Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 326

Happy Third Birthday, Rose!

Our wee Emperor is now three years old. Happy birthday! May you have many, many years of grand adventuring (and picnics).

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Emily Saso

Emily Saso writes fiction and screenplays. She lives in Toronto and blogs at www.egoburn.blogspot.ca. Her debut novel, The Weather Inside , is available now from Freehand Books.
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?My first book, The Weather Inside, gave me permission to call myself an author. It didn’t change my life, but it helped to solidify my identity, which is something I didn’t realize I needed until it happened.
The Weather Inside is my only completed novel to date, so I can only compare it to my short stories. The dark humour is consistent. Also the dashes of weirdness mixed in with the mundane. My novel feels different because I love it and am very proud of it. (I’m sort of meh about my shorts.)
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
As a teenager, I was obsessed with becoming a novelist or filmmaker, so I was always splitting myself in two, never getting very good at either discipline. When I was 18, I got rejected from every film school I applied to. That heartbreak forced me to focus my creative energy into fiction. I love non-fiction too, by the way. But fiction is much more fun.
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’ll get hit with an idea pretty quick, which then spirals into an obsession. Once that idea takes over my life, I know I have something worthy of a novel. But the writing part takes me ages. I’m not overly talented—my first drafts are garbage—so I have to make up for that deficit with a disciplined, masochistic work ethic. (I’m lots of fun at parties.)
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?I don’t have a “usually” yet since I only have one book under my belt. But, as a reader, I definitely enjoy the novel form more than the short story, so—so far at least—I’m always striving for a book.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?I’m a solitary writer. Now and then I’ll head to a coffee shop with a friend to lay down the foundations of an idea, but my true creative process relies on solitude, snacks and 90’s pop music—definitely not public readings. But I’ll do readings if I’m invited to do them, and I’ll enjoy the process. It’s probably still one of the surest ways to connect with readers.
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’m into the standard questions: Why doesn't he love me? Why can’t I find happiness? Where will I go when I die? Why am I even here to begin with? Why did I eat that whole box of cookies? I just try to put a twist on them, something weird that maybe (hopefully) no one else has thought of before.
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 for the love of it. If I wrote for any reason greater than that, I would be a depressive egomaniac.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?Both.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?“Turn off The Real Housewives of Atlanta and write.”
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (short stories to novel)? What do you see as the appeal?
Short stories are short, is the appeal. But I’m a novel person through and through.
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 work a fulltime job, so I squeeze in writing on the weekends. I used to write in the evenings after work too, but that was destroying my back, so I had to give up that precious timeslot.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?Read read read read books books books books.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?Rocks.
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?Television.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?Kazuo Ishiguro, Susanna Clarke, Douglas Adams, Ali Shaw, Audrey Niffenegger, Wally Lamb, Aimee Bender…
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?Live abroad.
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?Something in foreign policy or espionage.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?I loved the endless possibility; that the only rules were the ones I imposed on myself.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film? Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, which I recently reread. 
The One I Love written by 20 - What are you currently working on?My second novel and a television pilot.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Erin Wunker, Notes from a Feminist Killjoy

