Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 14

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jerm Curtin

Jerm Curtin grew up in ruralIreland and has lived in Spain for many years. His chapbook, Cacti & otherpoems , was published in December 2024 by Southward Editions at the MunsterLiterature Centre. He won the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2021. He began writingas an adolescent and is now in his early sixties.

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

I have been writing since my teens, changing, developing, andhopefully getting better all the time. My writing life has been 'off-grid', asit were: I have published very little, and I have no literary friends. As ayoung writer, after a brief contact with the poetry world in my native city ofCork, I felt, unconsciously at first, that I was better suited to the fringesof literary life. And of life in general. I have lived and worked all my adultlife in provincial Spanish cities, writing all the time and hoping my isolationwould give my work an individual perspective until I felt I had reached a stagewhen my poetry could go out into the wider world.

As a result, the poems in my chapbook are a selection from themany poems I have written over the years. They were chosen in an attempt tomark out an area I could call my own, to lay the foundations for future books.The poems are meant to be solid structures, the lines often heavily worked on.

Now that it has been published, I feel free to move up into theair, to use lighter materials, to have openings that would allow for more spaceand let oxygen in.

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

Two reasons.

My area of rural Ireland still cherished, as I was growing up, therags and tatters of an ancient poetic tradition. My mother recited poems onimpulse as she went about the house. Her favourites have stayed with me.

On the other hand, Ireland in the 1970s was still a closedpatriarchal society dominated by rigid Catholicism, and poetry dovetailedeasily with an impulse towards inner freedom and became its expression.

For fiction I would have to have lived in a different type ofsociety or at least seen my relation to that society in a different light.

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 firstdrafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out ofcopious notes?

I write a lot, but none of my first drafts is anywhere nearfinished. I need to find connections with other texts I have written, perhapsyears before, and work on them over an extended period before I feel a poem hasenough shape to deserve that name, and longer still before it has autonomy orindependence.

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

Poems begin with attention, to an experience in life, to an echo Ihear in a word or phrase. It continues through a process of enquiry thatincludes the origin, development or consequences of that experience, and themore ground that process covers, the more intensely I work on a project.Fortunately, I don't have to meet deadlines.

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

When I hear poets read, the voice adds another dimension. The poemceases to be just a text and comes alive.

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

Given Ireland's uneasy relationship as a colonised country withits neighbours in western Europe, and my own origins in an underdeveloped ruralarea, I am conscious of my condition of outlier to the central trunk of thepoetic tradition in English.

Equally, I am aware that the echoes of my own experience and thehistory of my area in the impoverished and neglected parts of Spain,particularly Galicia in the north-west, and elsewhere in the world, place anonus on me to give expression to those who have in a sense been sidelined byhistory.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in largerculture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer shouldbe?

I have just finished an extraordinary book Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean and the Climate Crisis. The author, Tao Leigh Goffe,concludes that 'we desperately need more poets influencing policymakers. Withpoets at the international table to develop climate policy, what new horizonsare possible? They invent and distill the language needed for an optimisticfuture.' It would be nice to think that she is correct.

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

The final shape of my chapbook owes a lot to the poet Patrick Cotter, my editor at the Munster Literature Centre. He stressed that the bookshould act as a calling card, as an introduction to future work, and togetherwe sifted my poems with this in mind. He was easy to work with, patient, kindand understanding.

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

I read a lot of Rilke as a young writer, and practical lessonstaken from his work have been essential to my own writing, especially theadvice he received from Rodin, that artistic activity was work to be carriedout like any other work, on a daily basis.

Or that beautiful text where he suggests that one should wait, andgather meaning a whole life long, and if possible at the very end, one might beable to write a few good lines.

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

My creative writing happens at night, in silence andsemi-darkness, when the secretive workings of the unconscious mind dominate theprocess of putting pen to paper. Always pen on paper, with pages that are oftenunreadable, frequently very bad, and always in need of revision.

In the morning, the computer and the keyboard take over. Ianalyse, alter, cut and delete, and occasionally find something worth pursuing.

I think of my night work as a trip to a quarry, from which Ireturn with a block of uncut stone. By day in my workshop, I follow the veinsand fissures of the stone and try to find the shape that is hidden inside,waiting for the tap of the chisel to make its revelations.

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

The act of giving attention, of focussing on experience alwaysleads to some inspiration. If I am physically or mentally tired, or unwell, Iaccept that I will be unable to work, and engage in some other activity,cooking, walking, listening to music, that makes me feel better.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The damp that rises from the boggy soil of Atlantic Ireland, andthe heady aromas of wild flowers, like cow parsley or honeysuckle, or thesweetness of burning gorse.

