12 or 20 (second series) questions with David Kloepfer

David Kloepfer lives in Burnaby, B.C. His first novel Cheap Thrills (Vancouver: Now or Never Publishing, 2019) was released on October 15th. He is at work on a second, third, and fourth novel.

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

I’d say the only thing it really changed is deepening my appreciation for my friends and family, who have been tremendously supportive and excited for me. My most recent work, being what I’m working on now, not Cheap Thrills, I think is quite different. I think it’s more spare and I’m using humour a little less.

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

I don’t know. I tried my hand at poetry a few times when I was younger, but fiction and novels have always been what I wanted to do. I wrote most of a novel in high school. Thankfully, it and the poetry died with some hard drive or other many years ago. What I was reading was novels, so that’s what I wanted to write.

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 first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

To start doesn’t take very long. On the plane to and from Europe recently, and in a few evenings on my vacation there, I wrote the germ and first few chapters of another book. Now, there’s two other novels I have to finish writing before getting to that one, so starting obviously starting isn’t the problem.

The process is slow for me. The first draft is really uneven. Some chapters will be nearly wholly formed, while others aren’t much more than word salad that I’m lucky to save a sentence or two from. I look at the final product as whittling down mounds and mounds of raw material.

4 - Where does a work of fiction 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?

I’m working on a book from the very beginning. Cheap Thrills started with a character, another book I’m working on started with a setting, yet another I’m working on again started with a character, and the one I germinated the seed of on that plane ride started with a setting and concept. So I guess there’s no one way to start.

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

Well I’ve yet to do one so I can’t really say. I can’t see myself enjoying it. I don’t want to hear myself read. Poetry readings make sense to me, fiction readings do not. I zoned out at the handful of prose readings I’ve attended. I’d rather just read the thing.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

I’m not smart enough to answer many questions. I look at my writing as a way of asking them, or perhaps expanding on questions that already exist. The current questions are probably the same as they’ve ever been: the big why, the big how. I certainly can’t answer those.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

Thankfully a little bit of good journalism still exists, and those are the answer-finders, and thank you to them. I’m not that, but that is certainly a role, and an important one. As above, I try to think of myself as a question asker. Primarily, though, I think my role as a fiction writer is to entertain.

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

This novel, Cheap Thrills, did not receive substantive editing from the publisher. They are a very small publisher. They essentially copy edited my book and went with what I had. The novel had earlier editorial feedback, as a draft was done when I was enrolled at Humber. That was challenging, and rewarding. I think such editing is probably essential. There was something liberating (and terrifying) about going to print with a book that was essentially entirely mine (it’s a substantially different book than it wasat Humber).

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

Just puke garbage on the page and form into something useful later. I still have to force myself to do that when I don’t feel like I have anything to say or am stuck in a draft.

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

On working days, I’ll get in an hour of writing after dinner as often as possible. On my days off, I get up, walk the dog, then sit down for lunch. Often I’ll get some exercise or do chores, then get back at it for a few hours.

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

Other books. Reading seems to get the motor going, pretty much immediately sometimes. If I’m not quite settled enough to write, I’ll read for a half an hour, and the flow of the words and sentences will act as a catalyst, hopefully.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Tomato sauce cooking on the stove.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Movies, perhaps too much. Video games now also. Nature certainly, living in B.C. But that books come from books is entirely correct, at least if they’re any good.

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

Well, there’s an endless list, but for Cheap Thrills in particular it was Donald Westlake, Charles Willeford, and Paul Quarrington. The first two made me want to write a crime novel, the second two made me want it to be funny.

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

Write more.

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

Well I pay my bills working in a library, which is good work. If it hadn’t been for that I’d probably be working in a factory. I think I’d like to be a very good cook, but working in a kitchen sounds harder than I’m willing to put up with.

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

Compulsion, which I hear commonly. But I think I decided to be compelled to do it. I mean, who’s making me, really?

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun was the last piece of fiction I’ve been totally engrossed by, and that was earlier this year. I’m watching less and less film the older I get. I think Lost City of Z was the last movie I saw that’s really stuck with me.

19 - What are you currently working on?

Three different novels! If I get stuck on one, I move on to one of the others for a while, generally, but now I’m at the point where I need to plough through to the end of the one I’m currently working on so I can get it ready for the submission process.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

rob reads soon in Vancouver (w Christine McNair) + in Ottawa; and a new chapbook!

rob has a new chapbook with Anstruther Press!

