Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 18

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Marc Perez

A poet, Marc Perez is the author of Dayo (Brick Books) and Domus(Anstruther Press). 

1 - How did yourfirst book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compareto your previous? How does it feel different?

I think having theexperience of writing, editing, and publishing the book gave me a betterunderstanding of my creative practice, as well as strengths and weaknesses inmy writing. Practically, though, I don’t think that publishing changed my lifein any way. I mean, I’m still broke. Affectively—to use the famous Alice Notleyquote on my social media feed—I still have my grief.

My current workisn’t much different but a further exploration of themes and ideas I engagedwith in Dayo.

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

Ah, my earliest exposureto poetry, if I remember correctly, were riddles, or bugtong in Filipino, whichwere very common then. When I was in grade school, I usually bought cheap spiralnotebooks that featured random celebrities and, at times, public domain poemson the cover. One such poem is “Don’t Quit” by Edgar Albert Guest. Sentimental,sure, but for the kid-me, it was moving. Actually, I revisit that poemsometimes and, in fact, read it to my wife not too long ago. Finally, orcourse, there were love poems. My real introduction with contemporary lyric,which influenced me henceforth, happened when I was attending Adult Ed here inVancouver and an instructor, a poet himself, had us read poems by the greatWisława Szymborska. View with a Grain of Sand remains to be a revelation.

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

I think I’m aninstinctive writer; I mean, I try not to overthink it. Often, I write the draftof a poem fairly quickly and spend a lot of time editing it. Sometimes, a poempresents itself almost fully formed; other times, I lift from varioussources—notes (loose papers, word docs, app notes), unfinished poems, literaryquotes, etc. My strategy, always: reflect on what to write and how to write. Whenthe poem isn’t coming, I don’t force it. I wait until we’re both ready.

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

I like seriespoems. I look at my poems in relation to each other and my work as whole ingeneral. With Dayo, I had an idea ofthemes that I wanted to touch on, and the poems in the book relate to thesethemes in one way or another.

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

I get incrediblynervous whenever I read publicly. What saves me from vertigo, usually, is theimmediate reaction from the audience; I observe their expressions andreciprocate. I don’t think of reading in terms of promotion or exposure, butsimply another form with which to share my work and connect with people. Theorality of public reading, with its own demands and approach, I think, is aform distinct from the written word. In fact, I’ve found myself veering awayfrom my own text at times, adding and omitting some words while reading.  

I recently had themarvelous opportunity to read Dayo inits entirety for the Whole Cloth Reading Series (thank you Elee and Bronwen!). I’mnot a performer or athlete, but I think it was the closest I’ve been tosomething somatically sublime. I really hope such poetry reading format becomesmore common and accessible.

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

I don’t go aboutwriting a poem with theory in mind or try to answer theoretical questions. I’dwrite an essay instead. That said, theories, of course, also inform my poeticpractice, and they figure, needless to say, in my poems. I’m concerned aboutalienation; neocolonialism and migration; mental health in relation to ourcurrent cultural and economic neoliberal hell-hole; revolutionary,anti-imperialist movements; liberalism and its discontents; affect; amongothers. Intentionally, though, my lyric poem’s emotional register is at theforefront, and not the technical jargon that inform it. Primarily, I write, asI often say, to move hearts, including mine.

7 – What do you seethe 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 poet’s role,first and foremost, is to write poems.

The writer, likeany worker, is a political entity. What they produce, whether they believe itor not, are artifacts embedded in particular histories, cultures, socioeconomics,etc. Their words and actions have weight and consequences. In their scribbleddreams, to borrow from Delmore Schwartz, begin responsibilities.

That said, I don’tthink there’s a homogenous role for writers, but like everyone else, they contributein shaping cultural discourses in our society. Their role, however, whatever itmay be, is only as good, valuable and progressive as the dictates of theirvalues, politics, and ethics. Fascists, needless to say, also write poems.

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

Editors aredefinitely essential, regardless of the difficulty of the process. With Dayo, I entered the poet-editor relationshipsfrom the idea that they want the best for me and my work. That was definitelytrue in my experience with Brick Books, and I greatly admire the attention andcare they provided.

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

There’s my usualanswer of writing poems in a series. When I was attending a creative writingprogram, an instructor, I don’t remember exactly who, told me something I foundinteresting: protect your voice. It is helpful because I became much morediscerning of feedback and advice, whether good or bad. If voice, simply put,means the combination one’s use of language and one’s vision, then I, whowrites in English as a Second Language, must ensure, for instance, thepreservation of even the tiniest inflections in my style against the hegemonicpower (that is, requiring consent and coercion i.e. grading, publication,marketability) of institutionalized and normative writing conventions.

10 - How easy hasit been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction)? What do you see asthe appeal?

I recently read We Do Not Part, by Han Kang and Vancouverfor Beginners, by Alex Leslie(incredible work, by the way), so I’m kind of questioning if there’s an actualdistinction between poetry and fiction, or if such distinction is evennecessary. To me, writing in multiple genres means having more vessels to carrythe content I wish to write. If a topic isn’t working as a poem, I can trywriting it as a short fiction or personal essay. It broadens the possibilities.

11 - What kind ofwriting routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does atypical day (for you) begin?

My writing routineis akin to Vancouver spring weather—irregular and indecisive Right now, though,my kids attend preschool and kindergarten, so I get to have a few hours in themorning until around noon to do my thing—write, edit, read, develop and scannegatives, and so on. I used to stay up late to write; now, I’m typicallyasleep by midnight.

12 - When yourwriting gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a betterword) inspiration?

I read poetrycollections and novels that I love and read multiples times. I go meandering walksand create a brain-space for both randomness and concentration.

13 - What fragrancereminds you of home?

Adobo.