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

I feel that poetry has most in common with photography, in whichan opportune moment gracefully shoulders a wealth of experience. I findinspiration in many great photographers, from André Kertész to Willy Ronis,Saul Leiter or Rinko Kawauchi.

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

When I was a teenager, the best poetry in English came from NewYork and Northern Ireland, and Heaney and Ashbery were and remain hugelyimportant for me.

Milosz and Tranströmer, Lorca and Machado. Aurelio Arturo, theColumbian poet. The Galician poet Uxio Novoneyra, available in English translation by Erin Moure. Diane Seuss and Daisy Fried, Kathleen Jamie, Alice Oswald and Pascale Petit, Alison Brackenbury and Gillian Allnutt, Eilean Ni Chuilleanáin and Martina Evans, John Burnside and Mark Doty.

I also see my own development as a consequence of the discovery ofa short book by V. S. Naipaul, who I had never heard of when I picked it up bychance. He is justly criticised today, but Finding the Centre was a revelationfor me. This account of how he came to write his first book, Miguel Street,which I immediately got hold of, consciously focused on the process of leavinga non-literary background and turning that background into writing material. Isaw the characters he created from the streets of Trinidad in people I knew inrural Ireland. He was also the first writer who got me thinking about thecontinuing role of the British Empire and colonial experience in the place Igrew up, despite independence. I think he also helped me find my own way in aliterary tradition I loved, but found at times overwhelming, the tradition ofJoyce and Frank O'Connor, Yeats, Kavanagh and Heaney.

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

I want to write more about being a young adult in Spain in thelate eighties and nineties as the fervour of the transition to democracyvanished and the tentacles of the old regime made their presence felt againthrough the first right-wing government, an early taste of the fascistinheritance experienced more widely today. 

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what wouldit be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had younot been a writer?

I am not a writer. I couldn't have made a living from poetry, andnever really thought I could, but writing is a safety net that has prevented mefrom ending up as something much worse than I am.

I teach English as a foreign language, but I sometimes fantasizethat I wouldn't have made a bad tradesman, a carpenter or a stonecutter.

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

I drifted naturally towards writing as a teenager. I was bookish,and poetry was 'in the air' in the place I grew up.

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

My enthusiasm is often for books I have been reading mostrecently. These include the afore-mentioned Dark Laboratory, essential readingalongside Michael C. Mann's 1493 and Amitav Ghosh's The Nutmeg's Curse toexplain how we have ended up where we are today.

I have learnt a lot from Eula Biss's Having and Being Had, a lookat the economics of writing, and from Christiana Spens' The Fear, aphilosophical study of anxiety.

In Spanish, I have loved Martin Prieto's Un poema pegado en laheladera, portraits and analysis of Argentinian poets to add to the morefamiliar work of Borges, Pizarnik and Olga Orozco.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I am working towards a full collection.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

 

Spotlight series #110 : Margo LaPierre

The one hundred and tenth in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring Ottawa-based freelance editor and writer Margo LaPierre .