I think, now, that there are questions to be asked about access, ownership, and agency. I think, now, that claiming space and having a place at the table of Big Ideas and Important Thinking are not the same thing. I think, as I write myself into being a writer, that there’s a lot of work to be done on so many different levels. Figuring out where and how I stand, myself, seems crucial in order to try to stand with others who are affected differently by aggressions of misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, class, and, and, and… (“Introduction: Some Notes for You, Reading”)
The second title in BookThug’s “essais” series, edited by Toronto poet Julie Joosten, is Erin Wunker’s articulate, irreverent and thoughtful Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on everyday life (BookThug, 2016). Borrowing her title from British writer and academic Sara Ahmed’s research blog feministkilljoys, Wunker utilizes the idea of a “feminist killjoy” as one who sees feminism (a term she discusses as being complicated, multi-faceted and even willfully misunderstood) as the belief that all genders have equal value, and the foundations of the patriarchy, a presumed-standard which see maleness as vastly superior, as an argument worth kicking against. Given this, how could any thinking, feeling human imagine anything wrong with feminism? For Wunker, and Ahmed, theirs is to take away the “joy” of the patriarchy via the arguments of feminism. As she writes:
One place to start is with the term “feminist killjoy.” When I told my mother that I was thinking of writing a handbook about how to be a feminist killjoy, she expressed concern. Why did I want to make things harder for myself? Aren’t there enough epithets about willful subjects circulating without me deliberately taking one up for myself? Well, yes and no. The term “killjoy” tends to be derisive: someone who is a wet blanket, who rains on the parade. The person who says “quiet down” to people engaged in riotous laughter. But when appended to the term “feminist,” “killjoy” acquires nuance. “Feminist” is too often understood as inherently and problematically militant. When brought together, “feminist” and “killjoy” trouble the habitual understandings of each other. Double positives? Not quite, but taken together they usefully disrupt expectations and so-called common sense.
Wunker also writes about her own privilege through the process of writing from her own cisgender, white and middle-class perspective, and how the experiences of feminism with one isn’t necessarily the feminism of another (something that has become more prevalent in the arguments around Pride: how whiteness privilege, whether deliberately or otherwise, has pushed aside the founders of the movement that allowed for Pride: women of colour and the trans community); to presume otherwise would be severely reductive, false and counter-productive. Utilizing personal anecdotes, historical and contemporary examples and academic material, Wunker quickly establishes a deceptively informal tone that would allow even the most casual reader an easy entry, as she opens the book into a series of conversations and musings on some rather difficult subject matter. Through the course of her essays, Wunker attempts to discern how best to think, feel and simply be in the world in a positive, respectful and productive way, despite a series of acts and beliefs that work heavily against anyone not exlusively straight, white and male.
I think, upon reflection, that it has to do with what Ahmed warns the feminist killjoy about. It’s not that anger isn’t useful or even necessary for feminist killjoys. In fact, in The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Ahmed writes about the necessity of anger for the feminist movement. Rather, what I read in her words as a caution: Don’t let your anger—especially if it is righteous, especially if you know you’re on the side of right—fool you into thinking that it makes youright. Don’t be precious about your anger, warns Ahmed. Don’t let your anger become a site of oppression—for you, for others—when it can be a site of struggle. Don’t let your own experience of anger—feminist, justified, understandable—become totemic. Don’t let your anger be a stopping point. Don’t let your anger stop you from doing the hard feminist work of killing the joys of a patriarchal culture. Don’t let your anger blind you to the anger others experience, differently. Don’t think your anger is universal. Don’t think because your anger is feminist that it is meaningful for all women. Don’t fetishize your anger.
