Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 391

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Phinder Dulai

Phinder Dulai is the Vancouver-based author of dream / arteries (Talonbooks) and two previous books of poetry: Ragas from the Periphery (Arsenal Pulp Press, 1995) and Basmati Brown (Nightwood Editions, 2000). His most recent work has been published in Canadian Literature and Cue Books Anthology. Earlier work appeared in Ankur, Matrix, Memewar Magazine, Rungh, The Capilano Review, Canadian Ethnic Studies, Toronto South Asian Review, subTerrain, and West Coast LINE. Dulai is a co-founder of the Surrey-based interdisciplinary contemporary arts group The South of Fraser Inter Arts Collective (SOFIA/c).

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book was validation for my poetic practice and the experimentation I was doing with the English language in the multiple vernaculars of English within one’s private, public and work life. It also centered my life experience as a South Asian male, an immigrant and as a creative person seeking a space for praxis that did not fall into the usual migrant testimonial of marginalization. I chose the title intentionally because it was straddling that poetic tension of the centre and the peripheral – like the experience of working as a parking lot attendant at an opulent hotel.

dream / arteries (published by Talonbooks), is a major departure from the first and second books; in fact all 3 books are different books of poetry.

dream / arteries really seeks to situate different perspectives on historical documentation, one’s relationship to the archive and public records, and exploring ideas of positing a poetic counter-surveillance record and considering what that might look like 100 years outside of a maritime migration arrival.

2014 marks a centenary of the Japanese steamship Komagata Maru which set sail for Canada with 376 Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu migrants travelling from Punjab, India. They were refused entry at Vancouver, even though all passengers were British subjects. The Komagata Maru sat moored in Vancouver’s harbour for two months while courts decided the passengers’ right to access – while the city’s white citizens lined the pier taunting those onboard. Eventually, Canada’s racist exclusion laws were upheld and the ship was forced to return to India. I decided to explore the story of the ship given the rich surveillance record of the ship’s arrival. The ship itself had a nautical history of 36 years where it served as a migrant ship between 1890 to 1907 bringing Russians, Ukrainians (then also Russian and Serbo-Austrian), Italians, Greeks, English, Ottoman and Armenian passengers to the New World, making port on Ellis Island, Montreal and Halifax, as well as, Hong Kong, Japan, India and Constantinople. The names it went by was ss. Stubbenhuk and ss Sicilia. For this book I drew on a global collection of ship records, nautical maps, passenger manifests, and the rich, detailed record of the Komagata Maru.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I recall how poetry arrived into my mind and heart. I grew up with watching my parents be creative in their own ways – my mother sang Hindi filmi songs into an old Hitachi tape recorder with her large beehivish pitch black 1970s hairdo. My father would sing old Punjabi and Urdu songs and poems during family get-togethers with our relatives. As a teenager I fully experienced the beauty of poetry from learning about poetry in grade 11 English class – the poem that transfixed me was TS Eliot’s Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I think the reasons were how Eliot mapped the social psyche of self-doubt, vulnerability and awkward silences; potent for a teenage mind.

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 am a slow writer, a slow but methodic researcher and I take some time to explore ideas through what one might call an Ent-ish approach to coming to some centre of the thinking. I have always been this way.  Word threads permeate my mind often. I might hold on to those threads for a few weeks, possibly a month or two; even a year or more. When I do have the moment to write the first draft I normally will take a day or two for a full first draft.

In 2012 I undertook a writing residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts, where I managed to write a sequence of poems over a ten-day period that resulted in 12 first draft poems being written that make up a some of the Komagata Maru section of my recent book of poems – dream / arteries. Now I find it kind of humorous to think that a 40 page section of the book containing poetry, a fictive letter, fictional sources, factual sources, archival notes and pseudo surveillance documentation was the result of four years of painstaking research, reading, collating, recording and revisiting of facts; in addition to seeking out obscure sources of information regarding this ship’s history. I keep telling myself I should have done more with the information I collated, but then I come back to a grounding thought for my praxis – fewer words and precise words.

Each time I have moved an MS to book stage I will usually seek out some other eyes for an external perspective on the work. My first drafts go through such a editing process. During this phase I will usually make structural changes, deleting phrasing that does not work, changing stanzas and even shifting word sequences from one stanza to the next to see the potential arc of the poetic space the work is inhabiting. What I am always trying to do is to create textual constriction and torque the language. The experience a reading of a resonant poem tends to have this tension - one that is both intimate to the reader, and expansive in the generative space of meaning and the reader’s inner visual imagining of the world within the poem.

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?
In my waking dreams where word sequences visit me during the day and I catch them and store them away in a sparse memory palace I have in my mind.

I never think about a book until more than half way through the MS. A book emerges probably sometime during the writing of the final 3rd section of a working manuscript at the first draft stage. That is when I can see the possibilities and envision the scope and space of the book and also what I might envisage of the book as a produced entity; or otherwise, if the MS is really just a fragmented collection of not fully realized poems or poems sequences. Then I go back and work on it further.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love doing readings. While I was of British birth and a Canadian upbringing, as a Punjabi, I have a strong oral tradition that has always been part of my thinking about how poetry works; even though I consider myself a poet that is on the page. The Punjabi language is rich and has a great history of being a lingual vehicle for many great Punjabi poets who have been Sufi poets, Sikh Poets, Secular Poets and Atheist Poets.

Giving public readings allows me to shift tones, explore the expansiveness of voice and explore the oral and aural scope of the poem and where I might use or not use pauses. Sometimes I will shift slightly the breath of the poem to work the emotive palate and see if the listener is impacted differently with a poem that I have read a number of times and in different ways. I like to explore these subtle ways to see how the spoken word space either builds a further node for a reader to experience poetry and also after a reading whether the listener generates a meaningful experience from listening and watching me perform a poem.

