12 or 20 (second series) questions with Victoria Chang

Victoria Chang's third book of poems, The Boss, was published by McSweeney's in July 2013.  Her other books are Salvinia Molesta and Circle.  Her poems have been published in American Poetry Review, POETRY, Virginia Quarterly Review, New Republic, The Nation, The Believer, Agni, Kenyon Review, and Best American Poetry.  She lives in Southern California and works in business.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
It did change my life in so many ways in that I had a real book out in the world and that was really neat.  It was a big hurdle and still is a big hurdle for a lot of poets.  At the core, it didn't change who I was.  I think I thought it was going to change my life, but it didn't. 

My new book, The Boss, published by McSweeney's is really different from my previous work, but I think it is still me.  I wrote it in 2 months sitting in front of a tree while waiting for our older daughter to finish a language class every Saturday for a series of Saturdays.  I wrote quickly and furiously on long lines with no punctuation, allowing word play to propel the poems forward to mimic the loss of control I was feeling in my life--bad boss, father had a stroke, little kids everywhere.  So my process was different and the outcome, the work, feels very different to me.  It's my voice in its entirety. 

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I was one of those poets who always wrote poetry.  It was introduced to me in grade school and I never left it or it never left me.  I've tried fiction and non-fiction but have never been drawn to it.  Poetry is who I am for better or worse.  It's very much a part of my identity and I don't like the poetry community that much but I still love poetry.

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?
This last manuscript, as I said, was written quickly and that's how I like it now that I've tasted it!  I now want to write from that kind of inspiration instead of toiling and toiling over poems.  I think sometimes in the past, I have toiled over poems because I was searching for something to say.

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?
If I knew where poems begin, I would be a much better writer!  I try not to be so controlling and try to be more intuitive so allow the poems to tell me how to form the greater work.  I would never sit down to write a theme-oriented book.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Counter for sure.  Ask anyone who knows me well that I despise readings.  It's an awful process.  I like to write poetry.  That's it.  I like to read poetry.  That's it.  I don't enjoy anything else about it, including the poetry world and the politics and all the climbing and angling, not my 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 have no idea how to answer that.  I imagine people would say that my work tries to transcend the personal to the political?  I don't know.  I don't like to think so consciously about my poetry.  I just want to feel it and let it be how it wants to be.  Just like my children--they are who they are and I love them for what and who they are.  I don't question who they are.  They just are. 

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?
I think the role of the writer should be to get people to think about something deeper, more philosophical.  I think the role of a writer should be to surprise people and to make them see things in different ways.  I think the role of the writer in American culture is to counter all the trash on television!

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I am very flexible and open--have always thirsted for feedback with very few people willing or able to give it.  My editors at McSweeney's were amazing!  We worked and toiled over the manuscript word for word and made it better.  I don't think a lot of editors would do that mostly because poets are so full of themselves and their work that we think it's pristine, untouchable.  I don't think that at all.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
The advice I give myself every day is to be authentic and don't give a crap what other people think of you.  If you spend your energy trying to control how you are perceived, you are not real.  I like real people.  I don't care if you are a climber or a jerk, just call yourself out.  That doesn't mean you have to be a jerk all the time.  I love professional people--people who know how to behave. 

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
It's nice to be able to think about other people's work in an intelligent and critical way.  I think many of us are smart enough to do it, but some of us don't like to do it as much.  I have so little time between a job in business, kids, ailing parents, etc., that I am lucky if I get to read anything.  I don't write poetry now for years at a time and that's okay with me.  I hear Louise Gluck is the same way (not to compare myself to Louise Gluck), but I can identify with that.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
None.  I don't write really.  Haven't in a year+ or more.  My typical day is getting kids ready for school, driving them to school, working at my job, picking the kids up from school, cleaning the house, doing homework with them, driving them to swimming or art or something else, preparing meals, showers, more cleaning, book reading to them, yelling at them to go to bed, emails for me at night, then repeat.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I don't get so worried about my writing getting stalled.  It's always "stalled".  I just like to read anything and everything poetry or not poetry-related.  I'm an avid reader and interested in everything.  Frankly, as I told my editor at McSweeney's, I don't care if I never write another poem.  I mean it.  I don't care if I never publish another book.  Really.  I'm at that place in my life where I don't care.  To be totally honest, I get a little sick of the poetry community and all the politics that it wouldn't bother me to never be a part of it again.  I sound like a bitter old lady!  I don't mean to sound like a bitter old lady, but that's just how I feel.  That's the truth. 

