12 or 20 questions (second series) with Alex Leslie

Alex Leslie writes fiction. Her chapbook of microfictions 20 Objects For The New World was published by Nomados (2011) and her book of stories People Who Disappear is forthcoming from Freehand this April. She's working on a collection of stories entitled This Could Be You. She is guest editing the Queer issue of Poetry Is Dead magazine (submit! deadline June 1st! this is a shameless plug!). She is from Vancouver.

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's hard to say which was my first book -- my Nomados chapbook or my Freehand collection. The Freehand book is much longer and I think I'd sold that book before I sent my microfiction manuscript to Meredith Quartermain at Nomados. So I'll pretend these things happened simultaneously, because there is no real before-and-after. I don't think any single publication (story or book or chapbook) has "changed my life." I used to have that expectation, but now I just try to have different projects on the go at the same time to spread out my energy and stay interested. Both books gave me more confidence, generally speaking. The Freehand book I'm traveling to different cities to read from so I guess that is a tangible change -- different audiences, reading away from the West Coast, etc.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I've always written fiction. I still do. I've always been drawn to human drama, the complexity of human interaction, how weird and insecure and contradictory people are (including myself of course). I've published some non-fiction but stopped because I found non-fiction limiting -- I like the option of making up outright lies and adding whichever part of reality suits the pacing of the story, etc. I don't know how to write poetry with linebreaks. I love that kind of poetry but have no idea how people pull it off. I stick to rectangle-shaped things. Sometimes people tell me those things are poems and i say yes.

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 am an obsessive note taker. I will write down your conversation in a bus, in a coffee shop. If I don't know you personally I don't have any respect for your privacy. Just today I was on an escalator going up out of the train station at 41st and Cambie here in Vancouver and the woman in front of me was talking about losing her husband five years ago  and how she's just getting through it now and the woman beside her, an acquaintance, was obviously not interested and going through the motions of sympathizing. I was eavesdropping because my dog died recently so I'm obsessed with other people's stories about grief (I know, I'm morbid). So I will probably write something about that woman but her husband will be my dog. Or a woman will ride the same escalator over and over to grieve someone. Or something. You get the general idea. I think this is the associative, weird, invasive way most fiction writers work. I take lots of notes, gather scraps, circle things pointlessly, etc. When I get to the point when I can write paragraphs, I am so fucking relieved. At that point, I can write fast. It's the gelling and confidence part that is the hardest and most crucial part. Mostly the confidence part.

4 - Where does 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?
No, I don't work backwards -- from the big concept to the bits. I envy people who can do that. I have to struggle upwards from little shards of junk. Stories begin for me in something weird that I notice. By weird I mean incongruous or intensely sad. I hate the word "poignant." Something that makes me write it down. I write outward from something like that, a moment or a detail. I don't think I've ever written forward from a scene or event. I don't know how.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I enjoy readings. I performed music from a very very young age and by the time I was in my teens I was performing for big audiences (I played in orchestras). I used to have severe stage fright but that was worked out by just having to perform over and over.  So now I can enjoy performing and enjoy observing people's reactions and responses while I read. I can't say the readings are PART of my process tho. I'm not a performance poet.

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 write different kinds of things. Stories with plots and characters; more abstract stories. I'm interested in how language-focused fiction can be before the emotional connection is lost. I'm a person for whom language is emotional connection so this balance is hugely interesting to me. (By that I mean I can get emotional listening to sound poetry -- what the fuck is up with that if language is about "communication"? etc etc). So I suppose that's a theoretical concern of mine, if I have to state one. I don't know what "the current questions" are, but I'm interested in who gets to ask questions and why. I'm guest editing the Queer issue of Poetry Is Dead (published by Daniel Zomparelli) because I'm interested in bringing together current Queer Canadian poetry and experimental prose from around the county and across generations.

