Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 404

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Wanda Praamsma

Wanda Praamsma grew up in Clayton, Ontario, near Ottawa. Her first book, a thin line between , appears this fall through BookThug. Her poems have been published in ottawater , seventeen seconds , and Feathertale , and several literary non-fiction pieces have  appeared in the Toronto Star, where she worked for several years as an editor. Praamsma currently lives in Kingston, Ontario.

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?
Publication-wise, I’m not sure yet, but writing and finishing a thin line between was a big leap for me, out of journalism and into poetry. It solidified something I knew about myself – that I’m a poet – but didn’t enact fully until taking the time to really explore myself on the page.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I came to non-fiction first, as a journalist – but there were always poems there, too. I always saw, and still see, headline-writing as a form of poetry.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
It seems to come fairly quickly, and then I do a lot of whittling-down. Some poems come out very close to final shape, but for my long poem, I whittled and whittled quite a lot of the prose-y parts.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I am very much a jotter-downer of things, and then I begin to piece things together. The long poem seems to be a form I enjoy. Everything seems to begin short, in short pieces, and then combines into a whole.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I haven’t done many readings yet but I do imagine they will form part of the process in some way. I’ve always loved reading aloud. It’s also a chance to voice how I heard it all in my head while writing.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I have a hard time even wrapping my head around the phrase “theoretical concerns.” I’m sure they’re there, but others can figure out what they are. Certainly there are a lot of questions. The big one: who am I? and also, who are you? For a thin line between – I wanted to explore my family, on both sides of the ocean, and how I fit within that family. Art and love and death emerged from that.

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 see the writer’s role as the same as any artist: to uncover, unravel, reveal and expose. Within both the personal and beyond-personal (social) realms.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Fairly essential. Difficult, too. I’ve been an editor myself, and they see things you don’t. But I think every writer should be ready to protect their work – there are times when you need to be very hard-headed. (I suppose this comes more from my work as a journalist than as a poet. Editing is a different beast in the newsroom.)

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
At a crucial moment in writing my book, and not knowing if it was finished or not, a poet-friend said to me, something like, “Our writing changes. We change.” Right then, I knew it was done – or very close to being done. It was time to move on.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
I am just starting to get into critical prose so I’m not sure yet how easy or difficult it is.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I have a little baby now so there is no routine. I write and read while nursing, and when baby sleeps. I used to get up, do yoga, write for a bit,  read for a bit, then repeat. On days I worked elsewhere, I’d still get up and do yoga and write, but then also try to write on lunch breaks and on the ferry to and from Wolfe Island, where I used to live (now I’m on the mainland, in Kingston).

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
When my writing’s stalled, it’s generally because I have too much else going on. It means it’s time to pare down, clear the mind. Then the words come again. I need space to catch thoughts. Doing yoga, meditating, long walks – they all give me that. But also, visiting art galleries, travelling, and reading – not just poetry, but prose and books on yoga and eastern philosophy.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
There’s a line in a thin line between: the smell of parsley reminds me of my mother

so there’s that – and nutmeg, too.

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?
Visual art, especially. I like my words to spring from sculpture, pottery, painting, fibre art. I find great freedom in examining/observing/peering into other people’s work. I like to find an abstract puddle to dance in.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
For my work, particularly this first book, the Dutch Fiftiers (Vijftigers), a group of experimental writers and artists that emerged in the Netherlands and Belgium after World War II. My grandfather, Bert Schierbeek, was a member. At the time of writing this long poem, I was reading lots of the Fiftiers – not much poetry by any others – but also lots of novels, especially Haruki Murakami and Arundhati Roy.

Also important and much loved are Daphne Marlatt, Sheila Heti, Phil Hall, Alan Watts, Garcia Marquez, Neruda.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Visit Shikoku in Japan, and be a pilgrim to the 88 Buddhist temples on the island.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I’ve always been intrigued by the workings of cities, especially transit/transportation – how people move through cities and act in those buses, streetcars, subways ... so maybe a city planner of sorts ... but I don’t really believe there’s much choice when it comes to what you do – if you’re in tune with yourself, you land deep in what you should be doing – and writing is what I should be doing.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
See above, but also, when I was little, I went through a series of what-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-ups, all based on TV shows(!). I wanted to be a marine biologist because I loved whales and we used to watch Danger Bay . Then we watched Street Legal and I wanted to be a lawyer. Then it was Superman, and I decided on journalist. Somehow journalist stuck, because I then went to journalism school. But, seriously, it was when I started writing for the local paper in high school that I decided I wanted to write. Then, once I was in the journalism world, I realized I wanted something more through my writing – that’s when I started writing poetry.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I just read Dionne Brand’s No Language is Neutral and loved it. Read 1Q84 and Kafka on the Shore by Murakami earlier this year, and both are very good. I am not so much a film enthusiast/connoisseur, but I was just given a dvd copy of Out of Africa – still my favourite.

20 - What are you currently working on?
Another long poem. And there’s a novel simmering on the far burner.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Karla Kelsey, A Conjoined Book

Trumpet vine to maple branch lashed. Finch following finch aft the stone wall. The granite statuette stowed away & the wooden door scrapes closed. & I                                                                                                 was your Rose, your Lily, your Loralie dying over & over with the slow pause of an early silver screen, grass gone nickel, skin gone glycerin.                                & in the corner the shotgun & the emptied urn, rusted urn, the lifting stone where pillbugs curl & hide as heavy in wet wool you leave the scene through the garden door.                     Under the rubric of excuse is the story in which I was last in a lineage of hunters, the once-seasonal rain that wouldn’t go.