Anstruther, a history

you can easily order a copy from the press, or send me $10 (plus $2 for Canadian shipping, or $3 for US shipping) and I will totally send you a signed (if you wish) copy, (e-transfer or PayPal via rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com; email if you require/wish alternate options)

here are some readings I am doing soon, also

rob mclennan and Christine McNair in Vancouver, at Lunch Poems at SFU
Wednesday, February 19, 2020, 12–1 p.m.
Teck Gallery (main floor) at SFU’s Harbour Centre Campus, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver
Admission: Free

rob mclennan + Ellen Chang-Richardson launch their Anstruther Press chapbooks in Ottawa
with guest readers Claire Farley + Ian Martin
Thursday, March 19, 2020, 7pm
Arlington Five, 5 Arlington Ave., Ottawa ON
Admission: Free

Venue is dry with mocktails + coffees + bites. Casual drinks to follow at Flora Hall Brewing. Unfortunately not wheelchair friendly.

Might I see you at either of these? Might I see you at both?

 

Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman, edited by Neeli Cherkovski, Raymond Foye, Tate Swindell

Bob Kaufman is a poet; Bob Kaufman is a man steeped in a mythology sprinkled with a few facts. For many he exists as the man who wrote poems on newspaper margins, the man flowing with plied, jazz-infused visions as wife or friend transcribed his surrealistic rants, the man yelling poems at strangers parking their cars on North Beach street corners, the man repeatedly and repeatedly arrested on San Francisco streets, at times after being harshly beaten by the arresting officers, the man who took a vow of silence unbroken for eleven years. For me he began as the father of a long-forgotten toddle playmate. He was my parents’ friend who came to house parties and wreaked havoc. He was the author of a yellow-covered little book of poetry that held my father’s favorite poem, which he often quoted:

The first man was an idealist, but he died,

he couldn’t survive the first truth,

discovering that the whole

world, all of it, was all his …

(“Suicide”) (“Foreword: ETERNAM POET,” devorah major)

I was intrigued to see a copy of the new Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman, edited by Neeli Cherkovski, Raymond Foye, Tate Swindell, with a Foreword by devorah major (San Francisco CA: City Lights Books, 2019). I’d not actually encountered Kaufman’s work prior to this, but for a poem composed in tribute to the late poet (1925-1986) by Ottawa poet Michael Dennis, included in his classic poems for jessica-flynn (1986). My knowledge of Kaufman is scant: aware of his peripheral associations with and around the Beat poets, and little more. As the back cover to this new volume attests, Kaufman “was one of the most important—and most original—poets of the twentieth century. He is among the inaugurators of what today is characterized as the Afro-Surreal, uniting the surrealist practice of automatic writing with the jazz concept of spontaneous composition.” Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman, then, is a hefty volume of his work, from the three books published during his lifetime—Solitudes Crowed with Loneliness (New Directions, 1965), Golden Sardine (City Lights, 1967) and The Ancient Rain: Poems 1956-1978 (New Directions, 1981)—as well as a healthy selection of uncollected pieces, as the opening “Editorial Note” offers, “from small magazines and public or private collections, diligently unearthed by Tate Swindell, who also compiled the valuable biographical chronology containing much new information.”

NO  MORE JAZZ AT ALCATRAZ

No more Jazz

At Alcatraz

No trombone for

Al Capone

No piano for

Lucky Luciano

No more cello for

Frank Costello

No more Jazz

At Alcatraz

The work included here shows Kaufman as a restless writer, one who moved through Beat associations and jazz through to Buddhist teachings, of play and critique and observations on culture, street life, race and simply where his curious attentions would take him, from lyric poems to chants to rants to memoirs composed in prose. Listen to the poem “NO MORE JAZZ AT ALCATRAZ,” a poem from the hefty section of “Uncollected Works,” includes the footnote “Spoken by Bob Kaufman at Specs’ Bar in San Francisco, February 19, 1980; transcribed by Jack Micheline.” This is a short, quirky poem clearly composed for the sake of performance; is quick and playful with rhyme, but one that can’t exist without a far darkner underpinning, one that speaks to violence and race. Kaufman is easily one of those poets of the 20^th century known of far more than read, and read more than understood, something this new volume works very much to correct, with a volume that also features devorah major’s worthy Foreword with accompanying archival photographs, and essays on Kaufman and his work by Neeli Cherkovski and Raymond Foye. The two hundred pages-plus of this new Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman has obviously been compiled with an enormous amount of care and attention, clearly as homage for a man as difficult as he was beloved, and as brilliant as he was evasive. As Cherkovski writes in “REMEMBERING BOB,” an excerpt from Whitman’s Wild Children (1988):

