Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 116

FENCE #39 (Vol. 21 #2): 39 WIN-SPR 2022

 

Isabelle Huppert

Vengeance is as dignified

an option as any, less lightning
than thunder, less timbre

than quake. Collared encore,
blank applause, trains stalled

for towns at a time. what good can
come of bad handsomes? What god

would hum through a hurricane? (Eileen G’sell)

As you most likely know by now, one of my favourite literary journals (a list that includes The Capilano Review, Canthius, Tripwire and filling Station, among a handful of others) is FENCE magazine [see my reviews of issues #20 here, #21 here, #26 here, #27 here, #28 here, #29 here, #30 here, #32 here, #34 here]. This latest issue is also the first to include Emily Wallis Hughes and Jason Zuzga in the shared position of Editorial Directors. As Hughes writes as part of an introduction to the issue:

When, in the early fall of 2021 Rebecca [Wolff] offered us this shared position, the history of my way to Fence flooded my mind, and I imagined a 21-year-old who might stumble upon this issue in a bookstore, like I did in 2006, when I urgently needed to find all of the differing language-people one reliably finds in Fence, which I don’t need to describe – you can see for yourself. If you have come across this online, or if you found this in a Barnes & Noble in a town very far from New York City, welcome, I’m glad you’re here with us. I know and remember what it is like to pick up a literary magazine and say: where was this before? Why didn’t my teachers give us this to read?

This new issues offers, as is standard for this particular venture, a wealth of material, and I’ve a list of names a kilometre long (0.621 miles, for American readers) of contributors to this volume with stellar work (most of whom I hadn’t heard of prior), including Eileen G’sell, Trey Moody, Ben Jahn (whom I contacted since to solicit work for periodicities), Hazel White, Kirstin Allio, Jen Frantz, Jasmine Dreame Wagner, Cate Marvin, Peter Myers, Jesi Bender, Jennifer Kronovet, Alyssa Perry and Samuel Amadon, among many, multiple others. As Nick Flynn’s poem “sacred trash” opens: “I cut a picture of a stranger // out of a newspaper, my daughter / took a pen to the man’s face // & scribbled it out—it is // a black cloud now. I saved it, / I have it here—whatever // a hand touches could be // the word of God.” Or the infectious rhythms of Annelyse Gelman’s “The Story,” that begins: “He has killed, the man, a doe. / To be sure, it was an accident, but there was / one private moment, just before / he slammed on the brakes, when / he hit the gas. Just to see. / It is dusk. It will be years before he makes his confession. / The eyes of things that shine in the dark / have started to shine.” The strength of FENCE emerges from the range of styles and the sheer among of work included, but most of all, just how damned strong the material included is.

The issue also includes a hefty folio towards the end, some fifty pages of “A portfolio of writing by nurses,” produced in large part to acknowledge the period of time we’ve been in, as well as their ongoing work and experiences throughout. The section floats through an assemblage of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and memoir, working through the multiple facets of a period of health crisis, from what can easily be seen as the front lines. In Shirley Stephenson’s “COVID & Locusts & Protests & Love—A Community Nursing Perspective,” she writes: “In the first weeks of COVID, I often wondered, Is this the way I will get the virus, and will it kill me? It wasn’t an ambush of panic, but a slow recurring thought, like fireflies drifting and flickering around the exam room.” For all the talk of crisis and anxiety around those initial months, it was easy to feel overwhelmed, for those of us who remained home, as well as those unable to make that choice, even beyond the fraction of the population who insisted on minimizing the entire situation. How does one maintain composure, maintain living, even while attempting to attend to the uncertainty of health? As Sarah Cluff’s short poem “Santa Monica” ends:

The sign at your dentist’s office says
“We cannot undo what you will not do.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Bára Hladík

Bára Hladík is a Czech-Canadian writer, editor and multimedia artist. Born in Ktunaxa Territory, she received her Bachelor of Arts in Literature from the University of British Columbia in 2016. Her work can be found in THIS Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, Carte Blanche, EVENT Mag, Hamilton Arts and Letters, Bed Zine, Empty Mirror, Cosmonauts Avenue and elsewhere. Bára’s microchapbook Book of Mirrors was selected for the 2019 Ghost City Press Summer Micro-Chap Series and her collaborative artist book Behind the Curtain (Publication Studio, 2018) was an honourable mention for the Scorpion and Felix Prize (2017). Bára’s first book New Infinity appeared this spring with Metatron Press (2022).

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first publication was a microchapbook called Book of Mirrors published by Ghost city Press. It was in many ways the beginning of New Infinity, and the microbook perseveres in the pages of New Infinity.

It was life changing to have people read and resonate with my work. I still sometimes get snippets of someone sharing or commenting on it. It gave me the validation and confidence to continue to compile my work, as I began to see that it was needed.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
My first encounters with poetry was lyrics written in the sleeves of records, tapes and CDs. Analogue style. In those days, those words were the only glimpse you could get of the artist. As an immigrant, it was a way for me to learn English and better understand the new world I was growing up in. My parents fled Soviet occupation in former Czechoslovakia, so they grew up in a media-controlled society. Having access to western music was a big deal. I grew up on everything from Pink Floyd to Nirvana to Muddy Waters. I was writing lyrics from a young age and I still write a lot of songs.

I didn’t come to poetry in more of a literary sense until I went to college in the city and began to be exposed to more writing and arts than I could access in the rural setting I grew up in. I read a lot. The first poets that really turned me upside down into the world of poetry to never return at that time were constraint and found poets. I found this approach to language very liberating, as it challenges a linear reality. At the time I was dealing with undiagnosed severe pain and struggling to put my story to words. Constraint and found poetry allowed me to express my existence from a vantage beyond the constraint of a linear body or narrative.

