Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 114

Sadie Dupuis, Cry Perfume

 

 

PARKING FOR THE FUNERAL

One week later I’m a completely different person.
I don’t even recognize the person from eight days ago.
Their unrelated habits and features, askew and sourer breath.
The one who bruised and scraped up
my undersides, that was a fleeting stranger.
Doing the work. We’re doing the work. Working every day
to tolerate an airport breakfast, show up
at the gig without bloodshot anything, trot
past the bronze lion without haste.
Neck thick like a wolfman. It takes taming.
From the lightning sky, dead in the tongue.
Wrapped in a rainbow like always, divorcing myself.

Philadelphia guitarist, songwriter, singer, producer and poet Sadie Dupuis’s second full-length collection, following MOUTHGUARD (Boston MA: Black Ocean, 2018), is Cry Perfume (Black Ocean, 2022), a collection the publisher describes as “a collection of lyrical poems that engage with grief and loss and the toll of overdose and addiction with an activist bent.” Dupuis’ short, declarative narratives are set with a dark undertone and absurdist, surreal sheen; she writes narratives that feel off-balance, unable to completely find solid ground. “I chew up my feet,” she writes, to open the poem “MY PRETTY POET,” “Running down a mountain times five / When I buy the green gem / I’m envied by thousands / When I look into the makeup monitor / My eyes are the color of American money / Bleach-sanitized [.]” There’s a particular kind of swagger through these lyric character studies, one that carries a tone of exhaustion across a weight of experiences through performance, touring and loss; around, as the back cover offers, the “glamorized toxicities often inherent in entertainment.” “Today I saw the best show ever.” she writes, to open “BOWLING A 666,” “Today I drank the best tonic, it was bought for me. // My ambition keeps me fixed to the pratly center part / of a guitarist with no dynamics. // Friday the 10th and it’s not auspicious. / In the mint washroom with yellowed egg wall prints / constructing a mental self-portrait for a lineup of pinups.” There aren’t that many poetry titles that seem to emerge specifically from and on the topic of touring musicians, although Vancouver poet Catherine Owen’s punk collection Trobairitz(Vancouver BC: Anvil Press 2012) certainly comes to mind, but there is something of Cry Perfume that links it closer to Vancouver writer Michael Turner’s infamous Hard Core Logo (Vancouver BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1993), the poetry collection famously adapted into a feature film by Bruce McDonald in 1996. Composed as notes from the road, there is an energy of endurance and exhaustion through these poems. There are delights here, and hard lessons and losses, examining the joys and fallows of performance and touring, conversations around harm and harm reduction, music, isolation and connection. Or, as the poem “I’M SO TIRED BY THE BEATLES” ends:

My black and white movie dreams
Show up because life is dotty
It’s all anyone can do
Wired on plasma
into the mirror
I’m tired of you

SOME : fifth issue,

 

place can over there  and I’ll drop the tree upon it
while over there fetch bbq sauce packets in glovebox

offset on white crescent of bucket’s innard part
between plastic lip and hump of mushroom silhouetted
to take spinning half cut up hwy to sell the PG
creep who refused to leave the mountain who after
an agreement in good faith reneged hence
the loaner red semi driven w scant warning
over his tents, baskets, dog, kitchen things,
against bucket innard eyelid shape
extends flickering shadow of a ribbon of piss (Hamish Ballantyne, “from Hansom”)

I like what Vancouver poet Rob Manery has been doing with his print journal SOME[see my review of the second issue here] and the fifth issue, dated Summer 2022, recently landed on my doorstep, featuring work by Hamish Ballantyne, Clint Burnham, Jeff Derksen, Lary Timewell and an excerpt of a collaborative work-in-progress between Elee Kraljii Gardiner and Chris Turnbull. There is something really valuable about any journal or publisher able to publish work by writers who don’t seem to publish that often in journals, if at all (Lary Timewell, for example), as well as being open to work that might be seen as too long or too experimental for even journals interested in that kind of work. Hamish Ballantyne [see my review of his latest here] is working a larger project through a sequence of fragments, each small section simultaneously offering another and a further perspective. “practice breeds a / constellation of attendant / practices each indivisible / from the instants of their expression,” he writes, further in the excerpt included here, “Later we / if we can find each other in town / decide what they all meant […].”

The intricate and precise layering of Gardiner and Turnbull’s collaborative “MESH” is stunning, offering folds of text wrapped across each other. They’ve a further collaboration in the October issue of Touch the Donkey I look forward to exploring as part of our interview. And as far as Timewell is concerned, it is well beyond the time when someone should be publishing a book by this poet; I know there’s an enormous amount of uncollected work he’s been sitting on, and he certainly deserves far better attention than he’s seen so far. His “Eight Poems” in this issue offer echoes and roots of his 1970s and 80s Vancouver KSW language-origins, but with an engagement in the interpersonal that runs across the foundation of his entire work.

reminiscent of natural animal pleasures

it’s not escapades in cascades
it’s not business as usual
it’s not an unlivable wager
it’s not captivated or decorated
it’s not spurts of pleasant to recall
it’s not learning to be a good loser
it’s not you never loved anyone but yourself
it’s neither happiness not lacking in happiness
it’s not at hand it’s not out of reach
it’s not the blue funk of a sports slump
it’s not favour me won’t you with just one more smile
it’s not picking the lock in your daydreams
it’s more like thinking sweet things of others even as you slowly die
it’s more like it’s nothing like that at all
it’s more like as probably many of you will already know
it’s more like i suppose you have all heard the incriminating rumours of
it’s more (isn’t it?) like your so-called life