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

I’m a firm believerin the dialogic nature of writing. It’s an antidote to the peerless, creativegenius. I like drawing from various sources, forms that seem divergent ordisparate. It’s like a random conversation with a stranger, who, I later learn,isn’t a stranger at all. I welcome serendipity and chance encounters.

15 - What otherwriters or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside ofyour work?

Since my lateteens, I’ve gravitated toward revolutionary and socialist texts—theoretical andliterary—from Marx to Ho Chi Minh to Jose Maria Sison and various things inbetween and beyond. They are important in the way I view the world and how Isee myself in it.

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

I would like tobecome a strong swimmer; but first, quit smoking cigarettes—permanently.

17 - If you couldpick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, whatdo you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I like the smell ofwood. I would like to be a woodworker for sure. I’ve often imagined shaving,chiseling, or hammering wood to make a table and chair. Never tried it though!

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

I write—or make artin general—because like water or math, it is an essential, basic part of life.I don’t need any justification on why to do it. It just is. As with paid work,photography, activism, and parenting, however, writing is only one aspect ofmyself. I don’t feel any pressure choosing one thing over another. Theycoexist. The main contradiction, I think, arises from the lack of time; toresolve it, I give by best at getting better with essential skills like schedulingand time management.

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

We Do Not Part, by Han Kang, definitely. I wasliterally holding my breath while reading sections of the book. For poetry, Irecently revisited The Selected Poems ofWang Wei, translated by David Hinton. I’ve read it multiple times yet don’tremember much of it, only a general feeling of longing and surrender. For film,it has to be Perfect Days, directedby Wim Wenders.

20 - What are youcurrently working on?

I’m working on a full-lengthcollection of poems. I’ve also started a hybrid chapbook, composed ofphotographs and poetry. Mainly, I’m trying to write a collection of shortstories.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Wayne Miller, The End of Childhood

 

AMERICAN DOMESTIC

The drone was ours
Slipping home
Toward a distant strip ofearth
That was also America

While the operator
Stared into his net ofpixels
Then stepped down
From the consequence ofthe mission
Into the dark grass

Drove the long way
Through the night air
He had to cut
With the blade of hisheadlights

His family waiting
Behind the heavy curtains
Of that home he’d carriedwith him
To work and back
As most of us do

Home that fell away
At the required moment
So he could get on withit
What do we say

When he opens the frontdoor
And that bright interior
Flashes suddenly
Into the world

Denver, Colorado poet and editor Wayne Miller’s sixth full-length poetry collection, mostrecently following We the Jury (Minneapolis MN: Milkweed Editions, 2021)[see my review of such here] is The End of Childhood (Milkweed Editions,2025), a collection that continues his lyric explorations at the collisionbetween the dark realities of American military culture and the intimacies ofhome, family and childhood. “My best friend’s older brother had posters // ofnuclear explosions all over his bedroom.” he writes, as part of the poem “THELATE COLD WAR,” “At night they became the walls of his sleep.” There’s asharpness to his lyrics, his lyric turns, able to change course mid-thought,allowing the collision of ideas or troubling connections.

The End of Childhood is a title, of course,that provides layers of possibility, from the complicated and naturally-human simplicityof emerging out of childhood thinking, from discovering that Santa Claus or theTooth Fairy don’t exist, to the realization of the failings of trusted adults,into further shades of darkness of human possibility. These are poems on multiplelevels of realization, and a broadening scope. “Last week, a violent mob / ofthousands stormed the Capital. // They wore sweatpants and flags,” begins thesecond part of his three-part “ON HISTORY,” “puffer coats and tactical gear. //If I ignore the details of their chants / and the silliness of their face paint,// they become a historical form. / That policeman on the television // beingcrushed in a doorway / over and over is trapped inside // of history. If youfeel nothing / for him, then you are inhuman. // Yet all of us were pushing /from one side or another.” His title allows for a further suggestion ofinnocence, in thinking that such could not happen, could no longer happen;could not happen here. Through his articulations, Miller knows full well thathe and all around him live deep within history, from the best moments throughto the worst. The storming of the Capital Building, or a teenager felled by abullet while waiting for the bus. These are poems that meet the present moment,even amid the intimacies of home and memory, children and those recollectionsof childhood that becoming a parent can so often prompt.

While,for the most part, these troubling elements of “America” sit at the background,almost as a shroud, they are still deeply present, even as the book as a whole writesaround childhood, from his to that of his children, offering moments thatstitch together that accumulate into narratives with the lightest touch acrosslines, one phrase carefully set upon another. Whatever the subject matter,there is such a lovely slowness to his lines, a deliberateness, offering hushand a halt amid such careful measure. “My grandfather—just a boy— / discovered hisfather’s body,” Miller writes, as part of “ON VIOLENCE,” “the trauma of whichis why, / my grandmother would say, // he never aspired to more / than basic,menial work. // My grandmother’s father / drowned in Sheepshead Bay // after anight of heavy drinking / with the fishermen // he so admired. Foul play / wassuspected, but never proved. // This was in 1920. Back then, / mygrandmother told me, // things like that happened / all the time.”

Milleris remarkably good at offering poems that hold tight against the lyric, meetingthe breath of a moment or a packed thought, nearly into the realm of the koan,one set against each other as a series of steps. The opening section, “TOWARD AUNIFIED THEORY,” holds even closer to that lyric ethos, a sequence of more thanforty self-contained short bursts, two to a page, each of which hold a thoughtthat itself leads into a question. The poem “ZOO,” for example: “The plexiglass/ separating us from the animals // brings them closer [.]” Or the openingpiece, “CHILDREN,” that reads: “Condemned to live // inside the weather / ofour moods [.]”

