Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 108

dg nanouk okpik, blood snow

 

 

Whiteout Polar Bears

Dead on—in the night sky,
or stuck in the deep web,
bear stars exist. Name the
bone piles on the marsh
heaving like the Chukchi
sea-pure-ice-white and
Arctic air rising. Fifty miles
of open water floating.
I’m a carcass with
marrow bones 5x’s an ice
bear at 1,500 lb. and 9 feet
tall. One swipe of my paw
you’re neck-snapped, to the ice,
melt ground, cheek to red
ice stream. I glance across
the whiteness to myself.

The second full-length poetry collection by New Mexico-based Anchorage, Alaska Inupiaq-Inuit poet dg nanouk okpik, following the multiple award-winning Corpse Whale (Tucson AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2012), is blood snow (Seattle WA/New York NY: Wave Books, 2022), a collection of meditative, first-person descriptive lyrics populated by birds, inlets, polar bears, the north wind, polar cap and the thaw, moose tracks, seal, birch and berries. “Sunken sod of whalebone,” she writes, to open the poem “Ice Age Two,” “earth houses rising, / out of feathered sea / water.” Grounded in her particular northern landscape, okpik offers a perspective on a culture and climate, as well as man-made pollution and climate change, specifically around northern resource stripping. “The Little People brought south / winds with pollution.” she writes, to open the poem “Polar Bear Lost,” “As the polar / thunder starts in a rip-crackle- / roaring, across, on January 1st / 2018 in Santa Fe just as / Ursus Maritimus.” There is a curious call-and-response element to certain of her poems, suggesting nearly a hybrid form of the English-language utaniki (thinking specifically of Canadian poets such as bpNichol, Fred Wah and Chris Johnson), as certain poems in the collection include a small trio of lines at the ends of poems, nearly as a three-line closure or addendum, adding to the pulse of the body of the poem through a combination of repetition and addition, almost in a haiku-like structure. “way in and one way out,” she offers, to close the poem “Fossil Fuel Embers,” “blackwood cooked slow over done / skies whale gray-blue [.]” On the whole, okpik offers such a lovely and light touch of the lyric, the line, one that rolls across a deep knowledge of a landscape, composed to bridge her own particular distance. “In the sunglow I roll / a handful of ice silt clay,” she writes, as part of “Early Morning Sky Blue Pink,” “roll it in my hands until // they’re red-rose red—I don’t let them bleed. / Let them feel with the texture of each grain. // I’m a round ball; minute ball. / A blossom ball of future-past-present.”

This is a wonderfully evocative collection, with an open heart and a determined lyric, and there’s a straightforwardness to the structure of this collection that I’m quite enjoying, one that isn’t broken up into thematic or structural sections, but simply a collection of individual poems, assembled together to form a book. Her poems do seem composed to attempt, in her own way, to reconcile a suggested disconnect—the rippling effects of her outside adoption as an infant—between herself and the foundational elements of her culture and landscape. “No, not all at once did they come,” she writes, as part of the poem “When the Mosquitoes Came,” “those takers didn’t know. Then they came in waves of time, / curiosity driven in urgency of a newborn baby girl, / me to be only theirs, no matter what harm it caused me / it was to an Inupiaq family secret, / what they knew meant right makes might.” As a whole, blood snow exists as a document of witness, a love letter and a declaration of belonging, and an argument for both ecological and cultural preservation, simply through the evocative descriptions and language the flow of her lyric, the waves of her words, provide against such book-length shoreline. “I live in a dugout in the cliffs next to the ocean,” she writes, as part of the poem “Twilight Pain,” “bluffs receding filling with seawater rising / from melting glacial ice. Across the inlet seal island / not far from my dugout. / They bark and sun themselves all day, / but are in constant fear of losing ground to walrus.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Nicole McCarthy

Nicole McCarthy is an experimental writer and artist based outside of Seattle. Her work has appeared in PANK, Hobart, The Offing, Redivider, Glass: a Journal of Poetry, Best American Experimental Writing, and others. Her work has also been performed and encountered as projection installation pieces throughout the Puget Sound. Her first nonfiction collection, A SUMMONING , was published summer of 2022 from Heavy Feather Review. Find her at nicolemccarthypoet.com. 

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

A Summoning is my first book and it showed me that I could write a book. It taught me that there isn’t one way to write a book as long as you just get started. Most of the time the body of work will guide you with how it wants to come together. In the process of writing this book I’ve worked with many writers, each one making me a better writer in the process. Renee Gladman, a well-known experimental writer and artist, was my thesis advisor in grad school and really pushed me to be better with every piece I created. I don’t know what this book would look like without her. I also worked closely with Amaranth Borsuk and Rebecca Brownas I put the collection together, and I feel incredibly lucky that they continue to support me and champion my work.

I can see how my writing has changed even from this first book already. I’m working on a nonfiction collection as well as, to everyone’s surprise, a horror novel. Something about the pandemic kicked off a thrill in me to consume anything horror, and it’s helped. I’ve also become obsessed with the micro essay, evaluating every sentence and every word to see if it’s working hard enough. When I approach writing now, I think about making concise, impactful little paragraphs that linger with people when they read it. So much can be felt and communicated in under 1,000 words.

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

I wrote poetry in response to a writing prompt in sixth grade, so I suppose it started then. My teacher put it up on the bulletin board in the hallway for all to see, and it lit the ember in me to always be a writer in some form or another. I was also a big reader as a kid, I even won book reading competitions at school and at my local library. I could see, early on, how you can create beauty and art through writing, so I took classes in all genres so I could be versatile and experiment in any genre that possessed 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?

