Rob Mclennan's Blog

Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi, The Book of Interruptions

 

│││

I can no longer affordhumour

a spear knocks at mycaged heart and the rattles awaken a primal fear.

a marble floor, a marblebust, all the negative space potent within rock.

mandibles in an oyster ofsunlight within the sunflower. this sap.

there are things I can’tdo with words.

there are words that areflexed too far off the body. 

clouds make way for theAlborz mountains to crack.

revealing millennia. 

the sun

a temperament of thegreat flood. 

the sun

makes new 

the speech (“PsychoticNotebooks”)

Thefifth full-length collection from queer, Toronto-based, Iranian-born poet, writer and translator Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi, is The Book of Interruptions (Hamilton ON: Wolsak and Wynn 2025), following on the heelsof their full-length debut, Me, You, Then Snow (Guelph ON: Gordon HillPress, 2021) [see my review of such here], the dos-a-dos WJD [conjoinedwith The OceanDweller, by Saeed Tavanaee Marvi, trans. from the Farsi byMohammadi] (Gordon Hill Press, 2022) [see my review of such here], the collaborativeG (with Klara du Plessis; Windsor ON: Palimpsest Press, 2023) and solocollection Daffod*ls (Pamenar Press, 2023) [see my review of such here],as well as a plethora of chapbooks. Set with opening poem, “Before We Begin …,”and six sections—“Psychotic Notebooks,” “Purgatorial Imagery,” “There Needs toBe More to This Than Nostalgia,” “A Harmonious Armageddon,” “An Autobiography”and “Consonants* A Book of Visions*: A Book of Illuminations*: A Chorus of*L*ght: Against L*ght: Against L*ght”—The Book of Interruptions extendsMohammadi’s accumulations of space and spacings, writing a sequence ofinterruptions and disturbances, hiccups and self-sabotage, writing thepossibility and impossibly of words, language and meaning. “my mouth bubblingunder water // the narrator mentions me by name,” the opening of the sequence“Psychotic Notebooks” begins, “I am the cliffhanger // for one of a thousandnights before slaughter // having asked more questions than I have answered //in the city within the city I swerve // among the cacophony of the tunnel // anocean within an ocean [.]”

Gesturaland expansive, there is an element of worldbuilding to Mohammadi’s lyric, onethat returns the structure to the crossed-out (or interrupted) vowel throughtheir use of the * symbol from prior work (specifically ), writing a narrativestructure concurrently fragmented, populated and isolated, swirling amidstaccato struggles with faith and cities, queer experience and a litany ofrestless, thoughtful observations around feeling unsettled in a secular Toronto,while holding on to a cultural history of the poem that connects to thatstretches back thousands of years. With each collection, Mohammadi furthers acomplexity of their engagement with the long poem, the book-length accumulatedlyric, a trajectory that is as striking as it is propulsive. And yet, each workbegins fresh, composed with an open curiosity, and an array of questions, somenew, and others, that need to be asked more than once, for the sake of a broader,even ongoing, response. As part of the sequence-section “Purgatorial Imagery,”as they write:

I began as a novice
to a city
long ago mastered
by a writer’s eventualplunge
into blindness
the instinct to pub-crawl
came from a differentbreed
and the black tome of thenight
painstakingly written tobe fed
as an offering to thelake
as if breadcrumbs toducks
whose soft glide
is the unfolding
of the universe 

a betrayal

gods
            idols
gods
            stone
God
the parenthetical

jason b crawford, YEET!

 

This Has Never Been Myamerica

I could talk about everyvideo clip of bodies rolling on pavement, skin-smeared sidewalks, the hopscotchof our bones. But what would it do, other than incite a riot in my stomach? I dobelieve in abolition, yet have never been a fan of sticking my own hands in themud. Does this make me a bad Black, the type soft white lips have not warnedtheir children about? All of my (white) partners’ parents loved me, some evenfar after our parting. They used to say it’s so sad what happened to thatboy, but do you all have to keep looting? and all I could offer was a concernedgrin, minstrel-toothed and tame. I don’t know what I am waiting for. A free,borderless land? A space for all my niggas to be niggas? I’m sure on top of amountain somewhere there are collections of us made god, allowed to crack inpeace, crack into the hands of their own loved ones and gust into a darkeningred sky. The living, the dead, their names all never etched on a baton oftongues. I am optimistic about what it could look like if we didn’t knowanything but the dark. I am waiting to forget why we reach for the light.

Thesecond full-length collection from Brooklyn poet jason b crawford, following Year of the Unicorn Kidz (Knoxville TN: Sundress Publications, 2022) [see my review of such here] is YEET! (Oakland CA: Omnidawn, 2025), a collectionof poems surrounding agency, searching and reaching, clarity and refrain, policeviolence and the histories and realities of being Black in the United States ofAmerica. “Let’s call it // redlining, redistricting,” crawford writes, to closethe single-page “If I ever leave New York, I am going to burn everything,” “removingthe stains / of brown left out in the sun. When I leave I want // to ignite theblood-drawn lines and watch / them disappear behind the flame. // I want themto know / I was here.” This is a book of mourning, of loss and survival; of exhaustion;of memorializing the dead, and attempting to protect the living; working toarticulate a violence that is always present. “—should we start by crafting amap? I / must be honest,” begins the triptych “When we finally get there——,” “Ido not know where in / the galaxy there is. I do not know the / lineagefor this soil, no clear placement / of meteors to name where we have / been orwhere we have yet made it / safe. Traversing the long Atlantic of the / starsis tiring when done correctly.”

Setin three sections of poems—“Departure,” “Arrival” and “Home”—as well as openingpoem, “When we finally get there——,” crawford works through lyric, prose andvisual accumulations, allowing text to fade, overlap and extend in an expansive,joyful sequence of poem structures. There is a joyful range of structuralconsideration, amid a text rife with anxiety and grief. “and if we can pausefor / a second to talk about Black / bodies close enough to pass heat,” begins “Odeto Beat Milk,” “between their furred chests; a furnace of boys / warming eachother through an already too hot / summer evening; [.]” The perpetual questionthroughout crawford’s depictions, their insistence upon presence, upon witness,is the inevitable: Why? Why must anyone be treated like this, and how has itgone on for as long as it has? Citing and responding to works by such as DouglasKearney, George Abraham, Xan Phillips, Hanif Abdurraqib, Dorothy Chan and ItaloCalvino, this collection is akin to a work on voice, on voices. As the sixth ofan assembled nine different poems titled “essay on YEET!” sprinkled throughoutthe collection begins: “Today, I am relearning / tenderness—its porosity. The weight/ of the past folds safely in my / palms, its playful blades rest / upon thenape of my neck; I know/ this is love, this cutting. Deep / down, I know itwants / what is best for me.” crawford explores the effects in a deeplypersonal way, writing slant across a broken heart, attempting to push throughas much witness, as much simultaneous beauty, in response as possible. To counterhate with love, as crawford knows, is the only way. As they write to close the wonderfullypropulsive poem “Gettin’ Religious, 1948,” a poem subtitled “after ArchibaldJohn Motley Jr”: “saying alive here or anywhere / we survive; call it tabooto be alive or aware of being anywhere—we want / to bask in that dusk-soundthem children make—what night done gave us, music. / what i mean here is thatwe want that music to catch us by our tongues.”

