Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 117

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Emily R. Austin

Emily R. Austin was born in Ontario, Canada, and received a writing grant from the Canada Council for the Arts in 2020. She studied English literature and library science at Western University. She currently lives in Ottawa. Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is her first novel.

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

Thanks for chatting with me, rob! My first novel, Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead came out last year. A few years before it, I wrote a novella, “Oh Honey.” In terms of how the works compare I’d say my writing has become a little more earnest and a touch less focused on apathy.

Everyone In This Room changed my life in that it’s what connected me to my talented literary agent (Heather Carr with the Friedrich Agency), as well as publishers, editors, publicists, other writers, booksellers, librarians, and readers. Day to day, my life doesn’t look too different. I get more messages than I used to. I feel a little less coy referring to myself as a “writer.” I’m also a bit more motivated to write now, I think.

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

When I was thirteen, my high school English teacher gave me a short story assignment. Before high school, I was weak in English. I had a learning disability growing up (and still do, presumably.) I was never told what it was, but I’m pretty sure it’s dyslexia. Because of that, I performed poorly in English growing up. So, I was surprised to get an A+ on the story I wrote when I was thirteen. My teacher moved me from the college track English to the university track English, entered my story in a contest, and it won first place in Ontario. I got a fancy plaque. So, I got into writing fiction because my little thirteen-year-old heart was given the confidence to do so by a very kind English teacher.

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

It takes me a while to write an entire book, but I can write the beginning of a book pretty quick. I have lots of ideas, though most are bad. In terms of how the drafts look, I edit while I write. I don’t think you’re supposed to do that, though. Because I do, my first drafts have already been pretty painfully edited. After they’re done, I action the notes from people like editors or my agent, and the story shifts a bit. So far, you’d be able to tell it’s the same book, though, I think.

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’m an anxious person who feels a weird illogical desire to be always working towards something, so if I’m writing—I’m hoping for it to become a book.

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

Everyone in this Room came out during the pandemic. It was very shortly before covid that I found my literary agent. It was near the beginning of the first lockdown when I got the book deal—so, no, I’ve not done many public readings. None, in fact, besides a few virtual events. I used to intentionally select classes in university based on whether they had a presentation component. I’d have chosen a class with a forty-page essay over one five-minute presentation.

I’m about ten years out from university now, and miraculously, I’ve overcome a lot of that. I went through a period of feeling deeply apathic, and one of the few benefits to apathy is that it made it possible for me to speak publicly without caring. I am no longer an apathetic person, but I managed to get a number of speaking opportunities under my belt while I was, and unintentionally overcame the fear. Somehow, I actually teach classes now. That all said, it would still be a lie to say I enjoy any form of public speaking. I am certainly able and willing to readings, though.

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?

The main reason why I write is because I like to. I don’t sit down to write thinking of the concerns I have, or the questions I want to get to the bottom of. I am just sort of acting on a compulsion. Questions usually do come up as I’m writing though. It depends on the characters, I think. In Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead the questions relate to, “What’s the purpose of life?” and “Why not kill yourself?” I guess generally, I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of other people to understand, and foster empathy maybe.

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 think writing can be important. It can do things like entertain, offer hope, or make you think. Though, it doesn’t always do that, does it? I don’t have a strong opinion about what the role of a writer should be. I guess I think everyone should be whatever they want.

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

I really love working with editors. I think having other people involved in your writing, who prompt you to improve it, is extremely fortunate. For me, I also find it’s often easier to action feedback from other people because I have a lot of self-doubt, and when there are editors involved in your writing whose judgement and skill you trust, it makes writing easier. I was lucky to have a very talented editor, Daniella Wexler, work on Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead. I can say, for sure, that book is much better because of her. My literary agent, Heather, also edited, and she significantly improved that book too. There were others involved too. I think having anyone involved in your writing who cares about it enough to want to make it better is lucky.

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

Write pretending no one is going to read it but you.

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

Genre wise, I’d say my novella and book were pretty similar. I like to write about women, mental illness, and dark humour. I tend not to write very long stories.

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 should probably start a writing routine. I have multiple day jobs in addition to writing, and while I think I’m somehow managing to create the façade that everything’s organized—the behind the scenes of my writing is a mess. I write in my note’s app a lot. Usually, the bulk of my books are written over a handful of frenzied weekends, where I did nothing but write, and then picked at for half an hour here and there. All to say, I’m probably in no position to offer any advice regarding this.

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

If I feel stalled, I try to get away from it. I go for a walk. I read something. Or, usually, I start something new and come back later.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

There’s some wild plant that grows around Southwestern Ontario (and probably Ottawa too) that I smell sometimes when I’m outside. I don’t know what it is, but every time I smell it, I simultaneously remember being a teenager working at a summer camp, playing at my aunt and uncles farm, and laying in the grass in my parent’s backyard. It’s some sort of weed, I think. It has a distinct smell. I want to say it’s juniper, but I think I just like the word “juniper.”

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 definitely does for me. I’m a big fan of the band Muna, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus. Every time I hear a song I like, I imagine a story around it.

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

Ottessa Moshfegh, Brandon Taylor, Kristen Arnett, T Kira Madden, Sam Pink, Jean Kyoung Frazier, Steven Rowley, Casey Plett, Zoe Whittall, Sylvia Plath, Leonard Cohen.

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

I’d like to find ways of being a more helpful person to other people. I’m looking for opportunities to contribute more to the well-being and happiness of other people.

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?