It really depends. When I have a micro essay in mind, I’ll give myself ten minutes with the idea to write down what I’m thinking, then I leave it alone for a few weeks and come back to it, slimming it down, refocusing on the point of the piece, and polishing. I’ve finished whole micro essays in under 30 minutes that feel done, while others I’m still tinkering with because I haven’t reached the center of them yet.

With a nonfiction book project, it takes me ages. I like including research elements into my nonfiction, so I frequently spend months just reading books and highlighting passages I know I’ll reference somewhere in one of my pieces. Lots of diligent notetaking! I’ll write drafts and start tying things together, but with a nonfiction book project I never know when it’s done, what it needs next, what pieces to work on, etc. It’s chaos.

With my horror novel, I’ve given myself the gift of play. I have no expectations for it, so I’ve been experimenting with storytelling elements and themes without putting too much pressure on myself. I set an overall project outline that helps guide me along, but really I just let the narrative wander where it wants, and I merely follow and shape. It’s been a rewarding, refreshing experience.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

It really depends on the project. My pieces usually begin with a sentence I’ve jotted down or a prompt/moment I’ve been dwelling on for a bit. I spend time developing the piece, giving it space to tell me what form it needs to take. Sometimes it comes out looking like a poem, most times it’s a micro essay. I’ll have a feeling in my gut whether or not it’s done. One time I sat on a micro essay for over a year because every time I revisited it, it didn’t have the impact I was hoping for and something about it felt hungry. Because it was about the illusion of love and betrayal, I ended up splicing the text with late 1800s drawings of magicians doing magic tricks. Then I felt in my gut it was done.

I typically create several pieces that come together as a collection, that way I can see how the pieces are in conversation with each other, but I’m currently working on a novel that I’m taking the more traditional route with and working on it from beginning to the end.

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

Public readings are a big part of the process for me. In the way I think about how my text and visuals will lay out on a page, how I think about my use of white space, etc., I approach event venues and readings the same way. Being in-person with an audience brings the potential for additional layers to the work. One event I did focused on the 12-page overlapping memory piece that appears in my book, and I planted people in the audience to read; we took turns reading our parts until our voices overlapped and it was the coolest result. Another performance I did was for my second nonfiction collection. I threw myself a divorce (like someone would throw a wedding) in a Tudor-style mansion in Seattle. I had toast givers and my original wedding dress on a mannequin with photo props to encourage people to take pictures with it. I came into the performance with a 45-foot veil with wildflowers woven in before jumping right into the reading, and it was the most fun I had because I could feel this book take on another level and a new meaning for me. That wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t done a public reading. It’s my favorite part of the process.

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

I’m always trying to say something, and I always try to take risks in writing. Whether that’s discussing memory and how it shapes our existence, the failings of society, or how do we find control in horror situations, I aspire to explore topics without being on the nose about it.

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

We are the witnesses, aren’t we? Documenting history, creating these capsules of art and pain and truth to live outside of time. It’s much larger than that though; we also provide others connections to remind ourselves we aren’t alone in our experiences. At the heart of it, I see the role of writer as witness first.

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

I haven’t really worked with an outside editor. I have a core group of people I went to college with who have reviewed my work, which was a fun process. The process of swapping work with writers you’re close with and whom you have grown to know their work really well is so cool because you can see, over years, how they’ve grown into their writing. There is also an inherent trust that builds as they encounter your work and provide feedback.  When I went through the editing process for A Summoning, my press asked me to create new visuals for the first half of the book, and it was the greatest suggestion that I’m still thankful for. It added some new layers to the narrative that weren’t there before.

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

Don’t feel bad about not writing all of the time. When you’re not writing, you’re out cultivating experiences. My poetry mentor taught me that and it helps immensely in times when I’m not feeling like a “real writer”. People on social media are constantly posting about their accomplishments or book deals, which can weigh on you, but sometimes your body and your mind need to check out so you can bake a cake or watch ducks in your local pond or feed your neighborhood squirrels. These moments have turned into micro essays for me eventually, but I allow myself that time to just be present in my own reality and take a breath from everything.

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

It’s been a necessary part of my writing process for years. Sometimes when I’m trying to communicate something, text simply isn’t enough. Adding a visual to pair alongside text is instrumental in relying the idea or feeling I’m hoping to convey. It shows the reader an additional layer to the work and a small snapshot into how the piece is working in my head.

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 wish I had found a routine that works, but it’s all over the board. Sometimes I try to get up early to write, sometimes I stay up passed my bedtime to get revisions done, and sometimes I do nothing at all. I try to write a few times throughout the week, percolate on some writing ideas I’ve been working on, then I dive into several hours of writing on the weekend. It’s best if I give myself deadlines because then I’ll actually get the work done.

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

When I get stalled I hop to another project. I revisit something that I’ve let sit and simmer, seeing if fresh eyes will help kickstart it again. I also have a stack of notecards on my desk with different prompts to get me going. Sometimes all I need is to give myself 10 minutes to work my creative muscles to free myself from writers block.

I also have writing specific dates with my husband, who is also a writer. We have café dates where we get coffee, put headphones in and write for a couple of hours, keeping up some dedicated writing time every week. We also do book walk and talks in the spring and summer – we’ll find a trail and walk 2-3 miles while we talk through our writing projects and go over what we’re stuck on. Some of my best writing breakthroughs have happened on these walks. He’s my best editor and thought partner, so usually I just talk to him about what I’m stuck on and we visualize different paths the piece could go.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Warm banana bread. My mom’s laundry detergent (probably from Costco). Folgers coffee brewing. Lavender lemonade candles. The cologne my fella wears.

