12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jason Emde
Jason Emde is a teacher, writer, undefeatedamateur boxer, Prince enthusiast, and podcaster with an MFA in Creative Writingfrom the University of British Columbia. A finalist for the CBC CreativeNonfiction literary award, Jason is also the author of MyHand’s Tired & My Heart Aches (Kalamalka Press, 2005) and little bit die (Bolero Bird, 2023). Focused on roving, expatriation,pilgrimage, loss, and systematic derangement of the senses, his work hasappeared in Ariel, The Malahat Review, Prometheus Dreaming, OxMag, SoliloquiesAnthology, Ulalume Lighthouse, PopMatters, The Watershed Review, Brush Talks,The Closed Eye Open, Short Writings from Bulawayo III, and Who Lies Beautifully: The KalamalkaAnthology, as well as featuring in Orange Lamphouse’s Post-a-Poem project. Emdelives in Japan with his wife, Maho, and their typhoon sons, Joe and Sasha.
did your first book or chapbook changeyour life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does itfeel different?
Myfirst book changed my life by changing nothing at all. I fully expected it tovault me to the toppermost of the poppermost in no time flat and after it soldabout twenty-seven copies I realized the world, literary and otherwise, wasn’tlining up to pat me on the back and reward me or even notice me at all. Whichwas a very useful lesson. As for my most recent work, I like to think it’s lessindecently solipsistic than my previous stuff. It’s still often about me, butit’s also about where I am, about landscape and place. I’ve learned to noticenot just the thing—me—but the things aroundthe thing, too. At least a little bit, anyway.
How did you come to poetry first, asopposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Icame to plagiarism first. My first“book”—created in elementary school, grade three or thereabouts—was a truncatedrewrite of The Tower Treasure byFranklin W. Dixon, the first Hardy Boys adventure. I stole the characters, theplot, some dialogue, copied a couple of the illustrations, and added a fewlittle mysterious touches of my own. I got to poetry a little later, around 15or so, scribbling graceless, awkward lines in little notebooks, and probablystill plagiarizing—if slightly less obviously—the poets and lyricists I wasinto at the time. I read a lot of fiction when I was a kid—almost only fiction, actually—but I think I wasdrawn to poetry because it seemed both easier and sexier. I was wrong aboutthat, of course. Or half-wrong, maybe.
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?
Itdepends. If I’ve got a non-fiction piece in mind, I tend to let it brew andtransude and filtrate for a while, and take it for walks, and make littlenotes, so that when I sit down to actually write it I’ve done a lot of workalready and the basic structure tends to be more or less intact. After thatit’s minor fixes and incremental improvements and linking up the connections.When I’m writing poetry I tend to be a little more spontaneous, or in any casetry to be. That means a lot of my notebook scribbling turns out to be unusablecrap, but occasionally I dash off something workable and there it is, almostready to go. Susan Musgrave said, “Mystery, unknowing, is energy.” For me thequickest way to access that energy is to go in not really knowing what’s goingto happen or where I’m going or anything. Being comfortable with unknowing andthen not being afraid to tread all over the place.
Where does a poem or work of fictionusually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combininginto a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the verybeginning?
RobertFrost once wrote, “A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or alovesickness. It is a reaching out toward expression; an effort to findfulfillment.” That’s more or less how things begin with me. A throb, a wisp, ahint, a clue. And I’ve worked on projects in both directions: assembling littlepieces that start, somehow, to click together until a bigger possibility, abigger idea, begins to show itself, and also sitting down and writing the firstsentence of what I know is a book. Depends on the project. Depends on theparticular homesickness and lovesickness, too.
Are public readings part of or counterto your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Iused to do readings quite a bit in college, and always dug them in anegomaniacal way. I’ve always wanted to be a rock star, to be Prince or MichaelStipe or Ace Frehley or Lucinda Williams, or rather Prince and Michael Stipe and AceFrehley and Lucinda Williams, andwear cool clothes and crazy make-up on stage in front of tons of rapturous fansand lots of women with exotic tastes. Doing readings was the closest I evergot. And the best compliment I ever got after a reading was overheard by afriend of mine: “You know that guy who looks like Michael Stipe? He read a poemabout his penis!” Don’t think I’vedone a reading in Japan, or at least nothing public. The foreign communitywhere I live is very small, and the slice of that community that’s interestedin poetry or even reading at all is even smaller. Everything is Twinkle Pandavideo games you play on your phone. Nobody cares about my dopey little poemsexcept for a few tender and very intelligent friends.
Do you have any theoretical concernsbehind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with yourwork? What do you even think the current questions are?
Ithink the current question is the same it’s always been: how to get through theday without doing too much damage to your dignity or damaging anybody else’s.That’s about it.
What do you see the current role of thewriter being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think therole of the writer should be?
It’svery weird to care deeply about scribbling in notebooks and blackening pagesand reading all the time and buying too many books and hosting a podcast aboutwriting and being interested in what your friends are reading and writing andsending actual letters and postcards to people and agreeing with Morrissey whenhe sings “There’s more to life than books, you know, but not much more” andthen finding yourself talking to some guy in an airport bar and the guy says,“Why read books? I haven’t read a book since high school” and he’s proud of it. I’m all for whatever getsyou through the night—and for me it’s books, it’s always been books—but formost people, and more and more, it seems to be other stuff. If people want tospend their time playing Shiny Bubblegum Princess games on their phone that’sup to them, but it doesn’t give meany pleasure. The writer’s role is clearly much diminished. But all that reallymeans is that if you still feel compelled to write, knowing nobody gives ashit, it means you’re really awriter. It also means you’re free to write whatever the hell you want. Nothaving a role, or having a role so small it amounts to the same thing, meansspirit is free to play where it will. And maybe that then becomes the role. The more people who are free, on whatever level,to do what they love, creatively, the more energy must be injected into thelarger culture. In any case it’s very pretty to think so.