            Bob Kaufman strived toward an understanding of the universality necessary for great poetry. He felt that narrow ideological concerns could shut down the “fountain,” as he described it to me. He once told me, “I’m black, Jewish, white, green, and yellow with a blue man inside me struggling to come out.” Often, he begins a poem with his eyes or his head or some other part of his anatomy, and moves outward into the world. He is not visceral but gracefully attuned to his body as a key to opening “the mysteries” he refers to in his poetry. In “Blues for Hal Waters,” he refers to his head as “my secret cranial guitar”; another poem asks, “would you wear my eyes?” Even in the saddest poems he emerges joyous out of ecstatic love for language and its possibilities, reaching out to others:

            My body once covered with beauty

            Is now a museum of betrayal.

            This part remembered because of that one’s touch

            This part remembered for that one’s kiss—

            Today I bring it back

            And let it live forever.

Queen Mob's Teahouse : Jamie Townsend interviews Lindsey Boldt

As my tenure as interviews editor at Queen Mob's Teahouse continues, the latest interview is now online, as Jamie Townsend interviews Olympia, Washington poet Lindsey Boldt. Other interviews from my tenure include: an interview with poet, curator and art critic Gil McElroy, conducted by Ottawa poet Roland Prevost, an interview with Toronto poet Jacqueline Valencia, conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham, an interview with Drew Shannon and Nathan Page, also conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham, an interview with Ann Tweedy conducted by Mary Kasimor, an interview with Katherine Osborne, conducted by Niina Pollari, an interview with Catch Business, conducted by Jon-Michael Frank, a conversation between Vanesa Pacheco and T.A. Noonan, "On Translation and Erasure," existing as an extension of Jessica Smith's The Women in Visual Poetry: The Bechdel Test, produced via Essay Press, Five questions for Sara Uribe and John Pluecker about Antígona González by David Buuck (translated by John Pluecker),"overflow: poetry, performance, technology, ancestry": kaie kellough in correspondence with Eric Schmaltz, Mary Kasimor's interview with George Farrah, Brad Casey interviewed byEmilie Lafleur, David Buuck interviews John Chávez about Angels of the Americlypse: An Anthology of New Latin@ Writing, Ben Fama interviews Abraham Adams, Tender and Tough: Letters as Questions as Letters: Cheena Marie Lo, Tessa Micaela and Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Kristjana Gunnars’ interview with Thistledown Press author Anne Campbell, Timothy Dyke’s interview with Hawai’i poet Jaimie Gusman, Hailey Higdon's interview with Joanne Kyger, Stephanie Kaylor's interview with Kenyatta JP Garcia, Jaimie Gusman’s interview with Timothy Dyke,Sarah Rockx interviews Gary Barwin, Megan Arden Gallant's interview with Diane Schoemperlen, Andrew Power interviews Lauren B. Davis, Chris Lawrence interviews Jonathan Ball, Adam Novak interviews Tom Stern, Eli Willms interviews Gregory Betts and Jeremy Luke Hill interviews Kasia Jaronczyk, Karen Smythe and Greg Rhyno, Chris Muravez interviews Ithica, NY poet Marty Cain, Róise Nic an Bheath interviews Kathryn MacLeod, Heather Sweeney interviews J'Lyn Chapman, Lisa Birman interviews Portland, Oregon poet Claudia F. Savage, Justin Eells interviews Eric Blix, Luke Hill interviews Claire Tacon, Jeremy Luke Hill interviews Adam Lindsay Honsinger, Jeremy Luke Hill interviews Marianne Micros, Jennifer Zhou interviews emerging poet Kristin Chang, Ruby Nangia interviews Medha Singh, Vannessa Barnier interviews short story author Zalika Reid-Benta, Melissa Eleftherion interviews Mariel Fechik, Michelle D'costa interviews Mehdi Kashani and Sivakami Velliangiri, Jeremy Stewart interviews Calgary poet Nikki Reimer, Medha Singh interviews Arun Sagar, Jeremy Luke Hill interviews Governor General's Award-nominated poet Karen Houle, and Alexander Dickow interviews Toby Altman.

