Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 55

Gunnar Wærness, friends with everyone (trans. Gabriel Gudding

 

the shadow of thehomeland is a sea
that follows us in ourjourney    it waits for us
beside the rivers    that resemble blue intestines
spilling from thefolds    of the map we stole

i conjure from thistangle    of viscera and bowels
the carcass we called theworld    we chased it with swords
first in boats    then books    and at last with this
one bare hand    that burns here    on your thigh goddess
which you brush away    saying   if you want to fuck
comrade    you have to stop calling me momma

these are not mywords    that are crawling down the edge
of the map of theworld    drawn with crushed cochineal
soot and blood    on vellum here    where the seas and grown small
and the countries havedisappeared    while the rivers havewidened (“6. (such a friend to everyone / march 23 2015”)

I’mintrigued by the punk swagger of musical, muscled language of Norwegian poet Gunnar Wærness' poetry collection friends with everyone (Action Books,2024), a collection that offers his poems in original Norwegian alongsideEnglish translation, as translated by American poet and translator Gabriel Gudding. The collection is constructed out of fifty-five numbered poems acrosssix sections, or “waves,” with final, seventh “wave” made up of a single,coda-like poem set at the end. Throughout, the poems accumulate across anarrative expansiveness, each building upon the prior, some of which are quitelengthy, almost unwieldly, across multiple pages. There is an element of thiscollection reminiscent of so many of those hefty Nightboat Books selecteds,offering whole new worlds and histories of writers of whom I had previously andcompletely unaware (it is always good to be regularly presented with new worldsbeyond one’s borders), and Wærness’ poetry, at least as evidenced through thiscollection, is polyvocal and explorative, providing an outreach one can neverquite see the horizons of, beyond the stark works set upon the page. “you areyour own / many-mentioned / heretic-angel,” the poem “21. (the angel of history/ june 1 2015)” begins, “all of us who believed in you / each plucked something/ from your fire     as a souvenir // onyour yellowed image / the contones and rasters / are your fire’s cinders [.]”And there’s something of the date set in so many of the poem titles, jumpingaround in time and space, that provide a kind of untetheredness; it suggestsdates of composition, perhaps, but might also be a kind of red herring, or evenproviding dates from original composition, set in this particular order throughand for other means. One might wonder if the collection might provide adifferent shape if the poems were set in sequential order as suggested by eachdate instead of the poems’ numbering systems, or if the very notion of Wærness’expansiveness would render such reordering entirely moot. As Gudding writes toopen his post-script, “And the Carcass Says Look”:

In August 2022 abouttwenty Scandinavian poets and critics gathered for a symposium in Sundsvall,Sweden, to discuss the work of Gunnar Wærness (pron. Varniss)—in front of,with, and despite the misgivings of Wærness himself: I was fortunate enough toattend. The symposium principally focused on only one of Wærness’s severalbooks, Venn med alle. The Danish poet Glaz Serup asked Wærness about themany voices being sounded from the “I” in the book: from which or what realityor realm are these voices speaking? It’s an understandable question: everythingspeaks in Friends with Everyone. Or maybe: it’s more that speech isdistributed across a range of entities, a crowd of voices, sometimesdemocratic, sometimes geologic, sometimes botanical. Nonhuman animals speak asthey blink into extinction, the sea speaks, a mite speaks, rocks and treesspeak, the collective hiveghost of colonizing white people speaks, a prisoner,a cup, a goddess, a bowl, an eye, a tongue, a flower, a fetus. Lenin speaksfrom cupboards and drawers. We hear from unborn children and the dead speakfrom unknown realms. Even words speak in order to ask to be spoken. And somehowbehind these voices are other voices: the mite seems to ventriloquizeimmigrants, while poets are trying to ventriloquize whole nations. The wholebook seems suffused with monstrous speech, a gothic panpsychism. The issue thenin Friends with Everyone is reliably present: who or what speaks andwhy? To whom are they talking? And who is the friend?

 

Bren Simmers, The Work

 

OPTIONS

My brother and his
wife have stopped
making long-term
plans. The window
shrunk to months.
A basketball and a
volleyball removed
from her uterus,
her colon gone,
part of her liver,
spots blooming
on her lungs.
Now it’s chemo
every three weeks
until that stops
working. So long
as there’s options,
don’t talk about
dying. She fights
to play with her
daughters each
day, bank enough
memories to outlast
their childhoods.

Thelatest poetry title by Prince Edward Island-based poet Bren Simmers is The Work (Kentville NS: Gaspereau Press, 2024), following Night Gears (HamiltonON: Wolsak & Wynn, 2010), Hastings-Sunrise (Gibsons BC: NightwoodEditions, 2015) [see my review of such here], Pivot Point (GaspereauPress, 2019) and If, When (Gaspereau Press, 2021) [see my review of such here]. The Work, as the back cover offers, engages “with the work oflove and loss and the hope that we might somehow learn to carry our portion ofgrief. Simmers writes of churning in an accumulation of losses—the sudden deathof her father, the descent of her mother into dementia, her sister-in-law’sterminal illness—and of the work of slowly making wholeness out of brokenness.”There is an enormous amount of churning, as the book offers, through thiscollection, swirling and surrounding grief and illness and the roiling turmoilof familial health, all of which carry their own considerable and accumulativeweight. “There comes a point / when the losses stack / up and all you want is /a few good years and / cash in your wallet.” Simmers writes, to open the poem “LOADUPON LOAD,” the piece that opens the first of the book’s five sections. Simmers’usual clear narrative lyric provides a tension through its very restraint andstraightforwardness, writing the implications of grief, and the regrets aroundwhat can no longer be said, no longer be repeated, no longer be taken back. “Thelast night I was in an airport I ran / from one empty terminal to the next /looking for a time zone with my father / still in it.” she writes, to open thepoem “ICE FISHING.” Further, to close the short poem, offering: “I could feed avillage with / my grief. These days, / I don’t need a shelter or // an openingto talk to him. / Simply stand on the ice, / let the wind scale / my cheeks.”