The first eleven in the series were attached to the Drunken Boat blog, and the series has so far featured poets including Seattle, Washington poet Sarah Mangold, Colborne, Ontario poet Gil McElroy, Vancouver poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Ottawa poet Jason Christie, Montreal poet and performer Kaie Kellough, Ottawa poet Amanda Earl, American poet Elizabeth Robinson, American poet Jennifer Kronovet, Ottawa poet Michael Dennis, Vancouver poet Sonnet L’Abbé, Montreal writer Sarah Burgoyne, Fredericton poet Joe Blades, American poet Genève Chao, Northampton MA poet Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer from Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1 territory) poet, critic and editor Joshua Whitehead, American expat/Barcelona poet, editor and publisher Edward Smallfield, Kentucky poet Amelia Martens, Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie, Burlington, Ontario poet Sacha Archer, Washington DC poet Buck Downs, Toronto poet Shannon Bramer, Vancouver poet and editor Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Vancouver poet Geoffrey Nilson, Oakland, California poets and editors Rusty Morrison and Jamie Townsend, Ottawa poet and editor Manahil Bandukwala, Toronto poet and editor Dani Spinosa, Kingston writer and editor Trish Salah, Calgary poet, editor and publisher Kyle Flemmer, Vancouver poet Adrienne Gruber, California poet and editor Susanne Dyckman, Brooklyn poet-filmmaker Stephanie Gray, Vernon, BC poet Kerry Gilbert, South Carolina poet and translator Lindsay Turner, Vancouver poet and editor Adèle Barclay, Thorold, Ontario poet Franco Cortese, Ottawa poet Conyer Clayton, Lawrence, Kansas poet Megan Kaminski, Ottawa poet and fiction writer Frances Boyle, Ithica, NY poet, editor and publisher Marty Cain, New York City poet Amanda Deutch, Iranian-born and Toronto-based writer/translator Khashayar Mohammadi, Mendocino County writer, librarian, and a visual artist Melissa Eleftherion, Ottawa poet and editor Sarah MacDonell, Montreal poet Simina Banu, Canadian-born UK-based artist, writer, and practice-led researcher J. R. Carpenter, Toronto poet MLA Chernoff, Boise, Idaho poet and critic Martin Corless-Smith, Canadian poet and fiction writer Erin Emily Ann Vance, Toronto poet, editor and publisher Kate Siklosi, Fredericton poet Matthew Gwathmey, Canadian poet Peter Jaeger, Birmingham, Alabama poet and editor Alina Stefanescu, Waterloo, Ontario poet Chris Banks, Chicago poet and editor Carrie Olivia Adams, Vancouver poet and editor Danielle Lafrance, Toronto-based poet and literary critic Dale Martin Smith, American poet, scholar and book-maker Genevieve Kaplan, Toronto-based poet, editor and critic ryan fitzpatrick, American poet and editor Carleen Tibbetts, British Columbia poet nathan dueck, Tiohtiá:ke-based sick slick, poet/critic em/ilie kneifel, writer, translator and lecturer Mark Tardi, New Mexico poet Kōan Anne Brink, Winnipeg poet, editor and critic Melanie Dennis Unrau, Vancouver poet, editor and critic Stephen Collis, poet and social justice coach Aja Couchois Duncan, Colorado poet Sara Renee Marshall, Toronto writer Bahar Orang, Ottawa writer Matthew Firth, Victoria poet Saba Pakdel, Winnipeg poet Julian Day, Ottawa poet, writer and performer nina jane drystek, Comox BC poet Jamie Sharpe, Canadian visual artist and poet Laura Kerr, Quebec City-area poet and translator Simon Brown, Ottawa poet Jennifer Baker, Rwandese Canadian Brooklyn-based writer Victoria Mbabazi, Nova Scotia-based poet and facilitator Nanci Lee, Irish-American poet Nathanael O'Reilly, Canadian poet Tom Prime, Regina-based poet and translator Jérôme Melançon, New York-based poet Emmalea Russo, Toronto-based poet, editor and critic Eric Schmaltz, San Francisco poet Maw Shein Win, Toronto-based writer, playwright and editor Daniel Sarah Karasik, Ottawa poet and editor Dessa Bayrock, Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia poet Alice Burdick, poet, writer and editor Jade Wallace, San Francisco-based poet Jennifer Hasegawa, California poet Kyla Houbolt, Toronto poet and editor Emma Rhodes, Canadian-in-Iowa writer Jon Cone, Edmonton/Sicily-based poet, educator, translator, researcher, editor and publisher Adriana Oniță, California-based poet, scholar and teacher Monica Mody, Ottawa poet and editor AJ Dolman, Sudbury poet, critic and fiction writer Kim Fahner, Canadian poet Kemeny Babineau, Indiana poet Nate Logan, Toronto poet and editor Michael Boughn, North Georgia poet and editor Gale Marie Thompson, award-winning poet Ellen Chang-Richardson, Montreal-based poet, professor and scholar of feminist poetics, Jessi MacEachern, Toronto poet and physician Dr. Conor Mc Donnell, San Francisco poet Micah Ballard, Montreal poet Misha Solomon, Ottawa writer and editor Mahaila Smith and American poet and asemic artist Terri Witek.
 
The whole series can be found online here .

new from above/ground press: Witek, Kolewe, Christie, Ballard, Reid, Jenks, Tierney, Houglum + Quartermain,

Terri Witek, DOWN WATER STREET $6 ; R. Kolewe, Tierra del Fuego (excerpts from a fiction) $5 ; Jason Christie, PSA $6 ; Micah Ballard, A N G E L D U S T $6 ; Monty Reid, cuba A book: twentieth anniversary edition $6 ; Tom Jenks, Chimneys $5 ; Orchid Tierney, pedagogies for the planthroposcene $5 ; Brook Houglum, INVENTORY $5 ; Meredith Quartermain, Things Musing $5

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April-May 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy of each

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) 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). See the prior list of recent titles here, scroll down here to see a further list of various backlist titles, or click on any of the extensive list of names on the sidebar (many, many things are still in print).

keep an eye on the above/ground press blog for author interviews, new writing, reviews, upcoming readings and tons of other material; and you know that 2025 subscriptions (our thirty-second year!) are still available, yes? i can totally backdate; AND THE ABOVE/GROUND PRESS POSTAL INCREASE SALE CONTINUES UNTIL JULY 9, 2025! oh, and you know above/ground press has a substack now? sign up (for free!) for announcements, and even new features! AND SAVE THE DATE: the above/ground press 32nd anniversary reading/launch/party will be at RedBird Live in Old Ottawa South on Thursday, August 7th! tickets available soon.

