Saturday, July 31, 2010

12 or 20 questions: with Alexander Jorgensen


Alexander Jorgensen was born and raised along the foothills of Western Massachusetts. An incessant traveler, he has lived and worked in such places as the Czech Republic, China, the Galapagos Archipelago, India, and Kazakhstan. His visual poetry and writings have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in LIES/ISLE, Shampoo, Grasp, Drunken Boat, Moria, Otoliths, The Return of Kral Majales: Prague's International Literary Renaissance 1990-2010, and The Last Vispo Anthology. "Letter to a Younger Poet," correspondences with the late Robert Creeley, appears in Jacket #31. He was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2008.

The photo is courtesy of David Yan. It was taken in Beijing in 2006.

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

It didn't, and this was probably the best result that could have possibly happened. I was residing in Prague at the time, received a gracious blurb from the late Robert Creeley. It was clearly a case of naïveté on my part, looking back in hindsight, as I mistakenly thought that I had “made it,” as they say. Of course, I hadn't even made more than a baby step. I can say, however, that I was lucky to work with some wonderful individuals whose patience and advice saw the project through to its conclusion. In terms of appreciating the logistics and time that goes into publishing a piece of work, I learned lots. The heartbreak that followed led to some maturity, which is important for a writer, I think. I began to focus more on the process of writing, and its appreciation, as opposed to merely outcome - which has made for richer and more diverse work. Given the amount of travel and learning that has taken place since then, a more determined and intentional approach to my work, it's my feeling that I am today able to communicate with greater acuity and vigor. I am concerned with doing good work more than ever, which, for me, seems to be working well.

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

As a young person, I read the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickenson, W.B. Yeats, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Walt Whitman – an odd mix of things, really. What they did, I thought to myself, I want to do that; and entirely because of how their work made me feel, which was “emboldened.” I don't come from a particularly educated family background, so I think, at least in part, and for some terribly mistaken reason, I also came to view a knowledge of poetry as an indicator of social class. Clearly, I felt inadequate. Over time, and necessarily as my own appreciation for poetry grew, I better came to understand that poetry is not an exclusive space – but, rather, an expansive one.

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?

Nice question, and I am sure my response is going to sound rather hackneyed. Some poems quite literally jump out onto the page in a matter of minutes. Other poems seem to possess me in a sort of hypnotic daze for hours, and I obsess with these as one does when one's encountered a memorable space. There are, of course, those poems that require a sort of gestation period of days, months, years; these are poems for which time is of no matter and they tend to not permit me wriggle away from them until they have had their say and have arrived in what seems their entirely designed form. These things tend to be intuitive for me. I pay attention to overall symmetry, focusing on every part of a poem. Think of it this way: From my point of view, every poem has the right to its own individual song and, as a form, chance at perfection.

I tend to be a perfectionist with regards to my work, which means that sometimes a piece of work takes far longer to complete than I might like; but, again, I am relying on my intuition and sense of symmetry. In simplest terms, and this might require some deference on your part, I consider my work as a composer of music might; i.e., there are notes, phrases, rhythm, tones, consonance—even subtleties that act as counterpoints. There is a lot of attention to detail and, to be honest, sometimes it isn’t the easiest thing trying to convey concepts derived byway of my travels.

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?

There may be something queer about me, indeed. Rarely do I find myself genuinely entertained and when so usually for reasons others often find peculiar. I am engaged by the uncommon. Perhaps, it has something to do with the schooling I received at Montessori. Most of what I do in life, except for those moments when straight-jacketed by the mundane, is explore. When something pops its head up, my head twists round and there I go exploring, traveling to where ever it, and in this case we are talking about writing, takes me. I am not writing myself out of life, as Burroughs might have done, but rather writing myself into life. A word or expression, something witnessed, a daydream that lingers, and the possibility of each's hinge-pin possessing a multitude of contexts – this is how a poem starts for me. I tend to filter the world through emotional subjectivity. I am fascinated by speech patterns and the tools with which people communicate.

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

I love the experience of sharing my work with an audience that is present and well engaged. Along with reading my work, I often share some of the conditions or history from which a piece sprang; and I know that some readers aren't always as patient as I might like them to be with regards to a poet offering this kind of additional information. Given that I view life and work as inseparable, I view both offerings as integral to the process of showcasing work in this fashion. To be honest, I find myself reading work aloud as I am creating or editing a piece, so being able to read pieces that I am not entirely confident in with a group does assist in my working through or reworking a piece to its desire maturation. Additionally, I love being able to discuss pieces with individuals who either liked or didn't like a particular work. Feedback has frequently proven itself to be of important value, I think.

