Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 84

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Paul Hlava Ceballos

Paul Hlava Ceballos is the author of banana [ ] ,winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, the Norma Farber First BookAward from the Poetry Society of America, and a finalist for the National BookCritics Circle Award. His collaborative chapbook, Banana [ ] / we pilot the blood , shares pages with Quenton Baker and Christina Sharpe. He hasfellowships from CantoMundo, Artist Trust, and the Poets House. He has beenfeatured on the Poetry Magazine Podcast, Seattle’s the Stranger,and his work has been translated to Ukrainian. He currently lives in Seattle,where he practices echocardiography.

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

My first bookchanged my life primarily in how I think about myself. Despite being a writerfor decades, and having some accomplishments in fellowships, magazinepublications, and organizing readings, I sometimes felt out of place inliterary spaces. Silly, I know! These feelings of underachievement or notenough-ness are mostly in our heads, but they are real feelings. At some point,after the book and the awards that came with it, I realized that people wereexpecting me to engage with them about our craft—I simply had to. So having thebook has been an opportunity to open up, have conversations about poetry, makenew writer friends, and fanboy out to my favorite writers. I got a lot morebooks signed at AWP this year than before. 

Well, I should saythat our feelings of not enough-ness are in our heads but they do come fromsomewhere. For me, a lot of those feelings of not fitting in had to do withrace and class, from actually being an outsider in professional or moniedspaces. This book is different from my previous writing in that I wrote aboutthose subjects for the first time. In that way, it’s the most personal and truewriting I’ve done. So, it feels a bit disorienting and wonderful that peoplehave responded to it so positively. 

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

My abuelo was a poet. He wrote occasional poems to hischildren, my abuela on their anniversary, and even about the World Cup. Thesetypewritten pages are saved in plastic sheets and shared as near sacred objectsby my tíos. When I was a child, walking around with a book tucked under my arm,every relative I saw would tell me I resembled him. 

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

Oh my god, I am such a slow writer! banana [ ], as youcan imagine came from years of research and note-taking. I have to remindmyself that it’s ok to take months or even years to write a poem; art is a slowprocess. 

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

My thinking can be very webby—I can’t help but see connectionsbetween everything. So as soon as I write one poem, I’m imagining a book! Youcan probably see that in banana [ ]—this was a singular thought workedand re-worked.

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

I dread doing readings! Even now, after touring and havingdone dozens of them in the past few months—I want to run away and hide! I justwant to read or write instead. While I dislike the process, afterward, I lovehaving done readings. I love hearing other people’s writing and thoughtprocess. And the best part, of course, is getting drinks or ice-creamafterward. 

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

This book is drivenby the ways global resource extractive policies affect individual people. Whilethe title poem—the 40-page collage about the history of bananas—lies at itsheart, it begins with elegies to migrants to illustrate how historicalatrocities are directly connected to current ones, how the past and present areconcurrent. 

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

I think the cynicalpart of me would say “entertainer.” But I truly believe that the role of awriter—the real role of a writer as a thinker—is more profound than that.Writing should do more than re-form old tropes into new media. I believe thatwriting as an artform sees outside of structures of thought that we are raisedin, and shows us different stories that exist outside a kind of hegemonicthought. In journalism, for example, this is the difference between mediasimply restating what the police or political authority says about an event, versusdigging into history of the officers involved, background evidence, witnesstestimonies, etc.

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

Essential, ofcourse! I truly believe all thought is communal. This means that what I writeshould be considered, re-considered, edited. My first editors are always myclosest writing friends. But after a few rounds with them, I try to show mywriting to someone I don’t know, and then, ideally, to the editor of a press.

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

I tend to write inmany different styles, depending on the needs of the work, and my mood. Oneday, as a student, I went to Sharon Olds’s office, and she had my poems spreadacross her desk in a grid. She showed me how different styles I was practicingworked (or didn’t work) in relationship to one another. She told me where shethought my strengths were. I cherish that advice. It helps me remember the waysof writing that feel natural for me, so I can challenge myself by writing inother ways too.

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

I wish I had aroutine! The sad fact is that with a full-time job, a newborn, and trying tokeep my life in order, it’s tough to find time to write. Though I do considerwriting my life and career, with my paying job secondary, unfortunately, myculture does not value art enough to help me survive on writing alone.

This means that awriting day for me might be scribbling something in my Notes app during mylunchbreak. Or it might start with preparing food for the next day. Then, ifI’m not too exhausted after coming home from work, I can scarf some pre-madedinner, bring my computer down the hall to a quiet nook in my apartmentcomplex, pop in some earphones, and get a good hour of editing done.