With forthcoming chapbooks by: Michael Sikkema, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Lina Ramona Vitkauskas, Charlotte Jung and Johannes S.H. Bjerg, J-T Kelly, Beatriz Hausner, Mandy Sandhu, Jon Cone, Yaxkin Melchy (trans. by Ryan Greene, Mrityunjay Mohan, Laynie Browne, Nada Gordon, Andrew Brenza, Noah Berlatsky, David Phillips, and probably others! (yes: others,

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Kyo Lee

Kyo Lee is a Korean Canadian student and the author of the poetry collection i cut my tongue on a broken country (Arsenal Pulp Press). She is the youngest winner of the CBC Poetry Prize and the youngest finalist for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award. Her literature also appears in Narrative, Nimrod, Prism, The Forge, and This Magazine, among others. She loves colourful skies, summer peaches, and oceans. You can visit her online at kyolee.me.

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’m no longer embarrassed or (shy) to say to call myself a writer. It also gave me a “You can do it” sort of mentality. I think my most recent work is less artsy. Maybe more honest.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or nonfiction?
It just sort of happened. I find poetry easier because I don’t really worry about the direction of the poem; I look up and it’s done.

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 cut my tongue on a broken country technically took around six months to write, but I’d been writing a poetry collection, just not this one, for closer to three years. For me, the hard part seems to be getting started so I intentionally don’t plan the project indepthly so as not to overwhelm myself. Once I start, though, I get a bunch of new ideas so the whole thing changes pretty dramatically and I somewhat re-start.

I usually write my first draft for a poem in one sitting, and then I’ll take another sitting to rewrite the poem. After that, it is basically in its final form. I am not much of a meticulous editor; I’ve tried becoming one but it turns out my original instincts are usually better.

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 started working on a book from the very beginning when I started writing in grade 8. At least for now, I think I need something collective to work toward. Usually a poem starts for me as an individual line or image or multiple individual lines/images combined together.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I enjoy doing readings. I pay a lot of attention to the taste of a poem so I constantly read a poem out loud while working on it. Public readings used to make me slightly uncomfortable because I was always operating under the assumption that no one wanted to hear my reading, and they were just waiting for me to finish. I am in the process of getting over that, or maybe I give less shits now, so I’ve definitely been enjoying readings more.

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?
Why?

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?
Like many writers, I worry that writing is not the best use of my resources and time in the goal of leaving the world a better place than I found it. But I also feel like it’s the best I can do. This is what I’m supposed to do & I’m giving it my best shot. I don’t believe there is a particular role that a writer should fulfill—maybe writers just exist as a testament to our ability to imagine and listen.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Both! Not difficult in a negative sense, just difficult because they help you become honest with yourself and your work, which may be unpleasant but is also a critical part of writing. i cut my tongue on a broken country wouldn’t be the book it is right now if it hadn’t been for my editor Natalie Wee.

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

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I have no writing routine, which might be because I’m a full time student. When I was writing the book as a sophomore in high school, I tried to write a poem a day. But I don’t have a particular routine for now because that seems to add unnecessary stress to what should be joyful.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Life. But recently, Crush by Richard Siken.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Swiffer Sweeper wet mopping pads

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?
Ren Hang’s collection of photos of people in lotus ponds influenced this collection, as did several paintings from different impressionist painters. A couple poems in the collection were inspired by physics and chemistry lessons. But I am most often inspired by nature. I like beginning a poem inside a place.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Night Sky with Exit Wounds probably changed my life. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton is what got me into writing a book. I think about A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara at least once a week.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Write a novel. Sky dive. Feel so comfortable in my body.

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?
I kind of want to live in a cottage and pick fruits to sustain myself. But I have a strange feeling that if I hadn’t become a writer I would have tried to end up in a corporate office in a Big City.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
When I started writing, I almost immediately started getting external validation for it. Of course, that is no longer the only reason that I write, but I don’t know if I would have continued writing if people didn’t tell me I was good at it.  

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Last great book: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Last great film: Jojo Rabbit directed by Taika Waititi

19 - What are you currently working on?
A potential fiction book. School. Trying not to lose myself.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ongoing notes: early June, 2025: Elizabeth Marie Young + Hannah Brooks-Motl,

We will see you at the ottawa small press book fair this month, yes? June 21, at the Tom Brown Arena ; and the pre-fair the night prior, at Anina’s Café? You knowyou want to. The best of the small press in Ottawa since 1994. And don’t forget to sign up (free!) for the above/ground press substack! There’s even some further big interviewscoming up on there over the next few weeks with authors such as Jason Christie,Michael Sikkema, Monty Reid, Micah Ballard and Lydia Unsworth; that’s prettycool, yes?