Outside of writing, I’ve worked as a librarian, a college professor, and an information architect. I might just be a little burnt out, but I’m becoming one of those “I don’t dream of labour” types. It might be fun to just be a writer someday.

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

I am into visual arts too. When I was a kid, I thought I’d do something with that. When I was going to university, I felt like I had to pick between being an English major or go into visual arts. I picked English. I planned to be an English major, to go to library school, and to try to be writer, but I didn’t think the writer part would actually happen. It’s nuts that has to be honest. I felt sad about not going into visual arts though. I got a tattoo of this doodle I used to draw on all my notes on my side as a sentimental way of remembering I wanted to get into art once.

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

The Swimmers by Chloe Lane. It’s about a twenty-six-year-old woman named Erin who is spending a holiday weekend with her aunt, uncle, and terminally ill mom. Over the weekend, she learns her mom is planning to end her life the following Tuesday. It’s very sad and very funny.

I watched Drop Dead Fred recently which is a black comedy from 1991. I watched as a kid and re watched recently. It’s about a woman’s imaginary friend named Fred. It’s got 11% on rotten tomatoes, but I love it. 

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a couple things. One is a book about a woman with a phobia, and the other one about a girl who failed twelfth grade English.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Marty Cain, The Wound is (Not) Real: A Memoir

 

In 1992, my older brother had his first life-threatening seizure. My mother tells me I was on the living room floor playing with a toy ambulance, manically opening and shutting the doors. It was in the afternoon. It was in Dover, Vermont. It was possibly summer. They left me with the neighbors. We’re going to have a real good time, the neighbors said. We have some roast beef to feed you. I remember the car moving down the long driveway, entering the dark wood, crossing the edge of what I knew. (“PROLOGUE”)

I’ve been waiting a while to see the finished version of Ithica, New York writer and publisher Marty Cain’s full-length The Wound is (Not) Real: A Memoir (New Orleans LA: Trembling Pillow Press, 2022), after having caught excerpts of the work-in-progress through his chapbook Four Essays (Tammy Journal, 2019) [see my review of such here]. The Wound is (Not) Real: A Memoir is composed as a lyric examination of memory and trauma, set as sectioned prose poem sections that move in and out of surreal imagery, nearly as a kind of long poem reminiscent of the accumulated short sections of Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop’s collaborative memoir-dos-a-dos Cesi nest pas Keith / Cesi n’est pas Rosmarie (Burning Deck, 2002), or even Aditi Machado’s remarkable chapbook-length lyric essay on form, The End (Brooklyn NY: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020) [see my review of such here].

Opening with his first memory of his brother’s seizures, Cain unfolds the collection as a book of brothers, violence, illness, abuse, sex, memory and self-discovery. “My destruction,” he writes early on in the collection, “I take it with me. I breathe in whole numbers. I breathe in a dream with a gun to my head, and upon my waking, I stand in the shower and kneel in the stream; a field of flowers, the allergens enter, I expectorate softly with my mouth to the drain, I suck in hairs, I suck in piss, I suck in fear that fills my body like an egg and when I slice my arm the yolk comes running. I need a pill. I need a pill for my frantic intestines.” He writes of trauma, and of memory, offering a portrait that occasionally slips out of focus; sometimes necessarily so. This is a powerful collection, one that works to critique and unpack as much as possible, swirling through commentary on poems by Wordsworth and Robert Penn Warren against his own emergence into literary creation and literary thinking. Simultaneously meditative and urgent, Cain slips in and around form as well, blending literary criticism with trauma memoir, critical document and coming out story, providing articulate and comprehensive arguments made through accumulation around both form and survival. “And form is a feeling.” he writes, as part of “WORDSWORTH POEM.” “And form is a garment.” Or, as he writes as part of the extended “ROBERT PENN WARREN POEM”:

Describe your poetic lineage, the white male professor says. This is my first poem about my father.

/

When I consider Warren’s relationship with Time, I often think of his desire to step outside it—to hover above it like film on milk, like a membrane of fog on a pasture… To give the illusion of relinquishing control, but in actuality, wielding it authoritatively—as if to say, I can step outside this poem, BECAUSE I OWN IT, I can survey this Arcadian field from afar, BECAUSE I OWN IT. I can conceal process, blood and bodies, BECAUSE I AM A GOD. I am a white man who owns Time. this is for me, and I WILL LIVE FOREVER.

Rhiannon Ng Cheng Hin, Fire Cider Rain

  

I wanted to drive the magnetic machine
through a wet-earth memory of itself        align
the hours in solar grids           return
them to their naked selves
dew-borne woman by dew-torn woman
I wanted to suspend our quivering
for one soluble second             disengage
from office life        evacuate
those bloodlines of children     collapse
one by one, the continents
to calcic dust 

              Sugarcane fields darkened on the underside of clouds. (“COEFFICIENTS OF FRICTION”)