“IfI stopped taking airplanes / I’d never see my family again.” the poem “IFSATURDAY, AN EMPTY PARKING LOT” offers. The poems mourn the slow loss of familyand connection, a connection that requires a physicality. “Hello // to puttingon hard pants and still trying / to enter a conversation thinking yes,” endsthe poem “HELLO/YES,” “how a single word sets you up / for connection in a timewhen // people can’t touch.” Focusing different sections on different individualsacross this array of loss and losses, the poems of the penultimate section, “STILLMOM,” offer an erasure of vowels across the narrative, demonstrating adevastating progress of holes in her mother’s language as her minddeteriorates. As the poem “WHEN YOU STARTED HAVING ACCIDENTS” ends: “the skyis beige your food pureed you’ve / started to strike the aides during mrning care their / answer is always m re drugs on your birthday y u / said Ilove you back      it’d been mnths    when / friends ask I tell themthat [.]” The Work is a book that holds these articulations of loss socompletely that, as a reader, one hopes that the process might allow any readera way into their own losses, and perhaps, the author, a way from which to movesomehow beyond. This really is a powerful collection.

 

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Sara Henning

Sara Henning is the author of thepoetry collections Burn (Southern Illinois University Press, 2024), a2022 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Editor’s Selection; Terra Incognita (Ohio University Press, 2022), winner of the 2021 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize;and View from True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018),winner of the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award and the2019 High Plains Book Award. She is an assistant professor of creative writingat Marshall University. Please visit her at https://www.sarahenningpoet.com.

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

I’d like to begin by chatting about View From True North, thecollection of poetry which co-won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry’s OpenCompetition Award (with the late Monica Berlin) in 2017.  When I was sending that manuscript around tocontests, I was fresh out of graduate school, my mother had recently lost herbattle with cancer, and I was  at acrossroads in my life in every sense of that word: I was dating my futurehusband long-distance; I was sometimes-succeeding, mostly-failing to manage mylate mother’s affairs from states away (I finally got her home sold in 2019); Iwas lucky enough to be employed as a visiting assistant professor for the yearafter failing to obtain a tenure-track job in my field, but I had no futureprospects. The truth was, I didn’t believe in myself as an artist or as aperson. Grief and the difficulties of the academic job market had obliteratedthat for me. When I got the call from the late Jon Tribble that my book hadco-won such a prestigious award, I was baffled: I was out crane-watching inNebraska, had crappy cell reception, and I had pulled off at a Casey’s gasstation to talk. It was in that moment that my life as a poet and as a humanbeing changed. I felt acknowledged, celebrated even. I loved every minute ofworking with Jon and later with Southern Illinois University Press. Once thebook was published, going on book tour was an exciting rebirth for someone who hadlost so much of herself when her mother died. My mother, a counselor wholargely worked with dual-diagnosis patients, used to tell me about the gift ofthe struggle. It was a metaphor she used with her clients to talk aboutsurvival. She said that a caterpillar had to fight its way out of its chrysalisto gain the strength to use its wings. In the most emotionally honest waypossible, View From True North helped me find my wings. I have beenlucky to have had some literary success since 2018, when that book came out. Iwon the 2021 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and my collection of poems, TerraIncognita, was published by Ohio University Press in 2022. My newestcollection of poems, Burn, is forthcoming from Southern IllinoisUniversity Press later this month as a Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Editor’sSelection. I’m still doing what I advise my students to do—to write with anopen mind and an open heart, to use emotional honesty as a writing tool. I amstill writing about my journey as a human being, both elegizing and eulogizingmy experiences. I am still celebrating and finding joy in small, tendermoments. I am still taking risks in both form and function; however, myexperiential knowledge of working with two thriving university presses and awonderful publicist, Kelly Forsythe, transformed what I believed was possibleboth in my writing and in my publication journeys. My role, as I see it, is to  continue to publish and to help guide a newgeneration of poets in my role as the tenure-track poet at Marshall Universityin Huntington, WV. I am joyful every moment I get the pleasure of helping them bringtheir own artistic goals to fruition.

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

Honestly? When was an undergraduate, I was a pre-med major studyinggenetics. I thought it would be fun to take an introductory creative writingclass in-between my science pre-requisites. At first, I fell in love withfiction, and I wanted to take another fiction class that fall. Unfortunately,all of them were full! However, a poetry class had spots still open with theprofessor who would become my first mentor, Brian Henry, who now teaches at theUniversity of Richmond. His seminar became my favorite class, and during thattime, I fell in love with poetry. Though I came to poetry second, it became myenduring love.

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

This is a tough question! I’m a planner, which means I spend the bulk ofmy time researching my way into a new project’s architectural framework, thenconsidering how individual poems could work to negotiate the project’scraft-based strategies. Then I proceed to write those poems, slowly at first,and generally around the crests and troughs of an academic semester. Summersare glorious. I think it is important to say this: I give myself time toprocess the emptiness of completing a manuscript. It may sound ironic, becausepublishing a book is joyous, yes? Yes, it is! However, when a collection ofpoems goes to press, it stops being mine and enters the canon of contemporarypoetry—and that’s a bittersweet combination of both celebration and loss. Ibecome filled with questions: What is the next project? Will I be able to writeit? Can I approach it with an open mind and an open heart, writing from a placeof emotional honesty? What do I need to do and how do I need to prepare myselfto say what I need to say? That last question made me laugh (at myself): ifonly one could see my notebooks. Copious would be one way to describe mynote-taking process, well, and messy (I am left-handed in every stereotypicalway possible)! First drafts look nothing like their final shape, usually, and Ifind the real work of writing exists in how I revise my way toward what thepoem is trying to do and say, not necessarily what I want it to do and say. Iam frankly jealous of other writers whom I talk to who write a poem when calledto do so, poets who wait until enough poems are written in this way, and thenlook for how the poems talk to each other. There is something truly organic andbeautiful about going about writing in this way, but to put myself in thatposition? Just thinking about it gives me hives. Maybe the next lesson I needto learn is to take a deep breath, let go, and let the words take over.

4 - Where does a poem 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?

Oh, I’m that poet working on a “book” from the very beginning. I don’tknow how else to work, and I say that to let it be known I wish I had facilityto work in other ways. I certainly do not think my method is the good or theright way, it is just my way for now. This is how I teach my students: find yourwriting schedule, find your way into a poem, find the conversation youare joining, find your perfect writing schedule and space. I refuse tochastise myself (or my students!) with destructive, misogynistic, classist, andableist myths—if you don’t get up at 5 am every day to write, then you are nota writer, etc. etc. However, poems usually emerge for me out of abundantamounts of research, and then I find myself lost in regard to how to wadethrough it. My saving grace? I often turn to prompts written by people smarterthan I am. I am a huge fan of Kim Addonizio’s Ordinary Genius; MariaMazziotti Gillan’s Writing Poetry to Save Your Life, and Nickole Brownand Jessica Jacobs’ Write It!: 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire. There areother prompts and books I have not listed here, enough to fill a whole lifetimeof drafting. I look forward to discovering (and sharing) as many as I can!

