Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 51

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Chas Halpern

Chas Halpern has made a living writing and directing marketing videos for global tech companies (including Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, and Intel). He’s known as a storyteller, with a specialty in humor. Chas is also a screenwriter. Awards include top honors at the international Script-to-Screen Festival. He wrote a PBS documentary, which was shown throughout the U.S. and internationally. And he has written for a Disney Channel series. His screenplay, “Positive” (a dramatic comedy) has been optioned and is still in development. The Physics of Relationships is his first novel.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first published novel, THE PHYSICS OF RELATIONSHIPS, changed my life in very concrete ways. I entered the world of book promotion. This required spending hours each week contacting online book influencers, working on Facebook ads, responding to interview requests, contacting media outlets…even recording a short reading for an NPR radio station. That kind of work is what it means to be a professional writer.

I suppose it also had an effect on me psychologically. I have been a professional writer for several decades. Having a novel published meant I could call myself an author, as opposed to the more generic term “writer”. Although I was always confident in my writing ability (perhaps too confident!), having a published book that has been praised by reviewers has increased my level of confidence. That is no small matter for a writer. I would venture to say that we writers are, generally speaking, insecure and in need of encouragement. Writing, after all, is a lonely, highly speculative endeavor. There are always questions lurking the shadows of our minds: Is this work worthwhile? Will it be appreciated? Am I worthy?

I am currently writing a new novel. It builds on my experience writing THE PHYSICS OF RELATIONSHIPS. I am using the technique of the first-person narrator, which worked well in PHYSICS. I still rely heavily on dialogue to reveal character and move the story along. However, I have made a conscious effort to work more on setting and description. I have learned that many readers want to know more about the characters’ environment. This includes all the senses –odors, touch, and feel, as well as a visual sense of place. As one of my editors put it, you don’t want to have “bodies floating in space.”

Has a greater sense of confidence affected my writing? Yes! My latest novel is truly an exploration. I launched into it without knowing exactly who the characters were, what they would discover, or what would eventually happen to them. Each day, I sit down at my computer and wonder whether the muses will continue to guide me.  I am truly feeling my way in the dark. I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do that earlier in my career. It’s exciting and daunting in equal measure.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I’ve always been a storyteller. Before turning to novels, I wrote marketing videos for global companies. My specialty was storytelling and humor.

Fiction has allowed me to explore deep questions. In THE PHYSICS OF RELATIONSHIPS, I explored the question of how you find meaning after the death of a long-term, loving spouse. I wondered what it would take to renew your spirit and reshape your life in a positive way.

In my speculative novel, HUMANS ANONYMOUS, I explored the question of what would happen to society in the near future when artificial intelligence begins to replace our jobs, even the jobs of professionals.

In my current novel, I’m exploring the question of how to react as an individual to a world that seems to be off-kilter…a world where progress is possible, but many forces are holding back that progress…a world that seems to be bending toward atomization and self-destruction.  

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?
Once my question starts obsessing me (see above), I simply launch into my writing. I tend to write quickly. I have yet to experience writer’s block.

Every time I sit down to write, I start by reviewing the previous chapter. So, I edit as I go along. Because of this, my drafts are often fairly close to the final version, at least on the line level. However, I do extensive editing after I complete my first draft. Sometimes that involves restructuring the novel. For example, THE PHYSICS OF RELATIONSHIPS began as a series of essay-like chapters recounting the life of a woman after the death of her elderly husband. I went back and took the most dramatic element of the novel and put that at the beginning of the story. The story, as a whole, became more plot-driven. Along the way, I had to kill some of my “babies”, chapters that no longer worked in the plot progression.

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?
I always sit down to write a whole novel in linear progression. Sometimes, as in the case of my current novel, I will play with that linear progression. My wife suggested I put my original Chapter 7 at the beginning of the novel, and then go back in time in the next chapter. I thought it was a crazy idea at first. But I tried it, and it worked wonderfully.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I don’t mind doing public readings. I am happy to share my stories with as many people as possible. A novel is a meaningless series of words until someone reads it.

I don’t crave public attention. I would venture to say that few writers do. However, I’m fairly used to being in front of people. In my career as a director, I would often be corralling a group of some twenty crew members, plus actors and extras. And I have had a side career as a voice artist. For me, speaking in public, performing the text, is not a problem.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I covered this somewhat in my answer to question number 2. I do start my writing with a question in mind. However, I do NOT expect to come up with answers. I don’t believe that literature is about answering questions. It is about exploring questions. Novelists, I believe, have a high tolerance for ambiguity. We can live with unanswered questions. We understand that differing opinions can all contain an element of truth. We are not crusaders. We are explorers of the human heart and all the mysteries that lie within.  

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I can’t speak for other writers. Sometimes writing can serve the simple, but noble, purpose of entertainment. An entertaining book can take us away from our personal problems and struggles. That kind of distraction gives us the respite our minds need occasionally.

Although I always keep the entertainment element in mind when I write, I hope to serve another purpose. Reading novels can increase our empathy and compassion for our fellow humans. If my novels can serve that role in society, I will be very pleased. Many of our current problems stem from a compassion deficit, particularly in some of our so-called leaders.  

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
For the most part, I have been very pleased with my experience working with outside editors. Whether one works with a professional editor or a trusted beta reader, it is extremely important to get feedback on one’s writing. It is the only way an author can compare their intention to the actual reaction of the reader.

All readers will have a subjective response, which varies from reader to reader. That is to be expected. Often, you can ignore the most subjective responses. For instance, many readers will tell you if they “like” a character or not. That response is often irrelevant. A good, nuanced character doesn’t have to be likable.

However, it is important for the reader to understand the more thematic elements. I had one reader complain that the main character in THE PHYSICS OF RELATIONSHIPS didn’t grieve enough, even though the story takes place a year after the death of her husband. This was a misreading of the story. It wasn’t my intention to write a grief novel. My intention was to write a novel of renewal after grief.