The full-length poetry debut by Edinburgh-born Ottawa poet Rhiannon Ng Cheng Hin is Fire Cider Rain (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2022), a collection set in four sections—“Evaporate,” “Condensate,” “Precipitate” and “Collect”—that examine the relationship between a mother and daughter amid an evolution of movement and displacement through the metaphor of water. Across the narrative thread of Fire Cider Rain, Ng Cheng Hin writes of migration and arrival, examining what is gained and what is lost, and what can’t help but be left behind. “as if by ritual, I enter a polemic / of loss,” she writes, to open the poem “HUMAN DISSECTION LAB,” “wherein the axis of grief / lies stitched to the vein of every / hemlock, every arthropod, every / woman’s coarse throat.” Stretching across multiple geographies—from North Africa to Mahébourg to “the edge of Lake Huron” and a Greyhound bus along the 401—there are elements of the tonal structure and familial content reminiscent of another poetry debut from earlier this year, Nanci Lee’s Hsin (Kingston ON: Brick Books, 2022) [see my review of such here], both of which offer a lyric examination on mothers and daughters, loss and exodus, paired but perpetually untethered and seeking to connect. “like mother like daughter like matter like water –” Ng Cheng Hin writes, to close the poem “THE LAWS OF THERNODYNAMICS I.” Writing again of the narrator’s “Māmā” to close the poem “SEAMELT II,” she offers: “I will begin where she left me / with the sound of // water on tile.”

Her opening poem, the sequence “COEFFICIENTS OF FRICTION,” immediately sets a scene of descriptive thickness and full-bodied phrases, offering a lyric density very much aware of its own music and rhythms. “what breakable, half remembered bodies,” she writes, “bent with small attritions / stratospheric relics gliding north / in radical heaps              away from purled trees / broken porchlights, the long ache / of the autumn island fire – […]” There is a staccato pulse of accumulated phrases and lines, writing moments of delicate, subtle music, one atop another until the larger shape begins to reveal itself. The storytelling element of these poems is quite strong, although including occasions where the story gets in the way of the music and language of her lyric, otherwise offering a resolute and gymnastic density of sound, rhythm and meaning, as the first part of the poem “HOLOGRAM” reads:

in fertile floodlight
fabric lifts to pardon my
cynicism, my pisiform 

jutting out in the shape of
a swollen tilapia – another
statistic pushing me past 

dilapidated city puddles and
their half-lit blueprints
past the trophic lid of West Dundas 

where the Blue Bay Café
lived before it was
permanently closed 

where I return in these
terraqueous hours to find
a figure floating 

above the telephone wires
arriving and departing in lambent strobes:

a hologram, weaving between flame trees
a mother, unlearning how to love

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Madeline Sonik

Madeline Sonik is a multi-genre writer and anthologist. Her latest book of fiction, Fontainebleau , is a linked story collection. Her latest nonfiction book, Queasy , recently appeared with Anvil Press.

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

I guess that the publication of my first book gave me the confidence to attempt a second. I recall being very self-conscious with the first book. It’s difficult for me to put myself out there and I worried a lot about how the work would be received. It was a fiction collection, Drying the Bones, and it surprised me that many people believed the stories to be autobiographical. I was equally surprised that my first non-fiction book, Afflictions & Departures,was thought, by some, to be fictitious. I think that I’m much less self-conscious about my work now. Also, I’ve come to realize that readers will find their own meaning in a work and that once something is written, if you want an easy life, you just need to let it go.

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

In my early teens, I attempted to write satirical autobiography.  This was followed by attempts to write science fiction and children’s literature. Poetry followed, but more as an exercise. I would say that the first early writing I did, my juvenilia, happened as a kind of catharsis. There was so much I needed to express, and none of it was allowed. Writing gave me a space where I could express my grief and air my grievances and didn’t get in trouble for it.

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

I write very slowly, but the work does come out of copious notes. Usually, the notes are factual: for example, I might look into the life cycle of an insect to get a good metaphor, or for authenticity, details of the taste and texture of a particular sort of apple. Usually, my first draft is close to the final. I’d say that on average, I do about three drafts—and with the final two there’s a lot of tinkering rather than composing.

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?

A poem or work of prose usually begins for me with an image or a memory that I want to explore. I have written shorter pieces that have ended up being larger book projects, but also, I’ve started projects that I know will be books.

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

I don’t think readings help my creative process directly. They might help in the sense that I feel such relief and so relaxed when they’re over that I’m able to access my inner world faster. It’s kind of like having your oxygen cut off—when you’re able to gulp that air again, it’s an explosive experience.

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?

When I’m writing, the questions present themselves. I don’t try to answer them so much as amplify them. They are, for the most part, open-ended questions with no specific concise answer. For example, in one of the pieces in my current collection, Queasy,I found the writing directing me to explore the relationship my mother had with her half-brother. As I wrote and researched, I became more and more aware of how different they both were, and how both, separated by a generation, seemed to be products of the times they were born into. This might seem like a rather banal theoretical revelation, but for me, seeing how it impacted my mother and her half-sibling was quite astounding. Further, it made me realize that I too have been born into a specific time that influences the way I think, feel, act, and write.

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 different writers have different roles, though I don’t think writers are particularly conscious of what they do in terms of collective impact.  For example, some preserve the status quo, while others disrupt it. Some support collective values while others point out the limitations of these. Sometimes they do both together. I don’t think it’s for writers to say what their role should be. One writes what one must and tries as best they can to prepare themselves for the praise or punishment or plain indifference that follows.

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

I’d say it depends on who the outside editor is. If the outside editor understands the work and isn’t trying to impose their own ideas upon it, then they can be very helpful.

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

It’s hard to decide what’s the best piece of advice I’ve heard, but I’ll share with you something that has been very helpful to me recently both in my writing and in my life. This comes from an interesting little book, 365 Tao: Daily Meditations by Deng Ming-Dao:

“In order to solve problems, it is helpful to first understand whether they are puzzle, obstacle, or entanglement. A puzzle need only be analyzed carefully: It is like unraveling a ball of yarn and requires patience more than anything else. An obstacle must be overcome: We must use force and perseverance to either destroy or move away from what is blocking us. An entanglement mires us in a maze of limitations: This most dangerous of situations requires that we use all our resources to extricate ourselves as quickly as possible.”