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?
My writing process can be incredibly slow. The majority of my writing process is done in my head. As a chronically ill person, I spend a lot of time in a waking dream state allowing my body to recover. This is when I dream of images, themes, narratives, characters, or when I receive insight as to what is necessary to be said. Often by the time I reach the page, the shapes of the dream are formed. I dream up solutions to details and questions and problems, and update the document. I have several formed stories I have not yet managed to put to the document that exist in my head as holographic universes.

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?
For me, a poem usually begins with a few words in my notebook or notes app. An idea, contrast, emotion, image. Sometimes I consider the larger project thematically, and develop a series of poems. Other times I’m just vibing. I grew up writing notes and lyrics to myself, instead of writing publicly, so it’s been a practice that has always been with me. Eventually I mash everything together and see what it’s really saying, beyond my own experience. I have several rituals I practice to distance my narrative voice and draw divinatory information from the words, often using found words in practices such as cutting up words from medical texts into a mini deck of cards and drawing them into a sort of healing divinatory reading. I wrote much of my book using these practices.

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 readings. I am a shy person and I often find the seating at readings is difficult for my spinal condition, but when the vibe is right I love the practice of sharing and reading with friends and strangers.

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?
In the tradition of Czechoslovakian writers, I tend to ask philosophical questions about existence, inspired by surrealism and existentialism. Like my uncles (how I like to refer to Czechoslovakian writers), I grapple with the logic of contradictory truths, the manipulation of language, and the meaning of freedom amongst oppressive forces.

In New Infinity, my questions are related to the metaphysical symphony of the body. I ask about the philosophical implications of autoimmune disease, a sickness of fighting the self on a cellular level. I try to approach story and language in the book as a reclamation and interrogation of the narrative that was put on me by the medical system and society due to my rare disease, and instead create a narrative that becomes an expression of liberation and deep healing. The story is many stories and fragments arranged in a way that can be picked up and read in any order. You can read one page or several chapters, or jump around. It is not linear. Just as healing asks us to visit pockets of time, the stories move like dreams and memories, asking us to revisit ourselves (our cells).

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 feel that writers have a very big responsibility. That is, to be a worker for the people. Whoever “the people” are for you, we as writers (and artists) are responsible to offer our gifts back to our communities. Our work as writers and artists is to archive, reflect, express, research and put a mirror to ourselves. Writers have incredible skill and privilege to communicate on a level that resonates the heart, a powerful technology that should not be underestimated or under utilized. I feel our society creates a lot of shame around creative expression. I think this is because western society has defined “the writer” or “the artist” as a figure of prestige, instead of honouring the act of creation as something that belongs to everyone as a human right. Writers have a very big responsibility to use their time and work to address deep important topics in a way that directly benefits their communities and society at large, whatever that means for them specifically.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I love working with an editor, especially since I grew up bilingual and often miss spelling things. I prefer to workshop pieces later on in the writing process, if at all. But working with a good copy editor is very satisfying.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Allow your seeds to grow in their own time.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to multimedia works)? What do you see as the appeal?
I find it intuitive to work with many forms. As someone with a complex body, I often have to adjust my creative process based on my ability. I am not always able to write, so sometimes I just listen to music, hum or sing, doodle, slowly dance or whatever. I don’t see these forms as separate, but another language with which to express creativity. They inform and revolve into each other. They are embodied poems.

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?
Routine has been a shifting and challenging thing for me over the years, but lately I have been finding a rhythm. My writing routine tends to be folded between periods of rest and spurts of inspiration. I don’t have a specific time dedicated to writing. Everyday is different, depending on where my body is at and what I have to accomplish despite it. I write in my mind waiting at the blood lab, at the crack of dawn when my spinal pain is keeping me awake, or when I have to lay down for several hours until my spine recovers from over exertion. It is a form of release and self-healing, a way to be heard in some distant echo of time.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I turn to my bookshelf, and I turn to my plants. I turn to the wind, the water, the sky.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Chopped wood, a wood stove, cooked plums

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 am definitely influenced by music and sound. I am also inspired by science and research, I draw poetry from scientific journals and books on space and physics.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, Karel Čapek, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

As well as disabled writers such as Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha, Mia Mingus, Johanna Hedva,

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would like to write a film.  

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I would be a musician or an actor :)
 
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Writing is one of the most accessible art forms. I am able to write when I cannot move or open my eyes. I am still able to transform myself and others through distilled thought and creation. Writing is only one of my practices, but it is a nucleus of many forms of creation for me.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Parable of the Sower - Octavia E. Butler
Spice World  

20 - What are you currently working on?
I have several dreams / projects on the go. My next priority is to write a collection of short stories set in Prague based on family stories of Nazi and Soviet occupation and beyond. I am also outlining a sci-fi trilogy. I won't say much, but it involves a garden on the moon. I am also collaborating with Malek Robbana on a monthly dreamspells event that involves a guided nidra dream, presence and eye exercises, followed by community chats about dreaming. We eventually hope to publish some of our dream findings.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

the return of the ottawa small press book fair, autumn 2022 edition: November 12, 2022

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:
    the ottawa
    small press
    book fair

autumn 2022
will be held on Saturday, November 12, 2022 in room 203 of the Jack Purcell Community Centre (on Elgin, at 320 Jack Purcell Lane).

“once upon a time, way way back in October 1994, rob mclennan and James Spyker invented a two-day event called the ottawa small press book fair, and held the first one at the National Archives of Canada...” Spyker moved to Toronto soon after our original event, but the fair continues, thanks in part to the help of generous volunteers, various writers and publishers, and the public for coming out to participate with alla their love and their dollars.

General info:
the ottawa small press book fair
noon to 5pm (opens at 11:00 for exhibitors)

admission free to the public.
$25 for exhibitors, full tables
$12.50 for half-tables
(payable to rob mclennan, c/o 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9; paypal options also available

Note: for the sake of increased demand, we are now offering half tables.
To be included in the exhibitor catalog: please include name of press, address, email, web address, contact person, type of publications, list of publications (with price), if submissions are being considered and any other pertinent info, including upcoming ottawa-area events (if any). Be sure to send by November 1st if you would like to appear in the exhibitor catalogue.