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

You know, I thinkthat sometimes the most rewarding and inspiring thing can be removing oneselffrom the page and getting involved in community work. Volunteer at a dayworkerscenter, march for Black lives, join your union’s picket. This has felt crucialfor me to remember what and who is actually important in our work on the page.

12- What fragrance reminds you of home?

The woody,spicy-sweet musk of a California pepper tree after it’s wetted in a hot summerrain.

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

Visual art hasalways been an inspiration. When I was in grad school in NY, I would take thesubway to the Met and spend all day walking and observing, or sitting in frontof a sculpture and free writing.

However, in the pastdecade, I’ve swung the other direction. My book banana [ ] was veryresearch-based, and I loved coming home from work and reading history books,writing down any fact about the fruit that struck me. Right now, I’m writingpoems that begin with cardiac studies that I perform at the hospital where Iwork. I’m very interested in what happens when we combine language that issupposedly “poetic” or “beautiful” with scientific or academic language thatintends to serve a different purpose.

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

Poetry is importantfor my work, of course, but history and critical theory are, too. Some of mythe books that were critical in the formation of my most recent book are: TheOpen Veins of Latin America, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Howto Read Donald Duck, and Bananas, Beaches and Bases.

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

I would love toconduct interviews of people in my mother’s hometown in Ecuador and in myhometown in California, as a starting point for my next writing project,thinking about immigration and displacement.

16- If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or,alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been awriter?

I would love to be aresearcher of some kind, so I could go deep into scientific rabbit holes butalso travel to, like, the arctic to collect ice samples or somethingadventurous like that.

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

There’s somethingspecial about language as a medium, in its accessibility. Anyone can do it,anywhere, without expensive supplies.

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

I’m just finishingJane Wong’s memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, which is stunning.I really recommend you check it out. For movies, I’m still thinking about whata weird and funny movie Triangle of Sadness is.

19- What are you currently working on?

I work as an echocardiographer at the primary cardiologycenter for the Pacific Northwest. Currently, I’m writing poems using medicallanguage and thinking about how larger, political and structural decisionsaffect personal health outcomes.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Monica Youn, From From

 

One figure is female, theother is male.

Both are contained.

One figure is mythical,the other historical.

They occupy differentmillennia, different continents.

But both figures areconsidered Asian—one from Colchis, one from Korea.

To mention the Asiannessof the figures creates a “racial marker” in the poem.

This means that the poemcan no longer pass as a White poem, that different people can be expected toread the poem, that they can be expected to read the poem in different ways. (“STUDYOF TWO FIGURES (PASIPHAË / SADO”)

Dividingher time these days between New York and Irvine, California, American poet Monica Youn’s fourth full-length poetry title is From From (Minneapolis MN: GraywolfPress, 2023), a collection of poems that explores identity and self, and the questionsof “where are you from from” that perpetuate an othering of herAsian-Americanness. Youn crafts poems responding to how American culture keeps thevery idea of her at arm’s length, attempting to corner her into an image that doesn’texist, around an identity shaped from the outside. “In her postcolonialism //seminar,” she writes, as part of the final poem of the sequence “DERACINATIONS:EIGHT SONIGRAMS,” “she was taught to distrust / the commodification industry,// attempts to package Asianness / for Western consumption. // As an artistof color, always ask / yourself: Who is my audience? // theprof cautioned. Is this authentic / interiority? Am I self-othering?”

Followingher collections Blackacre (Graywolf Press, 2016), Ignatz (NewYork NY: Four Way Books, 2010) [see my review of such here] and Barter(Grey Wolf Press, 2003), From From is structured with poems that bookendfive sections—“ASIA MINOR,” “DERACINATIONS,” “WETERN CIV,” “THE MAGPIES” and “INTHE PASSIVE VOICE”—wrapping parable around folk tale around cultural markers. Throughshades of Ignatz, Youn writes through an explored subject for the sakeof deeper commentary. “We understand these violent actions to be defensive,”she writes, as part of “STUDY OF TWO FIGURES (IGNATZ / KRAZY),” “motivated byfear—a belief / that the cherished contents of the ovals are somehow underthreat. // But the ovals of the figure contain nothing. // Nothing, that is,except the blankness of the page.”

Throughfirst-person questioning and articulations around Western canon—from Greek mythto Krazy Kat and Dr. Seuss—Youn writes contradiction, commentary, immigrationand attempting to fit in. She writes of the nervousness of simply attempting tobe in her own body in what at times feels akin to hostile territory, throughanti-Asian attacks, ranging from outright violent to passive aggressive. “I’velost / my capacity for scorn: that // was my failing—not excess / of pride,”she writes, as part of the poem “MARSYAS, AFTER,” “but that stooping // to pickup their accoutrements, / as if emulation could engender // equality.” Shewrites the myriad threads of the magpie, offering sharp threads of seeing andarticulating a through-line of references across Korean, English and Americancultural references. She writes of others and othering, otherness and othertales of being. As the poem “THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A MAGPIE,” riffing offWallace Stevens’ infamous blackbird, ends:

And the most durableslander: the magpie as thief, bling-obsessed hoarder.