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 leave myself open to be inspired by everything. A writer teacher of mine mentioned in a class that every moment is worthy of being an essay, even the small moments. It’s stuck with me, so anytime I’m out in the world making more memories and encountering art, nature etc., I know I’m opening myself to more writing. When I was on top of a crater in Maui, I was inspired by nature, yes, but also who I was with and why I was there, thinking about my place in the universe. I have curated playlists for all my writing projects and I listen to them repeatedly to help me settle into the tone of what I’m writing. I see this inspiration and influence like a reverberation or a ripple in a pond, one can’t exist without the other.

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

Everything. I would love to keep exploring the horror genre and getting involved with that literary community. I would love to keep up with my nonfiction and continue to push the boundaries of what in-person performances can do and what can be done on the page/ on the web. I would also love to bring this element of performance into my horror fiction work in the future.

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

Strangely enough, I think I would have become a therapist. It’s fulfilling to me to help people and hear their stories, knowing they are trusting me to engage with them with empathy and compassion. Very different, but still a lot of note taking.

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

I’ve always been a poor communicator, especially with the people I’m closest to. Writing is my way of taking a breath, thinking through a topic or moment deeply, then writing something in a way that reveals a piece of me.

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

Poetry: Green River Valley by Robert Lashley (from Blue Cactus Press)

Fiction: The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

Nonfiction: The Guild of the Infant Savior by Megan Culhane Gabraith (Ohio State Press)

To be honest I haven’t been watching anything new, but I have been revisiting class 90s TV and film like The Mummy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer,Scream, 10 Things I Hate About You, etc. It’s making my bitter heart happy.

19 - What are you currently working on?

See above 😊

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

essays in the face of uncertainties : now available!

My suite of pandemic essays, essays in the face of uncertainties, is now available from Mansfield Press! I am extremely pleased to see publication of this wee book. Do you remember when I was posting weekly excerpts of the then-work-in-progress across those first few months of original Covid-19 lockdown? Huge thanks to Denis De Klerck (this is my second Mansfield title, by the by, after my 2019 poetry collection A halt, which is empty, which I still have copies of, as well), and to Stuart Ross, who worked on the manuscript as my editor (I would recommend him highly for any and all of your editorial needs). And of course, thanks to Sir Stephen Brockwell for permission to use his photograph on the cover. As the press release for the book offers:

This suite of pandemic essays exist within those first one hundred days of original lockdown, marking time through moments, anxieties and the elasticity of time itself. What are days, weeks, months? In this stunning collection of deeply personal essays, Ottawa writer rob mclennan wanders through literature, parenting, family, the constant barrage of cable news and the slow loss of his widower father across the swirling, simultaneous anxieties and uncertainties of an increasing sense of isolation.

I have a stack of copies on-hand, if anyone is interested ; if such appeals, send $18 (via email or paypal to rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com) ; obviously adding $5 for postage for Canadian orders; for orders to the United States, add $11 (for anything beyond that, send me an email and we can figure out postage); for current above/ground press subscribers , I’m basically already mailing you envelopes regularly, so I would only charge Canadians $3 for postage, and Americans $6 (that make sense?)

Or: if you live close enough, I could simply drop a copy off in your mailbox (or you come by here, I suppose); naturally, I’ll certainly have copies this weekend at the ottawa small press book fair (Saturday from noon to 5pm, Jack Purcell Community Centre, 2nd floor; Elgin Street). I also have copies, still, of my spring poetry title, the book of smaller(University of Calgary Press, 2022) for $20 (same postal rates as above), although if you might be open to ordering both (and/or my other Mansfield title, as well), I think I could knock $5 off the total price. Otherwise, either send myself or the publisher a note for a media/review copy, and be aware that I’m rather good at answering interview questions.

The book even has some lovely blurbs! Really, I couldn’t ask for much better than this.

mclennan’s writing is clear and haunting. This is a book that will stay with you for years to come.

Anne Thériault

The short lyric essays that comprise this book in one long meditative stream are indeed written in the face of uncertainties: not knowing where the pandemic of 2020 and on will lead us or how it will change us. The narrator/author stays home with his wife and two daughters while the map of the fallen to Covid expands and the numbers mount. In the face of the terrifying reality of death and political neglect, we are ensconced in the peaceful home of a small family that continues to work and play in isolation. mclennan writes with great elegance and compassion, and his expansive reading of books and authors from all over the world is brought into his narrative with great skill and ease. As a result, we find ourselves at the centre of a very large world of writers talking to each other across the globe and we see clearly that in this lockdown we are not alone. We never were alone. This book is a beautiful companion for our time and a very absorbing narrative that is hard to put down once you begin. 

                        Kristjana Gunnars

 

Melissa Fite Johnson, Green

 

I’M ONLY HAPPY WHEN IT RAINS
            after the Garbage song

My song came on and I jerked the volume up,
stomped on the gas, sang along: My only comfort
is the night gone black. Since his laryngectomy,
my father couldn’t talk. He studied me
from the passenger seat. I had to chauffeur him around
after his strokes. I wished the Toyota were a rocket
shooting me out of this town. Pour your misery
down on me. The song ended. I’d cried
through the last chorus: I’m riding high upon
a deep depression. I’m only happy when it rains.
He gestured to his paralyzed side—his right hand
a claw resting in his lap, his right leg limp
against the car door. He pointed to his chest,
mouthed, Me, too. He struggled to sit up. Me, too.