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

I try to follow my energy, and this makes it easy to be fluid. However, it also means that I have many unfinished works in progress, as the flow of energy might change before I’ve completed something. I have works from two decades ago that are still in need of completion. This used to bother me a lot, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to trust the process more and more. Sometimes the passage of time and the perspective that it gives is essential for moving forward. I’ll give you a good example. When I was in my late twenties, I began writing a novel in which one of the primary characters was a woman in her fifties. As I recently revisited the work, I realized that I could now write this character with more authenticity instead of relying on stereotypic ideas about what a fifty-year-old woman might be like.

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’m settled, I’ll write every day, beginning in the morning. At some point, I’ll usually go for a bike ride or go to the gym to clear my head. I’ll write again in the evening until I can’t discern what it is I’m writing, or in some cases, when I fall asleep at the keyboard. However, when I’m not settled, I find it very difficult to keep to a writing routine at all.

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

I usually get away from the writing if it’s not going well. I’ve found doing something physically active can usually help.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

I’m not sure which place I’d call home, but there are fragrances that remind me of my childhood, like newly mown grass and the smell of dusty humid air before a thunderstorm.

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 that everything you mention can inspire writing. I’d add to this intense childhood memories and images as well as the personal stories of friends and relatives.

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

I’m an extremely eclectic reader, but I mostly read works in genres that I’m currently writing. For example, Annie Dillard’s nonfiction works were important when I first began writing nonfiction. Toni Morrison, Barbara Gowdy, and Gabriel García Márquez have been important writers for me at different times, as have been Kelly Link, George Saunders, and Shirley Jackson. When I was working on Queasy, I read a lot of history and biography. I read, for example, Margaret Thatcher’s books (something I never would have read if I hadn’t been trying to get a political perspective of the 1970s in England). I read works like A Very English Scandal by John Preston and Anger Is an Energy by John Lydon as well. Being particularly interested in Jungian psychology, I have read a great deal in this field too. In fiction and in nonfiction, I find it helps me know the characters I write about better.

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

I’d like to renounce the world and live in bliss as a hermit on a mountain top, never having to deal with income tax again… but that’s not going to happen any time soon.

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 think it I hadn’t put my energy into writing, I might not have survived. My alternate occupation would have to be psychotherapist.

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

I wrote because, metaphorically, my tongue had been ripped out of my head and my mouth sealed. Writing seemed the most expedient and safe way to express myself. This, I believe, turned me into a writer.

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

Whenever I’m asked a question like this, I have a very hard time answering. I don’t know if I see works as “great” anymore. There are books that can be very well written and meaningful to me—books that can inform my writing—books that can bring me to new places of consciousness. However, I don’t know if I think of any of them as “great.”

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’ve just completed a collection of Weird Tale, and I’m currently working on a nonfiction book about family and genetics. 

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Hayan Charara, These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit

 

SOME SENTENCES

A poet I loved and was betrayed by
loved me again and my ex-wife
took me to a hotel to fuck my brains out,
something we never did, but just as her body
touched mine a crowd of people appeared,
an acquaintance, a colleague,
my current wife, one by one defiling
the moment, the room, and then,
because they do not give a rat’s ass
about daylight savings, my kids
woke me at 6 a.m., a false hour,
and the lawn needed mowing, the mower
needed gas, and halfway through I ran out
of leaf bags so I called the kids,
they had at the pile of leaves, and the air
smelled like a past I never had
yet always imagined as my own,
a past in which I go on listening
for the sentences never said.

I’m really enjoying the poems that make up Texas-based poet and editor Hayan Charara’s striking fourth full-length collection (and the first of his I’ve seen)—following The Alchemist’s Diary (Hanging Loose Press, 2001), The Sadness of Others (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2006) and Something Sinister (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2016)— These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit (Minneapolis MN: Milkweed Editions, 2022). Through finely-honed narrative poems, Charana’s lyrics offer swirls of narrative that nearly turn themselves inside out in uniquely crafty, clever ways, finding exactly the right moment and the exact right way to land, until you suddenly arrive, realizing you’ve been here the whole time. The extended poem “TERRORISM,” for example, is a masterwork of pacing and narrative, moving slowly across a large canvas to articulate complex thought, as is the shorter poem “ON THE DEATH OF OTHER PEOPLE’S / CHILDREN.” I’m startled by the ease of his line, and through just how much he can accomplish through very short spaces, writing observations that provide a curious distance, able to stand above even his own thoughts to better articulate them.

There’s an immediacy to his lyric, more meditative than urgent, wonderfully revelatory and intimate, offering moment to moment, even among surreal sketches that bear an impossible or even possible present. He writes self through the world, and the world through the self, offering a perspective able to find the smallest light through the dark. This is a remarkably optimistic and present collection, with a quality of dark optimism reminiscent of Ottawa poet Stephen Brockwell’s recent Immune To The Sacred (Toronto ON: Mansfield Press, 2022) [see my review of such here]. As the poem “NEIGHBORS” begins: “George killed men in the war. / Which men, which war, he doesn’t say, and I don’t ask. / The flowers in his yard, poppies or anemones, / remain the most beautiful on the street.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Grace Lau

Grace Lau is a Hong-Kong-born, Chinese-Canadian settler living in Ontario on the traditional and Treaty territory of the Anishinabek people, now known as the Chippewa Tri-Council comprised of Beausoleil First Nation, Rama First Nation, and the Georgina Island First Nation. Her debut collection of poetry, The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak , is published by Guernica Editions. Her work can be found in Grain Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, Frontier Poetry, Arc Poetry, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter at @thrillandgrace.