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ben Zalkind

Ben Zalkind lives and works inCalgary, Canada. His debut novel, Honeydew, was released by RadiantPress in October 2025. A Salt Lake City native and naturalized WesternCanadian, Ben is happiest outdoors, where he can cycle, drink coffee, andadventure with his wife and fellow traveller. 

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recentwork compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first novel, which has long been shelved, was a monumentalaccomplishment. Before I finished it, I wasn’t sure I could plan and execute alarge and complicated project without external pressure. The novels thatfollowed haven’t necessarily been easier to write, but I no longer doubtedwhether I could complete them. It was just a matter of juggling time, liferesponsibilities, and writing cadence.

As I consider it, I’m not sure there’s a clear throughline connecting my projects.Each one expresses a different stylistic impulse and dimension of self. Honeydew,which was published by Radiant Press on October 7, 2025, is a wackydystopian satire with an ensemble cast. In contrast, Only by the Grace ofthe Wind, which I serialized on Substack in 2024, is introspective and lyrical.It draws from my own medicaltraining experiences, which I sieved through a surreal mesh.

Honeydew’s tone is probably my default, and I wroteit quickly in the wee hours of morning before clinic. I find that humour is aready prism, especially when my guiding preoccupation—in this case, the rise ofbig tech—is so baffling and infuriating. How does this one feel different?Well, Honeydew is my traditional publishing debut, so it will be thefirst of my novels to have wings, so to speak, and make its way into the world.It will be the conduit through which readers meet me. And there is certainlysomething daunting about that.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry ornon-fiction?

Fiction is my first love, and I’ve always been drawn to the novel as aform. But I also have an affinity for essays and long-form non-fiction, which continuallyscrub and refocus my perspective. In a past life, I worked in journalism andentertained atavistic and extravagant fantasies about being a man-of-lettersand writing for The New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine. These days,I read a lot of nonfiction as research for my novels, which I feel demand anup-to-date cache of knowledge about big tech, cultural history, and currentevents. But when I sit down to write, I chafe against anything I perceive as arestraint, and so I return to storyland, where I’ve always wanted to be. Withthe exception of Robert Caro’s doorstopper biographies, which I believe tocontain some of the finest prose ever published, fiction has furnished my mosttreasured reading experiences. It’s where I always land, if that makes sense.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Doesyour writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first draftsappear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out ofcopious notes?

I’m quick. Once I have an idea, it dilates and unfurls itself, and I haveto wrestle it into an outline. As I write, I continually compile notes, some ofwhich I actually use. When the story is finished, I edit and revise like afanatic. The image that comes to my mind is of a crazed painter ransacking aroom they’ve just finished. They shave some of the paint off the rear wall andrepaint the segment over and over. Then, in a fit of pique, they kick a hole inthe drywall. And after a bit of reflection, they return to the room and sheepishlyrepair the damage they’ve done. The cycle continues until the exhausted andchastened painter throws up their hands, removes the blue tape from thebaseboards and ceiling, and says, “good enough.”

4 - Where does a work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an authorof short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you workingon a "book" from the very beginning?

Though I enjoy short stories and admire writers who have mastered thegeometry and mystery of the form, I have always found myself planning long-formprojects from the outset. I love long, arcing, unwieldy stories, and though Itend to want to make my stories really ponderous, I eventually pare them down.They begin, I suppose, with a germ—either an image, an idea, or even a phrase.And the process of writing is iterative. Even when I have a tidy, completeoutline, I still add and remove elements. A sort of Frankenstein’s monsteremerges in the margins that (I hope) only I can see. Somehow, it gets carvedinto a bounded, coherent story.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Areyou the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I like doing readings, though I’ve never publicly shared anything unfinished.I can see the benefit of doing so, however, and would certainly consider it inthe future. For anyone who might come to one of my book launches in October, Ido voices!

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kindsof questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even thinkthe current questions are?

This is such a good question. Ultimately, I’m interested in why, as the greatcultural critic, Thomas Frank, wrote in an essay for The Baffler magazinein the early 90s, Johnny still can’t dissent. The machinery that organizes andimmures our lives (read: late-stage capitalism) seems to foreclose politicalimagination and coopt any attempts at resistance. My primary preoccupation is howthat shapes the inner lives of would-be rebels. This could just be a reflectionof a personal psychological quirk, but a current of fecklessness runs through mystories. The desire to change oneself or the world is ultimately stymied bysomething, or someone, more powerful. More often than not, my characters tendto suffer for their clear thinking. In my next novel, however, a victory ofsorts is on the horizon.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in largerculture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer shouldbe?

To be honest, I don’t know if a truly shared culture still exists inNorth America. At least, not in the way we might have discussed it in previousdecades. The eminent historian Daniel Rodgers describes our current era as“fractured.” We’re atomized, isolated, siloed. Depending on our sociallocations and unique configurations of identity and ideology, we all seem toinhabit different currents in the slipstream. It’s kind of scary, I think.

My idealized writer archetype nettles, metabolizes, challenges, enthralls,dazzles, and poetically witnesses. In an interview with Bill Moyers years and years ago, the late political scientist and all-around lucid thinker Sheldon Wolin remarked that the humanities’ most important role is to help us makesense of what’s being done to us. I’d add only that I believe it’s also thetask of writers and other artists to irrigate their corners of reality withaesthetic novelty, light, and energy. After all, what is justice withoutbeauty?

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficultor essential (or both)?

Like all intimate relationships, editorial arrangements can be tumultuous,rewarding, infuriating, illuminating. Robert Caro and his longtime editor,Robert Gottlieb, were close friends and enthusiastic opponents. Their shoutingmatches were legendary. But Caro has been quick to credit much of his successto Gottlieb, who’s perspicacity and farsightedness helped to shape Caro’s epicbiographies of so-called great men and the historical periods in which theywere ensconced. Theirs was a relationship backstopped with mutual trust. I alsosuspect that Gottlieb’s understanding of Caro, what we might view as a sort ofwriterly empathy, guided his textual sculpting. It’s delicate work.

I have had both good and bad experiences with editors. If a writer findsan editor who really gets them and their project, it’s a specialfeeling.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily givento you directly)?

Be curious and make conclusions sparingly.

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you evenhave one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I tend to do almost all my writing in the early hours of morning, before Ihead to clinic. I set a goal, usually 500-1000 words, and I meet it come hellor high water. Sometimes, this means I write 500 tortured and flaccid words.But I always meet my quota. Coffee is involved.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (forlack of a better word) inspiration?

My bookshelves. When I’m stuck, I go back to the bigs.  

12 - What was your last Hallowe'en costume?

I can’t remember the last time I properly celebrated Halloween, but mymost memorable costume came from a mail-order catalogue in the mid-90s. When Iwore it, it appeared that I was a small elderly man on the back of anpucker-faced elderly woman wearing a wedding dress and veil. I had a convincingbald old man mask that I wore as well. It was a smash hit with adults and myfellow teens alike.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but arethere any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, scienceor visual art?

I have found tremendous inspiration in graphic novels, comics, andanimated films, especially in depicting the lineaments of human faces andexpressions.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, orsimply your life outside of your work?

I’m grateful for radical thinking and unfettered imagination, which havebeen recorded and preserved by intrepid, courageous publishers. These includenovelists, scholars, anti-capitalists/free-thinkers, poets, and mystics. Bookshave always been my portal into the universe outside of (and in some cases,inside of) my head. I tend to see their influence as a gestalt, a meshwork, andit’s difficult for me to tug on one thread without bringing all the others withit.