And hopefully we can still to the pre-fair reading as well! details TBA

BE AWARE: given that the spring 2013 was the first to reach capacity (forcing me to say no to at least half a dozen exhibitors), the fair can’t (unfortunately) fit everyone who wishes to participate. The fair is roughly first-come, first-served, although preference will be given to small publishers over self-published authors (being a “small press fair,” after all).

The fair usually contains exhibitors with poetry books, novels, cookbooks, posters, t-shirts, graphic novels, comic books, magazines, scraps of paper, gum-ball machines with poems, 2x4s with text, etc, including regular appearances by publishers including above/ground press,  Bywords.ca , Room 302 Books, Textualis Press,  Arc Poetry Magazine ,  Canthius ,  The Ottawa Arts Review , The Grunge Papers, Apt. 9, Desert Pets Press, In/Words magazine & press, knife | fork | book, Ottawa Press Gang, Proper Tales Press, 40-Watt Spotlight, Puddles of Sky Press, Invisible Publishing, shreeking violet press,  Touch the Donkey , Phafours Press, etc etc etc.

The ottawa small press fair is held twice a year (apart from these pandemic silences), and was founded in 1994 by rob mclennan and James Spyker. Organized/hosted since by rob mclennan.

Come on by and see some of the best of the small press from Ottawa and beyond!

Free things can be mailed for fair distribution to the same address. Unfortunately, we are unable to sell things for publishers who aren’t able to make the event.

Also: please let me know if you are able/willing to poster, move tables or distribute fliers for the event. The more people we all tell, the better the fair!

Contact: rob mclennan at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com for questions, or to sign up for a table

Johannes Göransson, SUMMER

 

I cant hear you
the lilacs are in bloom and the underworld
is slow I’m slowly listening to girls
sing about the rabble in syrenerna
they’re at my door pöbeln
the girls are in the lilacs syrenerna
I can’t hear them
I have a telephone number
tattooed on my shoulder and the lyrics
of the song on the radio
seems to be they’re at the door pöbeln
they’re at the door drömmen it’s not
a dream summer never ends
the currency has lost the language
inside language treacherous lilac
language syrener made for girls
like me for me the lilacs bloom
like little fingerprints hundreds
of bloody little finger prints I can’t hear
you I’m listening to the radio my wife
is feeding me pomegranate seeds
she’s feeding me with bloody fingers
it’s summer it’s summer I can’t
hear you det är sommar

I’m really enjoying the rhythms and music of poet, editor and translator Johannes Göransson’s latest, SUMMER (Grafton VT: Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2022). Swedish born and raised, and living with his family in Notre Dame, Indiana, Göransson is the author of eight poetry titles, although this is only the second I’ve seen [see my review of his Poetry Against All: a diary (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2020) here]. Between what I’ve seen of these two particular titles, Göransson works a threaded, thinking and continuous lyric, one akin to a journal or diary, allowing the ongoingness and repetitions to shape each larger book-length project. There is something intriguing about a lyric simultaneously held in the present moment, amid text and across a range of memory, moving from a gesture by his partner or one of their children, a thought on writing or film, and a series of recollections from childhood. The collage allows for a particular and tricky balance that appears to be done with ease, and allows for a lovely, continuous lyric flow. “How strange to wake up,” he writes, early on in the collection, “in this language / and be finished / with home be finished / with flowers och ett vackert hals / barnen babbler / like they are alive [.]” The music and rhythms of his lyrics are quite striking, one enhanced through the sprinkling of Swedish words and phrases, edging into the boundaries of his mother tongue. One is reminded of Canadian poets Erín Moure and Oana Avasilichioaei, for example, both of whom weave in other languages into and through their own work, or the work of Canadian expat Nathanaël; all of whom, as well, have done extensive work translating the work of other writers. On the whole, this assemblage and accumulation of poems provide a variety of threads across an internal monologue, one where images are able to fully ebb and flow, fade and form, ebb and flow. If his lyric is water, he writes the whole length of a river. “How can you think / I’m listening / I’m bicycling / which means cyclamen / cyclidium geranium / or the poison I’m marrying / to the summer [.]” He is writing memory, the present moment and family, as well as writing home, as his acknowledgements offer:

I began writing the book while staying in Fredrik Sjöberg’s apartment in Stockholm, looking at a painting of two girls on the wall: Anton Dich’s portrait of Lillian Arosenius and Hanna Gottowt. In my head I also had the title of Mats Söderlund’s first book, Det star en pöbel på min trap (There’s a rabble at my door). Also special thanks to Sten Barnekow for always finding me some place to stay in Lund, where I wrote a lot of these poems.

The poems curl, and loop, curl and loop; returning to repeated moments, repeated images. Curling up and around themselves, moving outward in concentric circles. “in the painting of ruins / I can hear summer,” he writes. Later on: “I can’t hear a thing/ tingling the thing I hear / is my wife doing that silver / thing to summer / until it’s over she is inte här / the summer is not over / here it’s still not over but she does / the end-voices in a landscape / painting with an ugly tree with / two girls from 1923 I can’t hear / her I know she is not here / you are here Lillian and Hanna you / will grow up to be history / I will grow up to be porcelain [.]” A bit further:

[…]
It's OK I’m impersonating a kiss
of lilacs the dust covers
my photographs I only ever write
about childhood
because that was before I died
and now the devil has brought me
back to summer in
Stockholm I’m starting to make
sense of my body
which is becoming buried in
pop music and now ooh-ooh
I have to write you a letter
about my body as if it were
split between foreign
words whispered by angels
and soldiers who march in
through the eye […]