Professional editors can also misread your intentions. In that case, you need to initiate a dialogue with your editor. You need to explain your intentions clearly and ask your editor to help you achieve those intentions. This happened to me recently while working with an editor on my novel, A HANDFUL OF CLOUDS, a story about a divorced couple re-examining their relationship. The back and forth with my editor proved to be very helpful.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
The best way to deal with rejection is to keep writing.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (screenplays to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
After I wrote my very first novel (still unpublished), I sent it out to volunteer beta readers. One beta reader wrote back to me: “This isn’t a novel. It’s a screenplay.” I was crushed. But there was a hard truth in that comment. I hadn’t fully made the transition from scriptwriting to novel writing. My descriptions were too cursory. I relied almost entirely on dialogue to describe my characters. I needed to go deeper into their thoughts and feelings. I needed to expand my description of the world they inhabited. I have made an effort to write more like a novelist in my subsequent books. I’m still trying to improve. One is never finished learning how to be a better writer.

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 write in the morning for two to three hours, six days a week. I don’t have any goals. If I write 150 great words in a day, I’m satisfied. Usually, my daily output is around 500 words, occasionally 1,000 words. I tell myself, it doesn’t matter how many words I write on a particular day. It doesn’t matter if what I wrote is a work of genius or not. What matters is to write, to continue.

I think it is extremely important to write every day (or almost every day). That discipline allows your mind to be fully immersed in the world and the characters you are creating. And, just as importantly, writing regularly creates a kind of mental friction that causes your subconscious mind to continue working out your writing challenges while you’re not writing. Once the imagination machine is set in motion, it will work on its own while you’re walking, taking a shower, even sleeping.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
My characters inspire me. Once they take on a life of their own, my characters tell me where to go next. I think of writing as a combination of empathy and imagination. I empathize with my characters as they find themselves in a particular situation, and I imagine what their response will be.

I am lucky not to experience writer’s block. On the other hand, it can take me months before I find the subject matter of my next novel. I won’t begin writing until the idea sticks with me and truly crystallizes in my mind. Then I dive into that mysterious pool of water called novel writing and figure out how to swim. So, you could say the writer’s block works itself out before I start writing.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Hmmm. I would have to say the odor of sautéed onions reminds me of home. Is that a “fragrance”  - a pleasant, sweet smell? It is to 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?
There are many influences on my work besides other books. As far as style, I admire many writers. However, I have never been tempted to copy a particular style. I try to please myself first. That is my style guide.

In terms of subject matter, everything in my life influences me – my family, my friends, the news, travel, medical problems, TV shows, magazine articles, podcasts. Everything I have experienced goes into the mix. That is not to say that I write autobiographical novels (aka “auto-fiction”).  The plots of my novels derive entirely from my imagination. And the characters are fictional, although I borrow little bits and pieces from different persons I have known.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
When I read a good book, it expands my sense of humanity and it inspires me to continue writing. I’m not the type to pick favorites. I have admired writers ranging from Elizabeth Strout to Tobias Wolff to Sally Rooney, as well as classic authors like Jane Austen, Tolkien, Trollope, Henry James and many others. I also read journalistic work from authors like Michael Pollan and Naomi Klein. I recently read a history book, Jill Lepore’s These Truths. Whatever the book, I look for intelligence, perceptive observation of the human comedy, and a limpid, cogent style.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Nothing special. I don’t have a bucket list. I spend a lot of my time (probably too much) inside of my head.   

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?
My mother thought I would be a good lawyer. She was probably right, although I was never drawn to that profession. People have told me I’m a good listener and would make a good therapist. I’m not sure, however, that I could absorb people’s emotional pain on a daily basis. It might be overwhelming, even if I was helping my clients. I’m doing what I want to do. So, I don’t have a strong desire to try anything else.  

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
That’s a deep psychological question. I’m not sure I have an answer. I was extremely shy as a child. I had a lot of bottled up emotions without any encouragement or outlet to express them. Writing, perhaps, is a way of reclaiming my voice. It’s a way of sharing my true, inner self with the world. I might be looking for that shy, little boy to be validated.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The most recent book that impressed me was Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kittredge. She has a way of expressing deep emotion, deep loneliness, without ever spelling it out. I’d love to learn her secret.

For the last great film, I’d have to go back to the Dardenne brothers’ Deux Jours, Une Nuit. It was a simple story with a universal message about compassion, brotherhood, and humanity.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m about 23,000 words into a new novel, tentatively titled PERPETUAL FLINCH. It’s about a middle-aged woman, Jacqui, who is concerned about her seventy-six-year-old father. He has moved to a rural area and is living a lonely, self-abnegating life with three dogs. Her father’s unusual behavior raises many questions in Jacqui’s mind. Is he truly happy? Has he found a kind of peace in his old age? Or is he simply delusional? Or worse, suffering from dementia?  Jacqui sets out to find out the truth about her father’s decision to live like a monk…and to help bring him back to “life.” It’s a kind of psychological mystery.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Azad Ashim Sharma, Boiled Owls

 

HER POEM

A new attitude that won’tkiss
    damage to our constitutions.

I cheated on you with asubstance
    that difficult hymn.

You are tired of hearingapologies
    this amends is living

in my abdomen
    tense with the past’s sun.

After patience wears downto heal
    with pearled relation

there is forgiveness
    in our romantic comedy

away in a silent songyour smile
    a big screen.

In the morning I fall inlove
    with you again    you are again

I wake up to yourmoonflower face
    held slow for two green hummingbirds.

FromSouth London writer and publisher Azad Ashim Sharma comes the poetry collection Boiled Owls (New York NY: Nightboat Books, 2024), following Againstthe Frame (Barque Press, 2017; Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and Ergastulum:Vignettes of Lost Time (Broken Sleep Books, 2022). Boiled Owls is acollection around sobriety, addition and depression across a graceful, incrediblypowerful and vibrant lyric, as the poem “RHYTHM ANALYSIS FOR A TIRED HEART”opens: “Unwashed it pounds / into breathalysed marrow    after a spree / loved ones        radical feminists / are made intodetectives    my pupils dilate / upliftwears itself into descent / embeds with the force      of a concrete duvet [.]” There’s such aevocative way that Sharma’s lyrics provide such rhythmic sweeps and expansivegestures, seeking wisdom through expression and full attention. “You held me / lazyat the low end of beautiful,” he writes, as part of the poem “XENOBIA,” “anddesire peeled over estimation. / It will reproduce itself / as necessity, /irrespective of how I smell just after rain.”