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Dog.

14 - 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?
All of the above.  I used to be more influenced by good books of poetry, but truthfully, I look within more than without now.  My life influences my work too.  I just live it and see where it takes me.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Business books, fiction books, news, everything.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Get a good night's rest.  An honest one.  After having kids, I never really get an honest good night's rest.  I'm always worried about something even if I don't think I am.  It's frightening being a parent.

17 - 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?
My occupation isn't writing.  It's my "hobby", which I always get scolded about to call an "avocation" or whatever.  I make my living and always have in business.  And I like business very much.  I like thinking about business and companies and strategies, etc.  I like writing about business.  Poetry and many other things are just my interests.  I don't mean to demean other people who do it for a living, but I just couldn't do that.  I'm too interested in too many other things.  And I like to have money to feed myself and family and to have a house, to remodel a house, to save for retirement, this is all fun for me.

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

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
A Hologram for the King, by Dave Eggers, just finished it this weekend.   I don't watch great films, I just watch silly animated movies with my kids now.  Not a single one is memorable. 

20 - What are you currently working on?
Nothing writing-related.  I'm on a book tour for my new book, The Boss.  Lots of work doing readings and traveling to places and trying to convince people to spend money to buy a poetry book.  It's not remotely pleasurable.  People aren't dishing out cash these days and if they are, it's not for poetry.  But I still go out there anyway in the hopes to find one reader!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Deborah Meadows, Translation – the bass accompaniment: Selected Poems

Of disagreements on the history and function of the apostrophe, some sources say it’s used for missing letters or had a start as a printer’s mark to indicate omission, but more interesting is the claim that the “cumbersome name for an awkward mark” is rooted in the Green phrase to “turn away” from the audience when addressing another person. (“Apotropaic Shuffle”)

The postman recently delivered a hefty work by American poet Deborah Meadows—her Translation – the bass accompaniment:Selected Poems (Bristol UK: Shearsman Books, 2013). I have to admit, I’ve long been a fan of selected poems, and revel in the possibility of getting at least some kind of overview (one version of such, certainly) across an author’s work so far, especially an author that I wasn’t previously familiar with. Vancouver poet George Bowering has had about half a dozen so far, each one with an entirely different flavor, and each edited and compiled by a different editor, none of which were the author himself. Meadows, on the other hand, gives the impression in her “Prefatory Note” that the selections were hers, which I understand entirely, but am not sure I actually agree with. Shouldn’t some kind of editorial distance exist? And why isn’t there an introduction of any sort? Selecteds, in my opinion (as anyone who follows my reviews already knows), should have an introduction. While I understand the argument that the work should stand on its own, I enjoy seeing at least some kind of context presented for the work, the selection and the overview (an oversight in previous selecteds by such as Dennis Cooley, Lynn Crosbie and Monty Reid, as well). Why has this particular selection been made, and why are we paying attention to it? The author, at least, does provide a bit of insight in her opening note:

The bass guitar creates patterns that make music into a visceral experience—they are what infect the body. The poems in Translation, the bass accompaniment: Selected Poems are in dialog with other authors, and here, experimental poetry engages logician Quine, encyclopedic novelist Melville, philosophers Irigaray and Deleuze, theologian and synthetic philosopher Aquinas, poets Dragomoshchenko, Heijinian, Raworth, Baudelaire, and Celan, Soviet cinematographer Vertov, video artist Bill Viola, and others.

Already, that’s quite a heady and intimidating list, and the poems within the collection select from nearly a dozen works produced over the past decade by presses such as Green Integer Press, Tinfish Press, Krupskaya Press, Shearsman, Factory School, Mindmade Books and BlazeVOX [books]. Just who is this Deborah Meadows? There is quite an acoustic gymnastic in Meadows’ work, with leaps and bounds, as in her multiple-book sequence, “The Theory of Subjectivity in Moby-Dick.” Her essay-poems are deep and playful explorations of logic and discourse, engaged with opening up a series of questions through the text. The range of her poetic constructions in such a relatively short time are remarkable, and remarkably broad and precise, willing to move into another territory once a particular project is complete. The lengthy sequence “The Theory of Subjectivity in Moby-Dick,” for example, reads as an ongoing study of the novel, chapter by chapter, as complete as had she sketched out her theory in prose;

Chapter 68

Skin remains a question:

“what and where is the skin of the whale?”

