Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 62

VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival (our rebuilding year) fundraiser : the home stretch,

Beaware that there are only two weeks left in the VERSeFest fundraiser, aspart of the grand rebuilding year for VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival! It’s amazing to realize we’re already at seventy percentof our target, and we’ve received an enormous amount of support and assistance,which is very much appreciated. Thank you to everyone who has offered support!

Thereare still plenty of poetry manuscript consultations available, including with MadeleineStratford, Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, rob mclennan, JérômeMelançon (in English/French), ryan fitzpatrick (for achapbook-length work) and Stephen Collis (for a full-length poetrymanuscript!). Here is your chance to get manuscript consultations some of thebest working poets in Canada!

Anumber of book perks have already gone, but we’ve just added two copies of NicoleMarkotić latest poetry collection (signed), books by Ottawa poet FrancesBoyle and Vancouver poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar, and there arestill signed copies of a limited edition hardcover by Montreal poet and critic ErínMoure! As well, there are numerous book bundles of donated titles by MetatronPress, Book*hug Press, Apt. 9 Press (including a very cool William HawkinsBundle), Nightwood Editions, Gordon Hill Press, Véhicule Press, Coach House,Invisible Publishing, New Star Books, Anstruther Press and a set of the ArcPoetry Magazine ArcAngels (broadsides by Sylvia Legris, SusanMusgrave and Monty Reid, produced for Arc patrons; designed andproduced for Arc Poetry Magazine by Christine McNair).

And watch for information soon on our spring festival : March 21-24, 2024! Some ofthe poets confirmed include Anita Lahey, Monty Reid,  nina jane drystek, MayaSpoken, Amanda Earl,DS Stymiest, Madeleine Stratford, Sneha Madhaven-Reese, Jaclyn Pudiuk, ChrisTurnbull, Mark Goldstein, Sandra Ridley, AJ Dolman, Myriam Legault-Beauregard,Nduka Otiono, Klara du Plessis and Khashayar Mohammadi. That sounds pretty cool, doesn’tit?

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Robert Colman

Robert Colman is a poet, essayist, and critic based inNewmarket, Ont. His fourth book of poems, Ghost Work, was just releasedby Palimpsest Press.

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

It made me realize that Icouldn’t pretend not to care about the work, that poetry wasn’t just anoccasional distraction but was an integral way in which I want to expressmyself. My first chapbook came 7 years later. When Shane Neilson accepted Factory at Frog Hollow Press it revivedmy belief in my abilities, the idea that I might have something to say, and theability to say it with craft.

Shane’s influence, andthat of Palimpsest editor Jim Johnstone, has encouraged my use of form in Ghost Work, which is a suite of poemsthat explores the gradual loss of my father from dementia. This new book has amuch more defined narrative arc than any of my previous work, and yet it’s alsothe most varied in form from poem to poem.

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

I’ve always been muchmore interested in poetic form than fictional narrative. I just don’t think inthat shape. I do pursue non-fiction when an idea doesn’t work effectively forme as poetry. That work moves slower for me.

3 - Howlong does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writinginitially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear lookingclose to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

Very few poems in Ghost Work came out close to their finalform. The only exceptions were three of the pantoums that inspired the project.After writing those, I knew a project had begun. After that I wrote about fivereally bad poems that were soon disposed of. Writing those, however, encouragedthe creation of a shape for the first section of the book.

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

I usually start bywriting individual poems inspired by events in my life or, on occasion, a movieor piece of art. Once I’ve written enough poems that I see certain themes, Imight be influenced by those themes as I write. Ghost Work was different. I knew very early that I wanted to writeabout experiencing my father’s dementia. That intention sometimes made it achallenge, but the use of form helped push me, allowing me to write both awayfrom and towards that ultimate concern.

5 - Arepublic readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sortof writer who enjoys doing readings?

I love readings. That’swhere community happens, where you can talk to other people whose work youadmire. But I don’t think of them as a natural part of my creative process. Forinstance, I’ll read a poem out loud to myself but would never take a half-formedpoem to an open mic to hear how it’s coming. What I love is hearing what workresonates with an audience. My last book came out during the pandemic, so I hadfew opportunities to read aloud from it in person. Reading in London, Ontario,last year, though, I had two readers comment on the same poem, one that I’dthought very little of since writing the work. That interaction changes my ownperception of the work. Writing is a solitary process, as is reading, so thoseoccasional in-person interactions are revivifying.

