Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 119

Spotlight series #75 : Jamie Sharpe

The seventy-fifth in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring something something Jamie Sharpe.

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 and Ottawa poet, writer and performer nina jane drystek.
 
The whole series can be found online here.

Robert Hogg, APOTHEGMS

 

AT EASE

Turned out
to be

a Haiku
after all

I wasn’t
even trying

 

RLH: Mtn: 2020-04-29

I’ve been fascinated by the way Ottawa-area poet Robert Hogg has re-emerged over the past few years, seemingly out of nowhere with a sequence of poetry chapbooks in relatively-quick succession: Ranch Days (for Ed Dorn) (Ottawa ON: battleaxe press, 2019), Ranch Days – The McIntosh (Kemptville ON: hawkweed press, 2019), A Quiet Affair: Vancouver ’63 (Victoria BC: Trainwreck Press, 2021), From Each Forthcoming (Ottawa ON: above/ground press, 2021), The Red Menace (Mountain ON: Hogwallow Press, 2021) and APOTHEGMS (Ottawa ON: Apt. 9 Press, 2021). During his first decade or so of publishing, Hogg never appeared to be a writer in a any particular hurry, although he did follow a trajectory of relatively-consistant book-publication from his days completing a PhD on Charles Olson under Robert Creeley at the University of Buffalo, through what ended up as a accumulated thirty-eight years of teaching at Carleton University in Ottawa before retiring: The Connexions (Berkeley CA: Oyes, 1966), Of Light (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1978), Heat Lightning(Windsor ON: Black Moss Press, 1986) and There Is No Falling (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 1993). For a poet who published so regularly across nearly thirty years, it does seem strange to note that his most recent full-length collection appeared twenty-nine years ago. This particular silence was only broken through his post-Carleton slow retirement from organic farming with the emergence of the chapbook from LAMENTATIONS (above/ground press, 2012), a title reprinted through above/ground in a slightly expanded edition in 2016. Otherwise, this period of relative silence was punctuated otherwise with two volumes of editorial work: An English Canadian Poets, The Confederation Poets – Vol. 1 (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2009), and the Canadian issue of the Portland, Maine journal The Café Review in April 2019.

BROWN DEATH

Hello brown death
I thought you’d be
black as night 

        and here you are
imitating earth
initiating me

  

RLH: Mtn: 2021-03-06

As I’ve articulated prior, I’ve always been fascinated by poets who engage in lengthy publishing silences, irregardless of whether or not they ever return. One could point to Montreal poets Artie Gold and Peter Van Toorn, British Columbia poet David Phillips (who apparently kept writing but simply stopped publishing, unfortunately losing multiple completed unpublished mansucripts during a house flood), Ottawa poet William Hawkins or even Phyllis Webb: poets who simply paused, whether no longer writing or no longer publishing, due to a variety of possible and personal reasons. Why or even how do engaged and otherwise active writers simply stop? Where do they go? Prince George, British Columbia poet Ken Belford published a handful of titles up to 1970, but wouldn’t publish again until 2000, after which he managed to publish multiple books and chapbooks until his death, some twenty years later. Monty Reid published multiple books up to his Flat Side (Red Deer: Red Deer College Press, 1998) from his home base of Alberta, with nothing to follow until he had been nearly a decade in Ottawa, offering his Disappointment Island (Ottawa ON: Chaudiere Books, 2006) as his first post-Alberta title, and the first of a handful of books that followed. Saskatchewan poet John Newlove spent a decade publishing a book every year or two until the Governor General’s Award-winning Lies (Toronto ON: McClelland and Stewart, 1972), before an extended silence of new material that included a selected poems, The Fat Man: Selected Poems (1962-1972) (McClelland and Stewart, 1977) and the long poem The Green Plain (Victoria BC: Oolichan Books, 1981) before his final full-length collection of new poems The Night the Dog Smiled (ECW Press, 1986). But for a larger selected poems and his posthumous selected poems, his publishing would only otherwise see a chapbook, THE TASMANIAN DEVIL and other poems (above/ground press, 1999). Toronto poet Pier Giorgio Di Cicco published books for some fifteen years until The Tough Romances(Toronto ON: Guernica Editions, 1990), with veritable publishing silence that extended until Living in Paradise (Toronto ON: Mansfield Press, 2001), a book that became the opening to his own return, bookending the time he spent in an Augustinian monastery north of Toronto.

The thirty-two short poems in APOTHEGMS follow Hogg’s more recent trajectory of dating his poems, many of which are reworkings of either finished poems or drafts originally composed during the 1960s, citing both dates of composition. There does seem something quite particular to Hogg for the fact that he does this, citing not only dates, but multiple dates for individual pieces, let alone the fact that he’s returning to much earlier poems, perhaps as a way to jump-start him again into productivity. As he says in a recent interview conducted by Ken Norris, posted online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics:

I very carefully chose, for my first book, what I felt were the strongest and most cohesive poems from that group. After the book came out, I felt little inclination to publish many of the others, and let them sit uncollected for many years. A lot of these were written for various women I'd had attachments to, and being newly married, I did not see including them in Standing Back when it came out in 1971. So, a quantity of these poems remained in various stages of completion, several not even typed up, and many others revised extensively. I came back to this hoard of material a couple of years ago, and began the long process or revision and resuscitation. I was surprised at how many were salvageable and would make good poems. Others, published in periodicals and Souster's New Wave Canada, did not get collected for the same reasons—too personal, too revealing.

Many poems which were written in Vancouver during my four years there from the fall of 1960 to October 1964 saw only periodical publication, or were also left unpublished. Over the past few years, I worked my way through these drafts also, and they are now collected in a ms called Not to Call it Chaos - the Vancouver Poems. A central poem in this sequence is the recently written A Quiet Affair – Vancouver '63 which came out as a chapbook this spring from Trainwreck Press. It recapitulates my experiences during the summer of '63 and presents the conditions as I experienced them around the Vancouver Poetry Conference. But it ties in with a number of other poems, most of which were written during that early period. The poems are predominantly lyrical in structure, but again, taken as a whole, they represent a kind of bildungsroman in a sequence of poems.