Composed as “notes,” the book is structured as any critical thesis might be—“Preface: Letter to My Daughter,” “Introduction: Some Notes for You, Reading,” “Chapter 1: Notes on Rape Culture,” “Chapter 2: Notes on Friendships,” “Chapter 3: Notes on Feminist Mothering” and “Postscript: Sometimes Refusal is a Feminist Act”—Wunker’s Notes from a Feminist Killjoy is smart, funny and visceral, terrifying and wise, and constantly attempting to comprehend, unpack and negotiate into language some extremely complicated cultural and human activities. Her writing is deeply personal and inviting, moving from conversation to theory in a completely natural way, utilizing theory to further that conversation that she knows she is but a small, but necessary, part of.
What if H. and I asked the questions differently? What if, instead of How am I going to teach him not to rape; how am I going to teach her about rape without teaching her to be afraid all the time, we put the questions this way:
How am I going to make sure that he isn’t taught to rape? How am I going to make sure that she isn’t taught to be afraid at a cellular level?
The difference between these questions and the original ones is that they presume a different future is actually possible. Both my friend and I were assuming the inevitabilities of rape culture in our infants’ lives. And that’s understandable. We’ve learned those narratives and inevitabilities ourselves. They’ve become our frames of reference. That’s the joy that needs killing: the sense of inevitability, that sense that rape—doing it or having it done to you—is somehow an inevitable, ever-present reality. Shifting our questions shifts our action, energies, and affects from within (I hope, I hope, I worry, I fret) to with each other. We move from the internalization of rape and rape culture as inevitable towards dialogue with others that positions rape, rape culture, gendered violence, and the associated traumas, big and small, as sites of struggle.
Given the lens of the results of the election south of the border, her chapter on rape is even more chilling, as she writes a recent history of reactions to an act of intimate violence that still manages to be dismissed by media, employers, universities and the law itself. Consider the recent story of the college student who raped an unconscious woman and was barely slapped on the wrist, as a judge suggested that he shouldn’t pay his whole life for a single act (oddly, an argument that wouldn’t fly if it were, say, murder), and that it could hurt his career opportunities. That might be terrifying enough, but to know that a rape charge isn’t enough to even prevent an electorate from voting for President is beyond unthinkable. As she writes:
If, as my editor and friend J. says so astutely, rape culture doesn’t have a linear history in either social memory or in our own biographies, then rape culture is atemporal and it requires atemporal, non-linear methods of putting words one after another to tell it and to tell it again. So if you find yourself automatically rejecting this, rejecting me as your interlocutor, take a moment to reflect on where the root of your rejection stems. From me? Or from the enormity of the joys that need killing?
I found her subsequent chapters – on female friendship and feminist mothering – rather enlightening, including the racist origins of the trope of the “angry black woman,” and her thoughts on feminism and mothering (given our own recent experiences around such, I found some of the personal stories she told of childbirth and mothering utterly charming). Really, anyone interested in culture and how it reacts with itself, or people and how they react with each other need to read this book. Visceral and heartfelt, Wunker’s Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on everyday life is well-researched and clearly thought, bringing in a variety of disparate threads into a coherent comprehension into contemporary culture. There is an enormous amount of information she unpacks here, and clarifies. This book should be considered essential reading.
I’ve read about female friendships described as romances and as the last bastion of truly platonic desire. This narrative appeals to me—it’s resonant with [Lisa] Robertson’s dark body of friendship—but it also makes me wary. It seems to me that recycling one storyline—the romance—means dragging all the sedimented associations of that storyline with you. I’m more interested in naming the ways this world does not make room for female friendship and discussing the ways those frienships form and thrive, despite the world as it is.
And working to build new worlds.