Lawrence, Kansas poet Melissa Fite Johnson’s second full-length collection, following While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015), is Green (Arlington VA: Riot in Your Throat, 2021), a collection of short, feisty, first-person narratives set as accumulations of short sentences or phrases, one piled or layered atop another. “Once my father wanted yogurt / but couldn’t remember the word.” she writes, to open the poem “THE IMMEDIACY,” “Once he tried to carry his own cereal, / brace the bowl’s lip against his cane handle, / and my mother came home to flakes / crusted to the kitchen floor.” Johnson composes a sequence of staccato narratives on family, childhood, pop culture and growing up, offering a progression of family moments, from her father’s illness and eventual death to her mother finding someone new, and moving to join them. She writes of youthful folly, youthful trauma, setting pop culture against hard lessons, understanding only the experience of another through her own lens: “He clamped his hand over your guitar, / undressed your melodies, forced / your words into his mouth.” (“APOLOGY TO TAYLOR SWIFT”) Her narratives bounce between staccato-points, allowing her conclusions to occur between occasionally distant markers, composing poems that almost give the appearance of disconnect or collage, but exist as threads, deeply held together and deeply felt. There is such heart here, one that carries the narratives across their thresholds, navigating the best and the worst of each possibility it might endure.

Charles Jensen, Instructions between Takeoff and Landing

 

POEM IN WHICH WORDS HAVE BEEN LEFT OUT

—After the Miranda Rights, established 1966

You have the right to remain
anything you can and will be.

An attorney you cannot afford will
be provided to you.

You have silent will.
You can be against law.
You cannot afford one. 

You remain silent. Anything you say
will be provided to you.

The right can and will be
against you. Have anything you say
be right. anything you say
can be right. the right remain silent.

You will be held. You will be
provided. You cannot be you.

California poet and editor Charles Jensen’s third full-length poetry collection, following The First Risk (Amherst MA: Lethe Press, 2009) and Nanopedia (Red Wing MN: Tinderbox Editions, 2018) [see my review of such here], is Instructions between Takeoff and Landing (Akron OH: The University of Akron Press, 2022), a structure of lyric examinations that collectively articulate poetic form, human possibility and personal grief, composed from within the chaos and potential self-destruction of America. “Before there was loss,” he writes, as part of the opening poem, “ORIGIN MYTHS,” of the seven-poem sequence “INSTRUCTIONS TO THE EXAM TAKER,” “there was gain.” He writes of the space race, tales of masculinity, story problems, childhood, mortality, family and fear, and cultural appraisals and apprehensions, often employing sly commentary on the ways in which we perform to each other, or even to ourselves. “Where the world enters us,” he writes, as part of the poem-stagger “STILL,” “is where it leaves / its scars.” The playful manner Jensen offers his structures, set with wry humour, often belie some of the dark material he wrestles with throughout the collection, from Miranda Rights, the belief in the “rapture,” to fear of death and of death itself, such as the sequence “HOSPICE,” a devastating and delicate lyric in nine short sections, the first of which, “Lift,” reads:

I lifted my mother’s body from the passenger seat—
the notches of her spine, her slats of ribs—
each bone against my skin, her weight
pulling me down even as I lifted her

my only thought
don’t let go
don’t let go
don’t let go

There are such losses throughout this collection, and for Jensen, it would seem, those losses are deeply personal, and deeply felt. One could see the parallel of “takeoff” and “landing” as the points between birth and death; one could see the entire collection a playful deflection, utilizing sly humour and a playful manner around a book around death, and the grief that so often surrounds and accompanys each experience. As the poem “STILL” offers, further on: “I cannot take / any more pain from other / people’s misery.” The two-page poem ends: “Your suicide was not / a crime against life. It is / a limp most people can’t / detect. I lie I always tell.” His poems are simultaneously delightful and devastating, composing lines so tight that one could bounce a quarter, one might say, off just about any of them.

Having worked his prior collection through an examination of the prose poem, the poems in Instructions between Takeoff and Landing play instead with alternative elements of poetic narrative, including plays on the schoolbook quiz and official government surveys. His poems, one might say, are beset with questions, some of which might not actually be as rhetorical as he suggests. Set in eight sections, every second section, each called “STORY PROBLEMS,” includes each but a single sequence of numbered poems, composed as cycles that work their way through the collection as a whole. Each section within these particular sequences also include an additional call-and-response format, displaying echoes of the classic Greek chorus, of the school workbook “quiz questions,” offering simultaneously revealing and tongue-in-cheek queries that illuminate the poems they sit within. As part of the sequence “INSTRUCTIONS TO THE EXAM TAKER,” the second half of the fourth poem, “MEMORY,” writes:

Quiz on this section:

a.      Point to the most revealing expression in this passage. What does it suggest about you? About me? I mean, the narrator.

b.     Write a diary entry in the voice of a satellite. Date it December 5, 1977.

c.      Sketch the feeling of “isolation” using charcoals or Cray-Pas only.

d.     Describe the atmosphere of a planet in our solar system as though it were your childhood.

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Heather Sellers

Heather Sellers is the author of four collections of poetry, The Boys I Borrow (New Issues Press), Drinking Girls and Their Dresses (winner of the Sawtooth Prize), The Present State of the Garden , winner of the Blue Lynx Prize, and Field Notes from the Flood Zone , from BOA Editions.

She is also the author of The Practice of Creative Writing: a guide for students, just out in a fully revised fourth edition. The book contains work by 50 authors and offers a thorough introduction to creative writing across the genres.  Her memoir, You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know was Editor’s Choice at The New York Times. Her essays have appeared widely. She directs the creative writing program at the University of South Florida.  Her website is heathersellers.com.

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

Georgia Underwater helped me get tenure—that was life-changing, to be sure. And it made me feel valid as a writer, to have a book published.  Also, my mother stopped speaking to me for a time after I published my first book and as painful as that was, the break in contract helped me begin to sort out some important truths about my family.