What and where is the mind?

            Inscribed upon, see through

            a brittle clarity, read through spectacles

that make a skin

over skin.

Upon the printed page or

            written into flesh as

warm-blooded as ‘we”

yet indecipherable.

Quarters for a child

            assuming one more tender

            than skin—

bulk mysterious, yet

            phenomena present how

            rocks connect

            to pyramids, as made things.

Borneo

man of nature, specimen body

with skin parsed for warmth.

Specimen-skin made, marked, for sale.

Comfortable with risk, copied

            to dominant collection of twoness

dispersed by instruments

            identical

to how small easy pieces

can be rendered

and teach these fine creatures how.

There are trace echoes here that connect to entire traditions of British and North American avant-garde writing, managing to blend the two strands together; through her particular blend of lyric, the sentence and theory, I can hear resonances of Karen Mac Cormack, Norma Cole and Tom Raworth, for example. It makes me wonder just how I have managed to have not heard of her or her work, prior to this.

Of self-emptying systems: nihilism. How can “yes” displace “no”? Sunyata replete.

But a substitution theory: the word for the thing, the thing for the other thing, has a “universal” appeal. It’s money. And little in the way of theorizing can interrupt its commerce, its erotic appeal. This rainy heartbreak, that dime-store by the ear of the mob, face out loud. Keep ocarina far from selvage: blew, then method and mathematical certainty. Haul and scrape good Word for importation to godhead, poached and re-set, spring mechanisms and all. Executed by market track, human capital, finance group, our prize, seminar on human entourage if you have the software, foundlings’ Houdini, erased land, term professor, robot message. Hard to see the go-between we are. (“Procuratio”)

12 or 20 questions: a (small) overview,

For those who haven't been keeping track, I've been running the "12 or 20 questions" series since September 2007, when I originally entered Edmonton for my tenure as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta. Often posting two or three interviews a day, I posted nearly two hundred interviews over the following nine months, focusing on Alberta and Ottawa writers of poetry, fiction and non-fiction (the interviews have since expanded to include comic book writers) while also including an array of writers from across Canada and around the world. Since that original series, I've posted hundreds more interviews in a second series of appended questions, and even a third, when I started the series of interviews with small publishers. I suspect the number leans very close to a thousand interviews over the past six years.

The idea was a variant on the meme, and was originally based upon a series American poet Kate Greenstreet was conducting with poets on their first books. I know some haven't been terribly interested in answering questions that aren't completely tied to their individual works, but I've been fascinated to see the variation between so many authors answering similar questions, from those who give lengthy answers to the incredibly pithy, to those who answer only a selection of the questions, to the rare one or two who have re-ordered, or even re-written the questions. Some of the pieces have been quite revelatory, and others provide rare insight into works that haven't yet received nearly the attention they should.

Over the years, some of the writers interviewed include George Bowering, John Lavery, Sandra Ridley, Myrna Kostash, Thomas Wharton, George Stanley, Sharon Thesen, Suzanne Buffam, Daphne Marlatt, Vincent Lam, Robert Pinsky, Rae Armantrout, Carrie Olivia Adams and Tim Lilburn. A more recent sampling of interviewed authors include Juliet Patterson, Lola Lemire Tostevin, Andre Alexis, Sadiqa de Meijer, Stacy Szymaszek, Christine McNair, Mark Tardi, Mathias Svalina, D.J. Dolack, Molly Gaudy, Robert Swereda, Kate Cayley, Steven Artelle, Sara Peters, Elisabeth de Mariaffi, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Howard Chaykin and Missy Marston.

The small press questions have been far less, but have been able to include dozens of interviews with publishers large and small worldwide, including Odourless Press, dancing girl press, The Post-Apollo Press, AngelHousePress, Apt. 9 Press, No Press, New Star Books, Guernica Editions, The Capilano Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Brick Books, Lipstick Press, Rubicon Press, The Porcupine's Quill, Apogee Press, Greenboathouse Press, Reality Street Editions and Horse Less Press.

