Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 133

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Oscar Oswald

Oscar Oswald is the author of IRREDENTA , an Editor’s Choice manuscript to be published by Nightboat Books in 2021. The collection engages the pastoral tradition from the American context of Thoreau, Stein, and Niedecker. His poetry has appeared in The Antioch Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Blackbox Manifold, and Fence, among other journals. He has a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, where he was a Black Mountain Fellow. He has also served as an Assistant Editor for Noemi Press and as the Poetry Editor for Witness .

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

Irredenta is my first and only book. I wrote it during the Trump administration, living in Las Vegas where he announced his run. My neighborhood was Paradise - an airport landing lane -  and I was escaping to the Mojave whenever possible. I began the book trying to work through the bluntness and impossibilities of Las Vegas, and I ended up studying cactuses. That trajectory reflects my consideration of political poetry and what political poetry is. Political poetry is pastoral.

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

Fiction never. When I was in high school I liked poetry, I wrote it on my own. I fought against my teachers in terms of what literature was and poetry seemed like the field on which to fight that fight, privately. I was watching David Lynch and John Carpenter and I was writing loud music like the Comets on Fire and Erase Errata. I think that there is an experience to literature that exceeds the ingenuity or craft of the writer, and that the words which drive a poem are its most important things (i.e., words don’t have to mean anything for literature to mean something). There is no conclusion to a poem - it opens at the end. You read again. That’s all you do and I like that. I tune out once there is something prior to or absent from the act of reading and surprise.

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

My writing turns on what’s at hand, and so the time for any poem is dependent on my mode, which changes with the project. I used to craft poems from parts, like a collage, chopping and dragging lines until I got the poem where I wanted it. That took a long time and lots of pages and patience. During COVID I gave that up. I started writing without editing, without looking back, practicing the Keatsian poetics of passivity that people like Jack Spicer carried into the 20th century. Keep the mistakes, wrong turns, don’t polish, trust the invention, it’s not my poem, I’m a reader… I don’t know where I’m going next.

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?

I find the book from writing poems. I start with pieces by hand, pieces of impressions or interruptions, working with an atmosphere of ideas or a pose (like a mode). I type those up, take what I like, lose the rest. I write a lot, reflect, edit, type, edit, write again. I want to write against myself to get somewhere I didn’t think to go.

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

I’ve never loved readings, but some of that is because I don’t enjoy sitting dutifully in bookstores or cafes or bars, hunched and quiet and zoning in and out, which is how most of them are for me. That said, I do have some readings I remember fondly: Alice Notley echoing the chapel at Reed College, Donald Revell and a moth around his head in Spokane, Brian Teare gently turning pages at a letterpress in Portland, Gillian Conoley cool on Zoom in the pandemic… I have not given many readings myself, but I’ve never lived among a reading community, so that could change. I can pull out my theater training and put on a show if need be.

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?

Irredenta comes from a pastoral pulse, the genre in its political garb. Pastoral shepherds, lovers, witches, children - in classic pastoral literature these figures occupy the boundary of civilized and wild worlds, where the terms ‘wilderness’ and ‘culture’ ripple into one another (Forest of Arden, “books in the running brooks,” all that). I wanted to work within pastoral confines, the generic stuff, the flowers and death, and bring this to the western United States and its deteriorating domestic empire. Out there, in the Mojave and the Sonora, on occupied land, is a place where American property, personhood, and the lyric “I” are unsettled. You can’t write about a rock in the Mojave without knowing that this rock belonged to someone else, belongs to no one, is part of the iconography and propaganda of America (Roadrunner and Coyote), that it lives in drought, and is beautiful. The pastoral incorporates all of this, and it always has. Virgil’s first Eclogue is about marginalized farmers; Theocritus’ poem “Thyrsis Lament for Daphnis” puts regeneration, death, and community into the pastoral lexicon. That’s why I wanted to write with the pastoral instead of diminishing it and razing its foundations. You see this often - the treatment of the pastoral as if there is nothing redeemable in it, like we have to write against it, because it is associated with romanticized poverty and bucolic landscapes (this is the controlling aesthetic of The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral ). The pastoral is about disenfranchisement and empire, and it is a meta-genre, one that reconceives itself at every point (see Milton’s Lycidas in particular). It is also a flexible and modern form, one that has a framework for political histories. I think Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas is a pastoral book. Same goes for Brian Teare’s Doomstead Days. Those books include nature and ecology and environmental justice without dropkicking the pastoral from the planet.

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?

The notion of a public utterance is complicated. Speaking into a discourse that is prepared in advance - or that you accept passively - is not speaking per se, it’s recitation. So much political poetry delivered on the market avoids the issues of utterance, aesthetics, or form - is that really political? I try to write new discourses in my work (impossible), with an eye for how discourse is defined by the poetry publishing market and other cultural forces. I think poets oughta keep us on our toes and disrupt literary communities that have defined their scope (explicitly or implicitly) within strict modes of writing or reading. I think poets need to question the culture of poetry and the specific kinds of poetics and poetries that publishers market. I write with a plastic “I,” one that is informed by the postmodern, instead of the stable lyric “I” that continues to dominate American poetry despite the rise of hybrid forms, modes, and identities. That’s why I don’t read much Louise Gluck; that’s why I read and reread Aditi Machado. I don’t know if that makes me difficult or pretentious or unmarketable - we’re going to find out! I want my readers to access my poems in sound or feeling, nothing else required.

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

I tend to write on my own and figure things out from there, only rarely do I reach out for readers of my work. I’ve had teachers in my education, of course, but they mostly focused on poetics - the way of writing - not the poems. Change the poetry not the poem.

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

“Poets are not cool” - Claudia Keelan. She was discussing the drive in poetry towards currency or signifiers of culture. I took this to mean that poets should write in their own culture, one that hopefully excludes them from the culture at large. I am attracted to poetry that does this even if it fails. Blake’s “Tyger,” , Maria Baranda - how the hell would someone workshop that stuff? Strange, excessive, enthusiastic… not cool.

