Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 67

erica lewis, mahogany

 

baby, baby

kiss my lips
ain’t no harm
to moan
rhythm
and change
of rhythm
gave you my life
transmissions
to my white blood
some faraway
satellite
six-foot hole
inside my chest
cobalt ribs
as intimate
whisper
the truth is
i see you
i see you
and god grew
tired of us
fucking
on the ghost
of the truth

Thelatest from San Francisco poet erica lewis (and the first of her works I’veseen, although I did realize I published some of her work in an issue of G UE S T [a journal of guest editors] a while back) is the full-lengthcollection mahogany (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2023). mahoganydescribes itself as the third in lewis’ “box set” trilogy, followingcollections the precipice of jupiter (P-Queue/Queue Books, 2009) and camera obscura (BlazeVox [Books], 2010), both of which were composed alongsideartist Mark Stephen Finein, as well as murmur in the inventory (Shearsman,2013), daryl hall is my boyfriend (Barrelhouse, 2015) and mary wantsto be a superwoman (Third Man Books, 2017), the latter two being the firsttwo collections of this now-completed trio. Citing this collection as one composedto bear witness, her “project notes” at the end of the collection offers that mahogany“was written during the years I care gave for my mother, Mary. Her long illnesswas the best and worst time in my life. For five years I shuffled between SanFrancisco and Cincinnati, six months by six months.” Threading their sharedappreciation of Diana Ross, she offers that, much like the first twocollections in this trilogy, “mahogany uses the music of a (oncepopular) pop artist that I grew up listening to. Each poem takes its title froma line of a Diana Ross and The Supremes song or a song from Diana’s successfulsolo career—the poems are not ‘about’ the actual songs, but what is triggeredwhen listening to or thinking about the music. I’m thinking about what happenswhen you take something like a pop song and turn it in on itself, give it adifferent frame of reference, juxtapose the work against itself, against otherpop music, and bring it into the present.”

Thereis something compelling in the way lewis composes her rhythmic suite of lyricsset across sound and nuance, echoes and repetitions, chants of song and intimatespaces. The poems write from the space of care and slow loss, grief and appreciation;the poems write of witness, providing a space through which her mother remains,intact and vibrant. “the day has passed / and gone inside,” the poem “i’mhere” begins, “i want to have / something to say / about my own destiny /there used to be / a voice in my head / telling me everything / was going to beokay [.]” lewis composes long lyric first-person threads, each of which rundown the page from her Diana Ross title-prompt, wrapping her mother in arms andcare and loss. The heartbreak and care across this collection is palpable, deepand intimate. “do you / love yourself,” the poem “i don’t want to live”begins, “we must travel / in the direction . of our fear / and now the frontieris gone [.]”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Joshua Chris Bouchard

Joshua Chris Bouchard is the author of Burn Diary (Buckrider Books) and Let This Be the End of Me (Bad Books Press), the latter of which was shortlisted forthe 2019 bpNichol Chapbook Award. He wrote or co-wrote five chapbooks, and hispoetry appears in Event, CV2, Carousel, Poetry Is Dead,PRISM international, Arc, and more.

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

My first chapbook, Portraits, openeda new world of publishing, collaborating, and sharing the work as opposed tojust writing it for my own edification. It was a feeling of: This what poetsdo, and I feel connected to that tradition. I wanted to be a writer, topublish, to do live performances.

The biggest difference between my worknow and my work then is more focus. The work then was a big release of emotion,experiences, and ideas. The work now is more deliberate with themes and overallpurpose.

It feels different. After the Toronto launchof my first full-length collection, Burn Diary, I felt a very deepmelancholy. I couldn’t figure out why. Eventually I realized it’s because thework changed, and I have changed. And change can be frightening sometimes. Orfeel like some big loss. But it’s also necessary and good and signifiesprogress. It’s best to always move forward.

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

My introduction was through music. Lyricsand the feeling of music. We all know that feeling when we hear ourfavourite song. It’s undeniable. I would listen to metal and hardcore and think:These people are saying something that is true and meaningful to them, and Iwant to do that too. I also listened to hymns at mass and was really movedby them. This fervent kind of expression and devotion.

I journaled and wrote lyrics toimaginary songs. I would show them to anyone who gave a damn. Everyone thought,I think, that something was wrong with me. My grandmother found one of myjournals and was very concerned, which made sense. I was writing about traumaand abuse and horrible things. I think that’s why I liked poetry more thanfiction or non-fiction. I didn’t want to construct narratives. I wanted to letit all go – everything I was feeling without rules – and poetry allowed that.

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

I think I write new projects at a decentclip. I’ll think about the idea of something for a long time and piece ittogether in my mind. When I sit down to write it’s almost already formed, sothe actual process of putting it on the page doesn’t take very long.

First drafts can take a lot ofdifferent forms. Some of my earlier chapbooks were not changed much from thefirst draft besides minor edits. But Burn Diary was shaped and reshapedfrom the original version quite a bit over years.

When I was just starting out, therewas this impulse to throw caution to the wind: just write, leave it all on thepage, see what happens. Keep everything as is, let it be raw, let it be faulty.But now there is a more deliberate process. I’m older, maybe wiser, life isdifferent. The writing is different too.

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

A poem starts with a thought that Ican’t let go. I obsess over it. It could be a word, phrase, or image. Usually,it’s a feeling that I don’t know how to make sense. I work it out on the pageand wrangle it until some kind of path comes from it. Usually, they start asshort pieces that I curate into a larger thematic work. For example, BurnDiary was written over years with poems from different times of my life. Itwas then laid out into a large book, rearranged, heavily edited, paired down toits core.

5 - Are public readings part of orcounter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doingreadings?

I love doing readings and have done afair share. I don’t think about performing when I’m writing and I don’t thinkabout writing when I’m performing, but performing has the same importance aswriting. The poem on the page has a life and the poem read aloud has a life,but they’re both born from the same source.

The poem on the page is read bysomeone alone in their house and they have a specific relationship to it intheir mind. They can take their time, reread it, leave notations in the margins.The experience of a poem at a performance is very different. It’s read aloud asit’s intended to be experienced by the author. They hear their voice and see theirbody. I like to do as many public readings as possible, and I think I cut myteeth in the literary scene at open mics and other live gigs. I wouldn’t be thesame poet I am today if it weren’t for readings.

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

My goal used to be pure emotionalexpression, even to a fault, even if it meant chaos. I resented anythingacademic or stuffy or pinned down by arbitrary rules. I hated anything that I perceivedas artistically oppressive or authoritarian. Poetry was an act of rebellion.

But now, things are much less clear.My views on myself and the world vary. If anything, I want to elicit a visceralreaction from readers. I want readers to gasp, swoon, cry, laugh, be horrified,glad, complacent, petrified. Again, the feeling when you hear yourfavourite song or read your favourite poem. It’s there, deep down in the belly.What is that? How does it happen? I think it’s the connection between you, theworld, and the artist. Or maybe that’s all bullshit. I don’t know! Mu!