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?

First, what I put together, if I can call it that, reflects just how it is I receive the world—not only how it is perceived, in terms of perception, but how information, stimuli, is received. Usually in blasts—think 10 televisions playing at once—some programs set on equations being processed. I consider context in everything I do. I try to convey an emotional residue relating to what I felt at the moment of genesis—and I tend to filter the world through an emotionally engaged filter as much as an intellectual one.

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?

In many ways, speaking solely for myself, I view being a poet as belonging to a cast of a sort – a tradition born out of a cultural need for moments of sobriety amid the many profundities that perplex us out there. I try to remind folks of just how apples once taste, and perhaps the ones of my youth; do so in order to suggest that we have agency and that agency requires responsibility and a bit of gratitude. I think being an individual is among the most difficult and lonely tasks for which few are prepared. It is hard being compassionate, but think it an important exercise, and think that many artists are, in fact, doing just that – demonstrating compassion – in their work, and what is offered is not bound, necessarily, to any essential standard of taste. I am very duty-oriented with regards to art and, naturally, it reflects how I see the world.

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

I have most often relied on my own instincts with regards to a piece, and have often found outside editors a distraction. Often, I quite literally find that what is happening internally, and I am speaking of the way ideas gather and take shape, might best be described as a crowd of clamoring voices bending towards each other in search of a way or lead; there is that attempt at synergy, at the coalescing of tones. As something begins to germinate, my job, as I see it, is to provide enough space in which a piece might develop with the necessity of overt shaping. On rare occasion, when I find myself stuck in ditch, let me say, with regards to my work – think in terms of a breech delivery – I will approach someone I deeply respect for counsel. No writer, I truly believe, can be reticent with regards to their work; they must struggle – must do so even if it takes longer than one might wish.

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

Without sounding crude, but while still acknowledging the importance of your question, I would offer something a friend once said: “The only way to say 'fuck you' to someone who doesn't believe in what you are doing is to be persistent and to succeed.” It is one of the pieces of advice I remember having remembered and having repeated again and again. Actually, it was a piece of advice given by novelist Diran Adebayo in 1999; he was visiting Prague and we were sharing my flat. This, along with the private correspondences with Robert Creeley, gone through during those terrifying moments of insecurity we all know well as writers, has made for a more intentional individual who's sensitive to both the importance of creating substantive work and to that process by which one is informed by both that work and its struggle to come into existence.

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?

I write whenever I can. My schedule is ever changing, in part because of travel and work, but I write incessantly – recording notes and observations on everything from napkins to pizza boxes. I think most often, however, I tend to write late in the evening till early morning – and usually buzzing on cups of coffee and cigarettes.

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

I'll read work by authors I admire, the energy of which usually provides me with a kind of challenge and, therefore, greater motivation to do vital work – or, and this is what most often assists me in the creative process, I will work on visual poetry. In my case, both poetry and visual art tend to feed each other – and I initially began experimenting with visual poetry in order to augment traditional forms of poetry I found limiting; for example, there have been instances where a poem seemed to require more than what words on a blank page have been able to provide. Whether it be writing poetry or prose, or completing visual projects, expressing my particular poetic sensibility is a primary concern – I attempt to share what I presume, and perhaps mistakenly, a consuming world – and I am talking about the greater world, not just what is over generalized – might require as part of a regular “dietary requirement.” It's a difficult thing, indeed, competing for someone's attention amid the harangue that is hyper-informationalized culture.

12 - Have you had a lucky charm?

Though sometimes taking longer to deliver than I might have wished, faith has brought me to those places – and I am referring to both the internal and to exploration outside myself – to which I have most wanted to visit. I suppose there are two kinds of faith on which I rely: a faith in something outside of myself, which is something very private; and then faith that, as long as I persist, thus honoring the creative process in which I so depend, I will be heard.

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?