The numbers of interviewed are, quite literally, into the hundreds, and I've heard since that a number of interviews are taught in various universities across North America. Some have even had hits numbering into the thousands. Who knew? I've been fascinated by the process, from interviewing larger names to being able to prod rare interviews with writers either emerging or set deep into the margins. The range here is quite stunning, even if I do say so myself.

Links to each series, listing hundreds of authors and presses in reverse order of posting, is below:

12 or 20 questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (small press) questions;

Ken Belford, Internodes

Give the word, and disperse early

and displace often. Let gaps fly

open. Let the ambiguous in and

begin with a little old-time melodic

contour, the outcome of movement,

the on-the-job practice of working

out the variations and intervals

of admission. Let in the elements

of incidental intension. As far as

the transparent, bald-faced texts

that fan out into the obvious, release

early, and release often. Let go,

and get rid of the entangled fabric

of arcane meaning, and breathe,

and be something more than

the immediate, repetitious sample.

It’s good to see Prince George, British Columbia poet Ken Belford’s new collection, Internodes (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2013), shaped to conform to the poems he writes, as opposed to the standard poetry-book size of just about every other book out there, shifting from the more standard six by nine inches to five by eight inches. Belford’s poems have long been part of an ongoing, larger work, composing short, predominantly untitled single-stanza poems that accumulate to book-length and even larger structures, linking back to decompositions (Talonbooks, 2010) to Ecologue (Harbour, 2005) to much of his previous work. “I lived a branchy past of sprigs and / sprouts and internodes and twigs, / but didn’t occupy the land. In cahoots / with roots, I made a living in the bush.” he writes, and Belford’s ongoing poetry (or even, ongoing poem) is one that works to connect to all other things, articulating his connection to the world through a deeply considered eco-poetic. How does eco-poetry connect to pastoral? Belford composes a poetry that is part of the world, as opposed to the pastoral, which is more-often seen as separate, somehow, from the author and the writing. There is something worth comparing here to the works of American poet Fanny Howe for their interconnectivities, as well for the fact that neither poet have been self-conscious enough about any over-arcing project to name such a thing (and, perhaps, neither of them ever should). As he includes in his bio note at the end of the collection:

“The conventional standards of narrative and lyric poetry give me nothing. The intention of the sequences I write is to assemble words that can be messaged to the habituated souls of the city from the land-aware that live outside city limits.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jessica Kluthe

Jessica Kluthe’s first book, Rosina, The Midwife was released in March, and since then has been on the Edmonton Journal’s list of best sellers for eight weeks. Two chapters of Rosina were recognized before publication: in 2012, her story “Scattered” won Other Voices’ creative nonfiction contest, and in 2011, her story “Traces” was nominated by the Writers’ Guild of Alberta for the James H. Gray award for nonfiction. Her work has also appeared in journals and magazines such as The Malahat Review, Other Voices, and Little Fiction. After earning a Master of Fine Arts degree in Writing from the University of Victoria, Jessica moved back to Edmonton to teach writing full-time at MacEwan University in the Bachelor of Communications Studies program. Jessica believes in promoting literature in Canada; she reviews for Canadian Review of Materials and has recently created a promotion project called Snap Scene to feature images from Canadian books. Jessica lives in a character house in the Highlands with her partner Reid and her cat Finnegan. She has just finished writing a children’s book and is at work on a YA novel. www.jessicakluthe.com

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

Writing Rosina, The Midwife taught me a lot. For instance, I discovered, through the researching process, that those stories placed outside of traditional records, and those stories that often go unrecorded, are just as important, and just as full, as those more traditional narratives (for instance, traditional stories of migration). I knew this at a gut-level before I started writing, but this process provided proof for me. For me, Rosina’s story demanded recording and I think it’s important to uncover and bring to the fore those stories that we see somewhere in our periphery.

Rosina, The Midwife has changed my life in some really direct ways as well: I think publishing has afforded me relevant and meaningful employment in teaching writing (something I had always wanted to do). Rosina, The Midwife has helped me join a community of writers, and encouraged me to keep writing…

Rosina is my first book-length work; I was preoccupied by the boundary zone between fact and fiction and by the intersections between memory and imagination. This is something I’ve explored in my short creative non-fiction and fiction as well. Having the length of a book to really inhabit that boundary zone gave me the space to explore these ideas. With Rosina, I allowed myself to write in the voice that was most comfortable (something I’d struggled with in shorter work), and that’s because, while resisting that voice, Lorna Crozier suggested that instead I use that poetic, lyrical voice. And who wouldn’t trust Lorna Crozier’s advice? I even added a short poem at the end of my book.

