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configurations: pinhey's point (poem)
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Jessica Smith, life-list
American poet Jessica Smith’s long-awaited second trade collection, life-list (Victoria TX: chax press, 2015), is a remarkable collection of expansive and exploded lyrics stretched and pulled apart to form staccato breaches into memory, multilinearity, meaning and language. As she explains in a recent interview posted over at Touch the Donkey: “I want to use the whole space of the page and approach it like a kind of blend between painting and poem, in that the words are usually arranged roughly left-right, top-bottom, but not entirely. I see the space of the page as already having a certain “weight,” like it’s not a blank/silent space, and that concept was molded for me by John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock and Steve McCaffery. I was also inspired, early on, by installation art, which along with sculpture is still what excites me the most: I want the audience to physically participate in the making of the object.” Structured into two sections—“observation” and “memory” (a selection of the second section published as a chapbook, here)—the poems in life-list, published a full nine years after the appearance of her Organic Furniture Cellar (Outside Voices, 2006), suggest far more might be possible, with further titles in what could simply be the opening work of something far larger. If this is Smith writing out a “life list,” how many entries might there be?
Part of what is remarkable about Smith’s work is her use of fragment and space, allowing the poems such a breadth of multiple readings and meanings, even while allowing a strong intuitive narrative grounding. There is something lovely and deceptively light in the way her poems accumulate so subtly into such hefty, serious weight, pinging across the margins of the book in ways that deserve as much to be heard aloud as experienced upon the page. Further in her Touch the Donkey interview, she responds:
I choose the page as a constraint: Often when I asked for poems for periodicals, I ask the editor about the margins, page size, and font, and then I write a poem specifically for the magazine within those constraints. When I write a larger project on my own, I choose my own visual constraints. I enjoy writing by hand on square pages, but when I transfer drafts to the computer I try to choose standard printer sizes for paper and margins and standard, readable typefaces. I am constrained by the current standards of publishing, but I choose the constraint for myself with an eye to publishing because I want a larger audience than the kind of micropublishing that non-standard pages/typefaces would require. So, yes, I sometimes feel limited by page space, but the limitation is positive. I need boundaries! It helps me concentrate on other things.
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12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ian Burgham
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I ‘m not sure the first book changed my life in substantive ways. But what it did was to convince me that someone else felt there was value for others in what I was producing. The idea that what was the result of an isolated act, a difficult solitary exercise, might be meaningful to someone else was almost a surprise. It provided me with increased confidence in showing work to others. Seeing it in print also gave me a new way to look at my poems …and suddenly you felt that maybe they just weren’t as good as they could be.
I think my most recent work is a little more ambitious in a number of ways – but I think my voice remains the same. One new thing I’ve tried in the most recent book is to link the poems with a continuous narrative that traces a moral and spiritual journey.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
When I was nine I tried to write a novel. It was as hopeless an exercise then as now. I am not a novelist or in any sense a prose writer. I don’t read novels. I can’t. I don’t like the form. I have always loved poetry – initially because it is a form of music, and that is fundamental to my being. My grandmother, with whom my family shared a house as I was growing up, kept poetry books by my Scots and Orcadian grandfathers on the shelf. So poetry was never foreign territory.
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?
A work, whether a long poem, or a thematic collection or an individual short poem arises out of image, sound, but always out of a feeling that declares its own significance. I don’t always know what the feeling signifies. But I start. Then what comes unfolds in a series of hooks and eyes of ideas and emotions. The first drafts are rarely anything but a beginning. And yes, I make notes over a course of time. I go through many drafts, always trying to hold on to where the poem is going. You have to be brave and be prepared to encounter anything and to move toward it, into it. Poetry is not for the fearful.
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?
As I said emotion, image, music, sound, smell, anything that triggers memory and the insect cloud of ideas – but always emotional significance. I do play with directed ideas later…but they tend to drag the work down into prose. However, my most recent book is more than a collection of separate poems; I started with the idea of linking locations with emotions and images, and it evolved into a narrative.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I read rarely. It is not that I don’t enjoy readings but performance is not writing. As a former musician, I know how performance can feed the ego. In a way, you work with an audience, but you can also manipulate an audience too. Primarily, performing does not engage the poetic mind; it is not the same way of mind and not the same way of being. I prefer making the work to the promotion and performing of it. I think the value in reading is that you, the poet, can hear it and know whether the music and the structure, your word and phrase choices are working. You encounter it in a new way. But my primary audience is my own ear. Reading for others is often valuable as part of the editing process, but it is a distraction. What audiences do when they hear my work, how they react, is not my business or my concern. I just hope that whatever they might find in it is meaningful.
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 one concern that may lie behind my writing; in fact, it haunts me. Why do we exist; what is the value of existence? So far the only answer I have is that we exist to make. If you strip away distractions and beliefs in anything, you come to the core of existence which seems to me to be nothing but pain and imperfection. But art gives me reason. It is the divinity of us, or in us, or at least the closest we come to it.
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?
The role of the writer is to write. And what you create can’t be in any way satisfying, beautiful or meaningful without coming from a place of truth. So poets confront and expose and work in truth. That is a damned and unforgiving place. Who wouldn’t prefer distractions? But poets have no choice when they are in the act of making if they hope to make something that is of value.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
It is essential. When I was much younger, I worked as an editor with a number of major poets in Scotland. There wasn’t one of them who didn’t work with one editor, or more than one, during the evolution of their poems. It is essential because comment and advice can strengthen the work. But editors of poetry must be poets themselves. We are often trying to overcome a nervousness that what we are producing is not quite right; there is lots of room for getting it wrong. An ignorant editor can embrace the nervousness, but a discerning one can reveal where the poetry really wants to go.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Work at the craft and then get out of the way when the poem begins to form. Then, when you think it is finished, put it away for weeks and months – when you see it again you’ll know what needs to be done. And be honest…write honestly or what you produce will have no lasting value.
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 write almost every day. If I don’t, I become “antsy”, restless, unhappy. But I can’t work on poems at my desk for longer than 3-4 hours at a time.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Often other poets’ work unblocks me – one word or phrase from a good poem and my imagination and emotions begin.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
The sea and salt on a cool day. I am always wondering what and where that place is.
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?
Science is a great source of image, symbol, metaphor and meaning. But so are all the others you have mentioned.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I do not read novels. But the poetry of many others, and the writings of poets on the nature of the poetic process, are key to my understanding of where all this business comes from. However, having said that, it is James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man to which I return often. It was the work that, when I first read it at the age of 17, gave me the first glimpse that the way the world appeared to me, and what my mind did with the ways of the world I encountered, and the words and images that emanated from it, that this was all “normal” for some – I had a community.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I have done it. But I would like to again live a life of daily literary endeavour, thought and study in exile in some other part of the world. A life lived in exile is delicious, loaded with new ways of thinking, seeing and feeling. Also I would like to collaborate with a musician/composer on a poetic work.
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?
A stonemason like my grandfathers.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Necessity made me write. I was born with the need and the passion, and never really wanted to do anything else.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Philip Larkin: The Complete Poems, and the notebooks of Jack Kerouac.
19 - What are you currently working on?
I am working on an idea to link a series of poems that focus on the salvation that resides in poverty, humiliation, disease, disfigurement and grief. I am heavily influenced at the moment by the paintings of the English painter, L.S. Lowry.
[Ian Burgham reads in Ottawa as part of The Sawdust Reading Series with Steven Heighton on June 10, 2015]
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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Amish Trivedi, Sound/Chest
PAINT/SWEEP 1714
This is the office so
she leans forward
again. My washtub is
blood-spattered and raucous.
Even at night, I
can hear the fireworks
as they bounce off the
engraved faces. Elvis
wishes he were back
in time. My president has
a handle that lacks vision. In
the doorway I felt the brush
passed of a hand and two mice
racing the hands up and down:
these many aisles wavering
in sawdust. It’s grainy
even when you’ve gone
over a dozen times and still
there are no songs you
remember hearing.
In the “After/Word” at the back of his first trade poetry collection (and the first title by new publishing house Coven Press), Sound/Chest (Birmingham AL: Coven Press, LLC, 2015), Providence, Rhode Island poet and editor Amish Trivedi writes:
The titles to these poems come from labels on a discarded card catalogue that I found while wandering around the basement at the University of Iowa’s Main Library in June of 2008. There were several cabinets that were being prepared to go to surplus, and while normally I paid no attention to them, the fact that this one cabinet still had labels drew my eye.