Boston MA: The latest from Boston-based poet Elizabeth Marie Young, a poet I hadn’t heard of prior to this, is the chapbook-length poem 349 THINGS I DON’T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT RIGHT NOW (2024), the sixth chapbook by Americanchapbook publisher clones go home. This poem is exactly what the titlesuggests, an accumulation set as stanzas, one after another, offering apropulsion of item after item that reads as delightfully surreal. As shewrites: “The Plastic Ono Band. Whether a wolf with / polypropylene teeth willdrag my dad into the River of / Lethargy. The Backside Rock ‘n’ Roll. What it’slike to be / on fire.” Wonderfully inventive and playful, the poem isexpansive, endlessly extensive and ongoing, and after a while, begins to readas reasoning, as mantra; as a listing of ongoing complaints and as, perhaps, away to centre the mind, the spirit, amid all the chaos. “This is just afeeling,” she writes, a repetitive quartet across a single page, “It does notcontrol me.”

Grandma energy.Whoever invented sin. Whoever
invented sinkholes.The unsettling glow of the
BachquellengrabenRiver. Open casket burials.
Indoctrinationcamps. Resetting interest rates to avoid
financial meltdown.Whoever invented spurs. Whoever
invented yourcomfort animal’s soft, synthetic fur.
Whoever inventedDolly Parton. Hacking the central
Bank of Japan.Elvira, Mistress of the Dark’s
sexual orientation.

Chicago IL: From Hannah Brooks-Motl,another poet I hadn’t been aware of prior, comes Poem Staple Collage / forJonathan Rajewski / & Other Poem (Chicago IL: The Year, 2024), the bulkof which, according to the colophon, originally “appeared as part of atext/image collaboration originally hosted by Nina Johnson gallery as part of ‘RecreationalCollage,’ a 2023 exhibition of works by Jonathan Rajewski, some of which appearhere,” produced in a lovely and graceful (with letterpress covers) edition oftwo hundred copies. I am curious about the nature of this particular collaboration,if it a proper back-and-forth between the poet and the artist, or if more of aresponse project, with the poet responding to particular artworks. These poemsare extraordinarily expansive, slow and meditative, composing an ongoing linethat suggests itself far longer than this particular collection might hold. “Theartist works at a simple machine,” Brooks-Motl writes, offering bits of textinterspersed with full-colour artworks by Rajewski, “It uses pressure fromwhich flows an arrangement of heavens wrapping around and carrying on—a hand orarm, a foot, a knee— // Pistachios and marigolds on a background of cardboard// When you look at the staple it’s catholic and scattered. An array meaningthe town you appeared in with obscure talents at life [.]”

From GS we know thatrepetition is not just repeating since differences of emphasis always exist

There is a granular non-repetitiveemphatic and continuously present view of things that liberates you from storyand regret

Time in its plastic wrapand denim, stapling dried blood and dried leaves

Failure which loves holeysocks and rags, walnut or rocks

Affects that appear overand over are bother, nervousness, ease

There is a velvetyrepetitive ambiguous and intermittent prospect—I write in a rush and then I select

The form is choosing, inorder to keep choice open

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Tom Comitta

Tom Comitta is the author of The Nature Book and two fiction books coming out in 2025: People’s Choice Literature: The Most Wanted & Unwanted Novels (Columbia University Press) and Patchwork (Coffee House Press). Their fiction and essays have appeared in WIRED, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Believer, and BOMB. Comitta lives in Los Angeles with their partner and child.

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’m not sure what you’d call my first book. Imistic Poems (2009), the chapbook of Nicanor Parra-inspired antipoems I printed one copy of when I was 23? O (2013) the concrete poetry “web book” released by Ugly Duckling Presse? The Nature Book (2023), my first supercut novel published by Coffee House? Everything always feels like the first time. This is in part because I keep starting from scratch in new genres. If my two books coming out this year–People’s Choice Literature: The Most Wanted & Unwanted Novels and Patchwork–feel any different, it’s because after writing one novel, I’m a bit more comfortable with the form.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, non-fiction or poetry?
I started my writing life as a poet, never imagining I would write fiction–a high school English teacher turned me off for over a decade. And yet, the first novel idea came, then the next. Eventually my brain could only think in chapters.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I usually research for about a year before I start writing. For The Nature Book, I spent twelve months collecting nature descriptions from other novels. For People’s Choice Literature, I worked with a survey design expert to measure as many aspects of novels–genre, character, subject matter, etc.–in as few questions as possible. Whichever project, once that year is over, I’m so antsy to get writing, it just flows. And once I’ve completed the first draft, the basic structure of the book is set. I either don’t know how to make wholesale developmental edits or just don’t trust myself outside of the original mindspace. The Tom writing in the moment knows better than the Toms to come. Although those later Toms can often make the early Tom sound better.