There is an approach to accumulated language and political writing that both Burnham and Derksen engage with that sits in a similar realm to other current and former Kootenay School of Writing practitioners; their work reminds of a similar flavour to that of Winnipeg-based poet Colin Smith, for example [see my review of his latest here]. For those aware of any of his numerous collections, Derksen’s four poems here offer elements of both the familiar and the unfamiliar, including a prose piece, “On a Generation that Squandered its Future” (I can’t remember the last time I saw a Jeff Derksen poem set in prose” that begins: “I was working in a gas station, a greenhouse, in delivery, in gardening, / in editing, in teaching, in administration. The weather has a new name and it / is no longer Elizabeth.” The shift in patter, patterns, is curious, while still retaining the accumulative effect of the long thread, writing language across issues of labour and capitalism. Burnham’s piece is an extended poem with a curious title, “letter from Mount Pleasant to Manhattan (on Kevin Davies’s The Golden Age of Paraphernalia, Edge Books, 2008),” suggesting an enormous amount going on through this particular poem, accumulating some fifty to sixty stanzas of piled phrases collaged together to form something far larger, and far more complex. “before her if I have to spell,” he writes, early on in the poem, “it out for you thereby taking // the pamphlet from the / Western Front listing two / dozen Chinese restaurants / nearby now, twenty-odd / years later, I wonder / what the German / sisters are doing now are / they still perpetual / students or did they finish // their degrees and training, / work for a while in the Harz / mountain village their / family originated from […].” There are a lot of directions to grasp this poem, less threads than individual points, and it makes me curious to see this particular Kevin Davies title to get a better sense of how Derksen might be responding to that particular work. Further on, writing: “[…] who // remembers Lorem ipsum, / clip art, clip joints, I’ll / give you a clip on / the ear the / sound of small bits of / gravel and grit under / tires turning (but not rolling, if / you catch my drift) […].” Alternately, the first section of Derksen’s “Anonymous Fanon Poems,” reads:

That which is choking
you is also choking me

but its tight mesh
the police
the army
the state

is not from you

nor others
under a blight

and I will lose it last
following first after

you lose it

I don’t know who carries copies (ie: stores, etcetera), but the colophon writes that correspondence can be direct to: somepoetrymagazine@gmail.com and that “Subscriptions are $24 for two issues. Single issues are $12. E-transfers are welcome.” Also: note that the reading/launch listed here is in Vancouver, British Columbia.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Rachel Mannheimer

Rachel Mannheimer was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, and lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where she works as a literary scout and as a senior editor for The Yale Review. Her first book, Earth Room, was selected by Louise Glück as the inaugural winner of the Bergman Prize, and published by Changes in April 2022.

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

My first book just came out, so it may be too early to say. But it was a big jump for me. Before the manuscript was picked up, only my partner had read it. I’d also previously only published a handful of poems, so the past few months have been my first experience—or my first awareness—of being read at all, really, outside of workshops. With friends and family, being able to share the book has created a feeling of increased intimacy. But I also feel, on a larger scale, the exhilarating feeling I first encountered in my MFA, that of being a participant in a shared project or conversation. As you suggest below, books come from books, poems come from poems, and I’ve been fed on so many books… It’s nice to imagine that this book might feed others.

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

I worked for years as a book editor, editing fiction and nonfiction, and I still work in publishing—as a scout, recommending books to international publishers for translation. I appreciate that poetry is separate from that work. But I also think it’s just the best fit for my brain. I like putting words to things, solving small problems with words.

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?

Some poems come quickly and whole. Some come together from notes I’ve collected over months.

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?

With Earth Room, maybe both. The poems were connected, flowing out of each other, and then the book—its shape and its concerns—came into view as the shorter pieces accumulated.

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

I love doing readings. I write very much based on sound. I also love attending readings; I never listen to audiobooks or podcasts, but hearing someone read in person is a treat.

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?

Usually the most immediate question for me is, How would I describe this? And, I guess, What feels important to describe?

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 don’t necessarily think writers are special kinds of people, except that they have some desire or ability to translate thoughts and experiences into language—to provide access to them in that way, make them concrete and portable, demarcated. I think that’s valuable, just in itself. I want to understand other minds and other lives.

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

As a professional editor, I believe that editing is very important! As a poet, I don’t usually get a lot of editing, but I always find it valuable when I do.

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

Keep going.

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

I don’t have a writing routine. Mostly my poems start with some outside stimulus—something I see or hear. I collect these things, play with the wording in my head. Eventually, I dedicate time to sorting and arranging.

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

Walks help. Drives and train rides. Museums. Seeing a new thing, trying to describe it, sometimes feeling my limits, learning more in order to describe it better.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, and there’s an Alaskan forest smell — I guess it doesn’t really act as a reminder, because I only get it when I’m there. But that’s an important smell

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

Visual art and conceptual art, dance and performance art are all influences on my poems—or at least subjects of them. I love time spent with plants and rocks, but I’m especially interested in human activity, what humans do. That’s what I want to understand through language.

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

I live with another poet, Chris Schlegel, so he and his work are important to my life and work. And so many others! Poet friends, writers I edit, and all the novelists, essayists, and critics I read for work and for pleasure.

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

There are some specific things, but in general I just want to experience more.

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?

I think I’d like to work with clay. Or be a wood carver.

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

The feeling that I already had the skills and materials I needed.

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

I’ll tell you the next great book: Ama Codjoe’s Bluest Nude is coming out in September and I can’t wait to read it. And Chris’s second book, ryman, is also coming out this fall.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I just wrote a poem for the wedding of two friends. Other than that, I’m still feeling my way toward the next thing.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Janice Lee, Separation Anxiety

 

it hasn’t been
the hotter summers

if you lose your cover
you can justify anything

I can justify anything

half into the future
is a kind of disappearance (“2”)

The author of more than a half-dozen fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry titles, the latest from Korean-American writer, editor, teacher and shamanic healer Janice Lee is the poetry collection Separation Anxiety (Troy NY: Clash Books, 2022), a numbered suite of seventy-six poems (with a quiz near the end) that sequence across trauma, memory, short lines and hesitations. “we couldn’t get into the garden,” she writes, to open the fourth numbered poem, “he said / she said / there was a wall / they said / the wall walls / said / the circumference of the event itself / within the would / there is always / a wall […]” Often composed as short lyric bursts, most of which are set as accumulations of short phrase-lines, her poems are propelled across the length of the collection and down each page through hesitation, pause and halting moments that gather together, one upon another; she writes of distance, separation; floating through and around a narrative of ghosts, trauma and distance, writing slant. “the notion of revelation is dangerous,” she writes, as part of “15,” “it is brutal / it being linear time […]” Through this small but mightily-dense collection, she simultaneously articulates the small, as well as a lightness, through her dense lyric, and an expansive stretch across a layered sequence. As poem “35” begins:

 

 

find yourself laying down
the beautiful melancholy of language is tempting
but you know already to turn away
once in awhile
and take a step in the opposite direction
you know already to laugh
after the tears
but how?

