12 or 20 (second series) questions with Brian Dedora
Brian Dedora’s novel/memoir A SLICE OF VOICE AT THE EDGE OFHEARING was a finalist for both the Relit Award and the George Ryga Prizefollowed by another “audacious experiment in narrative” A FEW SHARP STICKS,followed by LOT 351, and a book of his visual work from the 70’s and80’s entitled EYE WHERE, all books through the Mercury Press andTeksteditions. Editorial Visor in Madrid and BookThug in Toronto published hiswork on the Spanish poet and playwright, Federico Garcia Lorca, titled LORCATIONin a bilingual edition in 2015 along with TWO AT HIGH NOON published byVancouver’s Nomados Literary Press. BORDERBLUR and DIAGRAMS FOR A VAUDEVILLE OF POEMS published by NoiR:Z,Toronto, 2019. 2020 saw the publicationof PLAGUE SPOT and RECYCLED along with PHRASE-O-MATIC in2021 from NOiR:Z. Also in 2021, PAPER POEMS, Red Fox Press, Ireland, andin 2022 SECTION 2: Gap Riot Press, Toronto and POLAROID POEMS,Paper View Press, Portugal. Dedora lives and writes in Toronto where he honeshis skills in film photography with his vintage cameras.
How did yourfirst book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Yeah, axerox of a xerox expands the text...Oh, I thought, I could take that unfinishedpoem I wrote in creative writing class where the poem received a “You need toget your geography straight.” and a shitty ‘B- ‘... The poem could be redeemedbecause its visual along with corrections became, as a visual, a piece byitself. So, time to roll up my sleeves and get busy: xeroxing on a xerox ten times and reversingthe order so the most unreadable of the text appears first then moves to thebeginning of readability I then reduced the readable to the size of a postagestamp, so the entire piece laid out coalesces to almost total clarity and thenfades progressively to the reduced black shape of the poem. This became myfirst chapbook but also importantly my introduction to visual and concrete or “experimental”. I was not really interested in producing abook of discrete lyrical poems and producing this piece, THE DREAM, also brokea period of silence, a dry spell, of which I’ve had a few. Richard Truhlar and John Riddell ofPhenomenon Press wanted THE DREAM for distribution and published my secondchapbook a visual of breath diagrams, A POSTERIORI. Through them I met fellow writers also busywith experimental practices: Michael Dean, Steve Smith, bp, and the FourHorsemen. The lifelong importance of THE DREAM was to show me how I couldproduce in this vein which I’ve done my entire writing life. This was the wayto circumvent what I saw as puny poems with a tight return. My writing fromthat day forward was the beginning of a long trajectory where the visual andthe words became distinct pieces or distinctly separate but always undercuttingand circumventing the idea of the poem as I saw it. Word work has progressed from WHAT A CITY WASthrough some ten books to my latest piece THE APPLE IN THE ORCHARD all alongperfecting a technique of disruption in regards prose writing. The use ofincomplete sentences for the rapidity of thought, inclusion of visual materialsuch as photographs, bits of paper, and paintings. As to my latest work, THE APPLE IN THE ORCHARD, and how it compares to previous work is that it is the apex of myprose work so far in that it is both experimental and readable, not that theprevious books weren’t readable, but my technique has become so much betterbeing built through the experiments of previous work... each book spawnsanother in this long extension.
How did youcome to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Thebedroom poems of my youth and the stuff I produced for my creative writingclass were junk and in the long run of no real interest. The problem was I hadn’t yet found my métier.
How long doesit take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, oris it a slow process? Do first draftsappear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out ofcopious notes?
My writingprojects, not counting the lightbulb flashes that produce visual work, are aslow process because they never start as a named project but arise from singlewritten pieces in a host of notebooks. When any piece typed out or now entered on my computer might begin a newproject as it sets off memories of other pieces resulting in a furious searchthrough several notebooks to find what I want and lay them beside what I’ve nowtyped or entered. One of the pieces nowused in THE APPLE, was written in 1991. Other notebooks and other pieces begin, as I remember them, in relationto what now seems “something”, no definition yet but a locus of interest.Time-wise the prose projects take up to five years, THE APPLE almost sevenwhich includes the pauses between entries. There’s a lot of just plain thought work which goes into each projectwhether book or chapbook... Oh, and the editing, the paring down.
Firstdrafts never look like the finished piece...never.
I don’twork from A to Z on any project it’s always a long typed out piece that afterrigorous scrutiny becomes a book.
Are publicreadings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doingreadings?