The poems in APOTHEGMS are short, and lean into koans, the short snap of expectation and quiet words placed after another, with an intimacy that allows the dates to become an essential element of small moments that are clearly crafted, while still allowing a sense of immediacy. He writes of time, and the immediacy of it; referencing haiku and the moment in which he is standing, no matter the distance of temporality between thought and composition. Think of the poem “URBANESQUE,” composed from his home-base of Mountain, Ontario “2021-10-04,” that reads: “The tiny / tea bag / plate // in my / cupboard / takes // up more / real / estate // than the / tall / glass // standing / next / to it [.]” In certain ways, the only differences between the accretions of Hogg’s longer poems and these short, near-bursts is a sense of scale: the shorter pieces included here still allowing for a kind of accretion, but one set with a particular kind of boundary. The larger accretion, one might suggest, might be the very assemblage of these poems into a chapbook-length manuscript.

THE GIFT – 2021-06-20

Sending you
an imaginary

bouquet
Dear Bob

Daphne
in an email

What could be
more real

Hogg connects time to the physical, and the physical to the body. There’s a way he’s attentive to both physicality and natural spaces, in part, one would think, through his time as a kid on a farm in the Cariboo, or his decades farming a space just south of Ottawa. With references to poets Lorine Niedecker, H.D. and Daphne Marlatt, Hogg doesn’t have to describe the landscape to allow for its presence; as Creeley attended the immediate, and his sense of the “domestic,” so too with Robert Hogg, attending his immediate, whether memory or at that precise moment, and a “domestic” that concerns the landscape, both internal and external.

At the back of the collection, he offers a list of books “currently in the works for publication,” including “Lamentations; The Cariboo Poems; Postcards, from America; Amber Alert; Not to Call It Chaos – The Vancouver Poems; Oh Yeah—More Poems. In progress are The Offending Temple, and Ill Parodies – O, a selection of satires on various Shibboleths and current affairs.” To even see half of these titles in print would represent a remarkable output.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Emma Côté

Emma Côté is from a small town in Northern Ontario, where the winters were long but the books were aplenty. As a result, she went on to study journalism, English literature and creative writing and most recently completed a postgraduate certificate in publishing. When Emma isn’t re-reading or re-writing a novel, she can be found taking walks in the forest and asking people if she can pet their dog. Unrest is her debut 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?

The first book I wrote was when I was a little girl, which was some sort of Beauty and the Beast fanfiction. But I think I’ve been obsessed with writing ever since. I remember writing it out by hand on that paper that had perforated edges on both sides, and then ‘illustrating’ it as well.

Once I decided I wanted to work toward being a full-time author, I started reading about writing and learning about the craft and then I studied English literature and creative writing in school. But I didn’t finish the first draft of what I think of as my first novel, Green, until about three years ago. It changed my life in that I finally knew I could actually finish a complete draft. That is the hardest part, in my opinion. That first draft can really be like pulling teeth. It took me seven years to finish that draft and there were times I truly thought it would never get done.

So my most recent novel is vastly different in that I wrote the novel in three days as part of Anvil Press’ 3-day novel contest.  With the contest, you’re kind of banking on getting into a flow state and some point, and putting all your fears and self judgement and criticisms aside. Tons of people participate every year and think of it as this sacred time dedicated to writing that just doesn’t happen the rest of the year. I’m so glad I got involved with the community, even though the process was completely foreign and uncomfortable for me. What do you mean I don’t have time to agonize about every word?

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

Technically in a professional sense, I came to non-fiction first, as I worked as a journalist for a number of years. But fiction will always be my first love. I love that you can pull from real life, while letting your imagination run wild at the same time. The possibilities are endless.

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 usually get an idea quickly; something that I see or hear on social media will make me think of a character, storyline or starting point. But then I will file it away and start compiling notes for a while. It’s an incredibly slow process and my first draft almost always looks vastly different than subsequent drafts. With the current novel I’m working on, I ended up inventing a completely different backstory and am now going back in and doing a full rewrite with that backstory in mind.

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 usually begins with the spark of an idea. Like a grotesque image that I hear about when I’m watching the news. Or when I’m told about a place that sounds like it’s begging to be a particular setting. But I never combine pieces into something longer. I rarely write shorter pieces. I seem to gravitate toward novel writing because I really enjoy fully developed story arcs and the space to explore them.

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

It really depends on the day. Sometimes I’m feeling more extroverted and love the idea of doing a reading, especially if it’s in a natural setting. But sometimes the thought of being up in front of people is slightly terrifying. I do think that readings can be really beneficial to give a reader a glimpse of the author’s writing and how they interact with it personally. If you’re like me, you’re usually dying to know what an author was thinking and feeling while they wrote something. So I feel like public readings allow you a little hint at that, depending on how the author delivers the lines.

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

I do think about life, death and dying quite a bit, so I think my work deals with those themes fairly often. I suppose I’m not trying to answer any questions, so much as asking them and considering multiple answers. Some of the questions I grapple with are:

What happens when we die?

What makes a life well lived?

What is important to leave behind?

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I see the current role of a writer as being a storyteller, no matter what form or medium they choose. There’s a reason storytelling is such an ancient artform; it’s how we learn about and come to understand the world. Stories are vital to our development, to help preserve culture, and prevent atrocities from being repeated. They can be a jumping off point to facilitate difficult discussions. Stories are everything and anything we need them to be, but they are only one step, often the first.

