12 or 20 (second series) questions with Matthew Hollett
Matthew Hollett is a writerand photographer in St. John’s, Newfoundland (Ktaqmkuk). His work exploreslandscape and memory through photography, writing and walking. Optic Nerve, acollection of poems about photography and visual perception, was published byBrick Books in 2023. Album Rock (2018) is a work of creative nonfiction andpoetry investigating a curious photograph taken in Newfoundland in the 1850s.Matthew won the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize, and has previously been awarded the NLCUFresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers, The Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Prizefor Best Poem, and VANL-CARFAC’s Critical Eye Award for art writing. He is agraduate of the MFA program at NSCAD University.
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recentwork compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book, AlbumRock, is a mix of creativenonfiction, poetry and archival material investigating a strange photo taken inNewfoundland in the 1850s by Paul-Émile Miot. The project began as a blog post,then expanded over several years to a research grant, an exploratory road trip,and eventually a published book. You learn so many things over the course of along-term project like that (publishing contracts, working with editors anddesigners, image permissions). It’s not lightning-bolt life-changing, but morecumulative. It snowballs.
My most recent book, OpticNerve, is a collection of poems aboutphotography and visual perception. It took shape over many years, too, and hadits own complicated flight path. Both books gesture towards some of the sameideas and preoccupations – ekphrasis, photography and complicity, a sense ofplace – but they’re very different. Album Rock is a macro lens, OpticNerve more fish-eyed. I like that oneis published by Boulder and one by Brick. A good solidity there.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction ornon-fiction?
I came to poetry through My Body Was Eaten by Dogs by David McFadden – it caught my eye one day in my high school library,and I read it cover to cover and almost immediately started writing poems.Terrible poems. Shortly afterwards I became fascinated by E.E. Cummings, andfilled notebooks with floaty visual cloud-poetry.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Doesyour writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first draftsappear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out ofcopious notes?
My projects always begin as a nebulous collection of small things whichgradually cohere into a larger thing. I am always generating small things:journal entries, field notes from walks, poem fragments, quotes from books,photographs. Every project is rooted in these archives. So beginning somethingnew is usually a matter of sifting through bits and pieces, finding unexpectedconnections.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of shortpieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a"book" from the very beginning?
A single poem usually begins either as a firsthand observation, or as anexploration of language (sometimes I think of the poems as either “outdoorsy”or “indoorsy”). Bookwise, OpticNerve is themed around photography andseeing, and I’m working on a new collection of poems about walking.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Areyou the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love reading aloud. During solo writing residencies I’ve often readentire books aloud to an empty house, which is a fantastic way to feel immersedin the writing’s texture and soundscape. I write my own poems with the ideathat they will be read aloud, and enjoy public readings.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kindsof questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even thinkthe current questions are?
I like looking at things. The current question depends on what I’mlooking at. The bigger question, of course, is what to look at.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in largerculture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer shouldbe?
I’ve always liked Kurt Vonnegut’s take on this: “I sometimes wonderedwhat the use of any of the arts was. The best thing I could come up with waswhat I call the canary in the coal mine theory of the arts. This theory saysthat artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They aresuper-sensitive. They keel over like canaries in poison coal mines long beforemore robust types realize that there is any danger whatsoever.”
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficultor essential (or both)?
Working with an editor is difficult in the best kind of way, where youfeel discomfort, which is the sensation of being challenged and learning andchanging. I find it essential, but never easy.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily givento you directly)?
From Guy Debord’s autobiography: “My method will be very simple. I willtell what I have loved; and, in this light, everything else will become evidentand make itself well enough understood.”
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry tophotography)? What do you see as the appeal?
It doesn’t feel like moving between genres – both poetry and photographyare the work of seeing things in new ways. I’m fascinated by the way that poemsand photos can complement each other. They both feel like quieter, moreintimate ways of making, creating meaning by stringing a series of smallobservations together.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you evenhave one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
My only routine is to read for about 45 minutes as I eat breakfast. Irealize it’s a luxury to structure my mornings this way, and I cling to itdesperately. I don’t have a regular writing routine, but I make writing timeduring evenings or days off, or once in while through grants, residencies orcreative writing classes.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for(for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Going for a long walk works miracles. I can sometimes also unblock mybrain by switching from my computer to writing on paper.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Ocean wind – not so much the fragrance but the force of it. There’snothing like the breath-burgling, voice-snuffing, brain-numbing winds out onthe headlands near St. John’s.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but arethere any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, scienceor visual art?
I went to art school, and I really enjoy writing in response to images –paintings, photographs, films. Anything visual. I’m especially interested inthe way that documentary films can be lyrical and poetic (I love Agnès Varda’swork, and Werner Herzog’s), and the way that they can weave real-lifeobservations together to create meaning. There are lessons there for poetry, Ithink.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, orsimply your life outside of your work?
Teju Cole is an incredible writer and photographer and I enjoy his booksimmensely. I just finished reading Robert Macfarlane’s Underland and reallyloved it. Likewise Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. And one of my favourite films is Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I, a documentary about finding things, which begins in whimsy and moves almost surreptitiously to morepoignant social concerns.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
A really long walk, like the Kumano Kodō or the Pennine Way or theCamino de Santiago.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would itbe? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had younot been a writer?
Writing is an ongoing creative practice for me, but I wouldn’t call itan occupation. I do lots of things that are not writing – photography, designwork, web development, arts administration.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Writing gives me a specific kind of joy that I don’t experienceelsewhere. I love language – its sound, its mouthfeel, the deep deep history ofwords – and I get enormous pleasure from the process of wrangling language intosomething poem-shaped or book-shaped.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last greatfilm?
Teju Cole’s BlackPaper is a collection of brilliant,incisive essays about art, photography and seeing. Cole traces Caravaggio’stravels in exile, considers what it means to look at photographs of suffering,and writes about writing during dark times. “The secret reason I read, the onlyreason I read, is precisely for those moments in which the story being told isdeeply alert to the world, an alertness that sees things as they are or dreamsthings as they could be.”
I watch a lot of movies. The one I’ve enjoyed the most recently is CiroGuerra’s The Wind Journeys. It’s set in Northern Colombia, and in addition to marvellouscinematography, characters, and music, it features the most captivatingaccordion battles ever put to film.
20 - What are you currently working on?
A collection of poems about walking.
