Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 58

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Miriam Gershow

Miriam Gershow is a novelist and story writer. Her debut shortcollection, Survival Tips, is out from Propeller Books March 19 2024.Her novel, Closer, is forthcoming from Regal House in 2025. Her debutnovel, The Local News (Spiegel & Grau), was hailed as “unusuallycredible and precise" and "deftly heartbreaking” by The New YorkTimes.

Miriam’s stories appearin The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast and Black Warrior Review,among other journals. Her flash fiction appears in anthologies from Alan SquireBooks and Alternating Currents, as well as in Pithead Chapel, Had,and Variant Lit, where she is the inaugural winner of the Pizza Prize.Her creative nonfiction is featured in Salon and Craft Literaryamong other journals.

She is the recipient ofa Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and anOregon Literary Fellowship, as well as writing residencies at Playa, KimmelHarding Nelson Center for the Arts, Hypatia-in-the-Woods, and Wildacres. Herstories have been listed in the 100 Distinguished Stories of The BestAmerican Short Stories and appeared in the Robert Olen Butler PrizeStories. Her writing has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes and was afinalist for the Oregon Book Award (Ken Kesey Award for the Novel).

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

My first book, The Local News, changed my life hugely and not at all. It turned out to be someaningful to finally be able to say at 38, Ihave a book! It validated my creative existence and the long, wild choiceto be a writer. I’d been getting stories published for years, but somethingabout a book shifted my sense of how I was choosing to make my life and rootedme in it more deeply. Materially, I was lucky enough to get an advance thatpaid for eight months of maternity leave when I was a lowly adjunct instructor.But I woke up the day my bookwas published still with all my insecurities and worries and neuroses. A bookcouldn’t save me from myself, even though I’d deep down fantasized it somehowwould.

My newest book, Survival Tips: Stories, spans 23-yearsof my writing—some of those early published stories are in there!—essentiallymy whole career. This makes the book feel a lot more familiar to me, rather than brand sparkling new.It’s been fifteen years since my first book, and in hindsight, I was sovulnerable and full of a combination of disbelief and sensitivity whenit came out. I was unable to take in the processfully, kind of watching myself go through it rather than going throughit. Not so, this time. I’m meeting this book with joyand so much gratitude and loving every moment of the process.

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

I was squirreled awayreading fiction all of my childhood in the seventies suburban white girlpipeline of Judy Blume to V.C. Andrews to Jean M. Auel to Stephen King. It wasalways going to be fiction for me.

3 - How long does ittake to 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 a quick starter! Ilove beginnings. I’ve come recently to flash fiction, and some of those firstappear – miraculously – close to their final shape. Novels never ever appearlooking close to anything. I’m slow through a first draft, never quite sure whereI’m going and trying to coax the story out. The shape comes later, thoughrevision and more revision. There are always a whole bunch of scrawled post-itsand scraps of paper strewn across my desk throughout novel writing.

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

I usually begin with asnippet of character – a situation they’re in, a thought they’re having.

I’m pretty clear onwhether I’m writing long or short. Only very occasionally do short pieces endup going longer; often that’s a sign that I can’t quite wrangle my ideas in theway I’d hoped to. It’s also not unusual for a longer piece to run out of steambefore I’m done with it. That never usually signals a shorter story; it signalsthat the story isn’t there. Those end up in my very full recycling bin. I’m notshy about throwing out ideas that don’t work.

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

I love readings. I’m anambivert – love the solitary writing time, love being in community. I seereadings as the public celebration after the long, lone process of writing. Ilove sharing the work. I’m a former theater nerd. Readings are my stage! The dangeris if I read a work-in-progress too early; I’ll take the audience validation tomean the piece is finished, when often it’s really, really not. I can performit into sounding finished when the page alone doesn’t bear that out.

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

Hmmm…theoreticalconcerns sounds very high-minded and I consider myself maybe a more intuitivewriter. I feel like I’ve always returned to the same questions, long or short,fiction or nonfiction: how do we find connection and what are the many ways wefail at finding connection and how do we recover from that failure and dobetter?

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

Ideally, the role istruth teller, which feels essential right now in our post-truth era in the US.My first serious writing teacher, Tom Spanbauer, said, “Fiction is the lie thattells the truth,” and I agree fully with that. With fiction especially, thereis the potential to transport readers into the humanity of folks who aren’t apart of their lived experience and create empathy and understanding. I don’tmean didactically. I’m turned off by moralistic work. I don’t need a lesson.But that delicious quality of being swept up in fiction, I really do believe it can change a reader for the better.

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

Essential! I love it. Ithink an outside editor is the best reason to be traditionally published. Youhave someone as invested in the work as you are, trying to make it better.

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

One of my teachers,David Bradley, said, “Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness.” Does this count as advice? I return to it all the time. I really lean into my strengths in earlydrafts. I’d argue all writers do. For me, my strength are are long,multi-clause sentences with parentheses andem-dashes galore; meandering tangents; a wry, clever narrative or charactervoice. When I come back to the drafts, I can see how those crowd out otherparts of the writing: a clear structure, consistent pacing, a deepening ofcharacter vulnerability.  If I over-relyon my strengths, they create weakness in the overall writing. Revision becomesthe time to exercise the skills that aren’t as intuitive. I bring this up allthe time with fiction students. It’s such a good lens through which to viewyour own work.

10 - How easy has itbeen for you to move between genres (short stories to the novel to flashfiction to creative non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?