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Gabrielle Joy Lessans

Gabrielle Joy Lessans is a Denver-based poet, yogi, and new mother.  She is the author of Bread Of  (2021), and the forthcoming poetry collection, [a go], both via Ornithopter Press. Her collaborative chapbook [Re]Collection of the [Un]Likely , is available through Trainwreck Press. She can be found at www.gabbyjoy.yoga

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book (Bread Of) was released into the world around the same time I gave birth to my son. My first child, my first book. My life changed so much at that moment, it felt like suddenly all of my insides were external. Severed. Alive. Public.

The first book felt a bit like an exorcism of some old trauma that needed to be transmuted. This next one, [a go], feels more like a representation of my poetics. I am so excited to put this one into the world. To have these poems be seen and heard and read; to watch them take on a life of their own, as poems do, regardless of publication.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
This is a difficult one to answer.

Poetry came to me, really, is what it feels like. I remember being frustrated, wanting to write prose, actually, but poetry seemed to say: me first. It is a language you start to understand and then the other more normalized ways of thinking and feeling just kind of bore you.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I am unfortunately someone who is cursed with an ever swirling of ideas. So at all times I have about eight projects open & in process at once. When one of them calls out to me, and if I am able to hear it, I put the rest on the backburner and sink into that one for as long I am able. This is a totally insane way of operating, I know. It can drown you in the anxiety of never having enough time. I wish I was one of those writers who starts a book at the beginning and writes cleanly to the end and then begins a new project the next day.  I kind of cycle between them, all of them existing in this labyrinth, and I attempt to nourish each little by little until one sucks me in for the long haul. Right now I have open: a fantastical trilogy, a documentary poetics project, a book of wedding blessings, a collection of dream poems, collaborative essays on pregnancy & motherhood, and miscellaneous poetry floating around all parts of my computer, house, brain.

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?
Every project is, so far, different for me. A maddening reality it is. [a go] was a compilation of individual pieces, all composed inside a specific period of time, and they ended up of similar atmosphere. Bread Of was more of an excavation of the poem out of deep dive journaling, though it was never my intention for it to be a “book” per se.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Oh, I adore readings. Most of what I write is sonic. Intended to be read & heard aloud. I like poems to be streamed through your head, puncturing all these pleasure points of rhyme & song, and then when it’s over leaving you only with the little bits of debris you were able to catch onto & hold. Next time, next time.

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 think a lot of my writing infatuates itself with the interworkings of relationship. Between self and Self, self and other, self and God. Whatever God means to you: there is still a relationship with the concept, even (especially) if you don’t believe the concept exists. Not believing is still an experience of, with.  I am also fascinated by form experimentation, and how that extends itself into the context & content of the writing. I am honestly trying to challenge myself to write more “normally”—meaning, make myself write less experimentally as the experiment. A challenge. My dad says: “I don’t understand what you write but I like hearing it.” I guess all work is also the work of translation. I’d like to write something my dad understands.

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?
Gosh. A loaded question. The role of a writer, the role of any creative,  (and I want to be clear that anyone and everyone can be a creative) is to elasticize the imagination. To step into the imaginative realm and dream, envision, play around, expand, explore, rework any narratives we have been fed about ourselves, about the world. It’s always been imperative. And of course it is drastically important right now.  We dream our reality into being. The only way to change that reality is to learn how to co-create with it. Our imagination & our creativity are our only true weapons.

Brené Brown in her new book Atlas of the Heart talks about how important and vital it is to have the right vocabulary for our emotions. The more limited our vocabulary to describe our current state, the more limited we are in controlling it.  If we are just thinking, speaking, captioning our instagrams, naming our emotions in these very uniform, basic, habitual ways, we are STUCK THERE. In repetition. In a uniformed, basic experience of reality. When we expand our vocabulary, our language, we actually deepen into our capacity for pleasure, and open into an expanded ability to desire & envision new realities. The truest artists and writers, to me, are the people who are doing this work. At the same time, playing with little words on a blank page, in the solitude of your little room, in your little house, can feel so arbitrary. And I think that arbitrariness is also important. A perfect gorgeous antidote to grind culture. Another  doorway into the meditative realm. An artist’s purpose being also to practice being. Simply to be.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Working with Mark Harris of Ornithopter Press was my first real experience working with a book editor, and it was an incredible one. He has such an immaculate eye/ear for the nuances of form & sound, which for me, is just a dream. He gave subtle suggestions, posed important questions, and was gentle & attentive to this deeply personal text. I felt seen, cared for, and led; and that is pretty much all you can ask for in an editor. I have friends who have had much courser experiences with other editors, at other presses, and so I just feel incredibly lucky to have gotten the chance to work with Mark. Twice!

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

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to essays)? What do you see as the appeal?
I get dizzy when I think too hard about genre.

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 used to have a whole routine with candles & yoga & meditation & note taking. Now that I have a 9 month old child, the word routine feels purposely ironic. I have been writing my current project in a series of 20 minute entries. During nap time, or after I get into bed at night, before shutting my eyes.  I used to only write if I had the time to drop in for a few hours, or else it wouldn’t feel worth it. Now I do what I can, when I can, sometimes on my phone notes at a streetlight or dictating via voice.  In some ways, it has been a huge revelation for me to realize I can get real writing done in the cracks & corners of my day.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Get out in nature, get into my body via yoga or a hike or a nice little joint. Pull cards, read take baths, read words of favorite writers, or just agree to write badly & show up again tomorrow.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Diffused frankincense, the simmering of garlic & onion. And now a faint smell of diapers & milk.