All scientific evidence tothe contrary notwithstanding.

As if the cure for hatredcould ever be knowledge, eyes lidlocked open, well irrigated, forced to see.

Younwraps her lyric around etymologies, and how the myriad evolutions of words botharticulate and shape, even twist, perspectives, writing out the biases builtinto the ways we speak, what we hear, and how we listen. This is articulatedbest through the brilliantly-evocative fifth and final section, “IN THE PASSIVEVOICE,” a lyric personal essay wrapping memoir constructed through individual,accumulating prose-sections. As the back cover offers: “If you have no core of ‘authenticity,’no experience of your so-called homeland, how do you piece together an AsianAmerican identity out of Westerners’ ideas about Asians? Your sense of yourselfis part stereotype, part aspiration, part guilt.” As the prose lyric offers:

The cover of the NewYorker this week shows an Asian mother holding her daughter by the hand onthe subway platform. They’re the only people visible. They’re both masked,affectless, except that the mother has her wrist raised to show her watch. But she’snot looking at her watch, she’s looking sharply to the side, the entrance, asif she’s heard something. Her daughter’s head is turned sharply in the otherdirection, as if she, too, has heard something. A shadow covers the top half ofthe image like a scrim descending.

I haven’t taken thesubway since I’ve been home. Today I have to walk to a place two miles away. I couldcall a car service, but I refuse to spend my own money to avoid walking somewhereat 2 p.m. in my own goddamn neighborhood. But I take my pepper spray, clippedto the inside of my bag. Quick release.

About halfway there, amiddle-aged Black guy falls into step beside me. “With me with you, you don’t haveto worry about anything,” he says. He’s jaunty, retro-styled. He has abeautiful voice, and I’m sure he knows it. “No one will mess with you.” I rollmy eyes at him, grinning under the mask.

When I get home, I checkmy phone. 9,741 steps.

Laila Malik, archipelago,

my review of archipelago (Book*hug, 2023) by Laila Malik is now online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Hannah Green

Hannah Green is a writer and poetry editor at CV2. Shewas a poetry finalist for the 2021 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers.She lives in Winnipeg.

1 - How didyour first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare toyour previous? How does it feel different?

Xanax Cowboy (my recent work)is completely different from the way I used to approach poetry!  XanaxCowboy feels different because it is loose, unhinged, and most ofall--vulnerable. I let myself live in the poems instead of writing myself out.

Ican get very caught up in the technical aspects of poetry, the showiness oflanguage, like “OH, LOOK WHAT I CAN DO, DID YOU CATCH THAT?”. I let all that goin Xanax Cowboy. I gave up thecontrol and just said fuck it and wrote something completely new to me.

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

Ithink when I was just starting out as a writer, I could see it was easier to complete a poem, than say a work offiction. It was easier to stay up revising & revising & revising a poemuntil it was finished, since it was a shorter piece of work than fiction wouldbe.

Igotta feed the dopamine rabbit in my brain, and to finish a poem is to give ita carrot. I would have been starving it if I started out trying to write anovel.

ALSOOF NOTE: poetry just sort of clicked with me. I felt like I could finallyarticulate what was in my head and have it come out the way I wanted and thatwas an amazing feeling.

3 - How longdoes 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?

Iam an extremely slow writer, and my drafts are absolutely batshit. Most poems Iwrite have drafts of at least 10 pages. It is a lot of labor, but I love it. Afinished poem for me is generally very different from the first draft. Therewill always be lines from the first draft that haunt their way to the finalversion, but a lot is exorcized through revision.

4 - Wheredoes a poem 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?

Anindividual poem almost always begins with the last line, and I rarely changeit. I need to know where I am going or I get lost along the way. Expanding uponthat, I need to be working towards a larger project, because then I really knowwhere I am going. I think that is why I <3 the long poem so very much.

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

IfI had a checkbox available here I would select “Neutral”.

I’mfine with doing readings, but I wouldn’t say they are part of or counter to myprocess.

I’mjust going to chill on the fence here with a Coke in one hand and a Pepsi inthe other.

6 - Do youhave any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions areyou trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the currentquestions are?

I’mlooking at the romanticization of addiction and mental illness in relation tothe artist, and I use the Wild West as a backdrop. I’m interested in how theimage of the Wild West/cowboy is forever shifting to match what the current erawants/needs, much like a diagnosis does. Those are some of the themes andimagery I am calling into question.