6 - Doyou have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questionsare you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the currentquestions are?

I write because I want toexpress emotion in a crafted, hopefully beautiful way. I guess the overarchingquestion is, can I reiterate a scene or emotion in a way that is new enough orstriking enough that people will notice? Writing on the anthropocene, which Ithink most of us feel compelled to tackle, is particularly challenging in thissense. Environmental concerns found their way into Ghost Work sideways, which is probably the best way for it tohappen.

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

I think writers canreframe experience to clarify it for a larger audience. I think of how Roxanna  Bennett and Shane Neilson have helped reconsider dis/ability on the page. Whileit can have a societal impact, poetry can also simply encourage readers to considerlanguage(s) in new ways, as Klara du Plessis has done for much of her poeticexplorations. Hopefully what we write gives our readers at least one moment ofrecognition, something they’ve seen before that they have a new appreciation ofbecause of the work. It’s all about connecting.

8 - Doyou find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential(or both)?

I love working with myeditor. For me that interaction is essential. Jim pushed me to try new things -for instance, he encouraged me to work on a longer poem, which became “We’llMeet Again” in this book. My work is very much a collaboration with my editor.

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

Don’t think of theoutcome of the work. Allow the poem space to become what it needs to become.Save the editing for later.

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

When writing towards myfirst book I wrote every day. I needed that discipline to find my way towardthe work. Now, I have a full-time job as editor of a trade magazine and life ismuch busier. If I have a routine, it is that I read or write poetry almostevery day, but much more of that time is spent reading. I read before work, andlate in the evening. Poetry writing primarily happens at night, sitting up inbed and organizing those thoughts into concrete shape.

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

I try to get to the ArtGallery of Ontario or the McMichael. Visual art helps calm me and occasionallyinspires me.

12 -What fragrance reminds you of home?

The smell of sand andpitch pine.

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

Visual art is the formthat seems to influence my poetry the most. The opening poem of my last book, Democratically Applied Machine, was acommentary on a Gerhard Richter painting that, at the end of the process ofwriting that book, helped me frame its narrative arc in a way that hadn’t beenpossible before. The work of Joan Miro appears in Ghost Work in a way that remains a bit mysterious but is veryimportant to me.

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

Honestly, my peers whosework challenges me and encourages me to push the art further.

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

I’d like to write poemsthat tackle the anthropocene effectively. It’s something I’m working on verygradually.

16 - Ifyou 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?

Rock star? Maybe a loungesinger at my age. That’s the fantasy job I joke about.

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

It’s honestly the onlymarketable skill I have. I’m glad I found poetry along the way to becoming adaytime writer and editor.

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

Barbara Tran’s debut, PrecedentedParroting, is remarkable. Also, Russell Thornton’s latest really surprisedme.

19 -What are you currently working on?

I am currently working ona book of essays and criticism that is due to be published in 2026 or 2027.There is also an eco-themed poetry collection that remains in its protean stageof development.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

The Unwritten

originally appeared via my substack:

I imagine a thousandGreek ships arriving, their hulls covered in black pitch, each with a single sail.
               AnneSimpson, “What Does Poetry Do? Notes on Sōphrosynē”

 

1.

To illustrate a point during his post-reading on-stage interview,the senior novelist mentions a story he once meant to write of an accountant namedArtaud, who fell out of the sky. He fell out of the sky and survived, and no onecould figure out how.

Is this something you’re working on now? the interviewer askshim.

The novelist waved off the suggestion with his hand. No, no. Hewas too old, it would take too long. There are other things I must do.

 

2.

He preferred to answer questions on his latest book, a nearlysix hundred page epic that explores four generations of a family across two continents.The narrative stretches across more than a century, and took him twelve yearsto finish. He spent months wading through historical and personal archives,travelling six months from the United Kingdom through various points acrossEurope. How many more books might he have in him? He was already eighty yearsold. With every project, every book, the fear that it might be his last. And yet,every book was a new beginning. To start from nothing but scraps.

