Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 128

Nancy Holmes, Arborophobia

 

 

WTF—THE ANTHROPOCENE?

Back when the nights
were nightier
and summers yellower,
you couldn’t drive
a country mile
without getting
goop all over
your windshield.
The revolting splats—
who misses them?
But it’s weird, isn’t it,
all this invisible stuff
just
disappearing.

I was curious to see the latest by Okanagan, British Columbia poet Nancy Holmes, her Arborophobia (Edmonton AB: University of Alberta Press, 2022), given my recollections of my earlier days exploring contemporary poetry, and how much I enjoyed her second collection, not long after it originally appeared. This is her sixth full-length poetry collection to date, so I’m uncertain as to why her prior titles aren’t listed here: Valancy and The New World (Kalamalka Press, 1988), Down to the Golden Chersonese: Victoria Lady Travellers (Sono Nis Press, 1991), The Adultery Poems (Ronsdale Press, 2002), Mandorla (Ronsdale Press, 2005) and The Flicker Tree: Okanagan Poems (Ronsdale Press, 2012). Arborophobia is made up of a series of narrative, meditative lyric on trees and dementia, loss and falling, mothers and motherhood, grief and erosion. Holmes writes of breakings, and of breaking apart, from climate to forests to the human ability to endure. “They say everyone eventually / gets dementia.” she writes, to open the poem “MEAT.” “We / flip through crosswords / and eat too much beef.” She speaks of time, and the measure, misuse, misunderstanding and even limitations of such a human scale. “Of course you want more.” she writes, as part of the twelve-part sequence “THE TIME BEING,” “But truly, you can’t / fit any more into your life.”

In five sections—“ORB,” “ARBOROPHOBIA,” “STAIN,” “JULIAN” and “PATH”—Holmes writes lyrics that wrap themselves around a conversation around the Anthropocene, attempting to, as the back cover offers, “grapple with the problem of hope in times of crisis.” Through long, narrative stretches, she offers poems as companion pieces to climate anxiety, personal loss and the uncertainty of where we sit as a species, thanks in large part due to an array of choices both historic and ongoing. As she offers as part of her notes at the end of the collection:

“Arborophobia,” sometimes spelled “Arboraphobia,” means fear and hatred of trees. It was likely coined by architect Robin Boyd in his 1960 book The Australian Ugliness. The term describes the tendency of architects, developers, landscapers, agriculturalists, and Western society in general to transform ecosystems by destroying trees and native plants, ostensibly in the name of aesthetics and culture.

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with John Foy

John Foy’s third book of poems, No One Leaves the World Unhurt, won the Donald Justice Poetry Prize and was published this year (2021) by Autumn House Press. His second book, Night Vision, won the New Criterion Poetry Prize (St. Augustine’s Press, 2016). His poems have been included in the Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, The Raintown Review Anthology, and Rabbit Ears, an anthology of poems about TV. His work has appeared widely in journals and online. He lives in New York.

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

My first book taught me about savagery. You have to cut away what doesn’t work. There may be poems you love about your mother or father or your dog or your political views, but if they don’t work as poems, they have to go. You need, I think, to bring together only those poems that come through the blast furnace, and then see what it is they require to complete the picture. I did go on to write well about my mother, father, and dog, and those poems found places in my books, but it took time, tempering, and revision. My most recent work is broader in scope and tone. It includes more dark humor and pays closer attention to form. The newer poems are, I think, less self-consciously “poems.” Playful but deadly.

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

When I was a child, my mother read poems to my two sisters and me. One she always read was a haunting poem called “Some One” by Walter de la Mare (1913). The shiver stayed with me. Few words, all simple, magically frightening. That’s how it began. In ninth grade (I was 15 years old), I had an English teacher who changed my life. His name was – is – Peter Balakian. Our class discussions on “Skunk Hour,” by Robert Lowell, and “A Refusal to Mourn,” by Dylan Thomas, were defining moments. At that time Peter himself was an aspiring poet in his mid-twenties. He got us talking about Bob Dylan lyrics, which he’d write on the board. It was clear he enjoyed what he was doing. He moved around the room with the easy confidence of an athlete, and his teaching style was the same. He was not “an English teacher” but a friend who wanted to share with the class the writings he loved. He wanted to talk about them and hear what we had to say. He confessed that he had decided against Law School to pursue teaching and poetry. He had been a baseball star and football star in his student days. I was a middling athlete, at best, but I could relate. I thought, well, I want to be like him. (I began publishing poems in our high school literary magazine.) He went on to do a PhD at Brown on Theodore Roethke, and he became an eminent poet and a world-renowned scholar of the Armenian genocide. He won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Ozone Journal in 2016. He has long been the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of Humanities at Colgate University, where he is also the Director of Creative Writing. He published some of my early poems in the Graham House Review, which he edited with the poet Bruce Smith. He wrote a blurb for my second book. I see him sometimes when he comes down to NYC, and he has hosted me as a featured reader at Colgate. So thanks to Peter Balakian, I began to write poetry.  

My first published poems appeared in Canadian magazines, for which I remain grateful. I was studying English Literature at McGill and submitting to journals like The Antigonish Review, the Quarterly Review, and Poetry Canada Review, edited by Clifton Whiten. He included me in an anthology called, unsurprisingly, New Voices. I also had poems published in McGill’s literary journal, Scrivener. It was at McGill, and in Montreal generally, that I met Louis Dudek, Peter Van Toorn, Ken Norris, and Stephen Brockwell (a fellow student at the time).

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 I have projects. The poems come one by one, month by month. I’ve never had a grand vision. I just write whatever feels necessary at the time. If a vision emerges, it comes as a revelation from the work, as a result, not as part of a pre-conceived plan. The inspirations come quickly, the writing goes slowly. Final poems rarely look like the first draft. I keep copious notes in my notebooks, which are always close at hand, so I consult them whenever needed. I also keep an extensive archive of drafts on my computer. I always have something to work on, fast or slow.

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?

Well, I trundle out the old clichés because they’re true. The show usually begins with something I’ve come across that I like: a word, an image, a phrase, a line from another poem, an idea from some other work, a news headline (serious or inane), or a thing I’ve heard someone say. Sometimes it comes from the name of a street in Paris or a bird or some piece of advanced military weaponry. These are the way in. I work a poem up from these simple beginnings. It might happen over the course of a week or a month. It might happen over the span of 10 years. I don’t throw anything away. I don’t care about time.

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

Yes, public readings have been important. Before the pandemic, they were live, which was thrilling and essential. During the pandemic, they’ve been on Zoom, which is a bit bloodless but better than nothing, and I thank those who have hosted them. Because Zoom readings are not bound by location, they will likely be the way of the future. And that’s good, up to a point. The fact is, though, there’s no bar! No face-to-face camaraderie. I want to be in a room with poets and a bar. I’m happy to say I just was! I co-curate a reading series uptown in NYC called the Morningside Poetry Series (with Linda Stern and David M. Katz – we were formerly known as the Red Harlem Readers). We’ve been doing this for over 12 years. Our events are currently held at a bar called Suite on Amsterdam Avenue at the corner of West 109th Street. On Sunday, September 26, 2021 (last weekend, as I write this), I hosted our first live event in over two years. It was an open-mic free-for-all. A great re-commingling of poets and friends. We had over 20 people. Folks are hungry to get back to the real thing. Everyone was vaccinated, and you had to show proof of vaccination to get in. The drinks were cheap, the mic was working, and the poetry was excellent.