SoI guess I am trying to answer--what does all that look like, how can addictionand mental illness manifest in daily life, impact someone’s daily life, destroya “normal” life. 

Andthe current associated question might be: whythe fuck don’t we feel well?

7 – What doyou 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?

Toentertain, to puzzle, to make you think or see something differently.

Toexpress something and to have someone find the words that they need within it.

Language= framework = visibility, understanding, community.

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

Essential!I love working with an editor.  I trustmy own instinct enough to know what I am wanting to do, and the feedback Ireceive is almost always what I already know I need to do, and was sort ofhoping I could get away with not fixing (sort of sweeping under the rug andhoping nobody will notice). 

Andif the feedback I receive doesn’t match what I am wanting to do in the poem,then I can work through that with an editor--see how/why it isn’t comingthrough, figure out what window I need to open.

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

Sue Goyette came and spoke at the University of Winnipeg when I was doing myundergrad. She spoke about how no matter what we do, no matter where we are atas a writer, that all we would ever really want was to outwrite the poem wewrote yesterday, to push ourselves farther than we previously had.  And it stuck with me.

I’mhappy it did. She was right. It is what makes me keep pushing myself and myboundaries and expectations for what a poem can be and do. It taught me veryearly on not to measure myself/my writing against anyone else. I’m of courseinspired by and in awe of the work of other writers, but I’m just out heretrying to be a better writer than I was last week.

10 - What kindof writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does atypical day (for you) begin?

Routineisn’t something that my brain can seem to wrap itself around, so I don’t have awriting routine. I try to write at least a little bit every week though, evenif I don’t feel like it!

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

LitMags! If I am stalled, I curl up with a pile of Lit Mags, and I always find apoem that gets me thinking differently, a line that inspires me. I like LitMags for inspiration because I am introduced to so many new voices and stylesand forms to fall in love with.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Ireally want to give an answer for this, but I have a terrible sense of smell.

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

Science!But I guess that is still “book”, damnit. Research is very important to mywriting, so reading books or articles that aren’t literature is great because then I better understand all the cogsof my own experience, rather than just accepting the machine and leaving it atthat.

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

Anne Carson is my favourite poet. She does not give a FUCK. When I am lost, I readher work, and I’m reminded of tomfoolery and cheekiness, and not being afraidto get outside the boundaries of every other poem I have written. She neverdisappoints and is never boring.

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

SOMANY THINGS. I’m trying to just relax though. I’m realizing that I never learnedhow to slow down or take a break so I am trying to figure it out now. I’m goingto leave it at that, or I’m going to get myself excited about some unfinishedproject and be off to the races on it.

16 - 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?

Mechanic!

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

Ialways wanted to be a visual artist. And when I knew I wasn’t meant for that Itried music. And the list goes on. I tried a lot of stuff. I tried all of thesedifferent forms of expression but I could never get what was in my head outcorrectly. It never looked right. Poetry just stuck. I didn’t ask for words to be my bitch, but they are. Poetryfound me and I am happy it did.

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

OceanVuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeousis definitely a stand-out for me when thinking about books. For film, I’m goingwith X and Pearl ( I love horror movies).

19 - What areyou currently working on?

Iam working on Xanax Cowboy Vol. II!This rodeo ain’t over.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Jon Cone, LIMINAL: SHADOW AGENT PT 1 and LIMINAL: SHADOW AGENT PT 2

my paired review of Canadian expat poet Jon Cone's chapbooks LIMINAL: SHADOW AGENT PT 1 and LIMINAL: SHADOW AGENT PT 2 , both of which appeared last year with Greying Ghost Press, is now online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics.

Touch the Donkey : new interviews w Désil, Ballard, Rae, Tomash + Meyerson,

Anticipating the release next week of the thirty-eighth of Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], why not check out the interviews that have appeared over the past few weeks with contributors to the thirty-seventh issue: Junie Désil, Micah Ballard, Devon Rae, Barbara Tomash and Ben Meyerson.