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?

During COVID: Walking and wandering around, finding paths that cut over private property. Memorizing trees on trails, the ones people grip when they climb (making bark smooth). I’m unmoored at the moment. Writing when I can, mornings or evenings, editing a book, reading at night.

Before COVID: Writing in the mornings strictly, working the afternoons distractedly. But I don’t want to do that anymore. Things vary. Sometimes you write before your brain is muddled by the day, sometimes you gather muck for a poem afternoon…

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

Arthur Rimbaud.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Pinon, desert rain, hot dust. Humidity: I’m somewhere else.

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?

Natural forms like horny toads and creosote of course, and seasons and conversations with people. I’m pretty much a dunce with visual or performance mediums. That said, I just enjoyed seeing the Gauguins at the Art Institute of Chicago while visiting a friend, and the ‘amateurism’ of his work really struck me. Colors unbalanced, unrealistic, slabs of them with blocky people, chunkiness abounding, ”stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over.” It was almost like the terrible paintings by DH Lawrence you can see in Taos, blunt forms and goofy limbs, execution garbled, vision alone. Agnes Martin is also cool for me, for different reasons - meditative, simple, formal, uses colors. I also recently saw a collection by the painter Carmen Chami. She was working with classical myths and painting styles but applying this aggressive, polemic content for each piece. One painting was a woman cutting off her lover’s head mid-cunnilingus and staring you the viewer down. That was cool. I also really like Bob Dylan’s album Infidels.

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

I read on the way to something or away from something in my work. So I buy and rent books and give them away once I get somewhere, a state of circulation and going forth. That said, I always have Julia Kristeva around to keep me honest - her presence on a bookshelf is dominant. Conquistadors are also important, for all their idiocy, greed, and foolishness. The first European to have a vision in America was a guy named “Cow Head.”

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

Achieve professional and personal stability and then make money.

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?

Maybe a trail guide. I spend a lot of time on trails or making them. I trust my feet. I like teaching. I’m a writer because I don’t want to do anything else.

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

I acted for the stage before I wrote. I stopped because I couldn’t carry my persona off the stage. Some people can - that’s what makes them actors. But for me, once I wasn’t acting, I was just me - acting was just acting like an actor. Poetry is something I am always in and always doing. When I am not writing, I’m reading, everything feeds the poetry, teaching, talking, etc. That’s why I’m doing it right now.

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

Film: Thou Wast Mild and Lovely
Book: The Uplands: Book of the Courel and other poems

19 - What are you currently working on?

A long book of sequences. Trying to find another grip on language that doesn’t do what I’ve already done. Trying to work with literatures outside my cannon, outside the market, just stuff I’ve never heard before. Trying that without writing into / out of a sense of exoticism of the ‘unheard.’ Basically tuning out as much as possible from poetry and trying to do my own thing with writers who also do their own things for better or for worse. I am also about to move for a job.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

new from above/ground press: twenty-three new/recent (December 2021-March 2022) titles,

; 3¢ Pulp, by Lillian Nećakov $5 ; Report from the (Stuart) Ross Society Vol 1. No. 1 edited by rob mclennan, $7 ; Report from the (Amanda) Earl Society Vol 1. No. 1 edited by rob mclennan, $7 ; THE BEFORE, an excerpt from Welcome to Upper Zygonia, by Amanda Earl $5 ; 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 $8 ; Report from the (Stephen) Brockwell Society Vol 1. No. 1 edited by rob mclennan, $7 ; ECO BLUES: A tale in 3 parts, by Karl Jirgens $5 ; 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 $8 ; DISSECTIONS, df parizeau $5 ; aversions   //   nothing special, by Wanda Praamsma $5 ; RESIDUE, by Lydia Unsworth $5 ; Kid Stigmata, by Michael Schuffler $5 ; Calling to the Sun: Poems for Isabella Wang, edited by Stephen Collis $5 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 $5 ; Small Print, by Natalie Simpson $5 ; Apricot, by Nate Logan $5 ; 13 more songs the radio won’t play …, by Stan Rogal $5 ; Microbial Soup Kiss, by Sean Braune and Émilie Dionne $5 ; The 66,512, by Urië V-J (James Yeary) $5 ; Fire and Flood: Enacting Rehearsal as Performance, by Sarah Rosenthal $5 ; So/I, by Andy Weaver $5 ; oh the iffy night, by Simon Brown $5 ; Yesterday’s Tigers, by Mayan Godmaire $5 ;

keep an eye on the above/ground press blog for author interviews, new writing, reviews, upcoming readings and tons of other material;

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
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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 here to see various backlist titles (see the prior list here), or click on any of 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 Stuart Ross, Genevieve Kaplan, Jed Munson, Michael Boughn, Saba Pakdel, Laura Kelsey, Christopher Patton, Angela Caporaso, Russell Carisse, Jérôme Melançon, Isabella Wang, Joanne Arnott, Rob Manery, MLA Chernoff, Vivian Lewin and Matthew Owen Gwathmey, as well as G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #22, guest-edited by Kyle Flemmer, and G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #23, guest-edited by David Dowker, and issue thirty-three 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,

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Shashi Bhat

Shashi Bhat is the author of The Most Precious Substance on Earth (McClelland & Stewart, Canada, Fall 2021; Grand Central Publishing, US, Spring 2022) and a short story collection also forthcoming from McClelland & Stewart. Her debut novel,  The Family Took Shape  (Cormorant, 2013), was a finalist for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Shashi’s fiction has appeared in Best Canadian Stories, Journey Prize Stories, and other publications. She was the winner of the 2018 Journey Prize and was a 2018 National Magazine Award finalist for fiction. Shashi is editor of  EVENT  and teaches creative writing at Douglas College.

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

I suppose it was a bit of a relief. It was legitimizing. Like I could call myself a writer and not feel sheepish about it.