In the past couple ofyears, since I started writing short short work, it has been amazingly easy.After years of failure in selling a second novel, writing flash returned me tomyself and my writing and my confidence. There was something so delightful andsatisfying about a form that I could draft in a few sittings, and then work andwork into meaning. For a very long time, endings were the hardest part ofwriting because it was the moment you had to make something of what you’rewriting or admit you were bullshitting. Often I was bullshitting. But thisreturn to short work, and the discovery of flash and micro, which are so short,and so much about the ending, made me realize I do a lot less bullshittingthese days. I have a lot to say. And I’m saying it. It feels reallygood.

And I find myselflonging to return to novel writing after spending any real amount of time inflash, and vice versa. They are such good complementsto each other, and each makes me appreciative of and restless for the other.

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

I wake up, get myteenager off to school, drink some very caffeinated tea (having recently andsadly given up coffee because of my delicate, middle-aged digestive system),and sit in front of my computer. On the best day, I get to work with thewriting, spend an hour or two on it, find myself swept up in the momentum, andbefore I know it, three o’clock rolls around with me in a happy, creative hazeas my teenager rolls back in from school.

More realistically, I’min front of the computer grading my college students’ papers, catching up onemails, setting up book events, scrolling way too much social media, andfitting writing in for an hour or two. The deeper I am in a project, the moremomentum it gains, and the more likely I am to be swept up in it at the expenseof everything else. Those are the best and most delicious writing days, and I become a relatively absent (or atleast spacey) teacher/mom/wife/friend, as a result.

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

Books. So many books.Literary fiction, graphic novels, story collections,the occasional space opera. Television, everythingfrom prestige streaming series to bad reality TV. Anything away from my desk –walking, knitting, taking a long, hot bath. I need a change of venue if I’mreally stalled, to get away from the work so I can at least attempt to returnanew.

The question I’m always facing is: am Istalled out because I’m getting to the really hard stuff I’m avoiding or am Istalled out because this story idea is no longer alive in my imagination? Ihave to fight against the impulse to throw everything out when I’m reallystuck.

13 - What fragrancereminds you of home?

Childhood home? Newrain on asphalt. Current home? Teen boy sweat.

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

Does family count as aform? My books, most recently, have come from parenthood, marriage, and theongoing process of trying to make a home.

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

So many. I’m just goingto give a long list like an Academy Award winner being played off the stage. Authors I adore and who inspire:Jennifer Haigh, Marcy Dermansky, Deesha Philyaw, Rebecca Schiff, Kathy Fish, Mira Jacob, Tom Perrotta, Lorrie Moore,Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Gabrielle Bell, SaraNovic, Mary Gaitskill, Kristen Radtke, Dan Chaon.Books that changed my life: The Feast ofLove, Lolita, Geek Love, Barn 8, The Great Believers, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, Drown, Girl, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Nothing To See Here, The Invisible Circus, The Middlesteins, Notes on a Scandal, Arcadia, A Friend of the Family, Motherless Brooklyn, The Interloper, Fool on the Hill.

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

I want to write a bookwhere the central character is slowly falling apart, but endearingly or at least really engagingly. Likea slow motion car wreck but with wry humor and a good dose of pathos. I’ve tried writing this book three times, three very different books, none of them very good. For awhile, I thought I’d finally put this idea tobed. But recently I came up with a way to resurrect it that has me newlymotivated. It might be Sisyphean, but thisparticular boulder has a very strong pull on me.

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

Broadway star, though Ican’t sing or dance. I can emote.

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

I think it goes back to the early,transporting experience of reading. Books are magic. On the best writing days,the process of making books is magic too.

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

Last great book: Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino. Ican’t remember the last film, so I’m going to give you my second most recentgreat book: My Murder by KatieWilliams.

20 - What are youcurrently working on?

In all honesty, I’m working on the hustlefor Survival Tips – answeringquestions for cool writerly blogs, sending out postcards to bookstores andlibraries, composing emails for my mailing list. After that, I’ll get to workediting my forthcoming novel, Closer(June 2025), with my Regal House editor. And after that, if I’m brave (orreally dense) it’s back to pushing my boulder up my hill in the form of a newnovel out of the barest of bones of an old, failed one.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Jose Hernandez Diaz, Bad Mexican, Bad American

 

MIRAGE

A man walked in a deserton a Sunday afternoon. It was his birthday. He’d spent the morning walking inthe desert after his horse died. The man was starting to feel weaker by the minute.Then he began to see a mirage: it was his fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Cranford.Mrs. Cranford had died ten years ago. The mirage, or Mrs. Cranford, imploredhim to keep pushing, despite the oppressive heat of the desert. The man leanedtoward the mirage, to give it a hug. It disappeared. The man looked up at the sky:the stars were beginning to shine.

I’vebeen curious about the prose poems of Mexican American poet, editor and teacher Jose Hernandez Diaz for a while now, finally able through the publication ofhis full-length debut, Bad Mexican, Bad American (Cincinnati OH: AcreBooks, 2024), a title that follows his chapbook debut, The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020), but leads up to his next collection, TheParachutist (Sundress Publications, 2025). From the very title, BadMexican, Bad American sets up a potential collision of two cultures, withone foot in each, but fully neither. “All my ancestors were poor and I / amlike my ancestors. I don’t talk // about my personal life much. Why / complain?I had a loving family who // took care of me. A roof over my head. / Beans andtortillas on the stove.”