Personally, I am not sure how I would be able to create anything worthwhile without a broad interest in and descent knowledge of other art disciplines. Yes, I am inspired by music, cinema, painting, writing, design – even by dance. In my case, so much of what I do depends directly on what I perceive as possessing symmetry; and this is something that I have learned from studying the art. A poem possesses an architecture, there are tones comprised of such things as iconography and metaphor, its psychological disposition, there is its musicality, the phonology of language, and then there are questions related to how one emotes what is required in order to enable a piece to resonate and thus expose itself to its audience. Directors Kurosawa, Lynch, Kubrick, and Jan Svankmajer; the painters Otto Dix and Egon Schiele; composers John Cage, Bach, and Thelonius Monk; and I couldn't live without comic books, as the concept of the superhero is definitely part of my iconography.

Likewise, I am inspired by our attempts at actual communication, and even if that be little more than a gesticulation, something I know something about from having traveled a bit. Regrettably, and this is an opinion, I think too often language is used as a means of disappearing from the “human experience,” as it is called – that words often prevent us from revealing ourselves in terms of creating an interconnectedness and better understanding. Returning to the arts, townies—and then with friends Subhashis Gangopdhyay and Bobbi Lurie, two poets I much admire and respect.

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

I enjoy reading theological texts, find myself doing a lot of that as of late. I have an interest in history, philosophy, and politics—do so, in no small part, because of the amount of traveling I do; and travel has been inseparable to my work. In fact, it is fair to say that travel has been something that I have depended heavily upon, often visiting some of the most remote locations on earth. With regards to authors that never fail to inspire and influence my thinking with regards to writing, and I am making a very narrow short list here, I find myself returning to Kenneth Patchen, Samuel Beckett, Robert Creeley, Gertrude Stein, and polemicist Christopher Hitchens. As far as contemporary writers go, I very much enjoy the work of Andy Nicholson and Deborah Poe, and find myself awaiting new offerings with great impatience.

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

Visit Bhutan. Have a relationship that can sustain itself through difficult times. Quit smoking cigarettes and give up drinking alcohol; alcohol has been a great nuisance, truth told. Create a piece of work for those individuals I care deeply about. I think I'm probably young enough to state that there are heaps of things I haven't done yet and, most likely, haven't considered doing—which means there is probably reason for optimism.

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?

I think that I would love to run a small cafe with a constantly changing menu. I love to cook, have spent a fair amount of time learning a number of dishes, about this and that related to the culinary experience, through travel—Chinese, Tibetan, Czech, Siamese, Kazakh, and others; and I enjoy making people feel welcome—am very particular about such things. Likewise, a small organic farm, with kids running about and goats and chickens, is something I still hope for.

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

In short, and think that I feel confident saying this has been said before, that I must have read this before, but I genuinely feel that I am predisposed to creating – rather than, say, solely writing, and there be no one-upmanship involved – poetry. In many ways, I view Jackson Mac Low or Kenneth Patchen as models for what it is I am attempting to achieve with regards to my work.

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

I am a constant reader of poetry, short stories, and essays of all kinds. I particularly enjoy the writings and intellectual fervor of self-described contrarian Christopher Hitchens, regardless of whether my own political leanings are in accord with his own on any particular occasion, so I will say he is always somewhere close by. For most recent great book, and actually it was a re-read, I will say Kenneth Patchen's Albion Moonlight. Every page of Patchen's work is filled with what I will simply describe as hazardously delicious and exceptionally engaging; it is spellbinding. With regards to film, I have recently viewed Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time in the American West—and then a nice documentary on filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. On all fronts, genius is inspiring!

19 - What are you currently working on?

Apart from an exhibition of visual poems at Anglo-American University in Prague, planned for August and early September, and a new manuscript of work tentatively entitled We Lose Our Days by Preening Them, being happy seems most apropos these days.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Peter Norman’s At the Gates of the Theme Park


What He Found in the Vacuum Bag

Dust, great cotton-candy wads of it.
Three paper clips.
Human hair: his own and yours,
intractably entwined.
Five cents in pennies.
Veins and arteries of thread,
bloodless, unpulsing in the dust.
Crumbs of a meal you shared
with him, that night
when hope stirred bravely
in the candlelight, in the sure flow
of wine from a neck unstopped.
Fingernail clippings.
A pencil’s tip.
Charred wick and chips of cork.
Particles of sound: your chair
scraped back from the table;
voices, the mounting crescendo.
A busted thumbtack.
A spider asphyxiated.
Molecules and atoms, a ravelled mess,
a brood of dissonances made one.