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?
Well, yes, writers have roles. Everybody has roles and plays roles all the time, whether or not we acknowledge them. I think the writer's role is to observe, absorb and rewrite to interrupt dominant scripts. Also, sometimes I read something so beautiful, like Lidia Yuknavich's memoir of abuse and life The Chronology of Water, that I think the role of writers is to create beautiful things. But it's bigger than that. This is just a sneaky way of making people read that book.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
The editors I've worked with are Meredith Quartermain and Robyn Read. Both have been perceptive, kind and helpful. I think it's a person-by-person thing. can't make a general statement. I love feedback and conversation but I do tend to have a very set sense of what I want tonally and texturally in a piece of writing.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Someone beloved to me said in my early 20s, Write now because if you don't later you will look back and think "what if I'd written?"

Also I don't know if someone told me this but I picked up along the way from various people who were generous with me that if I shared with other people then I would have more. Which sounds like an after school special motto, but it is fucking true.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to creative non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
Very easy. My process is the same so the genre is irrelevant.

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?
Don't have one.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I bike. I lift weights at the gym. Endorphins are very inspirational. MFA programs should have an exercise component.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
The ocean.

Dogs.

Wood.

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?
Music. Hugely. Right now I'm listening to "One Beat" by Sleater Kinney on repeat. Also films.

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

Dear Sugar On The Rumpus

Dionne Brand

Amy Hempel

Pema Chodron

We The Animals by Justin Torres

Lisa Foad

Lispector

So so so many writers. This list is completely incomplete and random

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Backpack in Europe again.

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?
Counseling. I've worked a lot, in different capacities, with people with addiction issues and with what society broadly calls "mental health issues." Now I will slip into some "everybody has a story" platitude. The story-writing part of my brain loves complex people.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
A need to depict accurately what was happening inside of me. Shyness.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Film -- Monsieur Lazhar. It's about a man who is a refugee who gets a job teaching in an elementary school. His students' (white) teacher has just committed suicide. He has experienced and is experiencing true, violent, intractable pain, unknown and unknowable to those around him. They are experience a contained, sanitized instance of middle-class grief (though very real to them). He releases the kids' grief in the most quiet, tender way possible, with no judgment or need for "healing" present. It is what it is, as they say. Such an amazing film about the grace of accepting suffering.

Book -- Just read Justin Torres' We The Animals which was gorgeous. Series of vignettes depicting three brothers growing up in a poor family with a violent father. Read it for the language. I hate plot summaries.

20 - What are you currently working on?
A bunch of stories.

Editing the Queer issue of Poetry Is Dead.

Grieving my dog.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

A new sequence of poems, "Notes, on the subject of marriage," is now up at Quarter After #1

A recent sequence, "Notes, on the subject of marriage" is now up at Quarter After #1.

Jenna Butler, Wells

You used to be able to talk around the gaps, find words that were right enough, with acrobatic deftness. Now your tongue trips, mind falls flat like marram grass in a sea gale. Your leaps of logic confound even you, leave your listeners coughing into their hands, frantic for distraction.

You loved this beach once. The wind, the way it rips off the sea on a blustery day, what it drives up onto the sand. Whelks, polished stones, gull feathered battered like spindles. Bottle glass, bright colours scarified, filmed over. The same look in your eyes now when you turn to me, unsure, not wanting to ask. (“Wells”)

In Edmonton poet, editor and publisher Jenna Butler’s second trade collection, Wells (Edmonton AB: University of Alberta Press, 2012), she “draws on her own experiences of her grandmother’s disappearance into senile dementia to reassemble a sensual world in longpoem form” (according to the press release). Disappearance narratives in the form of poems rarely work, but the dream-like quality of Butler’s long poem write the straight lines long enough they bleed. Wells reads less an interest in Butler attempting to document every losing detail than explore the haze, the misty places between knowing, doubting and disappearing.

The kitchen smelt often of quince. The hoary fruits inedible unless cooked, whereupon they resolved into a spring-pink jelly.

Inevitably, all other scents would be underwritten by tea. The Darjeeling your mother was so fond of, your father’s chicory coffee, a taste he’d developed during the War. How your mother tried to break him of it, that coffee, its scent bitter and deeply medicinal. He’d tell her, Habits aren’t horseshoes; they can’t be thrown so easily.