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

Oh, I love doing readings. I love doing them because they allow me toconnect with other writers. I have a confession—I’m an extrovert—which I knowcan be a bit of a rarity among writers and those interested in reading/writingstudies. But because I am a poet who believes so much in community, I believein contributing to that community any way I can: holding workshops at publiclibraries and community organizations dedicated to serving literary interests,giving readings at local bookstores to support them, giving readings atuniversities to show students that they too can be on stage, sharing the workwhich defines them as writers and artists. Loving doing readings doesn’t meanthat I don’t find them nerve-wracking at times! LOL. I guess there is a part ofme that is always scared I’ll be the girl who invites everyone to her birthdayparty and no one shows up. But you know what? That’s never happened. When wepledge to show up for each other, to support one another and to promote eachother’s work, we are practicing community. I’ll never stop showing up forothers, no matter how many people are (or are not) in any given audience ofmine. However, I must say that writing and performing are two differentprocesses with very different goals, and I think it is wise to differentiatethe type of rhetorical function (and the sort of emotional energy) each one ofthem requires. One needs to prepare for spending hours alone at the desk orspending hours on the road or among an audience of eager listeners.  And like anything else, practice makes onebetter at doing the things that are both inside and outside of our comfortzones.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kindsof questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even thinkthe current questions are?

I do. My last three books—View From True North, Terra Incognita,and now Burn—are all elegies, but not in the way that one might think. ViewFrom True North, written in the wake of my grandfather’s death, exploressexual erasure, the emotional damage of living a double life, and how overlappingtraumas have the capacity to lock a family system into a toxic dance. I grew upa second-generation child of an alcoholic. I was born into a family in whichpeople loved each other deeply, but were afraid to embrace the truths of theirown lives. The members of my family—my aunts, uncles, grandparents, mother—weredeeply unhappy in their own ways, but no one was ready (willing? able?) tobreak the cycle but me. I guess I could say that View From True Northwas how I learned to find myself apart from my family, how I learned to honorand to love both myself and those who made me. Terra Incognita is a veryintentional elegy for my mother, who lost her battle to colon cancer in 2016.As the only child of a single mother, her death shook me in ways I neverthought possible. And while I wanted this collection to explore the very realeffects of how grief and love connect us to each other, I wanted even more toexplore the other side of grief. I wanted to explore how after grief, there canbe moments of deep joy. Perhaps after deep grief, joy becomes a bit sweeter.How does one know the ecstasy of light without tasting darkness, after all? Inmy current collection, Burn, I am interested in how time functions as thecompass we use to navigate life’s beautiful and often difficult moments. In it,I am really exploring the moments which make us. If, according to scientists,time has no actual meaning, if time is something that humans have adapted tocreate order and continuity in their lives, I wanted to interrogate time andwhat it taught me in the wake of my mother’s death. If Delmore Schwartz iscorrect that time is the fire in which we burn, if we are forever burning intime’s fire, the fire of our own creation, I wanted to question the differentconnotations time could take on: pain and pleasure, agony and ecstasy. A story:when my mother died, time stopped making sense. I would think a day passed byand it had been three weeks. I would be washing dishes for thirty minutes andit felt like hours. When my mother died, I lost my compass, my frame ofreference, and it made me question time as a metric to capture and tounderstand human experience. I read a lot of philosophy and physics books atthat time, but it was a poem by Delmore Schwartz—“Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day”—which finally put things into perspective for me. We may burn intime’s fire, but I am convinced we get to, in some part, decide how. Do wecombust? Do we burn with love and desire? Do we light the path for others? Dowe, like a phoenix, rise up through flame? Poet Nicole Cooley said of my bookthat in it, fire causes damage but reveals a new language. I agree with her. Aswe move through the world, time becomes a new language, a new perspective, theway in which we evolve, adapt, fall apart, and learn to love again. Time is themetric for resilience.

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

Other poets far wiser than I have answered this question in ways farbetter than I can. I’ll quote two strong, female poets whom I love and continueto learn from every day.

Sharon Olds: “I am doing something I learned early to do, Iam / paying attention to small beauties, / whatever I have—as if it were our duty / to find things to love, to bind ourselves to thisworld.”

PatriciaSmith, one of the best poets who will ever live: “Poetry doesn't cure grief—but it understands.”

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

I find that having an outside editor forces me to get out of my own head,which is often quite rewarding. Writing poetry can give you myopia, and I don’tjust mean the type you have to go to the eye doctor for. As poets, it is veryeasy to spend too much time in our own heads and when we do, our work canbecome personally-coded in ways which are difficult for an outside reader totranslate into the language of their own lives. This is why I find it essentialto not only work with an editor when it is time for a book to go to press, butalso to find a writing community with whom to share my work. The best writingcommunities are generous and emotionally honest: you may experience praise, butthe best moments are those tough love moments which come out of deep care, thoseinterventions which help you to interrogate your writing goals and ask yourself“what am I really trying to say?”  

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

“Just do it scared.” This piece of advice changed my life. If I don’t dowhatever “it” is (submitting to a top-tier journal, giving a reading at aprestigious university, talking to a famous poet, submitting a book manuscriptto the press of my dreams), then I don’t give anyone outside of myself thechance to say yes. Through the action of not doing, I am telling myself no. Butif I do “it” scared, whatever “it” is, I’m confronting the power my own fearhas over me. That is a kind of lesson, a kind of winning, in and of itself. Whiledoing it scared does not ensure success, like everything else, it abides by thelaw of numbers: the more you risk putting yourself and your writing out there,the more yeses you will receive. It is simple math.