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?
Getting out in nature is a constant source of inspiration. Reading beloved and new poets.  But when I am in certain states anything can really be an impetus. For example, I just watched some vids on interior design for inspo on how to really sink into making our home feel like home, and everything this interior designer said made me realize: everything is form! Her suggestions were to make everything in the room a conversation. To consider shape, scale, spacing, repetition. Not only did this make me realize that designing a room is (of course) an extension of poetics, but it inspired me to head back onto the page as if I were designing a room. An eye for form is an eye for form is and eye for form. Style is style, etc.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Anne Carson, Toni Morrison, Clarice Lispector, Etel Adnan, Helene Cixous, CA Conrad, Rumi, Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, Marie Conlan, Danielle Ferrara, Shawnie Hamer, Jenni Ashby, Karolina Zapal, Ryan Mihaly.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’ve always loved painting for expressive purposes. I want to make more time for play in that realm. I’m a very amateur gardener but adore the metaphor & slowness of the whole endeavor, so this spring I’d like to dive a little deeper into that.

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 often wish I had gotten my undergrad in psychology. A lot of what I do through writing & the yoga that I lead ends up being 1:on:1 healing work. So, diving into the unconscious to explore our own desires, dreams, fears, ideas, passions, etc. I adore this work, and sometimes wish I could call on a more therapeutic background.  But right now it exists in the realm of creative exploration.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I loved how immediately available it was. I didn’t have to learn how to work an instrument (the pen! I already knew how to use that) or figure out parts & pieces of supplies. It was available as soon as I became literate and will be, so long as I have a pen & piece of paper. Or a phone. Or a mouth.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?  
I just read Dictee by Theresa Had Kyung Cha. Whew. And I’ve been watching some shit TV ;-)

20 - What are you currently working on?
My paternal grandmother left a journal kept while she was dying from ALS, which led me into a spiral of ancestral healing work, engagement with the kabbalah, documentary poetics, & more. Recently I’ve been editing an exchange of letters with poet/friend Marie Conlan, on our experience of being pregnant during the pandemic.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Natalie Wee, Beast at Every Threshold

 

Despite a new death come to keep us from each other,
a constellation of birds sings outside your window

                    & if you think their music thunderous,
how much more must it be for these creatures—
                    but what do you know of why
they bleed noise?

                    & what of the cry you make, soundless,
with each movement, from the soles of your feet
                    to your finger thrust towards the sky,
another animal
                    reaching for unnameable things 

                    it does not yet understand. (“LISTEN I LOVE YOU JOY IS COMING”)

A follow-up to Natalie Wee’s full-length debut, Our Bodies and Other Fine Machines (special edition, San Press, 2021) is Beast at Every Threshold (Vancouver BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022), a collection of narrative poems comprised as journal entries, akin to an assemblage of diaristic reports or essay-poems captured through a densely-packed, descriptive, first-person lyric. “I can name any season,” begins “FREQUENT FLYER PROGRAM,” “but the trees I love will die // where they are. That’s what it means to become a light // year, to become memory: never stay long enough / to speak belonging the way ocean pronounces the sky, […]” These are poems that examine, react and respond, seeking out solutions and articulating problems, carving deeply personal and deeply felt lines across a meditative lyric. “I pray its name,” she writes, mid-way through “SELF-PORTRAIT AS POP CULTURE REFERENCE,” “& so undertake the undertaker, it preys my Mandarin name / so I watch Chinese dramas with bright-eyed bodies // to forestall forgetting my own. I’ve watched my skin / turned fragrant ornament thrown over women // the colour of surrender & they were praised for wearing it.”

Reminiscent of others working essay-poems examining sometimes complicated or even difficult personal and cultural histories, whether Phil Hall [see my review of his latest here] or Susan Nguyen [see my review of her debut here], Wee’s poems are song-sharp, hum with energy and verve, composed of lines that hold the ability to simultaneously carve, cut and caress; so damned sharp and precise, even enviously so, that one could bounce a quarter off them. “My love,” she writes, as part of the poem “ASAMI WRITES TO KORRA FOR THREE YEARS,” “what we make of loss is a sport / that kills.” Composed with a descriptive thickness, she writes of truth and consequence; she writes on cultural and familial lineages and inheritances, seeking both to connect with and determine the precise impact they’ve had upon her. “I was born in 1993,” she writes, to open “SELF-PORTRAIT AS POP CULTURE REFERENCE,” “the year Regie Cabico became the first / Asian American to win the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam. // I want these facts to mean something to each other / the way a room is just a room until love or its inverse // tells me what to do with the person standing in it.” She writes on tv tropes, violence and casual racism, connections through family, mass shootings and poetry. “Of all my inheritances       the ancestral appetite // pulls heaviest,” she offers, to open the poem “BIRTHRIGHT.” There is something really compelling in the way Wee draws out and expands her narratives; thickening as much as furthering through her lyric twirls and descriptive undertakings, broadening her articulations; one that furthers the narrative in a way quite different than I’ve seen, and utterly compelling. As she writes as part of the poem “BLOOD TRIPTYCH”: “The consequence of rib // is cage.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Sheila Murray

Sheila Murray’sarticles and short fiction have appeared in Canadian magazines and journals including Refuge Journal, Descant, The Dalhousie Review, Exile, White Wall Review, TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Room and The New Quarterly. Finding Edward is her first novel. Sheila’s writing has been supported by the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council.

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

Finding Edward is my first book, and although I can’t say that it’s changed my life, it sure has been fun. My previous work has been short fiction published in literary journals. They’ve never drawn much attention. But I’m hearing about the novel from all sorts of people, some whom I’d never have imagined would be so engaged with my characters, Cyril, and Edward, and their stories.

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

I studied literary journalism in university for my Journalism degree. I rediscovered my love for writing there. After that I took a couple of creative writing courses, and started to explore short fiction. Fiction just came naturally. I’ve never written poetry, but have the greatest admiration for poets.

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 can say that the writing comes fairly easily once the idea is there. I don’t work from an outline, but head off exploring with the central character. I often have no idea what will happen until I’ve actually written it down. I rewrite a lot, but find that lots of what’s written in a first draft is generally fairly together, it just needs lots of editing — usually removing extraneous information and verbiage.