He'd spent twelve years splicing and braiding various oddsand sods, including the whispered tales of his Great Uncle Silas, who may or maynot have had to quickly abandon Dublin over the murder of a local shopkeeper. Hewrote a sequence of four generations of men, from Lithuania to Belfast toLondon, before arriving amid the Family Compact of Toronto, and Upper CanadaCollege. At points the story held shades of a spy thriller into a family drama,to a tale of romance, loss and instability. It was about seeking one’s home,and the sins of the father. A complicated romance of strangers, during the timeof the First Great War.

And then there was Artaud, who scratched at the back of his consciousness.Why even bring him up?

 

3.

The fictional Artaud woke in an open field. The first cut hadbeen poured into furrows, and he found himself lengthwise, laying across a beddingof dried hay and clover. How did he get here? He had scrapes on his legs and hisarms, and a considerable bruise on his torso, but no broken bones. There wereleaves in his hair.

He remembers the passenger jet during take-off. He remembersthe ambient engine hum, enough that it soothed him to sleep.

Seeking his bearings, he recognized the surrounding fields,and the curl of the river. The tin roof of a farmhouse and red painted barn, pastthe trees. The bridge, further south.

And not a sign of the aircraft. No contrails, no wreckage. Itwas as if he had been plucked from his seat by an invisible hand and placed onthe ground.

A breeze rolled up from the river. Three sparrows flecked by.A cool brush past his cheek. The sky a deep, endless blue.

 

4.

After the on-stage event, the novelist stood in the festivalpub with a pint of some local delicacy. His agent asks about the story of Artaud.Is this something you’re working on? Is this a short story or novel? No, no, heresponds. It isn’t anything. Well, the agent says, if you ever write it up, I’dbe interested in seeing it. A knot forms in his stomach.

 

5.

Artaud was fifty-one years old, although numbers couldn’t savehim. At least, not any longer. He had built his career around a certainty thatnumbers made everything possible. He believed in the God Equation. He had faiththat a mathematical formula was indeed possible to explain creation, and everythingthat followed. He had faith in this, all of which came crashing down on thatthird day of June, in his fifty-second year.

Three thousand to forty-two hundred feet in the air.

He was flying home after a conference, to visit his widowedmother. She hadn’t been feeling well and Artaud wished to check in. He still borethe weight of the good son.

He was in the air. He was on the ground. He had his briefcasein hand. How did he get here?

 

6.

The novelist knew that Artaud would never be the same again. Fouryears after he woke in a stranger’s field, Artaud’s mother would suffer astroke, and linger a few months before dying.

The plane landed, as it had been scheduled. Artaud was recordedas having boarded the plane, but there was no one at his destination to claim baggageor pick up his rental car. The airline offered a statement that pointed to humanerror, and the possibility he hadn’t boarded at all, before considering the mattersettled. No crime had been committed, and no one had been injured. There wasnothing to claim, and even less to refute.

The novelist knew he’d created a puzzle he hadn’t the bandwidth,nor possibly the imagination, to solve. How did Artaud make it safely to theground? The novelist worried a younger writer would have been able to write hisway out of it, or at least not paint up into corners. Were his best books,finally, behind him?

 

7.

From then on, Artaud couldn’t look skyward without trepidation.He never truly felt safe on the ground again. Was some part of him still in theair?

 

8.

The Wicked Witch of the West’s “Surrender, Dorothy” wasn’t directedat Dorothy. It was an excision from a longer quote, “Surrender Dorothy or die,”directed squarely at the people of Emerald City. She never expected the Ms.Gale to give up so easily. She knew her reign of terror would mean nothing to thisstranger, this interloper. The Wicked Witch went after the people.

 

Eliana Hernández-Pachón, The Brush, trans. Robin Myers

 

There are so many ways tonarrate horror, and it’s hard to know which one is right. A dry, detachednotarial record full of specific data and times, numbers, measurements, like aforensic report? A journalistic chronicle, be it objective or subjective, thattries to access the suffering of the victims? A fantastical reenactment inwhich terror swells unnoticed? A devastating, symbol-laden poem in the style ofPaul Celan? A fictionless novel in the vein of Primo Levi or Truman Capote?
            The Brush, by Eliana Hernández-Pachón, recountsone of the worst massacres in early twentieth-century Columbia, committed byparamilitary forces (with obvious military complicity) in the village of ElSalado and its environs, the Montes de Maria. Here, the author chooses aseemingly straightforward way to narrate horror: narrative poetry in thirdperson that describes what befalls a peasant couple (two indirect voices, Pabloand Ester) as soon as signs suggest that something terrible is about to happen.The language is serene, colloquial, familiar, and the voices issue from themouths of these names: Pablo, Ester, Pablo, Ester, husband and wife. The omens,the fear, the warnings flutter down like snow from the sky. When the threats ofdanger intensify, Pablo decides to bury his sole treasure, in a secret place:in case he survives, or in case someone from his family survives. (afterword, “Howto Narrate Horror?,” Héctor Abad Faciolince)