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 shall leave theoretical considerations and questions to the reader. There are many themes and questions to consider; I have attempted to explore these ideas through dream / arteries. One expansive but quiet conversation taking place within dream / arteries is exploring what humanity looks like as it relates to journey, migration and exile. 

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?
What does larger culture mean for any person or individual? Does the writer have a role? I would say yes and no – yes because I strongly believe that in context to and specific to writing and mapping the world that I live in, or even re-mapping the world I live in, brings with it some potential to foreground and bring salience to public and civil society discourses, ideas that neither are straddle that very thin space of ambiguity that neither invests in a nationalist paradigm, nor seeks to advance a formal political tract. What I do attempt to do is what I think poets do what has always been done since early humans began practicing an observable artistic phenomena - capture the nuanced, the visible and invisible, and reflect on the quotidian aspects of life within a community and allow the potential for those observations to generate meaning for the reader and bring the reader into the space of that experience so that it is the reader who walks away with a generative meaning and resonance. Living in this contemporary moment; with the passage of modernity and within the context of a contemporary post colonial and post modern moment; a moment that even now seeks a life beyond a nationalist dream, there is a role for the poet to speak, provoke and evoke response and engagement through the work created; creating both the horrors and the beauty in our communities, neighbourhoods and within our families.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I have always found an external editor essential. The process can sometimes be tense as this requires the acknowledgement of the author to reconsider some things about the approach that was taken. For dream / arteries my first editor, good friend and teacher Roy Miki asked me to focus on the flow of the first section and editing and finalizing the sections of the book so there was a natural transition between the sections. I also deleted four poems from the finished book and I am very thankful to my good friend and Editor Jeff Derksen for suggesting the process to decide on eliminating them and pushing me to ask critical questions of myself during this process.

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

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to journalistic prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
I have failed a few times in writing a short treatment to begin novels, but I think maybe I was not ready to break out of the poetics at the time. I have revised that thinking lately. Some subject matter material requires different forms of genre or as I did with dream / arteries a weave of forms. Currently I am looking to write a longer narrative. At this point I am not sure if this work into a series of short fictions or a longer piece such as a novel.

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 actually don’t have a daily routine. I have a writing book now that I will write down phrasing. I have a daily routine of consigning poetic phrasing in my mind that I will ruminate and have a conversation with myself to see if the ideas behind the image-based phrasing speaks truth to me. If it does then I move it to the page.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
The only way to proceed with the stall is to proceed with life and live. Meditation and research sometimes helps. Some of the more meditative spaces I tend to find myself in is when I am at home doing housework; while I do these things my mind is slowly moving through the stall; I stalled during the writing of dream / arteries while writing through the poem about Mewa Singh Lopoke, the subject of the poem “(psalms) to the four clergy.” I was seeking to create a moment or scenario in this person’s life and animate and explore this further, while Mewa Singh awaits the gallows; and where his space of reflection would be. The reason for this particular writing stall was what is documented as the public record; and what is considered anecdotal oral and community stories of how Mewa Singh existed within the community of faith as a Sikh, and in relationship to a group of revolutionaries of the Ghadr Party; he was most likely both a foot soldier and a willing martyr as both a Sikh and secular revolutionary. Where I found a potential for writing was to really look into the chasm of solitude that Mewa Singh would have experienced; and thread that and overlay that experience to my exploration of that documentation; hence I found the breakthrough moment for this poem; it is damn hard sometimes to break away from two fully realized and documented histories that are diametrically opposed to each other; especially if you have a familial and philosophical connection to both.  dream /arteries  is as much about creating overlays and under lays to the subject matter.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
No frills chicken curry medium spiced with all the condiments and five rotis; compliments of my mother Gian Kaur Sokar and her masala.

The smell of baked almonds and cooling Speculas Cake – a dutch cake that my wife/partner Jane Cleary Dulai prepares and who is half Dutch; actually, anything she prepares reminds me of home.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Books do not come exclusively from other books. It is just not possible and maybe Mr. McFadden was posturing up some highbrow humour.

I am part of an artist run collective – South Of Fraser Inter Arts Collective (SOFIA/c). We are an inter-disciplinary group. I have always been that way so the visual arts, music and film have always and continue to be influences on how I write poetry. As I shared earlier, India’s many thousands of years of cultural civilization has resulted in a rich repository of many written and unwritten stories; including the oral traditions of story keeping and telling, and the richness of South Asian mythology and the view that poetry really is not poetry if it is not sung out loud and performed with music. In fact the idea of the solitary poet standing up in front of a crowd without an ensemble of musicians is a recent phenomena, and has probably more to do with contemporary legacy of modernity and modernism in Indian cultural ecology today; but am comfortable as a solitary poet offering up words in the quiet night air.

I also am a Star Wars junkie so currently I am reading a book on one of the Sith Lords. If one were to provide a rationale for reading such mainstream popular fiction it might be this – these novels are allegories of what we are living within at this current time; almost all of the global ideological showdowns and struggles, economic disparities and the global capitalist interests are writ large in a number of these novels and written expansively across world systems and galaxies. The allegorize-ation of colonialism and the ethnocentric colonizer is also part of this body of work; oh and yes, I am intrigued by the Sith ways of looking at the world.

