12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ben Robinson
Ben Robinsonis a poet, musician and librarian. His first book, The Book of Benjamin,an essay on naming, birth, and grief was published by Palimpsest Press in 2023.His poetry collection, As Is, was published by ARP Books in September2024. He has only ever lived in Hamilton, Ontario on the traditionalterritories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, andMississaugas. You can find him online at benrobinson.work.
1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How doesyour most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first chapbook helped me meet poets. It took thisthing—poetry—that I was spending an increasing amount of time thinking about,and gave me a way to connect with like-minded folks through reading and mailingand editing and exchanging.
My first book was maybe an extension of this, but also itsopposite. For all of the grief about the decline of the book, I think there’sstill a certain amount of cultural capital attached to the idea of having published a book, such that my first onebrought me back into contact, even briefly, with old neighbours, formerclassmates, friends from out of the country, etc.
As for how my most recent book, AsIs, compares to the earlier work, I think there are common concerns aroundclosely investigating inherited pieces of my identity, like my name, myrelationship to Christianity, or my hometown, and trying to come to both adeeper understanding of the way these forces have shaped me, and also how Imight want to relate to them in the future. That sounds somewhatindividualistic, but I hope these reflections also scale up, that they mightcontribute to broader conversations.
I think As Is differsfrom my past work in that it’s perhaps the most explicitly political. Perhapsthat’s because it’s about place and, while I share other aspects of myidentity, the communal aspect is undeniable when thinking about a city.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fictionor non-fiction?
I’m not sure that I did come to poetry first. I used to write shortfiction but it never felt quite right. I took a lot of my early work in manygenres to the various writers-in-residence at the Hamilton Public Library. OneWiR that I took stories to helped me, in maybe an inadvertent way, to see thatI didn’t really care about the rules of fiction, or at least conventionalfiction. I would bring in a story and she would ask these questions about plotand character development that I had no clue about and ultimately wasn’tinterested in. I’d say that I came to poetry because of its comparativeopenness. I’m not always sure that what I write are 100% poems, but there seemsto be a higher tolerance for divergence in the poetry world.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project?Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do firstdrafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out ofcopious notes?
I’m a real notebook writer. The poems often come when I find theconnection between a couple of images or lines in my notes, when it feels likethere’s a charge, like there’s something that merits exploring. Sometimes ittakes a while to find exactly why I’m drawn to a line or how it might be used,but once I find that connection, the poem tends to emerge quickly as I find itdifficult to think about much else in the meantime.
Lately, I’ve been trying to keep my drafts unsettled for as long aspossible. I often find it hard to get back to the generative space with a pieceonce I’ve gone into editing mode, so I’ve been letting my poems stay unfinishedfor as long as possible, giving them time to morph and stretch.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author ofshort pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working ona "book" from the very beginning?
A bit of both, I think. I wrapped up writing As Is at the start of 2023 and I wasn’t sure what would be next. Ididn’t write any new poems for almost a year, and when the new ones did come, Ididn’t immediately see what the connections were, but it’s exciting to watchthe themes slowly emerge and start to coalesce; there's something akin to theway a poem reveals itself in the writing that can also happen with acollection, I think.
The first new poems I wrote were about my experience of fatherhoodand then, seemingly out of nowhere, I wrote a couple of poems about bad adviceI’d received in my life, almost exclusively from men. While the connectionmight seem obvious now, at the time I wasn’t convinced these two sets of poemswere part of the same project. I’m trying to increase my tolerance for thatdivergence, trusting that the variety will ultimately make for a moreinteresting and less predictable collection as opposed to working backward froma theme and intentionally writing poems on particular subjects.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creativeprocess? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I think it depends when you ask me. On the day of a reading, Imight say that they’re counter to my process because I find the anticipationkind of immobilizing, whereas once I’m about two minutes into a reading orafter, I’d probably say they’re part of the process. It’s great to meet otherpoets and readers of poetry, to share the poems I’ve been tinkering with insolitude, but it takes a lot out of me. Maybe the nerves will go away one day,but they haven’t yet. Now I just know to expect them and keep going.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? Whatkinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you eventhink the current questions are?
I find this kind of question hard to answer. I did an interview with Kevin Heslop for my last book and it felt like a kind of creativetherapy—he had such great language for the connections between my projects thatI’m not all that conscious of. Each project has its particular theoreticalconcerns, but the broader ones are more elusive. I guess I’m interested in thebig questions: How should we live? What to do with life’s many coincidences andcontradictions?
I think I’m more concerned with the effect of my writing. The booksthat I love feel essential, both as pieces of writing, and also to my life ingeneral; they keep me attuned to the many nuances of experience that tend toget flattened out in daily living. I read a blurb once that talked about“obliterating cliche” [Anne Boyer, TheUndying] which I like—to take the old standards (life, death, love, home,family, etc.) and find some small particularity that might make them feelurgent again.
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’m not sure that I operate in the larger culture, but I’m okaywith small. The writers I respect, even in their limited and local ways, aredoing the difficult work of thinking deeply, of escaping the rut of what hasalready been thought, or written down, or is Googleable and are revealing howmuch more complex life is out beyond the bounds of the feasible, the realisticor the expedient.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editordifficult or essential (or both)?
Yes, certainly both. I’ve tried to get better at emotionallypreparing myself for editing, to resist defensiveness. My default positiontends to be either wholesale acceptance or rejection of suggestions, but I’vebeen getting better at slowing down and evaluating edits individually.