While there is probably no way of knowing exactly what the catalog’s function was, a librarian’s best guess is that they were used for a custom filmstrip collection. What the words and numbers are in relation to has been lost. The filmstrip, though, is that archaic bit of grade school technology that required the teacher to assign a student to turn a knob when the supplemental audio urged her to do so, usually through the use of an annoying beep that caused the inattentive turner to startle and flip the knob quickly but always too late.
My goal was to create a relationship between these words and in most cases, the numbers. Our minds, through the use of language, create relationships between ideas all the time, and I felt that with such a diverse set of ideas existing in one collection, there was little to do but manufacture that relationship.
Through the course of sixty-one poems, Trivedi utilizes the card catalogue phrases as bouncing-off points, composing poems that link through a tenuous series of stitches, including tone, structure and the occasional reference to the library. In a forthcoming interview over at Touch the Donkey, he discusses some of the thematic linkages, writing: “So yes, it’s something thematically I want to figure out better but I don’t want to be heavy-handed with the social aspect of it. I want the poems to function as by themselves. It’s like Sound/Chestwhere not every poem is about being in a library or being in a flood: the poems should have an overall direction but maybe each individual portion can do its own thing and that’s cool.” What becomes less interesting than the relationships between the text and the numbers is the relationship between the binary that exists in each title, and their relationship with the resulting poem, as Trivedi allows the expanse of the archive to enter into his poems, presenting small bits of information and salvage on just about everything. Through the build-up of poems that slowly accumulate into the collection Sound/Chest, one realizes that there is a flood, and there is something kept safe in a drawer, both of which expand, and even multiply, even as they are allowed equal weight. As he writes: “I’ve stolen all the /regrets I know about.”
TRUNCATED/OBVIOUS 1713
This is the worst say I know:
I had this memorized before,
so just turn it when—you’re
missing—this finger or that
one—to a lawnmower I—
heard it like that I—no
go back to the one before
the jelly—you’re the one who
spilled the paste—you’re the
one who flushed the
piece of her hair band
and shat on the edge of the—
problem I have is with
her Father—you’re missing
the beeps and we’re
out of people with—
fingers.
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call for submissions : seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics,
http://www.ottawater.com/seventeenseconds/
The first eleven issues remain online, and recent issues include work by Michelle Detorie, Cameron Anstee, Andy Weaver, Claire Molek, Chus Pato, Michael Boughn, Margaret Christakos, Victor Coleman, Marilyn Irwin, Donato Mancini, Erín Moure, Christine Stewart, Brecken Hancock, j/j hastain, Jessica Smith, David O'Meara, Wanda Praamsma, Amy Dennis, Phil Hall, Joshua Marie Wilkinson and plenty of others.
Send submissions, suggestions and pitches to editor/publisher rob mclennan via rob_mclennan (at) hotmail (dot) com
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12 or 20 (small press) questions with JenMarie and Travis Macdonald on Fact-Simile editions
JenMarie Macdonald is a writer and bookmaker living near Philadelphia. DoubleCross Press is publishing her chapbook of two essays in their Poetics of the Handmade series this spring. She collaborates with Travis Macdonald on chapbooks, including Graceries (Horse Less Press) and forthcoming Bigger On the Inside (ixnay press), as well as their press Fact-Simile Editions.
Travis Macdonald is a 2014 Pew Fellow in the Arts. He is the author of two full-length books – The O Mission Repo [vol.1] (Fact-Simile Editions) and N7ostradamus (BlazeVox Books) – as well as several chapbooks. He is a creative director by day and by night he co-edits Fact-Simile Editions with his wife JenMarie.
1 – When did Fact-Simile 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?
In 2007, Travis started publishing some short-run, staple-bound chapbooks by fellow Naropa students under the name Fact-Simile. But it wasn’t until JenMarie joined in the spring of 2008 that the press really and truly got up and running. Our original goal was pretty broad early on—we simply wanted to make lively, living spaces for our fellow writers.
At first, those spaces took shape as the simple, mimeo-style, staple-bound literary journal we still publish today. As we began experimenting with chapbook forms and learning more about the craft of bookmaking, our goals became more focused. Today, our aim is to create books whose structures perform their contents, providing tactile interactive experiences that expand upon and redefine the act of reading.
2 – What first brought you to publishing?
We both came to publishing from very different backgrounds. Travis from poetry and JenMarie from magazine journalism. Ultimately, though, what drew us both to role of small press publisher was the desire to discover and share new work. We both completed our grad studies at Naropa where there was a palpable sense that, as writers and as readers, it is absolutely critical that we create community and participate in the bigger conversation. Whether that community is enacted through a reading series, a journal, a blog, etc…the medium doesn’t matter so much as the act of connection. In many ways, that sort of public contribution feels just as necessary as the more personal acts of writing and reading.
3 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?
It’s probably safe to say that the role of publishers in general is, at its most basic, to connect writers with readers. In the not too distant past, that connection was made largely by a relatively small number of big publishing houses with broad distribution networks. But with more writers and (we hope) readers alive today than at any other time in the history of civilization, those monolithic publishing houses simply can’t serve the needs of an increasingly diverse population with increasingly fractured interests.
As the speed of information continues to accelerate, it enables the creation of loosely interconnected communities, connecting those fractured interests and audiences beyond geographical boundaries. We see the small press as a locus for that kind of connection, creating spaces for the exchange between writers and readers who might otherwise be disenfranchised by mass market publishing.
Since small presses are mission driven rather than profit driven, they are also able to take bigger risks than big publishing houses. This enables them to push the boundaries of what is possible in a way that we believe is vital and necessary.
4 – What do you see your press doing that no one else is?
There are a lot of talented and dedicated people running a bunch of really amazing small presses in the world today. Each of us specializes in a different combination of aspects of publishing, editing, bookmaking, etc. So there isn’t really any one thing that we are doing that no one else is, but we may spend more time considering the act of reading and how the physical form of the book affects the reading experience for each individual book more than other presses. Whether that’s through poetry trading cards or more obscure forms.
5 – What do you see as the most effective way to get new books out into the world?
For the more tactile, physical book objects we create, we still believe in the power of the post office. And other good old fashioned methods like face-to-face exchanges through book fairs and readings and such. But when it comes to building our readership, we’ve embraced many of the more technologically advanced media for promotion and communication: Facebook, email announcements, etc.
6 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?
We look at ourselves as collaborators rather than editors. We select work for publication that we consider to be a more or less finished product. Of course, we proofread all our publications and query the writer with small suggested edits or to identify potential errors. But, for the most part, we see it as our job to focus on creating a form for the book that works with and through the text, rather than manipulate the text to fit a pre-established form or expectation.
7 – How do your books get distributed? What are your usual print runs?
The ability to take control of the means of production and distribution was really one of the things that drew us to small press publishing. While we occasionally turn to commercial printers, for the most part we make and distribute all of our books ourselves. We sell them online through our website (www.fact-simile.com), at book fairs and at readings. Because we use almost entirely recycled and reclaimed material to make our books, our print runs depend on the quantity of materials we have. But it’s typically around 100 for chapbooks. The PDF version of the journal we distribute for free online and the print version usually comes in somewhere in between 350-500 copies that we print ourselves. For the poetry trading card series, we printed 500-1000 of each.
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?
Fact-Simile is just the two of us. The benefit is that we live together, so we don’t have to work around a bunch of schedules or coordinate big editorial meetings. The drawback is that, depending on what else is happening in our life, press work can get sidelined at times.
9– How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?
If there’s a secret to writing, it’s reading. As writers, WHAT we read ultimately influences our writing. Which raises the question of access. If we allowed Barnes & Noble or Amazon to curate everything we read, we would be much different writers. And with so many small presses out there publishing so many different kinds of work, curating our own experiences online can be daunting at times. As editors, we are very aware that we are curating a distinct experience for our readers. That awareness not only informs our consideration of the work that is submitted, it also helps us be more aware of how another editor may consider our own work when writing, editing and submitting. In the end, approaching our work with the understanding that every editor is curating a different sort of experience loosens the grip of doubt a little and lets us lessen our attachment to what is on the page so we can be more ruthless and risky in cutting and experimenting.