I tend to have a few books on the go – currently I am reading (in no particular) The Vestiges (Talonbooks) by Jeff Derksen; From The Poplars (Talonbooks) by Cecily Nicholson; The Outer Harbour (Arsenal Pulp Press) by Wayde Compton and Fauji Banta Singh and Other Stories (TSAR Publishing) by Sadhu Binning. I read these writers as their approaches to writing and exploring their subject matter deeply interests me.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
There have been many writers, critical thinkers, artists, film-makers visual artists, as well as quotidian moments of everyday living, listening, and the collation of ephemera that my poetry and creative antennae pick up on. In terms of writing, this includes literature that is considered ‘high art’ and also popular fiction. My bookshelf includes a range of books by authors who make a home in Canada, the U.S., England and other nations. The first time I read something that absolutely shifted my thinking about narrative time was Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. The novel is truly an innovative fiction and engaged a robust re-consideration of narrative time that was revolutionary; and considering it was published in 1929, it adds more weight to Woolf as a true innovator at a time where the great novels were being celebrated. This is equally true of my second defining reading experience that led me to move my commitment to greater learning and discipline in my embryonic stage of writing, and that was after reading Salman Rushdie’s Midnights Children and reading all of his subsequent novels. Both these novels really did do that for me in terms of then considering how I have looked at how time is sequenced within fiction and poetry, or in poetry’s case, how that flow is really more like dream time – image experiences that one floats through in a disjointed string of dream tableaus experiences. I see a clear connection to the sub-genre of magic realism to my work in poetry; and there are many poets who may not really have this in their lexicon, but I realize for the work I generate, I am always balancing the use of a clear social realism lens with interior lyric mode of address in poetry.

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

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?
Bus Driver most likely. I like people and I like to observe the world around me.

Alternatively, I think I would have made a decent Lit Prof.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Writing is like taking big breaths.  To get to a big breath you really do have to be ready to exhale that which has caused some pain to your soul. If I don’t take big breaths then I don’t actually feel very normal. I need to write because the brain does not stop and my body continues to process the world around me. Without writing I would not be as genial and centered. 

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

20 - What are you currently working on?

12 or 20 (second series) question s;

Andrea Rexilius, New Organism: Essais

I hear myself whispering to the wood, at night, on hilltops. I hear myself whispering at night in my sleep. What are my eyelids saying. At night the room fluctuates. Climbs other rooms, other landscapes. I am steaming in this room while the other room heaves forward. Embeds itself in the coat rack and the doorframe, seeps in between pages of a book. Later I find traces of it. A residue on the countertop, a piece of bark in the sink drain. The impression of an ear on the wall. I have the distinct sense that the room is listening. The room is carving out new ideas beneath the skin. The pores soak in their salt, sweat out the room, move the room upward into the light. Let the room sink like a stone cradled inside the ear. The stone will absorb the room, not necessarily bring the room. Some people live on borrowed rooms and their eyes are shakier for it. It is best to dissolve a room like this, to walk away from it and not turn back to check its progress. (“Séance”)
I’m fascinated by the essay-poems that make up Andrea Rexilius’ third poetry collection, New Organism: Essais (Tuscon AZ: Letter Machine Editions, 2014), a title that follows To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation (Rescue Press, 2011) and Half of What They Carried Flew Away (Letter Machine, 2012). As part of her accompanying statement in The Volta Book of Poets (Sidebrow Books, 2015), she writes:
My work investigates the book as a process of inquiry and is interested in the nature of conversation, questioning, subjectivity, women’s history, and the proximity between physical self and textual self. In my writing and teaching I combine interdisciplinary research with creative process to spawn an approach that is both rigorously intellectual, in the sense of questioning, critical thinking, and essaying, as well as playful and engaged across the disciplines of performance, film, and installation. Related research interests include: contemplative performance poetics, book arts, text-off-the-page, feminism, and aesthetic theory.
There have been numerous poets over the years exploring the blend between essay and poem (with a shortlist of Canadian poets who immediately come to mind: PhilHall, Barry McKinnon and Erín Moure), and Rexilius’ explorations into the same exist deep in the tradition of the extended prose poem. New Organism: Essais exists both as a new collection of poems by Andrea Rexilius, and an argument of the forms in which she works, exploring, prodding and pushing at the boundaries between multliple genres, existing simultaneously within each work. There is something remarkable in the way that Rexilius explores the boundaries of the book as unit of composition, and one that is entirely unique in the realm of poetry-as-thinking, and the possibilities of the extended prose poem. Each poem within the book speaks to, and is intimately connected to, each surrounding poem, and the book as a whole exists as a thesis on thinking, collecting and states of being. In the sequence “Second Residue: The Woods,” she writes: “A territory is not a blank page. / It is the book buried beneath the ground.” The book exists in two sections: “New Organism,” made up of five sections of extended prose poems, and “Essais,” made up of two extended prose poem-essays. The tricky part is attempting to explain the differences, as her blend of poem and essay run throughout, yet one might say that the first part of the collection leans more towards the poem, as the second part leans toward the formal essay. And yet, in the end, to speculate on the differences between the two might be to miss the point entirely.
The animal that is my sex is not a novel. This is a novel. This caused a rhizomatic membrane. I am faltering here. In the white snow of the white page. Yesterday I watched a Tarkovsky film in Russian. The translation was “look how peculiar the sky. The sky.” I meandered back inside the doorway just as it began to pour. All of the grain in the field writhing. I struck the yellow leaves with my fist. I struck the grey sky and the mud beneath my feet. I don’t know what being human means. Is it to have eyes? Here is the ground, the field. The air around me a room. A room that pulses and heaves. The light, clear. The light, not yellow. My breath, not yellow or clear. The words, leaves upon my breath. the turning of the seasons fall off of my mouth. My mouth lingers. The sun sets. Some animal burrows its dark fur inside this sentence.
If Lisa Robertson is, as she once wrote, “a gentleman collector of sentences,” then Rexilius is the bricolage, and the first of her two essays in the “Essais” section, “Root Systems of Narrative: A Séance,” describes exactly the same process Stan Dragland does in his new book of essays, The Bricoleur & His Sentences (Pedlar Press, 2014). As Canadian poets Robertson, Phil Hall and Natalie Simpson, Rexilius is a serious collector, and, in similar ways, her writing is the result of a complex collage of a myriad of materials, picked up from a scattering of sources, precisely set in very deliberate ways. As she writes in “Root Systems of Narrative: A Séance”:
I tend to gather alike things in language. I obsess over an idea or a term or an image and use it over and over again in a variety of contexts. Images are cumulative or regenerative. They have to be allowed to exist in almost every context before we can pretend to know anything about them. I find I have to use my body in order to write well. I go for a walk first and gather things and pretend to be a diorama. Then word conduct themselves. If I don’t go for a walk first, I gather things from books. I move through books the same way I move through walks. I turn to pages and find the field jar. Then I put all of the field jar elements onto a page. Then I cut and paste them. I have to trust my first instinct or there is a massacre. I have tried many times to undo a massacre. Everyone knows things are hacked up and put back together when that happens. They sense a murder has occurred and are uncomfortable.