Interviews with contributors to the first thirty-six issues (more than two hundred and forty interviews to date) remain online, including: Pam Brown, Shane Kowalski, Kathy Lou Schultz, Hilary Clark, Ted Byrne, Garrett Caples, Brenda Coultas, Sheila Murphy, Chris Turnbull and Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Stuart Ross, Leah Sandals, Tamara Best, Nathan Austin, Jade Wallace, Monica Mody, Barry McKinnon, Katie Naughton, Cecilia Stuart, Benjamin Niespodziany, Jérôme Melançon, Margo LaPierre, Sarah Pinder, Genevieve Kaplan, Maw Shein Win, Carrie Hunter, Lillian Nećakov, Nate Logan, Hugh Thomas, Emily Brandt, David Buuck, Jessi MacEachern, Sue Bracken, Melissa Eleftherion, Valerie Witte, Brandon Brown, Yoyo Comay, Stephen Brockwell, Jack Jung, Amanda Auerbach, IAN MARTIN, Paige Carabello, Emma Tilley, Dana Teen Lomax, Cat Tyc, Michael Turner, Sarah Alcaide-Escue, Colby Clair Stolson, Tom Prime, Bill Carty, Christina Vega-Westhoff, Robert Hogg, Simina Banu, MLA Chernoff, Geoffrey Olsen, Douglas Barbour, Hamish Ballantyne, JoAnna Novak, Allyson Paty, Lisa Fishman, Kate Feld, Isabel Sobral Campos, Jay MillAr, Lisa Samuels, Prathna Lor, George Bowering, natalie hanna, Jill Magi, Amelia Does, Orchid Tierney, katie o’brien, Lily Brown, Tessa Bolsover, émilie kneifel, Hasan Namir, Khashayar Mohammadi, Naomi Cohn, Tom Snarsky, Guy Birchard, Mark Cunningham, Lydia Unsworth, Zane Koss, Nicole Raziya Fong, Ben Robinson, Asher Ghaffar, Clara Daneri, Ava Hofmann, Robert R. Thurman, Alyse Knorr, Denise Newman, Shelly Harder, Franco Cortese, Dale Tracy, Biswamit Dwibedy, Emily Izsak, Aja Couchois Duncan, José Felipe Alvergue, Conyer Clayton, Roxanna Bennett, Julia Drescher, Michael Cavuto, Michael Sikkema, Bronwen Tate, Emilia Nielsen, Hailey Higdon, Trish Salah, Adam Strauss, Katy Lederer, Taryn Hubbard, Michael Boughn, David Dowker, Marie Larson, Lauren Haldeman, Kate Siklosi, robert majzels, Michael Robins, Rae Armantrout, Stephanie Strickland, Ken Hunt, Rob Manery, Ryan Eckes, Stephen Cain, Dani Spinosa, Samuel Ace, Howie Good, Rusty Morrison, Allison Cardon, Jon Boisvert, Laura Theobald, Suzanne Wise, Sean Braune, Dale Smith, Valerie Coulton, Phil Hall, Sarah MacDonell, Janet Kaplan, Kyle Flemmer, Julia Polyck-O’Neill, A.M. O’Malley, Catriona Strang, Anthony Etherin, Claire Lacey, Sacha Archer, Michael e. Casteels, Harold Abramowitz, Cindy Savett, Tessy Ward, Christine Stewart, David James Miller, Jonathan Ball, Cody-Rose Clevidence, mwpm, Andrew McEwan, Brynne Rebele-Henry, Joseph Mosconi, Douglas Barbour and Sheila Murphy, Oliver Cusimano, Sue Landers, Marthe Reed, Colin Smith, Nathaniel G. Moore, David Buuck, Kate Greenstreet, Kate Hargreaves, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Erín Moure, Sarah Swan, Buck Downs, Kemeny Babineau, Ryan Murphy, Norma Cole, Lea Graham, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Oana Avasilichioaei, Meredith Quartermain, Amanda Earl, Luke Kennard, Shane Rhodes, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Sarah Cook, François Turcot, Gregory Betts, Eric Schmaltz, Paul Zits, Laura Sims, Stephen Collis, Mary Kasimor, Billy Mavreas, damian lopes, Pete Smith, Sonnet L’Abbé, Katie L. Price, a rawlings, Suzanne Zelazo, Helen Hajnoczky, Kathryn MacLeod, Shannon Maguire, Sarah Mangold, Amish Trivedi, Lola Lemire Tostevin, Aaron Tucker, Kayla Czaga, Jason Christie, Jennifer Kronovet, Jordan Abel, Deborah Poe, Edward Smallfield, ryan fitzpatrick, Elizabeth Robinson, nathan dueck, Paige Taggart, Christine McNair, Stan Rogal, Jessica Smith, Nikki Sheppy, Kirsten Kaschock, Lise Downe, Lisa Jarnot, Chris Turnbull, Gary Barwin, Susan Briante, derek beaulieu, Megan Kaminski, Roland Prevost, Emily Ursuliak, j/j hastain, Catherine Wagner, Susanne Dyckman, Susan Holbrook, Julie Carr, David Peter Clark, Pearl Pirie, Eric Baus, Pattie McCarthy, Camille Martin and Gil McElroy.

The forthcoming thirty-eighth issue features new writing by: Samuel Amadon, Amanda Earl, Miranda Mellis, Michael Betancourt, R Kolewe, Monty Reid and Meghan Kemp-Gee.