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

When my writing gets stalled, I read. And honestly, I will always choosereading over writing. That was the way I was taught to write (read everythingyou can get your hands on, then write), and that’s the way I write to this day.Why? Because books are the best way to open your mind, open your heart, get youthinking, let you know what the possibilities are, let you know where you mightframe the next possibility. Reading is the best way to get you to question yourthinking, your unintentional bias, and your limitations. Reading makes you haveconversations in your head with other writers and their experiences, and beforeyou know it, you are writing to continue that conversation, graft yourself tothe communities of writers you care about. It is a well-known scientific factthat books excite our mirror neurons, which affect the way we think and existin the world around us. Hands down, books are my best tonic for writer’s block,writing fatigue, and they often refill “my empty bucket,” which I think is justa code word for my soul.

11 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Honeysuckles in June. Magnolia blossoms stunning the air with their sweetfire.

12 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but arethere any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, scienceor visual art?

As a species, we are intersectional. I dare anyone to tell me otherwise.I attribute my ability to understand a poem’s rhythm and music to my motherinsisting I play piano for many years of my childhood (I loved to play it, butshe forced me to practice, and every time she’d set a metronome on the piano totick-tick-tick at me. I still dream about throwing that darn thing across theroom). If I didn’t become a virologist or a poet, I would have become an arthistorian. I could live in an art museum, sleeping on those little fussycouches and sneaking granola bars out of my pockets. I attribute my interest inmetaphor to spending most of my days outside as a Montessori school student,watching bugs and eating the meat of a pecan right out of its owl-shaped shell.Rhetorician I.A. Richards once called metaphor a “transaction betweencontexts.” It is impossible to understand things without understanding them inrelationship to other things. I attribute my ability to navigate a poem to myfacility of navigating science lab when I was still pre-med. I am often testinga poem using the tenets of the scientific method: what do I think I am tryingto say? What am I saying? With time, I learned I can change the chemistry ofwords to change a poem in fundamental ways which may cohere with or break thelaws of science. How cool is that?  

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

This question is too difficult for me to answer with any methodicalgrace. Therefore, I am going to just mention a few books which have changed mylife: Carlo Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score. DavidKessler’s Finding Meaning: the Sixth Stage of Grief. Cheryl Strayed’s Wild.Meghan O’Rourke’s The Long Goodbye. Stephen Hawking’s A Brief Historyof Time. Mark Doty’s Heaven’s Coast. Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. ToniMorrison’s Beloved. Willa Cather’s My Antonia. Everything writtenby the following poets: Patricia Smith, Jericho Brown, Terrance Hayes, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Mary Oliver, Joy Harjo, Sylvia Plath, Anne Carson, Lucille Clifton,Natalie Diaz, Federico García Lorca, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Rumi.

14 - 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 notbeen a writer?

I would have been a medical doctor, a nurse practitioner, or a highschool English teacher.

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

Recently, poet Nickole Brown visited Marshall University as part of ourvisiting writers series. During a class visit, she said (I am paraphrasinghere) that one of the beauties of poetry is that it doesn’t have to answerquestions. I take that to mean that poetry doesn’t have to have the answerswhich mesmerize human existence. I take that to mean that poetry has thecapacity to contain the multitudes of human experience without diagnosing them(like a scientist does), creating a narrative out of them (history), orfetishizing them (philosophy). I think that’s why I am hooked.

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

Carter Sickels’ The Prettiest Star was the last great book I read.It was a re-reading, but I stayed up all night to read it again like I did thefirst time: all in one sitting.

17 - What are you currently working on?
I am working on an ekphrastic collection of poems which addressesVincent van Gogh's life and art produced during his time at the Saint-PaulAsylum in Saint-Rémy, then in Auvers, where he died from complications relatedto a suicide attempt. During this time, he produced many of his most famouspaintings, including The Olive Trees(1889), Irises (1889),and The Starry Night (1889). While exploring van Gogh’s work, I am also exploring the myth of artisticmadness, a myth which has damaging repercussions for contemporary artists, andmy own family’s relationship with mental illness, specifically bipolardisorder.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Diana Khoi Nguyen, Root Fractures

 

A girl dug a hole at thebeach, sent her siblings to fetch water.

She found pleasure in it.All things fall down, or want to,
so she dug and dug, hertrowel falling deeper, the earth growing darker.

She thought in concentriccircles, the tides coming
and going, overlapping eachother. When she poured water in,
the hole filled up, thenemptied, its walls caved in. She began again.
If she could have, shewould have dug a hole every day, one
beside the other, thenanother, and another. A hole is a hole,
but none of them are thesame.

Along a shore, no one canknow how many holes there are.

Along a shore, no one canknow which holes are hers. (“A Story About Holes”)

Struckimmediately by Pittsburgh-based poet Diana Khoi Nguyen’s stunning full-lengthdebut, Ghost Of (Omnidawn, 2018) [see my review of such here], I was pleasedto hear of her follow-up collection, Root Fractures (Scribner, 2024).Nguyen writes of connection and disconnection, breaks and attempts into healing.“my work inspires mother to write poems I will inherit from her,” she writes, toopen one of the short lyric “Cape Disappointment” poems, a title that repeatsthroughout the collection, “tears on the page denature like egg whites [.]” RootFractures is a collection that explores and expands upon slow and eventualloss, of fracturing itself, from her parents leaving Vietnam to the death ofher brother, and how deeply that loss permeates every aspect of the remainingfamily structure. Through sharp lyrics, she examines the breaks, and their ongoingoutcomes across years, across generations. These are poems with a gravitationalpull, one that highlights loss and disappearance, and the grief that can’t helpbut rush to occupy those absences. The sequence “A Story About Holes,” one ofthe anchors of the collection, offers: “This is a story about two particles.They are travelling near / an event horizon. Life at the edge can beparticular. One / of the pair falls in with a negative valence / which sucksout energy from the black hole. // The other particle, its counterpoint, escapeswith positive energy. / No one knows how.” Nguyen offers an evocative expanseand stretch of detail, akin to a constellation, from how her parents first metto the shadow of war that forced them to leave, through to the multiple waysher brother worked to remove himself from the family landscape, until hefinally did, becoming that absence that couldn’t help but outline for those whoremained. In portraits, how he become shadow, a text that is perpetually erasedand rewritten, held in place. “open the window to erase your ghost or maybe letone in,” another “Cape Disappointment” poem offers, furthering Nguyen’s occasionalrepeat set akin to short asides from the main narrative threads of thecollection, “I unlatch like a cello case, air filling every dent in the velvet[.]”