"Four for Rosmarie Waldrop" (new poem,

I've a new poem, "Four for Rosmarie Waldrop," now up at e.ratio 20.

"A short interview with Armand Garnet Ruffo," Jacket2

My 11th 'commentary,' "A short interview with Armand Garnet Ruffo," is now online at Jacket2.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Kristina Marie Darling

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of twenty books, which include The Arctic Circle (BlazeVOX Books, 2014), Fortress (Sundress Publications, 2014), and Scorched Altar:  Selected Poems and Stories (BlazeVOX Books, 2014).  Her awards include fellowships from Yaddo, the Ucross Foundation, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, as well as grants from the Kittredge Fund and the Elizabeth George Foundation.  She was recently selected as a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I feel like my first book opened up everything for me.  In the process of giving readings, doing interviews, and reaching out to critics and reviewers, I really started to feel like I was part of a community.  I'll always be grateful to Jared Michael Wahlgren of Gold Wake Press for taking a chance on my first book, Night Songs .  But my recent work is definitely more experimental than that first poetry collection.  Night Songs was a thematically linked poetry collection, containing many prose poems that addressed classical music in some way.  Lately I've become much more interested in fragmented forms, since I feel like they leave more room for the reader's imagination. 

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I came to poetry after a short career as a failed fiction writer.  I tried to write short stories, but the problem was, I approached them with a poet's mindset.  I didn't really care about plot, but spent all of my time crafting evocative images.  It was after several terrible short stories that I realized that poetry was a better match for me. 

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
A book-length project takes me about a month.  This is because when I have a manuscript in progress, it literally takes over my life.  It consumes all my energy until I've finally finished it.  For me, revision is easiest when I'm in this mindset, so I mostly revise the book as I go along, changing certain passages after I've written the next one.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I mostly work with long poems and book-length projects.  But I usually find the larger project, or the overarching theme, as I write.  I usually start out with a short piece or two, and from that, a structure emerges.  It's almost impossible, for me at least, to feel like I'm working on a book from the very beginning, since the book never turns out the way I think it will. 

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love doing readings.  I look at them as an opportunity for dialogue.  You not only get feedback on your work-in-progress, but you make valuable connections with other poets.  I enjoy meeting poets whose work is much different from my own, since these are the poets who challenge me most, and who I learn the most from.  For me, readings present the perfect opportunity to make these kinds of connections. 

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 mostly write in appropriated academic forms (footnotes, glossaries, appendices, etc.) with the goal of rendering scholarly discourse more inclusive.  More often than not, academic conversations are predicated on acts of exclusion.  Most of us could probably name many things that supposedly don't belong in an academic paper.  These rules serve mostly to keep certain groups of people from participating in scholarly conversations.  With that in mind, my writing blends these received academic forms with types of language that would never appear in an academic paper - autobiography, aestheticized diction, etc.  I'm trying to figure out what scholarly inquiry would look like if it's language, and its forms, were more democratic.  I definitely think that one of the most pressing questions currently has to do with where we draw the line between "creative" and "critical" discourses. 

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
It seems like most writers position themselves as cultural critics, but this is problematic, because the poetry community especially is so insular.   I think that writers should still hold a mirror to culture, but they should also look beyond their own communities to effect change.  

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I love working with editors, particularly when publishing book-length works.  I say this because I've had editors make suggestions that surprised me in the best possible way.  Even when I have a clear vision for what a given book will be, I really value feedback from someone who's been through the process many more times than I have. 

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Poetry is 20% art and 80% business. 

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
I love working in other genres, particularly reviewing.  When writing reviews, I do close readings of other writer's work, and this teaches me a great deal that I can apply to my own craft.  It's also nice because when I'm at a standstill with a poetry manuscript or a larger creative project, I can turn to my work in another genre and hopefully find some inspiration there. 

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 definitely pride myself on not having a set routine.  I write when I can, and when I feel that I have something I'd like to say.  But much of my poetry wouldn't exist without artist residencies.  For me, it's crucial to have time set aside that's just for writing, and to be free of other obligations.  This is what enables me to sink deep into myself and begin writing. 

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
When my writing is stalled, I read everything I can get my hands on.  This includes poetry, of course, but also many texts that would never be on a poetry workshop syllabus.  By this I mean Victorian novels, astronomy books, the work of visual artists, and even mathematical books.  More often than not, it's strange non-poetry related texts that provide the best inspiration and direction for my work. 

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Yankee Candle's plug-in air fresheners. 