With my first book, I felt some pressure (only from myself) to write something “serious” and “literary,” and I had a narrow definition of what that meant. I also think I felt boxed in by some of the expectations and tropes of South Asian diaspora writing. With my new book, there are some similarities in that both are coming-of-age stories about girls, with chapters shaped like short stories. But this time I wrote with more freedom of voice and tone—this book has jokes and pop culture references and is set mostly in high school but is also quite dark and unsettling and deals with serious subject matter.

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

I’ve always read more fiction than anything else, particularly short stories. I like the freedom of fiction as opposed to non-fiction—I enjoy making things up, exaggerating, and satirizing. Occasionally I write a poem as a mental exercise (almost always sonnets or other form poetry), but it’s like doing a sudoku. They’re not great poems.

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 tend to spend a couple of weeks making notes for a story or chapter, another couple weeks writing, and then revision can take months or years. The length of that process, and how drastic it is, depends on the story and the urgency of the feeling behind it—like I recently wrote a 7,500-word story out of pure rage and it basically wrote itself, but now I’m working on a quieter story that requires more research, and it’s taking forever just to outline.

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?

Lately for me, a story begins with a feeling of injustice or unfairness, and then I enact it in a fictional context. Both of my novels began as a bunch of short stories that grew into a book. The next time I write a novel, though, I’m going to begin by knowing it’s a novel. That seems like it would be easier.

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

I love doing readings. It has had a big effect on my writing to think more concretely about audience—to consider momentum and to aim to hold attention rather than getting mired in self-indulgent description. I didn’t really try to be funny or dark in my stories until I started doing public readings. A joke has such a clear barometer for success: people either laugh or they don’t. An emotionally impactful story ending is the same—I can tell when I look up from the page and see people’s faces whether the ending has landed or not.

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

In terms of the writing itself, I’m often seeking a balance between humour and darkness, which can be a tightrope walk. I don’t know if I’m trying to answer questions so much as pose them in a way that feels uncomfortably true. And I imagine the questions are different for every writer. When writing a shocking or bleak ending, I ask myself how far is too far, and should I end at that moment when the emotion is most potent, or should I pull back into a denouement? And what breadcrumbs must the story contain to maximize the ending’s power? Calvino’s essay, “Lightness,” from his Six Memos for the Next Millennium, had a formative impact on my writing. He wrote about believing in a writer’s obligation to represent the time they live in—and he had grown up through the second world war—but also that he was driven to write pieces with lighter rhythms and adventures, and the challenge of finding “harmony” between the two.

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?

“Should” is a complicated word, because I think good writing comes out of writing where the energy is, and that might be politics for some people and dragons for other people. I write about things I’m frustrated by or passionate about. Currently, my concerns have a feminist bent, and my book is about a girl’s childhood trauma, and how gender-specific experiences can condition a woman to be silent, which of course coincides with what has been going on in larger culture. Maybe the next book will be about dragons.

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

I lucked out, because my editor is Anita Chong, and she is remarkable. I think she must be a literal genius, as well as being a lovely person who does not try to push the writing in any single direction, but rather looks for places that need sharpening and opening up, for ways to fully realize the narrative. I left every phone call with her full of ideas. I imagine it could be challenging to work with an editor if you weren’t on the same page (figuratively!), but thankfully I have not had that experience.

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

I can think of three, all given to me by different undergrad professors: 1) Think about what you want the reader to feel “in the white,” meaning the white space on the page after the story has ended. 2) Read your writing aloud. 3) Don’t get an MFA if you have to pay for it.

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

My novel chapters are basically short stories. I’m very attached to the short story form. I love the way a short story compresses and highlights the narrative arc, while also truncating its ending and withholding complete resolution. I think the ending of a traditional novel is like a sigh, while the short story ending is like a lump in the throat, and I prefer the effect of the latter. On the other hand, I love the novel’s greater opportunity to explore a character over time and into different aspects of their lives. So why not combine them?

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?

During the school year I just cram in writing wherever there’s space (I teach full time and edit a literary magazine, so it can be busy). I make notes for my own stories while my students are doing writing exercises, or in my phone while on the SkyTrain. During the summers, at least pre-pandemic, I would meet with other writers in cafés for Shut Up & Write sessions—we set a timer and alternate blocks of writing and socializing.

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

I often go to old stories or sketches I wrote 15-20 years ago and then fully re-write them. I find it helpful to have a starting point rather than a blank page. And in my phone I keep a list of story ideas, which will hopefully keep regenerating.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Tiger Balm. We have a lot of muscle pain in our family.

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

Music was a big part of my life growing up, and I relate it to writing because they’re both art forms that unfold over time. Both provide the opportunity for a first and last impression, for range in tone and volume and pace, for tension and catharsis. When I’m really immersed in writing, it feels the same way it used to when I was immersed in playing the piano (perhaps partly because of the hand movements of typing). And lately I’ve been writing more about music, which I find to be a multi-layered experience—describing sound while considering the cadence and rhythm of the language itself.

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

ZZ Packer’s Drinking Coffee Elsewhere—that collection expanded my understanding of what is possible in a short story. Early on, Kurt Vonnegut short stories, which have that mix of humour and morality. Amy Hempel’s “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried,” for its risk-taking and devastating ending.

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

I would like to visit Tokyo.

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?

If I weren’t a writer, I might be a psychologist or graphic designer…or I would invent something fantastic and pitch it on Dragons’ Den.

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

There’s never been anything I loved doing as much as writing. Except eating, but that’s not a job. In undergrad I was a pre-med English major, and there came a point where I had to make a decision—I had taken all the prerequisites and was studying for the MCATs, had already asked my professors for med school recommendation letters, but I just couldn’t do it. I had lost all interest in the sciences and was dreading going to med school, and as soon as I decided to get an MFA instead, I felt free. Best decision I ever made.

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

I just read Danielle Evans’s The Office of Historical Corrections, which I loved. And I can’t think of a great film more recent than Parasite, but I have been enjoying The White Lotus (miniseries).