Thepoems are both stark and rich, offering rare insight through the lyric fromwithin that dark space of addition. Through writing, he works his way throughit. “I can communicate today and deep the pain / without a blind code,” hewrites, as part of the poem “PLANETARY DEATH IS A / HOPELESS DRUG ADDICT,” “scabrousor rusticated. / You need to know how much I resent the world // for its beautyis right at my throat burning / away my tobacco skin.” Forcefully lyric, Sharmawrites of the losses he’s endured that could so easily continue, from thatrazor’s edge against the possibility of being completely overwhelmed. “What canI do when I encounter another person,” he writes, to open the poem “TAKING AWALK,” “except to yearn for all of our lost connections? // I felt nothing fora decade—only extremities // or a semiotics presmised on exchanging value // allaround the roads gladdened by nostalgic ire.” This is composed not simply as abook of addiction, recovery or endurance but as a book of resistance, offeringa lyric examination of the space within what is so often misunderstood, orwilfully mischaracterized. The expansive and devastating essay-poem that closesthe collection, “[NARCOPOETICS],” lays bare a lyric first-person straightforwardnessthat almost belies its own heft, anchoring a collection already able to findclarity from within the ongoing uncertainty, incoherence and chaos of addition.“Cocaine is nothing like height it's falling; falling into a deep air hunger.” hewrites. As the piece continues, further:

Endurance can mean mycapacity to endure drug use, to put my body through lines that, when totalledup, would go on for miles and miles.

I would often, when high,go out for a cigarette and end up smoking two or three in a row.

I imagined addiction asthis never-ending cigarette.

A cigarette you couldn’t stopsmoking.

Addiction as endurance,then, impacts the very conception of time; a time that is lived withoutmovement.

I was suspended in time, buoyant,jubilant, quickly floating with anhedonia, vomit, blood.

Denise Riley describedthe death of her son in Time Lived, Without Its Flow: ‘You live inside agreat circle with no rim’.

I was living a linewithout end; a morning after that had no hope of reaching midday; enduring timein the duress of a continuous present; making the same choices hoping for adifferent outcome.

In medias relapse means Iam relapsing.

Ben Robinson, The Book of Benjamin

My review of Hamilton poet Ben Robinson's The Book of Benjamin (Palimpsest Press, 2024), is now online at Chris Banks' The Woo dlot .

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Kevin Prufer

Kevin Prufer's newest poetry collection is The Fear (Copper Canyon Press in 2023). Hisnew novel,  Sleepaway is out in 2024 from Acre Books. He is also the author of several other books ofpoetry, including  The Art of Fiction (2021), How He Loved Them (2018), Churches  (2014), In a Beautiful Country  (2011),and National Anthem  (2008),all from Four Way Books.

He's edited several volumes of poetry, including NewEuropean Poets (Graywolf Press, 2008; w/ Wayne Miller), Literary Publishing in the 21st Century (MilkweedEditions, 2016; w/ Wayne Miller & Travis Kurowski), and IntoEnglish: Poems, Translations, Commentaries (GraywolfPress, 2017; w/ Martha Collins).  

With Wayne Miller and Martin Rock, Pruferdirects the Unsung Masters Series, a book series devoted to bringing the workof great but little known authors to new generations of readers through theannual republication of a large body of each author's work, printed alongsideessays, photographs, and ephemera.  

 

Prufer is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at theUniversity of Houston and the low-residency MFA at Lesley University.

Among Prufer's awards and honors are manyPushcart prizes and Best American Poetry selections,numerous awards from the Poetry Society of America, and fellowships from theNational Endowment for the Arts and the Lannan Foundation.  His poetrycollection How He Loved Them waslong-listed for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the Julie Suk Award forthe best poetry book of 2018 from the American literary press.

Born in 1969 in Cleveland, Ohio, Kevin Pruferstudied at Wesleyan University (BA), Hollins College (MA) and WashingtonUniversity (MFA).

1 - How did your firstbook change your life?

My first book came outwhen I was still in my mid-20s.  It wasaccepted for publication before I defended it as an MFA thesis. I was certainlynot ready to have a book out and it did not do well in the world.  It got one entirely negative (even nasty)review in a major literary quarterly, and then it vanished. Still, I had a bookout from a reputable publisher, so I felt pretty good about it at the time.

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

I always likedpoetry.  I had to memorize it at my toneyboarding school and I came to love the cadences of Eliot and Frost andDickinson, even though I didn’t necessarily understand the poems all thatcompletely.  In college, at WesleyanUniversity, I took no poetry classes, but I wrote poems and edited theundergraduate literary magazine.  Oneday, I sent a single poem out to a magazine I’d found on the shelf of a localbookstore and—in retrospect, amazingly—they took it.  Somewhere in the middle of all that, I becamecommitted to poetry in a lifelong sort of way.

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

I’m pretty fast.  I get an idea and run with it as far as Ican.  More often than not, though, I endup dropping it and going with something else, running with that, instead, andusually dropping it.  But for individualpieces that do make it into books: the first drafting process is fast.  Then I revise a lot.  I don’t take notes.  I do read a lot, though. 

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

I’m usually not working ona book—not when I’m writing poems.  Ijust get to a point where a book seems inevitable.  It is not a fraught process for me.  I gather the poems into a manuscript.  I think about how they are in conversationwith each other and I try to make that conversation interesting.  That is all. The difficult part is always writing the poems. My novel, Sleepaway,however, was always going to be a book.

5 - Are public readingspart of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer whoenjoys doing readings?

I am ambivalent aboutreadings.  I do a lot of them and I’vehad a lot of practice.  Because of this,I know how to read poems out loud.  (Ittakes practice, truly. And sometimes coaching from more experienced friends.) ButI often leave readings exhausted and nervous and wanting, more than anything, adrink or three.  Alone.  But that’s just my own nonsense.   I think a poetry reading is a good way toencounter poems which are (or ought to be) experiences of both music andlanguage.   These days, I’m reading frommy novel.  I’m still learning how to dothat, though.  It requires a slightlydifferent set of skills.