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

My process with an editor so far has been nothing but essential. I do know other authors that have had a difficult time, of course. It’s always challenging to have something you’ve worked on tirelessly be questioned and changed. But at the end of the day, publishing is both an art and a business, and an editor knows what will sell. Though if they’ve agreed to publish your work, it’s very likely that they see the value of it in its current form, and don’t have evil plans to change it drastically. It’s a delicate balance that needs to be hit between preserving the author’s vision of the work, and making sure it sells enough copies that the author can continue writing. I suppose it’s more vital to make sure you’re working with an editor you can trust to strike that balance.

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

The best piece of advice for writers will always be, ‘If you want to write, read,’ which has been said so many times by so many prolific writers it’s impossible to use direct quotes.

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

I wish I was disciplined enough to keep a strict routine. I do have a full time job now, so I try to set some time aside in the mornings a few times a week to get some words down. But early, early mornings—sometimes without even getting out of bed—will always be the ideal time for me.

My typical routine consists of getting up whenever my dog licks me in the face, followed by drinking coffee and doing some reading. Right now I’m making my way through S. by Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams, which is unlike anything I’ve ever read before. It feels more like dissecting a piece of experimental art than reading. If you haven’t heard of this book, I highly recommend looking it up.

After that I’ll try to squeeze in something writing related, even if that just means researching or compiling notes.

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

In Journalism school my teacher said that writer’s block could be cured by chopping wood. (?) By which I think he just meant do something else, anything else, preferably physical. So I’ll often jump on my spin bike now and put on one of the classes where they really yell at you. 

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The smell of a campfire. I grew up going on canoe trips with my family, so anytime I get a whiff of woodsmoke I instantly feel comforted and relaxed.

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

Definitely nature. My stories always have a strong connection to the environment. I worked as a sea kayak guide for many years, so that makes its way into my stories as well. I love any work that is described as atmospheric, where the characters spend a fair bit of time outside, either contending with or being a part of their surroundings. 

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

I’m a huge supporter of other Canadian authors who write Canadiana; Mary Lawson (who is also a self-proclaimed slow writer, by the way) Elizabeth St John Mandel, Madeleine Thien, Elizabeth Hay, Miriam Toews, Margaret Atwood.

As for my life outside my work, I also really love reading self-development titles, written by professionals in their field. Like Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach for instance, because I think having a growth mindset is important. Allowing ourselves to be open to learning new ways of thinking prevents us from stagnating and becoming jilted when things ultimately shift around us. 

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

I would like to travel some more! I’m very lucky to have had the chance to live in a number of countries thus far, but I hope to see more of the world.

Another dream of mine is to get my dog, Fable, registered as a therapy dog and take her to long-term-care facilities to visit the residents. I didn’t get to spend much time with any of my own grandparents before they died, unfortunately. And I think it’s just as important to hear the stories of seniors as it is to hear the stories of published authors. Quite literally, everyone has a story to tell. It’s impossible to get through life without one. I think it’d be great to hear some from people who might feel like very few people are willing to listen.

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

In 2019 I was working in Cambodia as an English Language Arts teacher. My plan was to continue down that path and teach in different countries around the world. But as time went on I found that I was more drawn to the texts themselves than I was to talking about them in a classroom. I made the decision to come back to Canada and attend a post-graduate publishing program in Toronto. Now, I work for a not-for-profit that helps Canadian independent publishers create and sell their digital books. We also do a lot of work in the accessible publishing space and that has been rewarding and meaningful work.

I’ll also add that having a full-time job allows me the space to write. For a time I lived in Costa Rica and tried to work solely as a freelance writer, but the lack of stability on all fronts made it really challenging to create the space to write.

So I do feel like I was always angling toward a career in publishing, and winning the 3-day novel contest with Anvil has given me a little confidence boost to continue toward supporting myself as a full-time author one day. Though I won’t be giving up my day job anytime soon!

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

I used to say that writing was the only thing that came naturally to me. But then I started trying to write fiction, so that wasn’t really true anymore. But it does remain the only thing that I have an inexplicable drive to do. Even if I avoid it sometimes.

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

The last book that moved me to tears was Lori Gottlieb’s Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. The way she was able to illustrate such clear arcs for each of the real life people she wrote about was astonishing. And the fact that their problems were so different, and yet so relatable was touching in a way I haven’t experienced with a book in a long time.

I don’t watch a ton of films. I prefer TV shows for the same reason I prefer novels over short stories. But my all time favourite genre-bending TV show is called The OA, which I don’t know how to talk about without spoilers, so I’ll have to leave it at that.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on the major rewrite I mentioned earlier. I’m putting myself on a strict schedule to get it done in two months so I can query it to literary agents a final time and then put it to bed if it doesn’t get picked up.

After that I’m going to switch to completing a story that I started during the 2021 3-day novel contest, but then quickly realized was getting way too complex to finish in three days. It could be described as futuristic fan fiction about an icon we all know and love.

Thanks for reading!

Reach me at:

Instagram: @emma.sidenotes

Twitter: @betterbybooks

Website: betterbybooks.com  

12 or 20 (second series) questions;
 

Brian Foley, There Must Be A Reason People Come Here

 
 

YELLOW BRICK ROAD

I hear the people
who walked here.
I hear it and then you
hear it too.
On the road,
the yellow leaves
coming to an end
never drop, stretching
out their change
with something bright
to mark their bodies
from the black grass.
Here is what we know.
This is the music
they would listen to.
They were addicts.
Here is what we know.
We’re not crazy.
Our instruments
are impaired.
Far from civilization,
we’re not where
we’re supposed to be.
So here we are.
And this meeting
is officially
about the possibility
of turning back.