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a short story collection. Still figuring out the elevator pitch, but it explores themes related to the body: chronic illness, bodily autonomy, mortality, and so on.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Brian Fawcett (May 13, 1944-February 27, 2022)

Sad news out of Toronto, hearing that Brian Fawcett died this past Sunday night after an extended illness. Strange to think I’ve known him some twenty years, as one of our early in-person encounters came through Prince George, British Columbia poet and publisher Barry McKinnon, prompted by a Toronto reading we were doing together to launch our 2004 Talonbooks. There’s a photo I can’t find of our post-reading assemblage, as both Stephen Brockwell and the since-late Priscila Uppal were simultaneously amused and confounded by Fawcett’s smartass remarks, including his numerous comments upon the length of my hair (he heckled similar, during the event). Fawcett spent years taking swipes at my hair, at more than a few readings. Once, at a festival. I suspect he was jealous.

I’d long been aware of Fawcett as a writer, having latched, somewhere in my twenties, to the “Sex at 31” poems that he and McKinnon had originated in Prince George back in the late 1970s, when the two of them decided on an open-ended sequence of self-contained poems to be completed every seven years from their age at the time, thirty-one [see my longer note on such here]. At that point, Fawcett was right in the mix of it all, and published an array of poetry titles throughout the 1970s and into the 80s, before he seemingly abandoned poetry for prose, leaning hard into a career as a journalist and public intellectual. He authored numerous books of non-fiction, writing fearlessly on subjects that others might have hesitated to touch, including Cambodia: A Book for People Who Find Television Too Slow (1986), Gender Wars: A Novel and Some Conversation About Sex and Gender (1993) and Virtual Clearcut, or The Way Things Are In My Hometown (2003). Later on, he co-write a book on one of his mentors, Robin Blaser (with Stan Persky; 2010) [see my review of such here], and a really touching and self-aware memoir on his late parents, Human happiness (2011) [see my review on such here]. He approached the lives of his parents, and elements of his own, as well, with the same rigor he approached anything else he had worked on. He was an intellectual who wore his working-class roots on his sleeve, and wrote prose that was unsentimental, with no patience for nonsense, but approached with his full, open heart. He wrote straight to the point, whether you liked it or not (and you were welcome to disagree). I’d be curious to go back into some of these works, to see how certain may have aged, although I suspect not as much as one might think; each one highly readable, entertaining and moving at a speed of thought that might otherwise seem impossible.

For a period, he seemed very much an outlier, approaching the work of the public intellectual out of a literary upbringing and roughneck northern British Columbia, deeply attentive to community engagement, and the importance of how a story gets told. Having spent years engaging with literary journals and figures including The Capilano Review, Barry McKinnon, George Bowering, Sharon Thesen, George Stanley and Robin Blaser, he expanded his writing through a variety of subject matter that converged where politics, policy and social justice were forced to contend with his skepticism. As part of the same, he co-founded the online Dooney’s Café with Stan Persky in 2001, where he regularly engaged with politics and literature.

There was a period of time, circa 2009-10, that I was spending more time in Toronto, crashing in either Fawcett’s spare room, or out in the coach house behind their house, which allowed for us to get to know each other a bit better. He was amused by my enthusiasms, and proudly showed me their coach house, converted by him into a small office/studio, surrounded by tomato plants. In August 2010, I arrived to housesit for a week or so, with only Brian on-hand to hand over keys. Before he left, we had dinner (from whence my photo of Brian emerges), and I was provided lengthy instructions on how to daily water the dozens of varieties of tomato plants that surrounded their yard, up the fire escape and across the rooftop deck of the coach house: a barrel of yesterday’s water to feed the tomatoes, and another barrel to fill (because the temperature out of the hose would have damaged the plants). It took more than an hour, each time. He’d managed to secure seeds from numerous places, including some he said near impossible to find. He was working, he said, on a book. At one point, he made me a toasted tomato sandwich, slathered with mayonnaise and sprinkled with sea-salt, something I never would have considered (disliking tomatoes and mayonnaise, for example). It was perhaps the finest sandwich I have ever had, and I say with no exaggeration that it was a sandwich I still think of.

I was also told if I touched the good wine while he was gone, he would murder me. Don’t drink good wine, he warned me, because its expensive, and you’ll be ruined for the cheap stuff. He still blamed a particular friend for getting him into good wine.

Brian Fawcett had a sharp mind, and a devastating wit. He didn’t miss much, it would seem. Most of the times I’d hear from him at all (but for some emails from last year, tantalizing me with photos of a poetry manuscript he was supposedly working on that he then refused to discuss) were in response to some bulk email I’d sent out, lambasting whatever author it was, wondering how I could publish such drivel. Don’t they know how to use sentences? After a while, I wondered if that’s why I kept him on those lists, to be able to hear him respond in some offhand, gruff manner. Knowing full well he enjoyed the conflict. The more time we spent together, the more confused he seemed by me, until realizing, he claimed, that I was “ambitious, but not competitive,” which he considered entirely his opposite. He also suggested I should write a “straight” novel, just to show that I could. And, once it was published, announce loudly how easy it was to write, all of which would make it easier to get my more lyric works of fiction published. During the same 2010 visit, he answered a call from a phone scammer, and delighted in putting them in their place. Two years ago, he offered me this piece of advice as well, out of the blue:

Some literary advice: find a writer/poet whose work you dislike intensely, and beat the living crap out of him/her for a specific book/text.

It’ll make people listen more carefully to you.  You have a reputation of being too nice, too unwilling to give offense.

(Plus It would entertaining as hell to watch all those tools you’re carrying do something bad…)

Perhaps he’s right? Perhaps I have been doing this wrong all along. He was always one for a good brawl, it would seem. He posted a bit more than a week ago on Facebook that he was on the way out. He was dying anyway, and had better things to do. We knew it was coming, and had been for some time. I shall miss his humour, his engagement and his fierce intelligence. I shall miss the ways in which he challenged my thinking. I shall miss his endless array of literary gossips and tall tales. I shall miss his kindness.