 

Jessica Bebenek, No One Knows Us There: Poems

 

Cosmos

O Neil deGrasse Tyson, I needyou
more than words can say. Totell me again
of our slow seep throughgenerations,
our transientcompanionship. Fill me again
with beer and then weedand then food
and then a little moreweed. You know
what I need. Superior knowledgeslams
against me and crack I amless than
a second, less than quantifiableworth,
caloric nourishment,fidelity.
                                             There are so
many things, NeildeGrasse Tyson, rushing
away from us atexponentially increasing speeds
and only one thingrushing toward us.
The more I listen, themore I imagine
I could understand you. Neil,I have so many ideas.
What’s your mailingaddress?

Thefull-length poetry debut by Montreal-based poet Jessica Bebenek, following eightchapbooks, as well as landing on the shortlist the Writers’ Trust of Canada RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, is No One Knows Us There: Poems(Toronto ON: Book*hug Press, 2025), a collection self-described as one that “presentstwo distinct and moving portraits of womanhood. The first is that of the devoted,caregiving granddaughter navigating hospital hallways and the painful realitiesof palliative care. The second is that of a woman a decade older,compassionately looking back on her younger self. In this second half, Bebenekrewrites poems from the first, honouring unimaginable loss and turning it into genuinehealing.” And there is such grief, such loss, here. As the opening poem, “Hospice,”ends:

I lied. There was afourth walk, but it confused itself
with heartbeat, the braininstructing the lungs to pump
within a vacuum. The feetfinding sheets of stone beneath
themselves and these stonesleading
around the side of thehouse, through several doors,
an accommodating hallway,
back into the room of thepoem’s origin.
It was a room containingall the bodies I knew
in varying states ofdecomposition.

Builtout of two sections of narrative, first-person lyrics, the structure of NoOne Knows Us There is set in halves, in counterpoint, comparable to the dual-structureMontreal-based poet T. Liem utilized in their SLOWS : TWICE (Coach HouseBooks, 2023) [see my review of such here]. Whereas Liem’s is a collection ofmirror-texts, with each poem corresponding to another at the other end, untileach of the two sides finally meet in the middle, Bebenek utilizes the twosides of her No One Knows Us There as a paired set of moments, allowing thetwo perspectives to glimpse each other in and through specific experiences. Theimmediacy of the narrator’s experience is provided counterpoint against distance,and the wisdom that emerges through time. “Here is the moment,” she writes, aspart of “The Future,” near the end of the first section, “when you leave /without leaving            You don’t saya thing / You don’t flick             twofingers at my brim / Here we are          You are not saying / Well.” One might see this poem meeting thepiece “The End,” set at the end of the second section, of the collection, thatbegins: “And what will I do if / at the end of all of this/ I am not led by thehand / to understanding?”

Bebenek’snarrator works through grief as it is happening, and, again, years later, revisitingwhat can’t help but shift through the intervening time. Part of what will beinteresting through Bebenek’s further and future work will be seeing how such alyric will develop, given an opening salvo that already seeks to articulate lossfrom two temporal perspectives. This is a strong collection, one that holds tofoundations even as Bebenek’s narrator works to comprehend, to clarify, allthat has happened and her origins, and all where she might eventually land. Earlyon in the collection, there is the poem “On the Night of the Morning / My GrandfatherDied,” with all the immediacy such an event might provide, as the poem ends: “Butthere is no fall. / We went home. / Chose one board / and then another, / onestreet and walked down it, / screeching with the thing / that made us.”

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Farah Ghafoor

Farah Ghafoor is the author of Shadow Price (House of Anansi, 2025). Selections of her debut poetry collection won the E.J. Pratt Medal and Prize in Poetry, and were finalists for the CBC Poetry Prize and the Far Horizons Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared in art exhibitions, magazines, and anthologies such as FACE/WASTE, The Walrus, and Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books, 2019), as well as post-secondary course syllabi. Raised in New Brunswick and southern Ontario, Farah resides in Tkaranto (Toronto) where she writes about the intersection of climate change, colonialism, and capitalism.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Writing this book helped me channel my climate anxiety and doomism into work that can communicate with and educate others. I learned that I needed to process the climate crisis in terms of the tangible, and that eventually led me to dig into concepts of economics and colonialism. Anxiety comes from uncertainty, but there is still so much certainty when it comes to the structures and processes that propel the crisis. Shadow Price gave me an intellectual and emotional foundation for my recent work, which aims to bring economics and individual stories to the forefront.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Poetry was attractive to me because it’s concise and conceptually precise. I came to it through a haiku in the second grade in one of those summer workbooks you would complete to get ahead in school. As I continued to write, it always seemed much easier to write about ideas than characters, and I was lucky to be rewarded for my efforts through school/class contests. When I stumbled upon spoken word on Youtube in high school, specifically Safia Elhillo’s “Alien Suite”, Maya Mayor’s “Perfect”, and “Somewhere in America” by Belissa Escobedo, Rhiannon McGavin, and Zariya Allen, I was amazed to see what poetry could do. I was also continuously inspired by other teens writing on the internet, such as my peers in The Adroit Mentorship Program.

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?
There are typically two origins for my work: freewrites and research. I freewrite frequently, and those passages often appear fairly close to the final draft. I also collect research and observations in that same large writing document, so for poems that are explicitly about a concept (such as shadow prices), I have to wait until I have a few key phrases/ideas that would help me approach the topic. This method can take years, but I don’t mind because my interests don’t and haven’t changed for years (which is how long it took me to write Shadow Price).

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?
Poems come from uncertainty – I write to understand myself, the world, and my place in it. I’ll stumble upon something in the world that I’m curious about, and write until I reach a conclusion. Since I’ve only written one book, I feel like it was a combined process – I was writing and collecting shorter pieces for years, and also wrote long poems specifically for the book.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I like participating in and attending readings, but find that I’m more of a visual reader than an aural one. I find it easier to spend time with a poem on the page, so I guess I’m more traditional that way. Readings don’t significantly add or take away from my creative process.