Denver-based poet and musician Brian Foley’s second full-length poetry collection, following The Constitution (Boston MA: Black Ocean, 2013) [see my review of such here] is There Must Be A Reason People Come Here (Black Ocean, 2022), a collection of poems that explore the push and the pull of lyric form, composing poems of short lines that accumulate down the page to poems with longer couplet lines, to longer burst of sketched-out fragments and sequences. “By ear I mean / I can’t sleep without it,” he writes, as part of the short sequence “FIVE ACCOMLISHMENTS OF DESTINY,” “& though I haven’t been able to prove it / if there are rules, it is not music.” The lyric composed via single-stanza stretches of short lines is something that seems to exist as an American thread, having noticed similar works by other contemporary poets such as Bianca Stone, Hailey Higdon, Emily Kendal Frey, Emily Pettit and the late Hillary Gravendyck, each of whom seem to share Foley’s predilection, as well, for their subversion, discomfort comfort and use of the straight phrase. “It gets so you feel / these things totally alive / inside of a crime / uncommitted,” he writes, as part of the five-page poem “HOMEWRECK,” “just / like the dusk forgot / how to spell me, now / just a collapse I plow into.”

A poet of occarional observational contradiction, Foley writes an underlying anxiety while attempting to survive and thrive through capitalism. “Unlike,” he writes, as part of “FLINT,” “the money I // can’t drink / but connect with / what color my / eyes are [.]” His lyrics seek answers, although more clarification than resolution, navigating through the complexities of contemporary living through big ideas and small moments. “There is a traffic / light hanging / in Mass,” he writes, to open the poem “PLUGS,” “no one has ever been through/ that has never turned red / on itself [.]” Or, simply put, as the final stanza of the three-page “from THE MAKING OF A MYTHANTHROPE” reads:

This isn’t a story.
I am writing out what I can’t find.
Ask me at my death who it is
that I love. I would like to know.

 

rob mclennan reads w Lisa Richter at the milk magazine reading series, July 27, 2022 (Toronto ON)

I will be reading in Toronto next week with Lisa Richter as part of the milk magazine reading series, July 27, 2022 at 7pm; TYPE Books, 883 Queen Street West, Toronto! You should totally come out! I shall, of course, have copies of my new University of Calgary Press poetry title, the book of smaller (2022).

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Vivian Zenari

Vivian Zenari's debut novel Deuce was published in 2022 by Inanna Publications. She has written and published short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. She lives, works, and writes in Edmonton, Alberta.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
This is my first book. It has so far not changed my life. I have published short fiction and poetry. I have published short stories many years after writing and rewriting them, but the novel was of course one project that took many years. As well, about five years passed between the novel's acceptance and the publication. The waiting has been quite long, that is, and I have found that somewhat unnerving.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I don't know why I have preferred fiction to nonfiction. I prefer to let my imagination loose, I suppose. Nonfiction has more strictures, not because the text has to have a closer affinity with the real world, but because with nonfiction I have found there are more people to satisfy (editors, really). My interest in poetry came at the same time as fiction, but I have written far more fiction, and I see myself as a fiction writer.
 
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't say there is a pattern. Sometimes the idea comes out fairly well developed. Other times, I have to work with the idea more. I revise heavily. Sometimes I use notes, other times I don't. Nonfiction I tend to use notes with.

4 - Where does a poem or work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I tend not to combine things. I have a project in mind, and it's either large scale or not.

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 associate public readings with the creative process. It is something that comes after, for the most part. I am used to standing in front of people and reading out loud to them in a formal setting, but I am not a performative reader. To me, reading a text is different from writing it.
 
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 suppose I have theoretical interests, though I don't know how theoretical my writing actually is. I have had a great deal of exposure to theory because of my education, and I am certain that training seeps into my writing. Deuce has quite a few gestures towards theory (Judith Butler, game theory, narrative theory), but I don't know that readers in the know will find the novel particularly astute towards or representative of the explicitly named theoretical orientations. I don't know if writers are really qualified to say what their own writing is "about." Writers lie.  I am probably a modernist in aspiration and a postmodernist in reality. At the same time, I am not wedded to realism, but I like it. The currency of questions (subjects, topics) doesn't much concern me, though I realize currency concerns a great many people (e.g., publishers and critics).

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 tend to see creative writing as art, and art to me is the act of manifesting thought in the material world and to other people.  Writing is one of many arts, and it is the one that I can do with any modicum of success. Writers, as all artists, reflect the world in a thoughtful way. It is criticism in the neutral sense (thinking about the world with purpose).

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I haven't always had an editor. I think it's very useful. It shouldn't be difficult, but it can be. It can turn into a battle of wills, I suppose, even if the battle is imaginary on my part.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Write with yourself as the intended audience.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (short stories to the novel to poetry to non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
I don't see much difference between poetry and short stories. Novels are larger in scale, and the scale is a nontrivial detail. Nonfiction to me is a different thing entirely....It seems more bureaucratic or something.

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?
Right now my life is so bunged up right now, I barely have a routine. I work for Athabasca University from home, and I usually work on this paying job first.  I have had more routinized processes in the past with delineated writing periods. I believe in routinized writing: the activity has to be job-like in some ways. Generally I don't have a life that is easily routinized. I have to push and struggle to set aside time for writing. It's kind of nightmarish. Belonging to a writer's group has been a good thing, though. I am pretty good at producing for a deadline (the next meeting). It's good for me to be around other people who like reading and value writing (a small percentage of the population) because then my morale is higher.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I don't really believe in inspiration....In the past, I used to love watching Inside the Actor's Studio on television. I loved listening to good actors or even directors talk about their art. That show used to inspire me, I suppose. It got my blood rushing.  Now, I all seek is time, liberty.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I don't have much attachment to home as a concept. Nonetheless, I associate my childhood with the smell of cut lumber--my father did a lot of woodwork and building around the house. I like the smell of baking bread and of tomato sauce cooking on the stove, and the memory of how my dog's feet smelled (like popcorn!).