I enjoyreadings and I’m a good performer of my work but a half hour before I go on myguts are about to drop and I’m wondering why the eff do I do this... then it’sthe first breath and I’m on. The important thing to remember is you must giveback. There’s nothing worse than listening to an ego driven narcissist recite“pohems”. Why are poet voices in manycases so soft, so without inflexions, so far back in the throat...you must getout there to give your audience something to hear...Sheesh!!
Do you haveany theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kind of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questionsare?
Idon’t have any theoretical concerns when I begin something... it’s acontemporary fixation as so much of writing is held and written withinacademia...all the better to rave on about it in class and it is a class thingwith an agenda. Remember PO-MO speak? What club do you belong to? Yikes, thatwas such a bore and a kind of mis-direction with a vocabulary to suit. You must recognize that between 1988 and 2008I did not write or publish so the whole “theoretical” kind of passed me by. Therewere some interesting thoughts/theories that grabbed hold especially thequestioning of the authorial absolute. I do enjoy reading theoretical essayswhich I forget quickly but the work is all there in some kind of punctum. Ifind that area of chaos or non-linearity especially fertile ground as evidencedby my three books, A SLICE OF VOICE AT THE EDGE OF HEARING, A FEW SHARPSTICKS, and most recently, THE APPLE IN THE ORCHARD. These books canbe read as long poems, collages, or “novels” all of them pushing against the university writing class prose read. Photography has also undergone huge shifts inits authority, meaning, and being. So, I don’t go out to shoot “theoretical”. Iget an idea and then shoot it. Thepandemic lockdown was really productive, I was shooting series every week. I make folders of these series some I’veshown many I haven’t.
What do yousee the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writershould be?
The roleof the writer in the larger culture... that depends on how you’re getting paidand whose words you’re “employing”. Thechannels in which writing is read seem to me fairly limited where writers ofnecessity not only find it difficult to get published but even get heard. The proliferation of books and voices, thewhole global hum places the individual writer in solitary confinement whererelease is burrowing down into your own language and by whatever means gettingout there to speak to someone. It’s the “getting out there” that grinds theinitial impulse as so much gets in the way: the petty politics, the outrightcruelty, the narcissism in front of unremarkable work, the “give them what theywant” and the myriad agendas of all the demographics. Current questions...!!?? I don’t believe there is any over-arcingmoment where the great question can be asked because we don’t know it, Icertainly don’t. Where even, to open, toanswering. There are many demographicswhere you may never need to step out from, all with their own set of questionsand maybe their own answers. Theimportant thing is to show and teach that everyone can be creative in whateverform makes you burn. I was listening to a Zoom recently where Erín Moure spokeabout an essay by Chus Pato concerning thinking. It’s that type of essay of ideas that exciteme... the thing is I could read these essays and never get to work.
Do you findthe process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Ilove working with an editor as I’ve only had two: Bev Duario and Stuart Ross.
WhenbpNichol and I did ABC Childhood we wrote a kind of call and response,
thenbp would type it, rip the finished piece out of the typewriter and beginimmediately inking out revisions where I’d be imploring, “Can we wait aminute?” The immediate revisions were away of getting or retaining initial impulse. Work with Bev Daurio was a treatas she would come on you very quietly with hints or suggestions which werebrilliant as she saw under what I’d written and then ask for a bit more. When Bev and I worked on A SLICE OF VOICEAT THE EDGE OF HEARING, she suggested taking one story/chapter andsplitting it in two and placing it separately in the book. It was a brilliantmove! Stuart was a very differenteditor as he worked for clarity without change to an original idea plus heenjoyed when I stood up for certain passages and then made suggestions of, “Canyou write three more of these passages?” I did write three more, The beloved buyer, in THE APPLE IN THEORCHARD. The point of working withthese editors is we all wanted the piece to be better and so we did.
What is thebest piece of advice you’ve heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
“You’rethe artist, you’re the problem solver.” Jack Kidder, Victoria, B.C., 1969. The advice I got before leaving B.C. forToronto. I was Jack’s protégé and hetaught me about food, art, music, and buying my first piece of art, now lostI’m afraid, a clown in a frilly costume trying to fly with the bird that’sflying past... one must try!
How easy hasit been to move between genres (poetry to fiction to non-fiction to photographyto visual art)? What do you see as the appeal?