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?
My work is concerned with how we are living at this point in time – specifically during the climate crisis – and what we value. At the end of the day, people are struggling to live in late-stage capitalism because economic priorities have taken precedence over ethical ones, and that has led us to devaluing the earth, which provides everything we need. Questions I’m always pursuing in my work include: What are we paying attention to? What has led us here? And where are we going if we continue down this path?

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 role of the writer is to tell the whole, exact truth, as unpopular as it may be.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I’ve had my writer friends always point out what I can’t see because I’m too close to the work, and my editor from House of Anansi, Kevin Connolly, always made me reconsider what I was previously too proud to let go of. It was essential (and a little difficult) but you have to let go of your ego to achieve your goals in any field.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Jess Rizkallah tweeted out probably 8 years ago: Figure out what you want to say and write it down. I’ve found that this helps bring a poem back to its emotional, truthful centre when it gets lost during revision.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
Non-fiction is hard because you can’t hide, even a little. I suppose that’s why I write it so infrequently – I’d say I’m a relatively private person.

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 tend to write at night, when my mind’s tired enough to be imaginative. It’s important for me to make a cup of tea that I will forget about and reheat at irregular intervals. When I’m revising or have a goal for the session, I first read work in the tone/style that I’m trying to achieve (lyrical, authoritative, etc.), then get to work. Revision usually takes many nights of rewriting.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I’ve more or less given up on trying to write during creative blocks – the best poems that come about during those times are about writer’s block itself. I’m trying to accept my creative cycle – months of block, idea germination, revision – so I'm trying to lean in during each period. I’m always jotting down observations and research though, anything that I read and find interesting.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
This is where I admit my bad sense of smell. I’m going to be cliche but honest here and say my mother’s cooking.

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 heavily inspired by nature, science, economics, architecture – processes that we can see and touch and affect our everyday lives. So you’ll see me write more about labour than space, for example. Visual art interests me most when it’s as precise as a poem.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Currently, Solmaz Sharif, Aria Aber, Daniel Borzutzky, Natalie Diaz, Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, and Mai Der Vang. While I was writing the book: Jenny Odell, Andri Snaer Magnason, Craig Santos Perez, as well as all of the other authors I note in the acknowledgments of Shadow Price.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’d like to write a novel, a song, a short story, and a screenplay. And make a short film and curate an art exhibition and decorate a really beautiful cake. I'd like to try everything.

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 would try to be a forest ranger or an ornithologist, though I’m pretty sure an outdoorsy job wouldn’t suit me. I’d love to experience nature every day – it makes me feel so alive.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Writing is my main tool of reflection and intellectual exploration. It’s a compulsion, like breathing. I feel strange when I haven’t written in a while, full of pent-up energy.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Young Woman Book Job by Emma Healey and Joan Didion: The Centre Will Not Hold.

20 - What are you currently working on?
My second poetry collection, which will have the same themes but hopefully focus on economics.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Nuala O’Connor, Menagerie

 

A Grey Gardens for Galway

Fleece-thick dust on the windowsills.A cobweb, big as a sail, wafts in the breath of my passing. Ivy lattices thewindowpanes and one long, ambitious tendril has found its way in and slinks alongthe wall. I stand and look and breathe. This is the house I want to die in. I kneeldown to rub ten, twenty years of grime from the floor tiles. They are mustardand terracotta with cuts of blue; they speak of maids-of-all-work andsusurrating hemlines. My heart bulges into my mouth in a push of goy, abittersweet, home-found palpation, though I’ve never been in this house before.The ceiling and walls reach to me, they bend close and caress my hair, theypour their mildewed breath along my neck. Welcome, they say. You arewelcome.

Galway, Ireland poet and fiction writer Nuala O’Connor’s latest poetry collection, herfifth, is Menagerie (Dublin Ireland; Arlen House, 2025), a curiousassemblage of prose poem narratives and short scenes that hold a thickness ofdetail and a lush sense of the lyric. “Now that the cage is open,” the title poembegins, “the wild animals are gone; now that the wild animals are gone, thegarden is silent; now that the garden is silent, the trees take up theirwhisper [.]” Across a suite of seventy-eight poems, O’Connor offers a prose menagerieof uncertainties, searching; she offers attempts at clarity, seeking; ofstories and storytelling, floating across fable and fairytale and a science ofhard facts, all told in a lyric lilt. “The geraniums are scarlet pansies,” thesingle-sentence of “Matisse in Massachusetts” begins, “their leaves, succulentshamrocks, the wallpaper, a sky lassoed by pink ribbons, the table is a saffrondesert, the plate, holding the pot, somewhy sheds blue ceramic petals, thesignature is an exuberant upcurve, each S a joyless snake, sizzing high to snarethe viewer, as adroitly  as innocent Eve,sizing up the seductive beauty of an apple.” There is such song in her descriptions,one that understands myth and beauty, the wealth of the garden and a detaileddescription. Her narratives might be composed in straight lines but they are nothingof the kind, offering a kind of detailed and direct meandering into and throughstruggle, complexity and ease. These poems are quite magical, honestly.

 

Mahaila Smith, Seed Beetle: poems

 

Thesis

It was something thediscourse got stuck on:
Where the eels came from.
No one had ever seen themmate.
Maybe all I needed toknow
Was how they changed formand why;
what question they wereanswering when their bodies
adapted from freshwaterto salt.
How did the passage oftime move in a fluid cycle?
How could they continueto make their pilgrimage
through so many man-made barriers?