He came back from the War overwritten with translucent patches, the scar tissue gleaming as though he’d been drizzled with molten glass. Wherever the mustard gas had touched, it had burned, clear through the wool tunic and out along his limbs like marsh fire. When the sunlight found him now, it did so gingerly, his skin coming alight in silver, the scars blazing. As though, in stripping everything away from him, the gas had somehow given him this armour. He no longer rolled up his sleeves in the garden as he hefted the spade, worried that someone might be moved to pity. Your father came back from the War armoured inside his own skin. Against everything.

Even his own family.

Even you. (“Home”)

As Butler’s previous collection, Aphelion (Edmonton AB: NeWest Press, 2010), explored the structure of the ghazals, Wells (named for the town of Wells-next-the-sea, England) explores the structure of the prose-poem, and the prairie narrative stretched out as long as a line can follow. Arranged in poem-sections, the poem-fragments hold up as a series of family photographs either blurry or apocryphal, and write the prairie sentence/long line with exquisite grace.

This volume, also, appears to be one of the first in the “Robert Kroetsch Series,” named for the late Alberta and University of Alberta Press author who died last spring in a tragic automobile accident. I wonder at this, pleased with the acknowledgement, but wonder why it was kept so quiet, and even now, seemingly barely-told or announced, but for a line or two in their catalogue?

two short (birthday) interviews + a poem

A few days ago, Janet Vickers posted a short interview she did with me on the Lipstick Press blog (Gabriola BC), the same day as another short interview, along with a new(ish) poem, appeared in The South Townsville micro poetry journal (Australia).

Wisdom teeth come out soon, so the morning I turned forty-two also meant an appointment with a dental surgeon in Kanata. Christine was good enough to take me for a post-dental brunch.

12 or 20 questions (second series) with Emily Pettit

Emily Pettit is the author of two chapbooks, How (Octopus Books) and What Happened to Limbo (Pilot Books), and the trade collection GOAT IN THE SNOW (Birds/LLC). She is an editor for notnostrums and Factory Hollow Press, as well as the publisher of jubilat. She teaches at Flying Object.

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 suppose one could say my first book changed my life, but I think I would say instead, my first book has been an enormous part of my life for a long time. I began writing it when I was 21 and it evolved a great deal over the last six years. As for my more recent work, it is work at work with the poems in GOAT IN THE SNOW.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I have been reading my poetry my whole life. On purpose. Not on purpose. I have a little bunny. He is a beanbag bunny and his name is Snuggle Bunny and I have had him forever. He was a poet. He is a poet. Then I didn't really write poetry again until college. And that happened by accident. A wonderful accident.

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?
Copious notes and thoughts that bring them together. I rarely write drafts. I like to sit down and write a poem and not stop until it is done.

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?
I begin with the ending. Most of the time. I have an ending in mind and I try to make my way to that ending. Endings are always on my mind. Often to the detriment of my beginnings.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Public readings given by me are not a part of my creative process. Other peoples' readings certainly engage my mind creatively and are often inspiring. I'm afraid I'm too afraid of reading for my own readings to be something I enjoy. I give readings. I think it is an important part of sharing your work. Reading makes me nervous. Very very nervous. But I read! And I try to not seem nervous.

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 am very interested in questions. I want to ask questions. I cannot stop asking questions. Perhaps one of the things I love most about writing poems is the space they create for asking questions. 

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 different writers have different roles and some writers have more than one role.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I think my thoughts about the process would be specific to the work being worked on with the outside editor. I think the process of working with an outside editor is likely sometimes difficult and sometimes essential. I think both.

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

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?
Unfortunately, I do not have much of a writing routine. I write when I can or when I must. I don't write as much as I would like.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I think I most often to music. Turn on music.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Biscuits....

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?
O o all these things! Music. Music. Without music my mind would not work. I wouldn't want it to. And science, science is also so important to my life. All of our lives. Science is so about asking questions. It has me asking questions all the time. It has my poems asking questions. Film and television inform my work. Twin Peaks is a poem.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Gertrude Stein is very on my mind.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would like to go to Paris. This is not a joke. I've never been. I've always wanted to go.

