12 or 20 (second series) questions with Anna Lee-Popham
Anna Lee-Popham is a poet, writer, and editor inTkaronto (Toronto). She holds an MFA Creative Writing from the University ofGuelph, and is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University andUniversity of Toronto’s School of Continuing Education Creative WritingCertificate, where she received the Janice Colbert Poetry Award. Her writinghas been first runner-up in PRISM international’s Pacific Poetry Prize,shortlisted for The Fiddlehead Creative Nonfiction Contest and Room'sPoetry Contest, and longlisted for the CBC nonfiction prize, and has beenpublished or is forthcoming in Arc, Brick, Canthius, RiddleFence, and Room, as well as Autostraddle and Lingue eLinguaggi. Her debut poetry collection, Empires of the Everyday, waspublished by McClelland & Stewart in Spring 2024.
1 - How did your first book change your life?How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feeldifferent?
Some of my earlier work struggled to see beyond myown life. Yet I'm interested in the ways that poetry opens writers and readersout into the world. In my collection that is about to be published, Empires of the Everyday, I had a thrillof a time with an "I" that was clearly not “I, Anna” – and thatlanded me in a poetic voice that carried its own weight, its own toner,cadence, its own severity. This was not a conscious construct, but rather thespace that opened up to write into. It’s an approach that learned from the pathforged by many other writers.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, asopposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Like many, I wrote poetry as a child – on some days,remnants of a poem I wrote as a younger person (about not being able to sleep?not counting sheep?) linger in my mind. I wrote poetry, or parts of writingthat had tones of poetry, in books that I kept hidden for much of my life.
3 – 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?
Many notes, much reading, then more notes, then beingout in the world, then noting that too, and back to reading. I am not sure Ifeel clear about when any particular project starts. While I remember aspecific moment when I knew that Empiresof the Everyday had taken on a shape – laying in bed with my partner, discussing the voice of the"I", the key questions, thepiece was interested in exploring, and a clicking into a shape that seemed tobe happening – I feel that certainlythese questions, possibly even the shape, were likely things I had been mullingabout for years, living in the world we live in, as I do, with therelationships and interactions I get to have.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you?Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project,or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
With Empires ofthe Everyday, I knew it was poems that were all circulating a commonproject – though it took a moment, and prompting by others who were reading thepoems, for me to understand it as a book. I am drawn to the expansiveness of alinked collection of poems, or a long poem. Bernadette Mayer, discussing thesonnet form, wrote “How serious notorious and public a form to think youcould find the solution to a problem or an ending to an observation in onebrief moment” – and this resonates with me. When I have tried to write poemsthat attempt to show a significant insight within the limits of a single poem,they have, in my experience, often fallen flat. This may, in part, be becausefor me any one thing, any one experience, always seems to hold complexity,often seems to open out to more nuance and intrigue. In this I feel inconversation with Grace Paley'swriting about her relationships with her husbands. She writes"Either [of my husbands] has enough character for a whole life, which asit turns out is really not such a long time. You couldn't exhaust either man'squalities or get under the rock of his reasons in one short life." For me,this perspective extends beyond any individual or relationship to our broaderworld – in that it is not possible to get under the rock of the reasons of somuch in our broader world, but I'm sure interested in peaking in. In this also,I am much more interested in questions than in answers – the questioning workthat poetry can do, to open out more specific questions, to try "to findbetter questions to ask," as Canisia Lubrin discusses here.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter toyour creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I'm currently in the process – meaning today, thisweek, as I write – of Empires of theEveryday being released. Yesterday, a friend texted saying that she'dreceived a notification that the book is available for pick up from her localbookstore, although the publication date isn't for a few days, and so I'm inthat process of having something that was written alone, shared with a fewpeople, then a few more, then supported heavily through editing, design, andall, by the phenomenal and generous team of more people at M&S – havingthis book suddenly emerge out to the broader world. Public readings can feelsimilar, that glorious experience of a thing emerging into the world. Iappreciate how something through which I am attempting to engage with the world,then gets to engage with the world itself, though I don't crave the attentionon oneself that a public reading requires.
6 - 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?
I wrote Empiresof the Everyday sparked most actively by an incident in February 2021 whenthe city of Toronto started to demolish plywood structures that had been builtin local parks. The structures had been built in response to the chronic issue of lackof affordable housing in Toronto and the acute issues of winter in Toronto (as night time temperaturesfrequently reached below -10’C) and rampant cases of COVID in homeless shelters.
When the mainstream media reported onthis, they focused on the safety concerns the city cited for tearing down theshelters. But, from what I read in mainstream news, there was much they leftout: experiences of violence towards houseless people by police, thedisproportionately impacts of houselessness on communities of color andIndigenous communities, or the ongoing history of colonialism and imperialismin the city of Toronto, including the questionable legality of the Toronto PurchaseTreaty between the Crown and the Mississaugas of the Credit, in the late 1700sor the fact that in 2010, the Government of Canada settled the Toronto PurchaseClaim and the Brant Tract Claim for compensation of $145 million. There wascertainly no mention of the history of slavery in the city of Toronto.