Constructedas a quartet of poem-sections, Diaz’s poems present a strong storytellingelement, almost wistful, and surreal at times; gestural, as though performing amonologue in which things occur but nothing “happens,” offering recombinantthreads of origins and beginnings, curious tales told and retold, and surrealbursts that lean into flash fictions. “My name is very plain,” he writes, toopen the poem “MY NAME,” “Jose Hernandez. / I used to go by Joey Hernandezgrowing up. // I never asked anyone to call me that. / It was just a nickname. Ialways wrote Jose Hernandez // on my schoolwork.” Further down the page, headds the caveat: “I always wanted an American name, growing up, // like myPoncho friends, Anthony, Jon, and Michael. / It’s not so much that I was asellout. I just wanted // to fit in.” He speaks of culture and distances, ofattempting to find his place amid what seem, at first, to be two separate poles.“I guess that’s part of the reason why I don’t feel comfortable // as ateacher.” he writes, as part of “I NEVER HAD A MEXICAN AMERICAN TEACHER GROWINGUP,” “Never seen a Mexican male English teacher. / Also, however, I think I wouldfind // any excuse not to stand in front of a group of strangers.”

Whilehe does lean into the surreal, Diaz works a line comparably straighter than,say, Benjamin Niespodziany or Nate Logan, allowing the bends not throughlanguage per se but through the narrative arc, providing turns less sudden thanthe realization that the mirrored glass is actually liquid. There is also acurious cluster of poems across the third and fourth section of the collection,most of which begin with “A man with a” or variations thereof, offering a sequenceof short narratives that manage to spark and twist, deflection expectation throughdeft turns and smart sentences. Throughout there are some lovely elements, amidsuch lovely images and sentences, of prose poem style throughout thiscollection, and I appreciate very much how Diaz is open about those sameinfluences upon his writing, those poets that helped along the way, threadingindividual names throughout a variety of poems, culminating in the final poem, “ATTHE CEMETERY OF DEAD POETS,” that writes:

I was trapped in agraveyard of dead poets. I was technically trapped but didn’t want to get out,anyway. First, I went to Rosario Castellanos’s grave and paid my respects. I addressedher as mother in Spanish. Madre de la Poesia. Then I went to Octavio Paz’s grave.I wrote a small poem on the grave for El Gigante of Mexican letters. It was ahaiku and that’s all I’ll say about it. Next, I went to James Tate’s grave. I placedsome white roses on the gravestone and shed a few tears. I glanced at the sunset.I said thank you, told him I owed him lunch. Then, I went to Russell Edson’s grave.I dropped off a comic book I’d written and illustrated for him. I poured outwhiskey in the grass next to the grave. Lastly, I went to Marosa di Giorgio’sgrave by the entrance. I immediately turned into a yellow jackal in themoonlight. The new moon had cast a spell on the city.

Thepoem “THE SKELETON AND THE PYRAMID,” as well, opens with a riff that could easilyfit inside those surreal works of writers such as Gary Barwin, Niespodziany or Stuart Ross: “A skeleton with a sombrero sat on top of an Aztecpyramid.” Or the poem “MEETING JAMES TATE IN HEAVEN,” a poem that opens: “I metJames Tate at a carnival in heaven. Tate was riding the bumper cars with hiscat, Lucy. I was smoking a cigarette on the Ferris wheel with my dog, theincidentally named Carnival. We met in line to buy hot dogs. ‘My name is Jose,’I said. ‘I’m James Tate. Nice to meet you,’ he said. We ate our hot dogs at abench with graffiti scribbled by fallen angels.” For either poem, anyone wouldbe a fool to not be curious as to what might happen next.

Chuqiao Yang, The Last to the Party

 

Pompeii

The Lupanar walls speakof a woman,
her art was intercourse.
Here, once, she leftlovers to quiet deaths
on hard beds, sharp edgessoftened,
vestiges of a century ofpleasure.
A caged, beautiful birdof prey, a tourist imagines.
But you’d almost thinkthe walls spoke
of a woman whose art waspraying,
back turned to a man,knees bent,
body arched,god-searching.
A brave, dying bird ofprayer.
Colours, clay, heat,Pompeii’s countryside
burning down her body,the walls speaking
of a woman whose art waspleasure;
exhalations come a longway,
remnants of herexistence,
her worship painted onthe walls,
les petities morts in thehistory of lost lives,
little deaths in thehistory of survival.

Thereare long-awaited debuts, and then there are long-awaited debuts, such asChuqiao Yang’s The Last to the Party (Fredericton NB: Goose LaneEditions/icehouse poetry, 2024). Born in Beijing, raised in Saskatchewan andcurrently living in Ottawa, Chuqiao Yang is a poet I first discovered in thesummer 2010 issue of Grain magazine (Vol. 37.4) [see my review of such here] as part of Sylvia Legris’ stunning and maddeningly-curtailed run aseditor there. The Last to the Party follows Yang’s bpNichol ChapbookAward-winning Reunions in the Year of the Sheep (London ON: BaselinePress, 2017) [see my review of such here], a number of poems from which havebeen reworked and folded into this larger collection. In one of the finestdebuts I’ve read in some time (tied with Ottawa poet Ellen Chang-Richardson’s BloodBelies, which I’m currently reading as well), Yang writes of a prairiechildhood, various travel, family and family roots and youthful adventures,rebellions and reconciliations, her lyrics offering a richness that isconfident and subtle, considerations so clearly evident even in those poemspublished in Grain, fourteen years back. “Sometimes I float backwards,”she writes, as part of the opening poem, “The Party,” “ten times / over theSouth Saskatchewan / until I’m only kite bones / and promise: watch me, / amawkish pre-teen pedalling / uphill, licked by rime, / peering into aneighbour’s window.”

