12 or 20 (second series) questions with Clare Goulet

Clare Goulet is aBritish-Québécoise hybrid raised in Nova Scotia. Essays, fiction, reviews, andpoems have been published in journals and books in Canada and abroad including TheFiddlehead, Grain, Room, Dalhousie Review, TAR,Collateral, and Listening to the Heartbeat of Being (MQUP). WithMark Dickinson, she co-edited the anthology Lyric Ecology (Cormorant) onthe work of Jan Zwicky; she's given papers for various scholarly associationson metaphor in science, polyphony, manuscript editing, machine-generated poems,and writing pedagogy. Graphis scripta / writing lichen (Gaspereau) wasreleased May 2024. She lives a few steps from woods and ocean at the edge ofHalifax, where she teaches and directs the Writing Centre at MSVU.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your mostrecent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Graphisscripta snuck up between an anthology ofessays on Jan Zwicky, far behind me, and a novel just ahead: between thoseslower, thicker books, this one deked through like a breakaway kid chasing thepuck for the slapshot & through sheer luck landing it. After decadescollecting lichen and slow walks, plus a daily whirl of work and parenting, thebook itself happened fast—had to—and was a sneaky joy to make.  I thought that would be the end, didn’trealize that a book can generate its own life once it’s out, and now it’s mechasing after it—readings inunexpected places, lichen walks, scientists getting in touch about poetry,connecting with ecopoets in other countries, new projects. New life.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fictionor non-fiction?

Oh I’ve written all three always – particularly essays aboutmetaphor and science and looking, and small fiction-poetry hybrids, and I canfeel fiction for better or worse tugging at some of these poems – the 2 boys ofHypogymnia (H in the Index of names,power-headed tube lichen) —they popped out of nowhere as main characters andtook over with plastic 80s tampon applicators flapping on their fingers.  And Acharius in his garden bent overspecimens, and the pre-war northern British street kids of hammered shieldlichen.  Fortunately the whole point ofthe Index was, in a way, to character-ize lichen, unpack the metaphoric names.  Way back when I was agonizing over genre asyou do in your 20s, Don McKay penciled a marginal quip: “Poetry has always hadthe hots for prose, and vice versa. As lovers they are much more interestingthan as categories.” It’s still pinned to my wall. The novel ahead, allegedlyfiction, has a prose-poem and non-fiction threads running alongside the story—soperhaps I’ve found the form for me at last!

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does yourwriting initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appearlooking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copiousnotes?

A quick idea—seeing it all in a flash —then slow and painful and dread and masses of overthinking—then(usually, though not with this book) forcing myself to the table, until therelief of revision. But this one was fun—an idea sketched in 2010 on the backof an envelope, then I raised a kid, then found the envelope in the pandemic andwent for it.

I was heartened by Joel Plaskett’s song-a-week project and built weekly deadlinesfor 26 pieces into its Canada Council Research & Creation grant, and made thegame-changing rule for myself that writing had to happen alongside the research, not after. To always be writing, to havethe thing always cooking on the front burner. Thank god for that and for Pavia caféin Herring Cove and its excellent window ledge for scribbling those firstdrafts.

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?

I write lots of one-offs in the moment, most in my drawer, beglad, but I love reading books with atiny focus—could be structural, thematic, conceptual—as they tend to take youeverywhere, and that’s what happened here. After a couple of early lichen poems and essays on metaphor, the idea of a science-art poetic field guidewith an Index of Names came at once, sketched, grounded in walks for localspecies, after years of silent looking.  Graphis scripta was always a book.

As for the poems themselves – most begin with looking and a phrase that arrivesunbidden —like a line of music—the notes and the vibe all there – and for me thework is to see if there’s more there, a whole song.  Often what comes first is an end that I then writetowards (chasing after the puck again). What to me are the four or five truestpoems in the book arrived entire like that, whole, one draft, it was liketaking dictation. Elf-ear, mushroom, the diva Cladonia, a couple others. Maybe some writers can access thatsphere often or easily or all the time. I’m not there yet!