There was no reason for me to besurprised by the way the media reported on this incident, or by the city’sresponse. But this incident and the offhand, cool, distanced, piecemeal,uncontextualized reporting hooked me.
I became curious about what a tool mightlook like that would communicate this history, this context, link back to whatthe present is built upon. I began to wonder about how AI technology might actas a sort of translator of the news. What would the relationship be between theAI technology and the human? What would it be fed so that an analysis would bebrought forward that could help develop an understanding? What form would thecommunication take? What would be its limitations? Why use AI technologyfor such a process?
7 – 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?
Icertainly come after – meaning I attempt to follow — Dionne Brand's framing in An Autobiographyof the Autobiography of Reading that "the role of the writer… is tonarrate [one's] own consciousness." Adrienne Rich has also informed myunderstanding of the role of poetry. In a conversation with Claudia Rankine, Richexplained: “In a time of frontal assaults both on language and on humansolidarity, poetry can remind us of all we are in danger of losing — disturbus, embolden us out of resignation.”
8 - Do you find the process of working withan outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential.I haven't found the process difficult as of yet, though importantly humbling.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you'veheard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I was reading through some other interviews by otherwriters on this blog, and Canisia's response to this resonated with me:"Becareful not to burn out."
10 – What kind of writing routine do you tendto keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
There isno typical right now. I'm currently teaching and finding it quite expansive interms of the time that I can put into preparing for each class. On an ideal dayI write in the morning before my home, even the city, and certainly email, wakeup. On an ideal day, I wake to a quiet house and write for a few hours, likelystarting around 5am.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where doyou turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I alwaysturn to the world, wherever the writing is at. Sometimes that's a walk or bike aroundthe city, to the Don River, or to Lake Ontario, or it's turning on the news, orgoing to a space where people are wrestling with similar questions as I'mtrying to hold in the writing — a community event, a podcast, a rally.
12 – What fragrance reminds you of home?
Sheetsdried in the sun.
13 – 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?
Certainly all you've said – and really anything I cantake in: an interaction on the streetcar, flora and fauna in the city andoutside of it, a picture my brother recently sent of the northern lights,people, …
14 – What other writers or writings areimportant for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Dionne Brand, Canisia Lubrin, Christina Sharpe,Cornelius Eady, Don Mee Choi, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, M. NourbeSe Philip,Aimé Césaire, Robyn Maynard,Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Edward Said, Mosab Abu Toha,C.L.R. James, Italo Calvino, Chinua Achebe, Muriel Rukeyser, Sonia Sanchez,Claire Schwartz, Solmaz Sharif, Rita Wong, Gwendolyn Brooks, Natalie Diaz,Kaie Kellough, Yoko Ogawa, Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, Jordan Abel, Alycia Pirmohamed, Frantz Fanon, Antonio Gramsci, Gayatri Spivak, Walter Benjamin,W.E.B DuBois, the list goes on and grows frequently.
15 – What would you like to do that youhaven’t yet done?
Hmm, write this next book. Get outside today to playin the snow…. Live in a social world that isn't predicated on violence. Youknow, simple things.
16 – 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?
As a child, I dreamed of being a dancer. I loved themotion, and moments when I could feel the rhythm of a thing, and experimentingwith the limits of what my body could and couldn't do, but I didn't love theidea of people watching me. Sometimes I can feel the ways that writing is anextension of those same interests.
17 – What made you write, as opposed to doingsomething else?
Writing is where I come to try to understand theworld. Writing is where I come to try to engage in — as Dionne Brand noted in aphenomenal talk "Writing Against Tyranny and TowardLiberation — "reflecting, intuiting, making sense of, and undoing thetimes we live in.”
18 - What was the last great book you read?What was the last great film?
The Memory Police, by Yoko Ogawa, certainly,certainly, certainly. Agreat book I am currently reading is Landbridge, byY-Dang Troeug, The film 7 Prisoners. So many more.
19 - What are you currently working on?
My current project, titled In the Hours After, follows an event I attended in Montreal,fifteen years ago, where a Longshore worker active in the South Africananti-apartheid struggle discussed the movement's limitations: he believed thatbecause they did not fully believe in their success, they failed to imagine theday after they won. As a result, they weren’t prepared for the liberatorypotential after the fall of the apartheid regime — a message I've heard echoedby leaders and elders throughout my involvement in social movements over thepast dozen years in Canada and the US.
In the Hours After takes up this order — to imaginea liberatory future — by building from Empiresof the Everyday, which examines how the imagination of Empire that has ledto the current crises is both ever-present and at times operates invisibly. The“I” of the poems in Empires of theEveryday is the voice of a piece of AI machine technology that is fed newsand spits out poetry to translate life in the city into a less linear — andmore comprehensive — language. That collection concludes by exploring possibleendings, most of which are dire. In theHours After examines what is next beyond these dire endings, with a focuson the liberatory.