Atsuro Riley, Heard-Hoard

 

                                                [ bunkhouse ]

 

Most nights the boy they called Tynan
suppered us with scrapple from a can. Or some black-eyes
he’d’ve road-begged; a quarter-peck of crowders
scrounged off vines.

            *

The broad back-skin on the tallest boy
  —a (ripening) welt-weave, a lattice.

            *

Last good gloam-minute after work
we’d strip off there in the side-yard, yawping; taking turns
de-tarring    un-burning
arc-aiming cool hose-spray each on each.

            *

Eleven of us / chigger-scritches, scablets.
Eleven of us / none of us clean.

            *

Where the boss of us bore down
on us    our rank of bedrolls on the floorboards    one
and one and one eleven of us    ranked sack-beds
on floorboards    boots of    black breath of    the boss

            *

Of us bearing down on us—
ain’t none of us (not a one of us) clean.

I was curious about what I was hearing about the second collection by San Francisco poet Atsuro Riley, his Heard-Hoard (Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 2021), a collection that follows his full-length debut, Romey’s Order (University of Chicago Press, 2010). It took a couple of passes to really catch the nuance of Riley’s lyric, but once heard, it sunk in and stuck. And now I can’t not see: there is such a lovely music to these meditations, a slowness, almost akin to a drawl, and perhaps the pure, meditative slowness was what was holding my appreciations back. “A last rock-skip hurlstorm (crazing river-glass),” he writes, to open the poem “SUNDER,” “the closest they ever were.” There’s a silence he manages to articulate, one that runs like a current underneath each line.

There is a lyric calm presented through these poems, even as Riley writes on the storm; a lyric that verges on the hypnotic, or sacred, writing out the unspoken, against all the silence. As he writes, mid-way through, as part of the poem “[ cottage-work]”: “Word says—renting that stripped-wood A-frame yonder is a / new woman nobody knows. How she’ll scald and scour out / quick all your bringings in her bathtub—your miles of pig-guts / (for the chitlin strut, the piney supper) bundled spruce as / laundry.” His passages are descriptive and evocative, painting portraits of space, moments, scenes and narratives that rile fresh perspectives on what might otherwise be familiar. There is something about the way Riley takes a line or a thought and pulls it, stretches it out across the space of the extended lyric that is quite intriguing, akin to what Ottawa poet Monty Reid is known for as well, but with a language and candence and sense of the shadow and, dare I say, heart, that veers into a territory explored by the late CD Wright. As the same poem offers, a bit further on: “Mr. W. being known / for fine-carving these stern pine-paddles // (fresh-hewn for use by fathers). / Known to sear to scar.” There are some long, languid threads here, and the threads are breathtaking.

Lee Suksi, The Nerves

 

SLOO

We have something called closet time, slung in the absolute darkness over piles of fragrant old laundry with bottles of experiments lining the walls, bubbling inside. Let me be clear: it could happen at any time, this welcome darkness. In the high rise this is our mutual wilderness, leaning against crinkles of god knows what, unable to see our own fingers. Sometimes we just breathe. Sometimes they read to me from some novel we aren’t allowed and I get curious in pure darkness, extend my small body wider, wiggle myself into existence. We never touch except the time where they drape themselves over me, make a blanket of their bigger body. Our bones are not aligned and so there’s a weird mapping that goes on, an out of time attunement of our lazy breathing. It’s as if they are a body without ears.

A bottle never breaks. Sloo’s muttering and my tinkling mixes itself in with the ungovernable objects in our closet. We make an atmosphere of fume.

Winner of a Lambda Literary Award is Toronto-based writer and art critic Lee Suksi’s full-length debut, The Nerves (Montreal QC: Metatron, 2020), a book I only heard of recently, through acquiring a handful of Metatron titles as a perk through Amanda Earl’s AngelHousePress fundraiser. The Nerves exists as a book of intimacies, distances and seeking, composed as a sequence of short prose pieces that simultaneously exist as a collection of prose poems and an accumulative novel-in-lyric-sections. The novel-as-accumulation is a form I’ve long found fascinating, and something done by many over the years, from Beat poet Richard Brautigan to Haitian-Canadian novelist Dany Laferrière, or even, as I’ve argued before, American writer Sarah Manguso’s short story debut, the accumulated Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape (San Francisco CA: McSweeney’s Books, 2007). Suksi is attentive to moments, articulating movement and a wonderful attentiveness; theirs is a descriptive that shimmers, sparkles across what might otherwise seem ordinary, between moments of action. As Suksi writes as part of “AYA,” early on in the collection: “Aya is like this: the braces reflecting on their teeth make them look sharp. They have an enthusiastic laugh. I practice my own doggy nature by leaping around on the couch and drooling. I bring my shoulder blades as close to my butt as possible when I get up on all fours. We drank pop to get this hyper. We make gymnast shapes. I want to lick their teeth.” Through Suksi, the prose delights, and provides a wonderful balance between small gestures and longer arc. I hope we might see more of their work.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Holly Lyn Walrath

Holly Lyn Walrath is a writer, editor, and publisher. Her poetry and short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Fireside Fiction, Analog, and Flash Fiction Online. She is the author of several books of poetry including Glimmerglass Girl (2018), Numinose Lapidi (2020), and The Smallest of Bones (2021). She holds a B.A. in English from The University of Texas and a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Denver. In 2019, she launched Interstellar Flight Press, an indie SFF publisher dedicated to publishing underrepresented genres and voices. As a freelance editor, she provides editing services for writers and organizations of all genres, experiences, and backgrounds, but enjoys working with new writers best.

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 think as poets and writers we get caught up on the important “milestones” of writing and often inject a lot of meaning in them. I remember exactly the feeling when my first poem was accepted and where I was—the memory is so strong of that “finally” feeling. My first chapbook, Glimmerglass Girl, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2018. My first steps into making a book felt very tentative. With my new debut book of poetry, The Smallest of Bones (CLASH Books, September 28, 2021), I felt a lot more sure of my voice and what I wanted to say. The books have a lot of overlap in terms of feminism and discussion about women’s bodies, but they are different in approach.