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?
That's a great question.  The time I've spent at artist colonies (Yaddo, the Vermont Studio Center, the Wurlitzer Foundation, etc.) has been a really important influence on my poetry.  What's great about artist colonies is that you're exposed to work in so many different mediums - music, visual arts, writing, and everything in between.  I immediately became interested in work that crosses disciplinary boundaries, and have since done many collaborations with artists.  My recent book, Music for another life, was co-written with photographer and costumer Max Avi Kaplan.  He would take beautiful Polaroids and I'd write poems in response to his work.  I've also collaborated with installation artist Naoko Ito and composer Dale Trumbore, both of whom are very talented.  I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to participate in these artist residency programs at such an early stage in my career, and to be exposed to such compelling work in other disciplines. 

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
One of the first contemporary poets whose work I read was Eric Baus.  I was in college at the time, and picked up a copy of his magnificent book, The To Sound .  His work showed me that meaning in poetry doesn't always have to be clear cut, and that the reader can assume a more active role, participating actively in the process of creating meaning from the text.  More recently, I've found the work of Kim Gek Lin Short, Lucie Brock Broido, Leah Umansky, and Emily Toder to be particularly inspiring. 

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I've always wanted travel Europe by train.  I had a friend who claimed to have done it, and he said that the views were spectacular.  I've also thought about writing a novel, but all of my attempts at fiction usually become a prose poems, flash fictions, or something else entirely. 

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?
If I could pick another occupation, I'd probably choose to become a visual artist of some kind.  I've always wondered what it would be like to be liberated from my laptop, and to work with materials that are more tangible.  If I hadn't become a writer, I would have probably done something in this vein, perhaps working on text-based installations, paintings, etc.  This makes sense to me because my poetry is so visual, and frequently manipulates the space of the printed page.   

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I've always said that you don't choose to be a poet, but rather, it's something you're called to do.  I chose to write because, really, I had no choice.  It was something I was compelled to pursue, whether I liked it or not.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last great book I read was Shelly Taylor's Black-Eyed Heifer.  I've always admired poetry collections that create their own rules, their own syntax, and their own worlds.  Shelly Taylor has done all that and more.  It's a beautiful book, and one that I'd definitely recommend. 

And I'd have to say the last great film I saw was Nebraska .  It combines deadpan humor, interesting visual choices (the film is shot in black and white), and dysfunctional families.  It doesn't get any better than that.   

20 - What are you currently working on?
I'm working on a new collection of prose poems called "The Sun & the Moon."  The book will be a love story, a ghost story, and an astronomy guide all in one.  Stay tuned for details!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

new from above/ground press: rob mclennan + Touch the Donkey #4,

Texture: Louisiana,
rob mclennan
$4
See link here for more information
produced as part of dusie kollektiv #8

Touch the Donkey #4
with new poems by Maureen Alsop, Stan Rogal, Laura Mullen, Jessica Smith, Lise Downe, Kirsten Kaschock, Gary Barwin, Chris Turnbull, Lisa Jarnot and Nikki Sheppy.
$6
See link here for more information


keep an eye on the above/ground press blog for author interviews, new writing, reviews, upcoming readings and tons of other material;

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2015
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy of each

and don’t forget about the 2015 above/ground press subscriptions; still available!

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal (above). Scroll down here to see various backlist titles (many, many things are still in print).

Review copies of any title (while supplies last) also available, upon request.

Forthcoming: chapbooks by ryan fitzpatrick, Elizabeth Robinson, Jennifer Kronovet and others! and watch for new "poem" broadsides on the blog soon by Chris Johnson and Hugh Thomas!

"David McGimpsey: three new poems," at Jacket2

My tenth 'commentary,' "David McGimpsey: three new poems," is now online at Jacket2.