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

I think writers have a very important partin larger culture, even if they sometimes inflate that sense of importance incertain contexts. Many people have said that writers are the political andcultural barometers of any given society, and I think that is very true. A verylarge part of the writer’s goal – maybe their only goal – is to account forwhat is going on in the world in a very concrete way and hold up that unapologeticmirror and say: This is what we are, and this is what are we doing.

There is also the writer who exploresthe more metaphysical and introspective aspects of life: This is what I’mfeeling as a human being. I think there is a place for both and, anyways,those aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. Ultimately, I think writers have amoral and artistic obligation to call it as they see it. Be a human and expressyour humanity.

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

It’s nearly always essential. I feel I’mthe best judge of my work but that can get you only so far. When you liveinside your head all the time you get lost in the corridors of your thinking.An editor is there to guide you and be honest with you. They need to tell youthat the idea/word/poem/phrase isn’t good or not doing what you want it to do.

Sometimes an editor can hurt you becauseyour work is so precious that criticism can feel like an axe to the head, but theyalso give you power to make something the best it can be. I have written manypoems that I thought were very good, only to have a good editor (or generalreader) tell me that the poem doesn’t make any sense to them. There needs to bea stable conveyer of meaning from author to reader otherwise there is no pointin sharing the work outside of yourself, and editors will help you build that.

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

This may not be the best advice – Ihave heard many inspiring things from people about creativity – but it’ssomething my high-school history teacher told me. He was subbing for theWriter’s Craft course, and we were writing poems. He looked over my shoulderand asked: What’s that line break for? Why is it there? I didn’t knowthe answer.

He told me that everything you do in apoem needs to have purpose, even line breaks. That stuck with me. To this day Iremember that when writing poems: Does this line break or word have purpose?What is it I’m really trying to do? I also find music-recording engineerSteve Albini inspiring. Specifically, his lectures on the creative process and howthe capitalist industry impacts artists.

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

I’m a visual thinker, so it’s easy togo from poetry to photography. Photography works out a different part of theartistic brain muscle. You see it as a whole rather than lines left to right,it’s a physical object, and it exists outside my mind. I didn’t create it, it’salready there, its meaning subjective based on the observer. I also sing in aband and have dabbled with visual art. Again, a different muscle at work, butit’s all part of the same nervous system. It’s about expression. Photographycan express something that poetry can’t; music that poetry can’t; poetry whatneither photograph nor music can’t. I’ll go back and forth without much trouble.

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

I’m fastidious. I write between 5am –9am on Saturday and Sundays. I work a full-time 9-5 gig, so weekends are my bestopportunities to sit and put the words down. I rarely write anything during theweek, except maybe a few notes or lines I think are promising. I think somepeople are obsessed with writing; they are incapable of doing it. They willwrite all day if they could, any chance they get, or they will sit down andwrite a large work from start to finish in nearly one sitting. I sometimes wishthat were me, but it’s not. I love to write but life itself always takesprecedent.

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

Music is always my first creativepalette cleanser. Music doesn’t demand the same things from a listener aspoetry does from a reader. I can lie there and let it wash over me. Again,music hits a different nerve and stimulates a different part of your emotions.The second thing is just living, which sounds very vague and boring, but ithelps me a lot. Go to the park. Go grocery shopping. Buy an overpriced eclair.Go to the mall, the worst mall you can find. Malls are incredibly inspiring.They are so oppressive and offensive. Go to the food court and just watchpeople eat. Invariably I will get that feeling again and ideas start to come.

13 - What fragrance reminds you ofhome?

I love this question. It’s the smellof fire in autumn. Campfires or from home fireplaces. It’s that smell duringtwilight when it’s kind of cold, there’s a good wind, and the scent of burningwood is everywhere as you walk down the street. It elicits an image of safety,peace, warmth. Or gasoline.

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

Music and movies are huge influences.Music for the feeling and film for the visual. This reminds me of going to amovie theatre in the early afternoon on a summer day. You’re in the theatre fora few hours, it’s dark, whisper quiet, and you may even be totally alone. Youbecome engrossed in the film, the characters, the story. The film ends and youwalk out, and the sun suddenly pulverizes your senses. You feel like you’re ina dream or like you’ve somehow transformed into a new person. You’re a bitwobbly and stupefied. You’re not the same. I love that feeling. I want people tofeel like that after they’re finished reading my poems.

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

Shunryū Suzuki is an important writerand teacher for me. He wrote Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind which, when I wasyounger, was like a bible to me. To this day I go back to it occasionally andread passages. Suzuki was a Japanese Zen Master, and the book teaches the practiseof Japanese Zen and its basic philosophical tenets. It can be incrediblycomforting when I feel utterly defeated by life. My friend Alex once said abouttherapists: Sometimes you just need someone to tell you you’re not a pieceof shit. That’s what Suzuki does for me. He reminds me that I a human beingwho is flawed but…not a piece of shit.

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

I have always fantasized aboutbuilding a cabin in the woods and living there for…maybe forever. Have you seenthe Dick Proenneke documentaries? Proenneke went to Alaska in the 1960s andbuilt a cabin by hand and lived there alone for 30 years. He documented thewildlife there and wrote in his journals and that was about it. Not at all likeThoreau or something like that – he was the real deal. I’d also like to write anovel. Ideally a good one.

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

Psychologist, neuroscientist, or theoreticalphysicist. You know, the usual. Or a drummer.

I might have been a miner if I neverstarted writing. I would have followed the path of my father and grandfatherback home. Some kind of skilled trade. Right now, I’m an Editorial Manager at adigital PR company and have been doing that for 8 years. I suppose I would justbe doing that, but not sure if I would have ever got there if it weren’t forwriting. Maybe some other corporate gig. Living life and paying bills likeanyone else.

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

Solitude and lack of money. It wassomething I could do completely alone, any time, any place, and virtually for free.If I had more money, I might have gone straight to buying an instrument andtaking music lessons. It was also kind of easy. I didn’t really have to try atit. It came very naturally to write down all my thoughts and feelings. I felt Iwas good at it and later was good at shaping them and later was good andreading them aloud. Was I delusional? Maybe, but here we are!

19 - What was the last great book youread? What was the last great film?

I’m nearly finished reading A CaseAgainst Reality by Donald Hoffman. It’s a non-fiction book by a cognitive/neuroscientistthat theorizes on the nature of objective reality and human consciousness,under a cognitive and evolutionary-psychological context. It basically arguesthat objective reality as we perceive it is not actually there, and is morelike a shadow of an underlying reality we can’t understand, which is requiredto survive as animals. I am not sure I agree (or understand) it all but it’sfascinating.

Some months back I finally watched Aftersun,a UK film by Charlotte Wells. A devasting movie about a daughter and father whois not mentally well. It’s sort of an homage to the director’s late father. Ialso just rewatched Come and See by Elem Klimov. A true classicabout the absolute horrors and brutality of war. Painful to watch at parts butcertainly one my favourites. The actor who played the kid, Aleksei Kravchenko, wasjust unreal.

20 - What are you currently workingon?

I’m working on a new poetry collection, but I just started. I’mnot sure what it’s going to be yet, but I think it’ll be calmer and quieterthan my last collection. So far, it seems funnier. I’m also working on anon-fiction collaborative project. We’re just in the process of outlining itall. I think it will be good to stretch into a different genre. I also sing in aband called LINENS and we’re getting ready to record our first EP.