On beauty

It is impossible to remain still. I can’t remain still. I am a body in constant motion. Between baby, house, partner and writing, I am a body in constant motion, attempting two, three, four things simultaneously. I have always been capable at multi-tasking, but this is a new level. I bake as he sets down for lunch, and begin laundry and dishes as my wife attempts him down to sleep. I write an hour or two depending on the length and breadth of his nap. I sketch a few lines in my notebook as he coos on his mat. Later on, I prepare dinner as they play together in the living room. Once dinner is made, set and sat, I prepare his bath and begin loading the dishwasher. As she watches him in the bath, I fold last night’s laundry and diapers before assisting with bedtime routines.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Nora Gould

Nora Gould writes from east central Alberta where she ranches with her family. She graduated from the University of Guelph in 1984 with a degree in veterinary medicine. Her debut poetry collection, I see my love more clearly from a distance (Brick Books, 2012), was winner of the 2013 Robert Kroetsch Edmonton Book Prize and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry (Writers Guild of Alberta); it was also shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and was a finalist in the Poetry category for the High Plains Book Awards. Selah (Brick Books, 2016) is her second poetry collection.
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 thought that my first book, I see my love more clearly from a distance (Brick Books, 2012), might change my life but I don’t think it did. My writing process continued, began again, the same but different.
My second book, Selah(Brick Books, 2016), is written from a different perspective, a new knowledge base, but that keeps shifting too. Both books stand alone but I feel that Selah reframes I see my love more clearly from a distance — I had more distance, so to speak, when it was written.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?It’s always been poetry, perhaps because of epigenesis, or my mother reading me poetry, throughout my gestation right up to shortly before her death. The last she read to me was Robert Kroetsch.
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?For me, writing is a long, slow process. My first drafts come from copious notes and there is usually a scissors and tape stage after several drafts of several poems (or fragments towards a long poem) are written.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?A poem usually begins by insisting on itself. Notes are written wherever, often repeated in different forms. These notes might be on scraps of paper, on jeans or overalls depending on the weather, or in scribblers.
As to whether I’m working on a book from the beginning, it’s too early to tell (only 2 books to date) and I might never know at the beginning. As Theodore Roethke wrote in “The Waking”,
      This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.      What falls away is always. And is near.      I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.      I learn by going where I have to go.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?Public readings are not part of my creative process. I do read/speak aloud while writing as long as there’s no one else around.
I enjoy hearing others read and have enjoyed reading but I’m not comfortable reading to a dark room. I like to be able to see the people I’m reading to.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?The question is often what is happening? I am interested in juxtaposition, line breaks, and, the sound of the poem.
I’m not convinced I’ve answered your question.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?I’m not qualified to comment on the larger culture. My living is far too isolated.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?Both, definitely both.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?Keep writing. I quote Rick McNair, storyteller, actor, playwright, opera librettist, and so on.
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?This is a seasonal question for me. Much depends on the farm work. When I’m not needed, I feed and water the hens, gather the eggs then make coffee, carry it to my east room, and, settle at my table for work. I prefer to write in the morning but if I’m busy with tractor work, I will take papers with me and work as I can throughout the day and sometimes into the evening. It’s a case of turning off the radio.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?Sometimes I just put the page away and wait. Other times I will walk, run, or do repetitive physical work, depending what needs to be done. Scissors, shuffling, rearranging the pieces, can also help.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?Baking and baled hay. Sounds clichéd, eh, but that’s how it 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?Animals, Prairie, the quality of light, that big sky.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?That would be a long list. For now, I’ll just say Jane Kenyon.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?I’d like to travel, particularly if I could do a lot of walking. The Camino.
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?Archaeology.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?I do lots of other things, particularly farm work. The writing has always seemed necessary though.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?I don’t see many films but I recently enjoyed The Lady in the Van .
For a great book, I’ll say Napoleon’s Buttons by Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson.
19 - What are you currently working on?I’m in the gathering phase now — writing notes, collecting artifacts, flora, stones — I’ll see where these take me.
12or 20 (second series) questions;

Ken Edwards, a book with no name

No such thing as repetition
No such thing as repetition. No such thing as repetition there is no such thing as repetition. There is no such thing as repetition. Because. Because when a thing happens. Because when a thing happens for the first time it has not already happened. It has not already happened. It has not already happened when a thing happens for the first time. It has not already happened and when it happens again. When it happens again. And when it happens again it has happened before. There is no such thing as repetition because when a thing happens for the first time it has not already happened. And when it happens again and when it happens again it has happened before. It has happened before. And when it happens again it has happened before so inevitably. It has happened before so it has happened before so inevitably at once. So inevitably at once. So inevitably at once there is a difference. There is a difference. At once there is a difference. There is no such thing as repetition because when a thing happens for the first time it has not already happened and when it happens again it has happened before so inevitably at once there is a difference.
The latest from British poet (and editor/publisher of Reality Street, which recently folded after more than two decades of publishing) Ken Edwards is Where are the animals going
The animals are running. They are running together. The animals are running away. They are all different sizes. Faint steam rises from their bodies. They are not looking at us. Their eyes are fixed on where they are going. They are fleeing but we do not know what they are fleeing or where they are heading. It is a mystery. Scientists have come up with various possible explanations. The animals appear to be scared you can see it in their eyes. They are scared all right. They are all running together in a group or in several groups. They run and run. Are they trying to tell us something? Nobody knows. Nobody knows what they are trying to tell us.