The Marvel Universe is coming to an end in May 2015

As a long-time follower of Marvel Comics, I’m intrigued at the idea of the announcement that came recently about “the end of the Marvel Universe,” as it blends (or, really, crashes into) the Ultimate Universe this coming spring. Unlike DC Comics’ “the new 52,” which everyone seems to have hated (and managed to wreck my enjoyment of some of the very few mainstream DC titles I even paid attention to: Hellblazer ( Constantine ) and Batwoman ), or even the 1980s reboot of Superman, Wonder Woman and other titles, this isn’t a reboot or a switch of any sort, but a way for the characters and universe to develop.
I’ve been following Marvel for quite some time, since I picked up my first issues in the early seventies, focusing heavily on The Amazing Spider-Man and Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man, and eventually extending further out into The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, The Uncanny X-Men and many others. I must have at least six thousand comics by now. Gerry Conway on The Amazing Spider-Man. John Byrne and Chris Claremont on the Uncanny X-Men rebuild, or Byrne on The Fantastic Four. Jim Starlin, really, anywhere in the 1960s and 70s. J. M. Dematteis throughout Captain Americaor just about anything Spider-Man. Wow.
There are plenty of other examples. Obviously.
As I saw it, the 1980s into the 90s were an interesting time for Marvel, shifting their attentions from individual titles and individual issues to longer and interconnected storylines, the beginnings of time travel storylines and the experimentation with “other universes,” to the frustrations of long-time readers like myself when Marvel would return to the “basics,” whether bringing back Aunt May or re-breaking Charles Xavier’s legs. Think of Peter David’s brilliant run which saved The Incredible Hulk, forced by the company to make the Hulk “stupid” again, thus erasing any character evolution he had accomplished throughout his run (he quit the book as a result). Think of the character Toad, who changed entirely throughout the X-Men books to coincide with the character as it was built in the movies; done to bring in new readers, but damned annoying to those of us who had been there the whole time.
And yet, how do you allow entry for new readers without forcing them to read half a century (or more) worth of continuity to know what the hell is going on? It made a certain sense, and at least one cynic I know in the industry claims that the real money in Marvel is in selling bedsheets to kids and not in selling books, so there’s only so much they can alter the characters (I hate that he is most likely right). Death is never permanent, and returning characters from the dead often belittles (in my mind) earlier plotlines and developments. They killed and brought back (as a clone) Gwen Stacey (mediocre). They killed and brought back Jean Grey (with X-Factor , which was pretty interesting) only to kill her again (which seemed rather arbitrary, but I enjoyed the development of Cyclops and Emma Frost). They killed and brought back (very well done) and re-killed Charles Xavier. They killed and brought back Norman Osborn (brilliantly, I thought). They killed and brought back Ben Reilly, the clone of Spider-Man (very nice). They erased Spider-Man’s marriage to Mary Jane Watson (unforgivable). They killed and brought back Guardian (nicely done) and killed and brought him back again (very poorly done). They killed and brought back Alpha Flight (unforgiveable; really, after Bill Mantlo left the book after following John Byrne’s incredible run, Marvel seems to be pushing the idea of “if we do it badly enough, readers will just stop asking us to bring it back.” Shameful).
Some of these deaths have actually allowed some interesting possibilities, temporarily allowing other characters to develop more prominence, whether Xavier’s death allowing Cyclops to develop further, or even Captain America’s death prompting Bucky’s own version of Captain America (I was disappointed to see that go). DC did the same when Bruce Wayne died, allowing the original Robin, Dick Grayson (Nightwing) to temporarily take over the role (another shift I was disappointed to see end).
Sean Howe’s 2012 book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story , unfortunately, shattered a few long-held beliefs I’d been carrying about how the stories at Marvel were build, shaped and told over the long years (and it made me grieve, just a bit, for the dark, petty and even ridiculous origins of many beloved tales).
The strength of Marvel against DC was supposed to be in the fact that it refused to remain fixed. A far older company, DC held to archetypes (which made reboot far easier than rebuild, and movies far less complicated to get off the ground), and Marvel kept developing, shifting and building. The X-Men team was never stable for terribly long, nor were The Avengers, and yet, at some point, Marvel decided to stop moving, perhaps to keep a non-reading audience interested in what was happening. Teams and characters had to look familiar. It took Brian Michael Bendis destroying and rebuilding The Avengers into a decade-long arc to break down so many standards and held assumptions (including Civil War, the Skrull Invasion, Siege, Age of Ultron and other impossibly good storylines), thus saving Marvel, ultimately, from itself. Suddenly, it seemed, Marvel had the permission to change: Nick Fury no longer ran S.H.I.E.L.D. (allowing an evolution that saw it run, variously, by Tony Stark, Captain Rogers and Norman Osborn), Daredevil took over the territories of both the Kingpin and The Hand, and Spider-Man was taken over entirely by Doctor Octopus. The Human Torch took over the Negative Zone. The Shi’ar Empire saw the return of D’Ken, the savagery of Gabriel Summers and the beginning of the reign of Gladiator. Cyclops became an angry rebel, and Wolverine became Schoolmaster. The Black Panther lost his throne to his sister. The Illuminati were created. The Inhumans returned to earth and broke apart. The status quo could shift, and allow characters, situations and stories to develop in real, permanent ways, without betraying the central core of certain characters.
I’ve followed a few iterations of Marvel’s alternate universes, from Jim Shooter’s “New Universe” titles from 1986 to 1989 (including Star Brand, Spitfire and the Troubleshooters, Nightmask, Mark Hazzard: Merc, Psi-Force, Justice, DP 7 and Kickers, Inc.), the multiple 2099 titles that ran from 1992 to 1996, the Marvel 2 titles that launched in 1998 (Spider-Girl, Fantastic Fiveand A-Next, among others), the completely terrible “Heroes Reborn” titles from 1996-1997 that directly rebooted Captain America, Iron Man and other characters (thankfully, the entire experiment, seen as horribly failed, was reversed) and the “Age of Apocalypse” storyline throughout all of the X-Men titles from 2011 to 2013 (a rather good run; rumours had at the time that this storyline might have remained, had it been more popular). Most of these have been rather interesting, and some, like the first three examples, simply didn’t catch on, and were seemingly cut off at the knees. One wonders if this constant refreshing has been a matter of attracting new readers, while attempting to keep from alienating long-time readers, many, I’m sure, who either age out, get tired of the constant “back to basics,” or move their comic reading out of the “big company” stuff into more independent titles. I never have enough time or money for all of my reading, but some of the important titles on my own shelf also include Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, Mike Carey’s Lucifer, Warren Ellis’ The Authority, Grant Morrison’s Kill Your Boyfriend, Kyle Baker’s Why I Hate Saturn, Peter Milligan’s Shade, the Changing Man and Garth Ennis’ The Preacher. And does anyone remember Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children?
The “Ultimates” universe, one of the main components of this new collision, was launched in 2000, allowing new origins for a variety of characters already familiar in the main universe: Ultimate Spider-Man, The Ultimates (The Avengers), The Ultimate X-Men and The Ultimate Fantastic Four (for example), and opened new readers to an entirely different world of well-known characters. Readers could see how Spider-Man, for example, might begin today (and the first three feature films were very much based on Ultimate Spider-Man storylines, as opposed to the original), or The Avengers (two animated features, again, based on The Ultimates, as are much of the current live-action features). Because they weren’t part of the main continuity, characters and stories were allowed to develop, and a number of main characters have even been killed off, seemingly permanently, including Spider-Man, Captain America and Wolverine, something the main continuity could never imagine doing. Imagine the Hulk actually killing Wolverine, for example (it happened).
I’ve been reading with great interest the work that Jonathan Hickman has been doing with The Avengers over the past couple of years, a storyline that seems directly heading into this new collision, as is Bendis’ incredible work in All-New X-Men . What is impressive to me is how well some of these stories are being written, and how the interconnectedness of it all I didn’t even see coming. There is a very long game being played here, and I’m thrilled for it, even if I might not agree with every single choice of every single title or character (Civil War, for example, broke apart a stellar run on the then-new Young Avengers title, from which it never fully recovered; the subsequent run of the book had some intriguing developments, but overall, was mediocre at best).
What has also been interesting about how the current Marvel continuity has developed is how they’ve slowly brought a number of these “alternate universes” into normal continuity, reintroducing Star Brand and a few other ideas from Shooter’s “New Universe,” stranding Spider-Man 2099 into the present, or the current iteration of Spider-Man (a storyline I am not entirely convinced by, as unwieldy and as silly as the “Maximum Carnage” or “Clone Saga” storylines), bringing in every iteration of the character that has ever been written (from Spider-Girl and Spider-Ham to multiple new iterations).
I wonder if this collision of universes might even be Marvel’s way of ending the Ultimate Universe, even as they rejuvenate their main continuity. Possibly?
Okay, Marvel: you have my attention. Just don’t mess it up.