6 - Do you have any theoreticalconcerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answerwith your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

I’m not sure what thecurrent questions are and, if I were sure, I would probably try to avoidthem.  I am interested in the way timepasses and in the ways writers control the passage of time.  I’m also interested in history, the wayhistory lives inside our senses of who we are and inside our language.  And I’m interested in the inevitability ofdecline—social, historical, personal, mortal—and how that inevitability shapesour art and selves.  I guess these areeternal questions.

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

I used to admire theVictorian idea of a writer as someone who thinks carefully about ethics andvalues and communicates those careful thoughts to readers who need to hearthem.  Now I think that the role ofwriters is to participate in a larger, multidimensional conversation ofliterature and art.  All of us, writers,artists, or not, get to listen in on that conversation, which is vast,polyvalent, and multiply simultaneous, and, in doing so, learn about who wehave been, who we are, and who we might become.

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

Depends very much on theeditor.  I’ve had many, most of themquite good.  My current editors, atCopper Canyon Press and Acre Books, are extraordinarily good.  And when I get good editorial advice about mywriting, it is never difficult to take it. It usually feels, instead, essential and inspiring.

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

For writers?  It is this: “If you are chicken-shit all by yourself in front of your own computerwhile you are writing a poem or a story or an essay … then when aren’t youchicken-shit?”  I know that’s more of aquestion than a piece of advice, but it was given to me by a writer I admirewhen I was rewriting the same kind of poem over and over again.  I needed to be a little bit braver and trythings I was uncomfortable with – there, in front of my computer, alone, with aglass of wine, at night.

10 - How easy has it beenfor you to move between genres (poetry to fiction)? What do you see as theappeal?

It has been easy.  I love both genres and am curious about thetools available to me in each.  They aredifferent, certainly.  The tool of thepoetic line is formidable and many-bladed and it is hard, sometimes, to workwithout it.  But I’ve found that theparagraph has its own excitement and velocity.

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

I write late at nightonly. With a glass of wine and music.

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

I read books.  Lots of them. I am always reading a book or two. But, unlike most my friends who aren’t writers, I read like awriter.  That is, I ask, “why did theauthor choose to do it this way? Why not that way?  What’s governing the odd choice of tense here?  Or the shift in point of view?”   Those kinds of questions are important to mebecause they give me ideas for my own writing (and help me understand otherwriters’ choices).  I can see how theymight interfere with my enjoyment of some books, though.

13 - What fragrancereminds you of home?

4711.  A cologne from Cologne.

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

Mostly books, yes.  I always have music playing while I write, soin a vague way, music.  And, of course,my own experience as a living person. That’s probably the biggest thing. Still, I can’t overestimate the writing of other people as formative.

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

In prose, Emily St. JohnMandell’s Station Eleven.  And allof Willa Cather.  And everything by Henry James.  Flannery O’Connor.  And Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands.  In poetry, Keats.  Eliot. Delmore Schwartz.  Catullus.  Russell Atkins.  Laura Jensen.   I could go on and on. Truly, I am a uselessmachine that reads.  Those are a few, offthe top of my head.

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

I would like to finish thenovel I am writing now.  And I would loveto go to Sicily, to visit the Classical and pre-Classical sites there, sitesI’ve read all about for years.  I wouldalso like to be able to go back in time. I’d travel way back to the 4th or 3rd centuries inWestern Europe—maybe Ravenna or Trier—and try to understand what it was like tobe alive then. 

17 - If you could pick anyother occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do youthink you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I worked in the news for awhile, for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. But I didn’t like it much.  I wasgoing to teach high school and then I was going to get a PhD in comparativeliteratures (German, French, English).  I’mglad I didn’t do any of those.  I’m veryhappy being a writer and also working with talented younger writers as theylearn who they are and how to write through that.

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

It was inevitable.  I’ve always written.   There wasn’t something else.  I remember showing my third grade teacher mystory about a penguin.  “I didn’t copythis,” I told her. “I wrote it myself.” I didn’t say this because I was insecure.  I said it because I knew my story was sogreat that she would think a professional, famous writer had written it if Ididn’t inform her otherwise.  Probably awriter who had won many major prizes.

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

Black Earth by Timothy Snyder was the last truly great book I’ve read.  It terrified me.  Strangely, the last great film I’ve seen wason the same subject. Zone of Interest.

20 - What are youcurrently working on?

I’m editing a book ofpoems by authors you’ve never heard of (but should have heard of) for WesleyanUniversity Press.  I imagine it will bean alternate (or antidote) to the familiar Norton anthologies.  I’m doing this with a couple friends, Martin Rock and Adrienne Perry, both excellent editors and writers.  And I’m writing another novel.  And I’ve got a new book of poems mostly done,too.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

 

Jennifer Spector, Hithe

 

Of howelements canopy
                    Plum rose andginger, cashew, prestonia,
The corotú parasoledharbour and shade
                       & setchellin burrows of grazing
Batten, trumeau, gable                leg and hand
Housed in a wind-shelledpharos

 

One bird scoring an ariaas we collect our tea
          Bristles silveron the soft
Shake of tail                 aligns with moon-burned tide

                                    It is the first morning of time
                            Andthe morning today (“A SAIL HORSE”)