*Now it was autumn & the end of the year mistaken for mineraled dirt, the time of departure become worn. From the moon’s quarter to its half, rains had fallen & all the hill streams ran in flood. As the piano performs scale after scale the piano becomes exception. (|Insterstitial Weather Remnant:”)
American poet Karla Kelsey’s third trade poetry collection, A Conjoined Book (Omnidawn, 2014), is a conversation between two texts, two poetry collections separately composed that she brought together in a single volume. As she writes in the interview that accompanies the press release:
When, in 2006, I moved to Central Pennsylvania, I never had lived so far east, nor had I—a native of Southern California—ever lived in such a rural area. What struck me first was the enormous beauty of the landscape: all trees and river, I felt I was living inside an emerald. Then I began to learn the environmental trauma the landscape had suffered, and still suffers, from the legacies and traditions of mining, lumbering, and now fracking. Also: there are contradictions in such places where the wide, slow Susquehanna runs idyllically along small farms—but between river and farm container trucks zoom past both Amish horse and buggies and adult bookstores. At one point near Harrisburg the road crests through rounded green hills to a view of Three Mile Island. The first book, AFTERMATH, seeps in this landscape, foregrounding the embodied experience of beauty and rend. There is catastrophe under-tremmoring the book, but it remained unnamed.
After writing AFTERMATH I thought: what if the catastrophe were to be named? What, then, would happen to the language that I have on the page? How would it curve to an “aboutness?” The Grimm brothers’ tale, “The Juniper Tree”—wherein a stepmother kills her step-son and allows her daughter to take the blame—intrigued me because of its savageness, because of its questions of guilt and responsibility. Also, the boy’s bones, buried under the same juniper tree that shades his birth-mother’s grave, transform into a bird that avenges his death—an intriguing metamorphosis of innocence into the agency of the natural.
I re-worked AFTERMATH around this tale with the intention of revision, but in the end I found that I had written a second book, Become Tree, Become Bird. A handful of friends were kind enough to read the two different books and to offer their opinion on which book was stronger. G.C. Waldrep, who shares this Central Pennsylvania landscape, suggested that I put them together. Instantly I loved this idea, for it would foreground what happens when narrative is introduced to landscape and embodied experience. The project became A Conjoined Book.
One can see the resulting texts as a pair of accumulations, a rush of sketched-out notes built in a couplet of books set together in a binary axis (in this case, a binding). How do “AFTERMATH” and “Become Tree, Become Bird” interrelate, and how are they separate enough that they are required to be seen as stand-alone projects? Both projects work and weave their way through a lyric collage of retelling fables and fairy tales, providing physical descriptions and observations of the natural world, and the way memory affects the ways in which we actually remember. The differences, one might suggest, between the two volumes are razor-thin: as the first focuses on perspective/vantages and a series of fables, the second is composed around birds, weather and a series of afterimages. Given that she has titled the first work “AFTERMATH,” and the second section includes a poem such as “Afterimages:” and the series of poems titled “Interstitial Weather Remnant:,” it is as though Kelsey focuses her gaze throughout the two works on what remains after a particular event, whether a trauma, devastation or storm. She writes out the remnants themselves, using the scattered, disparate pieces to shape together into something coherent, complex and remarkably solid. It becomes curious to see Kelsey’s A Conjoined Book adding to an increasing list of recent poetry titles, a number of which have appeared through Omnidawn, dealing with environmental matters, such as Barbara Tomash’s Arboreal (Berkeley CA: Apogee Press, 2014) [see my review of such here], Julie Joosten’s Light Light (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2013) [see my review of such here], Robin Clarke’s Lines the Quarry (Richmond CA: Omnidawn, 2013) [see my review of such here], Brian Teare’s Companion Grasses (Omnidawn, 2013) [see my review of such here] and Ken Belford’s Internodes (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2013) [see my review of such here]. As Kelsey writes in “AFTERMATH”:
A collection of woundednexuses, antecedents, hollows
for hallowed arms. & the redtorn from my dress from the
trees. & the blue torn from
the wind as a banner as a singularmoment stalled in yellow
banks covered overwith the lightestof frost. & so gone
to the river & ablefor this moment
to have been what was lost.

a week (plus) in the east; (part one,

If you were following our updates via Facebook, you'll know that we recently returned from an eleven day driving tour, from Quebec to the Maritimes into New England, driving out to see various folk that we never get to see, before Christine's maternity leave ends in November. What madness! We aimed for no more than four or so hours of daily driving (which didn't always work), and Rose managed to survive the process far better than we might have expected. We aimed driving in the morning and afternoon to her naps, with an hour or two break for lunch, to get her fed and allow her to tear around a bit.

I found a little blank notebook I'd never actually used yet (most likely, I think, a Christmas stocking bit from dear mother-in-law) for the sake of scattered notes, phrases and assorted what-nots.

I took a stack of books to read (never opened), and TONS of material for give-away, handout and otherwise distribution (of course). I sent postcards to my lovely daughter Kate from every stop.

Rose charmed everyone. Waving and smiling even at those who weren't paying attention.

Saturday, September 13, 2014: We drove out to Pointe-Claire, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal where Stephanie Bolster and Patrick Leroux live with their two girls. Can you believe it's been a decade since I was last in their house? That was back when Kate was but thirteen, and Patrick hadn't seen her in a decade. It has been a while since Patrick and I touched base. He's a Franco-Ontarien playwright I went to high school with, and now so rarely see, so the visit with them was really one of my highlights of the trip. Has it really been eighteen years since I produced that first chapbook of hers? Has it really been twenty years since our pal Patrick came home from the Banff Writing Studios and told us he'd met an English poet from Burnaby?

The rain en route to Quebec City was absolutely fierce. It hit and struck and pounded, down. Once landing, Rose made friends before we'd even left the car (she waved at a young couple in a restaurant window, and they happily waved back). We found the most lovely little bed and breakfast, right across from the Chateau Frontenac, where we attempted to calm the baby into sleep. Via YouTube, I presented Rose with her first experience watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. Eventually, we slept.


Sunday, September 14, 2014: We wandered a morning and early afternoon of Quebec City. We walked along the walls of the old city, and explored the fort and museum. Oh, what lovely views. Rose, given it was time for such, slept.

There's a part of George Bowering's Stone Country: An Unauthorized History of Canada (2003) that I'm rather fond of, caught in my head as we wandered the Plains of Abraham: "Really, there is nothing biblical about the Plains of Abraham. Here was a nice grassy field that had been granted to a ship's pilot named Abraham Martin in 1645. If it had been granted to his brother, the great battle would have been fought on the Plains of Claude."

The view from the Plains was absolutely breathtaking. And the weather was perfect. Just in case, Christine wore the rain-jacket she'd picked up at the train station in London, en route to Paris, during our honeymoon.

Christine thought I looked far too much like this statue, so (with baby + carrier) had me pose along such. A long distant relative, perhaps?

And of course, tea at the Chateau Frontenac. Or at least, some tea and a cocktail or two. And postcards!

The Basilica in Quebec City appeared to be in the midst of a grand celebration, celebrating an impressive three hundred and fifty years with a video screen showing a brief history, increased security, and a grand door that the faithful can enter (only the seventh door in the world, and the first outside of Europe). It looked quite impressive.