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 love music, most kinds of it (not pop so much, though). I love film and "shows" (TV, streaming "content"), the excellent ones especially, but I like really, really bad stuff too--I dislike the mediocre middle, which is where most film and show lie.  I love humour too, uproariously funny sketch comedy, improv, and sitcoms. I have written poetry about nature, though I'm not sure I like nature that much.....I like dance and stage drama--I wish I watched more of it.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I read a lot. I want only the best--life is short. Right now I am forcing myself to read French-language books in French. I want to read In Search of Lost Time in French this year. My writing heroes, if that is what this question is aiming towards, include William Shakespeare, George Eliot, George Saunders, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Ellison, Henry James.  There are many more.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would like to hang around a stage production or film production and watch the process from beginning to end. I work alone, and I think working alone is problematic in some ways. Stage and film are more collaborative and perhaps are less lonely.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I've had it with other occupations! I've done librarianship, editing, academia. I've thought about being a physicist and a programmer. Writing should have been my plan A, but I have great self-doubt, and I've thrown myself into all kinds of professions to be practical. Writing has become part-time, so I feel like I live part-time.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
See above. Also, I am not much of a talker. Writing makes me feel like I belong to civilization rather than outside it.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last best book I read is James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain. Holy fucking shit--the combination of the personal with the political: love, religion, family, social relations, all with the emotion of the deep down secret parts of people. Unbelievable. The last great film I've seen I've seen a zillion times: Casablanca . Of more contemporary film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire. And I am always plumping for the TV series Black Sails.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I am working on a novel set in the mid-19th century United States about a real person, George W.L. Bickley, who founded a kind of precursor to the Ku Klux Klan. The research is killing me, but I like the research. I am half-way through the first draft.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

JULY 9TH WAS THE TWENTY-NINTH BIRTHDAY OF ABOVE/GROUND PRESS! AND WE'RE HAVING A BIG RIDICULOUS SUMMER SALE!

Happy birthday, above/ground press!In case you hadn’t heard, July 9, 2022 was the TWENTY-NINTH ANNIVERSARY OF CONTINUOUS PRODUCTION for above/ground press (which has now achieved 1,200 publications to date) and to celebrate such, I thought, why not offer a huge summer sale? (I mean, people love those, right?)

$35 (plus shipping) for any eight 2021/2022 titles! Or, if you are feeling particularly brave, $40 for any ten 2021/2022 titles! (until September 1, 2022!

with options including plenty of 2022 titles so far: Report from the (Cameron) Anstee Society Vol. 1 No. 1 ; Reading The Great Classics Of Canlit through Book 5 of bpNichol’s The Martyrology, by Grant Wilkins ; Natural Man, by N.W. Lea ; Silts, by Jed Munson ; AN ENVELOPE FOR SILENCE: Some Short Fiction 1977-1989, by David Miller ; looping climate, by Matthew Gwathmey ; Report from the (Monty) Reid Society Vol. 1 No. 1 ; In the shadows, by Michael Boughn ; west coast shorts, by Laura Kelsey; English Garden Bondage, by Russell Carisse ; In-Between, Poetry by Saba Pakdel, a non-corresponding bilingual English/Persian collection ; Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright, by Jérôme Melançon ; G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #23 : edited by David Dowker : with new work by Nicole Raziya Fong, Lisa Robertson, ryan fitzpatrick, Catriona Strang, Allegra Sloman, Nikki Sheppy, Fenn Stewart, Pete Smith and Christine Stewart ; Report from the (Elizabeth) Robinson Society, Vol. 1 No. 1 ; Divination, by Marita Dachsel ; Andante: Scales and Proportions for a Chemical Orchestra Amid the Fraying Social Norms, by Anne Tardos ; Okay?, by Lori Anderson Moseman ; Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] #33 : with new work by Howie Good, Jérôme Melançon, Genevieve Kaplan, Cecilia Stuart, ryan fitzpatrick, Benjamin Niespodziany, Maw Shein Win, Margo LaPierre, Sarah Pinder and Michael Boughn ; Report from the (Kate) Siklosi Society, Vol. 1 No. 1 and No. 2 ; COLVILLE SUITE FOR MIXED VOICES, by Vivian Lewin ; SCRIED FUNDAMENTS, pomes by MLA CHERNOFF ; Visions of Bolaño, by Wade Bell ; pandemic friendship, by Joanne Arnott ; G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #22 : edited by Kyle Flemmer : with new work by Leslie Joy Ahenda, Jake Byrne, Cobra Collins, nathan dueck, Kyle Flemmer, Helen Hajnozcky, Samantha Jones, Jun-long Lee, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Helen Robertson, Ben Robinson, Eric Schmaltz, Cristalle Smith and Kevin Stebner ; ELEGIES, by Rob Manery ; 3¢ Pulp, by Lillian Nećakov ; Report from the (Stuart) Ross Society Vol 1. No. 1 ; Report from the (Amanda) Earl SocietyVol 1. No. 1 ; THE BEFORE, an excerpt from Welcome to Upper Zygonia, by Amanda Earl ; G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #20 : produced also as CASTLE GRAYSKULL 1.5, directed by Skeletor edited by Micah Ballard and Garrett Caples : with new work by Colter Jacobsen (as Teela), Anne Waldman, Brian Lucas, Carrie Hunter, Roberto Harrison, Neeli Cherkovski, Raymond Foye and Bob Flanagan, Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta, Tamas Panitz and Gregory Corso ; Report from the (Stephen) Brockwell Society Vol 1. No. 1 ; ECO BLUES: A tale in 3 parts, by Karl Jirgens ; Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] #32: with new work by Carrie Hunter, Emily Brandt, Lillian Necakov, David Buuck, Hugh Thomas and Nate Logan ; DISSECTIONS, df parizeau ; aversions   //   nothing special, by Wanda Praamsma ; RESIDUE, by Lydia Unsworth ; Kid Stigmata, by Michael Schuffler ; Calling to the Sun: Poems for Isabella Wang, edited by Stephen Collis : with contributions by: Manahil Bandukwala, Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, Yvonne Blomer, Stephen Collis, Zoe Dagneault, Diana Hayes, Erica Hiroko Isomura, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Jen Sookfong Lee, Natalie Lim, Tanis MacDonald, rob mclennan, Hasan Namir, Chimedum Ohaegbu, Tolu Oloruntoba, Arleen Paré and Rob Taylor ; Autobiography, by rob mclennan ; Small Print, by Natalie Simpson ; Apricot, by Nate Logan ;