Thanksto rural Ottawa poet Chris Turnbull, I was recently introduced to the work of Jennifer Spector, an American poet from New York currently living and working in Panama,specifically through her poetry title Hithe (Connemara, Ireland: XylemBooks, 2021). There is such stretch to these lyrics, such delicate placementand rhythm across incredible distances through phrases set carefully. Her poemsare composed out of lines and phrases that accumulate, not carved but placed orassembled, set carefully one on top of another. “know / the cold / how it ripsyour skirt / dances the grave / shuttles its many nests,” she writes, to closethe three-part, four-page lyric “SAND HWYL,” “this breath / did you suspect /flush scooped / of own dark weep?” The author biography on Spector’s websitewrites that her work “embraces a poetics of place and dialogue with the naturalworld, as it alters, translates, or abstracts in retrieval.” Certainly, thisself-description of her work not only connects deeply to the self-descriptionof the publisher’s interests and aesthetics, but to Chris Turnbull’s ongoingprojects as well (and I half wonder if Turnbull might emerge with a titlethrough Xylem Books at some point). “blade with me in low / grasses,” shewrites, to open the three-page poem “MIGRATIONS,” “stay quiet     the pirate / birds and saltarines deepbuilding rough nests / spindle the trees // let us lay to ground      or / island for weeks / to roost on dry cliffs[.]” Or, as the following page begins:

   follow me   sleep near quiet water
trail our carrion at thesound       swimming
                iguanas       headed to islands will walk
        across land
    clutches of thirty
share nests alongmangroves and rivers
     even the crocodiles   emerge at night, stalking
swamp brakes

There’san enormous amount of physical and conceptual space between Spector’s phrasesand lines, so clearly and deliberately set. There is a thickness of descriptionmanaged without a single wasted or extraneous word, with echoes of Lorine Niedecker in tone combined with Phil Hall’s bricolage and condensed language,brought into a deeper and more refined sharpness; or imagine, if the late Nelson Ball composed sequences with longer threads, and a bit more lyric. Deeplyphysical in short and sharp detail, this is an absolute beauty of a collection,one deeply attuned to attending the glossary of landscape. I am delighted to gothrough this.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Hamish Ballantyne

Hamish Ballantyne is a poet and translator based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ peoples (Vancouver, Canada). He works in the Downtown Eastside and as a commercial mushroom picker. He has published two chapbooks, Imitation Crab (Knife/Fork/Book, 2020) and Blue Knight (Auric Press, 2022) and published his first full-length Tomorrow is a Holiday (New Star) in 2024.

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?
The first chapbook came out in early 2020 and flew under the radar. My most recent work is more deliberate, for better or for worse.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I came to fiction and non-fiction before poetry—I wrote a lot of stories growing up. I also wrote non-fiction after a fashion—I used to write small books about animals, the weather, natural history that were 100% made-up. I only came to poetry in my teens, through my friends.
 
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
It takes a long time to get going, a lot of attempts circling around the same idea, sound, word. Once I crack something, develop an unexpected phrase, then I can get to cruising where a lot of writing happens very quickly. Then the editing again is a slow process, trimming things and developing threads between different poems.

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 think more and more I find myself working on a book from the very beginning. I have a lot of ideas for books, execution is harder.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
No I'm not, but it's getting easier. I do spend a lot of time thinking about how the poem sounds out loud, it's just that I don't think I'm the best reader. I'm working on that too.

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?
Yeah I think I do but I don't know if I can phrase them adequately outside of my writing. For one thing, I'm invested in the unscalability of poetry—the impossibility of extracting meanings from the full density of the text as it's written or read aloud. Poetry has an inbuilt resistance to the frictionless translatability demanded by late capital, and as such has huge potential to safeguard threatened histories, lifeways, idioms, sounds.

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?
There's clearly a lot of anxiety in Western liberal democracies right now about the role of the writer in culture, and I think it has a lot to do with the hunch that no one reads anymore, with a liberal insistence that the crises of late capitalism are actually a result of people failing to communicate properly and we need to bridge dialogue in our polarized societies etc. I've seen a few too many thinkpieces about empathy—I'm suspicious of those.  

I don't see any sort of privileged role for writers in the larger culture, but I think literary writing is important. Documenting histories, imagining futures and alternative presents, transgressing the boundaries of language etc. I am less concerned about the role of the writer and more about the role of writing in the culture—because as worried as people are about the crumbling institutions of literature, about changing modes of reception, about shrinking readership, writing—the inscription of language—remains dynamic and participatory.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I like it! I haven't been to a writing workshop or class since high school, so working with Rob Manery on my most recent book was a nice/new experience.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
One time we were driving down a logging road and a big rig came flying around the corner and my friend went halfway off a cliff trying to avoid getting hit. His van was kind of teetering there for a minute but the trucker hopped out, got some chains, and dragged it back on the road. The trucker (Walter) thought the whole thing was pretty funny and just said "keep 'er between the ditches" before he blasted off again. Good advice. But maybe the chestnut there is that if you almost kill someone you should at least drag them out of the ditch with chains.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to translation)? What do you see as the appeal?
The two have a very close relationship for me. Translation is generative, it allows me to play and experiment more freely, because there's material there to work with, there are some parameters. The nothing of the white page can be pretty restrictive, I get stuck with what's easy for me. So in times where I'm not writing much or I don't have much going on in my head I'll turn to translation for a while to get the wheels turning.

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 try to read before work every day, to make sure that I do something on a workday that isn't just work. Then I try to carry my notebook with me everywhere I go so I can write on the bus or when I'm walking around. Essentially I try to absorb as much as I can, from as many sources as possible—and eventually something in the confluence of film-music-poetry-natural history-history-philosophy-novels-newspapers will congeal into a thought, and once I have about four or five thoughts that have been sitting in my notebook for a while the writing will start to take shape in my head as I walk around.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Writing that's familiar, people like Peter Culley, Philip Whalen, Hoa Nguyen, Roberto Bolaño. But also I turn to a less exacting form of reading, skimming big books I have lying around. And music, and movies: , Lucrecia Martel, . Recently I had a long day of no writing and watched a ten-minute documentary about a family in Louisiana that poaches rabbits as they get flushed out of the corn by the big agribusiness threshers. That opened the floodgates.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Creosote! Docks! Low tide!

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 think David W. McFadden is drawing a distinction between literature and life which we must strive to destroy at every instant!

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
The writing of Michael Cavuto, Fan Wu, Tessa Bolsover, Tara Bigdeli, Cecily Nicholson, Dale Smith, Aime Cesaire, Cesar Vallejo, Fred Wah. Michael Taussig, Clarice Lispector, Gogol, Sergio Pitol.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Go to the Brooks Peninsula.