On the other hand, whether or not they know it, the readers and writers who submit to our press, are curating our reading experience in interesting and often unexpected ways, exposing us to work we may not have sought out or encountered on our own. That inevitably has a significant impact on how we read and edit our own writing.
One of the first books we published was The O Mission Repo, Travis’s erasure of The 9/11 Commission Report. It gave us autonomy and the luxury to put out the book as we wanted on a specific timeline. We could be riskier with our editorial choices, and we could release the book while The 9/11 Commission Report was still something relatively fresh in people’s minds. So while we aren’t against publishing our own work in certain instances, our primary aim is to make space for the work of others.
11– How do you see Fact-Simile evolving?
In addition to the chapbooks that we make, we’d like to create more intricate book arts pieces. Eventually, we’d like to enlist some more editors and bookmakers. We’d also like see Fact-Simile evolve beyond a press into a community-based literary arts organization. With that goal in mind, we’ve recently begun collaborating with Vox Populi Gallery in Philadelphia to host craft talks and poets theater. We’re also exploring the possibility of taking on interns and eventually offering workshops.
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?
We’re most proud of making magazines, books, and book objects that bring people new reading experiences. We have no pre-set expectation for how people should perceive and engage our work, so we can’t identify anything they’ve overlooked or that really frustrates us. Once our books are in their hands, it's about their experience, not ours. On thing does come to mind, though it’s more of a fascination than a frustration: some of our books go unread because some people are afraid to open and handle them. For instance, some people have confessed to having never broken the seal and unrolled Dale Smith’s July Oration or pulling off the rubber bands and opening the scrolls of our a Sh Anthology. This sort of behavior points to one of the ways that people engage with and develop relationships with books, letting them sit unread on shelves. Ultimately, that’s the sort of relationship we’re hoping to help shift.
13– Who were your early publishing models when starting out?
As we’ve already indicated, Naropa was a fertile and supportive place to start a literary journal, and we were taught about the history of small press publishing. Naturally, other Naropa small presses like Hot Whiskey and summer stock were models, but also Angel Hair, Big Table, Kulchur, The Floating Bear, 0 to 9, United Artists.
Elizabeth Robinson (of Instance and Etherdome) and her generous heart were huge inspirations. The Waldrops’ Burning Deck. Catherine Taylor of Essay Press was an early influence for JenMarie. The way we wanted at one time to collect every single Black Sparrow hard cover regardless of the writer, simply because they are so gorgeous. The book artist Suzanne Vilmain and her Counting Coup Press were also big influences.
14– How does Fact-Simile work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What journals or presses do you see Fact-Simile in dialogue with? How important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?
We consider ourselves extremely lucky to live in Philadelphia where there is an incredibly rich, vibrant, diverse and exciting literary community. Our most immediate interactions and engagements with that community takes place at the many readings and events we attend and host. If we extend our definition of community a little bit further, the magazine has put us in touch with an incredible network of writers across the country and beyond. While we each have our own favorite small presses (too numerous to name here) the real dialogue, from an editorial standpoint, is found in the bios of the writers we publish. As for the importance of these different levels of dialogue? It’s critical. The threads that connect the small press community are like an intricate, ongoing series of overlapping conversation where you can tune in at any one point and follow along to find yourself in some of the most unexpected and invigorating places.
15– Do you hold regular or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other events?
Readings and other events are very important as they are phenomenal and often fertile social spaces of play, discovery, mourning, celebration, activism, generosity, etc.
For a long time, we avoided creating our own reading series simply because Philadelphia has so many great ongoing and spontaneous events that we can’t always attend them all. So, while we held sporadic, occasional readings for launches and have hosted reading slots a couple of times at the Boog Festivals in NYC, it wasn’t until this year we started hosting regular literary events for a local Philadelphia gallery called Vox Populi.
Our first event was a pair of wonderful Kevin Killian plays brilliantly performed by Philadelphia poets Jenn McCreary, Jason Mitchell, Mel Bentley, Philip Mittereder, and Alexa Smith. Our next event is a craft performance by Kristin Prevallet of her most recent work “For He Who Will Never Know How Pornography Kills the False Woman and Prevents the Live One From Breathing,” which is available for free on the Essay Press website.
A poetic game play event called “What’s the Science?” (based on an in-class prompt described to us by the poet Zach Savich) is in the works and will be a collaboration of several local presses including Philadelphia Stories, Gigantic Sequins, Apiary, and Cleaver Magazine.
16– How do you utilize the internet, if at all, to further your goals?
The internet is an important virtual social space of play, discovery, mourning, celebration, activism, generosity, etc. The internet has made it possible to better engage and unify a local community as well as cultivate and engage with a global community in real time. We share news and events on Facebook and Twitter, and the only place (beside our house and at book fairs) that our whole catalog is available is on our website. In this way, it’s a device of curation and canonization for people much in the way that anthologies have been in the past, so it has become important to provide content in the possibility that it could end up in an individual “canon." For a press focused on the physicality of books, we maintain a good deal of our relationships virtually.
17– Do you take submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for?
We have an annual submission period for the magazine, usually January 1 through April 1 (but we opened late this year, so we may read longer). In the past, we’ve run an annual Equinox Chapbook Contest in order to accept chapbook submissions. We’ll probably open this back up next year but we’re also exploring the possibility of a more collaborative, solicitation-based system that would allow us to explore new book forms in conjunction with the writer. At this point, we’re not looking for full-length manuscripts.
18– Tell me about three of your most recent titles, and why they’re special.
We’ve just released Jane Wong’s graceful chapbook Impossible Map. It’s a quiet, meandering text that whispers in contractions and expansions…a stillness upon which every sound is magnified. The physical book is a small 6x6 square with several Turkish map pop-up pages that unfold to four times the book’s size. Papermaker & artist Nicole Donnelly harvested the kozo for and made the Amate paper covers.
Brian Foley’s TOTEMis a microscope for image and syntax (and/or for experience) that reveals language as an (un)equatable talisman. The physical book is a denim and leather girdle book, a medieval form mostly used to hitch Bibles to a person so that they may lift it and read at any time.
Frank Sherlock’s Very Different Animals is a long poem which stops at the beginning and starts at the end. The interstitial space between these that is/is not the poem wilds itself between aggression and generation. The physical text is printed on a long sheet, accordion folded, and caged in the back hollow of a miniature canvas. Each canvas-as-cover features an original painting by the artist Nicole Donnelly.
12 or 20 (small press) questions;
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12 or 20 (second series) questions with Collier Nogues
Collier Noguesis the author of The Ground I Stand On Is Not My Ground, selected by Forrest Gander as the winner of the 2014 Drunken Boat Poetry Book Contest, and On the Other Side, Blue (Four Way, 2011). She has received fellowships and grants from the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and Fishtrap, and holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of California at Irvine. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in At Length, Matter, The Cincinnati Review, The Literary Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Tongue, Pangyrus, and the Lost Roads Press anthology Hick Poetics. The title erasure from The Ground I Stand On was featured in the 2014 SALTS Gallery exhibition The Printed Room: read the room / you’ve got to in Basel, Switzerland. She teaches creative writing at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, curates Ragged Claws, Hong Kong’s English-language poetry craft talk series, and edits poetry for Juked.
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
The biggest effect of my first book was that it made me feel I had done right by my mom. She was a middle-school English teacher who had always wanted to be a writer, and she was very supportive of my own writing. My book came out five years after she died, and I was surprised by how deeply I felt I had fulfilled something for her as well as for myself.
My new book, The Ground I Stand On Is Not My Ground, is nothing like the first book, because this one is all erasures of historical documents related to the Pacific War. It’s about a much more public world, about imperialism and violence, where my first book was comparatively intimate. But at the same time this book also comes out of my personal history, from my upbringing on a military base on Okinawa.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I took a few fiction workshops in college, and every teacher told me I sounded like I should be writing poetry. I wrote these two-page-long, mournful stories loaded with what everyone agreed was ‘vivid imagery.’ My teachers were right; those weren’t stories. They were the under-plotted fleshy outerclothes of poems.