Overall, I have this sense of terror and dread about the future,but that can also be a good feeling. It propels me forward. Onwards.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ongoing notes: late December, 2023 : Karen Solie, Paola Ferrante + HR Hegnauer,

Anotheryear, another what? And so it goes; if you can imagine, The Factory ReadingSeries will be turning thirty-one years old in January (keep your eyes out foranother event come the new year), and above/ground press as well, by thesummer. Madness! Just what might 2024 bring? And hey, publishers should bemailing me more chapbooks! I’m really not seeing enough these days.

Montreal QC: I was very intrigued to see a chapbook byKaren Solie, WELLWATER (2023), produced as “Vallum Chapbook Series No. 37”by Montreal’s Vallum magazine. Solie is a writer that doesn’t seem topublish chapbooks that often, and I don’t think I’m aware, offhand, of any by herover the years save for those days prior to the publication of her debut, herchapbook Eating Dirt (1998) that appeared with Victoria chapbookpublisher Smoking Lung Press (although a quick Google search offers that afurther chapbook, Retreats, appeared with Toronto’s Junction Books in2017). Otherwise, Solie is the author of six full-length collections: Short Haul Engine (London ON: Brick Books, 2001), Modern and Normal (BrickBooks, 2005), Pigeon (Toronto ON: Anansi, 2009) [see my review of such here], The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out (Anansi, 2015), The Living Option: Selected Poems (Northumberland UK: Bloodaxe Books, 2013)[see my review of such here] and The Caiplie Caves (Toronto ON: Anansi,2019) [see my review of such here]. Solie writes of basement suites, landscapes,foxes, and trees of a particular park, offering echoes of content familiar toanyone who follows her work; first-person lyric observations finely honed andcrafted across a line any bird, to paraphrase Don McKay, would trust to lightupon. As the poem “THE TREES IN RIVERDALE PARK” begins: “Diagonal pathsquadrisect a square acre / white as the page in February.”

Thefourteen poems in WELLWATER offer a curious grouping: as much as Solieis an author of individually-crafted lyric narrative poems, her collectionsoffer an ebb and flow of deliberately-structured book-length compositions, anda shorter selection, then, moves in a slightly different manner; enough that I amcurious to see how these poems interact with the book that might eventuallycome (her author biography does offer that a new collection is due to land in2025). “I can’t make it right. Not the shadow lying on the snow,” she writes,to open the poem “BAD LANDSCAPE,” “not the snow, terrain sloping crudely toward/ the poor outcome of a structure neither representational / nor abstract, andthe sketched-out town beyond / ill-proportioned, depthless, and basic. There isn’tany sense / of an origin, of what Plato called the lower soul, / toanimate what’s lacking with the spark of its / remainder.”

Toronto ON: Another title I picked up not long ago from Toronto publisher and poetry bookseller knife|fork|book [see my prior notes on othertitles from the past few months here and here and here] is Toronto writer PaolaFerrante’s THE DARK UNWIND (2022) [see her recent ’12 or 20 questions’ interview here], a chapbook of poems wrapped in lyric anxieties, climate changeand the Anthropocene. “The dinosaurs that didn’t die went slamming intowindows,” the poem “Descendants” begins, “dazzled / by the colour of a gold. Insteadof flight, they had their houses built / on tree tops, over many single bladesof grass; they learned to run / on fossils of their dead.” Wrapped in culturalmarkers and large-scale historical trauma, this assemblage of first-personnarrative lyrics an intriguing offering, and one, I hope, that will lead into afollow-up to her poetry debut from a couple of years back. There’s an increasedsharpness to her lyrics, and clear evidence of a honed line and fine eye. Listento the ending of the opening poem, “Asch’s Line Study In The CurrentAnthropocene,” that reads: “Before the river in the sky became a mudslide, / westood for elevator talk about the weather as though we’d never / tried to buythe rain, as though the rain was not canaries, slamming / into windows. Wechose, but stood in grocery lines and talked of / whether, as though we couldstill choose a time to see, as though / we’d get to choose when the power wouldgo out.”

Brooklyn NY: Another title lost upon my desk until arecent mini-excavation is Excerpts from CONTRADITION AND NIGHT : GRACE (PortablePress @ Yo-Yo Labs, 2021) by Denver, Colorado poet and designer HR Hegnauer,published by Brooklyn poet, writer, editor and publisher (etcetera) Brenda Iijima. Hegnauer is a poet I’ve been aware of for some time but hadn’t yetread, author of the full-length collections Sir (Portable Press @ Yo-YoLabs, 2013) and When the Bird Is Not a Human (Subito Press, 2018), aswell as a handful of chapbooks, none of which I’ve seen, and now, curious as towhy her work wouldn’t have made it across my radar before. Set in two sections,this work-in-progress excerpt offers the opening section “CONTRADICTION,”subtitled “To speak against,” a cluster of individually-numbered and repeated “DAY”poems, followed by the section “GRACE,” subtitled “The unmeried divine,” acluster of individually-numbered and repeated “Thought” poems. As the openingpiece to the short collection reads:

DAY 1

Life is like a small busin the desert of your human. You can’t feel the heat unless you’re standing inthe dirt. In which case you must ask yourself, would you like to stand in thedirt?

I look out the windowtowards the desert. Black walnut, organ pipe, saguaro, jumping cholla, sage,brittle brush, globe mallow, fish hook barrel, prickly pear, ocotillo.Scorpion, rattlesnake, collared lizard, horned lizard, fox, rabbit, coyote. I can’tsee the people.

Hegnauer’swebsite describes this chapbook as “vignette essays,” which I’m curious about;intrigued, even. I’m curious, also, about the divide between “CONTRADICTION” and“GRACE,” between “DAYS” and “THOUGHT,” wishing to know a bit more about whatmakes those divisions, those divides. And where the presumably-eventual full-lengthcollection might meet amid those clear demarcations. “It’s the sparseness that’sso loud here.” she writes, to open “DAY 5,” “Look up, look across the / desert.All that emptiness shows me at least twelve miles of itself, but / puttingmeasurements in the desert is not a natural thing to do.” There is an enormousamount going on in these pieces, and these poem-essays are as deeply thoughtfulas her lines are striking. As the poem “Thought 6” reads, in full:

“How do you say? My familyhung themselves because too much torture,” you say.

Six nights by truck. Now itis time to walk. Get out and walk.

Om mani padme hum.

“Okay. Where does the sunset? Okay. We’ll go that way.”

A bit of yak butter toeat.

“Our eyes became sick. Becauseof the snow and the sun. You know, eye sick.”

Om mani padme hum.

“If we die, then we dietogether. But if we are life, then we are life together.”