FromColombian poet Eliana Hernández-Pachón, translated from the Spanish by BuenosAires-based poet and translator Robin Myers, with an afterword by Héctor Abad, is The Brush (Brooklyn NY: Archipelago Books, 2024), an intense, book-lengthnarrative poem composed in three scene-sections, opening with Pablo, followedby Ester, and then what happens next. “Seventy more of those bullets are firedthat day.” the poem “The Investigators explain:” opens, “A mere / tenstrike the trees.” The Brush is composed, as the press release offers, as“a response to a traumatic event in recent Colombian history: the massacre inthe village of El Salado between February 16 and 21, 2000. Paramilitary forcestortured and killed sixty people.” There is something that literature can doand do very well, and that is act as witness, offering a way to document andacknowledge, to process, and The Brush shines a spotlight on Colombianhistory perhaps little known across North America, writing on what can’t beimagined, but an event that leaves its scar across not only history, but on thelives of those that remain. “When the bodies collapse in the town square,” thepoem “The Brush continues:” opens, “picked out at random, / the housesare left behind with their yards, / their kitchens, their sheets pressedsmooth, / receiving, still, / the sun’s warm touch.” This is a powerful and evocativecollection, devastating for its subtlety, and composed with enormous care andunflinching gaze.

The Investigators ask:

What did they do to them?Did they kill the ones they killed because they were on the list, or becausethey tried to defend themselves? What else did they do that day? Was there anywarning? How did they get here? That other boy—why did they take him away? Whosaid he’d stolen their animals? We heard about the man riding a burro. Wheredid that happen? How did that happen? How many did they shatter into? Were theconnections made a long time ago, or were they made and unmade again and again?Did they stay behind as lookouts? Did they leave? Did they leave after thatday?

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions for Barbara Tran

Precedented Parroting (Palimpsest Press, 2024) is Barbara Tran’s first full-length poetrycollection. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Hamilton Arts &Letters, The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, and TheParis Review. A co-writer of two XR short films, Official Selections ofSXSW in 2022 and 2024, Barbara is a co-editor of Watermark: VietnameseAmerican Poetry and Prose, 25th Anniversary Edition (2023).

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

The book that has changed my life themost is not one that I wrote but one that I co-edited: WatermarkVietnamese American Poetry & Prose. Through our work on the book,  MoniqueTruong and Khoi Luu, my co-editors, and I would get to know writers of theVietnamese diaspora from across the United States and stretching into Canada.We would forge deep, lasting friendships.

At a celebration for Watermark’s25th anniversary edition, contributor mauranguyễn donohue remarked that whilesome of us were meeting in person for the very first time, it felt as if we’dknown one another for decades.

That to me is the power of a book.

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

I knocked on fiction’s door first. No one understood whatmy stories were “about,” but they found certain paragraphs beautiful. I like tobelieve that my fiction writing has improved somewhat since my college days.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writingproject? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Dofirst drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work comeout of copious notes?

The greater challenge for me is pausing the idea generator longenough to cultivate one or a few ideas beyond the seedling stage.

With poetry, in general when the words come, they come quickly.Then, it’s a slow process of finding the order of the lines, teasing out a shapeon the page, and refining the language. I can spend hours simply moving line breaksback and forth.

In recent years, I’ve been collaborating on film scripts.That process is much slower. It involves copious notes simply to transport myselfto the designated time and place.

4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction usually begin foryou? 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?

For me, a great variety of things—nature, visual art,overheard conversation, dreams, someone else’s lines, an unusual object—canserve as a springboard for a poem or short story.

I’m most fascinated when writing bubbles up from asubconscious place, and things that I didn’t know I was thinking about spillonto the page. In order to tap more deeply into this, I have to let go of mypreconceived notions about what I would like to accomplish and focus myattention on hearing the voice that’s speaking to or through me. There’s noroom for thinking about an end product.