4 - Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
It always begins as a book. Then, sometimes the more I get into it, it condenses into a story or article. In the case of The Heat Diaries, when I spent a week in the hottest place on Earth (Death Valley) at the hottest time of the year (July), I thought it would become my first nonfiction novel. Then the experience was so traumatic–it all culminated in a protest with an ugly response from the tourists and park service–that after I wrote an article to reimburse my travel expenses, I never wanted to think about it again. Which probably means I should write the book after all.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
When I was more of a sound poet, I loved readings. I would write something new each time or practice for days to get it just right. Eventually I got frustrated with the limited opportunities for performance poetry in the U.S., envying stand up comedians who, if you’re in the right city, can perform multiple times a week. The great thing about all those performances is that now when I get on stage, I can basically improvise the whole thing and somehow it works.

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?
Every book asks a different set of questions. Give ‘em a read and see. :)

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?
At present, I’m most interested in what power the novel can bring to a world that has largely forgotten it–until it becomes a movie or show. At Christmas last year, I noticed my extended family connected over TV narratives but had no shared relationship to stories in book form. This seems pervasive and even cliche to bring up this far into the television and streaming eras. Still, I’m curious how a novel might break out into national or international conversations. Or, if the form is relatively obsolete or diluted in the face of digital media, then what can it uniquely offer in this living-dead state?

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Depends on the editor! But more often than not I am eager and grateful for any feedback. And am amazed at what these presses let me get away with. Once the book is accepted, I almost never hear “no.” In the case of People’s Choice Literature, I still can’t believe what Columbia University Press let me publish.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
“Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.” - Doris Lessing.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to essays to opera)? What do you see as the appeal?
This is maybe too easy for me. Every seven years or so, I seem to exhaust my interest in a genre and move onto a new one. First it was music, then poetry, then fiction. My therapist is urging me this time around–I’m now at my fiction seven year itch!--to consider integrating it all.

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 have a writing space outside the home and keep a routine, writing for 6+ hours at a time, 4 days a week–how The Nature Book was written. Then I had a child and got a full time job and now write whenever humanly possible!

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I try to make it as “bad” or “dumb” as can be. Intentionally trying to write bad is the most freeing and relaxing—not lazy, but loosening up—thing a writer can do. With the bad in my tool kit, I’ve never had writer's block.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Wood and resin. The guitar I played in my parent's house throughout high school. Tbh this scent is cringe to me. Guitar is the instrument I know best but adolescent suburbia kind of killed it for me.

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?
Every novel I’ve written so far has been inspired by visual art. Kota Ezawa’s animation of nature shots from feature films, “City of Nature” (2010), led to The Nature Book. Komar and Melamid’s poll-driven People’s Choice paintings and Dave Soldier’s People’s Choice Music created the survey-based framework for People’s Choice Literature. And while it didn’t initially give me the idea for the book, David Hockney’s painting “Nichols Canyon” helped inspire the form of my second supercut novel Patchwork, giving me a model of how a work of radically different patterns can be connected by a single thread. In the case of “Nichols Canyon,” it’s a winding road uniting different textures of landscape; in Patchwork it’s the hero’s journey threading together patterns in how authors write.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
This changes for every book or every few years. At present, I’m obsessed with “weird fiction.”

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Maybe make a film? More likely a graphic novel.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I have two careers! By day I’m a book designer for an independent mental health publisher, mostly illustrating workbooks for teens.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?  
I constantly ask myself this question.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
They’re one and the same! Twin Peaks: The Return by David Lynch and Mark Frost was billed as a TV show, but I argue it’s the greatest multimedia novel or film-book of our time. Not only do its 18 episodes constitute what is essentially an 18 hour film, if you want to understand what’s actually going on, you also have to read the accompanying novels by Mark Frost: The Secret History of Twin Peaks and The Final Dossier . When I first watched The Return, I wasn’t a fan. I thought it was too obscure, too all over the place. But the more I got into it, the more I realized that the whole thing is a jigsaw puzzle that benefits from multiple watchings—that the confusion has a beautiful structure. For instance, it took two watchings to notice it, but the 18 episodes are symmetrical, with images, numbers, and actions echoing each other on either side of the center, which is episode 8. I often think of Seasons 1 and 2–until the murder mystery is solved—as the Madame Bovary of television and Season 3 as the Moby-Dick.