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 love to work on an oyster farm.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I always just liked the idea of stacking a bunch of papers I wrote on.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The Secret Ladder by Wilson Harris. Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzog.

20 - What are you currently working on?
A book of poems about the speed of sound and gambling.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Garin Cycholl, ) prairie d

I’mintrigued by this new collection, the first I’ve seen, by Chicago poet Garin Cycholl,a collection the title of which is structured as

           )
prairie
            d

andproduced in 2024 through Buffalo publisher BlazeVOX. According to Cycholl’sauthor biography, “prairie)d is the last volume among his Illinoispoems, which include Blue Mound to 161 , Hostile Witness , and The Bonegatherer . Together as ‘local epic,’ these book-length poems play with aspectsof memory, myth, and place.” I’m fascinated by the suggestion of this quartet-suiteof collections that collect into a single project. The multiple-book lengthpoetry structure is something that doesn’t often occur often throughoutcontemporary poetry, although one could point to bpNichol’s The Martyrology,Robert Kroetsch’s “Field Notes,” Dennis Cooley’s “Love in a Dry Land” [see my review of one of such here], ErínMoure’s trilogy around the citizen [see my review of the third in this trio here], Steven Ross Smith’s fluttertongue, Bruce Whiteman’s TheInvisible World Is in Decline, or Craig Santos Perez’s ongoing “from unincorporated territory” project [see my review of the fifth collection in this sequence here]. Some ideas are too big to contain, one might say, within the bounds of asingle volume, and present themselves as not simply “a body of ongoing work”but a project across multiple books.

Throughmy own reading, I can see physical and structural elements in Cycholl’s prairie)dof that ‘prairie vernacular’ of Winnipeg poet Dennis Cooley (interesting, also,that Cooley provided a blurb for the back cover) [see my review of Cooley’s latest here], but one composed across a straighter line; or even echoes ofAndrew Suknaski, Sid Marty or Barry McKinnon’s classic I Wanted To SaySomething (1975), unaware as I am of those American counterparts of thesame period that could have provided (for as much as I’m aware) a more directinfluence upon this project (or simply Cycholl’s work more broadly). There isan opening of the field to these poems, one anchored in those early prairieexplorations of lyric examination across the long poem, providing a narrativefragmentation but relative straightforward earnestness. The poems exist asgestures across the expanse of white, exploring the landscape of the American Midwest.“American runs as the / creek does—a ditch / into a wide, muddy / spot justwest of town,” he writes, as part of the poem “Oblivion).” Throughout, Cycholl writeson Robert Frost and Michigan’s edge, the Environmental Protection Agency andthe Mississippi basin, American biologist Tyrone B. Hayes and hip waders, offeringa walk through storytelling that runs into a gallop, writing descriptive lines thatrun endless across the horizon. “my memory / in these frogs— / the sour, milky /chemicalspas- / sing thru them / and the waters / passing thru me,” he writes, furtheron in the same poem, “(if every prairie is a return [.]” While one mightthink it is hard to see the forest for the trees, this fourth in a quartetexists as an intriguing stand-alone, clearly a love song to a landscape andgeography, writing across its gains and losses, failures and potential lossesto come through environmental and climate crises. “I sing to you from the exileof waters,” the poem “Zeke’s song” begins, “this city, Old Earth’s vengeancefor Eden; / what this place was originally, and still is, / northern[.]” Or, as the opening stretch, titled “PRAIRIE,” that begins:

(my body)

is a

journey a couple of

strings
plucked

            from here

I is the poet ofthe plain;
the poet of standingwaters,
of lungs gone to seed, of
ancient seepage

but as the song gets
closer to me, it
loses place

                        prairie
collapses under the eye’s
weight into a fistful of
smokestacks, a waterless
tower, five drums tagged
SIMPLE HAZARD—

 

Simina Banu, I Will Get Up Off Of

 

this monobloc but I fear Iam becoming experimental with my attempts. Last night I tried to hoist myselfup by gripping onto bananas taped all over the walls. They couldn’t bear theweight of something: me? Sometimes the tape would peel the paint right off thewall, revealing a horrifying yellow undercoat, and aother times the bananawould just split, leaving me banana-handed but utterly seated.

Thesecond full-length collection by Montreal poet Simina Banu, following POP (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2020) [see my review of such here], is I Will Get Up Off Of (Coach House Books, 2024), a book-length suite akin to a deckof cards, working through layers of depression, regression and response. As theback cover writes: “How does anyone leave a chair? There are so many musclesinvolved – so many tarot cards, coats, meds, McNuggets, and memes. In thisbook, poems are attempts and failures at movement as the speaker navigates heranxiety and depression in whatever way she can, looking for hope from socialworkers on Zoom, wellness influencers, and psychics alike. Eventually, thepoems explode in frustration, splintering into various art forms as attempts atexpression become more and more desperate.” From the cluster of lyricexplorations of her full-length debut, Banu shifts into a structure of proselyrics that cohere into a book-length structure, the first page of which openswith a single fragment—“I will get up off of”—before the following pagefurthers that thought, leaving the space where the prior page, that priorphrase, had left off:

                              this monobloc butI’ve been sentenced and now I am running through a field of memes. I treadsoftly, and they bite at my feet, relatably, godless. The memes are mycompanions, and I want to tell them how I’ve felt these days, because the memeswill understand. They’ve been here too. They’ve felt like this, just like this.I know because they talk about their psychotherapists and their debts and theirSSRIs and their exes and their microwaves and their possums. I trip. The memesencircle me, mouths agape like baby birds, and I feed them flesh from my eyes,and I feel loved.