2 - How did you come to creative non-fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or fiction?
I started writing Rosina as my thesis for my Master of Fine Arts degree, and that was my focus as a part of that program. I came to that degree with those ideas about genre and the intersections between genres, and had intended to explore them from the outset. While I am writing a novel right now, I think I’ll always have an interest in telling true stories in a way that extends beyond mere documentation—record making—and instead makes meaning out of the events of our lives and the things happening around us.  As a reader, I love reading non-fiction books that elevate the personal. And I came to writing first as a reader (and I hope it always stays that way).

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?

I often tell my students that writing is hard work, and that at any given point in a project they may find me star-fished out, sighing on my living room floor. Writing is usually a slow process for me. I tend to line edit and be unable to move forward until I am (temporarily) happy with the state of each sentence, then each paragraph, then each page. When I have time on my side, I aim to write a scene or two each day.

If something has to get done though, I will make that happen. There’s a magic that happens for me when I’ve been writing for a long time and have to meet a deadline: when I’ve found that voice, and understand the structure, I do my best writing.

4 - Where does prose 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 am in a new zone right now. I am writing a novel. I’ve been writing a novel since the first sentence. I think the experience of writing Rosina, and what I learned about structure and mapping, has made it possible to try this approach. When I started Rosina, I wrote the beginning, the middle, and the end into the first chapter. After realizing that, I used these three chunks as my guide—and while things ended up changing a lot, as I discovered new stories while researching and interviewing, it was useful to be writing to something. I’ve done that again with this new novel. I am still on the first half of the first draft, but I have a scene in mind for the end of the book… how I arrive there… no clue…

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I view promotion as a necessary component of publishing. I feel I would be doing a disservice to the project I spent years working on, and to the publisher that has taken a chance on me, to wait on the sidelines. That’s not to say that I find it easy; it can be uncomfortable. I view readings as a necessary part of that promotion, but more than that, they provide a chance to have meaningful conversations. On the other side of that, since I’ve written non-fiction, I’ve also been asked some questions that I thought were too personal, and have had to say so.

As a reader, I love attending readings to hear what passages authors share, and the stories behind the text. This is part of my creative process; talking about writing makes me want to write.

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?

The why behind my writing of Rosina gets at this question. 

As an undergrad, I had read in Tell it Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction that creative non-fiction was a genre with a rich boundary zone between memory and imagination for the writer to explore (39). But I was unsure how to explore. Memory is unstable. The entry and exit points of the moments that people remember don’t necessarily create an engaging narrative arc. I felt like I wasn’t maintaining the pact with the reader to tell the Truth as it was too easy to cross the border entirely and enter into the world of fiction…

As someone who had never lived in nor even visited the place of my forbearers, my family’s oral migrant history occupied that same space, that same boundary zone. And within that migrant history, this space was, for me, where Rosina existed. The stories I had heard about Rosina were worn by time, while they included some facts: who her husband was, when she died… the stories of her were also shaped by whosever memory she was contained within—they were shaped by the teller of the story.

While I set out to explore the genre of creative non-fiction, the symbiotic relationship between the form and content of this work supported a dual-exploration: an exploration of genre, yes, but also an exploration of the story being told within it—this migrant history. This migrant story built by fact and imagination supplied me with a means to explore the genre of creative non-fiction.

Rosina, lived in a farmhouse in Maione, Calabria with her son, his wife and all of their children. These three generations were separated as over time everyone left for Edmonton. After they left, Rosina had to leave the house she had been in for so many years and she eventually ended up in this house with her niece Sisina in Grimaldi. Standing on this doorstep brought me as close as I would get to crossing that line from imagination to artifact. I could only make it as far as the doorstep—a space between outside and in that I feel is representative of that boundary zone. Even if I had been able to go inside, I would not actually be making it any further into her world—so much time had gone by, and everything had been cleared out, moved out, and someone else now inhabited that house.

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?