4 - Where does a 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 knew that I was writing a novel from its first pages. It had to be a long story because it was largely about one young character’s search for the history of a much older man. Lots had to happen over an extended period of time.

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

I do enjoy pubic readings. I prefer to read shorter pieces, and I love it when people ask questions. In fact, readings have been central to getting Finding Edward published. I’d given up on ever finding a publisher who’d take it. But a literary friend, who’d seen me read from the manuscript at least a couple of times, liked what she heard. So when my editor, Marc Cote, at Cormorant Books, met her for lunch and asked whether she had any writer leads, she told him about my book. The rest is my happy history with long form publishing!

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 do have a number of concerns about the questions I’m asking, and how my characters’ experiences will be perceived by different audiences. Central to my novel is an exploration of what it means to be racialized in Canadian society. Race is a social construct. That’s a concept that’s hugely challenging for all sorts of people. Both Finding Edward’s main characters are mixed race, Black and white. I’m challenging the fundamentals of systemic racism and revealing the Black histories that have been deliberately hidden from Canadian mainstream knowledge.

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 writers should do their best work, whatever it is. They should be as honest as they can be about what they know and how they feel.

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

I don’t have so much experience working with outside editors. But I do think that it’s essential. Having the work reviewed by someone who is fresh to your writing and story is such a privilege. And, of course, an editor is also invested in getting the best story that you as a writer can tell. My editor, Marc Cote, asked me to give him more: more from the minor characters, more history, more Edward, more Cyril. It was in writing the ‘more’ that I found the depth that I believe the novel now contains and delivers. 

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

If you’re having trouble writing, just set aside a few minutes to write one line; or one paragraph. Get something down, more will follow.

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

It was relatively easy to move from short fiction to the novel. It’s true that the business of plot and character development needs a lot more attention. Timelines and other ‘minor’ details can really trip you up. I wrote the first draft of the novel when I was with a terrific writers’ group. Most of us had published short stories and were trying long form for the first time. So that helped a lot. One challenge is that it can seem a very long way to the end of a novel, but it’s certainly most rewarding once you get there!

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

I’ve been out of any writing routine for so long that I can honestly say I don’t have one. I do my best work in the mornings, so when I do get back to routines, I’ll start with that. And if things are going really well, I might work for as long as four hours. I think I’m pretty much done for the day after that.

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

If I’m feeling stuck I start reading. Only very good work by great writers.  And I walk. A lot. Ideally in settings with lots of trees, or open spaces. And I listen, to the wind, birds, and overheard conversations

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

I wasn’t born in Jamaica, and I’ve never worked there. But I have spent many years going back and forth to spend time stretches of quality time with my parents. I love the scent that is immediately there in the hot, tropical air when you get off the plane and walk across the tarmac. It’s extraordinary: a spicy, fragrant, warm deliciousness that makes me feel immediately at home.

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

I think stories come from many places and inspirations. I wrote a short story after seeing a contemporary art exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario. My character was an artist who made giant installations of organic materials. That was a really good story! I love writing about the process of creating art. One or two others of my short stories are structured around the enterprise of gathering and shaping materials into visual art forms.

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

These days, I’m particularly drawn to nature writing in all forms. I want to know lots about our natural world. It’s so full of miracles and tragedy and magic.

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

So many things. I have an endless list. What’s truly amazing is that some of those things will probably, actually, happen!

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 haven’t really been a writer. I’ve made a living doing other things, some in film and television production. Some in the non-profit world, particularly around social justice issues. These days I’m pretty much focused on climate change projects. But now that I can call myself a writer — you get to do that when you’re a published novelist, I think — I’ll stay being a writer for the foreseeable future.

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

I love the writing process. Somebody said, writing is a conversation that you have with yourself. That’s what it feels like to me. A lovely, long, rich conversation that tells me about my concerns and preoccupations, state of mind, fears and hopes. It often surprises me. When I’ve finished a piece  I sometimes wonder where all of that character and story came from. But I know that it is a part of me.

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

The last great book I read is The Salt Path, by Raynor Winn. It’s a memoir, a truly incredible story that had me from the start. When I finished the book I went straight to YouTube to find an interview with her. I needed to know more. That’s the first time I’ve had that experience.

It’s been a long stretch of pandemic and I haven’t been in a cinema for far too long. Toronto’s Hot Docs festival is one of my favourite experiences. Maybe next year.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I am working on ideas for the next novel. Now that I’ve had such a great response to Finding Edward, I’m pretty confident that I can write another. I’d started a couple of things over the past few years, and a new idea has recently come to mind. I need to decide which to spend my time on, and get started. Back to that morning routine with long walks in the afternoons!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ongoing notes: early September, 2022: Klara du Plessis & +doc.3 (Robert Hogg + ryan fitzpatrick,

In case you weren’t aware, there’s a small press fair this Saturday at the University of Toronto Fisher Rare Book Room (free to the public, so you should totally come out for this): Fisher’s Fine and Small Press Fair , Saturday, September 10th, 10am to 5pm. I’ll be there with a variety of above/ground pressitems, with further participants including Aliquando Press, Alan Stein/Church Street Press, Art Metropole, Book*hug, Coach House Books, George A. Walker, Greyweather’s Press, JackPine Press, k|f|b, Liz Menard, Massey College Press, Natalie Draz, Nietzsche’s Brolly, Porcupine's Quill/DA, Shanty Bay Press and Wesley Bates. Might we see you there?