I would not say that public readings were part of the creative process because “creating” a poem comes well before reading it in public. But readings are important because they help you gauge how your poems come across. You have to be able to stand up and talk to people in a room in a way that makes sense to them and respects their intelligence. You are not reading “at” people (that’s kind of disgusting). I like to think you are reading “for” people. Poems need to be at home on the page and the stage. They need, I think, to have the snap and vitality of a hook by Johnny Cash and the blinding, intuitive insight of a line by T. S. Eliot. They also need to be read well. This assumes that the poet-reader has at least an entry-level degree of competence in front of a microphone. This, alas, is not always the case.

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?

Theories are interesting, and I like to read about them. I believe, though, that they have little to do with writing. Or, I should say, they have little to do with craft. Craft is how you lay down a line, put words on a page. People in the water don’t need a theory. They need to know how to swim. So maybe my approach is about praxis, by which I mean an exercise of skill. I believe in technical discipline. To me, this is the same as saying that a guitarist needs to know how to finger an E minor chord. It’s about humility. It’s good to know how to play the English language, to submit yourself to its beauties, requirements, and complexities. I’m interested in loading common speech with as much meaning as possible. I want to make it cut and bleed, and I can’t see a better way of doing this except through the love of meter, sound, and syntax. I’m committed to the chord book of English prosody. Poets, like musicians, must know how to play their instrument. Miles Davis would agree. Shakespeare too. The current florescence of theory is good in a social and political sense. All voices need to be heard, all truths need to be told, and we need to enact social policies to help the marginalized and the disenfranchised. A poetry based on sociology and politics, however, risks losing value over time. It can also risk becoming boring. A poet still needs to lay down a good line. Subject matter alone does not make a poem.

The questions I’m trying to answer usually emerge after the fact. The poem, when it’s done, will reveal whatever questions I may have been trying to answer.

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 can’t prescribe anything for anyone. But if you ask, I would offer the thought that a poet only needs to write well. Your work may then last, and you will help the larger culture understand itself. When I say “to write well,” I am, indeed, begging the question. As Louis Armstrong said, “If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.” In practical terms, the poet needs to keep a bit of distance from the larger culture to better interrogate it, skewer it if needed. It does no good to blow up the car if you’re riding in it. You can’t rail against capitalism and love Kim Kardashian, the NFL, and Twitter. I like what James Joyce said: “silence, exile, and cunning.”

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

It has been an excellent experience for me. My recent book, No One Leaves the World Unhurt, was published by Autumn House Press. I had the honor of working with Christine Stroud (Editor in Chief) and Mike Good(Managing Editor). Both are fine poets in their own right and committed to the cause. It was a dream. I needed them, for sure, and I think they needed me. They helped me find an appropriate title for the book, which was traumatic at the time but a big win in the end. Throughout the editorial process, I worked closely with Mike Good. His granular line-by-line insights helped me avoid many slip-ups and added great value, and his patience was extraordinary. I was lucky to work with people like this. Poet-editors! Many thanks to Christine, Mike, and their team at Autumn House Press.

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

“Most of you will fail.” I took this as a challenge. The insight was offered to a gathering of students in an expensive MFA program by a well-known poet. He was not sued or cancelled for saying this. It was before the feel-good days. His honesty was bracing. Folks, somewhere, had paid handsomely for these young, would-be poets to sit at his knee, but here they were taking the bitter pill. I was not discouraged. I doubled down, for years. He also said that if you consistently allocated 45 minutes per day to your poetry, you’d be doing well. Back then, 45 minutes sounded paltry. Now, I know otherwise.

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

It’s been relatively easy. I like writing essays and book reviews. It exercises a different part of the mind, it clarifies your thinking about what is important, and it brings you into the larger conversation. I’ve done a lot of that. But it’s time-consuming. Also, when you write reviews, you can sometimes make enemies. That’s OK, but it is not optimal. Poets on a sinking ship should not club each other in the knees. Now, I inscribe my critical ideas into the fabric of poems, so I don’t need to write essays. My thinking is embedded in the writing, demonstrated in the execution.

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 work outside of academia, so I don’t have a predictable teaching schedule or semester calendar. I carve out time wherever I can. That is to say, I don’t have a routine. I do, though, have a method. I keep a notebook at hand. I always have something to write on, even if it’s a folded piece of paper in my pocket when I’m outside. Now, with an iPhone, I use the Notes app to input thoughts, phrases, etc. while I’m walking around. Whenever time permits, I sit down with my notes and mull over my jottings, consolidating them into drafts. I can do this either in a notebook or on a computer, whichever is more convenient at the time. The recording feature on the iPhone is also good. I record phrases and poems to hear how they carry on the voice.

For a long time now I’ve been working from home, even before the pandemic. In our living room, there are two computers: my work computer (used exclusively for work) and a big, desktop iMac. During a typical workday, I jump back and forth between computers to work, edit, compose, revise, etc. Also, our bookshelves are in the room, so I can pull down whatever book I need at any time, without losing a beat in my work-work or my poetry-work.

(To support myself and my family, I work as a senior financial editor. The only way we can afford to live in Manhattan, which is where we want to be. When people ask me what I do, I say “I’m the language guy in a house of numbers.” I’m immersed in language all day, albeit language in the service of things merely going up and down. Still, this keeps me knee-deep in the mysteries of the English sentence, its grammatical structures, its articulations, its maneuverability, and the beauties of its precision. I’m lucky. This kind of employment is not inconducive to writing poetry.)

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

My writing never gets stalled. When I feel the need to start something new, I turn to my notebooks or to poems I love. I might drink a glass of wine and walk my dog. Maybe watch the news. I might go to a local bar on Broadway, where I sometimes hang out with a painter named Sean Clancy who loves Coleridge. I never complain.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

- freshly mown lawns in summertime

- gasoline

- marijuana on a golf course at night

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?

All of the above. Also architecture, technology, war, louche Internet sites. Nothing is off limits.

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

Well, that’s a long list. The short list includes T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Seamus Heaney, Philip Larkin, Marilyn Hacker, William Matthews, Rhina Espaillat, and A. E. Stallings. The poets Peter Van Toorn and Stephen Brockwell in Canada have also kept me excited about poetry for a long time. Stephen is still writing, and his brilliant, incisive poetry demands and rewards close attention. Going further back, I would include Thomas Wyatt, Ben Jonson, George Herbert, Keats. Throw in some Shakespeare.

Among my cohorts, there is much excellent work being done. To name all the poets would be a long list. Besides Rhina Espaillat, A. E. Stallings, and Stephen Brockwell, there are talented poets to my left and right generating significant poetry. They’re a phone call away, or an e-mail, and some even live in my neighborhood. Some are in academia, and some are not. I am blessed to be living among these poets.