Composedin a sequence of prose blocks, there is something less of the prose poem to thisstretch of pieces than a poetry book’s-worth of prose extensions across thelyric sentence, each broken up into blocks, each returning to that same GroundhogDay moment. “this monobloc but Goya’s dog drowned in mud.” she writes, afew pages in. “It’s true the dog gazed upward, but she was looking at mud, andguess what, the mud wasn’t looking at her. If we want to be accurate, she waslooking at oil, she was oil, and everyone was plastered. Me too, over and overand over: the oil fills my stomach, and the mud fills me.” There is somethingcompelling in how Banu rhythmically returns each lyric opening to “thismonobloc,” offering book title as the presumed opening phrase of each poem, perpetuallyreturning to the beginning, to begin again, offering a tethered andunsettlingly stressed variation on Robert Kroetsch’s structure of composing thelong poem; by continually returning to the beginning, one can keep goingindefinitely, after all. And yet, Banu’s seemingly-unbreakable narrative tetheris entirely the crux of the problem her narrator wishes to address, reducingthe complexities of depression and anxiety down to the simplest, anddeceptively so, of questions, asking: How does one get up from a chair?

Domenica Martinello, Good Want

My review of Montreal poet Domenica Martinello's second full-length poetry title, Good Want (Coach House Books, 2024), is now online at Chris Banks' The Woodlot. See my review of her debut, All Day I Dream About Sirens (Coach House Books, 2019), here.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Concetta Principe

Concetta Principe is a writer of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction, as well as scholarship on trauma and literature, living with a disability. Her current poetry collection, Disorder , is coming out with Gordon Hill Press in the spring of 2024. Her most recent creative non-fiction project, Discipline N. V: A Lyric Memoir , was published by Palimpsest Press in 2023. Her poetry collection, This Real was longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award in 2017 and her first book of poetry, Interference won the Bressani Award for poetry, 2000. She edited a special issue “Lacan Now” for English Studies in Canada. She teaches at Trent university.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Interestingly enough, it was my second book, a collection of prose poems, that changed my life. For one, there was no dread in creating a 'second book" since I'd already had it drafted when my first book, a novella, came out. More than that, the poetry project actually outshone the first book, winning an award for best poetry.

Writing the novella changed my life because the experience of finishing a book length project was harrowing. I was writing it for my final MA project. I had an on-going conflict with my first mentor which involved me second guessing every move. A second mentor came to rescue me and helped me complete the draft to finish my degree. But overall, the drafting of this book was not enjoyable creatively: not the first draft nor subsequent drafts of which there were several. But in the process of writing, I came to see the value of being committed to the craft. I had some brilliant moments, some revelations, some creative break throughs, which kept me going. And when the fiction was getting me down, I'd write poetry. So I would unstick myself from creative blocks by toggling between genres. The poetry I wrote during the writing of the novella became my second book.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Thinking back to my first writing experiences, I wrote in all genres, but ended up writing prose poems for the most part, inspired by Stein's Tender Buttons. I first discovered her at the age of 10. The reason that i end up writing prose poems is because I have a storytelling drive in me. The emotional spark of the poem needs context. I find it hard to create context in the short space that most line poetry requires. And the rhythms of prose poems are just more my style, my internal voice. In fact, I was thinking yesterday that my poetry reflects a kind of inner voice that needs time to complete. if that voice isn't taking time to reflect the thoughts clustering as they do, and there are times when the voice isn't talking, i just don't write.
 
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'm a messy writer. Copious notes, you could say. I never like my first draft. I look at my first drafts of anything and find them derivative, boring, not interesting to me. So, if a poem is boring, I abandon it for something else. But when something i need to say grips me i don't stop until I have a draft that expresses what I mean. But even then, I may not be happy with what I've got. For example, I'm writing poems right now about the war in Gaza (which is not a war). I don't know what to feel about the poems. I read them and know they are unfinished and possibly just not appropriate (who am I to write about this event?) And so the project has a 'body' but I don't think has shape. I have lots of these poems that are connected but ultimately, not ready for an audience. Basically, the project is a mess.

But my process is also messy because I don't know what I mean to say when i start to write. The draft comes out and it's not hanging well, and I push and pull at it to make it hang. And even after I've got it hanging, I realize it has no life. So how do I breathe life into it? So I fiddle until it feels like it's working. Or abandon it. I abandon things a lot and then come back to them. Or they return to me.

Starting a project is usually inspired by word associations. A poetic conceit. Disorder, for example, came into shape  after being diagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). I saw that the poems articulate what I experience living with BPD which is a trouble with borders, an obsession with order, and a tendency for chaos, or paranoia.  

Projects just happen. Sometimes projects take a long time to take on the final shape, and sometimes they're just there. Then again, to be fair, when the project comes into shape as just there, it's usually after i've been stumbling around in the bushes for a long time. In fact, one project that came together just like that actually is littered with bits of content I'd been writing thirty years before. Literally those lines stuck with me for thirty years until they found a place to 'settle'. But even that project isn't finished or it's not something for an audience yet. Still working on it.

4 - Where does a poem or work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I combine pieces. I don't have the vision of a book until I can feel the pieces have a large meaning. I also find that I rarely am satisfied with one poem. I start a poem, a prose poem, and when the dust settles, another piece follows and after a while a third and fourth. So a single poem can have many pieces. The serial poem is my style. Or the long poem. There are several examples of these in Disorder and in Discipline N.V.. On the other hand, an essay may demand more essays. I wrote a group of essays on the topic of suicide, for example. I'd say that I had a few essays on suicide before I had a vision of 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'm the sort of writer whose anxiety makes readings a nightmare. I mean I can do them now, when at one time, I could barely complete my reading without fainting. My stress level was so high and I was so 'on stage' in the experience that I was barely breathing. Now, after having taught for several years, i can breathe in front of people when on stage, but that's about as much as I can do. if I make a joke that's total victory. Because I can't do banter, because I'm so shy I rarely feel relaxed enough to give context for a given poem. That means I need to shape my readings around the script of my poem/prose delivery. I work hard on delivery. But I hate the experience of having to perform.
 
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?
See #7

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?
When I was a kid making art, I wrote little plays and poems and I painted. I wrote and I created material objects out of clay and paper and fabric and wood. And then one day I knew I needed to choose one or the other art form and I chose writing. I chose writing because I wanted to express the truth. I'm not even sure what I meant by that at the time but today I see that the writer speaks the truth of their zeitgeist.