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?
Usually I think I am doing one thing and I realize halfway through, after months or years, that I am doing something else. So once I figure out what I am actually making, I’ve got quite a lot of it done, but that first part takes forever.
The process of drafting has worked differently for erasures than for other poems, though in both I’m looking for a sense of friction between several lines or images. When I’m writing conventional poems, I look for scraps in my notebooks, and see what happens when I put two interesting pieces of language next to each other. Or I’ll take a piece of borrowed language and rework it, maybe feeding it through Google Translate a few times or riffing on its sounds, and when something catches I’ll put that little piece next to something else. I don’t get a sense of a poem happening until three or four chunks start to feel like they’re balancing something among them. With the erasures, it’s a treasure hunt: finding the few vivid metaphors in a political manifesto and going from there, or looking for a first-person pronoun near crisp, standout verbs. In either case, nothing ever ends up looking much like its original shape.
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?
It depends. I’d been wanting to engage with the complicated situation of Okinawa, and my growing up there, for years, so I had been gathering ideas for a while. It seemed like at least a book-length project. I started working on it seriously about four years ago, but it wasn’t going anywhere until I started messing around with erasures, which happened because of Ezra Pound. I read a few of his Radio Rome broadcasts, in which he uses the word “she” often, to mean “democracy” or “France” or other abstractions. Maybe once he uses it to mean a particular person. That, combined with the extreme racism and anti-Semitism in those rants, made me want to interfere with his language. I’d been looking at Tom Philips’ A Humument, so I tried erasing. The result was a narrative about a single imagined “she” at home, listening to the radio during the war, maybe even listening to Pound.
Writing that poem was extremely satisfying, and I started to look for other historical documents that were frustrating to read for their jingoism, or their political grandstanding, or their utterly shuttered perspective. The early Western visitors to Okinawa, like Basil Hall and Commodore Perry, for example, have all the expected 19th-century colonialist things to say about the people they met, or didn’t bother to meet, when they anchored in Naha Harbor and charged ashore. Repurposing their words felt like a fitting way to engage the larger context of my own experience living there as part of the U.S. military more than century later.
The book found its final shape when I realized that the erasures alone, without the original poems I had planned to include, would make the book. The final version is half-print and half-digital: the poems exist online, in interactive versions, so that the original document’s language appears when you touch each line of a poem. And so in a sense this book is many books—a miniature library about how U.S. and Japanese and Okinawan history have intersected.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Readings are like rollercoasters. They terrify me, but I also love them once I get almost all the way through. Then I want it to be my turn again.
I also love readings because they’re a good place to discover other writing I like. And especially, seeing what other poets do when they turn their poems into performances, into voiced sounds, is great. I like reading with other people because there’s a solid chunk of time where I can just enjoy what’s going on.
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, though I don’t think I’m trying to answer questions as much as ask them. I am interested in what gets dismissed as “natural,” and why, whether it be femininity or cruelty during wartime or a supposedly fundamental goodness of ‘human nature.’ How does language figure into our negotiations around what we think of as ‘natural’? For example, part of the process of rationalizing inhumane actions during war (or any time, really) involves deploying metaphor to transform other people into beings naturally deserving of or able to bear that cruelty. I’m interested in what happens to someone, to her relationship to language and to other people, when she uses words to dehumanize or objectify someone else, and how language itself can seem complicit in how we turn words to that purpose. In The Poetics of Imperialism, Eric Cheyfitz quotes Abraham Fraunce explaining in 1588 that a metaphor is when “a word is turned from his naturall signification…so convenientlie, as that it seeme rather willlinglie ledd, than driven by force to that other signification.” That "rather willinglie" sticks with me.
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 writers should engage in our writing with what we perceive to be pressing questions. I also think we should engage with those questions in other ways, since literature can only do some work. Teaching and activism are some obvious complements to what a writer does in her writing life.
I admire writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Mallory Ortberg, who synthesize riveting writing and razor-sharp political critique on a daily basis. They are so quick, and every single thing they write is good. They’re models of how writers can play an activist role in larger culture.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I haven’t done it very much. I would like to—when I have, it has been tremendously helpful. It depends on the kind of writing I’m doing, too. With this book of erasures, an editor could help with organization, but maybe not so much with content.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
“It’s not about you.” A friend told me this (she phrased it much more kindly) when I was worried about not having brought an appropriately formal coat for another friend’s mother’s funeral. Of course she was right. It is hard to remember this but it is almost always true, and usually it is a relief even if it stings my ego.
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 like lists. A typical non-teaching day will begin with making to-do lists and then crossing off what I’ve already done (of course!). And then begins the struggle to do the writing before I do the things which are easier to cross off: the necessary other work (class prep, student emails, etc.) and the totally mundane (cleaning the bathroom). Breaking down my writing projects into tiny, doable steps and putting them on the list usually works: “Item: complete the second sentence in draft of poem X.” I feel undeservedly clever for having figured this out.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I go read contemporary poets who are doing wonderful, strange, sharp things with poetry as a genre. Dawn Lundy Martin, Craig Santos Perez, Cathy Park Hong, Claudia Rankine, Bhanu Kapil, Ronaldo Wilson, Maggie Nelson. It helps me remember that if I can figure it out how to make it work for someone reading, I can do pretty much anything to a “poem”. So then I am problem-solving instead of trying to write.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
River water and beer.
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?
Painting. History, if that counts as “not books.” But mostly books.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
The ones I mentioned above in # 11. Srikanth Reddy and M. NourbeSe Philip, for what they’ve made erasure poetry do. Gillian Conoley, Rusty Morrison, Allison Benis White, Shane McCrae. James McMichael’s Capacity. Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Have a kid. Maybe? (That’s why I don’t have one yet.)
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?
My whole family is small-town talkers and writers: English teachers, librarians, a couple of ministers. I would probably have been a librarian. That would be great.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I was working in advertising in my early twenties when my mom got sick, and I took time off from my job to take care of her. I don’t know what I’d be doing now if that hadn’t happened. The circumstance of her illness meant I had something to write about, and something I needed to escape, both.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Book: Jena Osman’s Public Figures. Film: Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum.
19 - What are you currently working on?
Whatever it is, it’s still at the stage where I don’t know what it is yet. Here's hoping I find out soon.
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Baby Names : short story (The Danforth Review,
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Christine McNair at The Sawdust Reading Series (Ottawa), July 15, 2015
As the series promotes via Facebook:
Wednesday, July 15
at 7:00pm
Pour Boy - 495 Somerset St W Ottawa
495 Somerset St W, Ottawa, Ontario K1R 5J7
The Sawdust Reading Series is proud to present Ottawa poet Christine McNair and our most recent contest winner, TBA. Come for the open mic, too!
Pour Boy features on-street parking, direct #2 bus service, and an affordable menu. We will be upstairs!
Christine McNair‘s first collection of poems Conflict was published by BookThug in 2012. The manuscript, and then subsequent book was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, the Archibald Lampman Poetry Award, the Ottawa Book Awards, and the Re/Lit award. Her poetry chapbook Pleasantries and Other Misdemeanours (Apt9, 2013) was shortlisted for the bpNichol chapbook award. She works as a book doctor in Ottawa.
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Ongoing notes: mid-June, 2015
I’ve a new broadsheet out today! You should come by the ottawa small press fairtoday and swing by Marilyn Irwin’s shreeking violet table and pick up a copy. I mean, we’ll see you there, right?
(Do I even still write poems? I can’t recall. Where do I even find the time?)
And of course, the big Chaudiere Books 2015 spring poetry launch is on Thursday at Raw Sugar Café! William Hawkins (Cameron Anstee reading for him, given a recent illness) and N.W. Lea, with a special acoustic set by Jesse Patrick Ferguson.
Philadelphia PA: I’m always happy to hear about new (or at least, new to me) presses, so was thrilled to receive a copy of Rosmarie Waldrop’s gorgeous new chapbook, IN PIECES (Philadelphia PA: O’CLOCK PRESS, 2015).
6 | SUNSET THEORY
To feel an idea is different. And rare. A private fluency of figment and frontier. A splinter in the sky. Let’s not get sentimantic. The word “reality” is a word. Atoms are unpredictable, a warp in a continuous field, a gamble against the powers of disorder. But grammar can unpack a sentence it has taken you so long to understate. What open window? What thin but penetrating light?