Also important to me are the letters of Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo and the letters of Elizabeth Bishop. Recently, I’ve been riveted by a book of essays by James Baldwin called . James Baldwin is James Baldwin, and he cuts like a saber, unapologetically. The book is a first edition, from The Dial Press, New York, 1961, purchased from Adrian King-Edwards at The Word Bookstore on Rue Milton in Montreal.

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

Read Remembrance of Things Past. Become proficient in Spanish (I already speak French and Portuguese). To speak Spanish in New York is a social grace and a tactical advantage.

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 suppose I would have liked to be independently wealthy. I have also dreamed of being a professional, world-class cellist like Yo-Yo Ma (though I’ve never touched a cello) or a gardener in a remote monastery in Kentucky or somewhere in France. Given my personality and skill set, the second option would be best.

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

- existential terror and despair

- psychological/emotional necessity

- the prospect of getting closer to intelligent women

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

The last great book I read was Moby Dick. Some good ones I’ve read recently include Just Kids, Patti Smith’s memoir about her youth in New York City with Robert Mapplethorpe in the early 1970s (she’s a fine prose writer), and an autobiography by some fellow named Bruce Springsteen – the guy has a way with words!

I don’t watch a lot of movies these days. There are too many, and most are second rate, at best, in the grand scheme of cinema. The last great film I saw was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest(1975, directed by Milos Forman, based on the 1962 novel by Ken Kesey, and starring Jack Nicholson). Also, I’d have to include The Deer Hunter (1978, directed by Michael Cimino) and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992, directed by James Foley, adapted by David Mamet from his own play).

One recent movie I did like was Paterson. It stars Adam Driver and Golshifteh Farahani, directed by Jim Jarmusch (2016). It’s an exquisitely moving film in which almost nothing happens! No sex, violence, car chases, cannibalism, or political posturing. I won’t say anything about the relevance of the title. Please just see the movie! I’ve watched it five times.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m working on some poems about garbage and pollution, including plastic. I’ve been thinking about the Gowanus Canal, in Brooklyn, which is reputedly the most polluted stretch of water on Earth. I can feel a poem coming.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

new from above/ground press: fourteen new/recent (March-April 2022) titles,

MERRY POETRY MONTH, EVERYONE! (and you are checking out the poems posted daily all this month on the Chaudiere Books blog, yes?)

FOURTEEN NEW TITLES: 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 $8 ; Report from the (Elizabeth) Robinson Society, Vol. 1 No. 1 $7 ; Divination, by Marita Dachsel $5 ; Andante: Scales and Proportions for a Chemical Orchestra Amid the Fraying Social Norms, by Anne Tardos $5 ; Okay?, by Lori Anderson Moseman $5 ; 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 $8 ; Report from the (Kate) Siklosi Society, Vol. 1 No. 1 and No. 2 $7 each/both for $12 ; COLVILLE SUITE FOR MIXED VOICES, by Vivian Lewin $5 ; SCRIED FUNDAMENTS, pomes by MLA CHERNOFF $5 ; Visions of Bolaño, by Wade Bell $5 ; pandemic friendship, by Joanne Arnott $5 ; 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 $8 ; ELEGIES, by Rob Manery $6 ;

keep an eye on the above/ground press blog for author interviews, new writing, reviews, upcoming readings and tons of other material; and don't forget the Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] EIGHTH ANNIVERSARY SALE this month (featuring the above/ground press backlist!)

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March - April 2022
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy of each

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) 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 (above). Scroll down the extensive list of names on the sidebar (many, many things are still in print).

Review copies of any title (while supplies last) also available, upon request.

Forthcoming chapbooks by Jason Christie, Geoffrey Nilson, Andrew Gorin, N.W. Lea, Lori Anderson Moseman, Melissa Spohr Weiss, Marita Dachsel, Stuart Ross, Genevieve Kaplan, Jed Munson, Michael Boughn, Saba Pakdel, Laura Kelsey, Christopher Patton, Angela Caporaso, Russell Carisse, Jérôme Melançon, Isabella Wang, Matthew Owen Gwathmey and issue thirty-four of Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal]! (and probably a bunch of other things, honestly).

and there's still time to subscribe for 2022 (I can totally backdate, obviously, to January 1st)! can you believe the press turns 29 years old this year? gadzooks!

stay safe! stay healthy; wash your hands; be nice to each other,

reading in the margins: Bobbie Louise Hawkins

  

BARBARA [HENNING]: Did you get there?

BOBBIE [LOUISE HAWKINS]: Oh God, nobody ever gets there.

During pandemic mornings lifeguarding our young ladies in their e-schoolings, I sit on the couch with notebook and pen, amid various drafts of in-progress short stories, and a copy of Bobbie Louise Hawkins’ reissued 1984 novella, One Small Saga. Produced with a new introduction by Laird Hunt and Eleni Sikelianos, as well as a long out-of-print short story, this new volume also includes a lengthy excerpt of an even longer interview that Barbara Henning conducted with Hawkins across 2011. Throughout the book, Hawkins’ prose is sharp, attentive and coiled. Her prose is descriptively expressive in this really lovely subtle way.

I’ve been attempting to be more proactive about seeking out prose that strikes my attention. It isn’t as easy as one might think: as an active reviewer, I’ve received books in the mail almost every day for more than two decades, but the kinds of prose that really strike are few and far between. Lydia Davis, Sarah Manguso, Miranda July, Anik See, Kathy Fish, Heather Christle. Lorrie Moore. I pour through literary journals and pry open envelopes, but much of what I encounter reads as too straightforward; narratives that might be easier to adapt into film, but harder to hear the music of the language.

As part of a post-reading panel at the Ottawa International Writers Festival in October 2007, the late Quebecoise novelist Gil Courtemanche complained heavily about English-language North American novelists. “You don’t want to write books, you want to write stories,” he proclaimed, thanks to my notes from the time. He was on a panel alongside British writer Marina Lewycka and Newfoundland writer Michael Winter, both of whom he dismissed with a wave of his hand. Courtemanche declared the problem with “our” fiction was that we all wanted to be filmmakers. It was no longer about words, he said. It was no longer about anything more than action. He went on, of course, saying that he doesn’t bother reading North American fiction anymore, because something always has to “happen” in them, and writers can’t just write anymore. Where is the interiority, he accused.

He also complained about being prevented from smoking indoors, claiming we were a culture of barbarians. Once he left, we christened a side-room of the festival hospitality suite the “Gil Courtemanche smoking room.” It was where all the conversation occurred.

Hawkins’ is a name I’d heard for quite some time, but never quite got to, in those ways in which we all do, filing an ever-increasing list of names of writers that one wishes to get to, but haven’t quite been able to, yet. Julia Cohen, Paige Lewis, Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. In my own way, I do wish to get to everyone, but it does take some time.

My prior of Hawkins’ work was limited to the fact that she published a novel with Coach House Press at one point, and had been one of Robert Creeley’s wives. I only mention Creeley for how important his work was for me throughout my late twenties and into my thirties, having spent an enormous time learning through his rhythms and lines, and those other writers that surrounded him, although I seem not to have paid nearly enough attention. I first caught her name through the association, and possibly her Coach House title catching my eye in multiple second-hand shops over the years.