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

I’ve always loved writing poetry ever since I was an angsty emo teen in the 90s and early 2000s. I find poetry as a way to express my emotions about life. I think women are often taught to compress our feelings and poetry was a way to put into words my inner world. Poetry has that power, whereas fiction is often about taking the reader on a journey. I love both, but they are different modes.

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?

Writing a poem is about tapping into an inner well in yourself. I generally fall into the imaginative space in my mind and let it go wild when I first start writing a draft. That is my absolute favorite part of writing. It’s the thing that makes non-writers look at you and go, “How do you just come up with ideas?” Ideas are everywhere, floating in the either, if I can give myself space to find them.

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

Each project is its own special weirdo for me. Some projects come to me write away. For example, I recently started writing a series of poems about growing up as a kid in the 90s and 00s and being queer and confused about literally everything. I can see the arc of that book in my mind. But my other projects, like my large scale blackout poems, have been going on for years.

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

Oh I hate doing readings, ha. I feel like I’ve gotten better at performing over the years but I am very much a “page poet.” It helps to practice!

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?

Someone once said they saw my poetry as always picking something apart or examining something that needs deconstructing and I think that’s a valid reading. I’m always wondering how we can change the current state of mind. Many of the topics always in my mind are feminism and queerness, the horror of being a woman, how writing can be a conversation with the past and the future.

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?

In some ways, I think public-facing writers have a huge responsibility and if your platform is large enough, you can really enact change in people’s hearts and minds. Reading is a great creator of empathy. But I also love the idea of writing being a personal process. Even if it just changes you from the inside out, I think there’s still a lot of power there. I come back a lot to Ursula K. Le Guin’s Bryn Mawr College speech from 1986, in which she says, “People can't contradict each other, only words can: words separated from experience for use as weapons, words that make the wound, the split between subject and object, exposing and exploiting the object but disguising and defending the subject.” We can only write from our own personal experience, but that experience can transcend space and time, a great dark gulf, to get to the reader.

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

I’m a freelance editor and a writer so this is always tricky for me! I love working with others to receive feedback on my work. It’s a great gift. But I have a hard time turning that editor brain off.

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

I’ve come back to this saying by Chuck Wendig a lot, “You do you.” I think in terms of writing and life, you have to love what you do. Otherwise, what’s the point? And the best way to love what you do is to be yourself completely.

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

I write a lot of poetry and also a lot of fiction, and I find that they often inform one another. When I write a story, I can often reread it and think, “This needs more lyricism!” And sometimes I revise my poems and find myself inserting more narrative. It’s also a fun exercise in keeping your writing mind agile. I enjoy the challenge.

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

I used to write more regularly but these days I take what I can get. I generally write early in the morning to avoid distractions, and I spend about five to ten minutes reading and listening to music beforehand, usually in the genre I’m planning on writing in. I write for as long as I have time for, and usually have to stop because life intervenes.

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

A lot of time when I feel stuck, I find it helps to “meditate” on my project. I spend time thinking about it right before bed and even imagining myself in my character’s shoes. This helps me get beyond a sticky scene where I can’t figure out what comes next. I find myself way less stuck in poetry, because I can write a poem in one sitting. Fiction is more about telling yourself the story.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

I’m from the south in Texas so I find a lot of smells evocative of home that might seem strange to folks from other states. The smell of barbecue on the fire, fireworks in the summertime, sunscreen and “marshmallow salad” (a green concoction my Mom used to make that involves pistachio pudding, fruit, and marshmallows.)

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’m very influenced by a lot of non-book subjects. One example is ambient music—which I find puts me in the zone to write. My new book The Smallest of Bones is very much influenced by anatomy textbooks and the science of the body.

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

As far as authors go, I greatly admire Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kelly Link, and Edward Hirsch. My influences and tastes are constantly changing. Other good reads include Brandon Sanderson, Nnedi Okorafor, Ursula Le Guin, Walt Whitman, Sherman Alexie, Sofia Samatar, Amelia Grey, Stephen King, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, , Sabrina Orah Mark, J.R.R. Tolkien, Virginia Woolf, Audre Lorde, and Rita Dove.

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

A million and one dreams. If it’s writing related, I probably have dreamed about doing it. There’s not anything specific I can pick out, but I mostly just want to sustain my writing life as long as I can.

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 always been fascinated by scientific jobs like oceanography or studying animals! I feel like if someone had given me the opportunity to study more in the STEM fields as a child, I might have gone that route because I’m always fascinated by how things work.

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

When I got out of college, a lot of people told me that I needed to “live more life” to write. So while I desperately wanted to write most of the years I wasn’t, I never gave myself that freedom. It wasn’t until I discovered the idea of writing in speculative genres that I realized it was worth pursuing writing as a serious occupation. I think I would have always ended up a writer. 

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

I recently read Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo and it made me incandescently angry how good it was. The last great film I saw was The Green Knight. I’m such a giant English major nerd that I’m still geeking out over it.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m trying to finish up a young adult fantasy novella this year. I’m also working on a series of 90s-themed poems about queer pop culture like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Princess Di, and Rocky Horror. And I’m working on more visual art / poetry crossover projects like my series of blackout poems, Man Erased.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

CAConrad, Amanda Paradise: Resurrect Extinct Vibrations

My review of CAConrad's Amanda Paradise: Resurrect Extinct Vibrations (Wave Books, 2021), recently appeared online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics.