Some novelists who continue to inspire me include John Steinbeck, Robert Penn Warren, China Mieville, Willa Cather, Olaf Stapledon, Mervyn Peake,Cynthia Ozick, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, Iain Banks, John Kennedy Toole, Ursula Le Guin, W. Somerset Maugham, P.G. Wodehouse, , Ralph Ellison, Terry Pratchett, Michael Chabon, Philip Pullman, Roald Dahl, , and Stanislaw Lem.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

In my writing life, I’d like to tackle a really big story, an epic whosearc spans a trilogy or perhaps a really big book with a bowed binding.

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 notbeen a writer?

As I get older, I can imagine so many alternative paths. My life trajectoryhas been a bit meandering, with factotum stops in some unusual corners of thework world, so I wonder what it would be like to fulfill a monomaniacalmission. I’ve fantasized about all sorts of occupations—historian, scientist, professionalathlete, astronaut, freedom fighter, bagel baker.

I come from a family of professional classical musicians, so I can alsoimagine a symphonic life.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

My mom says I started talking at 9 months (and never really stopped).I’ve always admired visual artists, performers, and other “creatives,” and Ican imagine alternate realities in which fate endowed me with more ability and discernmentin these areas. But my preferred mode of expression has always been language. Iseek out stories others have written and I’m compelled by some inner fire toput my own into the ether.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

In the past several months, I’ve been in research mode, so I’ve had thegood fortune to thumb through a number of truly excellent nonfiction books. Butthe last great novel, which I read and savoured for its prose and imagination, wasMervyn Peake’s 1946 masterpiece, Titus Groan.

As for films, I was astonished by the emotional sophistication of Anatomy of a Fall and the manic comic energy of Bottoms.

19- What are you currently working on?

It’s a sortof follow-up to Honeydew, but not quite a sequel. I don’t want to saytoo much, but we will see much more of Mo Honeydew, whose story will be onestrand of a three-part braided narrative that will expose new cracks andcrevices in Bonneville City, which is once again at the centre of a tectonictechnological shift.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Kay Gabriel, Perverts

 

And by an enemy lover.
Then I’m on aninterminable march
to a coded destination. There’sa chase,
there’s cops, there’sfriends.
I’d walk into traffic forthem
if I had to, but why do Ihave to?
I mean why now, and for ahidden purpose.
A thick cluster shoutsfor power. We briefly
command the attention ofthe cars,
then the attention of thePost.
Then one of us exists thedreams for Connecticut,
not before the headlinewriters get
a really good slander in,one of their best.
V and I have our photostaken in matching hats
we were supposed to looklike celebrities
in a stairwell under coldlight after arguing
all night dressed ingarments
from an infamous workshopunder the Williamsburg
Bridge. Mel Brooksarrives, he’s the mayor,
we’re allegedly sorry andwon’t do it again
payments coming due onbad decisions
“recklessly” making outand writing about it on
the wrong side of the day(“Perverts”)

Anexperienced reader, I would think, should delight at the thought of a new titleby New York City writer and organizer, Kay Gabriel; her Perverts (NewYork NY: Nightboat Books, 2025), which follows on the heels of A Queen in Bucks County (2022) and Kissing Other People or the House of Fame (2023)[see my review of such here], not to mention the anthology she co-edited withAndrea Abi-Karam, We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (NightboatBooks, 2020) [see my review of such here]. Favouring the accumulated, book-lengthlyric, Gabriel’s Perverts is built as a collection structured throughtwo long, extended sequences coupled: the lengthy opening title section, “PERVERTS,”and the shorter, second section, “TRANNIES, by Larry Kramer.” “in a world inwhich a pervert’s as good as a doctor,” offers the opening section, early on, “asfastidious as gnarly as intrusive in attention [.]” Stretching across alayering of accumulated sections, Gabriel writes through dreams and popculture, gender and sexuality, Queer thought and nightmares, and references to,among others, Jack Spicer and Alice Notley across what John Keene on the backcover refers to as an “anti-epic for our current moment, bringing contemporaryqueer community into being with lyric verve amid and in resistance to ourongoing catastrophe.” “Should I summarize? For you, Ranier,” the openingsequence continues, “I kept / my infuriating cool. The dog / was saved, wetaught our class, / we replaced the vaguely powerful talisman / with bespokepaper bags. Our students / left us rave reviews.” There is a propulsion toGabriel’s lyric, one that interweaves an array of threads to hold together acoherent, singular movement forward, across conversation, thought andcommunity. Or, as the “Acknowledgments” at the back of the collection offers,the title sequence “[…] is an exercise in collective capacity. The poemcollages my dreams with others’.

Subsequently,the second poem-section, in that same note, “[…] was a joke before it was a poem.”Gabriel plays off the title and purpose of American writer and playwright LarryKramer’s 1978 novel Faggots, a book described as “a fierce satire of thegay ghetto and a touching story of one man’s desperate search for permanence,commitment, and love,” it describes New York City during a time before AIDS,writing through the city’s very visible gay community. Across nineteen pages,Gabriel’s extended, accumulated four-part “TRANNIES, by Larry Kramer” respondsto Kramer’s novel, both directly and indirectly, composing gestures and declarationsas critique and swirling lyric. “God set you up to fail,” part four includes, “andwhen you took a Xanax after // the underwear party in the Grove // and itbobbed in your throat // like a buoy, that, too, was God, // keeping you awakeand making you look like an // ass in front of your slightly square boyfriend,// the trans one who, last time we saw him, was peeking // at the nearby Grindrsquare and who, // when the swallowed Xanax melted and made you walk // like anuncoordinated puppet into bed, // remembered and cited this incident in hislitany of // reasons to dump you, […].” In a recent interview conducted by ShivKotecha for BOMB magazine, Gabriel responds:

If the poem were just afuck-you to Larry Kramer, it could stop after those four words. If it were apaean to his genius, it would be boring. The book started as a joke I made tomyself, asking: What if Kramer wrote a novel in 1978 called Trannies insteadof Faggots? The first section of the poem introduces a fictional 1978 universe in which there is a highly developed society of transsexuals that hasall the kinds of class divisions that the faggots have in Kramer’s Faggots.In both poems, there is an overlapping interest in how desire structures humanrelationships and questions of shared political constituency. Well beforeHIV/AIDS, Kramer told gay people they were wrong to want as much as they didand to do as much as they wanted, and literary history retroactively readsFaggots as an ominous warning about AIDS. But it wasn’t that; it was justKramer finger-wagging and moralizing at a culture he felt deeply ambivalentabout and attached to.

 

Ongoing notes: TIFA Small Press Market/Meet the Presses’ Indie Lit Market (part two, : Jacob Alvarado + Drew Lavigne,

[a corner of my table at the TIFA fair, including the shortbread cookies I made] 

Again,this blended sequence, as the weekend of back-to-back small press fairs was abit of a blur. [see my first post on such here] 

Toronto/Mississauga ON: The debut poetrychapbook by Mississauga poet Jacob Alvarado is I Can Make It All Up To You(Toronto ON: Knife│Fork│Book, 2024), a collection of poems that write aroundtheir subjects, their initial prompts; less a sense of being evasive than simplyworking a different kind of clarity. “Bowie made his deathbed with Kendrick inhis headphones,” begins the poem “How Many Times Does An Angel Fall?,” “ashipwreck saluting its reflection. // 3:16 AM: my head hits a wall. / Confettibursts from my ears like ripped toilet paper.” There’s almost an element of theEnglish-language ghazal (John Thompson, et al) in some of Albarado’s lines,allowing a leap between lines, between couplets, allowing the space between asmuch narrative space as the space itself. There are times that I do want theauthor to push further, just to see what else is out there, but there remains aclarity through Alvarado’s lyrics, one that finds itself the occasional wisdom,sharp lines that poke through, such as the final line of “Me and You andAwkward Silence,” that reads: “Depression is a room full of cereal bowls.” I amintrigued by this debut; intrigued by where this particular author might venturenext.