And then we headed towards Edmunston, New Brunswick, knowing the drive would be baby-tolerable, before we continued further east, further.


Monday, September 15, 2014: We woke in Edmunston, where Rose and I played on the swings briefly, in the first-thing sparkle of morning mist.

Driving: did you know the longest covered bridge in the world is out here? We wandered over to such, but it was closed for repairs. Still, we took numerous photos of each other out front. And I had shades of recollections of perhaps being through here when I was quite small, a family trip I have yet to ask my father about: were we out here? Did we drive this way then?

Memory can be the most tricky of things.

Inside the bridge, where we saw workers working, welding and what-not. We could not cross (at least, by car).


We were heading for Fredericton, where we had lunch with Broken Jaw Press editor/publisher and Chaudiere Books author Joe Blades, who was working part of the election. It was good to see him, and pass along some publications for him to distribute around his immediate local. It had been possibly half a decade since I'd seen him last.

I will say it now: parking at the University of New Brunswick is stupid.

Visiting Joe was quite nice. It had been too long. And, before he returned to work, he offered us passes to the Beaverbrook Gallery, a space I'd long heard of but never actually seen. We were fortunate: summer hours still existed, otherwise it would have been closed on Mondays.

I had expected it, somehow, to be bigger. But some of the artwork inside was incredible.

Rose and I, of course, had a brief photo-shoot at the Robbie Burns statue outside. We allowed Rose to burn off some energy by rolling around in the grass (she is still very uncertain of lawns and grass, somehow) before we returned her to carseat, and was reminded of how we disappoint her in so many, many ways.

We kept driving. Rose fell asleep. We made the hour or two to Saint John, New Brunswick, where we visited Christine's friend Anne, who lives in the most lovely apartment downtown.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014: Before leaving Saint John, we wandered a bit by the waterfront, including through a small mall and market square building. We even saw granite sculptures being carved by the waterfront, and were afforded a brief tour of such by one of the people working there. How marvellous! I'd never seen granite sculptures being constructed before.

The water, the water. I think Christine had missed the ocean, tucked so long away in the Ottawa Valley.

Rose cranked slightly, so we moved a bit quicker, for the sake of a possible nap.

We saw a kilometre-marker, which I haven't yet looked up.

Andy Weaver was born in Saint John. I sent him a postcard: Everyone here looks like you.

Next: Parrsboro, Moncton and Wolfville...

fwd : the 2013 CWILA Count

This essay by Erin Wunker is posted here on behalf of CWILA: Canadian Women in the Literary Arts
Public + Women = Risky
Introduction to the 2013 CWILA Count
“Écrire: je suis une femme est plein de conséquences.” (Nicole Brossard L’Amér, 45)

“This question of publicness can’t be underestimated, particularly, as my blog posts attest, for women.” (Sina Queyras Unleashed, 8)

Framing Thoughts on “Public,” “Women,” and “Risk”In her 1977 publication L’Amér, Nicole Brossard wrote “écrire: je suis un femme est plein de conséquences.” Barbara Godard, a bilingual feminist critic, translated this as “to write: I am a woman is full of consequences” (These our mothers, 45). Writing, women, risk, consequences. These things are at the core of the mandate for Canadian Women in the Literary Arts. Begun as a grassroots feminist organization aimed at bringing discussions of gender, race, and sexuality into public forums, CWILA is now an incorporated organization with more than five hundred members. We have been conducting “The Count”—an annual audit of gender equity in Canada’s reviewing culture—for three years now. This our new third Count, which covers reviews published in 2013, continues to demonstrate a marked imbalance in whose books are getting reviewed, as well as in who is doing that review work. Why?
The “W” at the core of CWILA is always a contested space. In other words, as Brossard wrote in 1977, to write the word “woman” is to take a risk. Look at Brossard’s sentence. While it is tempting to read it without the colon (to write I am a woman is full of consequences) the punctuation is in fact a gatekeeper. Granted, the colon keeps the gate grammatically ajar, propelling the reader forward into fact. With a simple act of punctuation Brossard has shifted the category of “woman” into a direct relation with the work of writing. Writing is full of consequences, gendered categories are full of consequences, and writing about marginalized genders is full of consequence—be it in this introduction to the 2013 numbers, in a review, or in a blog post. And yet, the gate is ajar.
We started CWILA in part, as a concrete way to address concerns about whether or not Canada’s literary culture had representational justice. Representational justice—that is, the deliberate mechanisms that ensure marginalized groups are represented in a given context—is a starting point. Counting gender representation alone cannot ensure a just and robust literary culture, nor can it eradicate the micro- and macro-aggressions of sexism, racism, cis privilege, or homophobia. The numbers do one thing: they provide a place to start a public discussion. And let us not forget that public discussions that rattle the bars of the status quo are risky. The second epigraph that introduces this essay was written by Sina Queyras in her 2009 introduction to Unleashed, a selection of her blog posts composed between 2005 and 2008. The blog quickly evolved into a public facet of her writerly practice: it was a way of exploring, experimenting, and coming to terms with the ever-increasing relevance of the Internet in a literary life. The blog, Lemon Hound , also became a tool for asking why women writers are still disproportionately under-represented in critical dialogues about their work.
Here is the thing: blogging about inequity is risky. Writing about or as a woman is risky. Taking up public space to write about or as a woman is risky. The risks are multiple and they are polarized: you may be attacked or you may be ignored. Queyras’s blog is one site where these risks were taken up and reflected upon. Writing is a private act, until, that is, it is not. Blogging, as Queyras observes, makes this risk of public writing clear. The minute one hits “publish” on a post those heavy consequences are waiting at the gate. The CWILA Count is a public attempt to append hard numbers to the more general feeling that male writers and reviewers get the most representation in Canadian literary culture. This public attempt is not without its risks, but the possibility of representational justice is always worth the risk.
The location of the first part of our equation—public + women—is risky in part because it is an equation that is always contentious. What do we mean when we say “public” in relation to the literary arts? Indeed, what do we mean when we say “women,” and what can we mean if we are more expansive in our understanding of the outsider status of the term? For CWILA, the book review is one key place to press the equation of public + gender, and, by extension, of equitable representation.
In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf speculated about what histories and knowledges have been lost by leaving women out of literary history. That was in 1929. We have a responsibility to expand Woolf’s focus. We have a responsibility to ask whose knowledges and histories are lost, hidden, or actively marginalized when there is not representational justice in a living literary culture, let alone literary history. CWILA maintains that literary culture is one concrete place to work to consciously and ethically take into account the multiplicity of gendered identities, nationalities, and languages that comprise this country. And while CWILA does not yet have the labour power to ethically track statistics based not just on gender, but on racial and ethnic identity, sexuality, class, and ability, we are beginning to develop a set of apparatuses to track these trends. The Count is imperfect, but the trends of inequity which we track suggest that it is necessary and it is a means of asking questions about equality in public. Primarily, what the new Count data shows is that despite the often-positive reception of CWILA’s Count and the organization as a whole, there is still a significant gap in terms of equitable gender representation in literary reviews. In other words, despite much strong support from editors and publishers for CWILA’s project after the numbers are released inequity remains. Moreover, there’s been backlash. Public + Women = Risky, yes. But asking pressing questions representational justice is a necessary risk to take if we are to significantly and generatively shift Canadian literary culture.
The 2013 NumbersA thumbnail sketch of the 2013 Number can be summed up like this: regression.
Overall, 37% of the review space counted by CWILA volunteers went to women, 57% of it went to men.