Waldrop’s stunning sixteen-part essay-sequence proves, yet again, that some writers (not nearly enough) continue to improve, even after decades of publishing. IN PIECES manages to cohere in multiple directions, contemplating language, poetry, sex and the poetic line, allowing the most incredible connections through the almost-collage of thought, sound and sentence.
Toronto ON: In Rachel Rose’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at CanLit(Toronto ON: BookThug, 2015), the Vancouver poet (and current city Poet Laureate) plays off Wallace Stevens’ infamous early 20th century poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” a poem that has been riffed and repeated and pilfered by dozens upon dozens of poets for decades (my favourite has to be Robert Kroetsch, who composed his “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Lemon”). As her poem opens:
Let’s say it, then. Let’s make it explicit. Let’s lick the clit
of it. Let’s fornicate it.
The way you fuck and the way you write are exactly the
same. Isn’t it a relief to have it out in the air? Not a
metaphor, but a critical difference, a preference, not a
simile, but a simulation, a seduction of the ideal reader
with a piece about some pieces.
and some of us fake it
and get away with it
and some of us are very quiet
and regret it
and most of us are insecure about it
and some of us do it in public
and some of us are very private
and some like to experiment
and most of us do it the same way over and over
Rose’s poems is saucy and revelatory, expanding Stevens’ original short haiku-like passages into a rush of longer sentences that have the force and weight of water, and revel in a particular kind of seductive play that also pushes to explore, criticize and indict a level of complacency in Canadian poetry. We need more poems (and criticism) that call us on our shit. As she writes:
You love the serious, heterosexual guy you’d go fishing
with. Because women can’t be men and Chinese can’t
be guys and homosexuals can’t be the best and you only
teach the best. It’s a math proof and the answer equals
you. Because it’s all about love, true love, those whom
you truly, truly love.
Isn’t that unfortunate? Isn’t that serious? Because the best
by any other name is still you, squared.
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12 or 20 (second series) questions with Megan Coles
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
It’s too early to say how the first book changed my life. Eating Habits was just published this past October. So we’ll see. I expect understanding will occur in the manner of rolling hindsight driven epiphanies many years from now when I’m an eccentric old author recluse surrounded by standard poodles with promiscuous French sounding names. Though, the book won the Winterset Award. That felt relatively significant.
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I didn’t. Poetry and fiction reared their dogged heads at approximately the same time. But the poems were awful. Never nearly meeting my expectations. So I abandoned them as is the case with many a frustrated youth. The fiction wouldn’t allow it. The fiction just kept demanding my attention even while I was in theatre school writing plays.
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 usually spark from a place of great interior outrage or conviction. Something sets me off on rampage and I become totally focused on it. It’s a rather intense, mentally concentrated process and can be emotionally exhausting for my friends who are unfortunately subjected to endless rants. I dedicated Eating Habits to them as penance for their never ceasing patience. This goes on for about 6 to 18 months. Then I start writing. Which coincides quite directly with the ladies informing me that my fixation is no longer acceptable brunch banter. In a way, their refusal to entertain my obsession forces me to the page. The first draft is never the thing. I will write as many drafts as the piece demands. I will write a hundred drafts. I think expecting perfection in a first draft is both naïve and arrogant. Not to mention, lazy. It takes me years. But I am always writing more than one thing so I sometimes appear prolific. It’s an elaborate ruse; I’m not prolific.
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?
See above.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Readings aren’t part of my creative process. They come after the work is done. I seek total solitude during the writing. I will maybe show my dramaturge or my favourite humans what I’m working but only when I feel complete ownership of it. That’s it. Not before. In fact, I get right saucy when forced to reveal new or mid-process work. Readings are just the bit of fun that comes after. I sometimes get a kick out of heaving swears out into a room of mixed company while wearing heels. It’s a laugh.
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?
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?
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
The difference between a writer and a non-writer is writing. Do the work. Because that’s what it is. Craft.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to plays)? What do you see as the appeal?
I move between genres relatively fluidly. Right now, I’m writing non-fiction, short fiction and a Theatre for Young Audience piece. They utilize different parts of my brain. And I will warm up in that order, saving the theatre for last. I need everything properly stretched before I begin playwriting as managing various voices can be incredibly taxing. Training is necessary. Believing otherwise is foolish.
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?
When I am writing full time, I prefer to write early in the day, Monday to Friday. That’s rising around dawn and powering through until mid-afternoon. I consume a staggering amount of coffee before 11am and switch to herbal tea at lunch. Too much caffeine makes me animated. And I’m already pretty animated out of the gate. Currently, I’m working full time at Breakwater Books as the Sales & Marketing Coordinator so my writing tends to be relegated to weekend benders. To maximize this time, I’ll often cook something substantial on Friday evening or Saturday morning. I’ll bake an entire salmon at eight am to prevent having to prepare food while I’m writing. It’s a strategy. What works for me though, may not work for others.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I don’t stall so much as burnout from overdoing it. Then I totally back off; get estranged from that desk. Running helps. Home renovation projects are a great distraction. I read a lot and everything. All writers or aspiring writers should read voraciously. My bedside tables are awash with poetry, novels, short fiction, there's a Walrus in every room of my house. I also listen to news programs while I clean: NPR, CBC, PRI, BBC. And I adore nature documentaries. David Attenborourgh narrates my dreams. Basically, I refuel on information. Ignorance is not bliss. It’s irresponsible, especially for a writer.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Fresh bread, saltwater, an overzealous wood stove. Mom, Dad, and Nan and Pop, respectively.
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?
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I think I’ll write a television show eventually. And a novel. That’s a forgone conclusion actually. I’m decided on it and currently percolating ideas. I just have to clear the deck of all the plays first so I can focus properly.
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?
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
There was never really a choice. It was what I was doing before I told anyone it was what I was doing. I studied biology for a while to please my parents who thought smart women should become scientists. I guess facade Megan was an ornithologist.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last great book: reread One Hundred Years of Solitude. Great film: Short Term 12 (it’s on Netflix).
20 - What are you currently working on?
A trilogy of plays, a Lisa Moore adaptation for the stage, a TYA commission, some short fiction, and a scatter secret poem (that I will only read to the girls after three glasses of wine in the privacy of someone’s living room).
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part one,
[jwcurry taking photos of the rainbow (which quickly became a double rainbow) over Hintonberg during a break in the pre-fair reading on Friday] Another small press fair has come and gone; can you believe we’ve been doing this for more than two decades now? Here is a small sampling of some of the items I managed to pick up as part of the festivities:
Kingston ON: The twenty-two poems that make up the chapbook check engine. rhinoceros. tungsten. (Puddles of Sky Press, 2015) continues Michael e. Casteels’ exploration of surrealist prose, lyric narrative and unusual image combinations, such as in his poems “MY MOTHER, THE FLY,” “A SPECIAL STUDY OF THE MOOSE” and “TOTALLY COMPULSIVE BEHAVIOUR.”
THE ROBOT RIDES A BUS
While crossing the street, a robot is hit by a bus. Small part of the robot roll down a hill, frayed wires spark, lights flash. The bus driver kneels beside the robot and cries, “If I had been a surgeon you might have been repaired. If I were a priest you’d be blessed.” The robot attempts to raise an arm but there is only the grinding of gears, the leaking of oil. The robot tries to speak but its voice is garbled and growing faint. Its many lights flicker and dim as silence envelops the scene. A robot lies in the street. A crowd is gathered. The driver, still on his knees, cradles the robot’s dented head. The crowd closes in and hoists the robot to its shoulders. In a short procession they enter the bus. The driver wipes his eyes with a heavy sleeve, and follows. The door closes. The bus starts, lurches into gear, and continues down the rolling hills, towards a lake that is always in the distance.
What really strikes in this small collection are his short prose pieces, existing as both prose poem and incredibly dense short story, writing out a compactness that says everything the story requires in an incredibly small space. It’s curious to see the subtle, ongoing strains of Stuart Ross’ influence float in, around and through Casteels’ writing, something that lives just under the skin of poems that show an increasing curiosity and wit, as well as an increased sharpness and clarity. With a dozen or more chapbooks under his belt so far, Casteels is a writer worth paying attention to. Is a first trade collection that far away, perhaps?