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?
Perhaps I would have been a photographer? I would like to spend a serious amount of time with photography.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I love writing poems. I don't think of it as doing something in opposition of something else. I think of it as something I want to do. Something I do. Something I hope to keep doing for as long as I can.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Recently I have read these great books - What Is Amazing by Heather Christle and The Black Forest by Christopher DeWeese and Experiments I Should Like Tried At My Own Death by Caryl Pagel and No, Not Today by Jordan Stempleman.

19 - What are you currently working on?
I'm now working on my second book of poems and it is titled I'M ASKING YOU TO LOOK AT ME TOUCH ME TALK TO ME.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Sinéad O’Connor and her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds, Neil de la Flor and Maureen Seaton

She

is extremely skilled in hand to hand

combat, cantatas, and classical objects.

In her violent tale of Ambrosio

and Sisyphus she is obsessed with existence.

Her lust is apparent while she spies

on the blessed monks who love almsfood.

She is always seeking coincidence,

traveling back to her point of origin,

able to bear immense and sudden pain.

Above all, she is a rare example

of the not quite dead. She is permitted

weapons and is laid to rest in state.

Finally, it is she whose wounded

introversion makes her almost body gleam.

I’m fascinated by the poetry collaboration generally, especially now that Christine McNair and I are finally in the midst of ours, working slowly over the past near-year. The first I really noticed had to be Transference of November / Snow (Kingston ON: Quarry Press, 1985) by Roo Borson and Kim Maltman, who went on to trio with Andy Patton as Pain-Not-Bread. More recent collaborations of note include Toronto poets Jay MillAr and Stephen Cain’s collaborative “novel,” Double Helix (Toronto ON: The Mercury Press, 2006), Toronto poets BillKennedy and Darren Wershler’s apostrophe (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2006) and update (Montreal QC: Snare Books, 2010), Amanda Ackerman and Harold Abramowitz’ Sin is to Celebration (arrow as aarow #8, House Press, 2009) and the ongoing collaboration between Edmonton poet Douglas Barbour and Arizona poet Sheila E. Murphy, first published as Continuations (Edmonton AB: University of Alberta Press, 2006), with a second volume forthcoming over the next few weeks. There have also been smaller collaborations between Phil Hall and Western Australia poet Andrew Burke, and the manuscript by Amanda Earl and Sandra Ridley shortlisted for the 2010Robert Kroetsch Award.

Aurora, a simple tree of a girl, once told me the story of the earth’s ionosphere, the way she held to her original spring and fall, always more nimble than northern life or the completely selfless ultraviolet of science fiction—in other words, the fascinating spectacle of a young female who is mostly red, occasionally ultraviolet, and America’s favorite hometown to boot. Aurora is normally open to space and the cause of electrons and protons evaporating off the surface of her limbs. She is predominantly female, a little goose of outer space, a permanent river feature that bends along the Kentucky and Indiana shoreline, but invisible, like the increase in atmospheric turbulence. E is for looking to the east, she once told me, a little shy. I’m a little refugee deflected by the vivid description of experience, she once told me, as she flew through the ozone. Aurora is lighter on Wednesday. (“Aurora”)

According to the biographical information at the back of their collaborative collection Sinéad O’Connor and her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds (Firewheel Editions, 2011), American poets Neil de la Flor and Maureen Seaton “have been collaborating since 2004 when they holed up together in Miami for Hurricane Frances and got bored with the weather channel.” Given the few dates mentioned within the work, and some references as well, it would suggest that this collection is the direct result of that initial beginning, composed during a hurricane. I’m taken very much by the structural shifts, from the lyric poem to prose-lines that wrap into each other, and distinct shapes that shimmer, shimmy. I wonder, am I losing or gaining for not knowing either of their individual works? I would be interested to know the precise measure and structure of their collaborations, if poems were individually worked and traded into an accumulation, or if begun by one and completed by another, for example. There is a great deal to admire and intrigue in this collection, and it makes me interested in seeing just what else they’ve been doing, and hope that they might continue in their collaborative efforts. Still, for all the shifts, the strongest works in this collection appear to be the poems composed as prose-poems, striking out in ways the shorter pieces just can’t quite grasp, such as this, the final section in the four-part title poem, that opens the collection:

Pondering them, I flew into Spanish. I was Spanish and covered with light.