Do you find the process of working withan outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential.There’ll always be stuff I miss, either mistakes or connections. I’m always allparts grateful when somebody points them out to me. I’ll take all the help Ican get my hands on.
What is the best piece of advice you'veheard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Thebest advice I ever heard is in Gary Snyder’s poem “Stories in the Night”:
I try to remember machinery can
always be fixed - but be ready to
give up the plans that were made
for the day - go back to the
manual - call up friends who know
more - make some tea - relax with
your tools and your problems, start
enjoying the day.
Idon’t think of poems as machinery, but this is beautiful advice for life and writing.
How easy has it been for you to movebetween genres (poetry to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
BecauseI lack imagination, I’ve always mined my own life for material, which meansI’ve written very little fiction. I took exactly one fiction class when I wasdoing my Master’s and got my lowest grade. It was a bit of a struggle, frankly.Recently I’ve started reading moreand more fiction—Paul Lynch’s Gracegot me started again, because it’s brilliant and beautiful—but I’m still notparticularly interested in writing any. I lack the strength and skills for suchadventures. As for moving between non-fiction and poetry, it’s never beendifficult, which probably means I’m more interested in journalism than beauty.But we all have our crosses to bear.
What kind of writing routine do youtend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
Apartfrom trying to write something—anything—every day, I don’t really have aroutine. I keep trying to implement one but I never manage to stick toanything.
When your writing gets stalled, wheredo you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Longwalks. Nothing else works half as well.
What fragrance reminds you of home?
Somebodysmoking outside when it’s really cold out always reminds me of Canada, becausemy best pal Stan and I started smoking in a serious way in the fall and winterof 1988, on long walks around town. As for my home now, there’s a certain typeof incense that I burn a lot. I burn so much of it that when I took somepaperbacks to the foreign book exchange corner in the Bier Hall here in Gifuand my pal Tom picked one of them up sometime later, he immediately knew it hadbeen mine because of the smell. The whole book smelled like home. My home.
David W. McFadden once said that bookscome from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work,whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Definitelymusic. I’ve probably been more influenced by my favourite singer-songwritersthan everything else combined. Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, MichaelStipe, Joni Mitchell, and Morrissey all had, and have, a tremendous impact onmy work.
Imet David McFadden once, and asked him what question he always hoped somebodywould ask him but no one ever did. He said, “Can I buy you a drink?”
What other writers or writings areimportant for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Thereare some writers who just make me feel better, who help me get through thenight, who make me love being alive, who make me excited to go outside and lookaround and talk to people. Jack Kerouac, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace, William Faulkner, Susan Musgrave, Paul Lynch, Gary Snyder, Sharon Olds, Lucia Berlin, John McPhee, Ottessa Moshfegh, Louis-Ferdinand Celine,Dazai Osamu, Allen Ginsberg, Martin Amis, Walt Whitman, Janet Malcolm.Loveliness.
What would you like to do that youhaven't yet done?
Getrich from writing. Like, megastrophically rich.
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?
Ithink I’d like to be a criminal mastermind with a sinister master plan.
What made you write, as opposed todoing something else?
Idon’t really know; maybe it’s like what Adam Gopnick writes in The Real Work: “There was no primitivetrauma in history that made mankind as it is any more than there is a primaltrauma in childhood that made us as we are. We are this way because it’s theway it happened.” In other words it came to pass as most like it was. But I’dimagine that growing up in a house full of books, with two parents who weregreat readers, and having had one or two very encouraging teachers early on hadsomething important to do with it. And it’s a great privilege to have a part,now, no matter how small, in the world of books. A very great privilege indeed.
What was the last great book you read?What was the last great film?
Lastgreat novel: Ian McEwan’s Lessons.Last great book of poetry: Susan Musgrave’s ExculpatoryLilies. Last great piece of non-fiction: Gary Snyder’s The Practice of the Wild. Last great film: Barton Fink. I watched BartonFink with my dad only yesterday, actually. It was great. He’d never seenit.
What are you currently working on?
It’sonly in the percolating phase right now, but I want to write something—I don’teven know what, yet—about my neighbourhood here in Japan. The few blocks aroundmy house, the little postage stamp of land where I live. Deep focus on a smallarea. Intense focus on where I am. Robert Frost again: “Locality gives art.”I’m only now learning what John Lent tried to teach me a long time ago: whereyou are is interesting. You don’thave to go to New York or Paris to find a place to write about, there areenough interesting blunders and fiascos and little bits of beauty and all kindsof fascinations all over the place and the trick is to believe in the dignityand worth of your own experience and be right in your body right in the middleof it all, noticing. It’s like I’m constantly telling my son, when his mindwanders to what might happen in thirty minutes or what the next thing is goingto be, in the future where it’s bound to be better and more interesting than itis here, at this moment: be where you are.Be here now. It took me a long timeto even begin to understand that that’s the real work, and I want to seewhat I can do with it in my notebook. Oneof my notebooks. I’ve got quite a few.