R. Kolewe, The Absence of Zero

My review of Toronto poet R. Kolewe's third full-length poetry title, The Absence of Zero (Toronto ON: Book*hug Press, 2021), recently appeared online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Charlie Petch

Charlie Petch (they/them, he/him) is a disabled/queer/transmasculine multidisciplinary artist who resides in Tkaronto/Toronto. A poet, playwright, librettist, musician, lighting designer, and host, Petch was the 2017 Poet of Honour for SpeakNorth national festival, winner of the Golden Beret lifetime achievement in spoken word with The League of Canadian Poets (2020), and founder of Hot Damn it's a Queer Slam. Petch is a touring performer, as well as a mentor and workshop facilitator. In 2021, they launched Daughter of Geppetto, a multimedia/dance/music/performance poetry piece with Wind in the Leaves (TBA), their first full length poetry collection Why I Was Late in Sept with Brick Books, and their libretto Medusa's Children with Opera QTO. 

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 one that was a collection of my photographs I’d taken of my band “The Silverhearts” from 2007 to 2009. It came out when we were on a western tour. After the trip, they left a voicemail saying they didn’t need a saw player if there’s already a Theremin player. Personally I thought we needed less guitar players. They disagreed so I have a lot of those books left. Now I’m a one person show, replaced the band with a loop pedal and now everyone listens to my great ideas. I’m happy my next full book is one I don’t semi quietly resent. Rather, it’s a celebration and a mild anxiety, because, wow, some people are going to read it, and it’s personal, you know?

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

I actually started writing mystery stories as an 8 year old. My lateral lisp (which I’ve since done years of speech therapy to correct) meant that my friends were all books, or imaginary. I got that fab new pen that had 4 different pen colours in it, and used a different colour for each character. Later I realized, I just loved dialogue and I went to playwriting. I started writing poetry when I was a teenager, and my first book was created in my early 20’s as a companion piece to an anti-valentine’s night I hosted as my alter ego – Tits McGee, it was called You Make Me Sick – The love poems of Tits McGee. I wrote three more chapbooks as her (that were each tied to hosting events), until I started really write in my own voice. When I found the poetry slam, my playwright heart just leapt. The monologue series of my dreams.

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

My writing has always come quickly, I have that ADD brain so it’s just full of words rearranging itself and getting everywhere. I’ve really committed to having deep and careful process, since my mind loves to rush to the finish line. Ever since I did the Spoken Word & Music stint at Banff, I’ve tried to re-create the music hut, and the pin board freedom. So now my books and plays become a kind of wall sculpture of notes hung on twine attached to wire, and little objects the bring life to the whole thing. Some things will take me a day, some will take me 5 years to get right. It really depends on the subject and if there’s growth in the characters that happen because of them, or internally in myself.

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?

Sometimes there’s a tangible spark of an idea, a line that wants more words that I keep in a notebook, or some mornings I’ll just open up a book and point to a page and see if that’s a good prompt for the day. My spoken word theatre shows are something I really put together heavily with a concept and keep in that atmosphere to create, with no real thought of the ending until it shows itself. I think the project really shows itself to me and tells me the medium it would be happiest in and I listen, plan, adjust, or just write for 10 mins to keep up practice and see if I can get a sweet poem that can sit a bit before editing. For this book, I really just put together all my writing since 2014 and my editors found the book inside the manuscript. My next manuscript will have a tight theme and it’s currently a kind of installation project on my wall.

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

Honestly if you see me not on a stage, I’m quietly waiting to be onstage. I adore performing and being on tour, there is no more content me than when I am in front of an audience. I also love to teach others the craft of public readings, whether they are reading off page or performing memorized work. The more tools you can feel in control of , the better the show. I want everyone to excel and feel confident, I love a good poetry reading.

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 am always trying to be aware of language, of my own internalized racism, ableism, misogyny etc., when writing, because I often skirt the line to get points across.  I also place myself as a white settler in my work, and consider my audience is not all also this background. I strive to deeply recognize my own position and privilege as a white trans and non-binary person with an invisible disability. I aim to speak to issues of colonization, not only because it hid our genders, but also what it’s done to us all as a society trying to co-exist in a world on fire. I try to not speak over top of anyone, or consider myself someone who speaks on behalf of my immediate community, or any community that is not mine. I strive to find the right words to also platform other’s ideals forward in gestures of solidarity, with credit paid.

Current questions for me are always – What am I cultivating with my work? How do I make it more accessible? How do I make the audience care about something they may not relate to?

I find satire and humour to be such an excellent tool for accessibility, and message parachuting. I try to almost convert audiences into caring about things they likely would never want to address or think about; to do this in a way that feels both embracing and respectful to others who share these obstacles. Just writing about disability is such a trip. How do you get someone to understand something they never have to personally care about something they can’t see or experience. How do you make them believe that ableism affects us all? It’s a constant riddle I try to solve. I once performed a poem about gender at an event in Michigan in 2016 when Tr*mp was running. I was so scared to do it but I know at least one person in the audience decided to change their vote after hearing it. These are the poems I want to put out into the world.  

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?

The best poets are the ones who tell the truth, no matter the cost. The ones who are future thinkers and speakers of our difficult histories. I know Socrates was a creepy dude but I remember reading Plato’s Republic and thinking, heck yeah poets should be in positions of power. We all need the truth so bad in order to save the planet, to confront who we are, what we’ve done, and how to work in solidarity with everyone. I really believe our leaders should be spoken word artists, should be 2 Spirit people, how can we even meet climate needs without that level of land experience? We need decolonization, and I see poets in particular, speaking up about all of this. Leadership needs vision, creativity and most of all, the truth. We are living in radical times and poets and indigenous people are on the front lines of these conversations.

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

Honestly, I loved it. I was gifted so well by Brick Books to have two editors, Nick Thran and Andrea Thompson. Andrea, as we should all know, is one of the originals in spoken word poetry in Toronto and is just wonderful to work with. Nick is an incredible page poet, so he excelled in the  edits for the page, and Andrea ensured the sound, pace and presence of the spoken word voice was preserved, as well as did page edits. I was super spoiled and they really reassured me that I had the final decisions around how my work was presented. The final round of copy edits with Alayna Munce really cemented how I want my style to be represented on the page going forward. I’m super excited to know my style thanks to the lenses of such experts as these three.