My recent work, and all of my work, feels like an extension of that first project—I see it all as one big inter-related body of work—in terms of subject matter, theme, and intention. I hope my skills get better with each project.  Lately I’ve been working most intentionally on sentences, rhythm, story-telling crafts, concision and accuracy.

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

My Ph.D. is in fiction and my first book was a collection of linked short stories. I took as many poetry courses as I could, but in my program, one had to declare a genre, and I declared my work “fiction” mostly because Jerry Stern was not on leave that semester and the poets were and I was a much better reader of fiction than I was of poetry.

We didn’t have “non-fiction” in creative writing then, but my poetry and fiction were absolutely dwelling in that space.   But I did not see genres as wholly separate things, or in a hierarchy.  My first book, self-bound and self-published, by myself, when I was ten years old, contained a short story, a tiny memoir, a one page play and a long poem. I thought every writer worked across the genres. A writer is someone who writes things.

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 wouldn’t say fast or slow. I would say “ongoing.” I try to work every day—if I don’t, part of myself seems to turn against myself. I’m more present to the world and those around me if I’m able to write every day. I wish this weren’t the case. But the concentration required is somehow medicine for my poor brain: grounding, focusing, clearing.

Once in awhile, I’ll get down on the page something I really, really like, right out of the gate, and the shaping process hews fairly close to that first “down draft” but usually the first drafts look nothing like the final results. I’m a heavy, hearty, devoted re-writer—rewriting is writing to me. 

I do take a lot of notes on index cards and the backs of envelops and in my phone. I am not great at organizing and then finding these notes when I need them, but I think the act of noting is productive in itself—little breadcrumbs here and there, so I don’t completely lose my way.

I like to read notes by artists and writers, and I love fragments as art objects. And I’m completely surrounded by a sea of notes as I work…notes in books, and printed out drafts and pencils and post-its and lists and outlines and charts. It’s very messy. Writing for me is a layering process.

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 know many poets say the poem begins with sound, language, and rhythm.  For me, the poem begins with an image I can’t get out of mind or a juxtaposition I like.

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

I like to read. Not too often. It takes, for me, enormous preparation and planning and revision and rehearsing and energy and it’s incredibly anxiety-producing, too.  Reading the work aloud in front of an audience sure does lay bare what is working and what is not working. Some pieces work really well out loud and maybe most do not. That takes some figuring out, right? But if someone is taking one out to dinner afterwards, it seems important to attempt to give over some kind of experience that is entertaining and meaningful. So I like it and I do think it’s good creative training but it’s definitely more demanding than pleasurable.

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

I’m absolutely not a scholar.  I’m not sure I’m trying to answer questions with my writing. I’m more trying to document what I observe truthfully and accurately.

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

So many kinds of writers.  So many kinds of roles.  Against “should.”

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

A good editor is the luckiest thing ever, right? She is your teacher.

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

All the advice about outsmarting yourself: You have to figure out how to stay at the desk when you absolutely do not want to, and you have to figure out ways to keep learning your craft so you can improve, and you have to do these things mostly on your own.

You have to be smarter than you are. You have to develop an enormous tolerance for failure. Mostly, you have to stay at the desk.  You have to kind of live there, really.

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

I am very stay-at-home in my life but very wander-y in my writing pursuits. There is so much fantastic work to read, across genres, and so much technique to learn and practice…irresistible. I don’t think I move among genres, I think they move among me! 

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Brenda Hillman, In a Few Minutes Before Later

 

Tech certainly hadn’t helped; chlorpyrifos;;—
cities eking out funds, people sleeping in tents

            with black & white dogs & children;

racist prisons—you’re getting numb to the list—“growth
in the service sector”—

women working three jobs—production of power

& that tone in the profit voices when you call customer service
growing slightly more officious suspecting the next “downturn”—

you wake with nano-minutes of stress built up overnight—
    offshore breezes,   fear of fires—

mosses bunched , , , ,,, , , , ,,,   , near the small oaks (did they fear stone?)

Women had experimented for centuries with too much cortisol—
so, what to do now,   since doing was the problem—   It was just

mainly important to get through the day (“A Slightly Less Stressful Walk Uphill”)

California poet, editor, teacher and activist Brenda Hillman’s eleventh full-length poetry title, In a Few Minutes Before Later (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2022) [see my review of Pieces of Air in the Epic (Wesleyan, 2005) and Practical Water (Wesleyan, 2009) here], a title, as she offers to open her dedication, that was “composed between 2016 & 2021, half before & half during the pandemic.” Sitting at two full pages, her point-form extended list of dedications includes numerous individuals, creatures, geographies, punctuation and ideas, and even a list of numbers; how many books, let alone poetry books, include dedications to lists of numbers or punctuation? Set in six numbered sections—“In Landscapes of Stress & Beauty,” “Activism & Poetry—Some Brief Reports,” “There Are Many Women to Cherish,” “For Writers Who Are Having Trouble,” “The Sickness & the World Soul” and “In a Few Minutes Before Later”—Hillman furthers her exploration through a poetic of lived action, offering up a lyric that contends with and articulates her activism on numerous fronts, comparable to similar works by Vancouver poets Stephen Collis and Christine Leclerc, or Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier. “Days are unusual.” she offers to open the first poem in the collection, “Micro-minutes on / Your Way to Work,” “The owl sends / out 5 zeroes from the pines / plus one small silver nothing.” As has been the case through her books for some time, Hillman’s lyrics are large in scope, and reminiscent, slightly, of the experimental lyric heft and lightnessess contained in the later works of the late poet CD Wright [see my review of her final collection here], offering poems that skim, stretch and turn, all while managing to lift the lyric well beyond its earthly bounds. Even her use of punctuation, offering sequences of commas, pushing beyond not only the visual element of text on the page but the actual fact of punctuating, holding, halting. Pop pop pop pop. One can’t help but be affected by the placement of text upon the physical page.