Simply, storytelling is culture building. I think that a writer needs to ask this question each time they start a new work; I think the answer will change depending on the project, and that it should. With Rosina, I felt compelled to explore this story because I anticipated that within the Canadian context comprised of so many citizens with immigrant and refuges histories, I was not the only person who felt a disconnect from their forebearers. While I don’t think that my family history could stand in for those distinct migrant experiences from across the globe, I do think it can provide a counter-narrative: writing across time and borders in spite of diaspora. A dominant cultural narrative in a relatively young country is one of histories elsewhere, but in bringing together people, in this case, a line of women, across time and place, it is my hope that that those elsewhere histories can become more central in the story of a multi-cultural Canada and as part of the Canadian literary landscape.

In a more overarching way, storytelling is culture and economy building. At the Words in 3D conference in Edmonton, Kieran LeBlanc, executive director of the Book Publishers Association of Alberta, said that, “books are a different kind of pipeline.” How powerful is that? I read a report on literacy that said that if we were to raise the literacy level in Canada by a mere 1%, we would see a lasting increase of 18 billion in our GDP.

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

Essential! I know that certain people, including my editor Linda Goyette (who is brilliant, thoughtful, and someone who I trust completely), helped shape my manuscript. Linda asked me questions that I couldn’t have asked myself after staring at the same pages for so long. Linda showed me how much she cared about Rosina, at times more than I did, and this relationship helped me to try things I may not have otherwise. And, I will always think of Linda’s careful first words about my manuscript, when it was still in need of a lot of revision work, and ensure I use that constructive, thoughtful voice when I’m providing feedback to my students. I can’t say enough about how important I think this writer-editor relationship is.

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

There are two pieces of advice that I have been thinking of while working on my novel.

1)    Trust the process.

2)    Take it bird by bird (or, you know, sentence by sentence, page by page).

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (creative non-fiction to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?

With creative non-fiction, since I’m working with a true story, there are existing plot points that I can use. I find that comforting. I write to each point. But with fiction, I’ve needed to map things out a little more than I’m used to, and of course, invent a little more. I still find myself writing a lot of real things into my work (for instance, I was out picking rhubarb in my garden and came in and made my main character, Rebecca, have it for lunch). I’m feeling a lot more freedom with fiction, and I’m also less worried about the audience (for now), since my characters are invented and not people in my life.

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

It all depends on the time of year, and what else I have going on since I teach full time. I can’t write in little spurts, so I chunk out time to write. I need at least a few hours to shrug off everything else on my mind and get into a writing space. When I don’t have a lot of time, I’ll write scene by scene. Even if I go a while without writing, I am constantly thinking about it, and I’ll keep notes.

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

There are two things I need to do when I’m stuck: read more, talk to writing friends.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

I start Rosina with a scene at my parents’ house in the fall. Autumn smells, like fallen leaves and cinnamon, remind me of home.

14 - 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?

The main influence for me is silence. I feel like I have a lot of things (that I put into my life) competing for my attention. When I can actually just slow down for a few minutes, and tune out everything else (which is perhaps why I like to write late at night), I can start to listen to that really quite voice that gives me images, words, places to start. I can write once I can hear that voice.

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

A book I read again and again, because the writing style makes me want to write, is Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. It’s achingly beautiful.

I read a lot of writing guides: Tell it Slant, Bird-by-Bird, Good Prose. It’s not that I find that every piece of advice works for me, it’s just that often there are one or two things that stick and that’s enough to get me thinking and then writing.

Perl’s Guidelines for Composing is a generative writing exercise that brings me to that silence, that space where I can listen to my voice, and this is so important for my first drafts.

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

How much time do I have? Write children’s books (this is a huge goal for me), write a YA novel (which I think I’m doing right now), take some poetry courses, learn Italian and have access to more adjectives…

17 - 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?

I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. I think I would have ended up teaching high school English had I not pursued an MFA. I feel really fortunate to be able to teach and write now.

I’ve been so focused on school and writing/publishing that this summer I decided I needed to expand my skills. I am happy to report, I now offer gardening advice to neighbors (seriously, they ask me for advice because I finally figured out things like the difference between a weed and a flower, and how to prune), baking (three successful pies), and I’m this week I am learning to make jam. I’m sure all of these things will make their way into my writing.

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

I can’t remember a time that I didn’t write.

It wasn’t ever really a question of will I or won’t I write, but it was a will I or won’t I ever be published.