Queen Mob's Teahouse : Cheena Marie Lo, Tessa Micaela and Brittany Billmeyer-Finn

As my tenure as interviews editor at Queen Mob's Teahouse continues, the eighteenth interview is now online: Tender and Tough: Letters as Questions as Letters: Cheena Marie Lo, Tessa Micaela and Brittany Billmeyer-Finn [pictured] . Other interviews from my tenure include: an interview with poet, curator and art critic Gil McElroy, conducted by Ottawa poet Roland Prevost, an interview with Toronto poet Jacqueline Valencia, conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham, an interview with Drew Shannon and Nathan Page, also conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham, an interview with Ann Tweedy conducted by Mary Kasimor, an interview with Katherine Osborne, conducted by Niina Pollari, an interview with Catch Business, conducted by Jon-Michael Frank, a conversation between Vanesa Pacheco and T.A. Noonan, "On Translation and Erasure," existing as an extension of Jessica Smith's The Women in Visual Poetry: The Bechdel Test, produced via Essay Press, Five questions for Sara Uribe and John Pluecker about Antígona González by David Buuck (translated by John Pluecker),"overflow: poetry, performance, technology, ancestry": kaie kellough in correspondence with Eric Schmaltz, and Mary Kasimor's interview with George Farrah, Brad Casey interviewed byEmilie Lafleur, David Buuck interviews John Chávez about Angels of the Americlypse: An Anthology of New Latin@ Writing and an interview with Abraham Adams by Ben Fama.

Further interviews I've conducted myself over at Queen Mob's Teahouse include: Claire Freeman-Fawcett on Spread Letter , Stephanie Bolster on Three Bloody Words, Claire Farley on Canthius, Dale Smith on Slow Poetry in America, Allison Green, Meredith Quartermain, Andy Weaver, N.W Lea and Rachel Loden.

If you are interested in sending a pitch for an interview my way, check out my "about submissions" write-up at Queen Mob's; you can contact me via rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com