While it is a truism to suggest that the numbers speak for themselves, the aim here is to sustain public discussion about representational justice in Canada’s literary culture. We need to unpack the stories that the numbers tell.
As Count Director Judith Scholes outlines in her essay detailing our methodology, the Count is not comprehensive. It does not count every single book published in Canada. What the Count provides each year is an evolving data set that allows us to begin tracking trends over time. This year, with the indispensable labour of more than forty volunteers, we wereable to expand the Count in significant ways. For example, in the Count of the 2012 numbers, CWILA began to nuance the language we use to adequately represent gender—from male/female binaries towards a more accurate male/female/non-binary representation of writers in the Canadian context—and we have continued to refine that language in the Count of the 2013 numbers.We were able to expand the quantity of publications we counted from 25 to 31. For the first time we have the linguistic capacity to include French language publications (Le Devoir, Lettres Québecoises, Nuit Blanche, Liberté: Arts et Politiques), and we had the volunteer capacity to add three metropolitan newspapers (The Toronto Star, The Chronicle Herald, Le Devoir). We increased the total numbers of reviews counted from 3,092 in 2012 to 5,613 in 2013. That is an 82% increase in the scope of our Count. Thanks to our volunteers’ efforts and our Count Director’s expertise we are now able to offer a broader regional representation and begin to take into consideration the culture of critical reviews in both English and French Canada. These new numbers reiterate old stories and tell some new ones too. Put simply, there’s still a gap.                         *
When is the last time you read a book review? Look closer at the byline of the review—who wrote it? Are you reading it online, or in a print publication? Now take a moment and look at the other books reviewed in that publication in the last month. Are they reviewed by the same people? Can you see any trends? Why did you read the reviews section? The answers to such questions, in broad terms, can tell us something about the ways in which we engage in the culture of literary economies; they can also contribute to larger, complicated narratives about equity and representation.
This is CWILA’s third annual Count. The concerns that initiated the organization were deceptively simple: it seemed as though we—readers in Canada—were hearing more about books by men than about books by women. Was this true? Could the hunch be extended to other marginalized groups? And if so, how might one gather compelling data that supported this hunch? Three years and three rounds of data-collection later, the concerns remain while we also work to ask better, more nuanced questions of the data.
For example, building on the mandate to account for, address, and advocate for representational justice in Canada’s literary culture, the Count of the 2012 reviews recorded the number of Canadian and non-Canadian authors counted. As Laura Moss observes in her essay unpacking the context of CWILA’s focus on nationality, the aim was to examine and extend the “C” for very specific reasons. These reasons, as she notes, did not include “tracking Canadian Content” or “measuring the viability of cultural nationalism.” Further, we are not the least bit interested in surveiling or policing citizenship. Rather, CWILA is invested in strengthening Canadian review culture by making it more equitable. As Moss notes, the book industry and book reviews sections in major metropolitan newspapers continues to shrink. If we are going to think about gender in relation to the nation, then we need to “distinguish between the reviews of books in general and reviews of books by Canadian authors in particular.”  Like attempting to track gender representation, counting national representation affords us the opportunity to think beyond individual authors and reviewers. Tracking the “C” in CWILA allows us to think more expansively about national support for the arts in terms of publication venues, publishing houses, and what needs to shift to foster a richer reviews culture. Last year, as Moss states, we found compelling evidence of support for Canadian writers:
In the age of the corporatization of everything, the CWILA 2012 numbers are less a good news story proving vibrant cultural nationalism and more evidence of communal resistance to a weakened literary economy. Reviewers, review editors, and publication boards make choices. They have chosen to support the arts in Canada by allotting space—however dwindling it may be—to work by Canadian writers.
And yet, the conversation about the “C” in CWILA is hardly finished. Rather, the 2012 focus on national representation has inspired the CWILA team to think carefully about how to convey the complexities of national affiliation. The question of what makes an author “Canadian” is hardly new, but thinking publicly on an annual basis about it requires that we continually nuance our terms.
In 2012, 65.5% of reviews counted were of books authored (in whole or part) by Canadian writers, and 33% were of books by non-Canadian authors.
In 2013, 60% of reviews counted were of books authored (in whole or part) by Canadian writers, 39% were of books by non-Canadian writers. The remaining 1% accounts for books by unknown authors or collectives for which nationality could not be determined.
Overall, 33% of reviews counted were of books authored by Canadian men, 24% were of books by non-Canadian men, 25% were of books by Canadian women, and only 12% were of books by non-Canadian women.
Put starkly, a non-Canadian woman writer is just over a third as likely to get review space in a Canadian publication as a Canadian male writer. Our 2012 numbers revealed a similar statistic and so, the inequity that we recognized last year seems to have intensified this year. One of the questions we would do well to ask ourselves is what we can do to ethically address this tendency and to shift it.
Overall, the 2013 Count shows that the majority of books being reviewed are Canadian, but that majority is smaller. Why? Only time, consistent data collection, as well as sustained and active conversation will tell.
                                                            *Growing the CountIn the Count of the 2013 reviews we introduced a new focal point—language. A clear limitation of last year’s count was its sole focus on English language reviews. We were criticized, rightly, for failing to count French reviews in our “Canadian” numbers. For us, the “C” in CWILA stands in—or aims to stand in—for all gendered, racial, and socio-economic communities located in the country now called Canada. And yet in practice, as a non-profit organization run almost exclusively by volunteers, we are hampered by our own limitations. Last year we simply did not have the resources to count in both official languages. This year we made it a priority to figure out how to do so. With the labour of our dedicated volunteers and editorial teams we expanded the linguistic content of the Count.
We were able for the first time to count French language publications: Le Devoir, Nuit Blanche, Lettres Québécoises, and Liberté: Art et Politique in addition to counting the French language reviews in Canadian Literature. We added these four new publications based on circulation and numbers of reviews published. This inaugural sample of French language representation in the Count is partial. It cannot give us more than a glimpse into gendered statistics in French language publications. And yet, it allows us to practice our mandate a little more fully. If we are ever to adequately account and advocate for representational justice in Canada’s literary culture then we will continually need to expand our fluency in the languages and the cultures that make up this shared space. In doing so, we have decided to publish essays in both English and French and to consider the results of the Count through first the integrated data you see here, and, next week, with a careful focus on considering the French numbers on their own. Next week’s spotlight will include an essay on the French language context written by Evelyne Ledoux-Beaugrand, with an English translation of her essay by Bronwyn Haslam.
Our initial foray into counting French language publications underscores that talking about representational justice in a public forum, while risky, can effect positive change. Of the 1,259 French language reviews counted, only 27% are on books authored by women, while 62% of the French language reviews we counted are about books written by men.

