12 or 20 (second series) questions with Nathan Mader
Nathan Mader is fromSaskatchewan and lives in Kyoto. His poems have been in The Fiddlehead, Plenitude, The Ex-Puritan, TheAntigonish Review, PRISM, TheNew Quarterly, and The Best Canadian Poetry 2018(Tightrope Books). The EndlessAnimal, his first full-length collection, is forthcoming in winter 2023 from Fine Period Press. 1 - How did your first book change your life?How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feeldifferent?
My first full-length book of poems, The Endless Animal, will be out thiswinter and what might follow is a total mystery, but the process of gettingthis book ready for publication seems to have changed, whether positively ornegatively, my relationship to composition. Choosing the right, single poem torepresent a particular energy or angle on something—even if it means cutting apoem I like on its own—has made me more judicious.
2 - How did youcome to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Encountering Macbethin 10th grade English changed everything! I was never a great student orhuge reader in high school, but I remember becoming obsessed by Shakespeare’s queerand queering language, becoming aware for the first time of the textureand music of particular words, the way the combination of sound and sense couldbe magnetized to articulate primal forces of existence in ways nothing elseever had—I was hooked, but it would be years before I dared to write anythingapproaching poetry of my own.
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?
Some rare poemscome quite quickly and nearly fully-formed, others are built glacially slow oneline (often one word, sometimes onesyllable) at a time before they feel “right.” Usually the first line comes froma voice, an image, a memory, a rhythm that arrives from somewhere charged with lyricpotential, and the rest of the poem is called forth from there.
4 - Where does apoem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end upcombining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" fromthe very beginning?
For me, thehammering and chiseling of revision iswriting—the source of the initial gesture is from somewhere beyondregular consciousness. I often experience poetry, both reading and writing it, assomething very embodied—it begins with a tingling at the base of my skull andends with a sometimes pleasurable, sometimes sheer feeling of exhaustion whenthe poem is finished with me. One of my friends joked that I have “poetryASMR,” which I love, but I’m hesitant to give the place where poetry comes froma name. I don’t really think in terms of books or projects because of feelslike each poem is its own animal. If shaping a poem is one of seeing what eachline might have to say to each other, shaping a book has been one of seeingwhat different poems might have to say to one another.
5 - Are publicreadings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort ofwriter who enjoys doing readings?
Public readings canbe a good reminder that poetry is both an act of communication and anincantation, and if an audience responds well to a poem, this can be taken as agood sign the poem is working. For me, poetry lives as much in the voice as onthe page, and I often make recordings of poems as I revise them to this end.
6 - Do you have anytheoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are youtrying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questionsare?
I’ve always lovedwhat Paul Muldoon says: “a poem is an answer to a question it itself has raised.”
7 – What do you seethe current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one?What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Except in times ofcrisis, the larger culture seems to care very little for poets and poetry—butthat’s okay. Opera and interpretative dance share the same fate. But for peoplelike me who need poetry, who hungerfor it, it’s everything. And I’d like to think if poets do have any kind ofrole, it is, as Dickinson says in her great poem, to “Dwell inpossibility.”
8 - Do you find theprocess of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I loved workingwith my editor, the wonderful poet Ivanna Baranova (everyone should get / pre-order her new book from Metatron Press!). She was such an empathetic yethonest reader of my work and essential to the process of getting The Animal Element where it wanted tobe. Ivanna was an “outside” editor in the truest sense because we’d never metbefore, and she shed new light on what many of the poems were up to. I’ve alsobeen fortunate to have friends as first readers of my work who are likewisegifted.
9 - What is thebest piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Can I just takethis chance to say thank you thank you thank you to any poet who has ever beenkind enough to look at one of my poems and / or offer advice? Also, someoneonce told me to turn the wheel into the skid when your car’s spinning out on anicy road—that’s saved my life more than once!
10 - What kind ofwriting routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does atypical day (for you) begin?
A poem can find meanytime—great when I’m on the train, dangerous when barreling down a hillthrough traffic on my bicycle—and I try to always be receptive to it. But I dotend to revise in the mornings after I’ve had coffee and before I have togo to work. Though the strange hours of teaching English as a second languagein here in Kyoto means working weekends and later into the evening toaccommodate office workers, the good thing is that I have most weekday morningsfree to work on things.