 

 

Jena Osman, A VERY LARGE ARRAY : SELECTED POEMS

My review of Jena Osman's A VERY LARGE ARRAY : SELECTED POEMS (Brooklyn NY: DABA, 2023) is now online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Shome Dasgupta

Shome Dasgupta is the author of The Seagull And The Urn (HarperCollinsIndia), and most recently, the novels The Muu-Antiques (Malarkey Books)and Tentacles Numbing (Thirty West), a prose collection Histories Of Memories (Belle Point Press), a short story collection Atchafalaya Darling (Belle Point Press), and a poetry collection Iron Oxide (AssurePress). His first book i am here And You Are Gone won the 2010 OW PressFiction Contest. His writing has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency,New Orleans Review, Jabberwock Review, American Book Review,Arkansas Review, Magma Poetry, and elsewhere. He lives inLafayette, LA and can be found at www.shomedome.com and @laughingyeti.

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

I still very vividly remember receiving the emailabout my first book winning a contest. I had a very basic flip phone at thetime, but it was able to receive notifications. I saw it as I was driving home,and I pulled into the parking lot of the movie theater, and read the email indisbelief. I read it over and over and over again, and then the tears came. Idon’t know how it changed my life—I can’t explain it, but if anything, I knowit certainly gave me the encouragement to keep going. Atchafalaya Darling was really fun to write—there weren’t anyobstacles or challenges as I drafted each story. It was the most relaxed and atease I had felt as I put together this collection. There are some darker tonedstories in this collection, but even then, I didn’t feel burdened by them, butrather my burdens were being released as I journeyed through these pieces.

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

Poetry was definitely my first form entering theworld of writing, and I think this was mainly because of the music I waslistening to, which was heavily lyrically oriented, and I just wanted to createthose same sensations with my own words.

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?

Starting a project—I don’t think it takes too longbecause I have a general idea of what I’d like to do with language or thecharacters or the plot, but only a general idea that floats around in my head.Initially, it arrives quickly, but every new project has a new experience andprocess—some being quicker than others. I’d like to think that the first draftof Atchafalaya Darling was one of myquickest, but after that—the rewrites and revisions definitely require moretime and attention. While there are several versions of each story, I don’tthink there is anything all too majorly different; however, one simplesentence, especially at the end of a story can remarkably change the wholetone.

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

It usually begins with a line—most likely an openingline that just kind of pops into my head, or an image, and with either, Iexplore or consider how to create a sound and rhythm out of it—this is for bothpoetry or prose, and then from there, I’ll see if I can continue with it andfind out what happens. I've used both processes with different books, but Idon't know if it starts off as intentional.

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

I dread give a public reading (or even recordings ofany sort). The anxiety that comes with it is overwhelming. I think the actualreading part is fine, mainly because it is all a blur, but the thought ofgiving a reading or waiting to give one—the days leading up to it and on theactual day itself really gets to me. Conversely, I love to attendreadings—whether small or large venues, I find them to be magical as aspectator.

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

I don’t think I’m keeping in mind any kind oftheoretical practicalities in my writing—at least not intentionally. Perhaps,it can be analyzed in such a way, but I’m not focusing on it. I don’t know—Ithink I write on the surface level, and maybe there’s a deeper meaning that canbe found, hopefully, an engaging connection to which readers can relate. I’mnot sure if I’m trying to answer any questions—or maybe once I finish aparticular piece or poem or manuscript, questions arise, which might lead to goback and see if there’s some kind of answer, but for the most part, I just kindof write and then write and then write some more.

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

I think this varies from writer to writer—each havingtheir own intentions. I don’t know what the role of a writer should be—I knowthat for me, it’s trying to connect to the world in hopes that readers might beable to find the same kind of relationship. I love the elements that surroundwriting—such as language and imagery, and I try to keep it as simple as that.Perhaps, the role is given from the reader rather than the writer. I do knowthat there are writers who have impacted society in meaningful and powerfulways, and I admire them so much in their courage to share their voice toprovide a magnifying glass, hovering it over our lives, past, present, andfuture. So much change and progress, I think, has been created by literature,much like any other form of art and creativity, and it’s quite clear howreading and writing and writing and reading are so important these days,regardless of a potential role of a writer.

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

I have been very, very fortunate and lucky to havenothing but amazing experiences with previous editors—whether it’s for ajournal or a publisher, there’s so much insight to learn from what they canoffer for their writers. I find it engaging and the various perspectivesprovided, I always take into consideration. I think that anything I’ve writtenwhich has gone through the expertise of an editor is stronger because of it.

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

About writing? Or life in general? I guess for eitherone or both—be happy with what you’re doing. I say this coming from aprivileged way of living, though there was a large part of my life, even thoughI had all the necessities for a life, when I was nowhere near feeling any kindof joy, whether it was related to writing or pretty much anything else. I thinkself-care has much to do with it, and finding a way to love yourself and othersand sharing your experiences and emphasizing and sympathizing with others andencouraging each other to keep going. These are bits and pieces of advice,whether directly or indirectly over the recent years, and I always keep that inmind day to day.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move betweengenres (poetry to fiction to creative nonfiction)? What do you see as theappeal?

I feel like it’s generally a smooth transitionbecause it only happens when an idea pops up, whether it’s for a poem orfiction or nonfiction—I think the trickiest part is writing in one form, and anidea for another form comes to mind, and trying to make the decision of divingright into the new idea or stay with the original one, mainly because ofimpatience on my part, but I’m also worried about losing momentum if I were tomove from one piece to another without having completed the current work-in-progress.If I’ve finished one form, though, it seems to be a nice switch if there’ssomething else I’d like to write in another form.

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

Oh the writing routine definitely changes—I guess itchanges with whatever works best with what’s going on at the time. Some days, Ilike to write in the mornings or afternoon, other times—at night, or ideally,at all times of the day. It all just kind of depends on what’s going on in mylife. In the summer though, as I have the time do so, I try to write everyday—it doesn’t matter what time of day, but at some point, every day, though Idon’t think it’s necessary.

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

I don’t think I turn to anything for inspiration, atleast not intentionally, but rather, I just wait it out or just force myself toput words down even though they aren’t the words I want, and hopefully, I’llfind a way out of it.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Oh gosh—any kind of Indian cooking.