Thefull-length poetry debut by Ottawa-based poet Mahaila Smith, following twochapbooks, including one through above/ground press, is Seed Beetle: poems (Hamilton ON: Stelliform Press, 2025), a speculative collection set as anassembled manuscript composed well into an imagined future. “I found the followingmaterial in notebooks and desk drawers,” the “Foreword” begins, “in blog postsand hard drives during the process of creating the Nebula Armis fonds in theyears following her passing. An archive of her poems is now housed in theChamberlin Collection of Poetry of the Toronto Public Library.” The “Foreword,”by the way, by the fictional “Dip Seshadri,” is dated “New Haywood, 2102.” Themost overt comparison to this collection would be the full-debut by Toronto poet and filmmaker Lindsay B-e, The Cyborg Anthology: Poems (KingstonON: Brick Books, 2020) [see my review of such here], a collection of poems byrobot poets put together some two hundred years in the future, or even the waythe late Robert Kroetsch wrote the fictional archivist Raymond assembling thework of a lost poet and her work, The Hornbooks of Rita K. (Edmonton AB:University of Alberta Press, 2001) [see my piece on such here]. As, too, B-e,the framing by Seshadri’s preface provides an environmental concern:

            Nebula poured her energy into advocating for the lives ofaquatic species. She was a primary organizer of the rally against Veil’s miningexpedition to Mars, after it was discovered there was life in the planet’s polarcaps. For her role in interrupting this project she was incarcerated for 6months. All poetry she created during this time was destroyed.
            After her release, we moved to her hometown, New Haywood,Ontario, where we worked with her mothers and the community to take back theland from Utopic Robotics, dedicating our efforts to creating community gardensand supporting the young people and children above all else. Ensuring that theycould grow food and provide for their futures. We worked to make sure that the landwas accessible to everyone. We met with the Tyendinaga Elders Council, bringingthe hard-shelled automated agricultural beetles with us, and their individual storesof seeds to decide what  should become ofthem. We pooled our seed libraries, made planting calendars, and learned howthe plants depended on each other to survive.

Asboth B-e and Kroetsch did, so too, Smith’s fictional editor, Dip Seshadri, helpsframe this collection, providing a further step of distance between the Smithand the poems, offering an opening insight of the late author through the lensof not only as her editor, but as her partner (comparable to Kroetsch’sRaymond, although the archivist fell in love with Rita through her words). Asthe preface ends: “Nebula was the love of my life. I miss her with all myheart.”

Setin three sections, Nebula’s poems write of repeated layers of death andrebirth, technological advance and environmental crises, utopia and itsfailures. The narrative framework of this imagined future is curious,interesting; and I’m intrigued at why, specifically, Smith wrote out thisfuture through the lyric as opposed to prose; wondering, perhaps, if theremight be a novelization at some point from an alternate perspective around thesame narrative this collection offers. Held together, the poems each providenarrative moments of lyrically-straightforward narrative sketches that togetheraccumulate into a larger and broader concern with how technology interferes withrepair, and has the potential to interfere with utopia itself. Nebula’s poemsoffer depictions of days and networks, beetles and histories, and fingersthrough dirt; as a warning, a look at and through where we might land from theperspective of having been through it.

A Young Automated Beetle
Writing Home

My mummy had soft handsand strong bones.
She was the one who putmy solar-powered energy-cell
in my core. The one whowhispered
my purpose to me as shebrought me and my siblings
to our little runway.

Be generous with yourseeds and your water, please.

I am happy when I workbecause I think of her.
Sometimes I send herlittle messages just to tell her where I am.
I don’t hear back, but I keepletting her know that I’m ok.
I look at the sky and thedry dirt and my little scooped feet;
She would probably liketo see these heavy hills,
of limestone; iron; andquartz;
fragments of mammalianskeletons and disconnected roots
I think about how I wantto renew this place
and make it special forher.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Omar Ramadan

Omar Ramadan is aLebanese-Canadian writer and PhD candidate in creative writing. He is theauthor of This Sweet Rupture (out now with UAlberta press!), the chapbooks SunDogs (forthcoming with Agatha Press), Sesame Love , and his works have appearedin Poetry Northwest, CV2, and The Polyglot. He lives in amiskwaciy (Edmonton).

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

This SweetRupture is my first book, and I am excited for it to be published and out inthe world. I've spent several years working towards this collection, and it haschanged my life in the way that I approach writing and think about thepractice/craft itself. It also alleviated a lot of self doubt regarding mycapabilities and intuitions regarding writing and the work that I am doing.People want to read this kind of work, read these kinds of stories, read thiskind of poetry, and I am happy to be putting myself out there, working throughall the ups and downs of being a writer and artist, and also enjoying theprocess along the way.

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

I came to poetryduring my undergrad at UBC Okanagan in 2016. I was in the creative writingprogram (minor), and focused a lot of my efforts on fiction in most workshopclasses that I took. At the time, I didn't think that I could write poems, andlooking back, I am not sure why I held this belief. Maybe it was self doubt orthat I was invested in writing fiction that blocked my pursuit of writingpoetry. But in that last year of my time there, I took a workshop class withProfessors Matt Rader and Michael V. Smith, who are two writers I look up toand inspire my own writing, and they pushed me into a space that I falselybelieved I'd be uncomfortable in. I haven't looked back since.

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

I think itdepends on how driven I am by an idea. Sometimes a project will come naturallyand quickly, and I can push a draft in a short amount of time, or it takestime. So, a combination of both I think! I'd say for poetry, my first draftsoften appear looking close to their final shape. I find that poetry comesnaturally and easily, especially when I've been mulling an idea over in my headfor a while.

4 - Where does apoem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end upcombining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" fromthe very beginning?

The poems in ThisSweet Rupture started small. A piece here, a piece there. I was lucky enough toget enough pieces together to publish some of the poems that appear in the bookas a chapbook titled "Sesame Love" with Moon Jelly House. But I didkeep an overarching theme in mind when I was writing the poems, and thankfullyI did, because it was much easier to compile them into a coherent book.