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creativeprocess? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I’m more used to creating andhosting and organizing and applauding otherwriters at readings; I prefer to be offstage and tend to disappear if a camera’spulled out. But I know that public readings and hearing poems in the moment, together,  matters, and so far they’ve each been unexpectedlyfun, particularly with this book. I’m so passionate about lichen that itoverrides shyness, people ask hard, fantastic questions, and it’s the poems outthere, not me.  Maybe improper, but I discoveredthat readings (and Brian Bartlett says it’s ok!) are where you can keep revising your poems after publication or try outdifferent versions—I’ve rarely read a poem exactlyas published in the book.  Takingdifferent ones out for a spin, or in different combinations for differentvenues—mini-curating—is also fun and changes my own perception of what Ithought I knew.  

Readings underscore how place matters:  I’m half British, and some poems have turns ofphrase that worked fully only in Ireland and the UK, whereas other poems  couldn’t go over at all! (When writer ClarePollard was looking at a couple in revision, I had to explain a ‘cakewalk’—whichby the way sounds super-odd as a custom to non-initiates). Here in Halifaxlocal audiences know the landscape at Herring Cove so I can’t get away withbullshit. Last month, reading pieces on 1810 Irish botanist Ellen Hutchins inher landscape of West Cork, Ireland toher family descendants became suddenly high-stakes – I felt a responsibility ofcare that probably should always be there.

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?

John Berger famously switched from painting to writing to meet hisown particular 20th-century moment. Here in the 21st, atthis tipping point, I’m not sure that writing meets the current questions.   I do seem to trace over the same concerns;failure of language, failure to connect, seeing and mis-seeing things as theyare.   

In this case I wanted to reada field guide to lichen that explored the nature of metaphor and couldn’t findone, so I wrote one. At one stage it had a Preface for the concept, deletedlast minute: Metaphor and lichen each about two or more wholes sharing the samespace; lichen isn’t a plant, it’s a relationship,alliance of fungus and at least one photosynthetic partner (alga,cyanobacterium)—as well as other elements we’re only beginning to see.  A metaphor, too, associates one thing withanother: something is like but not the same as, not literally, something else,changing our minds in ways that we’re just beginning to understand. The mainmove is that in a metaphor, as in a lichen, each partner remains whole, yettheir conjunction creates something that wasn’t there before. I gave a talk in2006 on this and encountered the analogy twice since, Don McKay in an essay andBrenda Hillman in a recent interview (so hey it must be true!). We each sawdifferent points of congruity, took different paths to the same clearing.   

7 – What do you see the 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?

Oh god, I remember interviewing Karen Connelly back in the ’90s – she wasjust back to Canada from Greece and Thailand and  had an articulate impassioned despairing ranton the lack of role in the culture,here in Canada, compared to elsewhere, back in that golden era when somethinglike the state of writing seemed like a serious problem. 

I do think—for any art—stitching together disparate fragments intoa piece of wholecloth of some kind—integrating what appears separate, illuminatinga relationship of this to that, connecting—is of immense value ata time when other interests seek to break us apart and see us as pieces morethan wholes, for the purpose of control. I think this kind of art-making of whole paintings, poems, books, jokes,photographs, bread loaves etc is of value not only (or even primarily) for theculture but for the person doing it, the maker. Whole persons can make wholecultures that are resistant and resilient to forces of destruction and control.Putin and his Kremlin cohort know this: there’s a reason missiles are targetingtheatres, libraries, schools, galleries, and cafés where influential writers likeVictoria Amelina were known to congregate. Ukrainians know this and rescuedbooks when the Dnipro dam broke, drying  them page by page in the sun. The last thingMaksym Kryvtsov did the day before he waskilled defending Ukraine from invasion—expecting he might be killed—was towrite a poem in the company of his cat. You can read it here.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editordifficult or essential (or both)?