i saw the clouds go by in used lab coats.
i heard the neighbor looking for her cat.
      The hour is come, the prophet wrote
The squirrel  has no apocalypse,   & shakes
  a gravid branch—consciousness in high places… (“[in the split gardens   irrational hope]”)

She writes interruptions, activism and “minutes of visible and invisible existence,” tackling a world-view of a sequence of space both intimate and deeply personal. She wants to live, after all, and she wants you to be able to live as well, offering notebook scraps layered across and below ecological concerns and public declarations. “The future was handsome before the power went out,” opens the poem “Poem Before the Power Went Out,” “She wrote to say he was being nice [.]” Hillman’s poems always provide the sense of something detailed, shaped; a layering of perfect detail, through an ease of line that flows as easily as song. “Poets are often tired,” she writes, as part of the poem “Among Some Anapests / at Civic Center.” Later in the same poem, offering: “A terrible beauty is dead / & the sun was tender upon us // We don’t think the hitting will work / A defensive time is made // A poem is not a protest / Subject to history’s impress [.]”

imogen xtian smith, stemmy things

 

i am not a woman. My gender is feminine.
Even the moon travels farther for what
it wants. Mostly i am water—swollen,
mourning, tie a blue ribbon round my finger
& forget me. Do you think me monstrous,
wanting my body my way? My poem
is a dream saying teach me where
you’re brittle & maybe we can rest there,
where breath tethers limbs to toes
wrapped blue knit, where nothing alone
is useful. Deep in the quiet i touch myself
undone, stars still stars over turns
& brambles, a dark wood weaving beyond
city light. You love the mess, don’t you,
the way consequence gives & gives—
stony dismay, a sweetness of rest. Here’s
a poem for my body, stemmy thing—it
begins & ends in dirt. (“deep ecology”)

There is such an electricity to the lyric of Lenapehoking/Brooklyn-based poet and performer imogen xtian smith’s full-length debut, stemmy things (New York NY: Nightboat Books, 2022). “Poetry both is & is not a luxury.” they write, to open the “author’s note” included at the beginning of the collection. “My intention has been to trouble the worlds in which i move, support, fail, live, struggle, love & continue trans-ing, addressing with rigor the circumstances that continuously shape me.” Through a book-length lyric, smith writes an extended sequence of sharp moments across narrative thought, one deeply engaged with numerous threads, all of which wrap in and around identity, self and gender. “Nothing is ever finished,” they write, as part of the poem “deep ecology,” set near the beginning. “Consequence gives a body / shape, says you cannot build home in a lie.”

One immediately garners a sense of Bernadette Mayer’s influence echoing through these poems (a quote by Mayer is one of two set to open the first section), as well as Eileen Myles, both of whom offer a fierce and even straightforward directness in their own ongoing works. Across the poems of stemmy things, smith unfolds a sequence of diaristic offerings of narrative examination, utilizing the suggestion of biography (whether actual or fictional, or some blend of both) for the sake of exploring and defining truths and discoveries across the length and breadth of becoming who they are meant to become. “By way of explanation,” they write, to open the poem “so the maggots know,” “i am / an unreliable narrator of my body / living gender to gender, marked / at birth yet far flung of phylum / straddling difference / between impossibility & lack—woman / & man—i, neither, though always / with children, a queendom / of eggs to the belly [.]” There is such a confidence to these lyrics, these examinations, reaching across vast distances with clarity and ease. If only a fraction of the rest of us could hold such fearlessness and poise while navigating uncertain terrain. “You need to know a radical touch,” they write, as part of the opening poem, “open letter utopia,” subtitled, “after Audre Lorde,” “that my yes means yes, my no, no, that yes & no / & maybe may shift while we linger, articulate, break / apart as moments ask. Does your blood taste iron?”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Michelle Poirier Brown

Michelle Poirier Brown is nêhiyaw-iskwêw and a citizen of the Métis Nation, currently living in Vernon, BC. Her debut book of poems You Might Be Sorry You Read This was published in 2022 by the University of Alberta Press, Robert Kroetsch Series and a chapbook, Intimacies , recently appeared with Jack Pine Press. Her poem “Wake” won PRISM international’s Earle Birney Prize in 2019. The song cycle, "The Length of a Day” (Jeffrey Ryan, composer), premiered in 2021. Michelle’s work has appeared in Arc, CV2, The Greensboro Review, Grain, Literary Review of Canada, Plenitude, Right Hand Pointing, untethered, Vallum, and several anthologies. A feminist activist, Michelle won a landmark human rights case establishing reasonable accommodation in the workplace for breastfeeding women. Retired from careers as a speech writer, conflict analyst, and federal treaty negotiator, she now writes full time and has taken up birdwatching.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I’m writing this answer only a few months after publication of my first book. I think it will be a while before I know how it will change my life. It’s a memoir that contains secrets. Hard to know the impact telling a secret will have.

At this moment, hard on the heels of weeks of launch events, I’m most curious about the impact of "coming out" as a performer. I’ve been a story performer for years, but a story performance is a feat of memorization, whereas a poetry reading is a more intimate act, less cerebral. I experience my embodied self as a kind of bridge from the page to the listener. It’s akin to delivering a homily, in that the eye contact and vocal techniques are similar. And a homily is very much an intimate experience. Sometimes uncomfortable. But so much more subdued. The poetry readings are much more dramatic, involving a range of performance styles. The book has enabled me to be who I am in the world in the way that feels a true representation of my self. Uncensored. Precise.