I slip downstairs through our fiction shelves, and there it is, Almost Everything(1982), a co-publication between Toronto’s Coach House Press and East Haven, Connecticut publisher LongRiver Books. A paperback set amid Elizabeth Hay and Fanny Howe and Sheila Heti titles. A price sticker on the front cover is dated January 1999, $3.99, from Toronto’s late, lamented community bookstore, This Ain’t The Rosedale Library. A whole book by Bobbie Louise Hawkins, there on my bookshelf, entirely unread. And so, to begin.

I’m fascinated by the ways in which Hawkins utilized the information of her life to shape fiction, writing out a narrative propelled by observation and commentary, composed over her own situations and experiences. She married a Danish architect when young, and begin to travel; so, too, did the narrator of One Small Saga. She was deeply pregnant during the cruise across the Atlantic; so, too, was her narrator. She uses the structures of her own life, but her work is fueled by her observations, her language. Her clipped articulations of what might not have been spoken of in fiction by male writers, or even caught at all. Her paragraphs expand, and then curl into conclusion. There is nowhere to go but the next line, the next thought. The language itself, propels. Hers is the most wonderful music, and one I regret not spending time with before this.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Barb Howard

Barb Howard is the author of Notes for Monday , Whipstock , The Dewpoint Show , and the award-winning short story collection, Western Taxidermy . She has served as President of the Writer’s Guild of Alberta, Writer-in-Residence at the Calgary Public Library, and editor of Freefall Magazine, and has taught Creative Writing at the University of Calgary, the Alexandra Writer’s Centre, and the Banff Centre. Barb is the Calgary writing mentor for The Shoe Project, a literacy and performance workshop for immigrant women, and sits on its board of directors. She is also a member of the board of directors for the Calgary Arts Development and Calgary Arts Foundation. She lives in Calgary, Alberta.

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

My first book didn’t change my life as much as I had hoped. I thought that after it came out I would feel that I had officially arrived as a writer. However, after that first book I then figured that I needed my second book to feel that I had arrived. And then my third, etc. Happy Sands is my fifth book of fiction and I’m pretty sure the “not there yet” pattern will continue. Happy Sands does have some fundamental differences to my first book Whipstock. In Whipstock I used a third-person point of view and avoided explicit interior thoughts (while hinting at those thoughts through action and dialogue.) Happy Sands is written in first-person and is an interior novel. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily progress, but it’s different.

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

I came to fiction first because that is what I mostly read. Also, when I started writing I was doing legal writing for a day job. I had heard that it’s best to write something that is not like your day job (otherwise it feels like your day job). It still seems like good advice.

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

I am slow to start and, once it gets going, also a slow writer. None of it comes easy. In Happy Sands I had to resort to the Pomodoro Technique (25-minute timed intervals) to finish the manuscript and the first big round of UCalgary Press edits.

I don’t take notes or write in a journal. I figure if an idea or detail is good enough it will stick with me. That might be code for laziness. My first full draft usually captures a sense of the general story idea and setting – but underdoes everything else. The most common editorial comment I get is “more here?”

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?

Usually, I know the approximate length of a piece when I start. There are occasional surprises, but the length and genre mostly end up being as I envisioned. I start writing at what I think might be the beginning and write to what I think might be the end, skipping over parts that give me difficulty. Then I go back and dig in and rearrange and fill-in and delete.

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

I see public readings as part of the job. I don’t dread them but they definitely occupy my mind for a few days leading up to the performance. During those days when performance planning and practicing and jitters take over my mind, my creative process for writing is obliterated.

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 begin a new piece my initial concern is: does the world need another book or story, particularly by another old white woman, and more particularly by me? I answer no. And then, illogically, go ahead and write anyway. When I write I don’t try to answer anything, rather I try to represent a feeling or a circumstance. And then when I finish I ask myself the dreaded question: so what? And usually have no answer.

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 the role of a writer has always been to observe, to report and, in the case of creative writing, to effectively and artistically interpret or represent aspects of (pretentious phrase coming here) the human condition. “Effectively and artistically” is the tricky part.

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

An experienced outside editor is absolutely essential to my process, and I love working with them. When else will someone spend that much time on a piece of my writing? A strong editor is a gift – even when we disagree. Working with a weak or inexperienced editor can by stressful and problematic – but that has only happened to me a few times in over 20 years. And every editor has to start somewhere.  

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

Long before it was a Nike slogan, my mom used to say “Just do it.” Basically – stop whining and waffling and making excuses and get on with it.

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

Moving between genres has been organic for me – more a function of time and stage of life than pre-planning, although deep down I think of myself primarily as a short story writer. Short stories were easier to keep in my mind in the tiny writing-time allotments I had when I was working full time and had young kids. My novels tend to be short – more like really long short stories or novellas. But they feel long to me.  Whenever I finish writing a novel I swear I will never write another one. I never say that after finishing a short story. The essays that I write are usually more reflective or personal than journalistic and I am glad I didn’t start on then until fairly recently. I have more life experiences to reflect upon now.

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 set up daily “office hours” that, in theory, are devoted to actual writing, and not to just “writing-related” activities like mentoring, or Board work or editing for other people. But I find it hard to keep to the office hours. In practice, my lowest daily bar to reach is to at least “touch” (= do anything, e.g. open the file and insert a comma) my current work-in-progress every day. Often that turns into a long writing session. But I still frequently end up regressing to my old habit of writing late at night.

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

If it’s a little stall, I go to the piano, play a bit, and then go back to my desk. If it’s a medium stall I take my dog for a walk or go for a bike ride. If it’s a huge stall and there’s no deadline, I set the work aside for a few months. If it’s a huge stall and there is a deadline, gulp, I use the Pomodoro Technique.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Loose leaf Market Spice tea. I make a highly-caffeinated pot every morning.

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

I am influenced by music and often choose specific playlists to listen to while I’m writing in the belief that something about the music, maybe the mood or pace, will filter into my writing. I use nature to re-think aspects of my work. In nature, I don’t actively think about the work, but just walk or hike and let the writing issue simmer in the back of my mind. It only works if I am on my own. Conversation kills that process.

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

I’m drawn to authors and works that rely heavily on dialogue and sharp humour. Roddy Doyle, for instance. I’m also drawn to Alberta writers – I like to see what my peers are up to. There is a lot of unheralded talent in this province.

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

Canoe the Nihanni River.

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 probably would have stuck with law and become an independent legal researcher – which still involves writing, but more boring writing. My mom was a dietician and, in retrospect, that occupation would have been a better fit for me than law. Maybe I would have given that a go.

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

Good teachers and positive reinforcement. Also, I’m not super comfortable expressing myself verbally, especially on-the-spot; writing provides a less pressured, more subtle, mode to “say” something.