Essential and wildly enjoyable—puttinga book out means to me the poems have to aim to work for others, as ahospitable gesture, to point and look with someone at something, together.  But as a working parent-writer of a youngerchild For this book, it was impossible to access the standard Banff editorial programs that glimmered and beckoned; like manyparents, I couldn’t at the time turn the key and leave for a month, or stopworking. Thankfully Andrew Steeves at Gaspereau gave a lucid sensitive read, plustime, and I invented an editorial development project with a UK writer for ahalf-dozen poems over Zoom, with the Canada Council’s professional developmentgrant and the brilliant Clare Pollard.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarilygiven to you directly)?

Margaret Laurence, in an interview with her I found when I was 16:“You’d be a fool to be an optimist in this world. But you gotta have hope.”

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetryto critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?

Over a life I’m noticing the reverse direction—critical prose topoetry—though I still flip back and forth. I used to love the flip and how each fed the other, but now, moving into  complex stories I can feel myself wanting to leaveanalysis behind—having a bit of a break-up with it. It hogged the mic for waytoo long.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do youeven have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

The day begins with the dog needing something, continues with thedog and amazing child needing something, then my wonderful students, returns tothe dog and family, and in between I write. For anything complex, I use longstretches pre-dawn before the dog or the world is awake.  (The doghas a great routine though; too bad hedoesn’t write.) 

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or returnfor (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I take the problem into the woods and walk a circular trail andlet my brain solve it sideways, without trying to. Or just embrace the stall andsit in granite cliffs by the Atlantic, big ocean, and aim to be empty of words—tolet language, to quote Don, “fray back into air” and just breathe.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Coal.  It conjures 1970sStaffordshire where I lived with my grandmother and went to school briefly as achild – coal in the grate to heat the tiny house, coaldust in the bricks, inthe air, in your mouth. Here in Nova Scotia it’s the stink of seaweed at lowtide: it fills you.

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?

Yeah this book feels built fromand for a lifetime of books, in a way. Other art forms? Music!  Virginia Woolf once said she always conceivedof her books as music before she wrote them. I think certain pieces of musiccan respond to and also shape the rhythms of what you write, or offer complexpolyphonic structures that help you build other complex structures. The novelto come has one thread that’s entirely music, a score composed for and builtinto the story. Without music how can you articulate loss?

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work,or simply your life outside of your work?

Fairy tales and Atwood’s Cat’sEye and the 1986 reprint of Eli Mandel’s Poets of Contemporary Canada 1960-1970—one of those 5-dollarMcClelland & Stewart NCL paperbacks. In college Jan Zwicky’s Lyric Philosophy changed my life in thefull Rilkean sense. Don McKay’s “Baler Twine,” ditto, and not only his essaysand poems (Birding, Or Desire and Apparatus and Vis à Vis and Paradoxides) but the marginalia, jazz collection,postcards, quips and asides, with Don it’s all gold and of a piece. Sue Sinclair, Elizabeth Hay, Anne Simpson, Helen Humphreys. Ilya Kaminsky. In theUK Carol Ann Duffy and Simon Armitage speak to my north-midland English soul,as does Kate Atkinson, whose stories somehow permit serious fun.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Write a mystery. It’s inescapable, like cultural genetic code.See: Atkinson, above.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what wouldit be?

It was hands down a cello-playing marine biologist for saltwaterplants until I realized there was such a thing as a lichenologist.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

Probably lack of ability to do something else. I read and wrote freakishlyearly so I have no memory of learning to do them, or of not doing them; it’s a hard question to answer as there was never inmemory a ‘before’ books time.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the lastgreat film?

Film: the slow intense Banel & Adamaby Ramata-Toulaye Sy, with my daughter over the summer, and watching her watchit.  Great pleasure books are always for mygreatly pleasurable book-club, currently Emily Wilson’s Iliad and Speedboat, a wild1976 novel by Renata Adler, and I’m behind on both. For poems a recent slip ofa thing that lingered is Slant Lightby Sarah Westcott.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Fiction and poetry at the same time, god help me! Small steps intoa new thing, Loan Words, morelanguage stuff, and a long poem/recording, Subliminal,using 1810 letters of an Irish botanist from the other side of the Atlantic, which forever pulls. Basically whateverI can make at dawn before the rest of the house wakes up.

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