"The Canadian prose poem," at Jacket2

My ninth 'commentary,' "The Canadian prose poem," is now up at Jacket2.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with D.D. Miller

D.D. Miller (photo credit: Neil Gunner) is originally from Nova Scotia but has lived, worked and studied all across the country. His work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. Writing as the Derby Nerd, Miller is known around North America for his writing and commentary on the rapidly growing sport of roller derby.

He currently lives in Toronto and his first collection of stories, David Foster Wallace Ruined My Suicide and Other Stories , was published by Wolsak and Wynn in Spring 2014.

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 don’t know that it has changed my life in any way other than I’ve been doing a lot more interviews like this lately!

I have identified as a writer for so long and spend so much time with writers and that has all stayed the same. It does give you confidence though: that there are people willing to publish and read your work. It makes it all that much easier to get up and write in the morning.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I’ve been writing fiction for as long as I can remember. I loved reading fiction and I think it was as simple as that. I wanted to write the kinds of stories that I was reading.

I wrote a lot of poetry when I was younger, in high school in particular, but it didn’t last much beyond that. I’ve written some short and longer screenplays to varying degrees of success as well, but in the end I always come back to fiction in terms of my creative writing.

I do write non-fiction—mostly sports writing—quite a bit. But I do so as an alter ego, The Derby Nerd, and it is about something super specific: roller derby. I came upon it by chance: I fell in love with the sport and no one in Canada was writing about it. I basically copied the style of coverage others were doing south of the border and eventually adopted my own style for covering the sport. There was no precedent, really, so it’s been fun to make it up as I go along!

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

I write a lot and all the time. So things generally come quickly, but they usually fall apart quickly as well, which is good because I am able to move on when something just isn’t working.

Rarely do I write a first draft that is “complete.” Of the twelve stories in my collection only one really resembles its first draft (and it’s, not surprisingly, the shortest piece in the book). I have a tendency, especially in short fiction, to write big and then whittle away until I find the core. It’s not rare for a 3000-word story of mine to have begun as a 7000-word first draft.

Usually, the first draft is a way into the story and the characters for me, so I am learning a lot about them and the way to tell their story. Then it’s a process of finding what it is that the reader needs to know, which I find usually isn’t that much.

4 - Where does 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?

It depends. I’ve set out to write novels before (two are buried in the proverbial drawer) and am currently trying to finish one, and in all three cases, I had a particular story in mind that I simply knew was too big for a short story.

As for my short fiction, they begin a number of ways: sometimes an end point comes to me, or an opening, or just a scene or bit of conflict. Very rarely it’s a character, but that has happened as well.

Once in Northern Alberta, I was in the washroom at a small truck stop and there were these little pocket-porn magazines for sale in a vending machine. Almost immediately I knew that this moment was going to be a pivotal scene in a story. It eventually became one of the stories in the book. That’s usually where fiction comes from for me.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I don’t enjoy doing readings of my work.

I actually quite enjoy speaking in public and talking about writing (my own or others), and I actually like QandAs and would much prefer doing these than having to read my own work. But I understand its function, so I do my best to entertain.

I usually have to read excerpts, and I find this awkward. Rarely do I have a story short enough to be read in a comfortable sitting (nothing bothers me more than when people read for too long, especially from fiction), and just by coincidence, my shorter works have not been conducive to readings (IE: they’d be boring or depressing read aloud). I feel that my writing is meant to be read, not heard.

Since I knew that I would have to do a lot more readings after the book came out, I decided to experiment with something: I’ve been trying to find stories within my stories—sometimes cutting bits and pieces out—sometimes reading excerpts that only include one secondary character, and I’ve actually enjoyed this process and think that my readings have been better because of it. And I also think that I end up understanding my stories better.

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?

Putting the collection together was an interesting process. There definitely is a consistent theme throughout, but I did not start writing stories with this in mind or with the idea of a collection coming together out of particular stories. I compare it to a band putting together an album: they usually have a whole lot of songs from which to pull the tracks for the album, and often bands will find “through lines” in the songs that eventually make the collection. I felt like putting together this collection was like that. However, the decisions were made on thematic connections, not theoretical ones.

In terms of those larger literary questions, I do my best to stay as far away from them as I can. I did an English Lit. undergrad right out of high school thinking it was the logical thing for a writer to do. In the long run, having access to all that great writing and an environment where people respected it and wanted to talk it about was obviously a huge influence and important introduction to the literary tradition, but my writing suffered considerably during that time. All that I produced were smart-assed, self-indulgent metafictions about writers and writing. It was fun and cathartic and actually ended up teaching me a lot about craft, but the work itself was horrible. So I leave larger literary questions to the critics.