Setwith opening poem, “The Party,” followed by four numbered sections of poems, Yanghas a painter’s ability to evoke a scene, whether landscape or portrait. She writesof moments turned and returned to, or recalled, turned and turned over, tobetter see, or see differently, attempting a fresh perspective on somethingthat clearly won’t let go. Consider the short poem “Phaethon,” the first halfof which reads: “I dreamt my father was alive. // Old, but happy, just // as I hadleft him. // He was bicycling.” She writes of foreign travel and prairielandscapes; she writes of roads home, and roads that lead away, and therealization that these are but the same roads, even before and beyond the clarificationof what home means, and where, from Ottawa to Saskatchewan to Beijing, centredaround friends, partners, parents and grandparents.

There’sa thread of wistfulness, and even melancholy, that runs through these poems, asYang articulates intimate distances, drifts and attempts to connect orre-connect. She writes of a closeness that never quite feels close enough, oris never meant to last, but occasionally, unexpectedly, might or even does.Listen to the lines of the wedding-poem “Epithalamium,” a poem that ends: “Andwhile there may be // years so full of sadness // you will be reluctant to trek// the dogged trail ahead, // you will reach for each other’s // hand, feel theother’s pull, // and you will be at ease.” She writes of a lifelong search forconnection and belonging, and of finally landing at a moment that allows itselfthat comfort. Her poem “Friday,” a piece that immediately follows “Epithalamium,”includes: “Now, we share the same space, and life is a wide, / paved driveway.”

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Arlene Naganawa

Arlene Naganawa’s work appears in The Inflectionist Review, La Piccioletta Barca,Whale Road Review, Fatal Flaw, Thimble, Whale Road Review, Barnstorm,Belletrist, Crab Creek Review, Crab orchard review, Waxwing, Calyx, New DeltaReview, Poetry on Buses, and in other publications.

Her chapbooks include Private Graveyard(Gribble Press), The Scarecrow Bride (Red Bird Chapbooks), The Ark and the Bear (Floating Bridge Press), and We Were Talking About When We Had Bodies (Ravenna Press). I Weave a Nest of Foil, her full-length debut, is new from Kelson Books.

Arlene has been the recipient of grantsfrom the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture and Artist Trust and was awarded acreative residency at Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island, WA, and served as ajuror for the 2024 poetry residency.

Arlene has been a Writer in the Schoolsfor Seattle Arts and ectures, instructor at Hugo House, poetry mentor and sitelead for the Pongo Poetry Project at Judge Patricia H. Clark Children andFamily Justice Center, and poetry teacher at Echo Glen Children’s Center inSnoqualmie, Washington.

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

My first chapbook, PrivateGraveyard, was the winner of a contest. I was stunned that it was chosenand it encouraged me to keep writing. The work in that first chapbook issomewhat different from the writing in subsequent books. I was writing morepersonally then. My new work is often, but not always, fragmented, ekphrastic,and collage-like. I use a persona almost always now.

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

I’m not really sure. I have always read fiction–my English degree was much morefocused on fiction than poetry. I didn’t start writing poetry until I graduatedfrom college and then almost accidentally. I took a short workshop from ateacher in my high school English department, James Masao Mitsui. He was anexcellent teacher, pointing out what was surprising, jarring, devastating, andbeautiful in our lines and images. He was very encouraging and I had some workpublished right away, so I kept writing poems. My thinking is not very linear,so writing short poems without narrative lines seemed more natural than writingstories or novels.

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

Writing takes me forever. Once in a while, I write a poem inone sitting, but I usually draft over and over, returning to a work many times,sometimes even over a period of years. I do like to write out a first draftquickly, even knowing that it is terrible, so I have something to revise. Ilove revising. I rarely take notes, but I think my work would be better if Idid.

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

My poems begin in various ways–with a single image, a linefrom another work, a prompt, a work of art, or something I’ve seen orexperienced. I’ve been working with Marie Howe’s idea of taking notes ofobservations without using similes or metaphors or any kind oftransformation–just record the figure or scene as it is without imposing anykind of interpretation. That leads to some interesting details for poems. Iwork best with concrete details. I find that using a “concept” for a body ofwork doesn’t turn out well for me. I enjoy poems that slide in from the cornerof my subconscious without thinking about a theme or tying them to other poems.

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 like reading in public. I read when it is thecourteous thing to do. I believe in helping the presses and organizations wework for, but I don’t like being the center of attention. Most of my poems workbetter on the page than out loud. I enjoy attending readings very much.

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

I don’t really have theoretical concerns. If I had a wideraudience, I would try to address humanitarian concerns more directly. It’sdifficult to write about such topics in original ways in poetry. The currentquestions include: What can art do to create more humane conditions in theworld? How can art encourage people to pressure governments and corporations toput the environment and people before profits? How can art encourage people to“live simply so that others may simply live”? How can art stop killing?

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

Writers help shape behavior and attitudes. Historically,this has always been true. People’s attitudes are shaped by the mythologies,literature, and theatre they see and hear. Often, writers are the best criticsof their times, opening the eyes of their readers to cruelty and injustice,both in fiction and nonfiction. Writers also affirm generosity and kindness, aswell as provide a moral compass. Currently, social media has taken over therole of literature for a certain segment of the population, and many consumersof social media are influenced by, well, influencers. But the influenceindividual creators will be short-lived compared to that of great authors. NoTikTok influencer can replace such writers as Toni Morrison, James Baldwin,Shakespeare, and many others. I doubt that the message of any individualinfluencers will last a hundred years, or even a decade. And many people stillread. Readers look to authors for guidance and affirmation of humanity.