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

To me, readings exist outside of the creative process. Bythat point, it almost feels like the poems aren’t even mine anymore, butrather, independent creatures with their own lives.

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?

So many concerns. How do we give voice to the silenced, thesidelined, the misrepresented? What makes us human? How do we retain/regain ourhumanity? I can’t write with these questions in the foreground though. Theywould be paralyzing. As I focus on imagery, music, and form, however, largerconcerns are always whispering in the shadows. I think of the grounding thatpoetry offers as a kind of meditation, an invitation to return to our softerselves, an oblique way of addressing these larger concerns.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being inlarger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writershould be?

Teaching empathy. What more important lesson is there?

Those who have not seen Arthur Jafa’s devastating—and somehow simultaneously jubilant—short film “Love isthe Message, the Message is Death,” please stop reading this and go watch. It’savailable on YouTube. Never have 7 minutes altered my consciousness so deeply.

Elsewhere, Jafa talks about empathy as a muscle that needsto be exercised, one that is disproportionately exercised in those who havelittle, if any, access to accurate representations of self in the dominantculture. Given the current state of the world, though, I think we could all usemore practice slipping on others’ shoes and walking around in them.

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

Both. For me, writing necessitates climbing so deep into myhead that the world’s grip on me loosens. Working with an outside editorrequires distance and perspective, an ability to see the full landscape. I findit difficult to switch modes. Or maybe I just like staying in my happy place,where all my choices are the best ones. My gratitude to JimJohnstone, Anstruther Books, for his patiencewith me.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (notnecessarily given to you directly)?

Don’t look straight down the steep mountain, just point to thenext place you’d like to be. And go. (snowboarding instructor)

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

I’m not always certain what genre I am working in at agiven moment. Some pieces begin more amorphously. With those, the labels come later, usually imposed when I need tocheck a box.

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

Days typically begin with barking (not me), then walking (oneof the dogs and me). Coffee. On most days, a short meditation. After that, it’sall up for grabs. For me, routines can be difficult to implement. I’mneurodivergent. I live with a cattle dog though, and Sprocket has cattle dogpersistence and a very high-pitched voice, so we rarely diverge from thewalking routine.

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

When I make time for it, painting is an effective releasevalve for the pressure I put on myself. It’s also excellent for clarifying mythoughts.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Steamed rice.

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?

With this book, nature was a strong influence. I was livingtemporarily in L.A., and it seemed to me that there were all kinds of portentsin the natural world then and there. The birds were raucous every morning andsometimes deep into the night. Feral parrots would come screaming through theskies. Ravens left plundered rodent carcasses strewn on the road. Then, theglobal pandemic hit. George Floyd was murdered. We took to the streets. Wildfiresravaged forests. It all felt connected.

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

Collaborative works by the group and writing by theindividual members of She Who Has No Master(s), a collective of women and nonbinary writers and artists of theVietnamese diaspora. Dao Strom, Hoa Nguyen, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Vi Khi Nao, LilyHoàng, Cathy Linh Che ... a growing group. Beacons to my writing and salves to my life.

And Monique Truong. Always.

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

Visit Angkor Wat.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt,what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended updoing had you not been a writer?

Were it not for severe childhood allergies, I would likelybe a veterinarian.

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

Curiosity. And a strong dislike of sticky fingers.

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

What I’m reading now: Tina Campt’s ABlack Gaze: Artists Changing How We See.

Monster by Kore-eda Hirokazu

20 - What are you currently working on?

On one of the front burners is a collaboration with theCanadian-born artist Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn, currentlybased in Ho Chi Minh City. I’m working on a script for her feature film, inspiredby her PhD research on the life of Khánh Ký, an early 20th centuryVietnamese photographer who used his artistry as an instrument against thecolonial state. It’s a fictional film with speculative elements.

In between other projects, poems continue to make appearances. Arecent one called “Yellow-bellied Sapsucker,” in particular, makes me smile.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Spotlight series #94 : Jon Cone

The ninety-fourth in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring Canadian-in-Iowa writer Jon Cone .

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 and Toronto poet and editor Emma Rhodes.
 
The whole series can be found online here .