Thirteen years old. Om mani padme hum. Where does the sun set?

new from above/ground press : Houbolt, Koss, Robinson, Dardis, Tucker, Oniță + Carr/mclennan

; But Then I Thought, by Kyla Houbolt $5 ; A PANDEMIC INVENTORY, SPRING-SUMMER 2020, BROOKLYN NY, by Zane Koss $5 ; Between the Lakes, by Ben Robinson $5 ; with the lakes, by Colin Dardis $5 ; The Last Horse / Prologue, by Aaron Tucker $5 ; Misremembered Proverbs, by Adriana Oniță $5 ; river / estuaries, by Julie Carr and rob mclennan $6 ;

AND DID YOU SEE THAT JASON CHRISTIE WON THE 2023 bpNICHOL CHAPBOOK AWARD IN NOVEMBER FOR HIS 2022 ABOVE/GROUND PRESS TITLE?   (second printing now available, as well as a Jason Christie bundle); and groundwork: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023) is now available! see my introduction over at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics!

keep an eye on the above/ground press blog for author interviews, new writing, reviews, upcoming readings and tons of other material; see the previous batch of backlist from October-November 2023 here;

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November-December 2023
as the final batch of the above/ground press 30th anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy of each
and there's still time to subscribe for 2024!

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button (above). Scroll down here to see various backlist titles, or click on any of the extensive list of names on the sidebar (many, many things are still in print).

Review copies of any title (while supplies last) also available, upon request.

Forthcoming chapbooks by Julia Polyck-O'Neill, Sacha Archer, Dale Tracy, Melissa Eleftherion, Kyle Flemmer, Saba Pakdel, Lydia Unsworth, Katie Ebbitt, Russell Carisse, Micah Ballard, Cary Fagan, Amanda Deutch, Kyla Houbolt, Gary Barwin, Blunt Research Group, Phil Hall + Steven Ross Smith, Peter Myers, Terri Witek, Pete Smith and Angela Caporaso (among others, most likely); what else might 2024 bring?

merry holidays and christmas! etcetera,

This is the image on our holiday cardthis year, which was taken during that fateful Guardians of the Galaxy ride atDISNEYWORLD [see my report on that particular adventure here]. This picture was snapped well after mybody had gone entirely limp, as I began to make my peace with death (it took afull two days for me to recover from that ride). There are many regrets upon takingthat ride. I shall never mention this experience again. I will point out, aswell, that I did not choose this image as our holiday photo. We shall speak nomore of it.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Emily Osborne

Emily Osborne is the author of Safety Razor (Gordon HillPress, 2023) and Biometrical (Anstruther Press, 2018). Her poetry, shortfiction and Old Norse-to-English verse translations have appeared in journalssuch as Vallum, CV2, Canthius, The Polyglot, The Literary Review of Canada andBarren Magazine. Emily’s poetry has been shortlisted for several prizes, andwon The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Poetry 2018. Emily has a PhD inOld Norse Literature from the University of Cambridge. She lives on BowenIsland, BC, with her husband and two young sons.

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?

My first chapbook (Biometrical, Anstruther Press,2019) and full-length collection (Safety Razor, Gordon Hill Press, 2023)definitely came as a fulfillment of a life-long goal. As a child I wrotecopious amounts of poetry and stories and always dreamed of publishing a book.When I was focusing on my academic studies, that drive was directed into publishingarticles and working on a critical book. After I decided to leave academia in2016 and focus on my creative writing, one thing that was emotionally difficultwas all the partial academic article manuscripts and book manuscripts I knew Iwould likely never publish. Holding my first chapbook and book took away a lotof that sting. And I am now working on a book that uses the knowledge I gainedduring my PhD studies in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature, which feels likeanother fulfillment and justification that the years in dusty libraries werenot for nought. But more on that below!

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

I grew up in a house filled with books of poetry. My motheris a poet who did a PhD in Modern American poetry. The seeds were sown early. Ilove crafting prose as well, but poetry has always felt like the most naturalhabitat for me. After finishing a PhD and postdoctoral fellowship where Ifocused on poetry, it isn’t surprising that I was first inspired to writepoetry once I turned my attention back to my creative writing.

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?

I’m definitely a snail, picking up little bits of dirt andpine needles as I inch along. Often I will think through a draft for a longtime, mulling over an idea, researching and taking notes, thinking upinteresting vocabulary. I make copious notes. Then, when I sit down to actuallywrite, the process can be very quick or very slow. Most poems I will edit alot. I’m a perfectionist regarding vocabulary and rhythm and work with imagery,bending and shaping an image until I feel it’s doing all it can. Most poems Iwill workshop with a writing group or with my husband, and then re-edit.

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

I quite enjoy readings and find it very helpful to see howaudiences respond to my poetry when read aloud. One of the things I miss aboutworking in academia during my PhD and postdoctoral years at Cambridge and UBCis the opportunity to lecture. I absolutely loved sharing material withstudents and seeing what kinds of insights and questions they brought to thetexts. For me, one of the benefits to hearing an author read their work is thatyou can (hopefully) hear some background about the piece and learn about whatmakes that author tick. In my experience, a minority of people find thisannoying and prefer to hear the poem or prose alone; most, however, enjoy thechance learn about the author and context. And the opportunity afforded byreadings to meet new writers and readers is always amazing. I only wish I hadthe chance to do more readings, but right now, living in a remote location withtwo little kids means I cannot do as many as I would like.

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

Essential and (at least so far), not at all difficult! Todate, editors have only suggested minor changes to my poems, but all feedbackand affirmation is incredibly helpful. On my chapbook I worked with Blair Trewartha and onboarded all of his suggestions. Same story with my full-lengthbook where I worked with Shane Neilson. While a suggestion to change a poem cansometimes feel jarring, every time I have stepped back and thought about how Ican use that suggestion to make the poem better, the result has been a betterpoem.

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

Curiosity is one of the most powerful tools a writer canpossess.

This, to me, has been so much more valuable than the moreoften repeated advice, “Write what you know.” Sometimes I think people getstuck on this latter advice about writing what they know, and cannot movebeyond it, essentially writing the same poem over and over. Or else, the poemdoes not contain enough meat in it because it fails to address otherperspectives, circumstances, etc. I think the most effective writing occurswhen you are curious enough about a subject that you will assess it from many angles;even if it’s something you already know about, there is so much more to learn!

12 – What fragrance reminds you of home?

Scents that remind me of my childhood home in SouthernOntario are: snow, hot tarmac in summer heat, freshly-baked bread, Ivory dishdetergent.

Scents that remind me of my current home on Bowen Islandare: damp pine needles, cedar wood, my husband’s light roasted coffees, variouschildren’s breakfast cereals gone soggy.

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

Scientific facts are constantly inspiring me with ideas forpoems and stories – it’s a challenge to elegantly work these amazing factsabout the universe or the body into art, to engage in this dialogue between theways the world works on our perceptions and the ways language works on ourperceptions. My debut Safety Razor has lots of science sprinkledthroughout, touching on memory, weather, DNA, linguistics, and ultrasoundwaves. I’m the kind of person who loves learning new things and loves findingconnections among things I hadn’t previously viewed as connected. Film andvisual art often find their way into my poems as well, although in a generalsense as opposed to directly ekphrastic works describing a painting or filmscene. Perhaps ekphrasis will be a future project!

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

For writing, I would love to write both an adult fantasynovel and a children’s fantasy novel. I have ideas for both, but not enoughtime to write them at present! Also I would love to write and publish morecriticism and reviews

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, whatwould it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doinghad you not been a writer?