as well as the plethora of 2021 chapbook titles: 13 more songs the radio won’t play …, by Stan Rogal ; Microbial Soup Kiss, by Sean Braune and Émilie Dionne ; The 66,512, by Urië V-J (James Yeary) ; Fire and Flood: Enacting Rehearsal as Performance, by Sarah Rosenthal ; So/I, by Andy Weaver ; oh the iffy night, by Simon Brown ; Yesterday’s Tigers, by Mayan Godmaire ; A Wolf Lake Chorus, by Phil Hall ; how to count to ten, by Kevin Varrone ; Whatever Feels Like Home, by Susan Rukeyser ; G o n e S o u t h, by Barry McKinnon ; The Northerners, by Benjamin Niespodziany ; THE TRAVELING WILBURYS COLLECTION, by Ken Norris ; W / \ S H: INITIAL CONTACT, by Terri Witek and Amaranth Borsuk ; Hotels, by George Bowering ; Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] #31 : with new poems by Brandon Brown, Rusty Morrison, Yoyo Comay, Stephen Brockwell, Melissa Eleftherion, Sue Bracken, Valerie Witte and Jessi MacEachern ; G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #19 : edited by Pearl Pirie : with new work by Cameron Anstee, Claudia Radmore, Lana Crossman, Rae Armantrout, Maxianne Berger, Rick Black, Charlotte Jung, Louisa Howerow, Anna Yin, Philomene Kocher, David Groulx, Monty Reid, Rob Taylor, Hifsa Ashraf, Geof Huth, Allison Chisholm, Michael Fraser, Phil Hall, Michael e. Casteels, Rich Schnell, Michael Dylan Welch, Janick Belleau, Sacha Archer and Chuck Brickley ; STRAY DOG CAFÉ, by Ken Norris; ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS IN YOUR MOUTH, by Franklin Bruno ; SAYING “BOY” IN A WILDERNESS OF SONG, by Gary Barwin ; Never Have I Ever, by Emily Izsak ; Mushrooms Yearly Planner, by Jen Tynes ; G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #18 : edited by Melissa Eleftherion : with new work by Caroline Goodwin, Nancy Chen Long, Elise Ficarra, Brenda Iijima, Florencia Milito, Saba Syed Razvi, Aileen Cassinetto, Zoe Tuck and Kim Shuck ; Listening Through the Body: An Exercise in Sustained Coordination, by Valerie Witte ; From Each Forthcoming, by Robert Hogg ; the girl arrived, by Ken Sparling ; Television Poems, by Jessi MacEachern ; small colossus, by Nathan Alexander Moore ; Study, by Katie Naughton ; Do You Ever Think of Me?, by Summer Brenner ; Ordinary Annals, by Monica Mody ; The End of Lake Superior, by Kōan Anne Brink ; TWETWE, an alt-text pandemoir, by Gregory Betts ; HAWAIIAN SUNRISE, by Ken Norris ; Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] #30 : with new poems by Dana Teen Lomax, Amanda Auerbach, Jay Millar, Cat Tyc, IAN MARTIN, Paige Carabello, Emma Tilley and Jack Jung ; Boing, Extinction VS Wow! Signal, Michael Sikkema ; SOME OF THE PUZZLES, by M.A.C. Farrant ; G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #17, edited by Melanie Dennis Unrau : with new work by Yvonne Blomer, Kiran Malik-Khan, Peter Christensen, K.B. Thors, Nicholas Molbert, Rina Garcia Chua, Tawahum Bige, Julia Spicher Kasdorf, David Martin, Ross Belot, Bola Opaleke, Adam Dickinson, Lindsay Bird, Kelly Shepherd, Maya Weeks,Lisa Mulrooney, Rita Wong ; WORM     HOLES, After Cao Fei’s La Town, by Jamie Townsend ; In the Museum, by Conor Mc Donnell ; Kid Commitment Proves Them Wrong, by Adam Thomlison ; Retrofit Me, by Alyssa Bridgman; Labour Day, by James Lindsay ; SOME OTHER DAYS AND NIGHTS, by David Miller ; The Breakers (Expanded), by Amish Trivedi ; that i want, by Ava Hofmann ; Knife with Oral Greed, by JoAnna Novak ; I am a language you are the sound device, by Sandra Moussempès translated by Eléna Rivera ; Clinging & Grasping, by Franklin Bruno ; a grain of sand, Photograph by Julya Hajnoczky Poem by Helen Hajnoczky ; Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] #29 : with new poems by Bill Carty, Michael Turner, Nina Vega-Westhoff, Sarah Alcaide-Escue, Colby Clair Stolson, Robert Hogg, Elizabeth Robinson, Tom Prime and Simina Banu ; a journal of the plague year, by Edward Smallfield ; still life with elegy, by Valerie Coulton ; The Hotdog Variations, by James Hawes ; The Great Beauty, by Anik See ; Chronotope, by David Dowker ; zero dawn, by Shelly Harder ; buttons & bones, by Alexander Joseph ; a field guide to fanciful bugs, by Amanda Earl ; OCCUPATIONAL ELEGIES, Joseph Mosconi ; Moonbathing in Al Faiyūm, by Brenda Iijima ; Transmissions from the Crawdad Constellation, by Michael Sikkema ; OFF THE RESTING SEA, by Al Kratz ; THE OCEANDWELLER, by Saeed Tavanaee Marvi, translated by Khashayar Mohammadi ; Bridge and burn, by Jason Christie ; micro moonlights, by katie o'brien ; Less Dream, by N.W. Lea ; Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] #28 : with new poems by MLA Chernoff, Geoffrey Olsen, Douglas Barbour, Hamish Ballantyne, JoAnna Novak, Allyson Paty and Lisa Fishman ; Geometric Mantra, by Andrew Brenza ; and The Universe in an Earth-Shaped Urn, by Amish Trivedi ;

That’s some one hundred and twenty titles! This list obviously includes issues of the quarterly Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] , the occasional and guest-edited G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] , the Report from the Society festschrift titles , and chapbooks in the above/ground press prose/naut series ; all titles available while supplies last (like, obviously), although everything listed above is (at this point of writing, at least) all still very much in print; and you know I’m also completely open to backdating a 2022 above/ground press subscription, yes? I mean, that's a pretty remarkable deal.