12 or 20 (second series) questions with JSA Lowe

JSA Lowe’s first book of poetry, Internet Girls, was published in 2023 by Finishing Line Press. Her poems have recentlyappeared in Biscuit Hill, LaurelReview, Michigan Quarterly Review’s Mixtape, Missouri Review, Screen DoorReview, Sinister Wisdom, Southeast Review, and Superstition Review. Her essays recently appeared in Denver Quarterly and Rupture. Her academic articles have appeared in Humanities, Journal of Fandom Studies, and TransformativeWorks and Cultures. She is an adjunctprofessor of literature at the University of Houston–Clear Lake, and she liveson Galveston Island with her cat Zoë.

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

I like that book—it’s a chunky little long poem, DOE, that Icall “Little House on the Prairie only with fucked-up pronouns.” What was niceabout that was feeling that someone was listening, if only the editors. That Iwasn’t just talking to myself in my office alone at 2 am to the cat,or at least not only that. Honestly I don’t find anything I’m doing thatdifferent now. At 55 I’m pretty set in my poesis, and when Carson says it’s thetask of a lifetime to avoid boredom (in the introduction to “Short Talks,”which I have memorized)—you can’t reinvent forms every time utterly, I find Ihave to operate within the parameters of what I’ve already mastered, to somedegree anyway.

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

I started writing songs when I was a kid, like maybe five or six, and amstill a songwriter, and I think it’s pretty much the same lyric instinct.There’s an absence, a lack, and the only thing that even begins to soothe it isthe heartbeat, the rhythm, and the arcing melody of plaint. (I’ve also alwayswritten fiction in my head, but only had the courage and the technicalabilities to start writing it down in maybe the last three years? I’m workingon a crime novel now, strangely enough.)

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?

I draft fast these days—again after, what, forty years? of writing poems Iwork a lot by instinct now, and don’t have to agonize over everything (at leastnot until revision). I generally start poems in the car/shower/on walks, scrawldown incoherencies, and then develop those phrases/melodies/thoughts later,when I type it up. I used to insist on drafting by hand, thanks to Brodsky andWalcott both being so insistent about it, but now I draft on my laptop, printout, and then revise by hand. I’ll go months only writing fiction and thensuddenly switch to poems. Last year an entire 85-page poetry manuscript fellout in a couple of months, and I’m laboriously revising that now.

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?

Both. I have, I don’t know, eight or nine manuscripts that haven’t beenpublished, and some are collections, and others are book-length long poems. Soeither can happen, and will.

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

I do love readings and I wish I got to do more of them. I have distinctways that I hear my poems—usually as kind of sharp and furious—and I love toinflict this reading on others. It’s tons of fun. Certain kinds of poets arescenery-chewers by nature and I guess I’m one, for the same reason that I lovelecturing to students, stalking around and expostulating, spittle flying likeI’m onstage at the Old Vic. And also—yes, they can help with revision. I’llrevise while I’m reading; the second I hit a word and feel that twinge ofdismay like, “oh no, I can’t actually say that aloud, that’s wrong.”

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 used to worry about this as a younger writer, what is my matière as the Old French poets used to say. Inevitably one has the same set ofconcerns, and equally inevitably those change. So now I’m more obsessed withe.g. my aging parents and aging self than my love life, which is no longer ascolorful (thank god). I suspect death, who has always been front and center,will continue driving the car. Aren’t we all trying always, though, to answerthe conundrum of late capital. The offensive ridiculousness of the carbon age,the excesses of the west, the ongoing cruelties of colonialism.

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

I suppose this sort of came up in my last answer, but Brodsky used to havea very clear take on this: “A writer is a lonely traveler, and no one is [his]helper.” We can’t set to work with the idea of having a “role” in “culture,”we’ll faceplant. The only thing to attend to are the parts of speech, the slantand near rhymes, the pulse of meter, the felicity of a word or its fecundassociations. That’s my only business and if anything endures, that’s up tohumanity and time. My role is mostly to shut up and pay attention. Some peoplejust pay more attention than others (cf. Jorie Graham).

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

I haven’t had a close first reader for a while now and that’s definitelybeen a bitterness, and a difficulty. (Although the writer Jael Montellano and Ihave been swapping drafts and gosh, she’s wicked smart.) I’ve never had aneditor pay that kind of close attention; I think I’d enjoy it, though?

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

Kerouac’s “Belief & Technique for Modern Prose.” So much goodness inthere: “You’re a genius all the time”; “Like Proust be an old teahead of time.”And then, my beloved old Zen teacher used to say, “Just show up.” That’s prettygood advice. Show up for your life.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry tocritical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?