20 - What are you currently working on?
Top secret, but I’ll say it has something to do with Twin Peaks: The Return, Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan, and a hill in Wales.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

2025 Bronwen Wallace Award shortlist interviews: Cicely Grace, Dora Prieto + Nicole Mae,

In case you hadn't caught over at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics , I've spent the past few weeks working interviews with the three shortlisted poets for this year's RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, poetry category, as run by the Writer's Trust of Canada, all of which have now posted-- Vancouver poet Cicely Grace , Vancouver poet Dora Prieto and Southern Saskatchewan poet Nicole Mae --and all of whom you should be paying attention to, I think, no matter which of them wins the final prize today. And did you see the interviews I conduced last year with two of the three 2024 shortlisted poets? Toronto poet Ashleigh A. Allen and Montreal poet Faith Paré , the latter who did the most stellar reading last fall as part of VERSeFest, I'll have you know. It is good to be paying attention to what them emerging writers are up to.

The Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, June 20: Pirie, MA|DE, Bandukwala, Moran + Smith,

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

The Factory Reading Series
the pre-small press book fair reading

featuring readings by:

Pearl Pirie (QC)
MA|DE (Windsor ON)
Manahil Bandukwala (Ottawa ON)
James K. Moran (Ottawa ON)
+
Mahaila Smith (Ottawa ON)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, June 20, 2025
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
Anina’s Café, 280 Joffre-Bélanger Way

[And don’t forget the ottawa small press book fair, held the following day at the Tom Brown Arena]

author biographies:

Pearl Pirie [pictured] lives slowly in rural Quebec. A queer, p/t abled settler on unceded land of the Anishnaabe, she is the author of footlights (Radiant Press, 2020)  You can find her on socials— Instagram, Patreon, Substack and at www.pearlpirie.com .

MA|DE (est. 2018) is a collaborative writing entity, a unity of two voices fused into a single, poetic third. It is the name given to the joint authorship of Mark Laliberte and Jade Wallace — artists whose active solo practices, while differing radically, serve to complement one another. Their work has appeared in literary journals internationally, including Augur, CV2, Grain, PRISM, Salamander, The Woodward Review and Vallum. MA|DE has written 4 chapbooks, including the bpNichol award-shortlisted A Trip to the ZZOO (Collusion Books 2020). MA|DE's debut full-length poetry collection, ZZOO, is out now from Palimpsest Press, and another collection, Detourism, is forthcoming with Palimpsest in 2028. More: ma-de.ca

Manahil Bandukwala is a writer and visual artist. She is the author of Heliotropia (Brick Books 2024; shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award and the Raymond Souster Award) and MONUMENT (Brick Books 2022; shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award). She has been twice longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, and was selected as a Writer’s Trust of Canada Rising Star in 2023. See her work at manahilbandukwala.com .

James K. Moran’s poetry and speculative fiction have appeared in Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology, Burly Tales, Bywords, Glitterwolf, and On Spec. Lethe Press published his fiction collection Fear Itself and horror novel Town & Train. Moran writes across genres about cosmic carports, drag-queen warlocks and nomadic superheroes. He reviews for Arc Poetry Magazine, Plenitude and Strange Horizons. Findable at jameskmoran.blogspot.ca , @jamestheballadeer.bsky.social (Bluesky) and jamestheballadeer (Instagram). Moran lives in Ottawa, on the unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.

Mahaila Smith is a researcher, poet, editor and MA student based on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg in Ottawa, Ontario. They won the 2024 John Newlove Poetry Award and were nominated for the Rhysling and Best of the Net awards. They adore fibre crafts and collecting sea-glass. You can find more of their work on their website: mahailasmith.ca . Their debut narrative poetry collection, Seed Beetle is available from Stelliform Press.

isaiah a. hines, Anything with Spirit

 

We don’t all remember theawkward child
we one were
Loved. Light
but not all right
fighting for something
that can’t or will notbe.

this has let me see
from right here in this
perpendicular moment.
My vantage and my whim

tell me what exactly ifeel ashamed
of, beloved.(“Afropolarity”)

I’m intrigued by this second full-lengthcollection by New York-based poet isaiah a. hines, Anything with Spirit (New York NY: Roof Books, 2025), following their debut, null landing (Slope Editions, 2022), winner of the 2020 Slope Editions Book Prize and afinalist for the 2023 Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Legacy Awardin Poetry. Writing on agency and assimilation, generational trauma and thepossibilities of change, hines composes a sequence of essay-monologues throughthe shape of short lyric bursts, offering first-person gestures that insist ontheir own presence. “But i do have a voice.” hines writes as part of theopening poem, “Afropolarity,” “Northerner, city-man / sitting sorrowful and theworst thing / i could possibly imagine // is that there is absolutely nothing /wrong with me. // i think the universe has not / yet made up its mind about /me.”