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

My personal experience with editors has always been positiveand enjoyable. I love seeing my work through their eyes, and I will usuallyrevise if they suggest revision, even if I also liked my original words.Editors work very hard, and I appreciate them.

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

Don’t worry about rejection.

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

Unfortunately, I have no routine. I write in bursts. I don’tstart the day by writing. I usually spend an hour cleaning house in themorning.

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

My writing groups and mentors share very creative prompts.Some of my best, and strangest, poems were written in response to prompts.These prompts vary and often avoid the “write about a time when” prompts. My favorite prompts often utilizeerasure or collaging from other sources, including YouTube transcripts or namesof paint colors.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Clorox bleach and Vano starch. My mother cleaned and ironedbetter than anyone.

13 - 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?

I’m often influenced by visual art. Art museums are some ofmy favorite places to visit. Seeing Picasso’s Guernica at the Reina Sofia wasone of the most powerful experiences in my life. I love all periods and stylesof visual art. The paintings on the walls at Lascaux, Dawoud Bey’s photographs,Van Gogh, everything.

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

There are so many that I can’t choose! I often return toMarie Howe.

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

There are many places in the world that I’d like tosee, but I find travel so exhausting that I probably won’t see them. I’d liketo learn another language.

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

I was a middle and high school teacher for many years, and Iconsider teaching my calling. I wouldn’t have chosen another career. I loveworking with young people.

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

That’s a question. I would have liked to play an instrumentbut my early attempts at violin didn’t go very far. I enjoyed drawing butdidn’t have an opportunity to learn visual art in school. We didn’t have muchart in my public schools, but we did have English language arts, and I lovedthe literature we studied, so that was an influence. If I’d had fine artsclasses, maybe I would have developed visual art skills, but maybe not. I’m notgood at sports or cooking.

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

“Great” is pretty subjective. A slim but beautifully writtenbook I just read is Foster by ClaireKeegan. I also liked Florida and Matrix by Lauren Groff. And Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So. I’mnot sure about film. My favorite film is the original Alien, but I can’t say it’s “great.” I’ve rewatched it many times.I like many films, all genres..

I’m looking forward to my copy of Radi Os by Ronald Johnson, but it hasn’t yet arrived.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I’m currently writing poem by poem–no project or specialtheme.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Elizabeth Clark Wessel, None of It Belongs to Me

 

Pioneer Women

My great-greatgrandmother Theresa
homesteaded her own acres
after her husband died ofa headache.
She sent her childrenaway until
they were old enough todrive a plow.
She was a Christian womanand canny—
the other pioneer womensent for her
when their times werenear.
Pioneer women had manybabies,
and many babies died.They had hearts
to break. Once I stood ona hill
surrounded by the gravesof pioneer women
and their children,throwing handfuls
of my grandmother’s ashinto a wind
that is always present;on every side
and below me ran straightlines of crops
in need of more waterthan the sky can give.
The crops are wrong forthe land,
which prefers the ancientgrasses.
In the lean years—or sothe story goes—
pioneer women ground upgrasshoppers
to make their bread.
They had meanness todrive them on.
They could give up almostanything
so they did. They wereoffered land
if they could keep it,and when they got it,
they put up fences. Theymust have known
their presence was afence. While all around them
the dirty work of killingto keep the land went on.

Itwas through a chapbook produced in 2018 by Daniel Handler’s Per Diem Press [see my review of such here] that I first had the opportunity to explore the work ofAmerican-in-Sweden writer, editor, translator and publisher Elizabeth Clark Wessel, so I am very pleased for this further opportunity, through the publicationof her full-length debut, None of It Belongs to Me (Boston MA: Game OverBooks, 2024). She even has a birthday roundabout now, if the ending of her poem“Mary Wollstonecraft” is to be taken at face value (which could be consideredspeculative on my part, admittedly): “Today is my birthday / It’s cold and notyet spring / The minutes tick by relentlessly / We can never know where / we’reon our way to / and I will never be content / with this box of words / But I wouldlike to leave it now / teetering at the edge / without tipping over [.]”

Iappreciate the clarity of her lines, a lyric that plays with the accumulationof straight phrases and its variations, such as the poem “The Ersatz Viking Ship,”that begins: “I wake up. / I drink coffee. / I take the words of one language./ I put them into another language. / My goal is to keep the meaning. / What I thinkthe meaning is.” There is a practicality to the narrative voice she presents, apragmatism to these lyric threads: aware of what terrible things might occurbut refusing to be overcome by them, simply allowing for what can’t be changed,and sidestepping what can easily be avoided. “my advice to you is / always thesame,” she writes, as part of “My Advice,” “check the lock by picking it /leave the scabs on as long as you can stand / avoid whatever you feel / likeavoiding for as / long as that’s a workable strategy [.]” There is an optimismthat comes through as sheer perseverance and persistence, able to continuethrough, because of and no matter what. “After giving birth it starts to hurt.”she writes, to open the poem “Love Poem at Thirty-Seven,” “And then there’s nodrive left. / Like a spent animal who has outrun / her predator. No energy to /seek it out. The flesh, the breath, / the deflated balloon of skin, the marks.”Wessel offers directions through her accumulation that appear, at first,straightforward enough, instead providing a sequence of turns, sweeps, bendsand even twists across the lumps and bumps of her narratives. I would love tohear these poems read aloud, honestly. And the straightforwardness of her linesoffer a mutability that can play with expectation, always providing a safe handto hold through even the darkest places. As the poem “Sticks” ends: “It crashedonto us, crushing what wouldn’t be penetrated. / What I mean to say is theworld kept ending, and we kept on / loving each other anyway. Isn’t that dumb. Isn’tthat just / the dumbest thing you ever heard.”