In an alternate life, I am a professor of Old English andOld Norse Literature. In a second alternate life, I am an art historian. In athird alternate life, I am a ballet dancer. In a fourth alternate life, I am aprofessional chocolate taster. About this last one, I’m only partly serious. Ieat way too much chocolate and have been described many times as a “hound dog”because I have very sensitive faculties of smell and taste.

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

Most of my reading or tv-viewing time these days is with mykids, and I’m therefore obliged to select from kid-friendly material. Myhusband and I just finished reading the kids E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Webat bedtime. I avoided reading this as a kid because I couldn’t get “into”animal stories. I grew up in a house where severe allergies prevented us fromhaving pets and I didn’t develop relationships with animals until later inlife. Wow, what a powerful story! I found myself smiling and teary throughoutand impressed by the championing of humility, a virtue which seems largelyforgotten these days.

The last great kids’ film I watched was The Song of the Sea(2014). Breathtaking visuals, spot-on narration, with a story that is bothcomplex and simple to allow children to engage on many levels. My 4yo wanted towatch this over and over and, for once, I didn’t mind the repetition!

19 - What are you currently working on?

Finishing off a draft of an anthology of translations ofskaldic poetry – a form of verse composed in Scandinavia between the ninth andfourteenth centuries. I’m so excited about sending this out to publishers andsharing this genre with the world. To date, there is no easily accessible andlyrical anthology of this genre, but it is incredibly fascinating and rewardingto read. These are the actual words of the Vikings and their descendants, andtheir poems give us a view of Viking Age and Medieval Scandinavia that isdifficult or impossible to find elsewhere.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

rob's year in review! writing, books, chapbooks, travel etc

I’musually so focused on reviewing, publishing, interviewing and actual writingthat I tend to forget to broadcast elements of my actual literary work in thisparticular forum, so why not an overview? This past year saw an array of events, activity and chaos, although most of my actual literary production this past calendar year has been focused on non-fiction(book-length lyric essay) projects: the first half of the year, attempting tocomplete the manuscript of “Lecture for an Empty Room,” and, since June,pushing this new non-fiction project, “the genealogy book,” both of which I’vebeen posting excerpts of on my enormously clever substack (among other prose-specificprojects and threads, including a potential book of short essays on prose writers, and a handful of short stories, both from what might be a secondmanuscript of very very short stories, “Little arguments,” and a secondmanuscript of actual short stories, “Very suddenly, all at once”).

Oh,and my poetry title World’s End, came out with ARP Books in October, andit is lovely. This is the collection that immediately precedes the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022). And Invisible Publishingproduced groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 a few weeks later, and it is gorgeous (see my introduction for such here). They hold the best of the second decade volume in their catalogue as well, if you’re looking for copies (I have a few of thefirst volume in storage, so prod me if you’re looking for that).

Ispent a month across January-February working a poem sequence, “edgeless :letters,” that was produced as a chapbook through above/ground press in July. Honestly,I spent the year even saying to myself that I wasn’t really writing poems, and certainly, the bulk of my 2023 was working on prose projects, but Ithink I now have the core of another poetry manuscript, “edgeless,” that just needsa couple further items to be complete. Around the same time that “edgeless :letters,” was composed, I was also putting what became the finishing touches ona further poetry manuscript, “Autobiography,” some of which has appeared in theonline chapbook Poems for Frank O'Hara's birthday (Palabrosa, 2023) and theprint chapbook The Alta Vista Improvements (above/ground press, 2023), as wellas through Horseshoe Literary Journal and the Chaudiere Books blog (and my own website, naturally), and issues of Arc Poetry Magazine, Eventmagazine, Grain magazine, periodicities: a journal of poetry andpoetics, Qwerty magazine, Stride magazine, South DakotaReview, The Peter F. Yacht Club and Volt: A Literary Magazine. Oh, and that call-and-response chapbook-length Covid-era collaboration Denver poet Julie Carr and I were working also appeared as a chapbook through above/ground press! I have a few excerpts of the writing diary I composed around such posted as part of my substack, by the way.

Summersaw the thirtieth anniversary event celebrating three continuous decades (andnearly thirteen hundred titles) published through my above/ground press; it wasa great event! I posted a report on the reading, naturally, which you should read here. There were some other readings I organized across the year, as The FactoryReading Series slowly returns to life [Pearl Pirie was good enough to even post a report on one of those events this past year]. the ottawa small press fair, which I co-founded and organize, landing at the thirty year mark next fall, may have moved over to Tom Brown Arena permanently, by the way.

Ieven got interviewed a bunch this year! Including: by Hollay Ghadery for River Street Writing, November 2023 : by RC Weslowski and Kevin Spenst for Wax Poetic, August 2023 : by Erin Bedford for Pinhole Poetry, July 2023 : by Susan Johnston, CKCU, May 2023 : by Valerie Coulton, Palabrosa, May 2023 : by Sam Szanto, 20 Questions, February 2023 : and by Lori Hettler, The 40 but 10 interview series, January 2023. I keep a running list of links of various interviews with me over here. And did you see I finally added a page to a variety of links to reviews of my work on my author page? After years of complaining that no-onetakes my work seriously, I thought that perhaps I should maybe give folk theopportunity to attend to those who actually had?

Thisyear had a bunch of travel as well, which has been a huge relief, after thatperiod of Covid-lockdown. I like posting reports on these travels, if for noother reason to recall what it is I’ve actually been doing (and for folk outside these events, a bit more knowledge of what various corners and communities might be up to), across thewhirlwind of other activities, and you can catch reports on my readings at the Horseshoe Literary Festival in Corner Brook, Newfoundland in October, for ARP Books in Winnipeg in October and at the Art Bar in December. I was solo with the kids back in January, when Christine was at Banff Writing Studios, we went to Picton to visit father-in-law and his wife in July, did a bigridiculous drive with the kids a bit later [parts one, two and three], attended a two-day Adams Family (birth mother's family) reunion in August and went to Disneyland in November. Without these reports, how to keep track of it all? The Disney jaunt was interesting, although the three months prior to that was completely overloaded, including two book deadlines (for On Beauty and groundwork), with Corner Brook and Winnipeg thrown into the mix, so everything since that time did involve a bit of a collapse (although now that I've a collection of short stories accepted and forthcoming, it is a bit more of a push to further this novel I began during those early months of Covid; the story actually continues the thread of a couple of the stories in that particular book, which themselves follow a particular thread from my second published novel, missing persons, that The Mercury Press produced back in 2009...).

Christine and I are slowly working to think about fall 2024 touring, by the way. She has her third full-length title, Toxemia, a lyric/non-fiction hybrid memoir, out in the fall with Book*hug, and my collection of short stories, On Beauty, lands around the same time with University of Alberta Press, so we're thinking a bit of a tour might be in order. We've not done such a thing together, and my last really big bout of extended touring (beyond one-off readings here and there) was back in 2006 [part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine, part ten], before I landed my year as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta; since Christine and the kids, there really hasn't been the opportunity to repeat such a thing, especially together, so we're finally taking it. We're currently seeking options that might have funding attached, so we can afford to travel around a bit? Would be good to get to Fredericton, Montreal, St. Catharines, Peterborough, Calgary, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Hamilton, Victoria, etcetera. Very exciting, yes?