There is such a grief and sense of loss that permeates the entirety of this collection, returning to summer and childhood, returning to children and poison, returning to a foundation of language and a portrait of two teenaged cousins painted a century prior. “To write a poem about violence,” he writes, as part of the second section, “while towers collapse is my scam / a summer scam I do it / while drinking milk of paradise / out of a rifle / but I have to get rid of it / the rifle before the party / starts the party of no / to enter undervärlden / you need a picture of yourself / with a noose [.]” Set in four numbered sections of accumulated, untitled lyrics—“For Lillian and Hanna,” “Flowers for the Riots,” “All the Garbage of the Sun” and “The World”—the first three hold to a structure of standalone poems, most of which each fit on a single page, set as single-stanzas of extended breath running down the page, until the fourth section, which is more fragmented, and extended: a layering of stanzas of one to six lines in a steady stream, all returning back to that poison, that painting, that room, circling into and across a poem about grief (far more grief, I would say, than violence, despite repeated references to an abstract and imprecisely described “violence”). And a counterpoint, perhaps, or sibling work to Joyelle McSweeney’s collection on their same, shared loss, her Toxicon and Arachne (New York NY: Nightboat Books, 2020). As Göransson writes in that fourth section:

I invented the meadow
in Giovanni’s room
because my daughter is dead
and I needed it to mean

in Giovanni’s room everything is garbage
nothing has value
and that is why I write a poem
about violence

I write a violence

Given his prior collection, Poetry Against All: a diary, was originally begun while visiting his former childhood home in Sweden in 2013, a book constructed out of entries excised from the manuscript that eventually became his book prior to that, The Sugar Book (Tarpaulin Sky, 2015), one begins to see elements of the larger pattern potentially at work: are these multiple book-length projects begun during the same period of travel home, or are his collections working into what the late Toronto poet bpNichol, or even the late Alberta poet Robert Kroetsch, worked throughout their writing lives, “a poem as long as a life” extended through multiple, published collections? Are all of his published books to-date, or at least these three, part of a single, ongoing project?

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Cian Cruise

Cian Cruise has a degree in film studies and philosophy, and works as a freelance writer, strategist, and consultant. Dad Bod is his first book of essays. His cultural criticism has appeared in Hazlitt, Maisonneuve, Playboy, Vulture, and Little Brother Magazine. You can find him on Twitter @CianCruise. Cian lives in Almonte, Ontario, with his family.
Image Credit: Jennifer Snider Cruise
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
More than anything else, Dad Bod taught me to let go of perfectionism. I wrote it under a fairly tight deadline, while working full time, moving out of Toronto, and taking care of my son (we had little childcare due to the pandemic). I accepted those constraints and attempted to write something that mirrored those circumstances: a lack of control, melange of intersecting influences, and exceedingly limited bandwidth. It was freeing. This feels very different from my previous work, in both fiction and non-fiction, which was often characterized by tighter reins.

2 - How did you come to non-fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or fiction?
Luck of the draw. I've been working in both fiction and non-fiction for as long as I've been publishing, and continue to oscillate between those two registers. The fact that my first book is non-fiction largely stems from having a better pitch for Dad Bod than for the novels I'm working on, and the material connecting with my editor.

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?
Getting started is the fun part, for me. I love looking at a blank page and covering it with scrawl. The first draft is probably my favourite part of the creative process, sometimes too much fun, because revision can be extremely difficult when I carve too deep a pathway the first time through those unknown woods. Especially in non-fiction, where I tend to write to fill a somewhat pre-determined thesis-emotion-structure, and each aspect of the weave feels load bearing to the greater whole. That means I often approach revision like a web, tugging on each change to see what elements it affects within the piece. It's something I'm always trying to wrap my head around, and understand deeper, to be able to revise in a more intentional way.

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?
It all begins from a single skeleton key something-or-other. Often it's a sentence, or the title. Or the juxtaposition between the two. Or, in fiction, a particular scene. If it's the right skeleton key, then it unlocks everything. Everything falls out of that one key moment (or sentence, or paradox, or what have you) and as long as I can carry that in my heart/mind as I work on the piece then I know I won't go too far afield, and I'll also know when it's done because that thing will be exhausted, captured alive, articulated, transcended, or transformed. When that key feels like it fits many, many locks at once — too many that I can't explicitly contain them, that's when I know I'm working on a "book" from the very beginning.  

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 readings, since my first love of writing is fun wordplay and ripping yarns and the momentum of the spell that carries you through a work of prose. Public readings feel like a chance for a writer to experience that feedback loop firsthand with their audience, rather than having to imagine it from your garret. I also really want people to be entertained and engaged with my writing, and readings helped me understand (especially when I was starting out) what worked, what didn't, and how absolutely incorrect my assumptions could be about which was which.

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?
This question honestly stumps me. I entertain plenty of theoretical scaffolding within my work, but I don't feel comfortable explicating the theoretical concerns behind my own writing. That feels a bit like trying to bite my own teeth. As far as the questions I'm trying to answer with my work, it's different for each project. With Dad Bod the question was something like, "Can I take a profoundly ridiculous conceit and turn it into something meaningful, while having fun along the way?" Sort of a self-parody that simultaneously stretches towards authenticity.   

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?
To make books people will actually read. To hurt people in interesting ways. To co-create hallucinations. Not necessarily in that order.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Ha. Definitely both, now that I've had the luck of working with some really outstanding editors. Difficult to stretch yourself after you've already put everything you had into something, essential to pull you past your own limitations.

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

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (nonfiction to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
Not easy at all. I write non-fiction because criticism is a big part of who I am and how I understand myself in the world. I'm pretty sure the first decade of cultural criticism I wrote was basically an oblique defense of my own inchoate storytelling aesthetic, told through dissection of all the narrative art that shaped me. I write fiction because I have these stories clanging around in my mind, and I want to see them out in the world. I want stories *like these* to be real. I want to contribute to the existing pile of stories, rather than only analyze. So the two registers fuel each other, in my spirit, but that does not necessarily mean that the development of craft in either genre supports the other, despite them both being prose. The appeal would be if I could manifest the critical awareness gained in non-fiction to produce better fiction. Fingers crossed.