Nicholas Bradley, Before Combustion

 

Parable of theConflagration

After the fire thunderedover the fields
like bison, like horses,like cattle, like
trains andeighteen-wheelers, and the woods
were cindered, and afterthe thunderstorm fired
itself into a drippingcalm of carrot
and melon, after historywas left
to smoulder, thecreatures who inched out
of the embers were coatedin mud. They looked
at each other withcolliers’ eyes until
their ashen masksmouldered, and they set to work
like oxen, clearingground for graves and grass.

Ifound myself charmed by the heartfelt intimacies of Victoria, British Columbia poet Nicholas Bradley’s [see his 2018 '12 or 20 questions' here] second full-length collection, after Rain Shadow (Edmonton AB: University of Alberta Press, 2018), his Before Combustion (KentvilleNS: Gaspereau Press, 2023). Before Combustion opens with a suite ofpoems that focus on the new moments of parenting, of fatherhood, offering such clearand quiet moments I haven’t seen prior around the subject, one I’ve also hadthe experience of enjoying three different times, three different ways: “I amthe oldest / living thing // you know,” he writes, as part of “In theBeginning,” “an unshaven // bristlecone / bent over // your bed.” Whilethere is an enormous amount of territory worth covering and recovering onparenting generally, the subject matter of fatherhood is still one that emergeswith hesitation; a poem or two at most by any new fathers, perhaps, although thereare exceptions [something I covered across 2012-3 in my four-part “WritingFatherhood” essay over at Open Book, which Benjamin Robinson reminded meof recently].

Bradley’sBefore Combustion is a collection sectioned into quarters, with theopening cluster of poems focusing on that newness of life, that newness ofexpansion, becoming and being. As the two-page poem “Waiting Room” begins:“Your third night alive / I drove home // from the hospital / to find sleep //and left you sleeping / those few hours. // In darkness, having / forgotten //everything but food, / water, and how // to keep you fed, clean, / and quiet,// I entered the house / a stranger // and failed to notice / the oak leaves //letting go.” In certain ways, the entire collection is centred around thatopening moment of new life, new fatherhood, echoing the way one’s entire worldcompresses into a single, singular moment at the birth of one’s first child, slowlyrippling out a return to the world but with an entirely new perspective, anentirely new lens. The poems of Bradley’s Before Combustion begin with newlife, but slowly do edge out into that return, offering graceftul turns ofphrase and line-breaks and short phrases, each of which do provide a slowness,requiring deep attention, even through poems such as “There Must Be 50 Waysof Looking / at Mountain Goats on the Internet,” that begins: “Stoned,blindfolded, one /goat dangles above / a second, horns / sheathed, four /ankles bound / and then four more, / rhyming quatrains.” In certain ways, eachsection provides its own impulse, less leading up to combustion than reactingto a change or changes so life-altering they seem akin to an explosion. Or, ashe writes to open the poem “Parable of the Drought”: “Not the end of theworld but the onset / of another.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Deepa Rajagopalan

Deepa Rajagopalan [photo credit: Ema Suvajac] won the2021 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award. Her work has appeared in literarymagazines and anthologies such as the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, theNew Quarterly, Room, the Malahat Review, Event and ARC. She has an MFA increative writing from the University of Guelph. Born to Indian parents in SaudiArabia, she has lived in many cities across India, the US and Canada. Deepaworks in the tech industry in Toronto.

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

Peacocks of Instagram is myfirst full length book. It’s coming out in May 2024, and I hope it will findits readers. I have been warned about the anticlimactic nature of publishingyour first book, but I hope it will change my life in some way.

The writing of the book has been life changing. The way somethingchanges your life slowly, like watching the sun set over the ocean, or cloudsdrifting away. I have lived with the characters in this book for so long, andtheir experiences, triumphs, joys, heartbreaks, have given me that ‘somethingbeyond the daily life,’ that Virginia Woolf talked about.

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

I have a natural inclination to say things quickly and concisely. Takingup space, meandering, slowing down, were not part of my South Asian upbringing.So, the short story came to me naturally. I am continually amazed by thechallenge that the short story offers: to tell something so universally true, andsingularly so. To make the reader feel something in fifteen pages or less.

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

Typically, the writing comes to me quickly, though I am anxious throughthe first few of drafts, until I find the bones of the story. I enjoy therevision process, combing through the prose over and over again until I’msatisfied with the words, the sentences, and the shape of them. Nine out of tentimes, the final version is nothing like the first draft, except perhaps theopening paragraph.

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

I think I am always working on a “book.” Even while writing shortpieces, I am trying to understand how they are in conversation with each other.How different each story can be, and yet be part of the same world.

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

I love seeing an audience’s reaction to new material, what moves them,what does not land the way you thought it would. However, I typically readsomething in public only when I feel it is ready.

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

I think writing is always trying to answer some kind of questions. Thequestions depend on what you are obsessed or preoccupied with, and what isgoing on around you, and in the world. For years, I have been consumed byquestions about agency, about the powerful and the powerless. How does theworld order dictate who has power now, and who has had power for millennia?What do ordinary people do when they are denied agency or find themselvesutterly helpless in the wake of cruelties, big and small? How do they takepower, or diminish themselves?