Light of a goose, light as a father; re-numerated and stunning.

I pulled them over my existing legs and trotted around like a mouse. I was looking for a hole in the wall, proverbially.

That’s when I found Sinéad O’Connor, singing, when blue birds flew out of her mouth.

Her coat was a thousand bluebirds coming to life and flying away like pieces of transformed sexual abuse.

And the crowd was pointing fingers at her coat, her blue tongue of feathers.

Such an intelligent bird, I thought, and all the cats inside me whispered: mouse.

Today is my forty-second birthday,

Moving, almost, at a higher rate of speed. 8:15am, forty-two years old [photo of myself at a wine tasting recently, taken by Christine; when do I start going to wine tastings? nice]. As I tell myself annually, it seems, what a difference a year makes. Last year’s sadness beard dissolved two weeks after forty-one [see last year’s birthday post, for evidence of the beard], and now, with new shared household, fiancé Christine McNair and our six month old kitten, Lemonade. We work, we write, we scheme, and he tears around the apartment. A strange optimism over a stretch of months, building and built, and allowed to be built, too. One has to create and/or permit a space for such, I know.

My father’s cancer surgery last March ended well. No chemotherapy required, which was enormously fortunate. Christine and I currently work on wedding plans. Our nuptials are planned for September 29, at the old Gordon Church, St. Elmo. With a kilt I have yet to acquire, we’ve already confirmed church, dress, minister, wedding planner, photographer, caterer. Piper for the ceremony, Celtic band for reception. Some of it months ago. Just how soon, exactly, is now?

I work on many things, including a poetry manuscript around our new digs on McLeod Street, “A halt, which is empty.” A second manuscript of short, short stories, as the first one makes the rounds; a fourth and fifth novel, as the third makes similar rounds. Expanding my explorations in prose, composing prose poems on a recent trip to Louisiana with Stephen Brockwell for the sake of a reading, and an expansive creative non-fiction piece on weddings, wedding plans and wedding poems. Since last summer, Christine and I have even been working on a collaboration, slowly [see two poems here; my essay on such here]. I’m even closing in on the final touches (another six months, which might even sound overly optimistic) of my post-mother creative non-fiction work, “The Last Good Year.” What was it I said last year? “[W]orking on poems that breathe and extend and most often halt.”

Over the past twelve months, my composition has shifted, from scribbling poems in coffeeshops to crafting, carving poems directly into the computer, and scribbling all over printed drafts in coffeeshops. The poems become denser, even as, possibly, I move in the opposite direction. Pearl Pirie even commented on the difference, recently. Is this me finally figuring a few things out? Now that, according to The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I am the ultimate answer to the ultimate question in the universe. Rightly so.

Although, for the week or two prior, everyone got sick. Christine did, and then passed it to me, some damned throat thing, which took us out for days. We were supposed to have my niece, Emma, visit for a couple of days, but apparently, everyone in their house was sick too, all at the same time. Perhaps in June, once school is over. So much for March Break.

Still, the birthday party happens on Saturday at The Carleton Tavern, upstairs. Perhaps, we might even see you there.

Here is my annual birthday poem, which appeared recently in The Peter F. Yacht Club:

Poem at Forty-two

Or to render time and stand outside

The horizontal rush of it, for a moment

Robert Hass, Time and Materials: Poems 1997 – 2005

1.

Pronic, abundant. Flutter at the signal. Rational,

in parts. Or mark out shadow selves,

reactive. No one shall speak

to the man at the helm. Mark passage, spent

and therefore passed. A clasp of mouthful, light,

drink up in equal measure. Egret,

picnics, profile pictures, bleach. Shall not

be held. Responsible, a finger. Glacier,

breaking, entry. Is the coloured cloth we wave a flag

or parceled snow?

2.

Heartbeaten, molten lead. Days texture some,

take years. Float up, make the ceiling crack,

a process, primitive. Catalan, yet when it rains,

intelligence, such thickness. Quartered,

drawn, and spent. So quickly, hide. I gather.