hines writes on being and accountability,visibility and safety, and on being Black in America, from the current state ofthe culture through the ripple effect of history. There is an enormous amount ofheart in this collection, one that proclaims itself for the sake of safety, ofprotection; one that demands attention through language, making itself present,visible and known. “Now i re-narrate my own story.” hines writes, to open thepoem “It’s time,” “i will no longer allow my story to be told by others. / iwill not allow myself to be painted by anyone who / does not love me.” This isa powerful collection in really subtle, ongoing ways, which might be a curious commentupon a collection of poems that offer such enduring and ongoing proclamations,but hines’ use of language allows both that presence, and a layer of comprehensionthat for change to truly occur, it must also come from within. Or, as the poem “Blackcope” ends:

i didn’t realize that
i already had a definition

i didn’t realize
i already had a name

be careful for what maycontain
anger

be cautious of what mayconceal
resentment

Alina Stefanescu, My Heresies

 

My Father Explains WhyThey Left Me Behind When Defecting

            in Hoa Nguyen’s unrelated future tense

You are the same to me.
The baby in the photo youwere, dark
curls we kissed beforefleeing.
Your mom was pregnantwith
the one she birthed in america.
Your eyes didn’t match.
One was yellower.
And no leaves on thelindens then
we didn’t know if we’dsee you again.
We didn’t know if we’dsee you again
and know leaves on thelinden, then.
One was yellower.
Your eyes didn’t match
the one she birthed in america.
Your mom was pregnantwith
curls we kissed before fleeing.
The baby in the photo youwere, dark
you are. The same to me.

Thelatest from Birmingham, Alabama-based poet, fiction writer and editor Alina Stefanescu, and the first collection I’ve properly gone through of hers, is theremarkable My Heresies (Louisville KY: Sarabande Books, 2025), a lyric explorationof being and becoming, of family histories and geographic shifts. “The firstword wasn’t love, was it?” she writes, within the first poem of the two-part “Cosmologies,”“It was this once that sat upon a time we can’t locate / in physics. It was thescience of bread / being broken and eaten. // I am still terrible at division.”My Heresies is a collection of big, complicated emotions, culturalcollision and a fierce intelligence, composed with such a delicate and carefulease of the line. “I, too, would appreciate / being courted at the leveling /of the sacred.” she writes, as part of the short poem “Little Things: A Ring,” “IfI can’t partake of the trifecta, / I will settle for that flaming / thing inthe angel’s right hand.” The poems are expansive and intimate, containing thewhole world and the author’s entire life in the smallest moment, the most containedset of sentences. Back in 2020 via the Spotlight series, she wrote of her pairedelements of Romanian and Alabaman as opposed to Romanian and American, aduality that is very much at the heart of this collection:

I’ve been trying toreconcile the self with the borders of multiple identities. Perhaps parentingforces these thoughts to the surface somehow — for example, why I identify asRomanian-Alabamian rather than Romanian-American; and how the word “unamerican”has been used to describe (and shame) me so often that pinning “American” tomyself feels like a moving target. Alabamian is easier if only because sayingunalababamian is phonetically clunky and awkward and therefore most humansdon’t invite it to their tongues.

If I write about theSouth and was socialized in the South, am I Southern? This is a question whichdepends on how I write the South. Every tough word I use is a wall I build indefense against the walls that I blame others for building and I have no self-defenseagainst the irony and uselessness of that apart from my culpabilities.

Withopening poem and five carved, numbered sections, there is an element of MyHeresies of being constructed as a long sentence, a book-length suite ofpoems seamlessly stitched into a single, ongoing conversational thread. Thepoems are propelled by hush and halt, a tempo of thoughtful measure,articulation, excavation and archaeological play, but one that loops and reelsand revels in repetition, managing to find new elements across familiarstories, familiar lines and phrases. “Failure to absorb the verb / and modifythe actor accordingly.” begins the poem “Indictment for Failure to Conjugate,” “Tosit and / play dumb.” There is also an interesting thread contained within thiscollection of the moments and lyrics of the late German-speaking Romanian poet Paul Celan (1920-1970), a poet with whom Stefanescu feels both cultural and poeticaffinity. “Paul Celan begins with an act of self-naming.” begins the poem “Sonnetat the Ghost Commune,” “The poem claims the invention of self / on a Bucharestwindowsill. Poets put // the moon in its place / at the horn of the table / onthe shoe of the satyr folding laundry into bohemian ballet.”

Thereis such a detailed intimacy to this collection, and a sharp and open intelligenceat play, one that invites the reader in as an equal, unafraid of what theselines might reveal. “My mother and I flit between French and Romanian / whensharing a bottle of wine.” the second part of “Cosmologies” begins. “In hindsight,the past tense overrides / the presence.” As the poem continues:

             My mother numberedher conquests but left them
nameless because sex is acomet that begins in a memory of longing.
The mother is a creaturewho teaches us to seduce it. “Sweetie,
you must do everythingonce,” she says. “Refuse to repent,
and don’t ever forget…”