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

It confirmed to me that I could do this whole poetry thing. I know that you don’t need to publish a book to call yourself a poet, but when I held that book in my hands for the first time, my first thought was probably something like “okay, it’s not just me and I’m not trippin here… this is real.”

My more recent poems have changed so much from when I drafted the beginnings of my debut! I think there were two main reasons… I was in a very inward-looking and memory-obsessed place at the time, for one. 

And looking back on those poems now, I think I also expected a lot more out of poetry, perhaps unfairly. As a new-ish poet, I was finding my footing still and trying to strike that balance between creating good poems and communicating all the feelings pent up inside me that growing up I could never really express, whether it was about injustice in my community or just, you know, human anger and pain. Poems can absolutely be a vehicle for all of that, but to expect that out of poetry, to the degree that I might have, was asking a lot.

I still demand a lot out of my poems now, but it’s in a different way—now all I ask of them is to be the best poems they can be.

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

I read a lot growing up. Fiction just came easily to me, as I think it does for most kids who like reading. My mom took me to the Fraserview Public Library in Vancouver every weekend when I was a kid and that was probably the favourite part of my weekends. 

I’d always bring a huge stack of books home (judging most books by their covers)—Goosebumps, Encyclopedia Brown, those series were some of my best friends growing up. The funny thing was I also loved those Eyewitness hardcover books about how things were made and interesting facts about different topics, so I’d say both fiction and non-fiction were easy sells for me, right off the bat!

Poetry, on the other hand, was something that was imposed by school at first. I studied Shakespeare and Pope and Milton in high school English, but I was just “meh” on everything. (If the poem rhymed, there was a higher chance that I liked it…)

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 never really tell. Sometimes, I get a burst of inspiration or a really cool concept, and the poem will come together in an hour or two. Other times, it’s like pulling teeth (and takes twice as long).

First drafts sometimes look close to their final shape. I haven’t played too much with form until recently, so I usually stick to the same few basic forms… But I do tend to write copious notes and rough drafts. My refining process for poetry is basically to hand-write and rewrite the draft with small changes incrementally—I don’t know why, but that process helps me think through the edits! Recently, I’ve been more experimental and the form of some of those poems have changed drastically from the initial drafts, unrecognizable, almost.

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?

Most of my poems begin with a seedling of a thought or idea. Not even half-baked. (Quarter-baked?) I’ve only written one book so far, and I didn’t write all those poems with the goal of turning them into a book—I think at some point I realized that I had enough poems for a manuscript, and only then did the book really come together!

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

I’d say it’s a part of my creative process. When I write, it’s very solitary and the words live almost exclusively within me. 

But when I do readings, I feel like I’m releasing them, hopefully into the hearts of other people. The poems that have felt most “complete” to me tend to be the ones that I enjoy reading aloud to people, and that elicit some kind of feeling from them. It makes me feel like I’ve seen their “true selves,” on the page, and also beyond it.

Readings give me lots of anxiety. I’m very envious of slam poets who could just walk up to the mic and recite from memory without a hitch—I don’t know if I’d ever be able to do that. But even so, I think that ultimately my enjoyment of public readings wins out by a hair. Let’s just say it’s 45% anxiety and 55% joy.

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 is one of those times where I wish I did an MFA or did a few courses there. Apart from reading other poets, my entanglements with theory are pretty, well, non-existent.

When it comes to questions, my work has a (I think) pretty narrow scope of inquisitiveness. The themes/subjects may vary quite a bit (basketball, hip hop, food) but in the end, it seems I’m looking for the same thing the next person is. Trying to figure out what love is. What belonging means. To find a place and a home in the world.

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?

A few years ago, I would’ve probably answered with some variation of “to be a mirror for society.” But who’s to say? Some writers may believe it’s their role to entertain—and they may be damn good at it.

Some writers may believe they don’t have a role at all, that they can write purely for the fun and fulfilment of it, and that should be enough. For me, writers can have responsibility if they wish to take that on, but I don’t think that every writer and every person who’s interested in writing should focus too much on the role. It’s a lot of pressure. I’m probably projecting. Haha.

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

Essential. For me it hasn’t been difficult, maybe because I’ve had the good fortune of working with great editors, but having an outside perspective is very helpful. You don’t have to, and shouldn’t, always take an editor’s advice, but when you’re so close to the work, as poets often are, it’s easy to miss things. The editor’s there to make sure you don’t.

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

Done is better than perfect—not to say quality isn’t important. This is purely referring to the whole fear of the blank page / procrastination thing. 

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

Pretty easy, because it’s a different goal in mind and a different process for me. I’ve found it healthy to write different things. Not only does it keep me from getting bored, but switching from poetry to reviews also gives me an excuse and extra push to make time to read other people’s work and to do it at a deeper, more analytical level—which then provides inspiration and makes me a better writer…

Which then allows me to read and analyze work in even more diverse ways and maybe even pick up on things that 2015-Grace probably wouldn’t have noticed. It’s a virtuous cycle.

