collision Center and the chapbook “Recant (A Revision),” were both published in 1994 and were self-conscious excursions into syntax, politics and collage-based writing at the limit of the lyric. After Collision Center was published, I wanted to write about different experiences that required a different kind of process to activate and represent. The experience in my collage-based process existed only at the moment of composition. I wanted to be able to capture experience as something active in my life, not just in my head at one specific moment.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I was attracted to poetry because of its speed, immediacy and risk—I still am. John Ashbery’s Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror and John Berryman’s Dream Songswere important gateways to writing for me. I’ve always read haiku to help me distill language. Paradoxically, I probably read less poetry than any other genre because I like to spend time with a poet and read their work exclusively.

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 write slowly. I spend most of my time gathering material and I delay writing a first draft as long as possible. I believe not writing or delaying writing is a vital part of my writing process. When I begin do to compose drafts of poems, I work quickly, usually in longhand in a notebook or on loose notes, revising printed drafts in pen. Inevitably, every poem is unique; some take shape quickly, others become shape shifters.

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?
I work poem-by-poem. I have a general idea about the subject of various groups of poems, but the overall narrative arc of a book usually comes last. Even with Trickster, which is structured like a novel, the narrative arc was one of the last elements of the book to take shape.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I recently read with poet Malachi Black and we collaborated on an unconventional reading format. Instead of each reading for a block of 20 minutes, we took turns reading. We each read sets of poems; each set got longer and we alternated sets. The reading developed its own momentum as we shifted voices and became a song of its own. I think the normal reading format is long and monotonous. Poetry needs a better delivery system—I think film is a better medium for spoken poetry than live readings.

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?
For me, poetry inevitably raises questions about human nature and conscience. As an art practice, I think poetry is an ongoing conversation among human beings about the nature of being human. At this particular moment, we’re witnessing the collapse of the human world, so it’s even more urgent that we understand human potential and how we might change the way we live. As Joseph Beuys said, “…the problem is to understand that man is first a being who needs nourishment for his spiritual needs, and that if he could cultivate and train his primary nature, this spiritual nature, he could develop whole other energies.”

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 experience being a writer as living within the practice of writing.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Mark Levine was my editor at the University of Iowa Press for Trickster and he was phenomenal—he rigorously engaged with the poems and the arc of the book. I’ve never worked with an editor who could collaborate in such a seamless way and I found it exhilarating. The conversation that developed between us over several months of editorial work was a huge gift to me and to the book. 

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
“Don’t be a Writer, just write.” Anonymously, spray-painted down the hallway of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in 1987.

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 set routine for writing. I write short notes and work on revising drafts whenever I can. To compose drafts of poems, I need long uninterrupted blocks of time, so I work when it’s quiet enough to work.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I constantly watch film—Takovsky, Bela Tarr, Cocteau, Bergman, Lars von Trier, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Satyajit Ray, Kenji Mizoguchi, Antonioni, Godard, Melville, Fassbinder, Pasolini, Fellini, Dorsky, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Marker, Maddin—the list is endless. Film keeps me sane. And I learn more from film, unconsciously, than any other art form. I also listen to many genres of music—too long a list to even begin—I’m continually discovering the dynamics of song.

As I wrote Trickster, I reread Lowell, Berryman (the entire Dream Songs), Roethke, Plath (Plath’s original version of Arial) and later Larkin. I also discovered the poetry and essays of Robert Bringhurst. I read Nijinsky’s diaries, and numerous non-fiction books on ecology, ethnographic records published by the Smithsonian in the early 20th century documenting Native American and First People’s oral traditions and Paul Radin’s translation of the Winnebago trickster cycle Trickster, including his field notes held by the American Philosophical Society library in Philadelphia.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Cat. I can’t describe the scent, because I don’t consciously smell it, it simply registers.

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?
Art often finds its way into my poems. The practice of making art is a theme that runs through Trickster. The last section is a single poem that extends fragmentary writing in Joseph Cornell’s files and diaries into complete lyrics. Another poem, “Fable” was written to accompany an exhibit by Esther Traugot. The poem “Hare” alludes to a performance by Joseph Beuys. “Metamorphosis” references a Picasso exhibit in San Francisco. At its best, art is an act of conscience that can be transformative and poetry can extend and inhabit that experience.