Branches

His hands: dew leaves,iced tea, a waterfall.
Dares and truths are bothdreams. Two choices; one flesh. 

My shoes were faded by thesoaked suede
of summer strolls throughsweet grass. 

A clearing. Of throat andbrush. 

My legs were oaks. My knees;a forest-fire.

The sun was my heartbeat.Its rays my veins;
its heat my pulse. 

His eyes: acorns, aloe,alcoves.
Needles rained frompine-trees: self-clouding. 

The breeze flew around mebut not through me:
    grease in a dewdrop.
Palm sweat: a waterfall,an avalanche, inevitable. 

His back: smooth, steady,slicked. A rockface. 

His mouth: The Devildawned into God,
The stab of Eden’sgatekeeper, the sun. 

A hickey is a mark ofbelief.

TIFA fair: Jay MillAr of Book*hug Press, Leigh Nash of Assembly Press + Michael e. Casteels of Puddles of Sky Press

Moncton NB/Toronto ON: From the current poet laureate of Moncton, New Brunswick, Drew Lavigne, comes the chapbook EveningDress (Toronto ON: Anstruther Press, 2025), a title that appears to be hisdebut, chapbook or otherwise. Lavigne offers poems of narrative richness andgestures that suggest performance, offering descriptive thickness across longlines and evocative meaning. “There is a dress by Paul Poiret,” he writes, toopen the title poem, “which I first saw / in James Laver’s Costume and Fashion:A Concise History. / It was called ‘Evening dress: Il a-été primé.’ A fashionplate / from the Gazette du Bon Ton, 1914. / I was ten, and had never seenanything like this / turquoise pleated tunic, over a wrapped hobble skirt, /fastened with a gilded oval gem, bands of the same / fabric twisting down thearms, clasped at each crossing / by round jade jewels.” There is such carefulnarrative unfolding, unfurling, through his lyrics, one that might provide asmuch comfort on the stage as on the page.  

Round Mirror

It was easy then to walkinto the sky
with my mother’s gildedmirror,
stolen from her darkroom, held in my hands outside.
Startling then to find inthe disc
that everything wasupside down.
With little effort I couldfly,
or walk among the branchesof trees;
then jump from cloud tocloud: going higher,
seeing everything in away that was strange and new.
Not understanding the dangerof falling.
I tripped on the roottangled ground.
I saw the rolling sky,the black trees, the hard earth,
my face like a desperateman, seeing blood.
I fell into the mirror,shattered on the ground.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Meg Todd

Meg Todd [photo credit: Anick Violette] grew up in the Alberta prairies. She is atwo-time finalist for the CBC Short Story Prize, and her work has appeared in Ploughshares,Prairie Fire, PRISM international and elsewhere. Her debut shortstory collection, Exit Strategies , was a finalist for both the ReLitAward and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Her debut novel is Most Grievous Fault (Nightwood Editions, 2025). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing fromthe University of British Columbia and a BA in Religious Studies from theUniversity of Calgary. She lives on Vancouver Island.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How doesyour most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first book, Exit Strategies, came outduring COVID when everyone’s life was turned upside-down. I’m not sure what Iexpected to feel when the book was released, but the news that it would bepublished and the work leading up to that publication were thrilling and, insome ways, more significant than the actual publication. Once it was a physicalbook, it felt apart from me. A child that had grown up and had to find its ownlegs, its own place in the world.

            ExitStrategies is a collection of short stories, most of which had beenpublished in literary journals before they ended up in the book. My new book, MostGrievous Fault, is a novel. No part of it was published before the book asa whole. It feels huge. A whole world that has been created and is nowaccessible for others to participate in. Again, I had the initial excitementwhen I heard that the book would be published, and again, I am now looking atsomething that stands on its own: it is no longer mine.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to,say, poetry or non-fiction?

I don’t know that this was a choice. I have a vividimagination, and perhaps that’s detrimental to the writing of non-fiction, inparticular. My mind either wanders happily away from the truth, or my memory isjust too poor to hold onto it. Not that imagination isn’tbeneficial to the other two forms. I’m sure it is. But for me, imaginationseems to take over. Also, I enjoy reading fiction, and just as I like to getlost in the reading of a story, so too do I like to get lost in the writing of one.However, it’s also the case that, after the exhilarating and sometimesfrightening freedom that is the first draft, I have to lean into what I imagineare the artistic skills of a poet and the detail-exacting talents of anon-fiction writer.

3 - How long does it take to start any particularwriting project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slowprocess? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or doesyour work come out of copious notes?

Most Grievous Fault is my first novel to be published, and writing it was a long process.The first draft was written quickly, without thought or plan. The ideas andimages and characters were there, but there was no form, no proper structure,and it was the wrong protagonist, the wrong tense and perspective. Sortingthrough all of that took more than a year. After that initial restructuring, Iturned to short fiction, looking at the novel occasionally, but mostly comingto terms with the fact that I was planning to abandon it. But my protagonist,Crystal, stayed with me, and at some point, I made a commitment to her andpushed through. The fact that she is unlikeable made the work difficult. Ineeded her to be sympathetic even though, really, she isn’t.

            Iam not a note taker. I write and rewrite, starting over and then starting overagain. I have many versions of Crystal’s story. Many versions, in fact, of allmy stories. I write quickly, but I edit slowly.

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?

Ideas come from anywhere. Something I see orhear, a truck at the side of the road, someone’s gait, the tilt of a head, aconversation. A short story begins from there: not much more than nothing atall. Ideas for novels, however, seem to appear in my head like movies. Theyroll around for a long, long time before I sit down to pay attention to thescript. I’m inclined to start a short story anywhere and at any point. For anovel, I need time and space. It’s a commitment. Long term.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to yourcreative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

When I am working on something, I prefer not toshare it for fear it will stifle, thwart, or disrupt my creativity. However,when I have a finished project, I’m happy to read. Writing is meant to beshared and the kind of sharing that readings present opens me to other ways ofinterpreting the work and other ways of understanding what I have written. Ialso really enjoy reading aloud in a general sense, whether it’s my work or theworks of others.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind yourwriting? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? Whatdo you even think the current questions are?

My writing, no matter which direction I thinkI’m headed in, veers towards the morally murky, the struggle of the human to beand do good, the challenges in determining right from wrong, the questions offaith in self, in others, in God, and the fallibility of the human body. I’minterested in what it means to be human, where and how we find meaning in life,and the difficulties in sustaining honest relationships. For me, these arequestions that are universal and that stay with us, relevant whether the storyis told through the perspective of believers or non-believers, thinkers ordoers, whether it’s set in a pre-industrial period or in a time of the internetand AI.

7 – What do you see thecurrent role of the writer being in the larger culture? Do they even have one?What do you think the role of the writer should be?

We all have stories, big stories and littlestories and in-between stories. They are all relevant and interesting, always. Itseems to me that the writer is attempting to find meaning in these stories and thento translate them into something that is accessible.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outsideeditor difficult or essential (or both)?