THE INNER EAR
It’s dark inside my inner ear. I light a torch to find my way, scorpions scuttling around my feet. The low, slow howling of wind—the kind that precedes a storm, or in this case a train—scares my hiccups right out of me. If it were my train I’d be the one shovelling coal, hauling thousands of turnips through the night.
Ottawa ON: I’ve been increasingly impressed with the work of Ottawa poet Marilyn Irwin, and the launch of her fifth chapbook, the blue, blue there (Ottawa ON: Apt. 9 Press, 2015), provided the opportunity to be reminded of just how much she’s been improving between publications.
creature, comforts
the 14 gasps up Gladstone
bends
Sunday sheets
various fibres
lint and old type
a faked stretch
to the left
our limbs
wormed July warm
curled cat
nothing more
empties, overflowing
Irwin’s poems [see my recent Jacket2 interview with her on such here] explore a series of moments both large and small in a compact space, pinpointing a level of minutiae that is so often lost or overlooked, as well as a space one can only describe as increasingly local. Her work invites comparisons (obvious or otherwise) to similar works by Nelson Ball, Cameron Anstee and Mark Truscott, among others, and the poems in the blue, blue here are quiet and sharp, insistently present and remarkably calm. Hers are poems that enter the body through the skin.
one fish, two fish
I’ve decided to split myself in two. into. two fish inextricably linked by fishing line. Möbius strip of soggy contracts, abstinence. if. gill gape. tension binds intrinsic; this is how waves are made. scream ekes in the confines of padded, cubicle walls. padded cubicle walls. not padded. walls. through. note the difference.
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Vittoria Colonna, Selections from the Rime Spirituali, English Texts, trans. Jan Zwicky
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Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part two,
My first report on our small press fair lives here, in case you missed it. Here are a couple more items I managed to pick up over the weekend. Are you jealous yet?
Kingston ON: It took a while for me to pick up a copy, but I finally collected Phil Hall’s limited-edition letterpress sequence, X (Thee Hellbox Press, 2013), a meditative breath-take constructed out of fragments, pauses and a steady, staggered cadence, much as any regular or irregular reader would come to expect from Hall. There is always such delight that comes from reading a new poem by Hall, watching his lines and language bounce and gyrate across patterns and the page, reveling in unusual sounds, shocks and digressions, even has he explores a particular series of dark moments from without and within. As he writes on the first page: “arcs letters curls of let / wait wit wait a song // grows a nail from a moo— [.]”
Few poems worth knowing
worth suspect knowingsuspect / few suspect
seeing double hearing less out of one ear
to have had to be 60 to say in a poem the abuser’s name
is this success or failure both neither
my tongue’s baloney-smell articulating adios
Hall’s poem is beautifully designed and printed by Hugh Barclay in a numbered edition of 106 copies, with artwork throughout by Michèle LaRose and signed by all three (mine is #87). This is the 47th book produced by Barclays’ Thee Hellbox Press.
LaFarge WI: It was good to see Montreal’s Billy Mavreas [pictured] make his first ever appearance at our Ottawa fair, especially with publications such as his HOOCH POP TYPOS (Xexoxial editions, 2013), published as “xerolage 57,” a collection of concrete poems/visual images. As Mavreas writes at the back of the small collection:
Hooch Pop Typos collects individual works spanning approx. 3 years that seek to mimic the aesthetic of degenerated photocopies using the tools of Adobe Photoshop.
[…]
With exception of 3 pieces, these works saw their beginning as images found via random internet image searches. An image, representing the search ‘document’, for example, would be downloaded, colour removed, high contrast black and white implemented and then filter, copy, paste, crop, repeat until finished. The 3 remaining pieces saw their start on the photocopy machines’ glass and then were brought in for alteration.
[…]
This publication, whose title is an anagram of the three words: Photo, Copy & Shop, is a welcome real world manifestation of these digital impulses.
Part of what I’ve always found curious about Mavreas’ work is the fact that he appears to have come into concrete and visual poetry via his work as a visual artist, as opposed to from a more traditional text-based writing practice. Working very much in the “dirty concrete” realm of concrete/visual poetry, his bio informs that: “His foray into concrete poetry and asemic writing started early via a love for mysterious symbols, rocknroll lettering and SF&F. Xerox manipulations and mail-art sealed the deal in the late 1980s as he entered and participated in the network as EHEL. His art practice is based on accumulation and accretion, consisting of various personal collections, made and found, that resonate with him on an aesthetic and spiritual level.” As part of an interview forthcoming at Touch the Donkey, he writes:
Many artists I’ve seen who explore visual poetry and comics tend to stay closer to the realm of abstract or experimental comics. In my case my comics have been experimental and I still make abstract comic work but I’ve been tending towards more direct narrative, straight up comic work so to speak, which is a great challenge, whereas my poetry tends way more towards abstraction, conceptual writing and visual poetics. My poetry that isn’t visual is usually rock lyrics, bumper stickers, band names and other stuff that remains more or less private, unpublished or juvenile.
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12 or 20 (second series) questions with Melissa Bull
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I guess it remains to be seen. I’ve been writing and publishing for a long time, but my first book just came out in April. Some of the poems in Rue are several years old, and I’m excited to think about all the shiny new projects I want to focus on next.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I didn’t, really -- I like to do all kinds of writing, poetry and fiction and non-fiction. The trick is more identifying what genre to work a particular project in. But I when I started to write, when I was around five or six years old, poetry was my way in. It felt like a departure from the way we use language every day. There was something conscious and purposeful about it that I liked.
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’m not a copious note-taker -- I’d rather use that writing time for writing writing. Poems usually take me a lot of rewrites. And then I forget about them and find them and rewrite them again. But I’m a fan of deadlines. I’ve worked as a professional writer and editor for a number of years and I like to just get out of my own way and get stuff done.
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’ll get a line in my head that won’t go away and I’ll just write it down and see what the next lines are. Rue is very much a collection of poems written about my life over the course of almost a decade. My next poetry collection began as a book, as more of a realized project that I have to work towards. It’s also, thankfully, not at all about me.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I like readings. I like them as a way of getting various branches of writing communities together, or of discovering new-to-me authors. When I’m giving a reading I try to keep it pretty brief so that no one gets bored or uncomfortable and we can get to the hanging out part faster.
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?
It depends on the project. Class and bodies almost always come into play. My next poetry collection has a more theoretical concern, but it too is about bodies and class.
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?
In some ways it’s no different from any person’s role I guess. To notice specifics. To be present. The books I’ve loved have shown me new ways of thinking. Not just new ways of thinking about a thing, but they’ve structurally shifted the way I think, the way I see. Which is exciting and cool. I love it when that happens.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I want to be edited. And I make sure I find a few key brains, in addition to my editors, to revise my work, always. I’m grateful to have friends who will take the time to think about my work and offer up some comments to help make it stronger.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I’m a late bloomer so for a while everyone was just telling me to publish -- and they were right! You should be publishing, when you’re a writer.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to translation)? What do you see as the appeal?
When I was a teenager I learned the now-out-of-date and problematic term “woman of letters” in a literature class and it gave me a happy feeling, a kind of kick of “yes!” -- I felt that’s what I wanted to be -- a cross-genre writer. (All the letters, all alphabet, give it to me.)
Re: translation, I get super excited about good work and I am so happy to have a skill that helps me share good work from one community with another, particularly as Canada’s franco and anglo communities can be pretty ignorant of one another’s arts.
But I’m just a big, happy, excited fan of language and the many things it can do. I feel provoked and engaged and useful when I write or edit or translate.
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 have day jobs, so I usually write at night, and on weekends. What I do is I work at an office all day, then come home, have dinner, hang with my partner, then have a coffee and kickstart my brain and make myself work for several hours. It seems work-a-holic-y, I know, but the truth is I think having constraints really helps me be more efficient with my time, and it keeps me from dithering too much. So it works for me.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I’m paranoid that I’ll wake up without another idea one day, so I stash lots of beginnings or ideas for stories around, so I can flip around from project to project if something stops working. I usually have a few things on the go so I just push one thing as far as I can then work on the next one until I can’t figure out where to go with that anymore, and so on.