Montreal QC/Toronto ON: The latest from Montreal poet and critic Klara du Plessis [see my review of one of her prior chapbooks here] is the chapbook Skin & Meat Sky (Toronto ON: knife|fork|book, 2022), a collaboration between du Plessis’ poems and Kadie Salmon’sphotography. As the colophon offers: “Both poems were written, and the photographic series developed, at Canserrat, a month-long residency in El Bruc, Spain, May 2018. Gratitude to the Canserrat staff and support from the Canada Council for the Arts.” Comprised of the six-part sequence “Cold Pigeons,” four full-colour photographs and the nine-part sequence “Skin & Meat Sky,” the interaction between the image and text makes for a curious interplay, both of which offer a physicality and presence, as well as the suggestion of being slightly beyond one’s reach. The colophon to the collection offers, as well, that the opening poem “is based on Pablo Picasso’s series of 58 reinterpretations of Diego Velázquez’s painting Las Meninas, also including 9 paintings of pigeons, which he considered part of the series.” du Plessis’ two poems offer a lyric, meditative and descriptive density through a music of clear, precise and deeply thoughtful notes. These are poems to read and reread, deserving of far further examination for their subtle movements, incredible precision and breathless pause. If this is a hint of directions still to come in her work, then I would say we need to be paying her writing far more attention. As the sixth section of her opening poem offers: “Auricular is not an oracle but the hidden / lobes / of feathers listening delicately [.]” Or the third section of “Skin & Meat Sky,” that reads:

I head towards the garden which is the museum,
encumbered by the brains inhabiting every boulder.
This mountain intelligence,
this ontological greenness.
Mountains are a form of ascension, geographically,
but also as a sequence of legs,
as utterly beautiful utensils scaling to higher ground.
At the beginning of a climb, legs are low,
but throughout the process legs are high,
thigh marking a vertical incline
knee|hinge|straightness
calf muscle bulges.
Strength acts out against itself,
then resuscitates abdominally.
To throw myself upwards is a kind of hallelujah,
but it’s also just the stomach holding torso in place.

Winnipeg MB: I’ve been enjoying what Winnipeg poet Julian Day has been working through his null pointer press, specifically the journal +doc: a journal of longer poems, reminiscent slightly of the forty-five or so issues of my own late lamented chapbook-sized journal STANZAS (above/ground press, 1993-2006), which itself was patterned after the twenty issues of George Bowering’s infamous IMAGO (1964-1974). The current issue is volume 2, issue 2: summer 2022 (or +doc.3), featuring Ottawa-area poet Robert Hogg’s “John Charley—Stacking Hay—Successful Indian Farmer” and Toronto-based poet and critic ryan fitzpatrick’s “Hibernia Mon Amour.” Through Hogg’s piece, he continues his reexaminations and reworkings of poems and drafts from the 1960s, working his unique collaboration with his younger self (something I wrote about at length as part of a review of one of a recent chapbook here), a poem titled after the title of a particular Library of Congress photo held as part of the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Flathead Irrigation Project (1947–1952). It is a curious piece, and sits in a particular farming experience Hogg would have shared from his own interior of British Columbia from an era not that much further down the temporal line. “Now that I’ve got the image,” Hogg’s poem begins, “blown up on my screen / I can see the details 1914 / Montana Reservation three / Flathead Nation / farmers making hay / why not ranchers I / find myself asking noting / the cowboy hats a mountain / in the background this / is high range land one / stands on their wagon its / wooden wheels so high / someone had to cut / four holes in the floor / boards to let the wheels / rise through roughed / a low gable of boards […]” The poem moves through a narrative that examines the photograph and the “making hay” of harvesting hay from the fields during that particular era, with pitchforks and string, offering what Hogg knows of the shared experience, although, curiously, one that completely sidesteps the complexities and implications of colonialism. Hogg’s poem is simply, and uncomplicatedly (in certain ways, naively) focused on the specific task of harvest as depicted within the photograph, and connecting it to his own childhood Cariboo experience (something that echoes with numerous of the pieces he’s been working over the past few years). It would be worth mentioning, also, his chapbook THE COLD LIGHT OF MORNING / New York City & Buffalo / 1964-1965, published online a few days ago as a pdf chapbook by fitzpatrick’s MODEL Press. You should look at that, also.

Almost set as counterpoint, fitzpatrick’s “Hibernia Mon Amour” references the offshore production platform located at the Hibernia oil field, 315 km from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. fitzpatrick writes of industry versus community, writes out the capitalism-over-community implications of a fossil fuel industry on environment, geography and trauma (offshore oil rigs, the mining that prompted the Frank Slide disaster, Alberta oil fields, etcetera). He extracts and assembles a lineation of human-prompted disasters and environmental shifts, all of which have human consequence and, ultimately, a global one as well. He accumulates a lyric sentence across pages, provinces and decades, one that might come to an ultimate and terrible end. As fitzpatrick’s poem opens:

No it will be inspiriting when the sun rises over the tankers at Kitimaat but

no it will be sublime when the sun sets over Hibernia but

no it will not be a problem after you shotgun those tailings but

no there will absolutely be a long tail on these historical conditions but

no you need to realize that the boom repeats itself but

no I’m not the one who made it personal but

Sarah Ens, FLYWAY

 

Wonder what swoops
in shadow, what feasts:
flycatchers, swallows,
grassland & boreal birds
beak-full. They scoop the
droning horde, clean
out the air—
polychlorinated
biphenyls,
polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons,
neonicotinoids,
poisoned arrows
meet their marks. Scratch,
shuck your skin
where it swells.

 

 

                                                            Out-flung under sky.
                                I read letters, diaries, strange & plaintive
                                                                        poems. (“Tallgrass Psalmody: PART ONE”)

Winnipeg poet Sarah Ens’ second full-length poetry title, following The World Is Mostly Sky (Winnipeg MB: Turnstone Press, 2020), is FLYWAY (Turnstone Press, 2022). Subtitled “a long poem,” FLYWAY is a collection that engages a long poem structure of fractured fragments that accumulate and stagger, writing on and around notions of home and geography in ways clearly influenced by generations of prairie (and even, specifically, Winnipeg) poets. Enn’s structures include echoes from multiple Turnstone titles over the years, including Dennis Cooley’s Irene (1999), for example, or Sarah Gordon (now Swan)’s Rapture Red & Smoke Grey (2003); I think of Robert Kroetsch’s Seed Catalogue (1977), Marvin Francis’ city treaty(2002), Sylvia Legris’ iridium seeds (1998) or Rob Budde’s Catch as Catch (1995). Enn’s fragments stagger, layer and build across a book-length stretch of long poem, writing of home and grandmothers, European escape and arrival in the Canadian prairies. This is a collection of being and becoming, writing out what is lost, gained and abandoned; writing out what is inherited, and what can’t help but be carried across not only distances, but generations. As her “Prelude” to the collection offers:

There is this place, this patch of tallgrass, a grassland of bluestem, wheatgrass, prairie cordgrass tall to my shoulders. Hardy bunchgrass, swaying. I’d never thought much about grass until I came to this place, but here the thought of grass is inescapable, everywhere innumerous “thrones, / dominions of grass” bending. Six thousand square kilometres of tallgrass once ran along the Red River Valley (imagine). Less than one percent remains. What remains: this small place, this preserve, here. It survives along a flyway—a flight path between breeding & wintering grounds spanning continents & oceans, stringing together places like this. So, the birds, too, I notice here: warblers, swallows, meadowlarks, migratory birds who rely on this place. My gaze tumbles from sky to shrub, poorly tracking flutters & specks & song.