Both. The fact that the story has become part ofme, that I feel it internally and know every version of it on a visceral level,including what has been removed and what was never put in but is germaneperipherally, can stand in the way of clarity for a reader. This is where thesharp eye of an editor is invaluable and essential. Knowing when and whyoutside opinion is necessary is the job of the writer. At a certain point, wecan be too close to the story to see what’s happening and what’s missing.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (notnecessarily given to you directly)?

My father used to say, “Doe gewoon.” I’mnot sure if it was his or if it’s a typical Dutch saying, but it means “benatural,” “be yourself.” In other words, behave without artifice, withouttheatrics.

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?

Although it depends on where I am in a piece, I don’tthink I can say I really have a routine. Perhaps I even avoid rigidity in mywriting practice. When things are going well, my project is open on the diningroom table and I write in fits and starts throughout the day, using what I’mdoing between bursts of writing to work things out in my mind. I am fully init, dreaming it and living it. Public writing, writing in the car, in a park,at the side of the community pool, in a coffee shop—every place and everythinggets channelled somehow into the piece. No gatekeepers until I sit down toedit, which is, in some ways, where the real writing work happens, and whichcan be either enjoyable or frustrating.

            Istart my days early with coffee and my laptop. I like to see the sun rise.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turnor return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I find it helpful to write with other people,which is something that’s not always possible. A long walk can also serve(sometimes) to generate ideas or to move things forward. I suppose it’s alsotrue that when I’m not writing, I can’t imagine ever writing again, and wheneverything is going well, I can’t imagine a project ever stalling or my mind evernot being productive. Sometimes it’s difficult not to feel unsettled by a lackof inspiration, and even though I tell myself that it will pass, there is apart of me that is unsure. Sometimes it’s a big part; sometimes it’s smaller,quieter.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The smells of goat’s milk, Bantam chickens, EarlGrey tea, prairie grasses—these I associate with my childhood home. My lategrandmother’s perfume, Arpège by Lanvin, reminds me ofhome in general, home as a place that is warmly familiar. The smell of teak, aswell, because of her teak cupboard, which is now my teak cupboard.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come frombooks, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature,music, science or visual art?

I think a lot about the process of painting whenI write, this rendering of what one sees, either physically or mentally, intosomething that others see as well. Making something from nothing. And I listento the radio, absorbing whatever comes my way, choosing nothing but the stationitself. Talk, music, political discussion, opera, news—it all floats past meand I can only assume it influences me, even though often it’s hard to pinpointexactly why and what will serve as a muse.

14 - What other writers or writings are important foryour work, or simply your life outside of your work?

This changes for me. Currently, I am drawn toDeborah Levy, all her works really. I love the way she looks at things, herthoughtfulness and intelligence and the way she sees her work as part of thecontinuum that is the world of writing. I like how she struggles to understandwhat it is she does—her introspection. I also love Rachel Cusk’s writing.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yetdone?

A very difficult question. I don’t have a bucketlist and am inclined to be open to whatever comes my way, and, at the sametime, I tend to be rather careful not to let too much come my way. In my mind,I’d like to be a spy—to observe without anyone knowing I’m there. I’d like tobe invisible.

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt,what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended updoing had you not been a writer?

I think I might have been a teacher, and I alsothink I could not have been a teacher. I love to observe and attempt tounderstand why a person is the way they are. In other words, I like to stepinto other people’s shoes. When I’m waiting for my car to be fixed, I am amechanic; when I’m in the doctor’s office, I’m the one with the stethoscope.I’m a barista, a grocery clerk, a dental hygienist, a road worker, a horsetrainer, a mountain climber. And I am none of those things. If I hadn’t startedwriting, I would be dreaming of writing.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing somethingelse?

I still remember this intense excitement I feltin grade 1 when I opened my notebook to a blank page and had a pencil in myhand. I remember my first reader with its simple images and vivid colours. Iremember learning the word “why”. To read a book was to be transported. Towrite a book? This was the pinnacle. Unreachable. I was and am in awe ofwriters.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What wasthe last great film?

While I can’t really say what the last greatbook I read was, some recent reads that impacted me and still linger includeM.A.C. Farrant’s memoir My Turquoise Years and Jente Posthuma’s verypoignant novel What I’d Rather Not Think About, as well as ArleneHeyman’s short fiction collection Scary Old Sex. These books are verydifferent thematically and otherwise, but they all convey “story” beautifully.Also, Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose and John Fowles’s DanielMartin. Recent films that have stayed with me include Maestro and Conclave,as well as the limited series, Adolescence and Secrets We Keep. Also,.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I am always writing short stories and at themoment these seem to be focussed on vulnerability, the fragility of our mindsand bodies. I am also searching, mentally, for the characters who will togethershape my next novel, which might be about sibling relations, or dying parents,or the interplay of helping and hindering, or the search for our place in life,or all of these.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Sara Gilmore, The Green Lives

 

Railroad

I late was called todistant slush
The early angel in menoonless 

A breeding blankets
That will not fail 

To meet you. Lately I ownmy warning
Overhang and little atwire in the branches 

Drop it over the grid animage
With its own eyes withits own completion. 

In a version of theuncommonly unclear we are
Skimping along morningmorning noon night 

Let the refuse lay quietdown instead.
In shutters outside thatnothing dislocates or wills, 

On a monitor printing themoon
I look through the window.Outside or inside 

Either petals sticking tothe glass or confront extending
Without instruction beingswept sweet. 

In noise, we are incommon
Contained in hurt’s arms,what do you think like that. 

The image watches andwaiting, not looking up
Not looking down, slips,maybe it sees us. 

If crawl inside, ifsubmerge,
If we open our eyes whathappens. 

1/19/2021

Ihadn’t heard of Sara Gilmore, an American poet and translator who teaches atthe University of Iowa and works as a phlebotomist, before seeing a copy of herfull-length collection The Green Lives (Portland OR: Fonograf Editions,2025). Through this debut and expansive collection of poems, I was immediatelystruck by the remarkable possibility of her lyrics, a propulsive and rhythmic swirlof long lines, long sentences that push and twist. “The ocean is for respect,”begins the short poem “Woman,” “alone it is, a sticker on the water / floor isanother code. To wait for nativity, its falter / hurry.” Oh, the rhythms, therhythms; and the way she twists punctuation and language, allowing sound andmeaning to swirl into entirely unexpected spaces. Her punctuation works indelicate ways, offering moments of visual rhythm, syncopation and contradiction.It works precisely because she knows exactly what she’s doing. “So it was,”begins the poem “Man with gun,” “I was / caught in my single permission /catering in all diseases of the mouth / the result of a nostalgia / I built myhome / in threatening handsome young men / on the basketball court.”

Eachpoem is accompanied by a date, and a symbol: ‘hobo signs,’ as she offers,providing an opening note that tells of these symbols, “socially constructed followingthe Civil War and through the Great Depression, denote the meanings of things,places, roads, and the people that hobos encountered, and served to tell, warn,and recommend them to other migrants. Markings were usually made in chalk orcharcoal on fences, buildings, trees, and pavements.” A suggestion that onedirection might hold folk friendly enough to offer a meal, or warnings thatdanger lay ahead. As part of her opening note, “ABOUT THE SIGNS,” she offers,also:

When I thought I was inone place, I was actually in another, again and again; this night the placesrepeating or beating in their own heart. Sometimes the owner is in—present,inside—even if, of course, “the holding of property is robbery.” Sometimes, she’salone, telling me, “I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to the baby”—and then I’mwith her. At times, the owner is out—faraway, outside—leaving the vividness,the itinerant, the visions, their home. Then the baby is my own.