11 - When yourwriting gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a betterword) inspiration?
I often take notwriting as a sign I need to be more in the world, to call myself back to myself.Meditation. Movies. Talking to friends. Talking to strangers. Talking to trees.Drawing something. Cycling somewhere. Sex. Silence. In other words, notthinking about writing at all and just being alive and present can help. Butthe biggest reenergizer for my poetry of all is reading a good poem by someoneelse! Often it only takes that single act of attention and reminding myself ofthe eros of language to feel the urge to put down on paper a poem I didn’t knowI’d already been writing.
12 - What fragrancereminds you of home?
Diesel engine exhaust.Lavender.
13 - 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?
The short answer isthat everything influences my art. The long answer is that I mostly grew up onmovies, not books, and they continue to be a big part of my life. When I’mrevising a poem I often “sense” it in terms of scenes, shots, and cuts. But Ialso tend to obsess over all kinds of paintings, photos, and museum artifacts Icome into contact with. People and what drives them are endlessly fascinating,too. Does the nature of desire count as a form of nature? And I hope my worknever turns its back on the animals, human or otherwise—I think a recentencounter I had with an octopus while snorkelling this summer might’ve justchanged how I see the world forever.
14 - What otherwriters or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside ofyour work?
I’ve made a nightlyritual of reading one poem by Dickinson and one by Rilke. Dickinson surpassesShakespeare in possessing the greatest wit in the history of the Englishlanguage, and something about her synapse-snapping speed of thought and formalmastery juxtaposed with the occasionally ostentatious, more often profound mysticismof Rilke in his castle keeps me in touch with the simultaneous wide specturm anddiscrete nature(s) of poetry. I likewise seem to return to Ashbery, Merrill,Schuyler, The Tang Dynasty poets (Li Bai, Du Fu, and co.), Blake, Terrance Hayes, Don Paterson, Richard Siken, Anthony Madrid, Hafez, CAConrad, Ariana Reines, Sylvia Plath, Eduardo C. Corral, The Odyssey, and the poems of my friends and mentors back home in the orbitof Canada, which I can’t bring myself to list out of fear of missing someonewhose work I love. I like to think my desire to feel the world and the word inthese various ways informs both my poems and thinking.
15 - What would youlike to do that you haven't yet done?
If the answer tothis question can be open to pure fantasy, I would love to try make a livingoff my poems and nothing else (laughter….uncontrollable sobbing…false stoicresolve).
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?
Sometimes I dreamabout what it would be like to be a Jungian psychoanalyst—to apply some of thegifts poetry has given me—a sense of the interior voice, the ability to thinkless-linearly and in terms of metaphor, symbol, and archetype, encountering subconsciousforces while attempting to “integrate” them—and apply them to people seeking toexplore and / or heal their psyche’s. Wasn’t this part of the poet’s jobdescription in the ancient world?
17 - What made youwrite, as opposed to doing something else?
The feeling I getwhen I’m working on a poem was and is better than the feeling I get when I workon anything else.
18 - What was the last great book you read?What was the last great film?
The last great book I read was Robyn Schiff’s fourthpoetry collection, Information Desk (Penguin, 2023). It’s a long poem orshortish epic that stems from her time working at the titular desk in theMetropolitan Museum of Art in New York in the mid-nineties, where the artifacts,art, and everyday interactions she encountered there are recharged with newimplications through the light of lyric memory. I’m also absolutely cuckoo for thepleasurable tension Schiff creates when the propulsive force of her signaturelong sentences meets the formal rigour of her syllabic line breaks.
When it comes to movies, these days it mightbe Tar that has opened the most doorsin my mind: the relationship between power dynamics and the creative drive, theblurred line between art and artist, the entwining of jealousy and desire inboth the artistic and romantic spheres…not to mention the ghosts. CateBlanchet’s performance is so visceral and fascinating, and the director, ToddField, conjures Tarkovsky vibes in the way the he gives silence and atmosphereequal breathing space, and I love that in any film. Barbarian is another somewhat recent favourite movie—too good totalk about.
19 - What are youcurrently working on?
Hopefully the nextpoem!