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

I just re-read Slaughterhouse Five because one my sons gave me the copy he used in university. I’d forgotten what a great book it is. In terms of films, for the past month I have been working on Michael Nyman’s music on my piano and will be watching the movie The Piano soon (hopefully tonight!) – in part to see if the movie has remained great over time, and in part to see how the music works within the movie.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a collection of short stories about “average” girls and women in outdoor recreational sports. The themes and tensions are different, of course, but the settings are all outdoors in canoes, on skis and mountain bikes, that sort of thing. I think there is a shortage of sports stories featuring women. Also, it’s a good excuse for me to go outside, have fun, be average… and call it all research.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Requiem for Steven Heighton

(1961-2022)

1.

Somewhere we have arranged                          with spring

a language of lament. To hear you’ve died. Abrupt, enough

to tear the earth                 along the Aegean.

 

2.

Sixty years                        , this unfinished sentence: through

a telescope of bone. With spring                            , as autumn, you wrote,
an old man’s Lent. Such currency of quiet charm,

of warmth.   

 

3.

You felt it all, it seems, their hurt           , their loss
: of friends divorced, dying or depressed                    , if this                              

a crappy year, you asked. Your love                 , an island

separated by the low rise
of lake.                                        And now,

this urgency of emails; to rephrase                   silence

as it petrifies,                     where once you roamed

against all reeling.

  

4.

What gap-toothed boardwalk                 of acoustic riff, a distance

travelled regularly, and with ease. And into                 hours.

A circle of chairs. A beer on the lawn.

 

5.

If, as you wrote, to die is truly                         to become invisible,

then perhaps                     this isn’t possible. A dram of single malt,

the waves of which                               

have crashed. These poems, carved                  from bread and butter,

shorelines, secrets             , tundra                   : something brittle,
ancient                    , deeply human. Stone                

as old as wine.

 

6.

I only just heard                you were sick.

 

Erin Emily Ann Vance, A History of Touch

 
 

WHISKERS

Between classes I haunted the vault of the University of
Calgary archives where I worked as a grad student.
I lingered, always, by the first editions of Plath and Sexton.
Like a luck charm I’d run my finger along the tip of a
badger’s whisker that Ted Hughes taped into a hand-stitched
chapbook shelved next to an early edition of The Colossus.

One day I will run my fingers along the marbled spine of
the box at the Lily Library that contains Sylvia’s hair shorn
in childhood, hair that never felt Ted’s brute fingers.
I wonder if Ted plucked those whiskers from a badger
in the wild, its thick musk like Sylvia’s heavy memory. 

But no, Ted couldn’t touch a woman without cowering in
his study, never mind a wild animal. He always did like to
pluck bits and pieces from the dead as they lay helpless.

From Erin Emily Ann Vance, a Canadian writer currently studying in Ireland, author of the novel Advice for Taxidermists and Amateur Beekeepers (Edmonton AB: Stonehouse Publishing, 2019) as well as a handful of poetry chapbooks, comes the full-length poetry debut, A History of Touch (Toronto ON: Guernica Editions, 2022). The poems that make up A History of Touch are constructed as curious breath-phrases, each line built to articulate rhythm on the page, each line break offering where the breath might stand. Her poems exist as short narratives, little lyric stories in the form of poems, that, as the back cover offers, “explore the natural, the supernatural, and the in-between, interrogating the position of the female body in folklore, pop culture, and history.” “Earliest memory: mother in coffin,” she writes, to open the poem “HAT BOX,” a poem dedicated to Lucy Maud Montgomery and her loss, due to a son stillborn, “the tubercular bed I grew in. / A haunted wood: I thought the birch / was the monarch of our forest / but it was mother’s grave that ruled. // In the fairy room I split in two, / by Maiden Lake I became a tree.” She writes of witches and mysteries, matrons and mothers, stillbirth, kittens, rabbits and silk; she describes a darkness of dolls, the institutional life of Rosemary Kennedy and the photographs of the Cottingley Fairies, and it wouldn’t be hard to see how the poems collected here directly relate to her time as co-host of the folklore and history podcast Femmes Macabres . Vance writes the stories of women who were maligned by their cultures and communities, from being sentenced to death for witchcraft to being dismissed as difficult or hysterical, and examining the depictions of these women and their surroundings. As she writes in “The Purported Last Words of Ruth Blay,” telling the story of a woman executed by hanging in the Province of New Hampshire, 1768, after being convicted of concealing the body of her stillborn illegitimate child: “Don’t let my students watch, don’t / let the girls see. I haven’t yet / taught them what it means to be // a woman.” Further on, adding: “Let them live quietly / for now. I’ll visit them in their dreams, / tell them of this pain when they are ready.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Daniel Tiffany

Daniel Tiffany is a poet and theorist based in Los Angeles and Berlin. He is the author of six collections of poetry from presses including Action Books, Noemi, and Omnidawn, along with the documentary projects of BLUNT RESEARCH GROUP, published in the Wesleyan Poetry Series. His latest volume, Cry Baby Mystic , was published by Parlor Press in 2021. Poems of his have appeared in journals such as the Paris Review, Poetry, Bomb, jubilat, Fence, and Lana Turner. In addition, five volumes of his scholarship have been published by presses such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Chicago, and he has translated texts by Greek, French, and Italian writers. He is a recipient of the Berlin Prize, awarded by the American Academy in Berlin. www.danieltiffany.com

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

Well, on a purely pragmatic level, the publication of my first book (a critical book on Ezra Pound published by Harvard University Press) got me tenure. I remember shouting for joy somewhere in a parking garage when I got the news that the book had been accepted. As for the question how my work at various stages compares (I’m speaking only about my poetry now), I’d say I couldn’t to speak to the quality of it over the years—that’s about readership, and authors are readers of their own work only in very odd ways, some reliable, some not. I do have my favorites, though, among my books. Some people say they can see, despite the range of approaches and forms, a continuity from the earliest to the latest. But I see changes as well—increasingly fewer words and forms which are at once constraining and magnetizing.

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

I came to poetry because I wound up attending a poetry reading in high school, half stoned, by a guy named Morton Marcus (who died recently—and taught for years at Cabrillo College in California). I’d never heard anything like it, I felt like I was dreaming with my eyes open, sitting there in class. At the same time, I was a young actor and went off the following year to Juilliard (the Drama Division) in New York, where I continued to read and write some poetry on the side. Come to think of it, my involvement in theater as a kid certainly must have tuned my ear to poetry as a crucial filament in the imagined space of the theater. I don’t think most people realize that actors (and preachers)--after poets--are the most sensitive and engaged readers of poetry in our society (often more so than other writers), since their training and art requires them to literally embody poetry in the roles they play (at least in productions of texts written prior to the 20th century). And their insights differ significantly from the kinds cultivated by poets. Though I haven’t been involved in theater in any capacity for decades, it has dawned on me from time to time that certain conditions of theater remain deeply embedded in my writing.

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

My poetry projects take shape pretty slowly, especially the one I’m fiddling with now, which has taken a long time to come into focus conceptually (and this project, more than any prior to it, has a strong conceptual aspect). I do lots of reading, listening, absorbing a gallery of voices—some poetry, some prose or fiction—which supplies the tonal palette for the book to be written. This gleaning period can last a year or more, but the writing, once I’m ready to go, can proceed rather quickly—though it can get hung up at times along the way. And to get into the space that each project requires, it’s crucial that I retreat—a luxury since my kids are grown now—into short periods of absolute privacy (a few days at a time) to settle into my brain and keep my bearings. There’s also lots of revision down the road, right up until the moment of publication.