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

Oh definitely—all those mentioned: music, art,science, nature, movies, TV, sports—I try to soak it all in from anywhere Ican.

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

All of it, to be honest. I try to read as much aspossible—whether it’s books, journals, social media, brochures, manuals,anything and everything that can be read. There are a million writers, too—butI guess I don’t want to only mention a few of them because I wouldn’t want toleave anyone out.

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

I would love to ride a horse, or at least be friendswith one.

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?

Writing is always a side gig for me—meaning, it’s notmy way of living so I think no matter what I would be doing as a profession,I’d still be writing. Any occupation to attempt? Perhaps being a farmer or amechanic, or maybe a computer programmer even though I have no clue how toperform in any these realms.

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

I think because I was always surrounded by it—I wasvery lucky to have access to books, and everyone I knew, especially in myfamily, were always reading.

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

I recently read Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s American Daughters, and I was mesmerizedby it, and I’ve still been thinking a lot about Katy Simpson Smith’s The Weeds. It was on TV the other day,and I really enjoyed Unstoppable.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m working on some shorter pieces, whether it’sfiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction, but it looks like I’m focusing a bitmore on poetry right now, while somewhere in the back of mind, and I’m lettingsome possible ideas for a novel simmer.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Faith Arkorful, The Seventh Town of Ghosts

 

Auntie has three childrenand all are born before breath.
She takes the third childhome. She lays him to rest in a crib
he’ll never grow out of. 

____

 

Miracle baby. Gabrielopts out of making an appearance,
but men of the earth arealways willing.
The rudest carries amachete. He chops at the ground
looking for weeds andfinds cousin’s hand.

One palm carries a long scarthrough it, an oblique,
undiscovered constellation.(“MIRACLE BABY”)

Aspart of this year’s spring quartet of poetry titles from McClelland and Stewartis Toronto poet Faith Arkorful’s eagerly-awaited full-length debut, The Seventh Town of Ghosts (Toronto ON: McClelland and Stewart, 2024), a bookthat begins with her mother, and of origins. “i am going to tell you aboutyourself, she says,” the poem “ORIGIN STORY,” which opens the collection, begins,“which means she is going to tell me what she knows of / a beginning forherself.” The poems in The Seventh Town of Ghosts are thick, tangibleand evocative, populated with family and familial connections; of familialspaces and cultural apparatus. “I can only guarantee my breathing in thepresent.” she writes, as part of the poem “WHAT ERA WOULD YOU TRAVEL TO IF YOUHAD A TIME / MACHINE?,” “This life is my only / chance. What comes before glowsin the dark.” These are poems that seek, seek out and call out, responding and reactingin ways thoughtful, and with considerable weight. “I have no answers,” shewrites, as part of the poem “LONG ISLAND MEDIUM,” “only small honesties. / Themoon moves around us and us around / the sun. Every breath a plant makes is an/ act of forgiveness. Winter is a chore and a / punishment. I know thesetruths.”

Aclear and confident debut, The Seventh Town of Ghosts is a book of truthand connection; a book of witness moving across the culture, amid the long shadowof ongoing and perpetual police violence. “I tried to explain the story and yousaid that if / the police don’t provide a reason for the stop then they / have donesomething illegal.” the poem “NO DIFFERENT” begins, “You are telling me thismeans / I am allowed to walk away. I am trying to explain that / I have neverseen a police officer struggle to find a reason. / You and I do not share thesame rules.” With a strong and optimistic heart at its core, this is a bookthat works to speak openly, while attempting to reconcile such differences, disturbancesand brutal and blatant truths. Or, as the poem “JUSTIN TRUDEAU DREAMS IN BLACKFACE”ends: “This / country belongs to me. This body, all bodies. I am a kingdom ofbodies. / Indeed, many will have to stand throughout my performance.”

 

Alice Notley, Being Reflected Upon

 

Teach them how tolove       why should anyone care
Why should anyoneanything

 

I told her ‘I’mfrightened’      it was 2:40 a.m.
so we took a walk in thedark this was a dream
when I was little I wouldwake up scared too
in the next dream no onesigned up for my class at Naropa
I am 71 years old teachthem how to love
would you take that classwhat would I say
it has to do with … nofilters
why would there be isthere anything
Love’s the only thing I canfind what is it it
is the holding together Ican’t locate a different
thing why do you call itthat       No Christian I
heard them singing Jesumeines Lebens Leben
a year ago the sopranowore a green taffeta dress
luxury of love sensationsnot ready-made
in that Protestant churchnear the Louvre
the pleasure of a thingis love of it the luxe
caring for others or allelse is that to be?
so if you in your poemcombine that with a modicum
of dross why dross I likethe word
I think you should writea poem about tiny atoms of the
self I said no I didn’t wickedloving lies
I have nothing to tellanymore I’ve been on the Cross
a lot lately in an effortto keep space and time con-
nected where I am whichmight be everywhere
I don’t want you to fallapart I love you
what shall we do

Havingpublished multiple book-length epics over the past decade-plus (although I seethrough her “Also by Alice Notley” list at the offset that I’m clearly behindon even her recent collections), I’m intrigued by the structural counterpointof American poet Alice Notley’s latest, Being Reflected Upon (PenguinPoets, 2024), a collection subtitled “(a memoir of 17 years, 2000-2017).”As her opening “Preface” offers:

I was trying to find outif anything had happened between 2000 and 2017, it was 2017 and I had justfinished treatment for my first breast cancer. Did the fact of the cancer haveany significance? and something must have happened at some point during thoseyears. I had been sitting in Paris alone since Doug Oliver died in April of thebig millennial year—what had been going on? An expanse of timelessness. Butimportantly it wasn’t a chronology, it was actual time, one thing all together.Incidents I remembered emerged on top of those of previous “times”—it wasstacked time; friends and relations died and I grieved having know them for so“long,” I would get seriously ill, or someone would, was that it, and there wasthe newsworthy, and I wrote a lot of books. It doesn’t matter when exceptinside the one thought of it. I became more obvious to myself, I discovered Iwas an unabashed location of unreported events of the Spirit, or Timelessness,the real name of Consciousness. I tried to let as many people as possible intomy mind. I changed the past the present and future by blending them. I becamethe one who held things together as they, the things, kept their motions going,being reflected upon me.