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 have one! When I have the time (usually on the weekends), I’ll pick up my pen and notebook, and start writing. My only routine is that I write with pen and paper.

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

Either taking a walk, or my bookshelves. 100% success rate so far. 

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Fir trees and dim sum restaurants.

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?

Yes! Music, but that might be cheating because I listen to a lot of hip hop that is essentially poetry. Ever since I started reading more Mary Oliver a few years ago, I’ve also been more influenced by nature and the environment around me. I used to do a lot of photography, and it’s really helped train my attention and discover that not all poetry lives in letters and words.

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

I’ve found that reading outside of poetry has been very enjoyable, and helps “reset” my writing brain. Recently, I’ve been reading and enjoying a lot of sci-fi lately, and I actually read my first Stephen King novel a few days ago. (I can’t believe it either.)

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

Write a ghazal!

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’d be a gardener—or be in a band.

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

I’ve always felt compelled to write. Even when I first came to Canada and was still learning English, I always found the act of writing soothing and exhilarating. It might be the closest thing to a calling I’ll ever experience.

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

Last book that I couldn’t put down: Salem’s Lot. Last great movie I watched: Mulholland Drive. I’m very late to the show on both of these, I know.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Nothing in particular… And I’m loving it.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Conyer Clayton, But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves.

My review of Conyer Clayton's But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves. (Anvil Press, 2022) is now online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Daniel Sarah Karasik

Daniel Sarah Karasik (they/them) is the author of five previous books, including the poetry collection Hungry and the short story collection Faithful and Other Stories . Their work has been recognized with the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Emerging Artist Award, the CBC Short Story Prize, and the Canadian Jewish Playwriting Award. They organize with the network Artists for Climate & Migrant Justice and Indigenous Sovereignty (ACMJIS), among other groups, and are the founding managing editor of Midnight Sun , a magazine of socialist strategy, analysis, and culture. They live in Toronto.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
It felt really validating to see my work published for the first time in book form! I had a play included in an anthology of five plays when I was about 21, republished a few years later in a book of which I was the sole author, and both those experiences were super encouraging. I'd say my work these days is a lot more overtly political (and gayer), and my expectations for its reception more modest. I no longer expect or hope a book's publication might change my life; mainly I hope that my writing gives pleasure or consolation to some people, and maybe opens up for those people a few slender spaces of possibility for different ways of thinking and feeling and being in the world.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I think I actually came to fiction and drama first—was writing in both of those forms from the time I was a little kid. Started writing poetry in earnest (and earnestly!) as a teenager, wrote a lot of poems in my late teens and early 20s with the encouragement of a couple of poetry mentors (the poet Robyn Sarah, who edited my first published poetry collection, and the poet Al Moritz, who was my professor at U of T), and then pretty much stopped writing poetry for several years. Started again five-ish years ago, motivated by an intuition that poetry could hold in a fruitful way the political contradictions I was grappling with, and the result became Plenitude.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
It really varies...any book-length project I've published has been the result of many years of work (in one case, more than a decade's intermittent work), but often I write early drafts in pretty concentrated bursts. And then revise for ages. The final shape of the work usually bears a family resemblance to its first drafts, but frequently it has completely different emphases. And it's often much briefer—I tend to cut my early drafts a ton, like by more than half, especially when working in prose forms.

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?
With poems, mostly the first scenario you mention: short pieces that end up combining. Or at least that's been the case so far. There are a few poems in Plenitude that I wrote after I'd figured out the book's basic texture and dimensions, though, poems I wrote to bridge a gap or serve some other function specifically in the context of that manuscript. With fiction and non-fiction, I've at least tried/am trying to write books conceived from the start as books, but my habit of cutting my prose down to like a third of its original length sometimes makes that intention tricky to sustain!

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I think I like those, yeah! I like performance, except for when I don't. I miss the minutes before and after public readings, when you could talk to people, and sometimes they'd even say they liked your reading. The pandemic has made that all feel monumental and rare. I hope it can happen again soon, and safely enough.
 
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I'm interested in making communist literature that's also necessarily engaged with the question of what "communist literature" means, or might be stirred to mean, in a context where capitalism and liberalism structure most cultural production in profound, often subtle ways. Ultimately I think the question a communist literature poses is the old philosophical question of the good life, i.e. what a good life amounts to and how we might live one, but where the good life's conditions of possibility are defined politically at every turn: not just the individual "what should I do?", but also the collective "what is to be done?"

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?
Oppositional. Not as a solitary gesture of opposition, though, but in relationship with collective forms of opposition. My understanding of culture is marxist insofar as I don't think culture is autonomous, but that it's always more or less the flower of a particular soil, of specific historical material conditions, and for us that soil is, broadly speaking, white supremacist cishetero-patriarchal settler-colonial capitalism. That's the soil even of the culture that decries the soil, the flower that rebukes its roots. So, to my mind, the project of making art needs to be in active conversation and collaboration with other political projects, like social movements, that fight to transform the broader structural and ideological conditions out of which art and culture grow. (In reality it's almost certainly more of a complicated feedback loop than that description suggests, but so often we're faced with sentimental overstatement in the opposite direction—claims about art and culture's inherent, independent power to transform the world and change minds—that I'll let my slightly one-sided account stand as a counterballast lol!)