I started writing proper academic papers in media studies about ten yearsago when I finally realized I didn’t have much to add to maybe, say, Dickinsonscholarship, but I was unshutuppable about Tumblr memes of Marvel characters.After a decade of conference presentations, a couple of peer-reviewed articles,a book chapter, etc., however, I no longer feel I have very much to contributethere. These kinds of writing/thinking use completely different parts of thebrain, and while it was fun, with the limited time I have left on our planetI’d like to prioritize fiction and poems.

Also, I was twice a semifinalist for the Fulbright to Taiwan and bothtimes didn’t make the cut. It kind of knocked the stuffing out of me, and Ithink someone else who’s better qualified can write about the queer girls andtheir queer fanfiction, and why it’s so crucially and culturally important.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even haveone? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

Shower, coffee, feed the cat, take my meds, check Discord and Twitterbecause I’m hopeless, then lately I’ve been revising one poem a day. My springsemester has included new courses and 70 students and feeling like my hair ison fire, so I generally spend the morning doing schoolwork (although do not getme wrong, I’m happy as a pig in mud teaching film and literature; I always sayit’s like the crack cocaine of teaching). Fiction tends to happen, if ithappens, in the afternoons, but during the summer—the catnip used to lureacademics—I write all day, gloriously, joyously.

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

Art museums and galleries are good, also films in languages I don’t speak.I call this filling the well. Long walks, and drinking a lot of water. Writingletters to friends.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Fresh hay.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are thereany other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science orvisual art?

Just off the top of my head: botany, Lou Rhodes, Chopin, medicine, CyTwombly, Agnes Martin.

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

The usual suspects, especially during my long education; but lately I onlyread Chinese webnovels called danmei, which are queer genre stories. Myfavorite author is pseudonymously known as Priest, and someday people will readher alongside Dostoyevsky, I think. Sha Po Lang (Stars of Chaos) and Mo Du (Silent Reading) are my two favorites atpresent. They almost tempt me to write papers again.

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

Actually finish a novel! I keep starting them and then panicking halfwaythrough. I also have a secret list of places to visit, even though I can’tafford them and will never get to go there. I’ll tell you three: Hangzhou,Dakar, Oaxaca. I had some idea I would learn to surf at fifty, but that…hasn’thappened. I love to watch surf videos, though. Maybe that’s close enough.

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 notbeen a writer?

I had an ex who used to claim that every single artist had wanted to besome other kind of artist, at first, and had failed—something about Ornette Coleman wanting to be a painter, maybe? I definitely wanted to be asinger-songwriter throughout college, and an actress in my teens. Those thingsare still there in me, just rearranged. I still rehearse lines in my car, forno clear reason. The body/face/voice just want to be shaping words, projectingthem into the world. I come from a family of musicians and will sing and playuntil I die, probably. You can’t stop the signal, Mal.

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

It was cheap and I had no money. And a few people made the mistake ofpraising me, early on.

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

In my mythology class we just read Anouilh’s Antigone, and in my film studies course we watched Ousmane Sembène’s La noire de…/Black Girl. Not bad. On my own? I got to see Chen Kaige’s restored director’s cut ofFarewell, MyConcubine in the theatre and sobbedfor hours afterwards. What a horrifying speedrun through the worst parts ofChina’s twentieth century, and also the heartbreak of being queer and cut offfrom the one you love, your people, your place, your own soul.

20 - What are you currently working on?

This crime novel, Beaconto Nowhere: harried New Englandwomen’s college dean (who just wants to be left alone to write her book) has tocope with an unfolding scandal involving a Title IX complaint and what’sstarting to look like a sex cult, and also she might be falling for her dependablecampus safety officer. Sort of dark academia/queer romance/cosy mystery?Heavily influenced by Robert B. Parker, because I devoured the Spenser books inhigh school like it was my job to do so. And, the new collection of poems, Idon’t know what it will be called yet—maybe Alpenglow? Maybe Sins of Old Age? Maybe Not Again, because I’m just immatureenough to think that’d be really funny.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Robert Colman, Ghost Work: Poems

 

In the Ribs of the Whale

Before weeding Penguinsand pulp fiction for the Sally Ann, my sister photographs his den. So manybooks. aspiration. Was there a goal, once, beyond connection? I pick out aGerman primer, Bertrand Russell’s short fictions, a guide to coastal birds ofthe United States. When did the world seem so knowable? My sister covets histeak desk, but it is anchor, not answer, Churchillian without a voicebox;outside the carapace of shelves, just some wayward sailor, landlocked, thepewter ashtray his spirit lamp. Selected wisdoms are now their own animal,wandering. When I read to him from its rows he joins me in snatches of poetry,lifts the book from my hand, turns it, caresses, cautiously riffling the pages,recalling his own face.