I see the writer as participating in addressing contemporary ethical concerns, or engaging in social justice. I see that happening in the writing community with writers speaking from their position as LGBTQ2S+, or BIPOC, or their disability. So I make my contribution as a white settler women living with a disability. What I worry about is that this specialization of our 'truths' may mean that we can't speak on topics not directly related to our position. I'm going to harp back to the issues raised by my writing about the war in Gaza. What right do I have to write about it? That leaves me speechless. But I am full of speech when it comes to what is happening in Gaza. But what is my ethical position to that event as a writer with all the privilege to be well fed, and not worry about where I'm living, but being neither Palestinian and nor Jewish? I'm not saying these things to apologize but to try and sort out why I am having trouble with writing about a contemporary crisis about which most of us have a position and about which I am compelled to write.

This dilemma I think is part of the role of the writer in culture: does the writer have a right because the writer writes? We all want to know what Zizek has to say about what's happening in Gaza, and he's got all the privilege possible. He's a writer and a thinker and that gives him the right. Does he have the right? And the answer seems to be, yes. So why do I think I don't have the right?

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
For the longest time, I wrote alone because no one got what I was doing.  It meant that I was always struggling to figure out how to make my work stronger and better for publication on my own. I mean being rejected so much did a number on me and left me feeling completely inadequate. So I created my own voice, or form, I think. Or maybe I didn't. In any case, it has only been in the last 10 years of writing that I've had good experience with editors work with me in my writing. I'm not counting the experience of my MA which is years ago, because those editors weren't working with me for publication.  

I don't know if working with an editor is essential, since I worked without for so long. But i would say that having a trusting relationship with an editor is essential. Building that trust, using my experience with Shane Neilson and Jim Johnstone as most recent examples, has been productive and so fulfilling. I also want to acknowledge the great trust I had working with John Barton and Jason Camlot.

I'd say that difficult is there if we consider trust being something that has to be be built. Building anything valuable is difficult. Writing poetry is, fundamentally, difficult. And that doesn't stop us from doing it.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Never give up. A 'no' in the publishing industry is a qualified 'no'. Losing in a grants competition is a qualified 'no'. Keep working at what you're doing and eventually an audience will form around you. I mean, when you ask yourself: should I give up? A voice in you will tell you: don't give up.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to short fiction to creative non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
In one way I would say it's been quite easy since I write a hybrid form to begin with. Moving between poetry and non-fiction is enjoyable for me because I can test the limits of each genre. So while I can move between genres, I find that a project asks for a certain form, even if it started in the opposite genre.

For example, i was writing prose poems on suicide but then realized there was far far too much to say than a poem could handle. So I started writing essays, lyric essays, and the form stuck for this project now published as Stars Need Counting: Essays on Suicide . The Disorder project was a collection of poems that wanted to be defined, so I wrote a lyric essay to end the book. The lyric element of this project introduced a facet to the topic that the line poems could not have done which led me to realize that some projects want to be expressed in several forms.

So for me, going between genres is enjoyable and I advise everyone to do it. The other thing I'd say about moving between genres is that this movement can unstick writer's block. I discovered this way back during my MA when I was struggling so much with my fiction project. Poetry saved me. I'd say that is appealing, to save oneself from writer's block.

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 write when the impulse grips me. I write something every day, if only a journal entry. But I don't write the 1000 a day that Stephen King advises. And maybe that is working against me. But then again, i don't write novels. But when I write long projects, sometimes everything I write is for that project and I can write (and revise) daily. It depends. Right now I'd say I'm between projects. So I'm not writing daily. And working means that I don't have the time to work on my creative work.  

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I read novels and poetry and some non-fiction. Right now I'm reading non-fiction by people living with BPD. I watch films (on Netflix usually). I'm watching Baby Reindeer , which is a bizarre British series about a man who creates chaos in his life. I always want to start painting again but every time I realize I need paints and canvas and all these objects to start painting, I sit back and imagine what i'd paint and that's almost as good as actually doing it. Inspiration also comes to me from the news (Al Jazeera, Ha'artez most recently). And my feelings. BPD are known for suffering emotional dysregulation. So, my feelings inspire me a lot.

13 - What was your last Hallowe'en costume?
Blondie with red lips. From the neck down, I'm dressed in puffy coat and jeans like anyone else in the neighbourhood giving out candies at the door.

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?
Film is probably the biggest influence. Astronomy (astrology) and some versions of physics. And psychoanalysis big time.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Academia has been a big influence on my writing. I am a thinking writer. I am driven by thought more than emotion. This I'd say is a failing or a weakness in my work. I find it hard to express emotion which is ironic considering I have BPD (emotional dysregulation). Or maybe thoughts are my way of controlling emotion? So I'm inspired by writers such as Anne Carson who thinks as she writes.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Write that novel that's been simmering for a while. I have a vision that in my old age, when I have time to just ruminate, the novel will come, the thing that I've been trying to get down on paper for about thirty years. I can see where it'll be set (the middle east) and I can see what the issues are, but I can't see the protagonist yet. Until I have that protagonist, I can't start...

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?
In grade 9, I decided I had to give up painting to be a writer. But I still love painting. I get excited looking at art and I have even started looking at the world in shapes which I can see translated to a canvas. I can see how a face could be painted: the planes, the shapes, the section of shadows. I can see bodies as shapes, and how a leg is articulated in angles and slopes. If I hadn't got stuck on the word, I would be a painter. Or a filmmaker. Or an astronomer.

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

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Right now I'm reading a book of testimonies of people with Borderline Personality Disorder. I cry while reading each story. I hear the suffering, I recognize myself. I distinguish my experiences from theirs and wonder what those differences might mean. It's a simple book, but as an honest book, it has had a great impact on me.

So I watched Zone of Interest the other day. It was a striking film. I could appreciate the European understated quality of it. I also watched fascinated to see what Jonathan Glazer was trying to do. I didn't even have to hear his acceptance speech to see the parallels between the Holocaust and the conditions in the Gazan war.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I'm working on a project in dialogue with a fellow poet on the benefits and hazards of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy for people with disorders. The objective in the project is to be critical of the method from a disabilities perspective.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;