Throughthe counterpoint of dates and signage, Gilmore offers such curious specificityof placement, even in what appears as a kind of abstract. “If to everythingthere must be an inside and an outside,” the same note offers, “I’ll make theoutside to assimilate states of precarity and abandon, for which no understandingholds.” There is such purpose here, composing a book-length poem, in many ways,around safety, solace; around both being and becoming. Curiously, Gilmour wroteon one of the poems that ended up in this collection for The Paris Reviewlast year, offering this as part of an interview:

“Safe camp” belongs to acycle of serial poems written around the symbols that itinerant communitieshave historically used in the U.S. After the Great Depression, as people (manyof whom were teenagers) moved across the country looking for work, they wouldleave scratch marks or markings in chalk outside the places they visited, totell others what those places were like. For many years I’ve had a copy ofErnst Lehner’s Symbols, Signs and Signets, which includes a catalogue ofthese visual symbols and verbal descriptions of their meanings: “Owner is in,”“Keep quiet, “Bad dog,” “Safe camp.” There’s something flat and solid aboutthese descriptions that contrasts with the way I write.

“It’smorning when my man leaves: he tells me of a burden line of / temperateclimate,” Gilmour writes, as part of the poem “# #,” “first place,      counter-rising I don’t / fill beside it./ A water gauge, a page: still how I happened.” In truth, this very much seemsa book of searching, of wandering; of placement, seeking out a home, a safety,or simply a place to lay one’s head.

Look out the window fordays after headaches, watching: row for washing, revoke still.
Today I saw youdistracted by a noise faltering noise from air conditioners
green blue in slownessand distance. The steps before it too 

up and down        always the first time.

 

Ongoing notes: TIFA Small Press Market/Meet the Presses’ Indie Lit Market (part one, : Liam Burke + Gary Barwin,

Okay,so this has to be a blended sequence of fair-posts, as multiple vendors (suchas myself and the delightfully-productive above/ground press) attended bothfairs across two days in Toronto [see my post on the most recent prior TIFA Small Press Market I attended; see my post on the most recent prior Meet the Presses Indie Lit Market I attended]. I mean, two fairs in two days? It was abit ridiculous, but somehow, it worked. Most of the vendors I spoke to, myselfincluded, were naturally exhausted after two days of fairs and carrying andstanding. There was a nice tribute that Gary Barwin spoke at the Indie LitMarket to honour the late Toronto poet (and Meet the Presses Collective member)Paul Dutton, who died earlier this year. And congratulations to Jeremy Luke Hill, who won this year’s bpNichol Chapbook Award! Announced the very day he saw his new above/ground press title for the first time.  And you know our Ottawa fair is coming up soon, yes?

Toronto/Ottawa ON: From Ottawa poet Liam Burke, co-author of the collaborative Orbital Cultivation (with ManahilBandukwala; Collusion, 2021) and machine dreams (with natalie hanna;Collusion, 2021), comes the solo chapbook status ailment (Toronto ON:Anstruther Press, 2025), an assemblage of ten short, curious lyrics. Burke’s poems offer lyric narratives, lyric inquiries, set in ether, presenting orsuggesting a kind of action, such as the reference to the Marvel flick, DoctorStrange (2016), by titling a poem “dormammu ive come 2 bargain,” a poemthat writes a held kind of abstract, purposefully, it would seem, inert. As theopening stanza reads: “i could just stay here / gather green trichomes / letinertia have its way / collate colonies of moss / mash every button / to escapethe command- / grab of coming of age [.]” There are narrative threads thatexist in Burke’s poems, but less straightforward than from all sides, slant;offering swirls instead of straight lines, and a sequence of entreaties withoutclear closure. These poems are intriguing, thoughtful and exploratory, offeringunexpected paths and trails and truths. Or, as the first section of the sequence “fivelitanies” ends: “how am i       to show /to love my body       when it fails me so[.]”

status ailment

panic overwhelming

No you may not heal heatuplifted.
No you may not jitterbugyour body.
No you may not catapultyour
heart your throat yourdiaphragm.
No you may not finishthat joint.
You might be dying. Panic
’s roar in the dark, low,hot. No you
May not. No you may not.

Gary Barwin + serif of nottingham at TIFA's Indie Lit Market

Hamilton ON: “I weep for the world and so UNESCOdeclares my tears a site of significant cultural heritage. They don’t includemy snot and jagged sobs though I would argue that they are integral to theprocess.” And so begins the title and opening piece of Hamilton writer, musician, collaborator and performer Gary Barwin’s latest chapbook, MY SEXYMOTHER TERESA COSTUME (serif of nottingham editions, 2025). Barwin’s shortprose bursts exist as postcard stories, twenty-two in total, all existing asblends of dense, narrative expansiveness, offering short sketches across a widecanvas of history, literature and experience. “During World War II,” the firsthalf of the piece “In my Pants” reads, “Dervis Korkut, the librarian at theNational Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, at great risk to his life, hid thebeautiful medieval Sarajevo Haggadah from the Nazis by concealing it in hispants, I remembered, so I went to the bookstore.” His short missives haveprogressed, it would seem, blending a thread of surrealism with a far largerworldview, offering pieces that read somehow both surreal and straightforward,able to only see the story properly from coming to it from unusual sides. Or,as the piece “The Ventriloquist and 1942” begins: “The European explorer stoodon the bow of the ship, holding a ventriloquist dummy dressed as a sea captain.Together, explorer and dummy looked across the vast ocean at the distant horizon.”Truly, these pieces are quite amazing, and hard to shake, once you’ve read. Theykeep one returning.

Cake

I’m phoning your cakebecause of course you don’t have a birthday anymore, at least, not really. Yourcake is really far away—somewhere “out there” or “here.” Same as you, in thisday where I woke up and made coffee and got in my car and drove to where I’mwriting this and where I picked up this old-fashioned phone. Ring. Ring. Are youthinking of cake in your own cloudtown, thinking of us, candles and blowingthem out, the breath from inside us, hhh hhh hhh. Happy birthday. Happy birthday,we say. And you’re thinking, happy birthday, happy birthday to me too.

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Rachel Trousdale

Rachel Trousdale [photo credit: Nick Beauchamp] is a professor of English at Framingham StateUniversity. Her book of poems, Five-Paragraph Essay on the Body-Mind Problem ,won Wesleyan University Press’s Cardinal Poetry Prize. Her other books include Humor, Empathy, and Community in Twentieth-Century American Poetry and Nabokov,Rushdie, and the Transnational Imagination . @rvtrousdale, www.racheltrousdale.com.

1 - How did yourfirst book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compareto your previous? How does it feel different?

I’ve been having so muchfun with this book! My first books were scholarly—I’ve written one ontransnational fiction, and one on humor in twentieth century American poetry,and also edited a collection on humor. I enjoyed writing them, but scholarshipcan be a very small world, and once a book comes out, all you do is wait sixmonths and see if anyone reviews it. This is my first full-length poetrycollection, and it’s been a delight getting to travel around, give readings,and meet people. Someone recently emailed me to tell me he’d used one of mypoems in his wedding vows, which was a thrill.