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 I have one, it's to write in the morning, edit in the afternoon. Nowadays, a typical day begins with a toddler deciding that breakfast is 5:45am, so I punch it in a lot more at night, which is rank chaos.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Books. Usually ones that share nothing in common with what I'm trying to do. Or walks. Or conversation with a few close friends.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Freshwater lake rot. I grew up where the St. Lawrence River joins Lake Ontario, so nothing hits my olfactory quite like the admixture of algae, fish decay, and the tang of ozone.  

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?
Film, television, and video games have played a major impact on my development as a writer, in part because I've written about them so damned much, but in part because I've been so ensconced within the visual metaphors and vocabulary of those media so often, for so long, especially as a child, that they helped form my fundamental creative imaginary. My creative metaphysic, as it were, was shaped by narrative visual art at least as much by literature. That bleed is very fun and also very hard to harness appropriately, since so much of what sings in one medium would be left on the cutting room floor of another.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
As far as informing my approach to non-fiction: Sheila Heti, Dave Hickey, Geoff Dyer, Joan Didion, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lin Yutang, Anne Carson, Steven Erikson, Alan Watts, Zhou Zuoren, and Mary Beard. At least, that's who I can see on the bookshelf across from me right now.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Publish a novel.

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?
Maybe a historian, if I could grow bushy enough eyebrows.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I love writing and I am absolutely miserable when I don't write.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Jurassic Park , just crackerjack. Locke .

20 - What are you currently working on?
The audiobook narration for Dad Bod and a fantasy novel.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Best of the Sucks: High-Octane Poetix from the Legendary Toad Suck Review, ed. Mark Spitzer

 

THE GHOSTS OF ANNE BOLEYN

Convicted of fucking in Greenwich

when she sat, only inwardly mutinous,

by Henry’s side three miles distant,

it should come as no surprise that Anne,

now relieved of physical limits, flickers

wickless in a coach drawn by headless

horses all the way to Blickling even

as she skims towerwards on Thames,

skips poltergeist in shoe shop on day

of execution. Every year since 1538,

she’s frissoned as if by magic sword

trick. Now many queens, more fertile

than Henry could ever need, she flirts

in empty bonnet. Skirts, once garnet,

are blood clot, even looser than accused

in places she’d never been. (Brenda Mann Hammack)

Recently, a copy of the anthology Best of the Sucks: High-Octane Poetix from the Legendary Toad Suck Review (Cheshire MA: MadHat Press, 2022), edited by writer and translator Mark Spitzer, an anthology pulled from the six volumes of the annual Toad Suck Review (2009-2015). As Spitzer offers in his “FROM THE TOADSTOOL: PREFACE TO A NEW TOAD ERA”:

Back in 2008 I was an assistant professor of writing at the University of Central Arkansas where my dean desired a national literary journal for the college. So I went to him and proposed publishing a print version of an already established literary journal that was only online at the time. Having worked as an editor of Exquisite Corpsefor nearly a decade, and knowing that I could coordinate a deal between my university and said journal’s ed in chief, I threw in the incentive of writing a proposal for an MFA program in creative writing which the dean also wanted. Then Whamo! It was on.

[…]

Hence, we settled on the title of Toad Suck Review, named for the region of Central Arkansas where UCA is located. And so “The Transitional Issue” exploded on the scene. Toad Suck Review #1 included work by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, CD Wright, Xaviera Hollander, Jacques Prévet, Lyn Lifshin, Kevin Brockmeier, David Gessner, Davis Schneiderman and an electric, eclectic host of other vibrant voices. We debuted our “High-Octane Poetics” section along with fiction and nonfiction, but we also focused on literary translation, Arkansas-specific authors, environmental literature, artwork, reviews and critical/scholarly work. And as all this went on, we held bandfest fundraisers, sponsored readings, had a presence at national conferences and created a major buzz.

Anyone who knows me already knows I’m a big fan of these sorts of archival projects, from the ongoing interviews I’ve been doing with current and former editors/publishers of small press and journals to the fact that I’m currently building the latest ‘best of’ anthology of above/ground press, covering the press’ third decade of publication. There is something of this currently anthology that reminds me of The Angel Hair Anthology (New York NY: Granary Books, 2001), edited by Anne Waldman and Lewis Warsh, a book that covered a period of Angel Hair magazine and books produced between 1966 and 1978: with the arrival of each anthology on my doorstep, they each provided me an introduction to an entire range of publishing (albeit with scores of familiar names) I hadn’t been aware of. I don’t think it unreasonable to have not heard of either, as few copies of either Angel Hair nor Toad Suck Review most likely managed to make their way north of the border. The two hundred-plus pages of the anthology give a sense of both the locality and the urgency of the journal, working to reach beyond the borders of their immediate to connect a community of writing and writers well beyond into other parts of the country. There’s a vibrancy to the poets, from early work to the late Matthew Henriksen (a poet who died earlier this year, obviously after the book had gone through production) and Jericho Brown to local favourites such as Michael Anania, CD Wright, Jack Collom and Frank Stanford, and American poets well-established by that point, including Ed Sanders, Anne Waldman and Lew Welch (the book does seem to be particularly male-heavy, which is worth noting). There are places where the design of the collection does seem a bit compact, a bit squished, but there is something, also, of the assemblage akin to collage, seeming all over the place—poems and  prose to interviews and essays—suggesting the journal existed in much the same manner, offering a kind of curated literary catch-all, with no one contributor lifted higher than any other, and there’s something energizing in that, something purely democratic. The anthology includes mounds of poetry from an array of poets both new and established, an essay by Amiri Baraka, “WHY MOST POETRY IS SO BORING AGAIN,” Lew Welch’s ‘LANGUAGE IS SPEECH,” as well as interviews with Anne Waldman, Davis Schneiderman, Jericho Brown and CD Wright. This collection offers a rather intriguing portrait of a period of time in American poetry, as seen and curated from Arkansas, a geography not as much on the radar as perhaps it should be. As Wright’s interview ends:

Fayetteville was a place with its moment. There was more than a critical mass of artists from different media living there in the early seventies. We were all burning, none more brightly than Frank Stanford. We were all holdovers from the struggles of Civil Rights, Vietnam War; emerging partisans of the Women’s Movement. Making a little art in the Ozarks, yeah, that seemed like a fertile and protected setting. Reagan was temporarily confined to California. We had all graduated from our at least attended the University of Arkansas. The town was inexpensive and cohesive. The death of Frank Stanford should not be designated the only catalyst for that diaspora, but his tragic early death was a strong, painful signal that our time there was up. Many of us moved to the cities—New Orleans, Houston, San Francisco and Los Angeles were the primary urban destinations. A few hardy artists stayed on and succeeded in making an independent creative living, but the rest of us had to find another way forward. College towns have that in common. They shed their former students. This one bound us together for longer than many, but it was just not large enough to employ artists in any special numbers. But among the artists I most admire, Fayetteville is where they were conentrated then.

Derek Beaulieu, Surface Tension

 

At its core, Surface Tension holds a series of delicate, balanced poems, each symmetrical, palindromic, and made by hand using Letraset. A graphic designer’s tool, Letraset – which standardized typefaces across advertising platforms in an idealistic, 1950s/60s aesthetic of sales copy and purchasing power – foregrounds a clean design; a logical, controllable narrative of graphic beauty and heroic lyricism.

Much contemporary poetry arose from that mandate, but we can swerve the beauty away from the sales pitch.

Surface Tension creates landscapes from the remnants of advertising (Letraset, for instance, is now mostly used by scrapbookers and hobbyists), a pastoral space of deep ink-pools where even the language itself is an oily sheen on the surface of writing. (“MADGE, YOU’RE SOAKING IN IT”)

The latest from Alberta poet, editor, critic, publisher and visual artist Derek Beaulieuis Surface Tension (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2022), an assemblage of morphed text-as-image that examine how language, meaning and letterforms are shaped, playing with the pure image of letterforms, continuing a structural thread he’s been exploring in his work for years via Lettraset. Surface Tension also marks his return to publishing with Toronto’s Coach House, who produced his full-length debut, with wax , back in 2003, having published since with numerous publishers including Talonbooks, The Mercury Press and Guillemot Press.

Titled Surface Tension, Beaulieu references the physical point where liquid shrinks and reshapes into the minimum surface, offering not simply metaphor but description of how poetic form is and can be shaped, offering a sequence of visual sequences, each composed as a succession of text-forms in sequence, some of which move from the recognizable into purely abstract, but every bit of the sequence intact. The visual sequences are interspersed with prose poems that serve as essay-sketches around the project and its applications, as the piece “FORM IS NEVER MORE THAN AN EXTENSION OF CONTENT,” opens: “The poems are further manipulated using photocopiers to become liquid and languid, troubling poetic logic, perfection, and power narratives, they flow and gather, drip and congeal, sliding off the page.” The prose poems serve, almost, as accumulative essays, offering single-sentence mantras that serve as poetic statements, which themselves form larger essay-shapes through their collection. In the same piece, further on, he writes:

When most of the language we consume is non-poetic, should poetry not attempt to poetically intervene within these spaces that are not traditionally poetic?

Poetry is not the beautiful expression of emotive truths; it is the archaeological rearrangement of the remains of an ancient civilization.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Trynne Delaney

Trynne Delaney (b 1996) is a writer currently based in Tiohtiàh:ke (Montreal). They hold a Master of Arts in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Calgary. Their work appears in The Puritan, CV2, Carte Blanche, GUTS, WATCH YOUR HEAD, and the League of Canadian Poets’ chapbook These Lands: a collection of voices by Black Poets in Canada edited by Chelene Knight. In their spare time they like to garden. They grew up in the Maritimes. the half-drowned is their first book.

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

My first book the half-drowned will be releasing a week after I wrote this in June 2022. I’m not sure how it will change my life once it’s out in the world. Writing it certainly changed my life—I have relationships to texts and people that I know I wouldn’t have without the work that went into this book.

Working on it has been one of the most rigorous processes of my life. It’s taught me a lot about what my own needs are as a writer. For example: I need to have a space dedicated to my writing outside of my house. I didn’t realize how much I was writing outside of my house before covid hit in cafes, parks, libraries, busses… about a year ago I managed to find a studio space. I’m super grateful for it.

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

I think I came to poetry simultaneously with other forms of writing. The first time I remember really connecting to a poem was with Life Doesn’t Frighten Me by Maya Angelou, the version illustrated by Jean-Michel Basquiat—ironically, life does frighten me very much. But the first time I think I understood how versatile poetry can be was in an American Lit course. I chose to write an essay on Crossing Brooklyn Ferry and it was like I’d unlocked a portal to another dimension. In terms of my work, most of it is hybrid form – I don’t think of poetry as separate from fiction or non-fiction or even other more visual genres like graphic novels or film/tv.

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 don’t know! I think of all of my projects as having been started from birth. In general, everything takes longer than expected for me, I am trying not to fight that so much anymore.

I took a lot of notes for the half-drowned. It’s the first time I’ve approached work through a lot of research. Most of the research was at the intersection of histories of Black Loyalist populations and personal experience/connection to those histories.