And of course, copies of the first thirty-six issues are still very much available. Why not subscribe? Included, as well, as part of the above/ground press annual subscription! (did you know that above/ground press turns thirty years old tomorrow? and you know we've that big 30th anniversary fundraiser ending soon, yes?) We even have our own Facebook group. It’s remarkably easy.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Tim Ryan

Tim Ryan works and plays in and around Calgary, Alberta.He lives with his wife and daughter, a bossy cat and a curious rabbit. He isthe winner of the Alberta Views short story contest. Tim’s work hasappeared in The Write Launch, The Prairie Journal, PrometheusDreaming and more. East Grand Lake is his first novel.

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

Well, I only have onebook and it has just come out, so you’ll have to check back in a year or so forreflections on how it has changed my life. But already I have an overwhelming sense of accomplishment and pride in(finally) getting a book published and sending it out into the world (pridemixed with terror, that is).

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

The Hardy Boys.Seriously. I devoured them as a kid and knew that, someday, I wanted to write abook so others would read me.

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

The start is what takestime. Once I have a start, the writing comes quickly. But it has to be a realstart, not something I forced onto paper. That moment of a real start iseverything to me as a writer.  That iswhat I write for. I don’t make notes, or plot or anything like that. I have anotebook where I write down lines that come into my head, but that is about itfor background. Probably one of my failings as a writer is that I find itboring to know where I am going. The sense of discovery is the fun.

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

Definitely the scenecomes first and then the larger story. Sometimes, it is just an opening line. Ihave a notebook with lines that I think might one day be stories and storiesthat become projects.  But it all starts,for me, with a scene.

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

I can’t say I enjoy public readings, mainly because Iam an introvert. But, once I get going, it is fun to read your work aloud. Ifind I lose myself in the story after a few paragraphs. More importantly,readings help me with gratitude. I always really, really appreciate the peoplewho take the time to come out. I often get verklempt when I look up and see acrowd of people who choose to spend some of their valuable time to come andhear me read.

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

I am always asking aboutthe interplay between structure and story. That is so important to me. I thinkthe moderns made that key and there’s no sense ignoring it. I really try tomake my writing one where both structure and story are interesting and raisequestions.

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

I think a fiction writeris one of those people who can question everything and get away with it. So Ihope that’s what writers keep doing. An obsequious writer should just go be acustomer service rep or, better, a politician.

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

Not difficult. Not sureit is essential either. It is smart. I think having that second set of eyes atthe “end” of a project is very helpful and gets the piece from finished todefinitely finished. But I am usually mostly there anyways.

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

The best piece of adviceon writing I have is from a fictional character, Seymour Glass. In Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters,Seymour tells his brother Buddy Glass the following:

“Ifonly you’d remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a readerlong before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, thensit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all theworld Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart’s choice. Thenext step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. Youjust sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won’t even underlinethat. It’s too important to be underlined.”

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

I don’t find it hardbecause one feeds into the other. The appeal for me is that short storiesprovide scenes and scene-work, whereas novels are more about plotting howscenes fit together. I think to write a novel it is essential that you writeshort stories.

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

I am terrible at aroutine. I do exactly the opposite of what most writing books tell you to do. Iwait for that moment in inspiration. I don’t find it helpful to try and write500 words a day or whatever, because I just end looking back and asking “whatwas I thinking”.  But I often will wakeup with a spark and sit with a cup of tea, start to write, and have 3000 wordsin an hour or so. I recognize this is not the approach of most writers.

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

I go back to reading. IfI have nothing in the tank, I find that going back to being a reader is thebest medicine. I just tell myself “It will come. Don’t push it.”

13- What fragrance reminds you of home?

Freshly cut grass and thesmell of a sleeping cat’s fur.

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

Music, for sure. I can’ttell you the number of times I am listening to a song and suddenly the start ofsomething arrives.

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

JD Salinger. He is my goto whenever I need to remember why I write. I also return again and again to(almost ashamed to say it), Harry Potter. Not very highbrow, I know, but I amlooking for comfort if I am going back there. As for influences, I would have to put Proust, Joyce and Virginia Woolfright up there. Something about the moderns makes me aim high.  They took so many risks. Present-day writersthat wow me include Cormac McCarthy, Karen Russell and Michael Ondaatje.

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

A novel in second-personvoice.  I have a draft, but it isn’tclose to finished. I think it is such an under-utilized voice and has so muchpotential.

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

Musician. I like to playmusic, but don’t have the skill to make it an occupation. But if I could beanything else, that’s what I would be.

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

The admiration I had as akid for writers. How they can make you get lost in a world. I wanted to be ableto do that. Maybe someday I will be able to J .

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

Last great book was Foster by Claire Keegan. Unbelievable inevery way. The kind of thing I aspire to. Last great film was The Bansheesof Inisherin. It still makes me think.

20- What are you currently working on?