Margaret Christakos, Her Paraphernalia: On Motherlines, Sex/Blood/Loss & Selfies

It was as if I could not write now offline. It was as if I needed the writing itself to be public to believe my voice existed. It was as if my voice had stopped existing. It was as if some essential vitamin was missing. It was as if I only mouthed the words. It was as if there was no point to the fact of writing. Why write. Why write anything. Isn’t the world full of writing. Isn’t the world just so full. Erase the crap. Erase the crap erase the crap erase the crap erase the crap out of it already.
The thing is you never know what has been erased and what has not been erased. (“Étude 5: Up Into Her Hole”)
The first title in editor Julie Joosten’s “Essais” series through BookThug is Toronto writer Margaret Christakos’ remarkable lyric essay/memoir Her Paraphernalia: On Motherlines, Sex/Blood/Loss & Selfies (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2016). Composed in ten numbered “Études”—“Her Itinerary,” “She Comes From Everywhere,” “Retreat,” “Chips & Ties,” “Up Into Her Hole,” “One Body,” “(Iphigenia-as-) Siri, a series,” “Cellphies,” “Her Paraphernalia” and “Cavort”—the opening sections exist as part sketchbook, part travel diary and part lyric essay, moving through the details of a search for the points-of-origin of her grandmothers. She writes: “I also, though, can track a mini-history of enamoured mutual liaisons that veered toward an outcome of eventual unrequired sexual love. It was as if the movement from pleasure to the deprivation of the sexual love object was a turn-on almost more than any other factor. It was a diversion that led me to poetic writing, I see now.” Opening the book with an acknowledgment and exploration of the women from whom she is descended, Christakos pours through what information she can about each of them and how each of them ended up in Northern Ontario into Sudbury, later allowing her parents to eventually meet and marry. She writes:
When I began this project what I loosely knew was that all four of my grandparents had arrived from elsewhere: Nanny from England, Grandad from Upstate New York, my father’s father from Molaos near Sparta, Greece, and my Nana from a small mountain-backed seaport village on the east coast of the Peloponnese. By 1915, they were all residents of the Sudbury region in northern Ontario, separated from their birthplaces, new immigrants, shaping their imaginations of what would become real to them, each cleaved from the phantasmic memories of where they had come from—where I come from. (“Étude 1: Her Itinerary”)
As part of her research into grandmothers, she travels to England to explore London and Bath, sketching notes and taking pictures, writing emails and texts and even taking a lover. She travels to Athens, Greece and, later, to Sudbury, Ontario, all for the sake of exploring the physical spaces of her genealogy.
Walking in Athens my first morning, bewildered and anxious at my adriftness without English, I think of how Mom’s stroke produced a sudden slight of tongue slipping away all recognizable signs and sounds, replacing them with unreadable untranslatable glyphs. Before leaving Britain, I’d asked M while we were still flirting about the parts of his Algerian-Russian childhood he’d experienced in Arabic and Russian. “Who were you, who are you, when you think of your past? Are you the same person in your first language as you are now, in French and English?” He said, “I don’t change who I am, I am continuous,” and then seemed to be willing to volley some of the differentials, before we simmered into what seemed to be inevitable and intense physical speech, lol. But somehow I wondered this about Mom; did she sense how she existed in her past, before the loss, and was it anything like how she existed now? It still seems unassessable. (“Étude 2: She Comes From Everywhere”)
Throughout the course of the ten sections, the book has many centres that she returns to, from her four grandmothers to her own mother to herself and her daughter, moving back and forth between them across a rather wide canvas, allowing myriad interconnections between the generations, and even a rippling between them. The centre, then, becomes the connections between the generations themselves, shifting the narrator/author Christakos as both centre and but one of a line, a lineage, of women.
I am only fifty-two. These emotions seem like they should belong to a woman in her seventies or eighties. But no, now I see, to become fifty as a cisgendered woman can mark a scraping off of sexuality and subjectivity that, no matter how much prepared by a hurrah feminist intentionality for agency, operates like a self-aware social trouncing. Did my mother feel these losses and erasures as she entered her sixth decade, sleeping separately in the house, all of her children entering adulthood, myself at age nineteen involved in a serious live-in relationship in Toronto? I saw my mother as vibrant, full of life and rich in community, eclectic, powerful, a small electric ball of opinion, always changing, actively learning, fearless, driven, unsleeping, free. I did not identify her as lonely, or ailing, or missing sex. I didn’t have such words to attach to the older women of my family, although it seems day-plain to me now that nobody was getting any. (“Étude 1: Her Itinerary”)
Through family history, selfies and introspection, Christakos writes and rewrites her whole self into being in an utterly fascinating way, composing a layered, lyric and complex portrait/selfie that is deep and considered, raw and determined, through the lines and lineages of precisely what her subtitle tells us: motherliness, sex, blood, loss and selfies. After discussing sex, grandmothers, the death of her mother, children, the loss of children some of her family endured, divorce and what comes next, Christakos includes a definition of “paraphernalia,” furthering what she includes as epigraph to the book, writing that the word “arrived into use in the mid-17th century” and emerged from what property, outside of the dowry, a woman is allowed to keep despite marriage or the death of her husband. As she writes: “Until the Married Women’s Property Acts in the late 19th century a husband became the owner of all his wife’s property when the couple married. A partial exception to this was her purely personal belongings such as clothes and jewellery, which she could keep after her husband’s death. These were her paraphernalia.” So then, Her Paraphernalia: On Motherlines, Sex/Blood/Loss & Selfies is not only composed as a portrait/selfie, but one explored at a very particular point in the author’s life, working to ground, and reaffirm, herself before any possibility of eroding. Hers is a clarity hard-fought and hard-won, and gets to the very core of genealogy and the self, and how we are affected by those who came before us, through what we choose and what we can’t help but become.