These are not heartening statistics. However, they are familiar. These statistics which, don’t forget, represent our first foray into a French language Count, are strikingly similar to the statistics from our initial Count in 2011 when only 41% of the reviews we counted were about books written by women. In fact, the numbers we have collected from French language reviews are not so terribly different from the 2013 English numbers. One very interesting percentage emerging from the French data, however, is this: 10% of the review space we counted is dedicated to male and female co-authored publications.
Does this suggest that collaborative creative and critical work is being rewarded with review space in Quebec? Perhaps, but only a broader, more sustained Count will provide the data we need to say for certain. What is clear is this: in both French and English Canada, discrepancy and inequity are still the order of the day. Of the total reviews counted (5,613) there were 1100 more reviews of books written by male authors than there were of books written by female authors. That, friends, is a big number.
Here is what our initial data on French language publications suggests: A French-speaking Canadian female author has half the chance of being reviewed as a French-speaking Canadian male author and less than a non-Canadian male author.
Male authors publishing in French get 2.3 times more review space than female authors publishing in French receive.
French-speaking Canadian male authors receive six times the review space of non-Canadian female authors.
Non-Canadian male authors writing and publishing in French get three times the review space than non-Canadian female authors, and slightly more than Canadian female authors.
And, as in the English language reviews counted, our French data shows that men are still more likely to review male authors than female authors. Why?
It is crucial to underscore that the French language data is in keeping with the initial 2011 results of the English language data. In other words, our numbers show a systemic gender inequity across languages in Canada. What can we do to generatively address this unhealthy imbalance? It is time for a truly intersectional and coalitionary feminist response and call to action. The numbers are a place to begin.                                                 *
The CWILA EffectThe numbers are a place to begin asking better questions about representational justice in Canadian literary culture, yes. But if we are truly to foster a sustainable and inclusive literary culture we must also think carefully and publicly about the less-visible stories the numbers begin to tell.
The 2013 Count shows similar trends to the 2012 Count—women are less likely to receive attention in the form of review space, and male reviewers are far more likely to review books written by men than books written by women.
Of the 5,613 reviews counted, 57% cover male-authored books, while 37% cover female-authored books.
Of the female-authored reviews counted, 51% were reviews of books written by women.

Of the male-authored reviews counted, only 25% were reviews of books written by women.

The statistics show that while women tend to review men and women’s books equally, men review men’s books twice as often as they do women’s books. Why is this still the case?
In an interview with Chelsea Novak, Literary Review of Canada editor Bronwyn Drainie noted that women reviewers were more likely to turn down requests to review than men. While being clear that this was her own observation based on ten years of experience (rather than something she had quantified with data), she observed that the reasons women turned down requests to review were different than the reasons cited by men. Namely, the responses Drainie hears are based on being overworked: “I’m just too busy”; “I’m overloaded”; “I can’t take on anything else.” Drainie speculates that she hears these kinds of responses from women because they are, in fact, doing a disproportionate amount of service labour, such as writing reviews. “Everyone wants women to be represented,” says Drainie, “and since there are fewer and fewer of them, more and more gets loaded on their shoulders than on the shoulders of all the men.” Drainie’s observations and speculations are compelling, and they point towards other hidden stories the numbers may tell: stories of workload, gender expectation, and gendered and racial diversity to name a few.
For example, as Ivan E. Coyote suggested in an interview with Tina Northrup in 2014, the “W” in CWILA is a contested space in a multiplicity of ways yet to be adequately considered. Last year, we added the category of “genderqueer” to begin to account for writers and reviewers who do not identify with the gender binary. This year, in consultation with trans women, trans, non-binary, and genderqueer writers and reviewers, we have refined how we present our data. We rely on the self-identification of writers and reviewers as well as the triple checking of pronoun usage to quantify data on writers and reviewers who identify outside the gender binary. And yet, this is only the beginning of the story. CWILA cannot hope to adequately address these issues or cultivate coalitions between woman-centred politics and gender critical politics more generally without writers and reviewers who identify outside the gender binary being actively represented within the organization itself on the board and in editorial positions. This, then, points to more risky and more urgent stories the numbers begin to tell. What will it take to continue to evolve CWILA into the kind of organization in which trans women, non-binary persons, women of colour, Indigenous women, and other severely marginalized groups want to take part? What will it take to feel as though we are truly working with a common purpose?
The story that emerges is this: while the Count will never be comprehensive, it is a crucial starting point for opening up public conversations about representational justice in Canadian literary culture. The Count may never adequately represent the diversity of genders, languages, and racial identities that make up this country’s literary culture. What it can do is get us talking and thinking about who is speaking and why. It can get us talking and thinking about who feels a part of that “us” and who does not. The Count can serve as a starting place for moving discussions about gender inequity and the micro- and macro-aggressions of living in a patriarchal culture into a wider public discourse. That discourse is risky, but it is a risk CWILA feels the responsibility to take.