Set in three numbered sections of “Tallgrass Psalmody,” with a European sidebar-section “Flight / 1929-1945” between the first two, Ens articulates a mapping of arrivals and departures between Europe and Manitoba, laying a subject matter and structure that emerged across the prairie landscape of the 1970s and into the 80s, but set through Ens own particular lens. “The war ended but the world unended.” she writes, as part of “Flight,” “Mother said / Keep your eyes and ears open and everywhere.” Hers is a lyric, a music; less a college or fragment than an accumulation. In many ways, her lyric is akin to Cooley, writing a progression across the larger story of the rippling effect of emigration across two or three generations. “Come / magnetic,” she writes, as part of the first section, “come urging, / orient in / migrant’s memory.” A page later offering: “I read: what we did to survive // I stand in the switchgrass / & read the wind the way I want it.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Allison Adair

Allison Adair’s first collection, The Clearing , was selected by Henri Cole as winner of Milkweed’s Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. Her poems appear in American Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review Online, and ZYZZYVA; and her work has been honored with the Pushcart Prize, the Florida Review Editors’ Award, the Orlando Prize, a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant, and first place in the Fineline Competition from Mid-American Review. Originally from central Pennsylvania, Allison teaches at Boston College and Grub Street.      

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

Publishing The Clearing didn’t necessarily change my life. I still work the same hours, make dinner, wipe the counters. I still sit down to write and fuss and fuss, still struggle to find time to write – so those daily things haven’t changed. But the opportunity to connect to other writers and readers has been staggering. Creative collaboration is incredibly sustaining, and having a book can make that more possible. And when a reader reaches out to say they’ve read and connected to something I’ve written, it makes all the late nights and obsessive tweaks feel worthwhile. Being lucky enough to have published with the incredible folks at Milkweed has helped The Clearing reach a wide audience, and – especially during the pandemic – I’ve been so grateful for the resulting sense of community.

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

Ha! I didn’t! I thought I would write fiction! I loved prose and wanted to write short stories and novels, but in college I couldn’t lottery my way into any of the prose workshops. I decided to try my hand at poetry “in the meantime” – I told myself that poetry’s emphasis on imagery and efficiency would help my prose…which it might have, had I ever returned to it. But I was hooked on poetry as soon as I started reading more contemporary work, and once I realized what a raw and glorious gamble a poem is. Poems shoot the moon. Not all hit, but the ones that do – there’s nothing like it.

I do still write nonfiction prose, and I’m very interested in hybrid essays. I had a great time writing this onefor Lit Hub and would love to try my luck more with this genre-of-the-between.

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?

Poems’ processes vary for me. Of the poems in The Clearing, some tumbled out fully formed. “Ways to Describe a Death Inside Your Own Living Body” took maybe ten minutes to write. Maybe less. It was inside me and needed nothing more than a valve to land on the page. “Memento Mori: Bell Jar with Suspended Child” was a different story. It was originally about ten lines long – really just the opening image of an old Victorian glass dome with a landscape made out of a dead child’s hair. A year or so later, I revised it into a sonnet; then I realized the poem was resting in what it knew vs. striving for what it could discover – so I decided to try pushing it toward a long poem, sustaining it over many sections and pages. From start to finish, with several months-long breaks in between, that poem took probably three years as it found itself. Each poem requires its own line of inquiry and its own fresh methods, at least for me; and that’s something I love about poems – the constant reinvention. “Flight Theory” took several months, too. The long-line contrapuntal form required tiny syntactical articulations. But again, each poem teaches its writer so much about how to build a form unique to that poem’s utterance.

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?

The poems in The Clearing were written with no book or larger project in mind. I admire books that have a kind of project coherence – Leila Chatti’s excellent Delugecomes to mind as one example – but I haven’t yet worked that way, with a primary driving theme or focus. So far, I’m working poem by poem. When I start a single poem, almost anything can be the impetus, but more often than not it’s an image – something that riles or disturbs or provokes me, that has some note of tension. Last week I was sitting on a bridge where two brothers were recently, and tragically, swept away at high tide, to their deaths. As I sat there, a garnet vase full of sunflowers, placed in memorial and by then partially dry, blew over in the sea breeze. Just beyond the vase, about twenty kids took turns jumping off the same bridge the brothers had jumped. It was the most beautiful, sunny day, as if nothing bad would ever come for any of us on that bridge. How can all these things be true at once – the imperative of joy, the loss, the danger, the carefree sun? The truth in that paradox felt like a beginning, all sparked by a single snapshot image.

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

Public readings energize me, whether I am a reader or an attendee. Poetry’s music comes to life in a completely new way in a live performance, and the reader can experiment with different “versions” of a poem, which I love. The intimacy of a live public reading is also so special. Recently I read with another poet at a bookstore in New York, and someone in the audience said she’d been waiting for her movie to start next door, so she wandered over to the bookstore where we were reading. She figured she’d kill some time there, but found herself so taken in by the poems that she forgot all about the movie and ended up skipping it to stay with us through the end of the event – Q&A and all. Talk about affirming! I’ve thought about this woman often since then when I’ve sat down to write. I’d like to write poems for her and people like her – people willing to be wooed by the word, even if they simply stumble into a poem.