Writing only works for me if I’m hyperfocused in a quiet environment, or occasionally with background noise. For the half-drowned I listened to a lot of ocean wave white noise while I was writing so that the rhythm could imbue itself into me. When I can get to that state where I’m in a flow, often what I write will be a good skeleton of the final product. I tend to edit my poetic work very heavily as I write. I prefer to write by hand because I find it hard to read and connect with writing on a screen so I will make a first draft on paper then transcribe my work to the computer as part of the editing process.

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

Most of my work begins with walking or journaling. When I have an idea that I feel good about I will commit to it and make a book. With individual poems I think of each one as a little book! If I publish a full book of poetry that’s longer than my little chapbook death of the authorone day, I want it to be thought out and well conceptualized.

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

Public readings were an essential part of my creative process pre-covid. I feel nervous about submitting anything for publication that I haven’t read in public yet. They were also the place where I learned to have more confidence and push my limits—for a while I was using readings as a form of exposure therapy for social phobia which was an interesting experience—I learned a lot about generosity and humour from that period. I really feel like those readings made me into the writer I am today.

During the pandemic I’ve found it pretty difficult to engage online because the screen makes me feel lonely and outside community. I’ve been so drained and working on more fiction work that I haven’t been as present.

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 big concern behind my writing is how to find community and love in the ways that we need, especially for oppressed groups. Like, beyond chosen family, how do we build a world that is predicated on caring for and supporting the people and environments around us? How do we become a part of without being apart from our needs?

I’m also interested in mythologies of the Black Atlantic.

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?

Hmmm this is a tough one. I wonder what is meant by The Writer. Some people are writing, some people are writers… I don’t know if I would define myself exclusively as a writer, though that has been a powerful word to claim at some points and made me feel more “professional.”

For a long time I thought the role of writing in society was social change. I think that can be the case, but isn’t necessarily. I think more often writers are simply documenting the movement of time, not necessarily linearly. Capturing an emotional process that reaches with tentacles and sometimes touches people.

I don’t know! Think it depends on the writer!

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

I usually like working with an outside editor. It’s helpful to have a glimpse into how others are reading my work. In my opinion it’s impossible to write anything without collaboration. Sometimes your environment is your editor, which really brings another meaning to an “outside” editor. Other times, it’s just someone who is good at reading. When editing is done well it really enhances the work and the writer’s voice. I’ve learned maybe the most from editors.

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

Rest!

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

They don’t feel totally separate for me; they slip into each other easily. The appeal of poetry is more emotional and personal. I like that poetry doesn’t need a plot. Plots are very challenging and detail oriented and when I am writing I feel like I am transcribing a dream, so I’m not overly concerned with consistency, which means for prose fiction I have to go back and do a lot of reworking of the plot after it’s written. In the future if I write a book with a plot I will probably try to plan it out more! I prefer writing characters and emotional/natural landscapes.

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 don’t keep a routine… yet. I work full time during the day and have a chronic illness so I write when I am able to, usually in the evenings. If I’m lucky I get a good mid-morning writing session on the weekend after lounging around and sipping on tea or coffee.

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

Walking. Or back to the water.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Frying onions and garlic.

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?

Music is a huge influence on me! I grew up playing music – cello – and when I was getting into poetry, rap and folk played a huge role in how I engaged with crafting before I really knew what to look for in written poetry.

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

Audre Lorde’s work came at a pivotal point in my life. Her essays recontextualized my life.

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

I want to write for TV at some point in the future. Good scripts are full of poetry.

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?

In an ideal world I would be a gardener. I think that’s my true purpose.

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

I don’t think it’s opposed for me, it’s just the one I’m public about. I want to try many more art forms in my life! One other one I like a lot is collage.

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

This may seem out of left field but I recently watched Scream 1, 2, and 3 and there is a lot to be critiqued with them, especially in their racial politics, but I had a really good time watching them and I thought the way that they made fun of the horror genre while also showing the ways that trauma always comes back for ya was surprisingly a lot more thoughtful than I expected.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m working on resting! That’s my big theme this year. It’s not something I am very good at yet but it’s something I’ve been forced to do more recently so I’m trying to find ways of slowing down and making sure I’m giving my body what it wants and needs and seeing how poetry might sow itself into this new, quieter life.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Douglas Crase, On Autumn Lake: The Collected Essays

 

As another appraisal of the commonwealth, “Lake Superior” extends a tradition that seems particular American: it’s a tradition we honor only partway. For the truth is, when our poets start telling us about gneiss, or land and air, when they locate their story in stone or, as Niedecker does, in rock, I think we are likely to allow them the trope but not likely to believe they are saying what in fact they just said. They and their poems are made of land and air and rock. People who read poetry have always been alert enough to entertain the trope while avoiding the notion itself as sentimental, romantic, or worse, perniciously near to nationalism.
            Get them away from poetry, however, and today’s readers are also alert enough ecologically to know that their own identification with the environment isn’t ipso facto proof of direct-mail mysticism or gang nationalism. (“Niedecker and the Evolutional Sublime”)

Moving my way through the stunning new collection On Autumn Lake: The Collected Essays (New York NY: Nightboat Books, 2022) by American poet and critic Douglas Crase, I had foolishly presumed I hadn’t actually heard his name prior to this, only to discover I’d read his essay “Niedecker and the Evolutional Sublime,” included as part of the late Lorine Niedecker’s Lake Superior (Seattle WA/New York NY: Wave Books, 2013) [see my review of such here]. As the press release for On Autumn Lake: The Collected Essays offers: “On Autumn Lake collects four decades of prose (1976-2020) by renowned poet and beloved cult figure Douglas Crase, with an emphasis on idiosyncratic essays about quintessentially American poets and the enduring transcendentalist tradition.” Some of the essays collected here, truly, are revelatory, and he writes repeatedly, thoroughly and thoughtfully on poets such as Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970), John Ashbery (1927-2017) and James Schuyler (1923-1991), among multiple other pieces on an array of literary activity, centred around his attentions across some four decades. I’ve read numerous works by Niedecker over the years, but admittedly paid little attention to the works of Schuyler and Ashbery (preferring, myself, the work of their New York School compatriot, Frank O’Hara), although Crase’s essays almost make one feel a sense of loss for not having paid enough attention. One doesn’t need an intimate knowledge of his subjects to fall deeply into these essays, and one is even reminded of just how poorly and rarely Niedecker’s work had been read for so long, only rescued from relative obscurity in later years, thanks to critics and editors such as Jenny Penberthy and Douglas Crase (fully aware that there are plenty of examples of women poets not given their proper due until later: Mina Loy, Anne Wilkinson, Judith Copithorne, etcetera).