2 - How did you come topoetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

My dad used to come intomy room when I was a kid and read or recite poems at me: TS Eliot, RobertFrost, Robert Service, silly rhymes from the Open Road for Boys circa1936, Lewis Carroll. I’d put down the fantasy novel I was reading long enoughto listen. Then, when I started trying to write fiction, I discovered that whatI kept trying to do was write the single intense page of epiphany or revelationthat you can’t reach until page 247 of a novel. That page doesn’t usually standalone in prose, but it turns out you can do it pretty efficiently in poetry.

3 - How long does ittake to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially comequickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to theirfinal shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

Individual poems tend tocome quickly—I write in a fast burst. And then I edit them very, very slowly.Sometimes when I’m stuck on a poem it turns out to be because it was only thefirst half of something, or more accurately only half of the material I neededto discuss; when that’s the case, it may take months before I find the missingpieces of the puzzle.

4 - Where does a poemusually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combininginto a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the verybeginning?

My critical books havebegun as big ambitious questions. But in poetry, it’s so far been short piecesthat accumulate into a larger project. Individual poems often suggestthemselves around a single sticking point: an opening line; a closing line; aweird image. Can I write a poem in which an octopus climbs a palm tree? Thenthe challenge is how to find the other pieces that go along with that startingpoint, because you don’t want the poem to be just one thing—otherwise theoctopus gets stuck.

5 - Are public readingspart of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer whoenjoys doing readings?

I love readings. Notjust of my own work: I started life as a theater kid, and I’m always recitingbits of Shakespeare and Yeats at my children, or reading snippets of sciencefiction stories out loud to my students. I like to wave my arms around and dothe voices, or gallop the meter like Robert Browning in that drunken-soundingwax cylinder recording.

6 - Do you have anytheoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are youtrying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questionsare?

I want to write things Ihaven’t seen before. There’s a genre of poetry I think of as “white poetlooking out the window,” where a comfortable speaker looks at a nice safe worldand thinks about how nature makes them feel. I desperately don’t want to write likethat, which can be hard, since I am in fact a comfortable white woman who likesto take walks. I want accuracy and intensity and stakes, and if something’sbeen said already I don’t see any reason to say it again. That doesn’t mean Ialways manage originality, just that I wish I could. I’m also very interestedin the role of pleasure, humor, and joy in art, especially art that addressesserious or difficult topics.

7 – What do you see thecurrent role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? Whatdo you think the role of the writer should be?

On the one hand, I thinkit’s silly for writers to claim to be special people; I can’t pretend to be aRomantic-style poet-prophet or anything of that sort. On the other hand, Ithink that artists of any variety have an enormous responsibility to tell thetruth in public. This is a political role, because when something is evil, youhave to say so. And it’s an aesthetic role, because when something isbeautiful, you have to enjoy it. And it’s a social role, because you’respeaking to other people, and inviting them to respond, and trying to create aconversation that goes beyond your own artwork. Writers of poetry, or offiction or drama, can ask hard questions in very different and sometimes morechallenging ways than journalists do. And unlike novelists or actors or evenmusicians, poets’ work is especially easy to share, and to take with you inyour pocket, or keep whole in a corner of your head until you need it—nocharger required.

8 - Do you find theprocess of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Essential. About twoweeks into the pandemic shutdowns, my friend Catherine Rockwood emailed me andtwo other friends from graduate school and said “we’re going to need poetry toget through this.” We formed an online writing group, giving feedback over GoogleDocs to weekly poem drafts. We eventually named ourselves the Harpies. Not onlywould my book of poems not exist without them, I would probably have gone fullYellow Wallpaper some time in November of 2020.

9 - What is the bestpiece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

“Never try to make ahappy baby happier.” This has nothing directly to do with writing, but it isthe best advice I have ever gotten. Also “Stick a stamp on it,” from Stephanie Burt, when we were both in graduate school and I was dithering over whether anarticle I’d written was ready to send out. And “I’d like to see more wildnessin this,” from Terrance Hayes, to me and multiple other people in a workshop hewas teaching. And the Connecticut State Lottery: “You can’t win if you don’tplay.” I don’t play the lottery, but it turns out that advice is useful inother contexts.

10 - How easy has itbeen for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you seeas the appeal?

I generally writebecause I’m trying to understand something. That takes different forms inpoetry and critical prose, though. My first critical book was an attempt tofigure out why novels by Vladimir Nabokov and Salman Rushdie tasted the same tome. My most recent one was trying to figure out why W. H. Auden and Marianne Moore’shumor felt like home (there wasn’t much mystery why Pound’s and Eliot’sdidn’t). Both of those books started with an itchy feeling that there was apattern I wanted to identify, linking different writers I admired. The processof writing really came down to explaining what that pattern was and finding aname for it.

When I’m writing a poem,though, I’m trying to answer different kind of question, often a moreopen-ended “what if” — what happens if I take this metaphor to a logicalextreme? Can I make a sestina behave like a hologram? Can I understandsomething unfathomable (eternity, the depths of interstellar space) by thinkingabout how it feels to drive on a fourteen-hour road trip? So instead of theitchy feeling that I was missing something, which is where the critical booksstarted, poems are like hiking a bit farther to see around the next corner, orlearning to juggle: can I just get one more angle on the view? can I do this whilebalancing a plate on my nose? What happens if I swap one of the juggling ballsfor an orange? and so on.

But you asked whether itwas easy to move between genres. For me, it’s vital. If I’m not trying to writepoems, I’m liable to miss some of the weirdness and ambition of the poems I’mreading. And if I’m not writing critically, I’m liable to repeat other people’sexperiments instead of coming up with new ones of my own.

11 - What kind ofwriting routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does atypical day (for you) begin?

I wish that apredictable writing routine were compatible with having an academic job and twokids. During the summer, I have the luxury of time: breakfast, take the kids tocamp, write for an hour or two, do some reading, have lunch, repeat. The otherthree seasons, writing takes place in stolen time: composing a poem in my headduring my drive to work and scribbling it down in the ten minutes before class,or an intense week-long writing binge during January break once the kids areback in school.

12 - When your writinggets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word)inspiration?

Few things get meunstuck better than a long talk with my spouse, who asks the right kind of hardquestions. When we don’t have the luxury of a long talk, though, I find ithelpful to do something with my hands: make a complicated dinner, or even justdo laundry. Is it preposterous to find inspiration in laundry? Solving oneproblem — the problem that the kids need clean socks — helps make biggerproblems seem more manageable.

But that’s not very inspiring-sounding,is it? Obviously another answer would be a list of poets I admire, even if mywork doesn’t resemble theirs. Harryette Mullen, Alice Oswald, Gwendolyn Brooks,C. D. Wright. I’ve been getting a lot of poem ideas from Kevin Stroud’s Historyof English Podcast. My students. Books about raven cognition. Travelplanning.

13 - What fragrancereminds you of home?

Butter melting in a hotcast-iron pan.

14 - David W. McFaddenonce said that books come from books, but are there any other forms thatinfluence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I write a lot of sciencepoems. I’m interested in physics, and animal behavior. If you’re going to writeabout birds, you need to know something about their musculature and nestinghabits and territorial behavior.

15 - What other writersor writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of yourwork?

I recite Keats to myselfwhen I’m anxious. I studied Italian in college in order to read the Inferno,and finally managed it last year, just 25 years after setting myself thechallenge. Virginia Woolf. I’ve read the Anne of Green Gables series anuncountable number of times. I consume big piles of fantasy novels, preferablywith cranky female protagonists; I’m a big fan of Naomi Novik. Oliver Sacks. Formoral philosophy, Edith Stein, Martin Buber, and .