The book as a book has changed relationships. There are things friends now know that they didn’t before. Don’t know yet what that will be like.

There hasn’t been time since publication for there to be much “recent work.” I do have one assignment I’m working on. Writing appears to be as hard to do as it ever was. Producing a poem always feels like putting myself through a sieve.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I have published both pieces of prose as well as poetry, and the memoir, although billed as a book of poetry, does contain some prose. The fact I had enough poetry to hold a narrative arc together came as a surprise to me. When I began the memoir in 2012, I began in prose. I was attending both prose and poetry workshops, but attending a three day retreat with Lorna Crozier taught me that poetry was something that could be produced on demand. To do so was so challenging, it made the writing of prose feel  easier. But then the encapsulating powers of poetry proved so satisfying, it took over as my focus during writing practice. A poem can create an intimate, vivid experience in a matter of lines.

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?
The start of a project is dictated by the deadline, and I will create deadlines (by, for example, choosing to enter a contest) in order to generate work. I have a visceral sense of how long something will take to squeeze out and have a strong sense of when to direct my mind to focus in order to meet a deadline. How much time I have to research and mull, then, varies. Once I’ve started, I can do little else. I need to have a sense I’ve cleared away everything else and can work uninterrupted, even if for days. First drafts comes slowly, word by word, line by line. It’s more often akin to sculpting in stone than sketching before painting.

Precision takes time but rather than write volumes and then edit down to essentials, I use square brackets. It’s a common practice in legal drafting, but I’ve been doing it in creative writing for as long as I’ve been writing. Accuracy, such a precise scientific term, brings muscle to a line. Square-bracketing allows me to move on quickly, then come back to research and refine. I think the fact I use this approach is one of the reasons Laura Apol calls my work poetic inquiry. It’s how I learn.

4 - Where does a poem or work of prose 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 write short pieces. With prose, I like to work with a specific word count. A homily is about 2,700 words. With poetry, I write until the visceral sense I have of the topic has been addressed. This rarely takes more than a page. I struggle with longer narrative arcs. In prose, I work scene by scene, usually completing my sense of story in around 5,000 words. It’s highly unmarketable to work in these short spans of narrative. A book, then, relies on being a collection. And a collection coalescing comes as a surprise.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Public readings are core to my creative process. I can’t separate creation from performance. When writing poetry, I will often pace, pausing to articulate a line, then writing it down. I’ve written a number of performance stories (the kind heard on The Moth, or in BC, The Flame). Without the desire to memorize and perform them, these stories would not have been written. Having a book of poetry in print that has the form of a memoir is a powerful experience; different, I think, from what a collection of poetry that is not a memoir might have. People who have read the entire book have read a “story,” and the feedback from readers really centres on the narrative. Having conveyed this narrative is satisfying. But giving breath and timbre to the poems is the aspect of writing that most enlivens me. I’d be sad, even frustrated, if performance could not be part of the process. The “Listen Now” page on my website is, for me, a very meaningful way to connect with my audience.
 
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
My writing practice is more of an exploration of sensibility than an intellectual undertaking. More of a “what is it like to be” than “this is what I’m thinking.”

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I experience writing, both as act and output, as the creation of intimacy. Reading is, for me, is the same, whether the intimacy is with a character in fiction or an intimacy with ideas (the latter being a skill I greatly envy). Writing brings us in close, leaves us different. I would be crazy lonely if other people didn’t write.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential. I find it difficult to read my own writing. It is getting easier as I become more comfortable with my material and more confident in my skills. But often, I feel I have no perspective. I have a submissions editor who regularly gets work of mine from the “probably trash” folder into publication, sometimes with surprisingly warm reception. And I do love the challenges put before me by a line editor who might say something vague, like “this could be stronger.” It can take days to solve a challenge like that, and it is always so satisfying.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Robert Bly: Art requires a confrontation with grandiosity. You have to get comfortable with the audaciousness of feeling you have something to say, or have said something worth hearing. You have to come to terms with feeling worthy. That your art is worth your time. Bly taught that to write is an exercise of self-sovereignty—and that to rule effectively, one must put one's realm in order.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to prose to photography)? What do you see as the appeal?
Poetry, prose and photography are all just things I find myself doing. All three are rooted in an urge to express. I’ve tried to express myself in other ways (cooking, drawing) and don’t pursue them, or identify with them, because they don’t produce satisfying results. A finished homily or poem is very satisfying, as is a well-captured image. My food, on a good day, is edible, at its best nothing more than a decent execution of someone else’s recipe. My stick people can sometimes communicate effectively, but it’s not satisfying. Something poetry, prose and photography have in common is that they are all, for me, activities that require problem solving. In that way, I’d add negotiation to the list. It’s just not an art I practice publicly anymore.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
When in a poetry writing period, I follow the routine I established when I did Arleen Paré’s 2016 writing retreat “The Habit of Art,” which is to sit still and direct my attention to noticing for two hours every day, starting at 7 AM. I allow myself to get up to pour more tea, but that’s it. The rest of the time is noticing, and noting, or working with notes made during previous sessions of noticing. I use the same hours when writing prose, but the practice alters in that it is a matter of turning back to the last sentence written and sitting for at least two hours waiting for the next sentence to arrive.

The more I write, the more I write. If I’m not writing at all, writing every day from 7-9 AM whether I want to or not gets me going.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Research. I’ve done a lot of things as a writer, including several years writing advertising copy. I could write about anything from plow blades to banking services, but it took research. As an art director, the illustrators would often ask, “what is available for reference material?” I have a tiny poem called “Conception” that was only possible after reading for hours on the topic of egg fertilization. Right now, I’m researching the anthropocene.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Petrichor. It reminds me of the prairies, even the dust is rising elsewhere.