Mainly short stories. Ihave a 60,000 word manuscript that I have tucked away for a year or two thatmight one day be a novel, but I reached a point where it needed to rest. So Iam devoting my time to shorter pieces for a while with a plan to return to thatms (when it feels right).

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

what we talk about when we talk about picton,

Breath, I suppose. We speak of breath. Attempting a space of time in-between all the other things. Christine and our young ladies headed to Picton to father-in-law's on Friday, where I joined them on Saturday, although back home by Sunday, given Monday morning was swimming lessons for the young ladies. Is this a long weekend?

The kids in the pool the whole time. Or so it seemed.

Victoria Chang, Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief

 

I wonder whether memoryis different for immigrants, for people who leave so much behind. Memory isn’t somethingthat blooms but something that bleeds internally, something to be stopped. Memoryhides because it isn’t useful. Not money, a car, a diploma, a job. I wonder ifmemory for you was a color.

When we say thatsomething takes place, we imply that memory is associated with a physicallocation, as Paul Ricoeur states. But what happens when memory’s place of origindisappears? (“Dear Mother,”)

LatelyI’ve been going through Los Angeles-based poet Victoria Chang’s strikingnon-fiction project, the stunning and deeply felt, deeply intimate Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief (Minneapolis MN: MilkweedEditions, 2021), a book of memory, history and mentors. Interspersed with collagedarchival photographs and other documents, the collection is composed as asequence of letters individually directed to intimates such as her lateparents, childhood friends, acquaintances and former teachers, as well as to herdaughter. Dear Memory follows Chang’s poetry collections Circle (SouthernIllinois University Press, 2005), Salvinia Molesta (University of GeorgiaPress, 2008), The Boss (McSweeney’s, 2013) [see my review of such here], Barbie Chang (Copper Canyon, 2017) [see my review of such here] and Obit (Copper Canyon, 2020) [see my Griffin Prize-shortlist interview with her here],although I’m realizing how far behind I am on her work, having missed TheTrees Witness Everything (Copper Canyon, 2022), with a further poetrycollection forthcoming in 2024 with Farrar, Straus & Giroux: With MyBack to the World.

Thisis a book of contemplation, recollection and reconciliation, as Chang offers thefluidity of a combined book-length essay and memoir through the form of journaledand unsent letters. There is such an intimacy and an openness to the way sheholds the book’s form, one that predates, arguably, even the novel; think of bookssuch as The Pillow Book (1002) by Sei Shōnagon, or even Bram Stoker’soriginal Dracula (1897). The back-and-forth of recollection in Chang’s DearMemory are even reminiscent to what Kristjana Gunnars wrote about in hernovella, The Prowler (Red Deer College Press, 1989): “That the past resemblesa deck of cards. Certain scenes are given. They are not scenes the remembererchooses, but simply a deck that is given. The cards are shuffled whenever agame is played.” Or, as Chang writes, mid-point through the collection: “Now I admirewriters who write with an intimate intensity but also a generous capaciousness.I enjoy reading work that expands while it contracts. Writing made by aninstrument with a microscope on one end and a telescope on the other, leavingsome powder on the page in the form of language.”

Dear Memory writes to and around her immigrant parents,offering her childhood as a foundation for the collection the narrative spreadsinto, through and beyond, including her own ways through thinking and intopoetry. Chang writes of memory as a way to articulate becoming, and anarticulation around writing, around poetry, is as foundational to her as the lostthreads of either of parent’s lives, the sequence of multiple familyrestaurants they ran and the difficulty of being the only child of Asian descentin predominantly white communities. There is such an intimacy to these pieces,one that demands slowness, demands attention. One that is framed around an acknowledgmentof loss, both long past and those losses that are ongoing, but composed in amanner through which to solidify, before those losses slip entirely away. “Memoryis everything,” she writes early on, in a lettet to her mother, “yet it isnothing. Memory is mine, but it is also clinging to the memory of others. Some ofthese others are dead. Or unable to speak, like Father.” Or, as the piece “DearTeacher,” begins:

I stumbled into yourpoetry workshop even though I wasn’t studying poetry. I was one of the fewgraduate students there. I remember you at the head of a long wooden table,presiding, as if your chair were a throne. The room was brown with woodeverywhere. We were knights of poetry. our plates were white sheets of paperfilled with our own flesh. Your words were infinite. They were an entirecountry.

At the end of class, youwrote each student a note. Your note said my poetry had become poems out ofpoetry and that my poems had begun to strike forward to the possibility…You also wrote that you wished I had made my voice more present in class andthat my form of articulation was far from shy. You told me to call totalk about next semester.

Jerome Sala, How Much? New and Selected Poems

 

Look Slimmer Instantly!

Read this poem.