Movingbetween genres is a matter of keeping myself busy especially after I’vefinished a word event from WHAT A CITY WAS, 1983, to THE APPLE IN THEORCHARD, 2024. It’s the space when I am wordless and in between a wordpiece where I need to be busy, so I turn to visual work, whether collage, PLAGUESPOT, THE PAPER POEMS, and THE POLAROID POEMS or photography. The analogue photography with its mechanicalcameras ( I like the ‘feel’ of it working) is the same space that needs to be busy andfilled but in my camera work I shoot sequences mostly based on flash ideas:Eight photos of scrap paper found on Huron Street where I lived and whendeveloped I wrote out on the white scraps in the photos what I had done endingwith “beginning at my doorstep”, titled SCRAP NARRATIVE. You can, if youwish, go to YouTube, look up my name and READ THIS FOTO to see a recentexhibition from the 70s until now.
Theappeal... it’s fun but also a degree of fear as I set out to shoot an idea, atension that makes the work better. BoxSet and Bloonz, published by Viktlösheten Press are prime examplesof a flash idea which I shot and made a chapbook out of the results and sent itout where Viktlösheten agreed to publish it.
What kind ofwriting routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I have nowriting routine until all the bits I’ve randomly written come together as onesomething, then it’s a more regular routine with lots of space to think aboutwhat more may be included i.e. new writing or a search through thenotebooks. I have wordless periodsespecially after a large project. Bylarge I mean a word event that is coalescing and becoming and when “done” I amkind of vacant.
When yourwriting gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a betterword) inspiration?
Whenthe writing gets stalled, I turn to my heap of notebooks and read to findsomething. Read other writers bothpoetry and prose and essays especially Lisa Robertson or Erín Moure or anythingI might stumble upon or be told about.
Beeasy on myself. One day I need to typeout these notebooks.
What fragrancereminds you of home?
Freshbaked bread and flowers in the house.
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?
Fred Wahalso said books beget the next book not merely sequence but an impulse or the nexttechnical or maturing step. Ideas docome from various sources, mostly visual but also, importantly, light bulbmoments that are the quick writes that later form a whole or the flash bulbsfor a photography idea.
What otherwriters or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside ofyour work?
What otherwriters or writings that are important...??!! Have you got time? I use otherwriters long after I’ve read them through some form of osmosis where I “hear”their voices and certain passages I write seem to have their voice: Faulkner,Burroughs, Goytisolo, Joyce, Modernists all but I’m still looking for acontemporary prose that really turns me on. For Canadian prose: Sheila Watson, John Riddell, Aaron Tucker. For Canadian poetry: bp, Steve McCaffery, Lola Tostevin, Kate Siklosi, Sonja Greckol, Dale Smith, Phil Hall, Erín Moure, Ralph Kolewe, Lisa Robertson, Kirby... How can I possibly name them all whetherdeep-dive or for singular events... near impossible.
Imust include my work on Federico Garcia Lorca as his life and writing were theinformatives to my book on Lorca titled, Lorcation, a tri-part bookcomposed of poems, an essay, and a reflective finale grounded in and on theland where Lorca was raised.
What would youlike to do that you haven’t done yet?
Writesomething completely straight.... nah! Some poetry, maybe...
Perhapscomplete a work that I’ve abandoned a few times and give it a kick in the butt.
If you couldpick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you wouldhave ended up doing has you not been a writer?
I have hada life with two “careers” .... I becamea master gilder under the tutelage of the artist William Kurelek at the Isaacs Gallery and went into my own business to become one of the premier gildingpicture framers in the country. Alongside this I have followed my own creativelightbulb moments whether written or visual including a twenty-year dryspell...when I concentrated on building an art collection and writing about it.I am not making a financial life by writing, there is no imperative for me todo so. This privilege is a space Iworked my ass off to achieve: the time to follow those creative impulses tomake... yeah, that’s it... to make.
What was thelast great book you read? What was thelast great film.
Thelast “informative” books were Erín Moure’s, Theophylline, neck and neckwith Lisa Robertson’s, Boat, I just love being inside these books.
Thelast great film setting me out to a full-blown bawl: ALL OF US STRANGERS,
sixnominations at the BAFTA Awards and no win for a film whose narrative is notlinear
and,therefore, very upsetting for Fred and Mabel in Mississauga... fuck me...
Itends with Frankie Goes to Hollywood, THE POWER OF LOVE, tears drippingoff my chin and full-blown bawling.
Thebooks: after all the edits and with THE APPLE IN THE ORCHARD gone topress... six Rex Stout, Nero Wolfe mysteries .... yup!
What are youcurrently working on?
Currentproject is a resurrection of an older work that needs the ‘truth’ to get out ofthe way for the introduction of the chaos it needs: THOSE LOW HANGIN’ FRUITS... to becontinued...as I saw it one morning and how wide this piece could encompass andhow I might get there... I saw it whole, exciting and scary.