To order, send cheques (as well as your list of preferred titles; add $3 for postage; in US, add $5; outside North America, add $11) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at the top of this page;

with numerous rarities/backlist titles still available as well! And you remember we still have a handful of t-shirts, right? And those 25th anniversary broadsides?

with further forthcoming 2022 titles by Lindsey Webb, Jason Heroux, Nick Chhoeun, Grant Wilkins, Isabel Sobral Campos, Mark Scroggins, Laura Walker, Adrienne Adams, Jordan Davis, Jason Christie, Geoffrey Nilson, Andrew Gorin, Lori Anderson Moseman, Melissa Spohr Weiss, Marita Dachsel, Stuart Ross, Genevieve Kaplan, Christopher Patton, Angela Caporaso, Isabella Wang (among others, of course) and Sara Lefsyk’s guest-edited issue of G U E S T [a journal of guest editors]! Oh, and Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] #34 lands next week as well!

and while we, at above/ground press world headquarters, otherwise known as above/ground press print and digital poetry solutions, know that we are living in unprecedented times, what choice have we but to persevere, and move forward? while being attentive to physical safety, hand-washing and mental stability as best as possible. we wish you all continued health and safety, please! we will still be here, even through the disruptions, attempting to produce new books, journals and broadsides as best as we are able (and in the meantime, of course, check out the online extension of above/ground: periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics ). And who knows, we might even be able to re-start both The Factory Reading Series and the semi-annual ottawa small press book fair this fall? Maybe? And next year, we’ll have a huge event to celebrate THIRTY YEARS (with a ‘best of the third decade’ anthology as well, to appear in fall 2023 with Invisible Publishing. That will be pretty cool,

Heather Sellers, Field Notes from the Flood Zone

 

Longing, Wading

Marble statues from the 1920s line our island’s promenade. The women have lost their arms and what they were holding. Boys are losing their faces.

They would not be turning and bending if there was no narrative.

Key elements of the hunt, heartbreak—a quiver, and empty vase—remain.

I tried to explain to my friend the concept of neglect for orchids.

To Kyle P. from Florida Pest Control, who picked up by its tail the dead bug on my living room floor with his bare thumb and forefinger—This, ma’am is your American cockroach—I said, Thank you. But I meant How?

Today’s rain is not the kind that gets you wet. More of a blossoming.

I’m fascinated by the unfurling prose-lyrics of Florida poet, essayist and memoirist Heather Sellers, having discovered her work only recently, through her latest poetry collection Field Notes from the Flood Zone (Rochester NY: BOA Editions, 2022). I’m even more disappointed that I hadn’t heard of her work before, given how delightful the titles of her three previous poetry collections sound: Drinking Girls and Their Dresses (Ahsahta Press, 2002), The Boys I Borrow (New Issues, 2007) and The Present State of the Garden (Lynx House Press, 2021). There is something of her sentences reminiscent of the poems of Anne Carson, or even Sarah Manguso, offering narrative curls that hold multiple layers beneath. “My editor listed what she liked,” she writes, as part of “Careful, Unfurling,” “what she didn’t understand, what made / her cry at her desk, and I took notes.” Writing of climate and chaos, extreme storms and the pull of an ordinary life, Sellers invokes her Florida landscape of family, childhood, determination and shoreline, all of which collaborate into a kind of lyric photo montage that shimmers in and out of focus, not unlike memory. “When it begins to rain,” she writes, to open the poem “Rain,” “it rains every afternoon, or all day, and some / nights are made more of water than darkness. // Raindrops the size of grapes, the size of asteroids. There is sweet rain, / greasy rain, new rain. Rain pools, settles in: the city is a glittering marsh.” Set in three sections of prose poems, her lines stretch across the length and breadth of a meditative rhythm and diaristic landscape, accomplishing poems that strike with the power and sure force of lightning.

Saturday

I don’t want to listen to the hard, high whines of leaf blowers’ dissonant strains but I do so all morning, longing for the dusky hush of brooms.

I fight the troubled middle of my story.

I complain to my friend I don’t know. But I do know.

For the party, I make deviled eggs and outfit each one with a cilantro leaf-sail stabbed into the yolk matter—twenty-four accented syllables.

Champagne: cold hard confetti liquefied in a sugary cage.

I drive home from the big house on high ground through rain, my cat parting the beaded curtains of silver as though making way to a brand-new place.

There is such a longing here, and a straightforward lyric narrative with shades of a welcoming, almost folksy, charm. Sellers’ narrator (or narrators, plural) yearns of something tethered, something more, regularly reaching out through the expanse of emotional upheavals and climate turmoil into something beyond violence, isolation and perpetual threat, all of which is punctuated by a landscape almost unimaginably and impossibly beautiful. “The deep green St. Augustine grass sparkled with droplets of water in the / late light and the sky turned hot pink and red.” she writes, to close the poem “Florida,” “We live in stolen jewelry.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Paul Cunningham

Paul Cunningham currently serves as the Creative Writing Program Coordinator at the University of Notre Dame, where he also co-manages Action Books, an international press for poetry and translation. He is the author of Fall Garment (2022) and The House of the Tree of Sores (Schism Press, 2020). From the Swedish, he is the translator of Helena Österlund’s Words (OOMPH! Press, 2019). He has also translated two chapbooks by Sara Tuss Efrik: Automanias: Selected Poems (Goodmorning Menagerie, 2016) and The Night’s Belly (Toad Press, 2016). Cunningham holds a PhD from the University of Georgia, where he was the recipient of the 2021 Diann Blakely Poetry Prize, and an MFA from the University of Notre Dame, where he was a Sparks Prize Fellow.