WhileI will revive my usual complaint about selecteds produced sansintroduction-for-context (an oversight I consider nearly criminal), there issomething almost preferable to experiencing American poet Jerome Sala’sintroduction-less How Much? New and Selected Poems (Beacon NY: NYQBooks, 2022). Having read poems here and there of his over the years, this isthe first collection I’ve explored, and it includes selections from his priorfull-length titles I Am Not a Juvenile Delinquent (STARE Press, 1985), TheTrip (The Highlander Press, 1987), Raw Deal: New and Selected Poems,1980-94 (Jensen/Daniels, 1994), Look Slimmer Instantly (Soft SkullPress, 2005), The Cheapskates (Lunar Chandelier Press, 2014) and Corporations Are People, Too! (NYQ Books, 2017), as well as a healthy opening section ofnewer work, and a closing section of poems produced prior to that firstpublished collection. It is interesting that the book is structured chronologicallyin reverse, the opposite of how selecteds are often compiled, offering the newestpoems at the end. Whoever put this selection together (another frustration I havewith certain selecteds; whether the author, an internal or external editor withthe press, it should be offered somewhere as a credit) chose for the reader tocatch a sense of where Sala the poet has been most recently, before launchingfurther back into that panorama of his publishing history. As the back coveroffers, this collection “offers a panoramic view of a poet whose work has oftenbeen a cult-pleasure until now. Spanning Sala’s early years as a punkperformance poet in Chicago to his career as a copywriter/Creative Director inNew York City, these poems offer satiric insights from the ‘belly of the beast’of commercial and pop culture.”

The People on TV

The people on televisionmove so slowly.
They walk through bighouses and stare into wide spaces
where meaningfuldiscussions appear. Animated clouds
of talk, stirred bylaughter, tears, anger, and catharsis
produce thunderstorms onthe plush rugs
where they roll aroundwith each other,
disrobing in awkwardclenches, wrestling
with the narrativesfoisted upon them by invisible
characters off screen,who theorize our desires
and write to them. youcan’t help but feel sorry
for those earnest, twodimensional souls, who struggle
mightily with thestereotypes prescribed to their situation
like drugs that enhancesocially desirable dialog.
For in every episode,even as they bask in their own beauty,
you feel we make them anxious,as if we were problem children
whose hang-ups theirmasters could only hope to solve.

Thereare elements of Sala’s work that remind of Canadian poets Stuart Ross or Gary Barwin: imagine either of those poets writing corporate-speak, and with farmore swagger, confident or foolhardy enough to be brightly coloured in suchswagger-subtlety, of course. If Jerome Sala had appeared in Toronto orHamilton, say, over Chicago, I could easily have seen his work alongside thatof Alice Burdick and Lance La Rocque, or even that of Victor Coleman or the late Daniel Jones, offering highly literate and literary poems that might bestbe experienced from a corner of some dark music venue, listening to the authorread aloud between sets of local bands. There’s a propulsion behind these poemsthat offers observation, documentation, critique and a kind of first-personreportage from a slightly surreal perspective of shifting soil. The ground willgive way, but Sala manages to hold on. His poems capture culture, politics andcultural movements through language, whether across tone, subject or speech,and probes best when swirling across all simultaneously. His gestures requireattention, whether screamed from a stage or as a whisper; his poems don’t simplyrequire or demand one’s attention but provide openings for one’s attention tofall into. “The map to be redrawn grows stubborn,” he writes, to open the poem “TheGlobe Fell Off the Table,” “refusing the clumsy crayon-holding fingers / of moronicmanipulators. / Things stay as they were the day before / yesterday began. Forgetabout tomorrow: / you can’t hit that pitch.”

Lately,I’ve been reexperiencing (through reading aloud to our nine-year-old) the “witand comic grace” of Winnipeg writer David Arnason’s short story collection The Dragon and the Dry Goods Princess (Winnipeg MB: Turnstone Press, 1994), andthere are echoes, too, I can find between these two volumes, in how Salaapproaches elements of humour and narrative via the prose poem, as the firststanza of the poem “The Fakir” reads:

            I am not Elvis Presley, yet I am in love with a woman wholoves a man who thinks he is Elvis Presley. That man is me. But if she knows I don’treally think I am Elvis Presley, she will no longer love me. She loves the deludedand only them. So, all day long I pretend I am Elvis Presley back from thedead. Like the majority of the people who voted for the postage stamp, I preferthe young Elvis. I myself look more like the older Elvis, as I am middle-agedand gaining weight. But you can see how this makes her love me twice as much,for I am, in her eyes, doubly deluded: on one level I am a mere mortal who thinkshe is Elvis Presley. On another, I am the old Elvis who foolishly thinks he isstill young. I know I am neither. I also know I want her love more than anythingin this world and will do anything to get it.