This purposeful distance has also made me unaware of what questions are being asked in current theoretical literary discussions. When I was immersed in that world in he mid-late 90s, it seemed as if we were at the end of something: the implosion of “deconstruction” or postmodern/structuralist theory as the dominant mode of criticism. It seemed to be a way of thinking about literature based centrally on the notion that it didn’t, or couldn’t, exist. At that time there was this awareness arising that the logical conclusion of post-structuralism was in the deconstruction of deconstruction.

So after this implosion, what has emerged at the “ground level” is a certain return to a more “traditional” form of style or writing. I am definitely noticing this in short fiction trends.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I think it’s probably the same as it has always been: to tell the stories of our times, to entertain.

I think writers are the front line of exploring the human psyche, probing it, not necessarily to find answers, but to express the complexity of it.

Because of its intimacy, I also think that reading is an excellent way to nourish a sense of empathy. So maybe that’s the role of the writer in the “Me Era”: maybe writing is the way we remind ourselves how to empathize with others.

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

Essential, and so far in my life, not difficult at all. I’m not particularly precious about my writing. If there is a craft or mechanics thing that I am doing wrong, I want to know and learn how to fix it. Most importantly, I know that I am not a very good judge of how a reader will respond to my work; I have a tendency to be straightforward and linear and sometimes too blunt (the over writing I mentioned earlier), so I have always thought it was incredibly valuable for me to have an outsider point these things out to me.

Traditional publishing is changing significantly right now and I fear that the close-editing process is something that could easily be lost or cast aside. I feel incredibly lucky to have had an editor work so conscientiously on my writing through the production of my book. I’ve always felt so lucky to have anyone care enough to want to read my writing so closely.

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

I don’t know about advice, but I have two mantras that I follow, and I don’t really know where they come from. One, I think, may be Alice Munro, but I may also have made it up: “Everyone can write, but writers write.”

The second comes from Jack Hodgins who I think was quoting someone else (and who I am now paraphrasing!): “To write good fiction you have to write one good sentence and then follow it with another good sentence…”

It reminds me that this is, first and foremost, a craft. It’s not just thoughts and ideas (everyone has those); it’s the putting them to paper in good sentences and well-constructed stories that makes a writer.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?

It was challenging at first, but I think mostly because it took me a while to find the voice for my non-fiction writing. Aside from sometimes lacking the time I’d like to have to do both, I actually appreciate having both genres to give me a break from the other. But when it all comes down to it, all writing, for me, is work—sentence building and story telling—so I see it all intertwined at the level of craft.

I’ve been working on a book-length work of non-fiction and a big part of the early struggles have been in finding my voice, or the point of view, for the book. It’s been an interesting challenge though. It’s as if I’m right back at the beginning, but it’s an interesting process.

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?

Because I teach at a college, my schedule changes ever-so-slightly every semester, but generally I like to get up and write right away, at least for a few hours. Then, ideally, I go for a run and either teach or get back to writing in the afternoon (usually switching from fiction to non fiction).

Whatever my schedule, I try to write five days a week, at least for a few hours a day.

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

I find I work a lot of things out in my writing while I’m running, so if I am having a bad morning or just a morning where I am lacking focus, sometimes I go for a run to mull things over.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Salt water. Atlantic ocean salt water specifically. I smell it as soon as I get off the plane or train in Halifax whenever I get home.

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

I think all of those things are just wrapped up in life. That’s so broad, I know, but I think books come from everywhere all the time.

I think maybe McFadden was speaking to tradition, to the shape that a book has and how it is part of a larger and much longer dialogue. I am not recreating the form every time I sit down to work on short fiction; I am engaging in a long tradition of creating short stories, and the way I write and my goals in writing are shaped by that tradition.

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

There has been such a resurgence in the short story as of late, and this has been incredibly inspiring to me. There have been so many collections by new(ish) writers that have been excellent: Sarah Selecky, Elizabeth De Mariaffi, Nancy Jo Cullen, Kelli Deeth, David Derry, Spencer Gordon to name a few.

Bill Gaston has a new collection coming out in June as well. This will be his first collection in seven years (he’s published a few novels in between). I think he is one of our best short story writers.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Publish my fourth book.


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?

Postal worker—mail deliverer. I still kind of want to do it. I like the endurance aspect of it. 

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

I honestly have no idea. Perhaps just being read to as a child, which led to a voracious reading habit, which led to my wanting to create the kinds of stories I enjoyed reading.

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

This is tough: I guess I’ll take ‘great’ to mean a certain thing: namely, something I think everyone should read/see. I’m going to say Boyden’s Orenda as my book choice. It feels like an easy answer, and it’s not necessarily my favourite book published in the past year, but at the same time I couldn’t believe how much I liked it as I was reading it. Plus, the whole time I was reading it, I just kept thinking to myself that everyone who lived in this country needed to read this book. I’m not sure that the story of early colonialism in Canada has been told as well or in as readable a way.

In terms of film that’s tougher. I really, really liked Inside Llewyn Davis , but everyone else seemed to hate it, which has made me question why I liked it so much (and I haven’t had a chance to rewatch it yet). Fruitvale Station was a pretty phenomenal movie that also didn’t seem to get much critical attention; but I did like Her and thought it was dealing, even if lightly, with pretty important questions about contemporary culture and the way we interact with technology and each other in light of this technology.

20 - What are you currently working on?
Right now, I’m getting pretty deep into a non-fiction book about the current roller derby revival, but I’ve also been jumping in and out of working on a novel for the past few years that I am determined to finish.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;