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?

I published my first e-chapbook, Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer, with Pangur Ban Party in 2010. I added a listing to Goodreads with no expectations. Out of nowhere, DA Powell posted a wildly generous review comparing Metro-Goldwyn-Meyerto Fellini’s circus in 8 1/2. Dennis Cooper also posted about it on social media. Such early support from Powell and Cooper was incredibly significant.

 2 - 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 do a lot of research, a lot of notetaking. The idea comes slowly, but the writing itself usually happens quickly. Editing is my favorite part.

3 - 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?

For me, story always originates from some key image. I keep image journals. Sound is another important component for me. I never begin any project by considering narrative or plot. Those things are secondary to image or sound. The word “plot” reminds me of burial plots. Makes me think of death. A very boring death.

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

I write poetry that’s meant to be read aloud and performed. Again, sound—and performance—are very important to me. I also enjoy doing readings. Jake Syersak and I started a reading series in Athens, Georgia called Yumfactory (a tribute to Lara Glenum’s Pop Corpse). Nathan Dixon eventually joined, too, as a co-curator. Hasn’t been very active since the pandemic. But maybe one day Yumfactory will return. I’m focusing most of my attention on the Action Books Blog these days.

 5 - 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 an ecologically motivated poet. Very interested in the possibility of an Anthropocene poetics. I have an essay in the works on something I call “Ecodecadence”. I’ve been thinking about how people can approach art as a mycelic practice. A many-limbed artistic ecology. A poetics that is multilingual, invasive, excessive, transgressive, queer, degenerative. More to come.

6 – 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?

The role of a writer? Tweet less.

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

“Write what you don’t know” –Johannes Göransson

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2017/07/to-vibrebrate-in-defense-of-strangeness

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

I enjoy working in many different mediums. Especially when I have no previous experience with a particular medium. I always return to this quote from David Bowie: “If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area.” Poetry, translation, film, painting, etc. I love approaching a subject working in two or more mediums. How might my response to a subject via poetry differ from my response to the same subject via painting? How might I adapt a poem into a film? I like to feel challenged. Obstructed.

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

I surround myself with images and photographs. (Usually taped on walls, tacked on corkboards.) Francis Bacon also used this approach. He would look at specific images when attacking his canvas (i.e. a photograph of a wrestler’s back, an animal mid-strike). I’ve also learned a lot about this sort of thing from fashion designers. For example, Charles de Vilmorin, a new designer I’ve been following since the pandemic, takes a similar approach when making new sketches. In a way, Kubrick did this too. I read he made the cast of The Shining screen Eraserhead before they began filming. It’s a way to channel a mood.

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

I’ve been returning to Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World lately. A recommendation from Mike Young. I also like to listen to certain kinds of music. Music helps me get into a good headspace for writing, but typically it has to be instrumental or something that drones. The lyrics can’t be particularly distracting. I’ve been writing to this album lately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlZyFLX7VdE

11 - 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?

Environmental geologist.

12 - What are you currently working on?

I just completed my first novel, Report of Land. I’m also working on my third full-length poetry collection, Ecodecadent.

12 or20 (second series) questions;

Colleen Louise Barry, Colleen

 

This is a surface
I am reflected on
No surface 

Am I reflected

I make so many mistakes with green beans 

This is just today

I am sitting while the wind does whatever
To the house and my banner whips around

A chained up snake in the garden
A furious human wig (“This Is a Mirror”)

Having read a recent interview with her [as well as her recent ’12 or 20 questions’ interview], I was curious about Seattle, Washington visual artist, writer and teacher Colleen Louise Barry’s full-length poetry debut, Colleen (New York/Kingston NY: After Hours Editions, 2022). Barry writes a kind of lyric accumulation of direct statements that assemble into larger structures, offering a book of perception, curiosities and alternate voices. “The truth is a part of age,” she writes, to open the poem “Never Done Quitting,” “is just not about your body // Elegance is rigid / over there, a horizon // the hawk flies over / It is just hungry // to be around you [.]” Composed via the shorter, first-person lyric, Colleensuggests itself as a book entirely around voice, but variations around a singular, central point. Who is this “Colleen” the author writes about? Barry composes lyric monologues that meander and click together across the open space of both thought and the physical page. “The color curtsies into space.” she writes, as part of the poem “Route B43,” “It’s the newest year / in a series of years. / Starting now / it’s my appropriate season.” Hers is a poetry of small moments, even gestures, that connect to form larger portraits and shapes, often not exactly what one might expect, upon opening. “I was so lonely so I bought a fish,” she writes, to open “My Fish,” “I was so lonely // In the night I don’t know what my fish thought / I dreamed of water only [.]” Composing poems of observation, distance and boundaries on birds, fish, lawns, motion and suspension, there are moments her poems seem to be composed from the outside, looking in. “When does the middle part begin?” she asks, to open the poem USA IV,” “Actually, you’re at the end / with a bunch of beautiful drunk people / stepping over ice.” Is it possible for the lyric to be simultaneously cinematic and internal? Possibly, if one is experiencing Colleen.

Regularly Maintained American Lawns

I was driven wild with trespassing
Bodies I never figured out
How to ingratiate 

That is this that and the other thing:
Love and what a slowly fading sparkle
I much prefer 

The muted shock cardinals harry
in early-mid March snow
on my lawn of all
the regularly-maintained American lawns