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 new project starts for me with mood, a particular climate of personal and impersonal feelings; and that stage very quickly passes into reading and gathering a constellation of texts, each providing a note, a coloring, a distinct tonality, to be sampled into the whole. My collections of poetry are usually book-length projects, whether broken into poems (sometimes untitled or sharing the same title), or in my latest volume, Cry Baby Mystic, a book-length poem (composed in tiny stanzas).

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

Yes, I love to read my poems aloud, though public readings can also sometimes be lonely or quietly turbulent in ways that linger sorely in the memory. What I love best is being inspired and energized by someone reading aloud before I stand up to read, which carries me forward like a wave. But sometimes I don’t quite know how to receive compliments after a reading. They make me worry about whether a poem could stand on its own for the solitary reader!

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?

There are indeed theoretical concerns that put pressure on the poetry I write, but I try to be cautious about drawing direct correspondences between what’s going on in my lives as a poet and a scholar. Also, there’s a lot of my critical writing out there (including the entry on “Lyric Poetry” in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Literature), and some readers will search around to draw their own conclusions. Nevertheless, because I developed a reputation as a theorist and scholar before I began publishing books of poetry, critics often felt compelled (in reviews of my early collections) to test out correspondences that they perceived between theory and practice in the volume they were reviewing. In reviews of later collections, however, those references to my scholarship have become sparser (which I’m glad to see), allowing the poems to wriggle free, without caption or credit.

At the same time, there are resonances between my poetry and my theoretical work, which I wouldn’t want to suppress. And I feel grateful whenever someone feels inclined to sound out those correspondences, with some degree of suspicion. People (readers) have noticed resonances between my thinking about vernacular languages, colliding levels of diction—one could even say translingualism—and the profusion of voicesin my poetry. In several of my books, for example, I’ve fooled around with collages, or alloys, of archaism and other kinds of patois, starting with The Dandelion Clock in 2010 (Tinfish)—which anticipated Bergvall’s and Brolaski’sexperiments with Middle English a bit later—and other more recent poems by Jos Charlesand Pattie McCarthy.

Generally, I’d say there’s an abiding concern in all my work with models of expression in poetry, shared language, and community. On the other hand, the current project I’m working on (with BLUNT RESEARCH GROUP), Logophobe, could be described as hovering around the problem of inexpression, of incompetence, and linguistic vulnerability: facing (and cultivating) the stupidity of one’s own language—in part by sounding the stupidity of the idols—and inhabiting feelings of fear and dread about language.

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?

While I don’t seem to have strong views about the writer’s role in society, I do think there are crucial forces today bringing new kinds of writers (and communities of writers) to public prominence, and that “churn” is indispensable to the vitality of the art. One lesson to be taken from this disclosure of new riches from new sources is that one generation, or community, must be prepared to step aside—to drop back into the shadows—in order to support the continuing vigor of verbal arts. This is not a position about politics, per se, but it has powerful political implications. In addition, poets have historically had a special role (in comparison with other sorts of writers) in maintaining a reflexive and sometimes experimental orientation to language. Poets are often the custodians—and interrogators—of language at a granular, and even molecular, level.

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

As a poet, one rarely works with an editor who makes substantive suggestions, or even line edits. I wonder what that would be like—and how it might be justified. At the same time, when I read books of poetry, a little thought bubble often pops into my head: “This collection could use a good editor!”

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

Take your last book, throw it in the drawer, and forget about it.

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

Because I wound up writing both poetry and scholarly, or theoretical, work, I agonized for many years about the corrupting influence of one modality on the other, fearing especially that my scholarly work would paralyze my process as a poet and put language to sleep. Actually, as I’ve gotten older and glimpsed a bird’s-eye view of my work (at moments), I think it may be the scholarly side of my work that has suffered most profoundly from my erratic commitments as a poet. My concerns and priorities as a poet have sometimes skewed the integrity of thinking and argumentation. At the same time, though I still must segregate the two activities--I can’t immerse myself in a poetry project while writing serious criticism—I feel much less fearful of the reciprocal harm one might bring to the other. It is what it is; it’s my history, I can’t help it. Poetry is resilient.

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’m not someone that writes every day—though I may be immersed on a regular basis in activities that a project requires: reading, research, wandering. I do like to hide away for days at a time when the work really gets going. My writing practice tends to follow a gradually intensifying arc: from distraction to speculation, to research and gathering, to increasing daily absorption in the writing process--which can occupy any period of the day or night--to revision (and more revision).

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Gillian Sze, quiet night think: poems & essays

 

             When constructing our names, my mother used our English names as a constraint. She translated sounds from one language to another. When said aloud, my Chinese name sounds recognizably like its English counterpart. The first character of my name, jí, means “lucky.” One looks for its Pinyin (the romanized spelling of the Chinese pronunciation) in a dictionary will reveal that it shares the same sound as the words for “stammer,” “urgent,” “to draw (water),” and “to gather.” The second character, lían, refers to the lotus flower. Lían can also mean: “scythe,” “ripple,” “a hanging screen or curtain,” and “to connect.”

            I often think of the poetic work that goes into a name. Those careful tasks of composing, testing, titling, and finding the comparability between meaning and resonance, sound and connotation. My Chinese name placed me in a matrix of homophones, a riddle of notes composed of varying levels of coherence. I was part of a constellation, one among many possible significations. As I grew older, I saw myself as a book that my mother was first responsible for naming.

I’m fascinated by the way Montreal poet Gillian Sze weaves poetry, memoir and essay in her latest collection, quiet night think: poems & essays (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2022). The author of nearly a dozen poetry titles and three picture books [see my review of her second collection, The Anatomy of Clay, here], Sze’s quiet night think is a book of meditations though the lyric, writing on language, translation, poetry and becoming, writing out the slant ways she came to writing, and the construction, or even the capability, of a more comfortable and complete version of herself through the process. It is interesting to hear how her sense of language, culture and writing emerge from the same central core, prompting her before she was even conscious of how each might have been affecting her. As she writes:

            What is this space that poetry offers? Creative space. Emotional space. Reflective space. A space for possibilities. The poem, for a long time, remained a rigid slab of words with no room to make the leap. I wanted space, but I didn’t know then that to gain it, you have to lose something. Loss, as my mother already knew, is what provides the space from which meaning can emerge.