Just being involved in a lot of projects and committing to deadlines takes care of most inspiration issues. I’m way less woo-woo about the mystery of it all and more trusting that things will come and will right themselves if I just sit down and work it out.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
My partner’s cooking. I come home from work every evening to him cooking us dinner. He also bakes bread every week, which fills our whole apartment with amazing smells. (I’m a very lucky person.)
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?
Man, if I could do all the arts I would. My writing is definitely a response to other arts -- it’s just that I can’t respond to those arts with those arts. Otherwise, I don’t know. My writing just about the stuff I think about, obsess over, can’t avoid.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I’m interested in writing that’s authentic, sharp, surprising, smart. I read journalism and non-fiction and poetry and fiction… I like to make sure I’m out of my comfort zone and keeping myself thinking and engaged. But I always feel badly, too -- there’s so much more I could be reading. The FOMO of literature.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
So many things! Learn to sail. (Though maybe I should learn to drive first.) Translate a bunch of novels. See more of Europe. Learn Danish. Improve my Spanish. Visit Mexico. Learn silversmithing and make my own jewellery. Be rippling with muscles.
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 have day jobs that allow me to lead an alternate life to that of a writer every day. I’ve worked a lot as an editor for various publications, and right now I’m a manager for an IT company. It’s important for me, for the way I learn about my limits and my capabilities, to participate in that “outside” world. I like it.
When I was in my early 20s I thought about becoming a minister for a while. I remember thinking that if I did that I couldn’t be as free in my writing, though, like I wouldn’t be able to say or publish dirty, judgy, sexy things. So I guess that worked out.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
When I was a teenager and getting ready to apply for colleges, I debated between studying music -- I played the flute -- and studying literature. Ultimately, for me, writing and literature seemed limitless -- you can write about anything. And I never auditioned for music school -- just went right for the books.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Naja Marie Aidt’s Baboon is my favourite book lately.
I just saw that movie While We're Young in the theatre, and I mostly liked it. I watched Boyhood on a plane recently; it was good. Mostly I’ve been streaming some fun Scandinavian crime shows, though. My favourite is Annika Bengtzon. A crime-solving, tough-broad reporter with great hair! The best.
20 - What are you currently working on?
A collection of poetry, a collection of essays, I’m translating two plays right now. I’d like to wrap up my collection of short stories soon… and get back to my novel. I’m finishing up my MFA soon and my thesis will be a novel translation. I’m looking forward to getting into that, too.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part three,
[Hugh Barclay, with his Thee Hellbox Press] Another listing of titles picked up at our most recent fair! See part one here and part two here, obviously. How much is too much? (We might need to build more shelves)
Ottawa ON: It’s nice to see a new small press offering from Toronto poet (and longtime editor of the Surrealist Poets Gardening Association) Lillian Nećakov, her chapbook The Lake Contains an Emergency Room (Ottawa ON: Apt. 9 Press, 2015).
The Lake Contains an Emergency Room
There are pacifists and mongrels sitting here
there is no window to look out of
you hold a small puddle of blood up against your cheek
outside, I imagine the clouds are blue
we have been waiting hours
it has been 16 years
we wait our turn
you can no longer hold a pencil
the doctor looks like a rooster
night is finished
there is no smell to pain
the needlework is shoddy
the door remembers us.
There is an odd humour and compelling candor to the surrealism of Lillian Nećakov, one that seems very human in nature, exploring the surrealism of such tangible subjects as gardening, the nature of origins, making soup, or a stroll through the park.
Step Away
Let’s return to an empty chair
or we could weed the garden
something to silence the haunting
a thing to teach us to carve bone
un-mouth the meanness
un-speak the dark promises
murmuring over our lakes
let’s return tonight
to our child’s skin
selfish, shirtless
bruised
let’s rage against the tongue
stich together
all our dead relatives
and linger
regretless
on the wind.
Ottawa ON:After an extended period working on a variety of other projects [see my recent Jacket2 piece on him here], jwcurry has been publishing again recently, with some recent oddbits including the collaborative (and hand printed) tchts(jwcurry and Rachel Zavitz) produced as CURVD H&Z 474 (31 oct 2014).
shadow planet
smithereens
at impact
The small collaboration between curry and Zavitz is one of but a long line of collaboration he’s been doing with multiple writers over the years. There is something about this short sequence of three-line stanzas that have the tautness of (English-language) haiku combined with an incredible precision that presents the illusion of a single (as opposed to double) hand present in every line. To order a copy, or inquire about other publications, write him c/o his new address: #302-28 Ladouceur Avenue, Ottawa ON K1Y 2T1
Another recent publication is the gestetnered INDUSTRIAL SABOTAGE #64, as jwcurry writes in the colophon, “the ‘selfstarterkid’ issue,’ the first to appear (after a long hiatus: #63, Messagio Amor Some More, was issued 13 april 2008),” featuring writing by a host of regular and irregular contributors to curry’s wealth of publications: Michael e. Casteels, M.R. Appell, P. Cob_, Lenore Cochrane, Jon Cone, Judith Copithorne, Marilyn Irwin, Lance LaRocque, Billy Little, bpNichol, Jim Smith, Hugh Thomas and Rachel Zavitz. One thing I’ve always admired about curry is his patience, fully aware that he has said that for his letterpress printing, he has to like a poem to produce it not once, but up to one or two hundred times (which makes one wonder how many published pieces would actually survive the same criteria, even from their own authors).
Apple
apple,
so to say, never again
uneaten
someone gave me a bump on the head (Hugh Thomas)
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Profile of Ben Ladouceur, at Open Book: Ontario,
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12 or 20 (second series) questions with Valerie Witte
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?
I am still figuring that out! My first book, a game of correspondence, was just published, and I think the main change is that when I tell people about it, they get very excited. So that is fun. It is (roughly) about the ghosts of relationships that still haunt us. My newest (unpublished) book I think is much less about relationships than my previous work was, probably because I am in a happy one finally. :) It is more about the body (the minor deformities that we all experience, and mine in particular), the evolution of human skin, and the history of silk. In this way, it is both internal and external, but not as relational as my other work.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I came to fiction first! I grew up writing stories, or at least filling notebooks with partial stories. I majored in Fiction Writing in college. But my fiction wasn't very good. After college, I began reading my brother's poetry books--he had two boxes of them and they were at my parents' house, where I was now living. I fell in love with Sharon Olds, Robert Hass, Charles Simic, and others. I don't count them among my inspirations, since I write very differently from them now, but that is how I came 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?
It's pretty slow. The book I just finished took over two years, and it's only 50 pages. It was particularly slow. Sometimes it takes me about a year to finish a manuscript. I do lots of drafts and rewriting and tweaking. The form can change five or six times during the process. I've been able to start the last two manuscripts at residencies, which has been a very positive experience.
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 am always working on a project--usually a whole book. I collect text from various outside sources as well as my own journals and writing. And I compile them with some kind of theme in mind, or one emerges over the course of the note-gathering. But I can't just write a one-off poem. I have no idea how to do that anymore!
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I both enjoy doing readings and am terrified of doing readings. I am always looking for ways to make them different. Sometimes I bring audio recordings that accompany my performance. Sometimes I ask friends or members of the audience to participate by reading different sections or "voices" in the poems. I am still usually super nervous, and I really want to get a lot better at putting on an engaging performance that resonates with the audience.
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?
How to use poetry to understand deeply human things like deformity, aging, physical and emotional pain, relationships. I am very interested in the environment and exploring issues related to climate change. I am currently thinking a lot about story and mystery--what do you do when things go missing or mysteries go unanswered...and why are we so fixated on resolving such mysteries.
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?
Of course she has one! I think it can be whatever the writer wants it to be, to an extent. I think the role of artists in general can involve many things--to entertain, enrich, and enlighten. I don't think the writer has to feel she must change the world or be directly political. But I do believe in contributing to the community and that sharing one's work with others is a key element of being an artist. I feel some obligation to help "get the work out," so I volunteer in a small press, and I helped form a collective that exchanges mail art and engages in collaborative projects and happenings.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I have rarely worked with an outside editor--thus far. My chapbook I edited myself; and my book book was lightly edited--they were very kind to me! I work professionally as an editor, so I feel that I have a deep understanding of the process and would work well with editors in general. I definitely believe strongly in the editing process.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I was an intern at a performing arts center in college. My manager was a musician, and he kept a binder of his rejection letters. I thought this was odd, but he said those are what make you work harder. So in general I don't feel upset when I get rejected. It's just part of the artistic process--and it does make you work harder.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (solo to collaboration)? What do you see as the appeal?