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

My high school drama teacher ordered us to never argue with critique or say anything in our defence. He told us to simply listen to feedback, the person critiquing you is like a professional audience member. You know your work best, so take what you need from them, leave the rest, never argue, and always thank them. It absolutely translates to any moment of critique.

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

I am a lover of atmosphere, so being able to add atmosphere to any work, whether that is in collaboration, or in my own multimedia creation, I just adore being able to present the work in the way I want the audience to experience it. When I worked primarily in theatre, I learned how to do everything so that I could know what to expect and how to achieve it. I find it very easy and natural to move from one genre to the next. Again, thanking my ADD brain for this, because how amazing is it to launch a book, a workshop play, a filmed libretto, a multimedia show and a book all in one year?  I didn’t mean to have it all be at once but the past 1.5 years have moved a lot of performances around. Being multidisciplinary means I never have to be tied to one genre. It feels natural to never fit into a box for very long, to always be shifting. As someone who has learned by doing, it also means I’ve not had academia narrow my scope, or expectation of what poetry, music or theatre should be.

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 get up, drink Vega Mix, do a little run (ok it’s more like powerwalking), then put on the kettle and do stretches, physio and weight lifting while listening to ambient music, the gay composer Chopin’s nocturnes, or slow pop ballads. If the dog is with me (I share a sweet hound/lab with a dear friend), we have us a wrestle, then I sit down at the computer and attempt to write something before the day takes my access away from the creative brain.

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

I just let myself stall for a bit. Sometimes I need a break. Then it will all build up and the panic will start because I am so fed by being in a state of creation, and I put a daily prompt back into my practice to keep flexing my poetry brain muscle. I also have a private group I do first drafts with. I always need a bit of an audience, and sometimes I need a deadline. I’m very motivated to please a deadline and/or an audience.  

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Vicks VapoRub, doggy paws, old books, wet ravines, sawdust, and horseshit. Really we moved so much that I don’t remember a specific home, only a series of places that we lived in while renovating, but these scents will land me back in time. My dog’s paws are the greatest access I have to childhood memories.  

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?

Oh yes, some things I see before I write them. Sometimes I play music for inspiration, sometimes I have the song before the words, and sometimes the story shows itself to me in nature. I’m open to all influences, I have a very vessel approach to existing as an artist in this world. I love imagining what insects care about, what a rock might think about getting sat on, as a lonely bullied kid, I had to make friends out of everything around me and script them into my life, so I know the gift of remaining open and hopeful.

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

I will always thank Kurt Vonnegut for Breakfast of Champions. When I found it at 13, I truly knew, you don’t have to pay attention to traditional form, linear timelines, or cater to an audiences expectation of what novels or anything should be. I loved that he always looked to the science students to find the writers, and avoided the English students. Later, I got his asshole (drawing from the book) tattooed on my armpit by the drummer from my punk/noise band. He really woke up the artist in me.

James Baldwinopened me up to queer writing, to deep atmosphere and prose novels, as well as some of the best critical race discourse that still serves today. I still love a good Tennessee Williams play with all that sweltering Louisiana flair and queer camp palate. Dorothy Parker is also an influence, her sharp wit and notions that kind of come around the corner and slap you in the face, and gosh I love her handprint on me.

My current obsession is A Black Lady Sketch Show, created by Robin Thede. It really has no boundaries and is always so creative, unexpected and totally genius. Truly, I sit in awe of the level of comedy, and thought that’s in every episode. It’s a show that should be studied, like an entire university course should be dedicated to it. It’s just beyond.

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

Having worked in film for 8 years doing lighting for everyone else’s scripts, I’d love to do my own or jump into a series and join a writer’s room.

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 worked in health care since I was 13, I started with volunteering at Bloorview Children’s surgical rehab centre, working with Occupational Therapists. If I had been a good student, I would have loved to had gotten into that field. Being the child of a nurse, who would hang out in emergency rooms after school, I’ve always loved being in that atmosphere and have worked in hospitals, family health teams, retirement residence, bed allocations and as a 911 operator for ambulance. I sometimes return when I need to make a stable income for a while. But the customer service end of it, the being trans at work end, yeah, I’d rather one on one occupational therapy.

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

I don’t think I do write as opposed to doing something else. More, I feel like I am always holding a series of spinning plates of freelance, and other disciplines. The only thing I don’t feel I can do is relax, and math.

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

I am still not over how much I enjoyed Gutter Child by Jael Richardson, just everything I could hope for in such an suspenseful and accessibly written book. The last great film I watched, Disclosure, it’s so important to me that everyone watch this documentary on trans people in culture. So many revelations, including finding out an actress I worked with for year (and truly had hysterical laughter with) is a trans woman. I can’t imagine her coming onto set every day with that fear, and all us burly guys, and endure some of the things they’d freely say around set. Also big on Crip Camp (disability pride and revolutionary history) and The Octopus Teacher just was everything my little kid heart needed to see. Oh geez I’m crying at the computer thinking about it rob.. ack. I guess I’m all about documentaries these days.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Currently I’m working on my Winnebago a Go Go Book tour schedule out west (though that’s super hopeful given the news each day) with the wonderful washboard player Danielle Workman (watch out for our band “Washboard Abs” haha). I’m also working on my next manuscript “Poetic Monologues”, and developing my next play “No one’s special at the hot dog cart” – which is basically – everything I needed to know about working in emergency health care, I learned as a teenage hot dog vendor in downtown Toronto”. Part spoken word play, part de-escalation technique workshop that will be developed with Theatre Passe Muraille’s “The Buzz” workshop series in the new year. I’m also preparing to revamp my multimedia/dance collaborative play Daughter of Geppetto with Citadel Theatre and the Wind in the Leaves collective in the winter. Oh yes, and preparing for Top Surgery after a long and very pandemic related delay of around 3 years since I started the process.

In short, I’m working on keeping the plates all spinning still.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;