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

I love going toand participating in public readings. I haven't had the chance to do that muchrecently as I've been a bit of a hermit with the amount of work that I have onmy plate, but I'm hopeful that I can get back out and do some readings/openmics. I find it important to my process to see and hear what other writers andartists are working on. It's inspirational!

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

This is a toughquestion to answer. I don't usually frame my creative work through atheoretical lens. A lot of my work concerns father-son relationships,masculinities, migration. These are some of the aspects I think about whenwriting, but I like to leave interpretation up to the reader. I think it's moreexciting to hear what others might theorize about my work rather than hearmyself talking about it in that light.

7 – What do yousee the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even haveone? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

The writer willalways have a role in society/culture. I think one of the roles of thewriter/artist is to make uncomfortable art, art that gives pause, that makesone think about the world and how they move within it.

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

I was very luckyto get to work with author and editor Kimmy Beach for this collection. I thinka good editor will either make or break your experience. You definitely want aneditor who will uplift you while also providing constructive feedback and criticismof your work. I think there also has to be a willingness on your end as well toentrust your words and work to an editor who might disagree with you on certainaspects, and a big part of being a writer is taking that feedback and workingwith it.

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

Good enough isgood enough.

10 - What kind ofwriting routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does atypical day (for you) begin?

I don't reallyhave a routine. I try to write at least one poem a day if I can; that usuallycomes out to a page or so a day as my poems are relatively shorter in length.My writing tends to happen at night as my days are usually filled with meprocrastinating on writing.

11 - When yourwriting gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a betterword) inspiration?

When my writinggets stalled, I tend to go look at some of the poetry books I have on mybookshelf and flip through them and that really helps rock me out of thatstall.

12 - Whatfragrance reminds you of home?

Bakhoor.

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

Music definitelyinspires my work. For This Sweet Rupture I listened to a lot of classical Arabsingers like Fairuz, Umm Kulthum, and Abdul Halim. I was trying to capture thatessence of home and nostalgia in this collection, so I listened to them when Iwas writing or when I was not.

14 - What otherwriters or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside ofyour work?

Cristalle Smith,Marc Herman Lynch, Kaitlyn Purcell, Nisha Patel, Matthew James Weigel, Matt Rader, Michael V. Smith, Gary Soto, Jess Rizkallah, Etel Adnan, Mohammed El-Kurd, Mukoma Wa Ngugi, Safia Elhillo.

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

Hike the PacificNorthwest Trail. Win a literary award.

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

I do enjoy andlove working with my hands. I love working on cars and made a hobby of that.There's something satisfying about swapping a brake rotor and puttingeverything back together and the car still running afterwards. It's a goodtime!

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

I was just anatural at it. I was also not cut out for sciences.

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

The last greatbook I read was Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. The last great film Iwatched was West and Soda.

19 - What are youcurrently working on?

I am currentlyworking on a new body of poetry, and working on editing down my detectivefiction novel which is complete!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

To Live and Die in Picton,

What is a weekend? On Thursday, we drove out to Picton to visit father-in-law and his wife (had we really not been since July?), given Rose's fever had subsided, finally. She'd been Wednesday in bed passed out cold until early afternoon, and the remainder of the two days recovering. Once collecting Aoife from school, we made our way into the car (slowly) and over to Picton the three hours or so south, and then west along that Highway 401. We made a stop, but the young ladies wanted nothing to do with a selfie.

A weekend, in which I spent most of Friday moving through the full manuscript of "the green notebook," the journal/day-book I've been working on since last April. I'd always aimed for a calendar year, and its now more than two hundred pages, the first I've sat down with the full manuscript-to-date since last fall, I suspect. I think I'm pretty much finished adding entries, although there are some scattered notes still to find themselves at the end. I am working now to hone the thing into something publishable, finished. I had sent a draft of such out for potential publication back in January, but I'm not quite sure if I should see that process through, or start prodding at someone else, also. How best to approach? And I'm sure you've been watching as I've posted excerpts-in-progress over at my substack, naturally. There will probably be further along there for some time.

A weekend-ish away, in which father-in-law and his wife could take the young ladies to a bookstore, a movie; in which they could celebrate Aoife's recent ninth birthday (it had been a while since they'd seen our young ladies, so we knew that important). Of course, I aimed for at least part of a day with a mound of books, tackling a morning of notes towards potential reviews on Saturday, prior to our scheduled return home, given Rose's choir was performing on Sunday. So much that I've yet to get to, but a bunch of pages of rough notes, which I'll attempt to craft into reviews over the next week or two.


Aoife had fallen to a slight fever prior to Rose, but had felt better, neither of them slowing down until they finally began to, slowly, do exactly that. By Friday evening, both lapsing back into slight fevers, but a quiet morning before an Easter Egg Hunt, in North Port, a small village some twenty minutes or so drive north of Picton, some distance west of the south landing of the big scary bridge. The whole village and environs, it would seem, had landed, with dozens of cars lining the main road, with easily one hundred scattered children with baskets seeking treasure from the park and various yards. The whole town, and the fire department, with trucks and equipment and snacks and a mascot. And every child left there with a basket of plenty of somethings.

By mid-afternoon, everyone was low energy, home. Rose and Aoife with fevers, Christine and I with sore throats. Low moving, so Sunday was, what? Laundry, each of us in quiet corners. So, Rose's participation in her choir performance was cancelled. But Aoife and I did colour more than a dozen or so eggs, dye staining our fingers, nearly impossible to remove. Beyond that, I think I wrote some letters. Not much more.