Setin a kind of conversational lyric, Notley’s narratives work a strongstorytelling impulse across fragmented threads, one that thrives on weaving,meandering and asides while still managing to maintain a book-length through-line.Her reflections blend memories, observations and dream-sequences. “what memoryare you trying to recover,” she writes, as part of the poem “What is a Thing,” “notre-upholster [.]” Composed akin to a memoir-in-pieces, the flow of her gesturesemploy a rush and a push, offering a first-person lyric flow that speaks to andthrough itself. The opening of the poem “POEM,” for example, that reads: “Itdoesn’t matter if a poem is clear or not / hard or not       It’s basic and ongoing creation / of theuniverse in terms of its particles as I speak / it the poem       If you’re reading it you hear me too[.]” Notley has long been a poet utilizing the book as her unit of composition,but it is curious to see the shift of her working that same structure throughthe accumulation of individual, self-contained poems, a structure that harkensback to a far earlier works in her publishing history (a particular favouriteof mine is her 1985 title Margaret & Dusty , for example, a book thatused to be housed at the Ottawa Public Library, now disappeared from theircatalogue). The epic, one might suppose, of small moments, individual pages.

Thepoems across Being Reflected Upon write in a kind ofstream-of-consciousness manner, writing on her late husband, Doug Oliver, or ofTed Berrigan; of encountering Jimi Hendrix, or of a sequence of dreams,threading through her observations with as much weight as events that occurred duringwakefulness. In this same direction, there’s even the occasional abstractaround thinking and thought that reminds of Canadian poet Pearl Pirie, the openingof Notley’s “Everywhere” that exists in a curious parallel: “That my mind didn’tbelong to my head as con- / tainer as if it could be so localized / but waseverywhere or anywhere obviously [.]” In certain ways, Notley’s reflectionsboth reflect on her recollections, her stories, but on the nature itself of recollection;how stories happen and are told, and retold; how stories and observances arerelayed, and how these stories connect and even wrap around each other. “thoughyour consciousness is somehow the judge already,” she writes, as part of thepoem “Before the Cognitive Organization of Matter,” “things I’ve said for thelast seven years events of my / life the earth is so used      and nothing can be new but / theMojave had remained primal you could get lost in / a few square miles of it,know what I mean? / And die of exposure why not I had a friend (not Greg) whodid / had accidentally shot and killed someone and in guilt / went out insummer away from town to sit // in full lotus position until he died they foundhim that / way my brother told me [.]” The poems here are fascinating for theirlayers around thinking and structure, with a richness quickly felt but allowingtime, and rereading, to further and fully absorb. And of course, Notley doesknow how to tell a good, if occasionally indirect, story. Or, as the poem “Whatis ‘Conscious’” ends:

Let it all happencollapse and fly out of your-
selves the only stickingtogether’s of the mole-
cules of soul to telleach other we ex-

ist that’s all the universeis vanity

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Anna Lee-Popham

Anna Lee-Popham is a poet, writer, and editor inTkaronto (Toronto). She holds an MFA Creative Writing from the University ofGuelph, and is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University andUniversity of Toronto’s School of Continuing Education Creative WritingCertificate, where she received the Janice Colbert Poetry Award. Her writinghas been first runner-up in PRISM international’s Pacific Poetry Prize,shortlisted for The Fiddlehead Creative Nonfiction Contest and Room'sPoetry Contest, and longlisted for the CBC nonfiction prize, and has beenpublished or is forthcoming in Arc, Brick, Canthius, RiddleFence, and Room, as well as Autostraddle and Lingue eLinguaggi. Her debut poetry collection, Empires of the Everyday, waspublished by McClelland & Stewart in Spring 2024.

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

Some of my earlier work struggled to see beyond myown life. Yet I'm interested in the ways that poetry opens writers and readersout into the world. In my collection that is about to be published, Empires of the Everyday, I had a thrillof a time with an "I" that was clearly not “I, Anna” – and thatlanded me in a poetic voice that carried its own weight, its own toner,cadence, its own severity. This was not a conscious construct, but rather thespace that opened up to write into. It’s an approach that learned from the pathforged by many other writers.

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

Like many, I wrote poetry as a child – on some days,remnants of a poem I wrote as a younger person (about not being able to sleep?not counting sheep?) linger in my mind. I wrote poetry, or parts of writingthat had tones of poetry, in books that I kept hidden for much of my life.

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

Many notes, much reading, then more notes, then beingout in the world, then noting that too, and back to reading. I am not sure Ifeel clear about when any particular project starts. While I remember aspecific moment when I knew that Empiresof the Everyday had taken on a shape – laying in bed with my partner, discussing the voice of the"I",  the key questions, thepiece was interested in exploring, and a clicking into a shape that seemed tobe happening  – I feel that certainlythese questions, possibly even the shape, were likely things I had been mullingabout for years, living in the world we live in, as I do, with therelationships and interactions I get to have.

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?

With Empires ofthe Everyday, I knew it was poems that were all circulating a commonproject – though it took a moment, and prompting by others who were reading thepoems, for me to understand it as a book. I am drawn to the expansiveness of alinked collection of poems, or a long poem. Bernadette Mayer, discussing thesonnet form, wrote “How serious notorious and public a form to think youcould find the solution to a problem or an ending to an observation in onebrief moment” – and this resonates with me. When I have tried to write poemsthat attempt to show a significant insight within the limits of a single poem,they have, in my experience, often fallen flat. This may, in part, be becausefor me any one thing, any one experience, always seems to hold complexity,often seems to open out to more nuance and intrigue. In this I feel inconversation with Grace Paley'swriting about her relationships with her husbands. She writes"Either [of my husbands] has enough character for a whole life, which asit turns out is really not such a long time. You couldn't exhaust either man'squalities or get under the rock of his reasons in one short life." For me,this perspective extends beyond any individual or relationship to our broaderworld – in that it is not possible to get under the rock of the reasons of somuch in our broader world, but I'm sure interested in peaking in. In this also,I am much more interested in questions than in answers – the questioning workthat poetry can do, to open out more specific questions, to try "to findbetter questions to ask," as Canisia Lubrin discusses here.