16 - What would you liketo do that you haven't yet done?

In Tobago, you can canoethrough the nesting grounds of the scarlet ibis—I’ve wanted to do that foryears. I have also not hiked enough of the Appalachian Trail. I don’t need todo the whole six month pilgrimage, section hiking will do. And I can’t believeI haven’t made it to the Himalayas—who’s been in charge here?

17 - If you could pickany other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do youthink you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

Most of my working hoursare as a teacher. I could do that without writing, and some years I have. But foran entirely different career: I think I could be very happy as a baker, or aninterpreter, or a travel guide.

18 - What made youwrite, as opposed to doing something else?

This is such aninteresting question, and one I have never understood. What is it that compelsus to write things down, instead of just thinking them through and moving on? Ithink it’s that same itchy feeling that something is missing. If I writesomething down, I have a better chance of seeing the gaps in the sequence, theplaces I haven’t actually figured out the problem I’m puzzling over. Then thenext mystifying question is why, once we’ve written something down, we feel theneed to publish it. Shouldn’t it be enough that I’ve solved the problem to myown satisfaction? But no, there the poem is, vibrating on the page anddemanding to be looked at, like in Woolf’s Orlando when the manuscriptleaps out of the bosom of Orlando’s dress. All I can do is send it on its wayand wish it luck.

19 - What was the lastgreat book you read? What was the last great film?

Last great book: EvieShockley’s Suddenly We. Not a film but a TV show: we’re watching Adventure Time with the kids and I revel in its cheerful weirdness.

20 - What are youcurrently working on?

Myfall syllabi! But also: I’m writing a sequence of poems that are the answers inan advice column. Not the questions, just the answers. Some familiar peoplewrite in — Galileo, maybe a Shakespeare villain or two, fairy tale characters,Gargamel from the Smurfs, I’m not sure yet. I’m open to suggestions.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Spotlight series #115 : Anna Veprinska

The one hundred and fifteenth in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring Calgary poet Anna Veprinska.

The first eleven in the series were attached to the Drunken Boat blog, and the series has so far featured poets including Seattle, Washington poet Sarah Mangold, Colborne, Ontario poet Gil McElroy, Vancouver poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Ottawa poet Jason Christie, Montreal poet and performer Kaie Kellough, Ottawa poet Amanda Earl, American poet Elizabeth Robinson, American poet Jennifer Kronovet, Ottawa poet Michael Dennis, Vancouver poet Sonnet L’Abbé, Montreal writer Sarah Burgoyne, Fredericton poet Joe Blades, American poet Genève Chao, Northampton MA poet Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer from Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1 territory) poet, critic and editor Joshua Whitehead, American expat/Barcelona poet, editor and publisher Edward Smallfield, Kentucky poet Amelia Martens, Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie, Burlington, Ontario poet Sacha Archer, Washington DC poet Buck Downs, Toronto poet Shannon Bramer, Vancouver poet and editor Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Vancouver poet Geoffrey Nilson, Oakland, California poets and editors Rusty Morrison and Jamie Townsend, Ottawa poet and editor Manahil Bandukwala, Toronto poet and editor Dani Spinosa, Kingston writer and editor Trish Salah, Calgary poet, editor and publisher Kyle Flemmer, Vancouver poet Adrienne Gruber, California poet and editor Susanne Dyckman, Brooklyn poet-filmmaker Stephanie Gray, Vernon, BC poet Kerry Gilbert, South Carolina poet and translator Lindsay Turner, Vancouver poet and editor Adèle Barclay, Thorold, Ontario poet Franco Cortese, Ottawa poet Conyer Clayton, Lawrence, Kansas poet Megan Kaminski, Ottawa poet and fiction writer Frances Boyle, Ithica, NY poet, editor and publisher Marty Cain, New York City poet Amanda Deutch, Iranian-born and Toronto-based writer/translator Khashayar Mohammadi, Mendocino County writer, librarian, and a visual artist Melissa Eleftherion, Ottawa poet and editor Sarah MacDonell, Montreal poet Simina Banu, Canadian-born UK-based artist, writer, and practice-led researcher J. R. Carpenter, Toronto poet MLA Chernoff, Boise, Idaho poet and critic Martin Corless-Smith, Canadian poet and fiction writer Erin Emily Ann Vance, Toronto poet, editor and publisher Kate Siklosi, Fredericton poet Matthew Gwathmey, Canadian poet Peter Jaeger, Birmingham, Alabama poet and editor Alina Stefanescu, Waterloo, Ontario poet Chris Banks, Chicago poet and editor Carrie Olivia Adams, Vancouver poet and editor Danielle Lafrance, Toronto-based poet and literary critic Dale Martin Smith, American poet, scholar and book-maker Genevieve Kaplan, Toronto-based poet, editor and critic ryan fitzpatrick, American poet and editor Carleen Tibbetts, British Columbia poet nathan dueck, Tiohtiá:ke-based sick slick, poet/critic em/ilie kneifel, writer, translator and lecturer Mark Tardi, New Mexico poet Kōan Anne Brink, Winnipeg poet, editor and critic Melanie Dennis Unrau, Vancouver poet, editor and critic Stephen Collis, poet and social justice coach Aja Couchois Duncan, Colorado poet Sara Renee Marshall, Toronto writer Bahar Orang, Ottawa writer Matthew Firth, Victoria poet Saba Pakdel, Winnipeg poet Julian Day, Ottawa poet, writer and performer nina jane drystek, Comox BC poet Jamie Sharpe, Canadian visual artist and poet Laura Kerr, Quebec City-area poet and translator Simon Brown, Ottawa poet Jennifer Baker, Rwandese Canadian Brooklyn-based writer Victoria Mbabazi, Nova Scotia-based poet and facilitator Nanci Lee, Irish-American poet Nathanael O'Reilly, Canadian poet Tom Prime, Regina-based poet and translator Jérôme Melançon, New York-based poet Emmalea Russo, Toronto-based poet, editor and critic Eric Schmaltz, San Francisco poet Maw Shein Win, Toronto-based writer, playwright and editor Daniel Sarah Karasik, Ottawa poet and editor Dessa Bayrock, Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia poet Alice Burdick, poet, writer and editor Jade Wallace, San Francisco-based poet Jennifer Hasegawa, California poet Kyla Houbolt, Toronto poet and editor Emma Rhodes, Canadian-in-Iowa writer Jon Cone, Edmonton/Sicily-based poet, educator, translator, researcher, editor and publisher Adriana Oniță, California-based poet, scholar and teacher Monica Mody, Ottawa poet and editor AJ Dolman, Sudbury poet, critic and fiction writer Kim Fahner, Canadian poet Kemeny Babineau, Indiana poet Nate Logan, Toronto poet and editor Michael Boughn, North Georgia poet and editor Gale Marie Thompson, award-winning poet Ellen Chang-Richardson, Montreal-based poet, professor and scholar of feminist poetics, Jessi MacEachern, Toronto poet and physician Dr. Conor Mc Donnell, San Francisco poet Micah Ballard, Montreal poet Misha Solomon, Ottawa writer and editor Mahaila Smith, American poet and asemic artist Terri Witek, Ottawa-based freelance editor and writer Margo LaPierre, Ottawa poet Helen Robertson, Oakville poet Mandy Sandhu, New Westminster, British Columbia poet Christina Shah and poet, critic, curator and former publisher Geoffrey Young!
 
The whole series can be found online here.