“I used to own this,” hesays.

I’mintrigued by Newmarket, Ontario poet Robert Colman’s fourth full-lengthcollection, Ghost Work: Poems (Windsor ON: Palimpsest Press, 2024), “asuite of poems that explores a son’s gradual loss of his father from dementia.”The loss of a parent is one of those universal experiences, one poets have beenarticulating and exploring for as long as poems have existed, and thefirst-person narratives of Colman’s latest collection around the slow erosionof his father offers lines and phrases set with subtle force, a striking easeand the most delicate care. “This walk is not ruined by absence— / loss comeseasy to the cedars,” he writes, to close the short poem “To Test an Absence,” “birchpeel and its sticky skin / that tests memory’s rule, what we hope / we cantrust as we walk above / on what seems like solid ground.” This is a book ofghosts, made more difficult for the slow erosion of his father’s selfthroughout dementia (comparable, in certain ways, to my own father’s slowphysical erosion due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). In the poem “Name,” Colmanwrites on regularly calling his father “father,” so as to remind him theirrelationship, a poem striking and heart-wrenching for that simple and ongoingdetail. “I run on as if words could shape an anchor,” he writes, “shape afather unoccluded, riven of doubt.” And yet, I find Colman’s more compellingpoems are the ones where he approaches his subject at a bit of an angle,allowing the language to propel, over the poems set to articulate a particular bitof information. “Tonight we char wild boar,” he writes, as part of the six poemsequence “Lost on the Way to Tortosa,” “aflame in tree boles. Yet here in theash, / mockingly, new growth. // This is the flicker he misses, the nonsensespark. / I hear him, an ocean away, testing a tune.”

Jared Stanley, SO TOUGH

My review of Jared Stanley's SO TOUGH (Saturnalia Books, 2024), is now online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics.

Fawn Parker, Soft Inheritance

 

FASTING FOR GOD

I was introduced to theidea of starvation
at the mercy of men by mymother

Walking into the partingcrowd
she pointed and said,

“He loves you, he lovesyou.”
When she’s wrong I blamethe men

The way they stomp theirboots on asphalt,
on porch steps, in thebasement

Into the precious dioramamy horned father
built to cage my small,small mother

I’m presented with themicrophone
asked: what is it calledif you get the worst hand possible

My mother, beat-less,says, marriage!
and laughs. She embellishes

each time, she embellishes.

Theauthor of the fiction titles Set-Point (Winnipeg MB: ARP Books, 2019), Dumb-Show (ARP Books, 2021), the Giller Prize-nominated What We Both Know: a novel (Toronto ON: McClelland & Stewart, 2022), and the forthcoming auto-memoir Hi,it’s me (McClelland & Stewart), the first full-length poetry title byFredericton writer Fawn Parker is Soft Inheritance (Windsor ON:Palimpsest Press, 2023), published under Jim Johnstone’s Anstruther Booksimprint. I’m intrigued by the back cover quote by Toronto writer Lynn Crosbie,and there are echoes and influence in Parker’s approach to narrative content, whetherswagger or swipe, to Crosbie’s own fierce lyric: you can see it in Parker’sfirst-person storytelling slant that refuses to be held, or held back; occasionallyreactive. “My husband says there is one place I can’t / do it and I do itthere,” Parker writes, to open “POEM AGAINST MY HUSBAND,” “I don’t come, and I don’twant to / so instead I write couplets.” The poems lead with swagger, but holdthrough precise measure, as Parker crafts sharp lines of meditative,observational grace, composing short monologues across a lyric surroundinggrief, maternal loss, marriage, caretaking and how one even begins to feelsafe. As the same poem ends: “But for the love of things / I do nothing. // Mywork needs me like an infant— / this is why we understand each other.”