And keep in mind I'm still working on my thirteenth annual 'best of' Canadian poetry titles list for the dusie blog, which most likely lands on January 1st over there. See last year's list here! In case you aren't aware, I have been writing and posting some one hundred and fifty book reviews online (between blog and periodicities) over the past few years (I have yet to do a proper 2023 count, but I will include such as part of my 'best of' list), so it is good to get a handful of 'worth repeating' reviews out every year. Oh, and I'm reading in January in London, Ontario with Karen Schindler for Antler River Poetry: might we see you at that? Don't worry if you are unable, naturally; I'll most likely post a report.

Valerie Witte, A Rupture in the Interiors

 

[ 2.2 ]

We are bodiesof evidence | a cadaver’s skin found frozen
in a glacier |To recover from shedding she discovered
a wall ofpungent herbs | impressions
made inminerals disturbed | where winters pass dormant, the physical
record issparse | A root ground to powder: why were things so difficult
to swallow | eaten bywarblers or washed away | rain, then two opposing
clines concealarmor | external, evolution
of feathers | Fleeceflower,the blood cleaned cold | and the female
bigger still,without a mouth does not feed | but draws | for draping
fabrics, belts| repel a moth
mugwort,babies by rocking | a cigar waved carefully
as if rollingcould alleviate | Absence extinguished before
contact butonce it was dropped | And singed her |

I’mstruck by the lineation and threads of Portland, Oregon poet and writer Valerie Witte’s latest full-length poetry title, A Rupture in the Interiors (PortlandOR: Airlie Press, 2023), following a variety of her poetry and hybrid titlesincluding a game of correspondence (Black Radish, 2015), The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (with Sarah Rosenthal; Operating System,2019) and the chapbook Listening Through the Body (above/ground press,2021), not to mention her forthcoming collection of experimental essays, One Thing Follows Another: Experiments in Dance, Art, and Life Through the Lens of Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer (punctum books, 2024). A Rupture in theInteriors is structured through nine numbered sections—“1. IN THE COILS,” “2.FURS FOR THE FIELDS,” “3. AND THE MANY SHAPES OF CLAWS,” “4. AN INFERIOR BLUEAND FAST,” “5. IN UNPROTECTED WATERS,” “6. WHERE FEW LINGER,” “7. A FAITHFULLYRENDERED MARK,” “8. TO BE RENT AT THE SEAMS” and “9. AND IF WE DISAPPEAREDPERMANENTLY”—with individual poems numbered within (the above poem, “[ 2.2 ],”for example, being the second poem in the second section), offering theassemblage as a single, ongoing book-length poem-thread. Witte’s lyric isknitted, stitched; a lyric that plays not simply with threading as imagery andcontent but as structure, and her threads are myriad, almost polyphonic and multi-directional,writing on perception and the body, and the very idea of what holds, howeverprecarious it might sometimes seem, everything together. “When we aretransformed clawless | out of water,” she writes, to open the poem “[ 6.4 ],” “|Also / red | garments are tents of deprivation by means of leaves/ or lungs: ventilation | lost | Any organ unusable at times, decayed / couldresemble | bellows [.]” Each individual poem propulsive, a kind of self-containedpulse across the larger and much broader, quilted, design. Or, as she offers inher “AFTERWORD”:

One night years ago, I dreamtI wrote a book called Silkyard.

I didn’t know then what theword meant—an orchard of mulberry trees; a length of fabric, measured; an openspace where one might wander or forage, that could be transposed onto thewritten page. A story of transformation, metamorphosis. Various threads likethese brought together to form a tapestry of sorts—their own rendering of a randomnight’s dreamscape.

With this series ofimages and interpretations in mind, and the compulsion to follow the directivedelivered to my dream-self, I began to write this book. I interwove thelanguage from texts exploring the history of silk and the anthropology of humanskin with my own experiences, in particular the minor physical traumas relatedto skin and hair, seemingly superficial flaws that nonetheless, over alifetime, take not only a physical but also an emotional toll.

The result was Silkyard[until the time of spinning], which became A Rupture in the Interiors,a text that traces the path of an individual through the course of a personaljourney while also tracking that of the human species as a whole.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Patrik Sampler

Patrik Sampler is author of the novels Naked Defiance and The Ocean Container.  His short-form writing has appeared in avariety of publications including TheGuardian, TheMillions, and TheScofield.  Sampler devoted the better part of a postgraduatedegree to the late-career work of Abe Kobo, and was acontributing editor for early editions of the surrealist journal Peculiar Mormyrid.  www.patriksampler.com

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

Getting my first bookpublished gave me more self-assurance, and made me think some things about publishing.

My most recent novel,NakedDefiance, is less fragmentary than myprevious (and first) novel, The Ocean Container, although both novelsare digressive.  I think Naked Defianceis more metafictional, maybe less lyrical, more about extremists and “idealistswho seek a richer engagement with life, but are repressed by the intrusionof internecine politics,” more about leftists turning into rightists andnot knowing the difference… I’d like to think it’s funnier. 

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

I think I came topoetry first, then perhaps felt a loss of the kind of innocence that can makepoetry vibrant, and also thought that people like Christopher Dewdney andWilliam Wordsworth had already done a good enough job and I had nothing toadd.  Fiction became a better vehicle formy ideas and I started with short fiction, thinking it would be both easier towrite and more marketable, but I was wrong and probably should have startedwriting novels sooner.

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

If it’s a novel, ittakes a year or two, anyway.  I take notesas I come across useable material, then the notion of a plot occurs and I seehow it can be used to hang that material together…

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?

Based on whichevernotes I gather, I like to get to a general framework pretty soon, then I add toit whatever else I can uncover…

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

If people wouldinvite me to public readings more often, I might have a chance to find out ifthey’re a part of my creative process. I’ve enjoyed some readings… basically it’s nice to chat with peopleabout writing.

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

Theoretical concerns…I think theoretical concerns behind my writing include notions of ‘reality.’  Out there, in a number of places, is an assumptionthat with greater detail something becomes more ‘real’ — but I think Jorge LuisBorges got it right when he said that not knowing the second fact about thefirst fact is in fact closer to reality.

‘Identity’ is anotherconcern.  There’s a popular notion that alabel can point to one’s deeper self, even though that’s clearly not how wordswork.  An ‘identity’ can’t be our essence,and we shouldn’t want it to be.  There’sa story by Abe Kobo called “The Crime of S. Karma.”  In it, a man’s business card — his identity —supplants the man himself and pushes him out of relationships.  We should read this as horror.

I’m reacting againstcertain kinds of received wisdom and if I’m asking any questions, they arerhetorical questions, and I should probably ask some more sincere questions….Then again, I think the job of the novel is to provide no answers… so maybe — ifit’s doing its job — the novel is part of an ever-expanding question.

Concretely, TheOcean Container concerns a political fugitive in partial solitaryconfinement, and questions the degree to which his perceptions are connected toobservations of the external world.  NakedDefiance has something of a farcical mismatch between labels and the thingsto which they supposedly point, and then it’s also — superficially — a crimestory in which the facts are never revealed… which reminds me that Chekhov’s gunis another thing that interests me greatly — namely, ensuring that the gundoesn’t shoot.  For example, a characterin Naked Defiance mentions that she’s pregnant early in the story, butwe never hear about it again.