I experience the “natural world” as the Real; it’s the single most important and unifying force in my work. It’s also become a force of extinction we’ve activated, Nature is no longer passive or consistent, but instead has become an overwhelming counter-force to human activity. The way we’ve altered our relationship to Nature has huge implications for the lyric, which has traditionally seen Nature as a consistent cyclical activity rather than as a living being. We need to renew and heal our relationship with Nature by recognizing flaws in our own human nature. Or to put it another way, as Laszlo Krasznahorkai says, “Evil is not some kind of natural force that continually embodies itself in man...it doesn’t even exist independently of man.”

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Right now, I’m immersed in the prose of Clarice Lispector and Laszlo Krasnahorkai.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’d like to live someplace sustainable, remote and wild.

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’d like to make films. 

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I don’t question my desire to write; I can’t stop writing, so I simply accept it. I’ve come to understand the practice of writing as the way I move through the world.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Seiobo There Below, by Lazslo Krasznahorkai, is a masterpiece.

I spent 2014 watching an astonishing retrospective of Satyajit Ray at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley; every Ray film I saw was brilliant.

Less recently,The Turin Horse by Bela Tarr (supposedly his last film) and Melancholia and Antichristby Lars von Trier influenced the tone of some of the last poems I wrote for Trickster.

19 - What are you currently working on?
I’m working on a series of prose poems. Trickster was built on the line, so I’m trying to clear my head by writing sentences before I inevitably return to the line.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

I had two new poems from the suite "Glossary of Musical Terms" posted recently at the Chaudiere Books blog, for the sake of #NationalPoetryMonth

The "Canadian Feature" I've edited for the May 2015 issue of Evening Will Come is now online, featuring poetic statements by derek beaulieu, Amanda Earl, Helen Hajnoczky, Peter Jaeger, Gil McElroy, Erín Moure, Nikki Reimer, Natalie Simpson and lary timewell, as well as a brief introduction by yours truly.

Thanks so much to Afton Wilky and Joshua Marie Wilkinson for the opportunity!

My 30th and final January-March 'commentary,'"Nikki Sheppy: three new poems," is now up at Jacket2.

Over at the Chaudiere Books blog, we're celebrating National Poetry Month with new poems every second day for the entire month of April! Watch for new work by Chaudiere authors and friends alike, including Janice Tokar, Helen Hajnoczky, Joe Blades, Kayla Czaga, Hugh Thomas, Sarah Mangold, Pearl Pirie, Stan Rogal, Lea Graham and derek beaulieu, among others.

And of course, watch for new spring titles by N.W. Lea and William Hawkins!

Sad to hear that Nanaimo, British Columbia poet Peter Culley has died, passing away (according to Kim Goldberg) "in his sleep early Friday morning." Condolences to his family and friends.

According to his EPC Page: "Peter Culley was born in 1958 and grew up on RCAF bases in Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Scotland & finally Nanaimo, British Columbia, where he has (mostly) lived since 1972.  His poetry & writings on visual art have been appearing for three decades in a variety of venues." He was the author of, most recently, the poetry titles Hammertown (New Star Books, 2003), The Age of Briggs and Stratton (New Star Books, 2008) and Parkway (New Star Books, 2013). See my review of Parkway, in which I attempt to provide a larger context for his "Hammertown" project, here. The Capilano Review has already posted a small note on their website on his death.

Here is a link to a post on Culley's work by Paul Nelson (where the photo of Culley was taken), and another post by Lisa Robertson from 2001, posted at Lemonhound.

As critic Steve Evans posted yesterday on Facebook:

My thoughts are with Rod Smith, Carla Billitteri, Ben Friedlander, Lee Ann Brown, and all the other FB friends who, like Jennifer and I, are absorbing the news and mourning the loss of the incomparable Peter Culley.

Peter read in the UMaine New Writing Series in the fall of 2005 (with David Perry, and while his great friend since High School, Kevin Davies, was doing his MA here). Just a few summers ago, he returned for our 1980s conference, where he gave a talk about "leisure poetry" (his own take on the poetics of the right-to-laziness) and generally enlivened things with his penetrating, kind, and humorous commentary. I'll miss his presence here on FB—the amazing photographs, the impeccable tips on what to watch next on TCM. Sigh.

Amber McMillan is a teacher and writer living on Protection Island BC with her partner, daughter and two cats. Her first collection of poems We Can't Ever Do This Againis out this spring with Wolsak and Wynn.

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;