Very much composed and organized as a book of origins, quiet night think is constructed through a blend of memoir, essay, prose poem and lyric; as the press release offers: “six personal essays, poems, and a concluding long poem” composed by “a new mother, contemplating her own origins, both familial and artistic.” Threading through form, Sze allows the ebb and flow of the personal essay and the prose poem to explore far more than perhaps the single possibility of structure and form might have allowed. She writes of how her name became her body, and answers the interweave of “how she got here” through the lens of her family origins and history, existing through and between two languages and cultures, and the ways in which new motherhood simultaneously shifted, expanded and validated her perspectives on all of the above. She writes on how she first turned to writing, something that emerged as both the tether and the propulsion to her whole being. “Why do you write? was a question that I was often asked, and my answer for both weeding and writing was Rilkean: I must. Yes, there was something inherently futile with every weed I pilled, but I did so stubbornly, thinking of what Mordecai Richler said: Each novel is a failure or there would be no compulsion to begin again.” A bit later on, moving through those first few experiences of motherhood, she writes: “My mouth, usually a vehicle for coherent expression, was humbled; I suddenly found my body taking precedence, and where it went in those hours there were no words.”

Sze’s meditations are delicate, thoughtful and raw, articulating the complex experiences and emotions around new motherhood, writing out a space grounded by her own childhood, as well as a childhood revisited and reconsidered (as so many of us do) through the birth of her own first child. She works to articulate that delicate and exhaustive space through the haze, and for what her earlier self was presented as a conflict, but she manages to find the space for both. She not only finds space, but she crafts for herself, perhaps through the very nature of shifting into new motherhood, the perfect form that her thinking requires, allowing the multiple cultural threads and divisions of form to combine, compliment and inform each other, to speak through what otherwise would have been seen as contradiction. As she offers, early in the collection:

What are you trying to be? Western? my father said. I had just been told that I couldn’t attend the school dance. His rhetorical quip baffled me, not knowing how to respond at age twelve when, being born landlocked in the middle of the continent, the West was all around me. And yet, always that inescapable underlay of another country beneath our feet, a ghost asleep in the open yawn of the wok, the deft pluck of our chopsticks at my mother’s dumplings. My father once told me that in the fastened words of my hyphenated identity, “Chinese” came first. What I heard sounded like duty, outsider, order, difference.

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Carmen Rodriguez

Chilean-Canadian bilingual writer Carmen Rodríguez(carmenrodriguez.ca) is the author of  Guerra Prolongada/Protracted War  (poetry);  a body to remember with/De cuerpo entero  (short stories); and  Retribution  (a novel). Rodríguez also has an extensive career as an educator and journalist, including work in adult literacy and popular education, particularly with Indigenous Peoples and other marginalized communities in the Americas.

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

My first book was GUERRA PROLONGADA/PROTRACTED WAR, a bilingual (Spanish-English) volume of poetry (Toronto, Women’s Press, 1992). Until then, the professions and activities that had defined my place in the world were “educator,” “journalist” and “activist.” This book expanded that repertoire to include “poet and writer.” Also, its publication allowed me to become a member of The Writers’ Union of Canada. Since then, I have been an active member of the organization, serving twice on its National Council (an elected position), participating in its Governance and Membership Criteria Task Forces, and chairing or co-chairing its Minority Writers’ Committee and Social Justice Task Force.

My most recent book is the novel ATACAMA (Halifax/Winnipeg, Roseway/ Fernwood Publishing, 2021). My two previous books are RETRIBUTION, also a novel (Toronto, Women’s Press Literary, 2011), and the short story collection AND A BODY TO REMEMBER WITH (Vancouver, Arsenal Pulp Press, 1997).

AND A BODY TO REMEMBER WITH introduced me to bilingual writing. While GUERRA PROLONGADA/PROTRACTED WAR offered me the opportunity to collaborate with Heidi Neufeld-Raine in the translation of my poems from Spanish into English, the short stories in AND A BODY TO REMEMBER WITH triggered my interest in writing in both languages. This resulted in two books authored entirely by me: one in English and one in Spanish, which were published simultaneously in Canada and Chile.

RETRIBUTION was my first novel, which I wrote using what I now call “my teeter-totter methodology.” This involves going back and forth between English and Spanish, an approach I have continued to use until now. Unfortunately, EL DESQUITE, RETRIBUTION’s Spanish counterpart has yet to be published, but Juritzen Forlag translated the book into Norwegian and released it in Oslo as CHILES DǾTRE in 2013.

It took me fourteen years to complete this novel -- the story of the Martinez family, as told in the voices of Soledad and Sol, a mother and her daughter, with book-end interventions by third-generation Tania. At times I struggled with the scope of the narrative, which spans seven decades and unfolds in two countries, while exploring the intersection between catastrophic political events and the personal lives of the protagonists. Furthermore, the main theme of the novel did not become evident to me in the early stages of my writing it, which meant that once I decided on it, I had to reformulate the story and practically start all over again. While I am happy with RETRIBUTION, in hindsight I think that a slightly different structure would have yielded a better result.

I’m very satisfied with ATACAMA. With the invaluable help of Linda Little, my editor, I believe that I succeeded in telling an important story and telling it well. I studied literature for many years and taught it for many more, so I think I know how to recognize good fiction when I read it. Modesty apart, I believe that ATACAMA is a good piece of literary work: it tells the story of and delves deep into the psyches of two lovable, interesting characters, while examining the interplay between their personal lives and the crucial historical events that define their journeys in this world. Their voices are well defined and reflect their temperaments and interests. The plot is dynamic and entertaining. The structure works. The settings are compelling. All in all, I feel that the ten years I spent working on ATACAMA yielded a good result.  

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

I did not come to poetry first. From an early age and along the years I wrote both poetry and short fiction. My first attempt at getting published professionally was in 1972, when I sent my short story “Acuarela” to the Paula Magazineliterary contest (Paula was a very popular women’s magazine published in Santiago by a collective that included Isabel Allende). My short story won an honorary mention and appeared in the March-1973 issue of the magazine.

A United States-sponsored, Canada-supported military coup was executed by General Augusto Pinochet and the Chilean Armed Forces on September 11 of that same year. Democratically elected President Salvador Allende was assassinated, bringing his “Peaceful Road to Socialism” to an end and unleashing a brutal wave a terror throughout the country. The coup marked the beginning of a seventeen-year dictatorship.

As supporters of the Allende government, my family and I were persecuted by the regime. We feared for our lives. Thanks to the help of generous friends and the hard work of Canadian churches, unions and human rights organizations, we were able to leave Chile and settle in Canada in 1974. I dedicated the next ten years of my life to support the resistance movement against the dictatorship. Then I became involved in educational work with First Nations communities across Canada.  

In 1989, the Chilean military dictatorship was replaced by a lukewarm democracy. The neoliberal economic system and the 1980 Constitution imposed by Pinochet were left intact and the dictator himself remained as Head of the Armed Forces and Senator for life. It was a change, but not the one that I and many others had wanted. The socialist Chile we had fought for so fiercely had eluded us once again.

I turned to my writing. I collected the poems and stories I had written along the years and also began to write new material. In the early nineties I decided to take a stab at publishing my work. That’s how my poetry collection GUERRA PROLONGADA/ PROTRACTED WAR was launched into the world, followed by my book of short stories AND A BODY TO REMEMBER WITHand the novels RETRIBUTION and ATACAMA.