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Both. I'm very particular, often obsessive about details, and also I need help. (I feel that way both as a writer and as an editor, actually.) The editorial process for Plenitude, with editor A. Light Zachary, was a good one: careful, detail-minded, collaborative. In general I feel like it's important to work with an editor who shares a decent number of your core political and aesthetic commitments, or the process is liable to be difficult in the wrong ways. Substantive political and aesthetic disagreements can too easily masquerade as problems of form, "objective" technical problems that need fixing rather than subjective conflicts over how the world and language should be.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Hm...I feel like by repeating the advice I'd be effectively giving the advice, and I don't feel qualified to give advice :)

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to plays)? What do you see as the appeal?
Easy because capricious. The appeal is partly about what those forms can do, as forms—e.g. the way I can express an idea or a feeling in verse without the need to build narrative scaffolding around it, and without the form inspiring a reader's expectation that I'll do so. Also partly about routes for reaching different audiences: I sort of have this sense that poems are for everybody, since reading one is so low-commitment, in a way that's less true of, say, novels and plays...which may be read and viewed more/most often by people who are already in the habit of reading novels and watching plays? Maybe? Not sure, but I have thoughts like that sometimes.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I have no writing routine tbh. I write in big bursts and then nothing at all for a while. But even that's not consistent, since sometimes I maintain a steady routine for the length of a given project—but not beyond it. A typical day for me begins in the afternoon. I'm working on it.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
What's happening in the world and its implications and how I feel about it.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Fragrancelessness. Which is probably in fact fragrance unnoticed, passing as neutral.

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 actually find it kind of frustrating and alienating when books come from (are responses to) books more than they come from (are responses to) the world! Though clearly it's always both/and—a question of proportion. I feel like it's good for literature to be influenced by all those categories of experience you name (nature, music, etc.) and also by, like, the direct data of experience, history, work, love, other people. And other books, but mainly insofar as they express those data or helpful, beautiful interpretations of them.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I feel like I'm slowly forgetting how to read, but the part of me that still remembers how to read would say Anne Boyer, Wendy Trevino, Mariame Kaba, Casey Plett, Kai Cheng Thom...and I finally read The Black Jacobins just recently, the Trinidadian marxist C.L.R. James's famous study of the Haitian Revolution, which I found really exhilarating.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Experience more of the world ("travel" approximates but doesn't fully capture what I mean). Plant deeper roots, in a way that helps me to feel safer and more nourished more often. Resolve or better negotiate the contradiction between those two wants.

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?
Probably criminal defence or labour law. I like parsing arguments in detail and I hate cruelty, even and especially when the cruelty is state-sanctioned or otherwise socially naturalized as inevitable or just. Law seems like a good fit for that temperament. Or a terrible one, since bourgeois law is far less about justice than it is about power. Good or terrible. So I hedge that bet by not doing law.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
An overall tendency to make cautious, responsible small choices and reckless, irresponsible big ones.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I loved Torrey Peters's Detransition, Baby. I haven't watched many films during the pandemic, so I guess I'll stick with my circa-2019 answer to the second question: Parasite .

20 - What are you currently working on?
I'm pretty busy with editing Midnight Sun Magazine , and I've been surprised by how little mental space that work leaves me for my own writing. But I'm also very (very) slowly chipping away at a book of non-fiction, fragmentary reflections on what it means to have/do revolutionary socialist politics today in a way that isn't purely symbolic or gestural but also acts on the world. It's looking like it might end up as a work of prose poetry—symbolic and gestural :) We'll see.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Stan Dragland (December 2, 1942 – August 2, 2022)

Sad to hear, via Toronto poet Ronna Bloom, that novelist, poet and literary critic Stan Dragland died earlier this week, half-through his eightieth year. As Stephen Brockwell responded to the news over email: “He was instrumental in shaping my perceptions of Canadian poetry. An open hearted, curious reader and writer.” Most probably already know that Dragland spent his teaching career the English Department at University of Western Ontario, where he remained until retirement (becoming Professor Emeritus), during which he was a co-founding editor and publisher of Brick Books (with Don McKay), a position he served until not that long ago, as well as a founding editor and publisher of Brick: A Literary Journal (with Jean McKay). After retirement, he relocated to St. John’s, Newfoundland and built a home with the writer and Pedlar Press publisher Beth Follett. He also published a stack of incredible books: if you look at his Wikipedia page, you can find a list of his titles, any and all of which I would highly recommend (I’ve even reviewed a few of them here and here; and mentioned him and his work in essays here and here).

As I’ve said elsewhere, I’ve always envied Stan Dragland’s ease with literary criticism; how he articulates the interconnectivity of reading, thinking, literature and living in the world in terms deceptively simple, deeply complex, and incredibly precise. I’ve envied his sentences, and how his prose connects seemingly unconnected thoughts, ideas and passages into highly complex and intelligent arguments that manage to collage with an almost folksy and deceptive ease (a quality his critical prose shares with the poetry of Phil Hall). If the 1960s and 70s saw George Bowering as one of the most prolific reviewers of Canadian poetry, and, as many have said, Frank Davey was our finest literary critic during the same period, Stan Dragland would emerge out of those years as a literary critic with an open and inviting heart, displaying a deep and abiding love for the materials he chose to explore. It was through Dragland’s eyes that I first understood just how wide-ranging criticism could be, as he brought in a myriad of thoughts, references and personal reflections to craft a criticism far more astute, and more intimate, than anything else out there.