Lately, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some great editors(as well as poets in their own rights) like Karen Solie and Annick MacAskill.My work is much stronger for their engagements with it, but, despite the factthat they are both unfailingly lovely people, it’s a vulnerable process for me.Ultimately, I try to remind myself that there are plenty of people in my life(thankfully) that I could go to for simple praise, to tell me that the poemsare “good,” and while praise is certainly nice and, to an extent, necessary,constructive and insightful feedback is so much harder to come by and is a realgift that ought to be treated as such.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarilygiven to you directly)?
Put the problem into the poem - Robert Hass. This one works for bothwriting and life, I think.
Sometimes I’ll make lists of my worries about a given piece, aboutwhat might be missing, about how it might be misread. Some of these worriesjust need to be written down and then moved on from, others help reveal whatmight be missing in the project. When I was writing “Between the Lakes” whichis a long poem that threads throughout AsIs, I was concerned that the poem, which is trying to engage with the land,was doing so largely from within the confines of a car which was of courseactively degrading that same land. After reading Gabriel Guddings' Rhode Island Notebook where heobsessively lists his mileage and direction of travel, I realized that I neededto address this tension in the poem and so, in the final version, I includedmoments where the smeared windshield, or the gas station—the materialconditions of the poem’s construction—are visible and I think the piece isstronger for it.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry toreviews to music)? What do you see as the appeal?
I don’t think of the transitions in terms of ease or difficulty. Asmuch as I love poetry, there are only so many hours I can spend with it in agiven day, and when I reach that saturation point, it’s not easy or difficultto transition, just necessary. They are all pursuits that I enjoy and theycertainly feed one another, but I move between them in the same way that Imight leave off writing a poem to ride my bike, or make dinner: because I thinkit’s important and valuable to fill a life with many different endeavours.
The reviews or interviews are a bit more related, but I think theystarted as, and continue to be, a natural outflow of my reading practice, oftrying to think deeply about poetry and then wanting to offer some of that timeand effort to others. They are another way to participate in a literarycommunity, to escape the limits of introversion and ask brilliant people abouttheir practice in a structured environment that also hopefully serves to bringmore readers to work that I think is useful or excellent or interesting.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do youeven have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
My routine has shifted a lot lately. Right now, with it beingsummer and having both my sons home all the time, my routine is noroutine—writing a bit on the bus to work, in the back room of the library on mylunch hour, at the kitchen counter while the little one naps and the big onewatches his shows, in the rare moments where the boys play quietly together andI try to stay as still as possible, so as not to disrupt them.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or returnfor (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Like many, I turn back to reading. I go back to the books that haveresonated with me or go looking for something new that will show me freshpossibilities. I ride my bike, which seems to open up a less conscious part ofmy brain that is capable of quickly solving problems I’ve been fussing with forhours.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I have a poor sense of smell, to be honest. We have a lilac bush inthe yard and my wife loves lilacs so maybe that? My kids love bananas, or atleast the first two bites of a banana, so perhaps the remaining 80% of thebanana that is then abandoned beneath the couch or somewhere similarly out ofthe way. Flowers and decaying fruit, like a Caravaggio. There are many things Ilike about our house, but its “fragrance” isn’t always top of the list.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, butare there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music,science or visual art?
Well for As Is, the bookcame from historical plaques, local newspapers, neighbourhood watch Facebookgroups, archives, old maps, Google Maps, the land itself, by-laws, lawn signs,murals, government forms, realtor fliers, and road signs.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, orsimply your life outside of your work?
The aforementioned Gabriel Gudding’s Rhode Island Notebook, C.D. Wright, Juliana Spahr’s Well Then There Now, Solmaz Sharif’s Look, Ari Banias’s A Symmetry, Layli Long Soldier’s “38,” Doug Williams’s Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg, Catherine Venable Moore’s introduction toMuriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead,Susan Howe, bpNichol’s The MartyrologyBook 5, Greg Curnoe’s Deeds/Abstracts,Emma Healey’s “N12”, and Zane Koss’s HarbourGrids.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Escape monolingualism.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what wouldit be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had younot been a writer?
My first thoughts were all writer-adjacent: journalist, podcaster,documentarian.
There was a time when I wanted to be a recording engineer. I findcutting audio meditative.
Increasingly, I’m fascinated by photography, but I don’t imaginethe career prospects are much better than poetry.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Probably some mix of the low barrier to entry, a preference towardworking alone, being content to sit in one place for long periods of time, andan inability to move on from the structure of school.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last greatfilm?
I loved Joyelle McSweeney’s DeathStyles. The music in her poems is blaring and raucous. And she went so farinto the underworld for this one, at once viscerally engaging with theunimaginable heartbreak of losing a newborn but also venturing off into all theother realms where poets dwell. It’s both mythic and materialist in the bestway.
As for movies, those seem to be the one art form that I haven’tfigured out how to fit into life as a parent without splitting a 2-hour filmacross four sittings. I have a Google spreadsheet of Movies to Watch, like a 2005 version of Letterboxd, which I havenot made much progress on lately. The odd time when my family goes away withoutme, I watch as many movies as I can to make up for it. Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up was a highlight of my lastbinge—a moving but unassuming look at how art comes from, and is also thwartedby, daily life. Some great weirdos in it, dysfunctional family, but gentle andnearly plotless like many of my favourites.
20 - What are you currently working on?
As I mentioned above, I’m working on a collectionof poems that seems to be focused on fatherhood. I have two young boys who(often delightfully) take up much of my time and energy, so like Hass says, Iam putting the problem into the poem, trying to engage with an experience thatis often either absent from literature or overly sentimentalized, to documentsome of the amazing thinking that children do.