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 depends on the genre. Poems and short stories tend to come quickly, but are often followed by days, weeks or months of rewrites. In the case of my novel RETRIBUTION, the concept came quickly, but the execution took many years and the final product had little resemblance to the early drafts. ATACAMA, my most recent novel, involved considerable field and archival research, which resulted in copious notes and attempts to incorporate such research into the story. The first draft and the final product ended up looking similar, but closer scrutiny reveals that I made important changes to the book, mainly regarding character development and some parts of the plot.

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?

Again, it depends on the genre. A poem or a short story are discrete units that in time may become part of a book. A novel is a book from the very beginning.

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

I love doing public readings and preparing for them – choosing the poems, story or novel excerpts I will read, practising by reading aloud and timing the presentation. Sometimes I add singing to my readings because I love music and I love to sing. Also, I believe that a bit of singing here and there helps to keep the audience engaged. Preparing for and doing a public reading helps my writing as the process forces me to stop and look at my work from a different vantage point.

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?

To me, writing is a political act. I came to understand the connection between language and power early in life through both my work in basic literacy education with marginalized communities and through my readings. From Paulo Freire and the Popular Education movement I learned that language is not a neutral means of communication, but rather a powerful tool and at times, a loaded weapon. That the oppressors have used it since time immemorial to keep large sectors of the population subdued and to explain and justify their actions. That the oppressed can and do use it as a tool for liberation: to name the world, reflect upon it, exchange stories and ideas, and articulate the actions they can take towards building a better world for all.

From Eduardo Galeano, Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Alfonsina Storni, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Luisa Valenzuela, Gabriel García Márquez and many others, I learned that meaningful and affecting stories (and poems) can also depict and denounce the realities of an unjust society, while presenting visions of a different, more equitable one.

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?

For me, to write is to protest. To write is to remember. To write is to bear witness. To write is to denounce. To write is to provoke and to propose. To write is to use the tool, the weapon called language in pursuit of justice; so that horror can turn into beauty, shame into dignity, and deceit into truth. This is particularly true in these times of unfettered neoliberal capitalism, when the one per cent continues to accumulate riches, while a good part of the world’s population lives in abject poverty; when half the world is on fire and the other half, under water; when exported and internal violence and wars, in addition to climate catastrophes, are pushing millions of people out of their territories and into unwelcoming, desperate situations.

This may sound like an enormous responsibility for a writer to bear. It is. It may also sound like a burden. In my case, it is not because I enjoy the challenge of translating-transposing the chaotic nature of Life and The World into the linear, orderly nature of language; of exploring the dialectical relationship between my characters and the places/circumstances they live in; of telling their stories in the context of the societies and realities in which they are inserted.  

I come from a country and a continent where writers have been killed, imprisoned and tortured for what they write; where their books have ended up in a pyre; where their publications have been banned. For the last forty-seven years I have lived in a country where the stories and cultural practices of the original inhabitants of the land were banned for decades. I applaud their resistance to assimilation and their determination to keep their traditions alive; their skill at mastering the colonizers’ tools – their languages and their literary forms, to release their stories into the world.

Silence is also a language – the language of imposed or internalized oppression. In my opinion, the role of the writer in today’s world is to break that silence.  

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

I don’t find the process of working with an outside editor difficult, but I do find it essential. In my experience, respectful, skilled and sensitive editors have helped me to identify aspects of my manuscripts in need of attention and have also guided me through revisions.

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

The best piece of advice I give myself and offer to my creative writing students is a lesson I learned through my own experience: if you feel like what you just finished writing is a masterpiece, set it aside for a few days and read it again. Most likely, you will find out that it is not a masterpiece and that it will need to be revised over and over and over and over again… and again…

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

Most often, I am engaged in several kinds of writing at the same time. Poems and short stories may “happen” impromptu, even when I’m in the middle of another project. Most often, I put those initial drafts aside until I get around to deciding whether it is worth my while to work on them or not.

As not all content fits the same form, it has not been hard for me to move between genres. Elsewhere I have said that my poetry is mainly inspired by elements such as memories and/or sensory stimuli which, in my experience, befit poetic language. Similarly, depending on the scope and depth of a narrative, my prose will become a short story or a novel. In general terms, journalistic reporting and analysis deal with socio-political or cultural affairs, while essay writing explores the world of ideas; and so on and so forth. This means that if I’m working with different content, I must move between genres. This is a challenge that I enjoy as it keeps me alert.

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 working on a long-term project, I go through periods of uninterrupted writing (if I have been fortunate enough to get a grant or a residency). During those periods I write every day for about six hours, take a break and then do revisions for about two more hours. If I’m not in the financial position to write uninterruptedly, I adapt my routine and work around my other jobs (most often teaching and journalism).

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

If I’m working in English and my writing gets stalled, I begin to transpose what I have written into Spanish; or the other way around. Inevitably, this switch in languages opens my brain and body to new sensitivities, ideas and forms of expression.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The aroma of burning firewood. I was born in Valdivia, a city that Pedro de Valdivia, the Spanish conqueror, founded in 1552 on the banks of a wide, blue river in the south of Chile. I grew up surrounded by ancient forests and in the company of patient rain. Just like everyone else in Valdivia, my mother cooked on a woodburning stove, which also provided heat to the rest of the house. So, to me, from an early age the scent of burning firewood became synonymous with “home.”

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

My inspiration for writing poetry comes mainly from images, smells, flavours, textures, memories, words, feelings and thoughts. Personal stories and their interplay with socio-historical issues and events inform most of my prose. I love certain types of music, dance and visual art, all of which have found their way into my writing.

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

I love reading literary fiction and poetry. Once in a while, I also read memoirs and literary non-fiction. I particularly admire and enjoy the work of the following writers and poets (in no particular order): Arundhati Roy, Eduardo Galeano, Gabriela Mistral, Julio Cortazar, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alfonsina Storni, Pablo Neruda, Cristina Peri Rossi, J. M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Hay, Jumpha Lahiri, Richard Wagamese, Rita Wong, Monteiro Lobato, Jorge Amado, Luisa Valenzuela, Miguel Hernandez, Alice Munro, Nancy Richler, Wayson Choy, Margaret Atwood (except for her science fiction), Margaret Laurence, Rohinton Mistry, Sandra Cisneros, Joy Kogawa, Michael Crummey, Canisia Lubrin, Oscar Hahn, Clarice Lispector, Omar Lara, Miguel de Cervantes, Virginia Woolf, Jorge Luis Borges(particularly his poetry and realist short stories), Doris Lessing, Nicolas Guillen, Gillian Slovo, and too many others to list.

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

Write and choreograph a ballet based on music and dance from an array of cultural traditions.

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 have done many things in my life. I have been a teacher, a professor, a popular educator, a basic literacy instructor, a workshop facilitator, a journalist, a radio host, a secretary, a social and political activist, a janitor, a cleaning lady, a cook, a musician, the script writer, narrator and director of a video on basic literacy instruction, a writer of educational materials, a dancer, a theatre actor… and a writer. I am also a mother and a grandmother. To me, one occupation or activity does not exclude the others.

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

Please read my responses to questions 2 and 17.

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

Book: Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese.

Film: Carlos Saura’s Tango.

20 - What are you currently working on?

A bilingual collection of poetry.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;