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

I'm currently in the process – meaning today, thisweek, as I write – of Empires of theEveryday being released. Yesterday, a friend texted saying that she'dreceived a notification that the book is available for pick up from her localbookstore, although the publication date isn't for a few days, and so I'm inthat process of having something that was written alone, shared with a fewpeople, then a few more, then supported heavily through editing, design, andall, by the phenomenal and generous team of more people at M&S – havingthis book suddenly emerge out to the broader world. Public readings can feelsimilar, that glorious experience of a thing emerging into the world. Iappreciate how something through which I am attempting to engage with the world,then gets to engage with the world itself, though I don't crave the attentionon oneself that a public reading requires.

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

I wrote Empiresof the Everyday sparked most actively by an incident in February 2021 whenthe city of Toronto started to demolish plywood structures that had been builtin local parks. The structures had been built in response to the chronic issue of lackof affordable housing in Toronto and the acute issues of winter in Toronto (as night time temperaturesfrequently reached below -10’C) and rampant cases of COVID in homeless shelters.

When the mainstream media reported onthis, they focused on the safety concerns the city cited for tearing down theshelters. But, from what I read in mainstream news, there was much they leftout: experiences of violence towards houseless people by police, thedisproportionately impacts of houselessness on communities of color andIndigenous communities, or the ongoing history of colonialism and imperialismin the city of Toronto, including the questionable legality of the Toronto PurchaseTreaty between the Crown and the Mississaugas of the Credit, in the late 1700sor the fact that in 2010, the Government of Canada settled the Toronto PurchaseClaim and the Brant Tract Claim for compensation of $145 million. There wascertainly no mention of the history of slavery in the city of Toronto.

There was no reason for me to besurprised by the way the media reported on this incident, or by the city’sresponse. But this incident and the offhand, cool, distanced, piecemeal,uncontextualized reporting hooked me.

I became curious about what a tool mightlook like that would communicate this history, this context, link back to whatthe present is built upon. I began to wonder about how AI technology might actas a sort of translator of the news. What would the relationship be between theAI technology and the human? What would it be fed so that an analysis would bebrought forward that could help develop an understanding? What form would thecommunication take? What would be its limitations? Why use AI technologyfor such a process?

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?

Icertainly come after – meaning I attempt to follow — Dionne Brand's framing in An Autobiographyof the Autobiography of Reading that "the role of the writer… is tonarrate [one's] own consciousness." Adrienne Rich has also informed myunderstanding of the role of poetry. In a conversation with Claudia Rankine, Richexplained: “In a time of frontal assaults both on language and on humansolidarity, poetry can remind us of all we are in danger of losing — disturbus, embolden us out of resignation.”

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

Essential.I haven't found the process difficult as of yet, though importantly humbling.

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

I was reading through some other interviews by otherwriters on this blog, and Canisia's response to this resonated with me:"Becareful not to burn out."

10 – What kind of writing routine do you tendto keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

There isno typical right now. I'm currently teaching and finding it quite expansive interms of the time that I can put into preparing for each class. On an ideal dayI write in the morning before my home, even the city, and certainly email, wakeup. On an ideal day, I wake to a quiet house and write for a few hours, likelystarting around 5am.

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

I alwaysturn to the world, wherever the writing is at. Sometimes that's a walk or bike aroundthe city, to the Don River, or to Lake Ontario, or it's turning on the news, orgoing to a space where people are wrestling with similar questions as I'mtrying to hold in the writing — a community event, a podcast, a rally.

12 – What fragrance reminds you of home?

Sheetsdried in the sun.

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

Certainly all you've said – and really anything I cantake in: an interaction on the streetcar, flora and fauna in the city andoutside of it, a picture my brother recently sent of the northern lights,people, …

14 – What other writers or writings areimportant for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Dionne Brand, Canisia Lubrin, Christina Sharpe,Cornelius Eady, Don Mee Choi, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, M. NourbeSe Philip,Aimé Césaire, Robyn Maynard,Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Edward Said, Mosab Abu Toha,C.L.R. James, Italo Calvino, Chinua Achebe, Muriel Rukeyser, Sonia Sanchez,Claire Schwartz, Solmaz Sharif, Rita Wong, Gwendolyn Brooks, Natalie Diaz,Kaie Kellough, Yoko Ogawa, Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, Jordan Abel, Alycia Pirmohamed, Frantz Fanon, Antonio Gramsci, Gayatri Spivak, Walter Benjamin,W.E.B DuBois, the list goes on and grows frequently.

15 – What would you like to do that youhaven’t yet done?

Hmm, write this next book. Get outside today to playin the snow…. Live in a social world that isn't predicated on violence. Youknow, simple things.

16 – If you could pick any other occupationto attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would haveended up doing had you not been a writer?

As a child, I dreamed of being a dancer. I loved themotion, and moments when I could feel the rhythm of a thing, and experimentingwith the limits of what my body could and couldn't do, but I didn't love theidea of people watching me. Sometimes I can feel the ways that writing is anextension of those same interests.

17 – What made you write, as opposed to doingsomething else?

Writing is where I come to try to understand theworld. Writing is where I come to try to engage in — as Dionne Brand noted in aphenomenal talk "Writing Against Tyranny and TowardLiberation — "reflecting, intuiting, making sense of, and undoing thetimes we live in.”

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

The Memory Police, by Yoko Ogawa, certainly,certainly, certainly. Agreat book I am currently  reading is Landbridge, byY-Dang Troeug, The film 7 Prisoners. So many more.

19 - What are you currently working on?

My current project, titled In the Hours After, follows an event I attended in Montreal,fifteen years ago, where a Longshore worker active in the South Africananti-apartheid struggle discussed the movement's limitations: he believed thatbecause they did not fully believe in their success, they failed to imagine theday after they won. As a result, they weren’t prepared for the liberatorypotential after the fall of the apartheid regime — a message I've heard echoedby leaders and elders throughout my involvement in social movements over thepast dozen years in Canada and the US.

In the Hours After takes up this order — to imaginea liberatory future — by building from Empiresof the Everyday, which examines how the imagination of Empire that has ledto the current crises is both ever-present and at times operates invisibly. The“I” of the poems in Empires of theEveryday is the voice of a piece of AI machine technology that is fed newsand spits out poetry to translate life in the city into a less linear — andmore comprehensive — language. That collection concludes by exploring possibleendings, most of which are dire. In theHours After examines what is next beyond these dire endings, with a focuson the liberatory.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Spotlight series #96 : Monica Mody

The ninety-sixth in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring California-based poet, scholar and educator Monica Mody .

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