Nikki Sheppy, Grrrrlhood: a ludic suite

purl + the accretion of sound instead of you = pearl
i was knitting—as befits my gender—when irealized i could hear my mollusk spinelesslyentombing its parasite—strata of hornydeposition—until there shonea bead that had forgotten everything but its ownvoluptuous light—at stuh timesi construe a mysterious pain in the yarn—winceand pull—dive and hook
Last year’s winner of the annual The John Lent Poetry Prose Award, as run by British Columbia publisher Kalamalka Press, was Calgary poet Nikki Sheppy, and the resulting letterpress poetry publication is now available as Grrrrlhood: a ludic suite (Vernon BC: Kalamalka Press, 2014). It is good to see more activity through Kalamalka Press, however seemingly random, over the past few years. The press originally gained attention in the 1990s through an annual poetry manuscript prize, but for book, not chapbook, publication (Karen Connelly’s first poetry collection, among others, was produced through such). That contest has long disappeared, but, now three years old, the third winner of The John Lent Poetry Prose Award was recently announced as Montreal writer Nicholas Papaxanthos, and his chapbook Wearing Your Pants will be published sometime in 2015. 

















WINDFALL is grrrrlhood. Bone of hair braided over and under the root system. That felled lock rocking its origin grew there without me. To go back is to fume quietly into the air, sound stolen by the gale-force spurred into lung. Of scent there is only chlorophyll (buds of a lost mitten, bathed organelles). It wakes like growth spurt. Bodes no futility, green verging on blue. I’m stippled with sense: voluble and inchoate. Not triste, no, but fire-breathing. Pit of the mouth scorched open, innards systemic with coal.
What strikes about Sheppy’s Grrrrlhood: a ludic suite is the brashness of her text, a daring series of forceful, bold and playful engagements with expectations of language, sound and the notion of “grrrrlhood,” portions of which are reminiscent of some of the electric lyrics of poets EmilyCarr, Christine McNair, Brecken Hancock and Sandra Ridley. As Sheppy opens the first poem, “GRRRRL”: “(n.) a style of primitive ape, sub-adult and / female, in ringlets and pluck, about to slip / her tongue into you without first seeking / permission [.]” Sheppy also manages to play with the language and concepts of mathematics, making some of her titles impossible to replicate in a form such as this. Grrrrlhood: a ludic suite is a smart and powerful mix of lyric extraction, mathematical formulae, angry questioning and Riot Grrl bravado, wrapped up in a striking accumulative suite of poems. I would very much like to see more from Nikki Sheppy.
MUST WE FOREVER PONDER
why the #cagedbirdsings?rattling a few bars like the whettedcry of a #loon, sculling into the ear canal,#wingingit through the tympanic membranewhile #chasingsometale—there it goes,all #atwitter—#beakingoff—#lettingfly in a tempest of unintelligible cawsthe mouth #spreadeagledthe body vacatedin taxidermy
Beautifully designed and produced, Sheppy’s new title, according to the colophon was “hand-set in Monotype Bembo with Centaur for display, then proofed, corrected, printed, folded, collated and bound in ‘The Bunker,’ Okanagan College’s letterpress print shop, by students of the Diploma in Writing & Publihing, 2014.” The list of the “Bunker crew” is listed as well, making quite a nice touch, and includes Jason Dewinetz, who is also editor, publisher and printer of Greenboathouse Press, one of the finest literary letterpress publishers/printers in the country. Produced predominantly by students, unfortunately, also means the impossible occurs, and the work includes a separate sheet of (rather charming) “Errrata,” that reads: “IF PERFECTION OFFENDS THE GODS, there’s no fear that our efforts in the production of this book will get on their nerves. Despite our best intentions, quite a number of typographical errors found their way into these fine pages. Our apologies to the author and reader.”

rob mclennan interviewed at The Review Review on ottawater + Touch the Donkey

A lovely interview, "Poetry and Art that Challenge Ottawa’s Sleepy Stereotype: rob mclennan and Tanya Sprowl-Martelock Discuss Canadian Journal ottawater," is now posted at The Review Review, in which Tanya and I discuss ottawater , and I also discuss Touch the Donkey . Thanks, much!

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jennifer Fraser

Jennifer Fraser grew up in Vancouver and attended UBC where she could not decide between French and English literary studies so she did a double Honours BA which required a dissertation and thus dragged everything out even longer. Unfortunately, her favorite course was a year long exploration of the Divine Comedy with Professor Chiarenza. Thus, Fraser became even more undecided what to pursue in graduate studies and avoided the whole issue by doing a Masters and PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. She wrote her dissertation on the Dante's epic poem and the impact it had on James Joyce who shared Fraser's inability to commit to one culture or language even. In 2002, her dissertation, transformed into a book, was published by University Press of Florida: Rite of Passage in the Narratives of Dante and Joyce . Fraser taught as a sessional at University of Toronto and is quite likely the first and only person to convince the Literary Studies Department at Victoria College that a course for third year students on the Divina Commedia and Finnegans Wake was a must. She also taught for Humber College and Branksome, an all girls independent school. After fourteen years in Toronto, Fraser’s husband took a position in Victoria, BC and so she moved with her husband, including her two sons, one three and one eight, back to the West Coast. In Victoria, Fraser worked for St Michaels University School and just recently has taken a position at an International Baccalaureate School, Glenlyon Norfolk. Directing plays, teaching literature, and lucky enough to work with fabulous creative writers greatly influenced Fraser who has written three plays which are available through the Playwrights Guild of Canada as well as another literary study, published in 2011 by University of Toronto Press, Be A Good Soldier: Children's Grief in Modern English Novels , and an assortment of novels the first one, Crush , published in 2013; the second one, Royal Dispatch being published this summer, two others completed but presently in a holding pattern and more in process. Fraser is a compulsive writer who cannot stop analyzing, dramatizing, and spinning tales.

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 found it liberating to write fiction as opposed to scholarly work. It was a difficult transition to make because I did not have a sense of how to construct a character or develop a plot or use dialogue. I discovered that a whole other part of the self is drawn upon when writing fiction and it made me feel more alive. Rather than the intellect being the dominant force, as in academic work whereby one seeks patterns or theoretical structures or cultural implications, the whole self comes into play when writing fiction. It made my heart beat and my senses become more finely tuned. Moreover, writing fiction allows for humour which I cannot resist regardless of how serious my focus is. I love funny people and situations and am quick to laugh myself at absurdity or folly and to allow this part of myself free reign in creative writing was an immense pleasure.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
When I first started creative writing, I tried short-stories and poems, but they were not a good fit. I am not a miniaturist or a perfectionist and thus could not do my best work in these highly demanding genres. I’m very character driven in my work and found that I needed more space and time to unpack my people. I wanted to throw them into a plot that challenged them and brought out their best and worst. This takes pages and pages. I am privileged to have very talented poets and short-story authors in my writing group, but I seem to need a vast literary canvas to fully shade and colour my stories.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process?
My writing comes fast and furious. My characters are relentless and they badger me. If I am caught up in teaching or attending to my children or any of the other demands of life, my characters become disgruntled and sometimes even belligerent. Then I succumb and develop a vacant stare as I cope with real life because fictional life is hounding me. It is a relief for me to carve out time and sit at the computer. It’s the only activity for me where I don’t notice time passing. I forget to eat and drink. Worse, I am shocked when I pull out of story world and need to return to reality.

Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I am a note taker and my training in academic work greatly assists me in this regard. When I wrote Crush, I was not at all a wine expert and even now am an absolute novice. However, I recorded the “stories” on Okanagan Estate Wineries’ labels. I read books. I took notes. I spent hours looking at the internet. Even then, I had a sommelier read the novel and she got completely amused in places where I had made glaring errors. Likewise, I had a RCMP officer read Royal Dispatch and he corrected quite a number of errors. To draw on experts in the final drafts process is wonderful and I’ve found people are generous with their time. I write a lot of drafts as my first ones are often rough as I am to just let the story hit the page with the sense that I can always go back and refine. I think this process comes to me through my theatre work as rehearsal is the key to depth-filled performances. Rehearsals greatly impact the nuances of timing and make an enormous difference to the interactive nature of drama that compares to the inter-related aspect of character dynamics in fiction.

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?
Ever since Crush, I’ve learned that I can only write books. This was true in academic work as well. I tried to write articles, but it was ironically enough harder for me than writing book length studies. My thirteen year old will get utterly fed up with me as I try to advise or explain something and I think he’s nailed my character. He simply says: “You don’t have to go on and on.” In real life, he’s right and I try to hold back, but in fiction it would appear I do have to go on and on.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
My initial sense of doing a reading is utter dread. As an introvert, any kind of suggestion that I need to leave the computer and worse, interact, fills me with resistance and causes me to whine and complain. However, the second I am in the classroom or lecture hall or at a reading, I delight in the interactions and dialogue, the discussion that stories spark and the sharing that happens. So although I go to readings kicking and screaming, I finish them off feeling a great deal of gratitude for the people who attend such events and who love to talk about books.

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 am fascinated by whatever it is in a person that makes them refuse to bow down before master narratives. What caught my attention in the Okanagan and inspired Crush was the aboriginal winery Nk’mip. I loved the story of Chief Clarence Louis who is a highly talented businessman and economic instigator in this area of the world. He is a leader and that absolutely caught my attention and made me want to know more. There is a metal sculpture at the entrance to Nk’mip winery and it’s a larger than life horse with a rider upon it and they face the lake and wind with cliffs rising up behind them. It is the oppression of those cliffs that represents to me all the forces in life that tell you “no” and say “you can’t,” but this rider turns his back on the wall of rocky cliffs and sets off in a new direction which is the driving force behind all of the characters in my fiction.

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 depends on the writer and there are many different kinds of reasons behind writing and different roles one might play in as a writer. For me, I feel like my role is as a story-teller. I feel like the most intriguing aspect of where I live is that it is paradoxically globally local. British Columbia today is a province of people from all over the world. The original settlements stretching back at least ten thousand years with the First Nations then the arrival of Europeans and Chinese and Japanese and then all of a sudden in the late eighties the whole world descended upon this wild diverse landscape forever rendering the community complex and dynamic. I find stories beckoning from all over when I’m here. What I find particularly powerful is that British Columbia is a place where people refuse to give up their stories. No matter what has been thrown at the First Nations people or the Chinese people who came here, no matter what cruelty was dished out to European immigrants or the Japanese during World War II, no one will relinquish the story of their suffering and of their triumphs. People in this community create cultures within cultures by adhering to their stories and I want to be a part of this.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I find an outside editor invaluable. Coming from the scholarly community, I like an editor who does not pull punches. I am not wedded to my every word or even character and find it easy to cut or erase or reinvent if needed. I like the dialogue that occurs when an editor examines in detail one’s work. I am particularly lucky at present because my publisher, Ben Coles of Promontory Press, is also a novelist and thus I find his editing exceptional in terms of his sense of story.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
My brother is a screenwriter and he told me that when I got stuck writing, I should stop and go for a long walk. It works wonders. My best ideas come to me or the solutions to my literary problems inevitably emerge when I’m walking.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (plays to fiction to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
The move from academic writing to creative writing was very hard, but I had an excellent writing group who encouraged me. I began by writing little “essays” as I literally felt baffled by the concept of fictional presentation. However, once I committed to creative writing, I find that shifting genres is quite seamless. I think because I have worked as a teacher of literature for a long time and also as a director of plays, I feel as comfortable in the world of Beowulf as I do on the stage of the Laramie Project. 

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 try to keep early morning open for writing before I have to go to work. If I’m being hounded by unsympathetic characters, I’ll write when I have spares from teaching or during lunch or just before dinner or while my son is at an activity just to quiet them. Any long weekend or extended holiday is writing time. I try to carve out as much time as possible and resent interruptions!

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
If I get stuck and my long walk fails to help, then I simply leave the section of the novel I’m working on and turn my attention to something else. I have an extremely poor memory and always have; however, I am able to keep clear in my mind long intertwining narratives with all the characters and their different detailed issues. My husband finds this quality in me quite annoying as I struggle to remember a person’s name or a book I’ve read or something I really need to purchase, while I can go on and on about my plots’ twists and turns or describe my characters’ outfits or speech patterns.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Home smells to me like my kids: boys’ sports equipment, boys’ empty orange juice glasses, boys’ quilts that are rumpled, boys’ shampooed hair as they lay their heads down on our dog’s musty coat, boys’ running shoes and the warmed fabric of their school uniforms. 