Danielle Pafunda, Along the Road Everyone Must Travel

 

I walked the road seawardfor the feast. I took my gold cuffs that keep my voice down, I combed thepoison out of my lashes, I lashed to my breast a plate for knitted hours sothat I might not / forget the way home, my keep, I keep / my daughter there,but it isn’t / home, I sing the easy tide of doing and weaving, but it isn’t /home, I try to leave it sincere in the knowledge of its anchor, in contrastwith the sand, in agreement to stay put under juniper, and juniper, and, then I/ send a couple texts to boost my spirits, fuck me, love me, kmn, and then I’mso deep in the road, fellow travelers mistake me for one of its / pebbles / I’mlooking for tender / for my tender friends who will recognize me in theconcrete ecotone, my bravado welling as Orion’s terse face sinks behind smog,Artemis prowling elsewhere, the god of the sea sucking a shipwreck, don’t / don’ttell me it gets nicer when it’s already nicer than I’d imagined, don’t

or (“Fast by the wide anddismal gates of hell I slowmo consider my claws / frontgold base done jammedwith vernal strife even the equinox uneasy for / diggers”)

I’vebeen hearing about American writer Danielle Pafunda some time now, only now beginningto attend their work, although she’s some ten published books of poetry and prosedeep, the latest being Along the Road Everyone Must Travel (Broomall PA:Saturnalia Books, 2025). The poems that make up this collection are propulsive,explosive, almost excessive; a rush of lyric, with each line and poem expandingalmost exponentially. Her titles, even by themselves, offer a deliberate rushof text at breakneck speed, short poems in and of themselves, offering a table contentsnot simply as a list of titles, but a hint of what is to come: “You go back to getyour holy things when your skin has greater part sun than air and stop touchingyour bitter friends it’s all true once married I had to go to the underworldfor a really long time after which I came to live above the biotoxic soil crustbut not with you or anyone” to “I turned thirty in wartime I turned forty inwartime stay you irritate my heart with distance until the present comes asheet of pearls and moor’s breath in a dry clime and I bedeck you” to “I duckedinto a sympathetic Pleiades and before I knew it neither desert nor sea stoppedwhere the mountains started [.]” Hers is a lyric akin to prayer, writing ofresistance and resilience in and around and through threads of Greek mythology,of gods and daughters and escaping from and to the underworld, offering shadesof Demeter; of either/ors, clipped speech and poem-endings, which suggest akind of ongoingness throughout the collection, akin to a long poem, set as asingle, ongoing, staggered sentence.

I fish around for thesalt god’s number and involve him in a bath of electrolyte tears / fuck me, I beg/ fuck my life / take the bare spot on a bird’s chest and liken it to my losseseasily foretold, easy in the hand, so hard to slip the scalpel to / whoever wasin there, who left her familiar lashed to the bed, wasn’t me, wasn’t mydaughter, I / tell my daughter don’t start crying or you’ll / never stop crying/ don’t give your number out to gods, and when you go back to hades, go quietand lone / sometimes / I’m on the road deep in the desert where sunlightbreaches my breastbone, the only protection I took, I wasn’t thinking clearlywhen I packed my bag, I packed things I didn’t / need / don’t fit in with thesalt god’s retinue of beautiful people

or (“I fall asleepwaiting for a call from the tribunal waiting for the elders to get here withtheir sacrificial blade I fall asleep before I die I want more dreams”)

Thereis an absolute heft packed into the small space of this sharp and stunning collection,approaching the narrative of her lyric moment by small moment, building uponand stretching outward, each stanza set as a dot on a long horizon.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Estlin McPhee

Estlin McPhee is awriter and librarian who lives on the traditional territories of the Musqueam,Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. They hold an MFA in Creative Writing fromthe University of British Columbia and are the author of the poetry chapbook Shapeshifters(Rahila’s Ghost Press, 2018). For many years, they co-organized REVERB, a queerreading series in Vancouver. In Your Nature, Estlin's debut poetrycollection, is available from Brick Books.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook changeyour life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does itfeel different?

In Your Natureis my first book of poetry but it grew out of some of the concerns andinterests that emerged from my chapbook Shapeshifters.Crafting a thematic consistency, a strong binding thread, has felt verydifferent for a full-length book versus a chapbook. The chapbook and otherpublishing credits made me eligible to apply for a Canada Council grant, whichI received in 2019 to work on In YourNature – and that definitely changed my life.

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

I actually came to poetry last – I wrote fictionand nonfiction before I started writing poetry in a serious way but forwhatever reason, I always had a sense that I wanted to publish in poetry beforeanother genre. So I suppose now I can finally start working on something else!

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

I am incredibly slow, at least at this point inmy life. There are poems in my book that I began writing in 2008. I’veexperienced the magic of a few poems flashing almost immediately into theirfinal shape but most of my poetry goes through draft after draft. In some casesall that remains of the initial composition is an image, a line or two, or evenjust the spark of it.

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

In YourNature is the first poetry book I’ve ever consciouslycrafted so it’s hard to say what my usual is. With this project, I found that Ihad a certain number of poems that just felt right together and then noticedgaps and possibilities in the space around them, which prompted me to work onspecific pieces for the book. But without that structure, a poem for metypically starts with some scrap I can’t get out of my head.

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

I like doing readings! They’ve become quitedifficult for me since I acquired Long Covid, as I get really bad shortness ofbreath in all kinds of circumstances but especially when speaking for longerthan about thirty seconds. I used to organize a reading series many years ago(with the wonderful Leah Horlick) so I find that kind of creative,community space rewarding and love connecting with people in that environment.But I have to be very judicious about when and what kinds of readings I can do(or even attend) now.