Reality is a set of agreements about what exists. I am a seer, more than anyone or myself will allow. I have a voice in me that is full-spirit, wearing the skin of an ordinary woman, but bigger forces abound. There is a misfittedness in me; daily modern life holds me in its reins. I feel an otherness, a kind of pantomime of unfurling. The world of death is as real as the world of the living; grind it and shred it all you like, larger energies rise up and shimmer, shadow us; it is not a time for ordinary speech. This is where poetry exists. Poetry is not the scrawl of shitheads hoping for stardom. Poetry is the otherness beyond ordinary speech, the after-image of the dead inside my organism, the after-image, that is, of my mother’s death to come. And the death of my grandmothers, and their mothers. And so on. (“Étude 9: Her Paraphernalia”)

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Leesa Dean

Leesa Dean is a graduate of the University of Guelph’s creative Writing MFA program and a full-time Creative Writing and English instructor at Selkirk College in Nelson, BC. Her short story collection, Waiting for the Cyclone, was published by Brindle and Glass this October.
How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?Waiting for the Cyclone is my first book so it’s difficult to compare with previous work unless I consider the “Allie the Alien” series I self-published at age 8. Actually, let’s compare that for fun. At age 8, I was really into drastic narrative arcs, action and fanfare. Someone needed to save the world or be a hero, otherwise there was no story. Now I’m interested in the other end of the spectrum. I don’t want to call the women in my collection anti-heroes, because they’re not, but they certainly aren’t heroes, and they’re definitely not saving the world.
This book is both a beginning and an end—it’s coming at the end of a string of important life events for me that include finishing a Master’s degree, moving across the country, starting a teaching career in Creative Writing and committing to a geographical location for the first time. But actually finishing a project, something I’ve traditionally struggled with, gives me confidence that this is the beginning of what I hope will be a long writing career.
Perhaps the biggest shift, though, is having an audience. I mean, it’s still small—a handful of friends and reviewers—but on October 4th, this book becomes public domain. In certain ways, I feel like I’m waiting for the cyclone. Will people like it? Will I care if they don’t? I generally subscribe to an “I don’t give a f*#k” attitude, but for some reason, this feels different.
How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?My writing life is an untameable beast. I have basically no control over it. Certain stories take three hours to be almost fully formed and others take seven years. I wish I could wrangle that aspect of my existence into some sort of coherent, predictable form, but I suppose the chaos balances out my more structured life as a full-time professor.
Where does a work of fiction or non-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?This particular book is a pastiche of well thought out plots and absolute flukes. Some of the stories come from my life—I did have an aunt, one I loved, who was stealing pharmaceuticals and shooting them at night while upholding her façade as a wonderful mother, and my own mother had a heart attack just like the woman in the story titled One Last Time. I’ve travelled to all the places I wrote about, and a lot of these stories began with the town/city as the main character. But other plot elements and characters came to me unannounced, unexpectedly. In the book’s title story, for example, there’s a deaf woman who looks like a German soldier and her deaf husband, a thin black man with brassy curls and one pierced ear. Every time I read that story, I think, where did they come from? I’ve never met anyone like them in my life.
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 absolutely have theoretical concerns. As a writer and a woman, I’m very interested in how certain women are rebelling against traditional gender roles. I grew up in a nuclear family, created from two nuclear families, with the unspoken expectation that I should one day grow up and have my own nuclear family. My mother had a job for a while, but a lot of her life was spent being a housewife. She didn’t have any of her own money and spent so much of her time indoors, cooking and cleaning. She is emblematic of so many women from too many eras.
My mother was rebellious in her own way—she was mouthy and liked to yell at my father. She loved him, yes. She loved being a mother. But I’m not convinced she loved all the constrictions that came with the lifestyle. The women in my collection are engaged in similar struggles, but overall, they take more drastic actions. They lie. They cheat. They abandon their children to do yoga retreats in India or fake volunteer work to go on romantic rendez-vous behind their husband’s backs. They leave their unwanted babies on church doorsteps. Are they terrible people? Yes. A lot of them are. My characters have often been called “unlikeable.” One reviewer called them “unworthy of sympathy,” which kind of broke my heart. I have a lot of empathy for these women because so many of them are trapped in a system, a type of romance that is gender-biased and potentially damaging, and the only way they know how to rebel is to lash out.