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

Arundhati Roy said in an interview that she enjoys the way the Russian writers “refuseto stay in their lanes. Especially now that the traffic regulations are gettingstricter, the lanes are getting narrower and more constricted.”

The role of the writer should be to say the truth about the atrocitiesin the world, while not denying its beauty and its joy. To say that which isuncomfortable, as plainly and articulately as possible, without fear.

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

I’ve always appreciated getting feedback on my work. Most of the time, Icomb through the feedback, and instinctively know what I need to take, leave,or tweak. Sometimes, it can be difficult, but the difficulty comes from makingsure you retain your voice, while considering edits. I had the good fortune ofworking with my editor, Shirarose Wilensky, on my short story collection, Peacocksof Instagram, who was gentle with me, and most importantly understood myintentions.

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

It’s hard to pick one thing, but there’s something Murakami said aboutrunning that is resonating with me today: “Being active every day makes iteasier to hear than inner voice.”

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

It is not easy for me to move between the genres. It takes me some timeto untangle myself from one and move into the other. I usually work on one formfor stretches of time.

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 stick to a routine, though it is not always consistent. I usuallywake up at dawn or earlier, have some coffee or tea, and write for a couple ofhours before the day makes its demands of me. Over weekends, I spend longerperiods of time writing. When I am working on a project, I am always thinkingabout it, so I can write anywhere. At home, in airports, cafes, the hospitalwaiting room.

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

I turn to books. I have a stack of books by my desk that I turn to whenI can’t seem to keep going. Norwegian Wood by Murakami, The God ofSmall Things by Arundhati Roy, How to Pronounce Knife by SouvankhamThammavongsa, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, to name a few.

13- What fragrance reminds you of home?

The smell of campfire, though I don’t know why.

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

Being in nature always infuses me with creative energy. It helps methink better, and be more flexible with my ideas, allowing stories to go wherethey want to go.

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

Alice Munro, Chekhov, Murakami, Kazuo Ishiguro, Orhan Pamuk, Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Hemmingway, I can go on and on…

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

Music moves me deeply, and I’d like to take vocal lessons. I’d want tosing, even if I am mediocre at it.

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 awriter?

I’ve had a long career in information technology, I ran a business,taught yoga, taught math and creative writing, but the work that makeseverything else tolerable is writing. I think I’d always be able to findsomething to do, but without writing, I’d be a lot less happy, and perhapsinsufferable.

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

I am a sensitive person, deeply affected by everything around me.Writing helps me make sense of life, to ease some of its pain, and to help seeits beauty. I’d be miserable if I didn’t write.

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

I read a story titled My Good Friend by Juliana Leite(translated by Zoë Perry) in the Paris Review last Fall, and since then I think about it atleast once a week. It is a love story between the narrator and her good friendwho is losing his memory. It is masterful and reveals the kind of everlastinglove that withstands decades and spouses and children.

I watched this movie Past Lives recently, and it shattered me, in thebest possible way. The film has a singular, haunting texture, that I thinkwould be interesting to explore in prose.

20- What are you currently working on?

I’ve been working on a novel, that follows the lives of threecharacters, whose lives are inextricably linked by a single tragedy that takesplace in a small town in Saudi Arabia.

I was travelling recently and took a break from the novel and started anew short story. I’m attempting to write a love story, which is difficult forme as I am naturally cynical. But this one seems to be coming along well. Ithink I’m going to give it a happy ending.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Allie Duff, I Dreamed I Was an Afterthought

 

Annual General Meeting ofthe Tors Cove Sheep

By boatloads they werehemmed and jostled
Hundreds of cuddle-facedruminants
brought by Noah’shilarious dory
to their summer-long baycation

Squint to see these whitespecks across the bay
on a green island-cliff;a flock
enjoying blueberryseason.

At the annual generalmeeting
of the Tors Cove sheep,
shear-holders, regimented
and rosacea-cheeked,
are regarded withsuspicion
but soon all are shornand ready for heat.

They discuss leaves ofabsence,
the winter’s woolyaccomplishments,
and bleat their mission statement:
to cud chew for hours
on forbs, clover, andgrass

indulgently, without
            dividends.

Asthe back cover for St. John’s, Newfoundland poet, stand-up comedian and musician Allie Duff’s full-length poetry debut, I Dreamed I Was anAfterthought (Toronto ON: Guernica Editions, 2024) offers: “In I DreamedI Was an Afterthought, the poet leaves her childhood home of St. John’s,Newfoundland to live in the country’s capital. Familial relationships, complicatedby chronic illnesses, are juxtaposed with looming disasters, both actual andimagined, as the writer navigates her stubborn yearning to be ‘some other kindof woman,’ and to ‘live fiercely’ against the odds.” Duff composes a sequenceof short narratives across the lyric, offering a portrait of home caught inpart through her time away, and Duff offers a distinct view. “High in the redoaks / blackbirds dive and land,” she writes, to open the poem “Constance Bay,”“scattering clouds of white moths. // Sentenced to hunt / each moment and pinit down; / the past is mine, the past is mine, / and it’s nobody’s, too.” Shewrites of spring flowers in the capital, but more often than not, her gaze iseast, glimpsing home in short threads on grandmothers and kitchens, thehostility of weather and dreams of reaching out, and reaching back.