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

My favorite summer read so far has been Theresa Shea’s The Unfinished Child. This book prompted a few serious discussions in my house, and I think a good book does just that. This book continually resists simplifying complicated, emotional topics: abortion, Down Syndrome, infertility.

Instead of film, I am going to say TV show: I watched the entire season of Orange is the New Black in two days. The show is based on a true story (you can read a letter that one of the main characters wrote for The New Yorker online: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/fashion/28Love.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&), and I like that real life element. If I had known there was going to be so much reading going on, I would have jotted down the list of books the prisoners were reading when I started watching. And, like Teresa Shea’s book that offers us complex views of female identities, my friend, and writer, Amanda Jardine wrote an interesting post about Orange is the New Black and its complex identities: http://fetchandfemme.blogspot.ca/2013/07/orange-is-new-lesbian.html.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I recently wrote a children’s book that is in search of a home, and I’m knee-deep in a first draft of what I think is a YA novel (though that may change) about a foundling. The novel is set in the present in Alberta.

I’m also currently preparing materials to teach a new course in the fall called Writing and Publishing Prose at MacEwan University. I’m looking forward to having Little Fiction’s editor Troy Palmer, Amanda Leduc author of The Miracles of Ordinary Men, and Diana Davidson author of the forthcoming novel Pilgrimage come to speak to my class.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

grain magazine 41.1: home-myths

My artistic practice is and always has been based on the creation of fictive characters who perform distilled psychological, social and experiential narratives in painting tableaux, drawing, and painting-based installation. Central themes that have occupied my work have included issues of desire and sexuality, gender identity, intimacy, and relationships to self and other. Over the past number of years I have worked in thematic series, beginning each with a conceptual framework and then allowing an intuitive and improvisational layered painting process to determine the eventual form and content of the work. In this way, my process has the quality and sensation of being a director, writer, casting agent, costume and set designer, for a compressed film or fiction that slips and glimpses, and that occupies a single field—yet remains unfolding. (Eliza Griffiths)

It’s great to see the work of former Ottawa visual artist Eliza Griffiths featured in the new issue of Grain magazine, subtitled “home-myths” (a detail of her "Love Story/Fear Eats the Soul (after RWF)," 2013, is reproduced on the cover). Griffiths was one of the early members of The Enriched Bread Artists collective over on Gladstone Avenue, and I featured her work in an issue of Missing Jacket magazine back around 1996. There is something about her work that has always been quite striking; able to paint variations of similar faces, and yet, each managing their own personalities. As always, the details are deepest in the eyes, becoming more ghost-like as the image ripples outward. The characters she paints exist almost entirely within the scope of the face, and she manages to create real people we haven’t yet met.

The issue themes around a fairly familiar trope – the idea of home, and the myth-making that can’t help but occur. “We mythologize our past,” editor Rilla Friesen writes in her “Editor’s Note.” It harks back to a line from John Newlove, in which he reminded us that the past is, indeed, a foreign country. As Friesen writes: “The works in ‘Home-Myths’ each have a different balance of geography/love. If there is no fixed home place, the need for love is increased.” I’m uncertain I agree with her thesis—she should read the piece Yann Martel wrote, “Philadelphia Green Blue – Musings on the Meaning of Home,” from the anthology Writing Home: A PEN Canada Anthology, ed. Constance Rooke (Toronto ON: McClelland and Stewart, 1997). Home is simply an idea, and to have no specific sense of home does not necessarily make one groundless. Still, there are some impressive pieces in this issue, from the short, descriptive lyric of Anita Dolman, the myth-lyric of Jessica Bebenek, and the two historical/myth lyrics by Catherine J. Stewart. There are pieces here on Snow White, Daphne and Apollo, weddings, Lamborghinis, Mahler, Freud and Nazis, millennials, and various incarnations of what could be called home.

Galena

Claim staked in 1883—

Jubilee Mountain marked,

measured, owned.

____

Over 70 years, Galena ore—

silver, lead, zinc—clawed out

of the mountain, ballast

shipped out of the valley.

____

Barite, white dust dredged

from the tailings ponds, rose

from the ore trucks and settled

into the clothes hanging on the line. We

wore it to school, basketball games.

We danced in it.

____

The ducks we plucked

on the hillside, breasts filled

with shot made from Galena ore,

lead finding its way home (Catherine J. Stewart)