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 that writers individually determine what role they will play in the larger culture. I’m thinking now of George Orwell’s essay, “Why I Write,” in which he identifies four reasons why people write—sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose. The essay is from 1946, but these categories still make sense to me. We need aestheticians, historicists, and rabble rousers. I have so much respect for writers who make an effort to question norms and challenge antiquated systems of thought like patriarchy and racism, whether they do so through fiction or creative non-fiction or journalism, but I also appreciate lighter books that I can, say, read on a beach or before bed without crying myself to sleep because of all the hard things they unearth.
What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?A few years ago, while eating Chinese food on Christmas Day in Toronto, I received this fortune in my cookie: trust your intuition. I still carry the message in my wallet.
How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?I love moving between genres! Seriously, it’s one of my favourite sensations, and it’s something I always try to teach my students, that form is fluid. Sometimes I’ll start writing a story and realize it’s too wordy and would be just fabulous as a narrative poem. I’ve also written poems and felt a story pushing at the boundaries, at which point I take out the line breaks and see where things go. You just have to trust your intuition and let the work be what it wants to be.
What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?My day definitely does not begin with writing. It never has. My imagination starts to come alive around 8 PM, and my very best writing hours are from 10 PM until 2 AM, which drives the man I live with crazy—he’s a Chinese medicine practitioner and says my organs are trying to regenerate during that time and I am doomed to forever be scatterbrained if I keep staying up so late.  Typically my day begins when I hear this same man boiling the kettle downstairs. My bedroom is a loft with no walls—I hear everything, and it’s a good thing most of the time. It gets me out of bed and reminds me that I’m part of a larger community. It helps me stay human.
When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?Whenever I’m writing, I have four or five books around me that I know I can count on for inspiration. Two of them never change. I always have Bronwen Wallace’s poetry collection Common Magic open as well as Denis Johnson’s short story collection Jesus’Son. More often than not, there will also be a Lisa Moore book. The other books vary depending on what I’m working on. What Denis Johnson and Bronwen Wallace have in common is they both write/wrote fiction as well as poetry. I don’t know how I would get anything done without those books. They sit on my desk, radiating their power.
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?Travel has been a huge influence—seeing new colours, people, problems, eating new food, standing on new mountains and shorelines. Music is a wonderful influence as well, which will become obvious when reading my book. There are lots of music references in the stories and what I like to think of as the traces of a certain musicality, living inside my words. Film is also an influence, which is why I decided to make a promotional book trailer that is more like a very short film than anything else. You can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJlUxCrCaQs
What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?So many things! Build a cabin. Live on a sailboat. Cycle through France. Hike the Appalachian Trail. Learn to play the sitar. I could go on and on.
What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?Honestly? I’m happiest when I’m writing, so in the spirit of hedonism, I choose to pursue that which brings me the most pleasure.
What are you currently working on?At the moment, I am working on a poetry project called Manuelzinho. I started the collection six years ago, almost seven now, while completing my undergraduate degree at Concordia University in Montreal. The first poem I ever published was from that project, and you blogged about it, rob. While in grad school I focused mostly on fiction and I forgot about the Manuelzinho poems completely until Vicki Zeigler posted a link to your blog on Twitter earlier this year as part of her “poem of the day” project.
My reunion with the manuscript has been a happy one. I’m totally in love with the character, Manuelzinho, who is a totally fucked Brazilian man who does things like set his house on fire because he thinks it’s possessed by a cucarachawith moth-like wings. His entire world is strange, and his family too—his father’s out of his mind and wears shirts with buttons made of hound teeth. They are both such train wrecks, even worse behaved than the rowdiest women in Waiting for the Cyclone.
12 or 20 (second series)questions;

postcards etc home, from the great war

Some family postcards and photos, from the Great War:


Elmer Cassidy to his sister, Mary Caroline Cassidy Swain (my mother's maternal grandmother)



Pte. Joseph Swain (my mother's maternal grandfather) to his daughter Marjorie, also known as "Mamie" (my mother's maternal aunt)

William Swain (one of my great-grandfather's brothers) to Joseph Swain


Pte. Joseph John Swain (my great-grandfather)




Philip Sargent Cassidy (great-grandma Swain's father)