Refrain, refrain. Her Florida, lungs. Go snowbird,

reactions, flicker glass. Too long in the house,

immediately following one, precedes another,

this ticker-tape condition. There goes dusty,

laden; chorus all things, full of moments.

3.

No longer, paradise. Nothing to declare,

declares. To speak in circles, laughing, standing.

Curse, curled bitter. Black, and cranny brim,

some call this, pleasure. All persons more

than a mile high shall leave the court. Bluebells,

rudderless, cranial in shape. Out nights, nights,

nights. Sleep soundly, sullen, austere minimalism.

This body, unknown. At both ends, dismisses faith

and death. Thinking, thinking through the half-cloud,

dark. A path of fertile, groundless.

4.

Adheres, a blanket loop. I’ve beauty, seen. Tables,

paper maps, a Roman ox-cart. I was there,

the flames rose, barn-fallen, housed. More

than just a number. Raised, pressed paper-flesh.

I hear the state of, union-pleased. Accumulate,

the children crown, passé. Dismiss a hand, drawn,

morning blood, embellished. The possibility of new,

arrived at fluid, writing; revisions sketched in snow.

Here a boy stands graceless, as his ancient self

negotiates what once was nature, ease.

5.

The presentation of this, failure. Sun stalk, paths

which we are nameless, formed. Poly-vocal, incomplete,

or stretched, in tragicomic waves. Architecture,

skate-parks, floodgates. Purpose, not its own.

Advancing progress as the path north, levels. Accrete,

impending wires. Tell ourselves, these questions, answer

from a high-horse. Under. Hat a brim the outskirts of

a house the basement cellar roots out root, akin. Such moisture

sparkles, shines. Abbreviate, pretend to sharpen, think.

Underneath this fabled bridge, a story picked-clean, stripped.

6.

Inmate, at the wheel. Accomplished. Hey there, there.

Forty-two boxes, all carefully packed. Because I never die, she said,

having wandered onto Brontë moors. A honeymoon. Here

the season, dry-bone by electric heat. Likeness, intervenes,

the phosphorescent dark. We age and all this nature, I resist,

not hiding in the dirt but reading, tracing light with light.

Dear Mum and Dad, like seeks like and echoes, struggles.

Craftsmen of such daily craft. Be happy, silent moons

and moonbeams. Lift up from the future, know

that nothing comes so easy, this. I’ve learned this now.

Ron Silliman in Ottawa: informal lecture/talk and reading

On Saturday, March 10, The AB Series brought American poet, critic and blogger Ron Silliman to Ottawa for the first time, with an informal talk during the afternoon, and evening reading.

During an engaged and highly comfortable talk, Silliman began by talking about his own history as a writer, fortunate enough to be part of a community early on engaging with “the real discourses,” having “face to face conversations about poetry.” He made the point that a lack of post-secondary education is “not an impediment to writing,” citing himself as an example, or even Denise Levertov, who didn’t complete high school. Silliman’s broad knowledge of literary history is staggering (even aware that Rob Manery and Louis Cabri ran a reading series at Gallery 101 in the late 1980s and into the 1990s), and his talk went in all sorts of corners, from the historic relationship of poetry and the academy, San Francisco/Bay Area poetics of the 1960s and 70s, Louis Cabri in Philadelphia, the School of Quietude, the internet and blogging, and numerous other topics.

Some highlights included his assertion that more Americans should be aware of the work of the late Montreal poet Louis Dudek, suggesting that Dudek and Robert Duncan were writing “mirror works” until Duncan encountered Black Mountain poetics in 1966. As Silliman called it, “the importance of Louis Dudek from an American perspective”: had Duncan kept on his particular path, it would have been similar to what Dudek continued.

In large part to the internet, he said, literature and literary engagement is “a different world geographically” now, more than it has ever been. In the early 1970s, there might have been a thousand English language poets actively publishing in America; the number since has exploded to some twenty thousand, giving Silliman, in his youth, an “unfair advantage” over the poets writing today. And as far as the border was concerned, he gave the Kootenay School of Writing a great deal of credit for communicating back with American writers, and the largest reason why a knowledge of so many Canadian writers and their works have freely crossed the border.