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

As I understand it,the role of the writer is to commodify oneself, reify fashionable notions (thenevaporate when those notions become unfashionable), and sit for pretentiouslycomposed photo portraits.  As for whatthe role should be… the writer — through their writing — should delight andentertain, invoke strange feelings of our oceanic bond with the mysteries ofexistence, and touch the sublime.  It’sreally that simple.

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

I like working withan outside editor.  I’ve had lots of excellentadvice.  Sometimes I wonder if I’mwriting by committee…

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

That I should go to acertain place where a certain famous writer is doing a residency and givingfeedback to manuscripts submitted by the public… I don’t want to drop names,because it’s in bad taste to do so.  WhatI will say is that she gave my writing a positive review, and that really didencourage me to write more.

10 - How easy hasit been for you to move between genres (fiction to non-fiction)? What do yousee as the appeal?

I think it hasn’tbeen too hard.  One thing I like to do infiction is mix hardly believable scenarios with familiar details of theso-called ‘real’ world.  In non-fiction,I do the same, but in different proportions. What I find hard is coming up with the right ‘gimmick’ for a non-fictionpiece, so I don’t write them nearly as often. And then the world is quite cluttered with non-fiction of the opinionvariety… Well, I guess you could say it’s equally cluttered with fiction,too.  As for the appeal… I think theappeal is to have some fun.

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

I like to write earlyin the morning, partly because there’s no other time in the day, partly becauseI like it.  I start by eating breakfast(the same one I have every day), stretching, listening to some classical music…Then I sit at the computer and drink a mug of undiluted espresso, and afterabout an hour I’m quite warmed up, mentally, and then I can go for maybeanother hour, maybe two, and that’s about all I can handle.  That’s how I like to write, but I can’t do ittoo often, due to everything else…

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

If my writing getsstalled, I don’t get too worried because most of my ideas happenaccidentally.  I think just being out inthe world… Well, cycling is my usual mode of transportation, sometimes I getideas when I’m on my bicycle.

13 - Whatfragrance reminds you of home?

Baked mackerel.

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?

Nature is a biginfluence.  Music is another biginfluence.  Those two things appear quitea bit in my writing.  The geometricabstractions of Wassily Kandinsky and his Concerning the Spiritual in Arthave influenced me greatly, as have the films of Andrei Tarkovsky – Stalkerand Mirror, in particular.  It wasa kind of ecstasy reading his Sculpting in Time.

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

Years ago,discovering Abe Kobo was a big impetus. There’s never been a novel quite like Secret Rendezvous.  It starts with a man — a kind of running shoesalesman — and the arrival of an ambulance at his home.  The paramedics are there to take his wife tothe hospital.  She’s not feeling unwell,nor has she called for an ambulance, but they both figure she should go,anyway.  After all, if an ambulance showsup, there must be a good reason… And that’s the most ‘normal’ part of thebook.  I don’t think we’re allowed inCanada to mention what else happens in that novel.  Suffice it to say, it showed me the noveldidn’t have to be just the same old, same old. As for other novels, Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of anIsland is similarly uninhibited, but far more commercial. W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn made a big impression on me, as did Renee Gladman’s EventFactory.  I read Anna Kavan’s Icenot too long ago, and it’s been on my mind ever since.  I like Italo Calvino quite a bit.

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

Earn some decentmoney.

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

I think of the writing process asbeing a lot like carving.  I could seemyself working with wood, maybe as a carpenter. I like plants, so farming might also be nice, except I like to go to theseaside in the summer… Maybe I could work in ahaberdasher, or maybe like a... a chapeau shop, or something...

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

I didn’t make itanywhere near getting onto a professional team for the Tour de France, so Igave up attempting that, started playing bass guitar, joined a few bands.  I had aspirations to make some of thoseweird, athletic basslines like the ones Derek Forbes of Simple Minds made a fewyears on either side of 1982.  Any bandsI was in didn’t quite get off the ground, though, so I turned to writing.  Well, I had been writing all along, just nottoo seriously.

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

We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin, iscertainly a great book, and I’ve just finished reading it again for about thefifth time.  It’s often credited as the‘inspiration’ for George Orwell’s 1984, but the truth is that he justbrazenly ripped it off — which isn’t to diminish the value of 1984,because it does a few important things differently.  Mostly, however, it’s directly analogous to We,except that We is a lot funnier. No one is being tortured into believing that two plus two equalsfive.  Rather, toward the end of thenovel the government sends people door-to-door, basically, encouraging everyoneto get a lobotomy.

As for the mostrecent great film I’ve seen, it’s Kawa no Nagarewa Baiorin no Oto, directed by SasakiShoichiro.  It’s a studied exercise in disobeyingthe Chekov’s gun principle, and a very understatedly weird film because it wasmade for TV and looks like it might be a kind of documentary — except that it’snot.  Every few years I watch this filmto refresh my memory… I find it mesmerizing.

20 - What are youcurrently working on?

I’m tidying up thefirst part of a two-part novel, about a man with no personality who is on ajourney to the edge of the Earth.  Alongthe way he stops at various decadent cities overtaken by primordialistcults.  At each hotel he receives anoverwrought letter, in a poor imitation of the style of Anaïs Nin, by an estrangedlover he might not in fact know.  Thesecond part of the novel, which I’m just getting started on, is a familymemoir.

I’ve also startedoutlining a novel about a disenchanted government worker who spends his meagresavings on a used Mazda Bongo camper van and goes on a road trip to sabotagesymbols of consumerism during the day while writing reviews of fake novels atnight.  These fake novel reviews foretellthe story: he’s kidnapped by a militant transhumanist, a dialectic ensues, he managesto escape, then regresses to a childhood state of oceanic connection with thenatural world… or a kind of pantheistic rapture.  There’s more to it than I’ve let on here, butall the pieces will fit together.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Beir Bua Press: Lydia Unsworth, Vik Shirley, Tom Jenks + Anthony Etherin,

WhenTipperary, Ireland publisher Beir Bua Press (2020-2023) announced, seeminglywithout prior warning, whether to the public or to their authors, that theywere suspending publication and pulling books from availability back in June, Iknew I had to get my hands on a few more titles before they disappearedcompletely. Thanks to individual authors, I’d managed to see two titles priorto this two-week warning: Texas-based Irish-Australian poet Nathanael O’Reilly’s pandemic-era BOULEVARD (2021) [see my review of such here]and Hamilton writer Gary Barwin and St. Catharine’s, Ontario writer Gregory Betts’ collaborative The Fabulous Op (2022) [see my review of such here]. Given how quickly the press vanished, it did cause a certain amount ofchaos, especially from authors of relatively-recent titles, but more than a fewhave since been picked up for reissue by other presses: the Barwin/Bettscollaboration and both Beir Bua O’Reilly titles were picked up by Australia’s Downingfield Press, for example, with other Beir Bua titles picked up by Salmon Poetry, kith books, Sunday Mornings at the River and IceFloe Press. The loss of the press isfrustrating, but they accomplished an enormous amount across a relatively shortperiod of time.