Further interviews I've conducted myself over at Queen Mob's Teahouse include: City of Ottawa Poet Laureate JustJamaal The Poet, Geoffrey Young, Claire Freeman-Fawcett on Spread Letter, Stephanie Bolster on Three Bloody Words, Claire Farley on Canthius, Dale Smith on Slow Poetry in America, Allison Green, Meredith Quartermain, Andy Weaver, N.W Lea and Rachel Loden.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Carolyn Bennett

Writer and comedian Carolyn Bennett cut her teeth performing at Yuk Yuks and hasn't stopped bleeding since. Selected TV credits include This Hour Has 22 Minutes, CBC COMICS and Chilly Beach. Produced plays include Mixed Media (CBC Radio) Pure Convenience (CBC Radio), Runtkiller, The Short List, Hitler's Ass, Canis Familiaris, Sick Kids Wanna Talk To You and Double Down Helix. She won a TIFF Studio Screenwriting Intensive Jury Prize for her feature comedy The Mac and Watson Springtime Reeferendum Show.

Bennett has worked as a senior writer for government and enjoys the perks of sharing the same name as a federal politician. Please Stand By is her first novel.

1 Q: How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

A:  My first book is my only book so far. Please Stand By was released in October by Now or Never Publishing. It has changed me in that I didn't know it was possible to make less money than I do in stand-up comedy. It has changed my life in that I don't hesitate to load my Presto Card (Toronto Transit fare card) $20 at a time. No more $10 these days.

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

A: When I was younger I attempted poetry. Poetry is the calculus of literature. It's convergence, a pining down of infinitesimals. I soon realized I'm more of a geometry type; I like studying the shape of things. That's prose for me -- matter and context.

3 Q: How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

A: It all depends if deadlines are involved. I love deadlines. When I worked in television, we had to stick to a schedule. I like answering to people. When I'm writing of my own volition to express what burbles beneath the surface of my daily life, then I slow down. It's like stew. Where's the tenderness, the savour, in a rushed stew? I like stew, by the way. Any kind. Vegetarian, meat, what have you.

4 Q - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

A: Oddly enough, I don't enjoy doing readings as much as I thought I would. I've been doing stand-up for a long time, so you'd think I'd be keen. My writing and my speaking ability are two different things. I write prose so I don't have to speak. I articulate on the page what I don't feel comfortable saying. I had a speech impediment as a kid, so maybe that has something to do with it. People expect me to be funny all the time too. That's why I write -- so I don't have to be funny all the time. But I usually end up being funny anyway. It's like an involuntary reflex, the reflex that got me kicked out of high school on a few occasions. Wait -- I think that's called being a smart-ass.

Q. 5 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

A:  How are we evolving as human beings? That's a place to start. I suppose I strive to define, however elusive that goal may be.

Q. 6 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

A: I'm old fashioned in that my favourite writing has to reveal truth. Truth with a capital T.  However, there are many permutations of truth. But I knows it whens I sees it.  

Q. 7 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

A: It is essential. Aren't all editors outside now? How many editors are on staff at publishers these days?  A good editor will want what's best for your work. A great editor will want what's best for your work, and tell you when you're being an asshole.

Q. 8 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

A: Lately? White space on a page. Lots of it. Most people can't focus on too much text.  Sad, but true.

Q. 9 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to playwriting to comedy)? What do you see as the appeal?

A:  It's easy for me, but it's not so easy for people who think of me only as a stand-up comic. I guess I'll encounter that when I apply for a Canada Council grant for the first time. I like to write plays to put words in other people's mouths, to let other people inhabit characters and situations. There are some tremendously talented actors out there. I get thrilled when I witness great performances. Any kind of great performance-- acting, dance, sports. Fiction for me is problem-solving and definitions and geometry. What do these shapes mean?

Q. 10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

A:  If I am working on a project, four hours a day and/or 600 words the aim. I have spent many years as a Senior Writer for government. Those are the lost years. Financially sweet, but lost as far doing any of my own writing.

Q. 11 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

A: Labatt 50 and Vicks Vapour Rub. Hops and menthol.

Q. 12 What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

A: Write a second novel. Make a feature film. Write another play. Narrow down this list and do one of them.

Thank you rob!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;