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?
My books are definitely shaped by books as I truly believe in seeing the world through the lens of literature, but when I’m writing, I tend to engross myself in the world of winemakers or the world of Chinese mythology or the RCMP. I love the detail and vocabulary and ideology that define groups of people who are utterly foreign to me. I’m the opposite of the writer that writes what he or she knows. I tend to write what I don’t know.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I have studied in depth, over the course of years and years, particular writers, and a day does not go by when I’m not under their influence. I could not have written with such intense sympathy the Irish terrorists of Royal Dispatch without James Joyce at my shoulder. I could not have written with such humorous grief the story of Gwen in Third Culture Kid without having taught Holden Caulfield’s story year after year. The torturous journey of Dante as he descends into hell in order to spiritually raise himself back up most definitely has shaped the tragic losses that occur in the cursed tale Gemini Cycle. That said, I do not think for a moment that my own fiction is anywhere near these great writers in terms of achievement. I merely hear them as I try to tell my own stories. Thus, I greatly admire the way in which Virginia Woolf obliquely delineates a character’s psychology and I strive to marshal her approach as I putter away at my laptop. I loved the movie Midnight In Paris as it told in such a sweet way the yearning we have to spend time with our favorite writers and the way in which we cannot help but dialogue with them across the ages.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Much as I find working with young people inspiring and interesting, I would like to write for a living and not have to always divide my time between teaching and writing. My dream would be to live in different countries for stretches of time and write novels.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I would love to act and sing. What holds me back is being highly introverted and self-conscious; hence, writing allows me to be creative and interactive yet also protects my need for quiet and alone time. I get along extremely well with my computer.

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

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I recently watched Cloud Atlas and I found its exploration of time and eternal recurrence fascinating. I especially found captivating the weight moments carry when one has the opportunity to do a kindness or a cruelty. I am in the midst of The Imperfectionists and am very caught up in the characters and premise. The writing is original and the descriptions quirky which has set my imagination singing.

20 - What are you currently working on?
Besides the arduous and painful task of editing, I am two chapters into the sequel to Crush which is the next Paige Munroe wine mystery called Celsius and it’s set on the Big Island of Hawaii at Volcano Winery. Celsius is all about what happens when literal and figurative heat is added to the mix of wine, relationships, food and so on. I wasn’t planning to write a sequel, but readers keep asking for it. I have a novel that needs minor edits and I’m hoping to have published in the fall entitled Gemini Cycle; it’s about the working out of an ancient Chinese curse in contemporary Vancouver’s China Town.  I have another novel called Third Culture Kid which is set at an international private school and is narrated by a fourteen year old girl who has major social issues because her dad is the Headmaster and her new step-mom is the new school counselor. Needless to say, no one wants to be her friend. Not sure when my publisher will bring that one out, perhaps in the new year. I am actually working on more, but I really find that this is one of my worst instances of going “on and on” and with that, I will hush.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Lucy Ives, The Worldkillers

1. Speculation:
We might think of description as the suppression of distance, since it brings that which is not present near.            Language, meanwhile, counterfeits presence. (One thinks of Gide’s Les faux-monnayeurs.)            Thus: it matterswhich language you use, whether it is “washed,” how prepared. The extent and location of your vocabulary. The eye remains fixed within the face and yet certain entities entice it, the anticipation of skin, something sinks in cloudy liquid. Temperature is so important in description, or that one object may hide another, at least in part.            It is possible we mortals feel solidarity with literary “objects,” in that these carry in themselves their own negation. Nothing participates in literature in permanence. (“On Description”)
In her third trade collection, The Worldkillers (Ann Arbor MI: SplitLevel Texts, 2014), New York City poet Lucy Ivespresents a work in three sections—poem, novel and essays—each of which bleed structurally across the boundaries of form. Ives, the author of Orange Roses (Ahsahta, 2013) [see my review of such here] and nineties (Tea Party Republications, 2013), is quickly developing into a poet of sentences on par with the poem-essays of Lisa Roberston and Phil Hall for their sharp blend of lyric, thought and wit. Her collection is structured in three parts: a section of poems, “My Thousand Novel”; a novel written over the course of a day, “The Worldkilllers”; and an essay, “On Description.” Still, the form between each of these sections remains rather fluid. It remains unclear if the declarations of form (the second section is declared a novel, as the third is declared “[an essay]”) are included as red herrings, distractions or as each section’s suggested focus. As the combined press release for The Worldkillers and Maged Zahir’s If Reality Doesn’t Work Out reads:







Why “Texts”: why “SplitLevel Texts,” that is, not that we are not interested in genre, but we are not interested in saying strictly, this one, this one we love MOST (id est, poetry) cannot contain others: are we children of the theory wars: yes and we were born on the side that loved capacity and textuality even in the earth: and what about hybridity: yes, but more important more to our essence: do we look to darwin and raise a glass to hybrid vigor: yes, very much more than probably yes : so why “Level”: do we see things as balanced: of course and also of course not: oh, so is that what the “Split” is about then: do we see the balance out of balance: yes: so what about “SplitLevel”: have we ever lived in one: have you?
The poems in the first section (including the poem “Poem”) are constructed as a sequence of accumulations; lines and phrases compiled in a kind of breathless rush, much in the way of some of the pieces from Orange Roses. The first section of “Poem” opens:
She does not like that very nice manShe does not like that very nice man on wheels with the face of saltShe does not like to live for three thousand years dripping and falling over her own whisperShe does not live for a week like a dromedary, stupid fringe of crystal sticking out from her eyeIf it’s what she wantsIf it’s lips and teeth and tiny white hairWhy not end every adjective with an “e”
Ives appears to favour repetition and the accumulation throughout her work, and the subsequent sections share this sense of accumulation. Where the poems in the first section might be accumulations of lines and phrases, the second section is one of prose-sections, sentences and plot-movements, and the third one of phrases, quotes and logical turns. The eighth section of her essay, “On Description,” titled “Speculation:” reads:
In the foreground there are reeds—long blades that shake; closed blossoms; and now a shelf of cloud, under which pale orange.            I write in a notebook, “I was just whistling.”
As much as anything else, The Worldkillersis a work that explores the boundaries and blurrings between the arbitrary lines drawn around particular forms, just as much as she plays with the naming of those same forms. Is the poem “Poem” a poem and nothing more? Is the essay “On Description” truly an essay and not, say, a poem-essay, or even simply a poem?

OTTAWA LIT: FALL 2014 PREVIEW

My piece on fall 2014 Ottawa lit, in which I took recommendations from and for Frances Boyle, Jesslyn Delia Smith, Cameron Anstee, Deanna Young, Sandra Ridley, Phil Hall, Chris Johnson, Anita Dolman, James K. Moran, Kate Heartfield, Monty Reid, Amanda Earl, Roland Prevost and a bunch of others, is now posted over at Open Book: Ontario.

matchbook;

I had a new short story this week over at Matchbook, "The New House," along with accompanying essay. This is actually the second submission of fiction I've had posted there (see the other here). Much thanks!