He also said that, with retirement, his blog might become far more active, again. I’d suggest you pay attention.

During the evening reading, Silliman read from a recent chapbook, Wharf Hypothesis (Red Hook NY: LINESchapbooks, 2011), a fragment of the work-in-progress “NORTHERN SOUL,” which is a part of the much larger, ongoing project he calls “Universe.” With thirty-some sections, he said, he’s managing but one a year; might it ever be complete, or even appear as a single unit? He read from this, and a longer piece published in Poetry magazine. When a writer of his caliber appears, it becomes interesting to see who appears in the crowd, and the mid-sized crowd included writers such as Phil Hall, Mark Goldstein, Amanda Earl, Pearl Pirie, Christine McNair, jwcurry and John Steffler. Impressive, indeed.

Part of the intrigue of Silliman’s work, apart from the sheer scale of his projects, is in the accumulative quality, read as less a list than a montage of just about everything, including this fragment of Wharf Hypothesis that mentions the late Montreal poet Artie Gold (mentioned, most likely, since British-resident American poet Barry Schwabsky is a contemporary to and old friend of Gold’s). There are barely any Canadian references to Gold anymore, and this one comes from an American poet, via a British recollection, writing:

in vast quantity

United puts away the Arsenal

to reach the finals

canals everywhere

Ten percent of the people

own 90% of the land

ergo 90% of the people

live on just ten percent of the land

The streets thus are crowded in the

South

Locals discern a course tongue

Wyston Curnow & Barry Schwabsky

in the very same room

Asparagus ravioli

Fleet Street being shorter

than I’d imagined

Cutting short Artie Gold

vomiting between sets

as the turntablist samples

Willie the Shake

photo shoot by the Roman fort

speed at which

towns blur by

feeling blurby – Simon

mit Garfunkel, always

Call and Response; Claudia Coutu Radmore's response now on-line

Claudia Coutu Radmore's "What year is it / Qui annus est," a response to Olivia Johnston's show of photographs, "Solo Series No. 2: 13-18," are both available for view in Ottawa's Red Wall Gallery at the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa until the beginning of April. Radmore's full text is available online here as a pdf, as well as in the gallery space.

Vernissage: Friday, March 16th, 2012, 18:00 - 21:00.

The sixth in a series of seven poetic responses, curated by rob mclennan, the first was Pearl Pirie's "The Walls of Jerusalem - Selected Poems and Process Notes," a response to Leslie Hossack's Cities of Stone - People of Dust," the second was Amanda Earl's "In the Tempo of Now - Selected Poems," a response to John Hewett Hallum's show of photographs, "MOMENT(O)," the third, Monty Reid's "So is the Madness of Humans," a response to Rob Macinnis' show of photographs, "The Farm Family Project," fourth, Sandra Ridley's "Shadow Lines," a response to Pedro Isztin's show of photographs, "Study of Structure and Form," and the fifth, Christine McNair's "materia prima.," a response to Caroline Tallmadge's show of photographs, "Solo Series No. 1: By Hand," all of which are still available here. The final response in this series will be by rob mclennan, with a reading of all the writers (with slides of their corresponding shows) is currently being scheduled for June 22, 2012. Stay tuned!

(another) very short story;

A recent British documentary on the Battle of Quebec and the Plains of Abraham opens with tales of British might and French near-dominance of most of what is now Canada and the United States, and closes with the American colonies turning left, independently uniting. A humiliating defeat, the host says, for every battle he mentions. Apparently this what British schoolboys taught, a context larger than the one we were presented: the Battle of Quebec, with no mention of American Rebellion a generation later, skipping directly to the War of 1812. There was little between the British North America Act and Confederation in our curriculum. Nothing else happened in Canada. We were left with no connections, from the not-yet-Major-General James Wolfe’s experiences at the battles of Falkirk and Culloden, General George Washington pushing the French out of Virginia, or explorer James Cook traversing the St. Lawrence, producing the first intricate water-maps. The list of histories edited, picked over, simplified. Near the end of the documentary, the word “Quebec,” the host says, means “narrows.” What else don’t we know.