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

I’m interested in the same big questions I’vealways been interested in, which are all variations on what makes a lifemeaningful – how do we situate ourselves inside (or outside) of time, how do welive while also in relationship with death, how do we connect to a larger senseof spirit or story? With In Your Nature,I was also thinking through the question of the self and how the self retainsor alters its essence in periods of transformation. That sounds very lofty fora book about transmasculinity, werewolves, witches, and Christianity (etc.). Iam also interested in fun stuff.

7 – What do you see the current role of thewriter being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think therole of the writer should be?

I don’t know that there’s one, single role forthe writer in our larger culture, but perhaps many: to witness, to critique, toinform, to inspire, to incite, to entertain… Writing and thus writers can bemany different things. I love the medium of writing for how it can act as anasynchronous yet deeply connective experience – I live in disabled time now andhave to spend a lot of time alone. Sometimes, though not always, during thattime I’m fortunately able to read or listen to an audiobook. So much of theworld is open to me through reading and writing.

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

Absolutely essential! I was fortunate to workwith River Halenon my book and I’m immeasurably grateful for River’s guidance. It’s also justso nice to talk about the tiny things in your work – should I use this word orthat one? Should I cut the line here or there? – with someone else who’sinvested in those things. I think the only difficulty, with a good editor, isin being seen both in where you’re succeeding and where you’re falling short,and that’s ultimately a privilege and a benefit to the work, but it is veryvulnerable.

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

I remember my high school writing teacher Silviasharing some advice on poetry that I still use all the time. It was essentiallyabout looking for the door (which I remember now as being red, but I may haveadded that visual detail myself) in a poem – finding the line or image thatacts like a portal, going through that door, and then letting the actual poememerge from there, while also letting whatever scaffolding was holding up thatdoor fall away. I think most writers know that feeling intuitively – the placewhere a poem is beckoning. But I know for myself I cling to the initialscaffolding of how a piece started, so I have to consciously look for thosedoors in what I’m working on and allow them to open and – maybe the greaterchallenge – allow the rest to fall away. Silvia also shared the idea of keepinga document of all the amazing lines that get trimmed as part of this process,which makes cutting those lines a little easier. She always credited thewriters whose advice she was sharing but I can’t remember any of the originalsources now. But those are two pieces that have become a major part of mypractice.

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

I often write about the same things in differentgenres (or perhaps forms), so the appeal for me is in having a different anglefrom which to explore the same subject. I think prose nonfiction also can holdfactual information a bit more easily than poetry so I like that form forcertain topics.

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

I don’t have much of a routine for writing poetrybut I’ve always tended to write more in the evenings and can vanish into avortex when I’m writing and then emerge with the realization that I’ve missedmy bedtime and I’m going to be in trouble for the next day. Maybe that’s mywriting routine – messing up my other routines. I usually listen to some kindof basic pop music on repeat; if I actually want to listen to the music then Istop writing to listen, but I like having the background sound. That said, I’mstill trying to figure out what works best for me with the brain I have now, astoo much sensory stimulation can trigger really bad symptoms for me. I do havepretty good structure around reading still, and generally read some nonfictionwith breakfast, which seems like a good way to start my day.

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

I’ve been writing long enough that I trust theebbs and flows and I don’t worry about the stalls so much anymore. Writingalways returns to me, or I to it, perhaps. 

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Warm cedar trees, wet soil, blackberry pie,lilacs. The smell of granola baking – my mother made granola when I was growingup and I’ve used a variation of her recipe my whole adult life so home hasalways had a honeyed oats smell to me.

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

Definitely nature, music, history, theology,spirituality… Everything that I take an interest in influences my work. There’sa lot of (old) pop culture in my book. I like poetry as a way to be inconversation with the world both inside and around me.

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

So many! I’m very lucky to be friends andcolleagues with many generous, interesting, and talented writers. The writersthat I’ve spent the most literary time with lately are James Baldwin andSiegfried Sassoon, neither of whom are friends or colleagues except in my mind.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven'tyet done?

Every year (for the past twenty years…) I make aresolution to learn to drive… But I think I haven’t done that yet because Idon’t actually want to, though I do need to learn. The main thing I would liketo do with my life is to help sustain the living world for future generationsso perhaps failing to learn to drive is part of that initiative.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation toattempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would haveended up doing had you not been a writer?

I work as a librarian in a public library, whichis a great fit for me, though it took me a long time to figure out what I coulddo to pay my bills in a somewhat sustainable way. It’s been a huge relief totake the financial pressure off of my writing.

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

Aptitude and encouragement – I always knew Ineeded to create and to make art; I was very into visual arts, music, and dramaas a kid, but writing is the medium for which I think I have the most intuitivetalent and – therefore, perhaps – I received the most encouragement for it,which made me want to continue, to develop my craft, etc. Encouragement can goa long way.

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

Poetry:Consider the Rooster by Oliver Baez Bendorfand I Don’t Want to Be Understood by JoshuaJennifer Espinoza. Fiction: I’mstill totally stuck on Bellies by Nicola Dinan, Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, and The World and All That It Holds by AleksandarHemon, all of which I read last year. Nonfiction:Histories of the Transgender Child by JulesGill-Peterson. Memoir: Something, Not Nothing by Sarah Leavitt. Thereare lots more I could talk about. I love reading. Film: I watched the documentary NoOrdinary Man recently and it was profoundly moving and reallyinteresting. I’m also not over the impact All of Us Strangers had on me and willprobably watch it for a third time soon.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Nothing at the moment, to be honest. Now that Ihave to manage chronic illness, and particularly an energy-limiting condition,I’m always over capacity in my life and desperately trying to find places andactivities I can cut back. Between work, childcare responsibilities, managingmy illness, and having this book emerge into the world, I have neither the timenor the creative ability to envision something new. But I feel confident thatwill change with time and I’m really looking forward to returning to the quiet,private realm of writing. I wonder what’s waiting for me there.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;