Runby Irish poet and editor Michelle Moloney King, Beir Bua Press seemingly appearedout of nowhere, quickly establishing itself as a press willing to take risks onexperimental work across a wide spectrum of style and geography. King clearly hasa fine editorial eye, and the print-on-demand Beir Bua poetry titles were well-designed,looked sharp and included some fantastic writing. To be clear: by shuttering the press so abruptly and allowing her authors no recourse (or prior warning), she did her authors an enormous disservice, and they deserved far better. Either way, given the press disappeared so suddenly,I wanted to at least acknowledge a couple of these titles I ordered back inJune, prompted by that infamous “last call for orders.”

Lydia Unsworth, Some Murmur (2021): I’ve been an admirer of Unsworth’s work for a while (a third above/ground press chapbook is forthcomingnext month, I’ll have you know), and this is a collection framed as onereacting to a sequence of changes in quick succession: moving to Amsterdam fromEngland ten days before the Brexit referendum, and discovering that she waspregnant. As she writes in her prologue: “When I found out I was pregnant, notlong after the Brexit referendum, it felt like a part of me had died and like asecond part of me was steadily dying. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, becausea lot of people feel a lot of things about procreation—about wanting babies,not wanting babies, really wanting babies, having babies, not having babies,really not having babies, how you should have babies, how you should not havebabies—but the way I saw it, from that side of the expansion, was that someunknown and unknowable event was lurching towards me, and its manifestationswere showing up all over my body; rising out, bearing down.” Unsworth appearsto be a poet that engages with projects, whether book-length orchapbook-length, and this collection works to engage with this sequence of new,foreign spaces, reacting to the notion of permanence, and fluidity across whathad previously been fixed. Have you read her take on the prose poem, over at periodicities?She writes of escape, changing forms and sustainability, offering a prose lyricthat manages to articulate these shifting sands even as they move. “Thought itwas wise to stand before the mirror crack,” she writes, as part of the poem “Attemptsto Recover My Previous Form,” “wide like bags of old receipts in supermarketbins. I didn’t compare myself to anyone but how can you not look at all thoseupended trunks trying to hold their bad weather in?”

Stoop

The body bends towardsyou like a plant. You are
my sunshine, my ray of sunshine.What do you call
a plant warped by circumstance?I hold you up to the
light. Ten lifts then tento the side. Environmental
stress weakens the plant.You are heavy fruit. My
stem turns to you, hulkingsunflower head bows
down, seeds fall from myeyes. Wind-blown tree –
frozen in flight. Umbrellainside-out, novelty tie
coat-hangered into aU-turn, leg kicked out high.
Flamboyant ice. Waitingfor a coin in a hat to say
it’s time.

Vik Shirley, Grotesquerie for the Apocalypse (2021): As Shirleywrites in her introduction, the origins of this short collection emerged “outof an intensely creative period in the first year of my PhD, which exploresDark Humour and the Surreal in Poetry. Focussing on the grotesque, I wasimmersed in, and obsessed with, the work of the Russian-Absurdist, Daniil Kharms, and the strange and surreal fable-like poems of Russell Edson.” This isa relatively short collection (why are these books unpaginated?) very muchshaped through the prose poem and prose sentence, and one can see echoes of Edson’swork throughout, with similar echoes that emerge through Chicago poet Benjamin Niespodziany. As the poem “Husband Ghost” opens: “A hospital rang to tell awoman that her husband was dead. // Not only was he dead, but his body haddecomposed already and he / had progressed straight through to the ‘ghostphase,’ they said. // They told her she should come and collect him.” There aresome interesting echoes, as well, that connect certain of these poems, whetherthe cluster of “Hello Kitty” poems, or poems that open with a similar descriptivestructure. I would very much like to see further pieces by Vik Shirley, and herstatement on the prose poem over at periodicities is worth reading, incase you haven’t already seen (and she does mention that this collection will appear as part of a larger work to appear in 2025, which has yet to announce). In a certain way, Shirley appears to approachher lyric from the foundation of the sentence, opening the collection with poemsthat lean further into line breaks, but soon moving into poems built out of prosepoem blocks, each of which offer short, sketched scenes that twist and turn andfurther twist. The poem “Devil Baby” is a striking example of such, and reads,in full:

A baby started speaking intongues.

“We don’t want a devil baby,”its parents said.

So they put it in adinghy, covered it with foil and set it sail down the Nile.

They were on holiday inEgypt, you see.

It was the worst holidaythey’d ever had.

Tom Jenks, rhubarb (2021): Providing echoes of thework of Vik Shirley, Tom Jenks’ rhubarb also seems a collection of poemsthat focus on the sentence, some of which offer line breaks, with others set ina more prose poem structure. One might say that his poems offer first person narrativesthat seek out their structures. “The horse was revealed to be entirelytwo-dimensional.” the two-sentence poem “opportunities” begins. “This presentedchallenges, but also opportunities.” The prose sentences ofTom Jenks offer first person nararatives, movingback and forth from short, sketched bursts, expansive open form poems toclustered prose blocks. There’s such a wry delight in sound and syntax across these poems that are intriguing, and the collection exists as a kind of collage on form, moving from the expansive open lyric to densely-packed short burst. I’d only seen Jenks’ visual works prior to this, so amnow quite fascinated by what he is exploring through his sentences: a kind ofsurreal swirling of narrative twists and turns, one that is open to the experiment-as-it-occurs. I am very interested in seeing where else his poems might find themselves.

 

scissors

Syrop on soya, the squareholes in waffles,
cheesy dumplings, ancientgrain rolls,
I don’t know what to makeof any of it.
All the elements for agood life are in place,
yet a good life is notbeing lived.
We should rethink the solarsystem
or buy each othershoulder bags.
I saw a dog that was entirelysee through.
I’ve got a ride on mower
but I still use scissors.

Anthony Etherin, Fabric (2022): Another author published previously through above/ground press, “experimental formalistpoet” Anthony Etherin, a poet, editor and publisher who lives “on the border ofEngland and Wales,” offers a cluster of poems in Fabric that continuehis strict adherence to formal poetic structure, engaging with such as theacrostic, anagram, lipogram, palindrome, villanelle, sonnet and ambigrams, evento the point of brevity, as some were composed with the Twitter/X limit of 280characters/140 characters in mind. “Fit one sent rule:,” the final couplet of “SonnetFuel” reads, “Tier sonnet fuel.” Part of what is always interesting in Etherin’songoing work is in seeing just how far it is possible for him to continueacross such highly-specific formal paths, and the wonderful variations thatemerge through his collections. The overt brevity is interesting as well,offering new layers to his ongoing structures. In his introduction, he offersthat “The poems of Fabric [a book he posted online as a free pdf, by the way] are at ease with their poemhood. Some discusspoetry itself, while others are more introspective, eager to evaluate theprinciples and rules by which they were constructed.” They are at ease withtheir poemhood, highly aware of their structures, as the collision of sound andmeaning provide the delight of what formal possibilities might bring.

 

 

 

Tautograms

The tautogram ties
terms to their typography–
tightening this text.