I love collaborations. I have been working with a visual artist, Jennifer Yorke, for about a year. She created artist books based on my Flood Diary manuscript that have been exhibited in Berkeley and France, and we are now working on videos based on a new manuscript I wrote called Silkyard. She is amazing to work with, so I feel very lucky. Neither of us knows the first thing about video, but we are eager to learn, and as she says, not afraid to fail! The appeal to me is both the process and joy of working with another artist, and creating something unique and new, different from a book.
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 afraid I don't have much of one these days. I am trying to write on the train to and from work now. Otherwise, I just slip it it when I have time. It's a challenge.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Still trying to figure that out! Probably music mainly and poetry books that I love. I also try to get out in nature as much as possible. I get most of my ideas on my morning walks--it's one of the few times in my day where I am disconnected from the world, so it's a very valuable time to me.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Hmm...trees and grass?
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?
I just read a long article about thermonuclear reactors. And I've written about cryogenics and researched the development of the Apollo Spacesuit. Yes, science seems to find its way into my work quite a bit. I love music, it's really my passion, but it doesn't find its way into my work directly very often. I listened to Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" a lot when I was writing one of my manuscripts--I think exactly one poem in the manuscript references the album.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
For poetry: Barbara Guest, Laura Walker, Rusty Morrison, Robert Creeley, Emily Dickinson, Bhanu Kapil. But I mainly read a ton of articles, essays, and news in places like Slate and The Atlantic. I obsessively read TV and film reviews.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Anything that combines writing with other art forms--I love to sing and I play drums (not well yet), so bringing those into a performance is a goal/fantasy; the video Jennifer and I working on; maybe an art installation based around my work.
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 think it could be really amazing to be a massage therapist. It seems like it would be wonderful to combine something physical, using your body, with helping someone else feel better and heal.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I don't know, I don't remember a time when I wasn't writing. When I was very little, I wanted to be an art teacher. But other kids' skills quickly surpassed mine. So I think that is partly why I am a writer--because it is something I have worked a lot at and am somewhat able to do. :) But also I just feel compelled to do it and it's the thing I do that always brings meaning to my life, for which I am very grateful.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Book: Citizen, by Claudia Rankine; film: This was a while ago but I loved Stories We Tell, directed by Sarah Polley.
20 - What are you currently working on?
Not sure yet. :) I am thinking a lot about the missing Malaysian plane from 2014. I am obsessed/intrigued that something so big and all those people can simply vanish. I am interested in exploring mystery--the human need to understand tragedy--including the morbid curiosity around it. Like the cultural obsession around the podcast Serial. I am also thinking about something related to hemispheres. Where any of this will go is yet undetermined...
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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Lesley Yalen, The Hearts of Vikings
Dad says a Paterson man lost his mind
On the George Washington Bridge
Another urge to span a gap
Another ride along this terminal moraine.
Now I keep an eye on the break-down lane
For people who may need my help specifically
But the edge of the world is speeding (“Causeway”)
Northampton, Massachusetts Lesley Yalen’s first trade collection of poetry is The Hearts of Vikings (Boston MA: Natural History Press, 2015). The author of a small handful of poetry chapbooks, including This Elizabeth(Minus House Press, 2007) and the beginning in (minutes BOOKS, 2011), there have been more than a few of us clamouring for a first collection to appear. Composed in four sections—“Causeway,” “The Beginning In,” “The Hearts of Vikings” and “Kaddish”—there is something of the collected-chapbooks feel to The Hearts of Vikings, which may or may not even be true (a chicken-or-egg idea: did the book structure pre-date the excision into chapbook manuscripts, or the other way around?), but something that my prior knowledge of her work is distracting me towards. Still, such books can make for entirely cohesive collections, such as, for example, Toronto poet Kevin Connolly’s long-ago first, Asphalt Cigar (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1995).
The squares are cut out, so that the
men stand in them firmly.
When you die. When I feel no quivering leaf
or breath. When finally deprived.
And the construction and the process of the proof.
And afraid. And Beethoven composed his
music for his God. When forced to be born
all alone again. All normal and alone. When
without a thought of authorship you slip all
egress from the heavily bolted earth, when
explosions are tearing holes in iron and
balancing on a peg is no option. When tea
is served on a patternless dress, various ladies
introduced to me by name. At the
borderland of grammar. And I can’t seem
to catch their names over the hearing.
Much of what I’ve seen of her work so far (and this book is no exception) seems to favour the sequence, whether constructing a small unit out of untitled fragments, or out of titled poems, both of which manage to accumulate into something larger, abstract and singular. Her poems might be built with a larger framework in mind, but she manages to leave incredible, open spaces between her lines and stanzas, allowing her poems a near-excess of breath, and therefore, life. Yalen’s The Hearts of Vikings writes out a series of shifts, revisions, abstracts and the texture of dreams, set as much in the tangible as in the intangible, slipping even in the grip of her incredible lines. One might say that the entire collection articulates an attempt towards writing out the slippages of identity, from the “Kaddish” that ends the book to the poem “The New World,” that opens the collection: “The passage was a middle whose end was me // let me revise [.]” Does writing out the whom and the what cement, or even reduce, identity, or simply highlight the impossibilities of writing? Who are you, really?
People had texture, dimension, and mass
If you hurled a person at another, it hurt
If you removed a person from a scene, gone.
A person could be embellished, disassembled,
Or held, but it couldn’t slip through fingers
Or be in two places now,
In your lungs or written down,
Sung or eternal or repeated.
Every thing had an inside and a skin,
A face and a tail,
An origin, a due date, an appearance, and dreams.
A box divided all space
Into two areas, no matter where you put it
It insisted on making this distinction.
A person took its place among things. (“The Beginning In”)
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report : some lately,
It seems we've had so much going on lately, that I've barely been able to think outside of work, toddler, toddler, work, occasional sleep and whatever else happens around here. Pulling some photos off the camera for the sake of download, I've been realizing there's been plenty of activity unrecorded, from visits to travel to book events to simply running and jumping and living; for shame! Brecken Hancock visits regularly with her infant boy, Winter! Amy Dennis and family were here for nearly a week from the UK! We went to Burlington and met Christine's friend Christine's new baby, Elizabeth. Here, for the sake of (some) posterity, a little of what we've been up to lately:
In March, we celebrated my forty-fifth birthday with a publication and a party! (of course) Rose sat with anyone who had ordered french fries (also, of course).
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Here she is with Cameron Anstee, enjoying cake.
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Later in March, there was our fifth annual VERSeFest poetry festival, including a number of Chaudiere Books authors such as Roland Prevost [pictured] and Amanda Earl.
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We headed to our annual Boca Raton [see various reports here], where I took some pictures for a future issue of Touch the Donkey (I think the entire photo-series will be far more appreciated come winter). And did you see there's currently a pre-summer sale for the journal?
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Winnipeg poet K.I. Press was in town a while back, and she launched her new Turnstone Press poetry collection in our living room!
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Marilyn Irwin was good enough to sit the Chaudiere Books table recently at Prose in the Park.
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I've even been able to get the rare late-afternoon out for some writing (if you can believe it).
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We launched some books by William Hawkins and N.W. Lea the other night as part of our big Chaudiere Books spring poetry launch [see my report on such here].
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Did I mention we went to The Big Apple, en route to Toronto? After years and years, the apple itself is finally open again.
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And yes, we've finally been able to allow the young lady to run around, including many local parks, and the jungle of our backyard.
There's probably a bunch of other stuff, but who can keep track? Especially without photos.
In March, we celebrated my forty-fifth birthday with a publication and a party! (of course) Rose sat with anyone who had ordered french fries (also, of course).
Here she is with Cameron Anstee, enjoying cake.
There's probably a bunch of other stuff, but who can keep track? Especially without photos.
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