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’ve written ekphrastic poetry, but only when asked. Putting on music for the 7-9 AM practice can be quite helpful. I’m selective about the kind of music, though. Choral music works well for some reason. If I’m under a deadline for a poem, I go outdoors. Note, I don’t say “nature.” Outdoors. I used to sit on my porch in Victoria. Before Covid, I could get started on a walk to the Cook Street Village. If I can’t go outdoors, I like a window. I need something to stare at. In Vernon, I live in a house on a hill with a big view of the sky. Not sure yet what will come of that.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
The writers most important for my work are ones who have taught me. I’m not formally educated as a writer, and so am not, as some say, “well read.” My breakthrough came when I stopped taking poetry classes through university extension courses and started attending poetry workshops and retreats where the only commentary came from the artist leading them. Arleen Paré, Lorna Crozier, Laura Apol, Jan Zwicky, Patrick Lane, Jen Hadfield—all have trained me in lasting ways. Writers whose work makes the top of my head come off: Anne Michaels, Jeanette Winterson, Jane Urquhart. Poetry icons: Ellen Bass, Billy Collins. Writing that has shaped me: dharma, sacred texts, philosophy, history of religion.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Wake up tomorrow.

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?
My “occupation” days are behind me—I went into medical retirement in 2010. And although writing—advertising copy, speeches, legal drafting, briefing notes—has been how I’ve contributed to the family budget all my life, writing artistically was never my occupation. It’s hard to know what I would have done if I had had access to a different education at a younger age, but I think I would have studied art history. It is a field with politics, religion and visual magic—several favourites rolled into one. Had I known it was an option, and had had the financial support to pursue it, I likely would have become an academic. It involves writing.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
In my early 20s, I was keen to get an inexpensive education that would lead to a job. I took the only program at Red River Community College, Winnipeg, for which I felt I had any aptitude: Applied Communications. My first job was producing the afternoon talk show on CKNW in Regina. It might help to know context. My last year of high school, I had a mental health crisis that put me in psychiatric care mid-year, so my confidence in looking at university options was shaken. In those days, I made my career choices based on help wanted ads in the newspaper, which had only recently dispensed with separate headings for Jobs for Men and Jobs for Women. Writing came easily. I only furthered my education when, after 17 years as a staff writer doing advertising, public relations, and speechwriting, I became tired of making other people’s ideas and products sound good. I drained my life savings and went to law school. I was in my 40s. I trained as a negotiator. But in the end, it was still writing.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m always working vaguely on a theatre project about what I do to live with PTSD. It’s never really out of my mind. In the end, it may just be that being alive feels theatrical and that there is nothing concrete that can come to the stage. However, I have a set, costumes, roles, lines and music all imagined with various levels of detail. These days, I’m advancing it by meeting bi-weekly with a dramaturge. I have, however, been doing this for some years, so maybe it’s just psychotherapy in its latest form. My goal for 2022 is to push a few small prose pieces to completion, just to get them off the side of the desk. If I’m lucky, they will also get published.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Allison Adair, The Clearing

 

GETTYSBURG

The peacock’s spurs are caught again
in the diamond chickenwire of his low
slanted pen. Nobody bothers anymore
to hammer the sagging barn.

Summer visitors regard the old farm from cars
without chrome, up on the hastily paved path—
if they look at all. There’s so much
else to see, burnished things, and battlefields

all look the same. But it’s here, this land,
where the war’s easy sepia finds an end
and a form: like us, the shallow rust-red soil
blows off for York, for Philadelphia, the coast,

and pasture erodes to bone. A black walnut’s roots
pierce the buried limbs of our grandfather’s fallen
spruce grove. The caterpillar inches along, lost
in its sad accordion hymn.

Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, selected by Henri Cole, is Boston poet Allison Adair’s [see her recent ’12 or 20 questions’ interview here] full-length debut, The Clearing (Minneapolis MN: Milkweed Editions, 2022), a collection assembled via lyric examinations of rural touchstones and violence, beauty and catastrophe, mining disasters, snow and domestic abuse, and other dark turns among a heritage of tractors, farmland and wolves. “When you begin to hate a man,” she writes, as part of the opening poem, “AFTER THE POLICE HAVE BEEN CALLED,” “his stunt fingers / swell with fat.” Adair composes narrative bursts of tension that shimmer at the edges, often allowing for something darker to appear just beyond the frame; something suggested, hinted, even threatened. As she writes of shadows, daughters and Georgia O’Keefe paintings in “FINE ARTS,” a poem that ends: “Our daughter’s brow resists this argument / for the hidden spectrum in white—we’ve taught her / cat from bird, engine from wheel. But here the petals open / to disclose their secret green, their yellow / blue pink gray. She is learning roots can be / branches can be shadows or hands / twining a woman’s hair / depending on the light.”

Adair writes of the struggles of women who lack agency, suffering toxic situations, rural isolations and abusive men. Her descriptions manage an enormous amount in a short span of words, setting scenes brilliantly against a lyric that carries its unique, underlying song that still allows for the possibility of such vibrant beauty across such settings. She writes with clarity, but it is the balance of descriptive acuity against shadows where the strengths of her poems lay, her narrations either having just emerged and looking back, or looking deeply into, even if from but a distance enough that may only temporarily be considered safe. “It’s dark but you know something / is there. It was an accident,” she writes, to close the poem “MOTHER OF 2 STABBED TO DEATH IN SILVERTON,” a poem prompted by a headline and article in the Denver Post, June 7, 2014, “he said, I never meant it. They stood there still // as newsprint.”