I caught a second-hand copy of his Journeys Through Bookland and Other Passages (Coach House Press, 1984) rather early in my twentysomething explorations, and was struck by his depth, composing perfect sentences of pure craft. It was through Dragland that I was allowed a further view into the work of writers such as Robert Kroetsch, Elizabeth Hay, Phil Hall, Lisa Moore and Margaret Avison. I’ve probably read through that collection a good dozen times, even taking it with me as part of reading tours, rereading his thoughts on Kroetsch, for example, some twenty years ago on the overnight passenger Via Train heading west beyond Winnipeg. Given how often I’ve picked it up over the years, it’s never where it should be on the shelf, and always takes forever to unearth. I can’t even figure out where it currently is, now that I want to look at it again. Instead, I offer an early paragraph of his more recent The Bricoleur & His Sentences (Pedlar Press, 2014) [see my review of such here]:

            Even casual reflection shows that the business of character, biography or autobiography, is a lot more complicated than a person might think. I got to thinking about this when Michael Ondaatje asked me to send him my bundle of sentences, because it’s personal and quirky and not meant to be shared without commentary. I began to think of it as a kind of postcard taped to the fridge. What would Michael and Mary Oliver and the barbershop dog think of it? I foresaw scratching of the head. Then I began to think about the word “bricoleur” as regularly applied to me by Don McKay. Might it fit not only my gathering and making of odd things, but also my puddle-jumping mind? Does it describe me all too well? This is not modesty. I think better sideways or in circles than straight on, so I hand my best attempts to others then do what I can to fix the flaws they spot. Do not imagine that this comes direct from me to you.

Dragland was kind enough to offer a reworked excerpt of The Difficult (2019) for my recent festschrift for Phil Hall, which included information in his author biography about a forthcoming title. As he wrote: “James Reaney on the Grid: An Essay will appear in 2022.”

Already some other tribute pieces have posted as well, such as over at Book*hug, and two poems by Ronna Bloom.

Condolences to his friends and family, including his children, and to Beth.

Spotlight series #76 : Laura Kerr

The seventy-sixth in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring Canadian visual artist and poet Laura Kerr.

The first eleven in the series were attached to the Drunken Boat blog, and the series has so far featured poets including Seattle, Washington poet Sarah Mangold, Colborne, Ontario poet Gil McElroy, Vancouver poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Ottawa poet Jason Christie, Montreal poet and performer Kaie Kellough, Ottawa poet Amanda Earl, American poet Elizabeth Robinson, American poet Jennifer Kronovet, Ottawa poet Michael Dennis, Vancouver poet Sonnet L’Abbé, Montreal writer Sarah Burgoyne, Fredericton poet Joe Blades, American poet Genève Chao, Northampton MA poet Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer from Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1 territory) poet, critic and editor Joshua Whitehead, American expat/Barcelona poet, editor and publisher Edward Smallfield, Kentucky poet Amelia Martens, Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie, Burlington, Ontario poet Sacha Archer, Washington DC poet Buck Downs, Toronto poet Shannon Bramer, Vancouver poet and editor Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Vancouver poet Geoffrey Nilson, Oakland, California poets and editors Rusty Morrison and Jamie Townsend, Ottawa poet and editor Manahil Bandukwala, Toronto poet and editor Dani Spinosa, Kingston writer and editor Trish Salah, Calgary poet, editor and publisher Kyle Flemmer, Vancouver poet Adrienne Gruber, California poet and editor Susanne Dyckman, Brooklyn poet-filmmaker Stephanie Gray, Vernon, BC poet Kerry Gilbert, South Carolina poet and translator Lindsay Turner, Vancouver poet and editor Adèle Barclay, Thorold, Ontario poet Franco Cortese, Ottawa poet Conyer Clayton, Lawrence, Kansas poet Megan Kaminski, Ottawa poet and fiction writer Frances Boyle, Ithica, NY poet, editor and publisher Marty Cain, New York City poet Amanda Deutch, Iranian-born and Toronto-based writer/translator Khashayar Mohammadi, Mendocino County writer, librarian, and a visual artist Melissa Eleftherion, Ottawa poet and editor Sarah MacDonell, Montreal poet Simina Banu, Canadian-born UK-based artist, writer, and practice-led researcher J. R. Carpenter, Toronto poet MLA Chernoff, Boise, Idaho poet and critic Martin Corless-Smith, Canadian poet and fiction writer Erin Emily Ann Vance, Toronto poet, editor and publisher Kate Siklosi, Fredericton poet Matthew Gwathmey, Canadian poet Peter Jaeger, Birmingham, Alabama poet and editor Alina Stefanescu, Waterloo, Ontario poet Chris Banks, Chicago poet and editor Carrie Olivia Adams, Vancouver poet and editor Danielle Lafrance, Toronto-based poet and literary critic Dale Martin Smith, American poet, scholar and book-maker Genevieve Kaplan, Toronto-based poet, editor and critic ryan fitzpatrick, American poet and editor Carleen Tibbetts, British Columbia poet nathan dueck, Tiohtiá:ke-based sick slick, poet/critic em/ilie kneifel, writer, translator and lecturer Mark Tardi, New Mexico poet Kōan Anne Brink, Winnipeg poet, editor and critic Melanie Dennis Unrau, Vancouver poet, editor and critic Stephen Collis, poet and social justice coach Aja Couchois Duncan, Colorado poet Sara Renee Marshall, Toronto writer Bahar Orang, Ottawa writer Matthew Firth, Victoria poet Saba Pakdel, Winnipeg poet Julian Day, Ottawa poet, writer and performer nina jane drystek and Comox BC poet Jamie Sharpe.
 
The whole series can be found online here.