Crase’s essays are deeply knowledgeable and intimate, managing to write critically about poets, as in the case of Ashbery and Schuyler, that he was personally close to for decades, allowing his friendships to open up, and not hinder, the possibility for clear critical examination. There is also something quite charming, and even unique, about Crase’s approach, as he offers in his preface to the collection: “You can emerge from your education by heroes and friends lacking a certain conventional balance, partial for the rest of your life to a set of values acquired when you were the fool in love. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” I find that kind of self-assessment quite wonderful, “a fool in love,” as Douglas Crase the critic/reader allows his thinking heart to fuel his examinations into the thinking and structure of any particular author beyond what might otherwise be possible. He continues, further on:

            Say you’ve decided to read all of a single author, as I did Emerson, or as Susan Howe must have done with Dickinson; read them as if no one had read them before, and only afterward consult the established critical writings on that author. You soon note that the writings generalize where they might be particular. They elaborate on their learnings, impressions, and at times their prejudice, until it appears eventually they have substituted the elaborations for what the author actually wrote. Jarrell cautioned his readers to remember that the criticism of any age, even the best of it, becomes inherently absurd. Sometimes it’s risible. And the conclusion is: if they got Emerson wrong, or Dickinson, how can I believe what they are telling me about Ashbery, or Niedecker, or the origins of the New York School?

There is such a delight in his examinations, offering a joyous and rapt attention and passionate engagement on very specific poets, poems and moments, while simultaneously able to see how the threads of his particular subject’s work fits into the larger fabric of literary production, culture and politics. As he writes as part of the essay “THE LEFTOVER LANDSCAPE,” “Much of art is the struggle to make emotion less embarrassing.” There is something quite staggering in that simple, short sentence that Crase manages to get, and get to. Honestly, go to page 135 and read the whole paragraph that sits at the bottom of the page. It’s breathtaking. And read the whole essay. And then read the whole collection. This is easily the finest collection of prose I’ve read in years.

Ongoing notes: mid-August, 2022: Adrian Lürssen + Ryan Stearne,

So there’s only two weeks left in the great above/ground 29thanniversary BIG SUMMER SALE , but you probably already know that. It also means that we’re leaning back up into fall, and most likely an announcement in a few weeks further for the 30th anniversary subscriptions. Can you believe the press turns thirty years old next year? Honestly, it seems strange, even to me.

San Francisco CA: I was curious to see a chapbook from Bay Area poet Adrian Lürssen, his NEOWISE (Victoria BC: Trainwreck Press, 2022). As the acknowledgment offers: “HUMAN IS TO WANDER, the full-length manuscript from which this chapbook is excerpted, was selected by Gillian Conoley for the 2022 Colorado Poetry Prize and will be published by The Center for Literary Publishing in November, 2022.” Lürssen’s poems and poem-fragments float through and across images, linking and collaging boundaries, scraps and seemingly-found materials. “She would say bees or blood,” he writes, as part of “Landscape No Longer In a Mother Tongue,” “he said. / Out of earshot is a river, she said.” There is something of the fragment and fractal to the assemblage of his poems, writing a map around the narrative “I,” through the way they fit together; and I’m curious to see how the larger book-length structure presents itself. And yet, in certain ways, the structure here is less of collage or fragment than the swirling of a fractured lyric around a central core. There is something going on here worth very much paying attention to.

[*force

 

The feather at the opening is also a ring around a cause: to enter means to empty pockets of insects and arms. Noon is the action against the enemy – night, a way to say “Uncle” or argue the difference between troop and troupe. The name and the rifle: a system, like a river leading away from home.

“Expect the yam and you’ll get the rhyme.”]

Calgary AB: I’m really taken with Calgary writer Ryan Stearne’s reworking on Ernest Hemingway through OLD SEA (Calgary AB: The Blasted Tree, 2022), produced in an edition of sixty copies (complete with metal hook embedded in the cover). In an “Author Statement” nearly as long as the short story (okay, not really, but close enough), Stearne offers:

            Is it possible to recreate style based on computational analysis. That’s what “Old Sea” is at its core, an attempt to use data to rewrite Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea as a short story. Hemingway’s immediately recognizable and brusque style made him an immediate candidate to test my stylometry-based hypothesis. When you read Hemingway, you know you are reading Hemingway. Yet, his simplicity is also an exercise in literary slight of hand, resonating emotionally in a style that seems effortless. What I mean is that Hemingway’s deliberations encompass an exercise in both inclusion and excision. The omitted words are equally as important as those set in the final type.

Procedural work, for the most part, can be seen as a way of either stripping bare or altering altogether, allowing the source material to purely feed the possibility for something entirely different to emerge, but Stearne’s project suggests, instead, a way of retaining the flavour of a particular work through its stripping down. As the opening of Stearne’s short story begins:

            The old man sat with the boy on the terrace where they could smell the faint odour of the distant shark factory on the wind, talked about baseball and fishing, and had beers. He hadn’t caught a fish in eighty-four days and was salao, the worst kind of unlucky.
            “You will be successful tomorrow,” the boy said.
            “Maybe,” the old man said.