Itis interesting to see any landscape through the lens of its writers, and Duff offersan intimacy to her poems, one quite different than the Newfoundland passagesand landscapes of Michael Crummey’s Passengers: Poems (Toronto ON:Anansi, 2022) [see my review of such here], for example, or the Newfoundlandscenes of Matthew Hollett’s Optic Nerve: poems (Kingston ON: BrickBooks, 2023) [see my review of such here], or even Adam Beardsworth’s NoPlace Like (Kentville NS: Gaspereau Press, 2023) [see my review of such here]. In comparison, Duff holds to small spaces, small geographies, writingout short narrative bursts less as scenes than moments that string together throughthe collection across a far wider, and expansive, tapestry of landscape andbeing. She speaks of the weather, of family; she speaks of boatloads, and sheep.She writes of what intimately can’t be but anywhere else than in her corner ofNewfoundland. “Something alive under the snow / makes it shiver,” she writes,to open “#DarkNL2014,” “like it’s asking not to be / shovelled, scraped, orsalted. // For a few days / we get a taste / of living in the dark.”

World Poetry Day : VERSeFest begins tonight! and interviews w Turnbull, du Plessis, Malik, Christie, Ridley, Mohammadi + Dolman,

Happy World Poetry Day! Our fourteenth annual edition of VERSeFest, Ottawa's International Poetry Festival, begins tonight, running through until Sunday. See the full schedule here. In case you hadn't caught, a variety of interviews with readers for this year's festival have been posting over the past couple of weeks over at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. Conyer Clayton : 2024 VERSeFest interviews: Chris Turnbull ; rob mclennan : 2024 VERSeFest interviews: Klara du Plessis ; Manahil Bandukwala : 2024 VERSeFest interviews: Laila Malik ; rob mclennan : 2024 VERSeFest interviews: Jason Christie ; Margo LaPierre : 2024 VERSeFest interviews : Sandra Ridley ; rob mclennan : 2024 VERSeFest interviews: Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi ; Amanda Earl : 2024 VERSeFest interviews: AJ Dolman ; we are hoping to see you! Of the four nights, be aware that the Saturday night show is ticketed, and bring cash for books! All books/chapbooks will be supplied by the authors. Huzzah!

Rob Manery, As They Say

 

who nowhere
or near
and indeed unwritten
or aware
will aim
at least
clutching
upon each
each end
ends each
further
on (“Sometimes Welcome”)

Vancouverpoet and SOME magazine [see my review of the seventh issue here] editor andpublisher Rob Manery is one of a handful of west coast poets that seem topublish intermittently enough (comparable to Dorothy Trujillo Lusk, Lissa Wolsak [see my review of Wolsak’s collected poems here], Kathryn MacLeod [her above/ground press title is still available] andAaron Vidaver [see my review of Vidaver’s most recent here]; former Vancouverpoet Colin Smith [see my review of his latest here], now in Winnipeg, is alsoworth mentioning), that one might understandably lose track, one of manyreasons why it is good to see his second full-length collection As They Say (Chicago IL: Moira Books, 2023). There are those that might recall Manery as anOttawa poet during the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, collaborating withLouis Cabri as the Experimental Writers Group and curating readings at Gallery101, later publishing hole magazine and eventual chapbooks under holebooks while curating the N400 Reading Series at The Manx Pub until he left townfor Vancouver in 1996 (Cabri, on his part, left Ottawa for Philadelphia in1994). At least twice if not three times the size of his first collection, AsThey Say follows It’s Not As If It Hasn’t Been Said Before (Vancouver BC: Tsunami Editions, 2001), and chapbooks Richter-RauzerVariations (above/ground press, 2012), Many, Not Any (Vancouver BC: SomeBooks, 2023) and Elegies (above/ground press, 2022).

Thereis such a wonderful heft to this collection, as though everything Manery hadworked on prior has been a kind of lead-up into this (the Elegies poems appearnear the end of the collection, as well). With poems that stretch and sequence,Manery’s is a language-fueled lyric of small movement across great distances, constructedas a kind of compressed expansiveness. “I at least / yield,” he writes, as thepenultimate poem in the seven-fragment sequence “These Constant Moments,” “toinarticulate / distances // if you depend / on these // unwelcome convictions /these constant // moments / some borrow [.]” Manery’s poems hold such exact languageand thinking, crafted and crisp stretches, providing such a delightful array ofsound collision and jumble of meaning, providing the poems far greater than themere sums of their parts. “Please tell me a story,” he writes, as part of thepoem “If All My Woulds,” “just a little story, // hemmed-in between the Would /and the Should, or the Must. It wasn’t / always like this? I count my / selfthe same man whether / I want or have.” There’s a staccato to his short lines,enough that he writes less across the page than straight down, providing a languageof craft and baffle, drawing vocabulary from multiple sources (depending on thepiece), from Sophocles, John Donne, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Louis Cabri, CatrionaStrang, Bob Hogg, Ted Byrne and Dr. Robin Barrow, among others. He utilizescollision and collage in such way to provide an effect of the pointed sketch, quicklines that simultaneously offer meditative pause and propulsive force. As hewrites as part of the book’s acknowledgements: “The Elegy poems draw almost allof their vocabulary from John Donne’s Elegies (Signet Classic, edited by MariusBewley). Each elegy in the series corresponds to the same numbered elegy pennedby Donne.” Built as a highly deliberate work of meditative collage, As TheySay is an assemblage of Kootenay School of Writing-infused language poetryas thoughtful and purposeful as anything I’ve seen. Rob Manery’s work hasclearly been flying underneath the radar for far too long.

do not excuse
a lie too

severe
and scrupulous

allow some
reservation

or illation
which they call

desirous of
some secret words

or was at that time
irresolute

both opinions
are possible

by their gravity
maturity, judgement

indifferency,incorruption
the impugners

carping at
just equivocations (“Equivocation”)