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

My poems’ questions might fall under an umbrella of seeking truth – but don’t all poems do that? I find disruption worthwhile, and what I call “estrangement” – defamiliarizing things I think I know, things we think we know. I enjoy establishing and then questioning a premise. That exercise in challenging otherwise widely accepted premises feels vital right now. Most of my poems probably prioritize expressive craft over theoretical concerns, though I am very interested in narrativity and how sequencing can alone create a kind of commentary.

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?

There are so many possible roles to be played by writers in the culture at large, including as-yet unprescribed roles and roles that will become clear only in retrospect. I wouldn’t limit it to one – though I do think an especially critical role is cultural archivist. If we don’t preserve the nuanced truth, who will? Poets do that so well, embracing the paradoxes and very human “honest duplicity” that go well beyond the quick soundbites of the day.

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

Editors I’ve worked with have generally been both generous with their time and creativity and gracious in terms of leaving final decisions up to the poet – so I would say that it’s rarely difficult and more often a great gift.

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

A few lines from Dean Young’s excellent poem “Faculty Summary Report” rattle around in my mind constantly: “Ping ping go the dancers, ding ching the pistons,/ kaboom the clouds but what is it the heart goes?/ Are we trying to get the tangible to shimmer// or the intangible shimmer to be like wet grass/ to push our faces in? Just try being a window/ and not taking a hammer to yourself.” So simple, but such a challenge: grace – in art, in writing, in relationships.

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

Essays can’t accommodate the same high level of conspicuous artifice – the language- and music-level indulgences that we love so much in a poem; so unless the essay is clearly experimental, it needs to be anchored in a more traditional way. Trying to maintain that obligation while still breaking enough rules to keep a piece fresh is part of the appeal, like a combination of tradition and innovation. For me, it’s a challenge not to overwrite an essay, to over-ornament. On the other hand, it’s so lovely to be able to say something more straightforwardly and to experiment with more breathing room than my poems tend to allow.

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?

Most of my day revolves around tasks unrelated to writing, or around others’ writing – such as the writing of my students. My own preferred routine is to begin writing around 12:30 a.m., once everyone is tucked in and the apartment is all mine, though I’m not convinced this practice is sustainable. My day almost never begins with writing. I do enjoy reading in the morning, when I have the chance; I feel really fresh as a reader early in the day. But for writing, I find that fatigue works for me, strangely. The surreal feels logical, and I tend to get out of my own way a little bit more.

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

My main crutch is hyper-realistic detail. I never really feel writer’s block, basically because anytime it begins to creep in, I shift the focus to an image so that the powers of observation begin to build tension toward some new conflict or question. I never tire of writing about place, and of course reading some of my favorite poets always helps to get me back on track! Tiana Clark. Edgar Kunz, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, John Murillo, and so many more can be counted upon to jumpstart my work whenever I need a boost.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

This might exist between a few senses, rather than being anchored in fragrance only, but the smell of slightly rotting old leaves brings me right back to one of my childhood homes, in Gettysburg. There’s also a very particular scent to well water that I associate strongly with a different house, once we moved to a different town when I was older.

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?

Liza Lou’s beaded installations have had a great impact on my work – their meticulous detail, painstaking labor, the brilliance of the effect in conversation with the tedium of the process, all of it. Doris Salcedo’s eerie furniture sculptures are another influence. How can a chair be infused with the body that sat on it? The way Salcedo’s work requires three-dimensional, face-to-face engagement is inspiring: Cathy Park Hong had a great essay about Salcedo in POETRY a few years ago. I’m also a huge, life-long rap fan. The intricate braided rhymes of 90s New York rap are often on my mind when I’m embedding sonic patterning in my poems, as are the chewy, springy vowels of Third Coast artists, especially those from New Orleans and Houston.For me, these influences translate to choices of Latinate or Saxon sounds as expressive beyond denotative meaning, and I love that stuff, like the differences between slough and scrub or crunch and chew, etc. Those choices feel like huge opportunities for toning and shading.

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

Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town has become a writing bible of sorts for me. I love Dean Young’s collection First Course in Turbulence, and CD Wright’s String Light, especially Wright’s poem “More Blues and the Abstract Truth.” Heather McHugh’s poem “What He Thought” is perfection, and I turn to it often. The pacing and ending of John Murillo’s “Upon Reading That Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Some Species of Birds” are a master class in poetry. (How in the world does this poem manage to land and to take off at the same time?)

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

Writing-wise, I would love to complete a book of essays, and I’d be very interested in trying my hand at writing song lyrics or a libretto. I also aspire to write more joyful and humorous poems, as those modes are huge parts of my world, not always reflected in my poems. Life-wise, I would love to travel to Bolivia’s Uyuni salt flats!

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?

Before I went to grad school to study poetry, I had tentatively lined up work in Northern Irish politics. If I weren’t engaged in writing or teaching poetry, I think I might have pursued something in that realm.

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

This question is something I struggle with, actually, in the face of pressing policy issues. Though I will always argue for poetry’s absolutely critical role in shaping and progressing culture, even in saving lives, sometimes I do feel a sense of impatience with my own work and my own role: Why does [whatever I’m writing] matter, in the face of poverty? Inequality? Lack of access to potable water? Someone vulnerable being harmed, right now, as I type even this? Often I feel called to put everything aside and go help dig water wells or do research for an innocence project or deliver groceries for people who can’t leave their homes. So I don’t know what the future holds. That feeling never leaves me; it’s not an inner conflict I have resolved.

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

This summer I reread one of my favorite books, and it absolutely held up: Amitav Ghosh’s In an Antique Land. It’s part ethnographic memoir and part straight history, and it is glorious. Amitav Ghosh is one of the world’s most interesting writers, and he’s also managed to wrestle with ethics in a real and progressive way in his work, which I admire. As for film, my husband brought home Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies recently (yes, we still borrow DVDs from the library), and was blown away, especially by the performance from .

20 - What are you currently working on?

Currently I’m working on an essay about risk, as well as a sonnet crown related to a dangerous flight I took one winter night with my father.Both pieces scare me a little, so I hope that means something real is happening.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;