In Peter Norman’s first trade poetry collection, At the Gates of the Theme Park (Toronto ON: Mansfield Press, 2010), are poems that are not so much tight as bullet-proof, often lines that resonate on the page and nearly hum with energy. From publishing poems in The Peter F. Yacht Club, The New Formalist to the chapbook After Stillness (above/ground press, 2004) to this (as well as a novel forthcoming with Douglas and McIntyre in the new year), Norman’s poems maintain a fine line between play and restraint, something best seen in his sonnet/essay collaboration with Stephen Brockwell, Wild Clover Honey and The Beehive, 28 Sonnets on the Sonnet (Ottawa ON: The Rideau Review Press, 2004), a magnificent banter between the two poets that should have been more widely available (and hopefully, at some point, it will be).

Peter Norman is an explorer of forms, writing poems for/after such as Margaret Avison, Georg Trakl and even Stuart Ross, who later became his editor for this collection of first-person lyrics, each word carefully placed one after the other, relentlessly carved and carved down to the foremost bone, with the slight trace of Ross’ surreal influence. There are a lot of exquisite moments, little gems of beauty, but when does subtle become too subtle, too slight-of-hand? Norman’s strength, certainly, comes from the minute play of familiar forms, tweaked familiar but just out-of-focus, but there are moments, still, that these poems could have played more, restrained themselves less, and been allowed, perhaps, to stretch out a bit. Norman creates for himself a tension between this restraint and formal play, one that feels as though he is still negotiating, one that works with a wonderful ease in some pieces, and in others, feels as though the play should have been allowed more leeway. Where is the fun, the banter, the expressive wit of Norman’s poems from that collaborative chapbook? Why do so many of his poems in this collection have to sound so serious, not a single eye giving that quick, fourth-wall wink?

Stuffed

after Margaret Avison

Somebody stuffs the world in at my eyes.
It’s pre-digested: I just let it break
the antiquated locks on the optic doors. My rice
is grey as corpse flesh and my whisky quakes
when riot cops march by. Electric air
creates a raised-hair halo. Desolate,
I shunt my toys from gate to gate and bear
the unseen force of all that freight
crammed through lenses at the break of morning,
bleak as the Yangtze and the leprous welts
that huddle on its flesh as a kind of warning.
Abstract, the characters reveal little else
than a sad, inconsequential blur.
There is no change, no listener.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

12 or 20 questions: with Gabriella Goliger

Gabriella Goliger’s new book Girl Unwrapped, a novel, will be published in the fall of 2010 by Arsenal Pulp Press. Her first book, Song of Ascent, won the 2001 Upper Canada Writer's Craft Award. She was co-winner of the 1997 Journey Prize for short fiction, was a finalist for this prize in 1995 and won the Prism International award in 1993. She has also been published in a number of journals and anthologies including Best New American Voices 2000 and Contemporary Jewish Writing in Canada.

Her educational credentials include a B.A. from McGill University and an M.A. in English literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Born in Italy, Gabriella grew up in Montreal and has also lived in Israel, the Eastern Arctic, Victoria, B.C. and Ottawa, Ontario.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book, Song of Ascent, a collection of linked short stories, turned me into a writer because I worked on it many long years. Loosely based on my parents' lives, the writing brought me closer to the struggles, hopes and heartaches of that generation of Holocaust-era Jews. My new novel, Girl Unwrapped, still grapples with the shadow cast by World War II but from viewpoint of the "new" generation. Set in the 1960s, it's a coming-of-age story of a girl whose budding lesbianism clashes with the mores of her times and her parents' desperate need for family regeneration. Sounds like a dark tale, but actually, the book includes quite a bit of humour.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I love the scope of fiction, the creation of a complex imaginary world that mirrors and sheds light on the real one. I love trying to inhabit a character's soul and telling that soul's story.

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 very, very slow. My early drafts are like sketches that I slowly fill in with detail. But even my "sketches" take me a long time.

4 - Where does a piece 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?

With Song of Ascent I wrote each story as an independent entity and only later pulled them together and re-jigged bits to make the stories flow as a connected narrative. With Girl Unwrapped, I aimed at a novel from the outset.

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

I do enjoy readings. I like reading aloud and connecting with the audience.
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?
Each work poses its own questions. One of the questions inherent in Girl Unwrapped is: how does one maintain a healthy tie to family, community and tradition, while growing into one's independent self?

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 current role is the same as the ancient one: to open hearts and minds.
I like what Kafka said: "A book must be an axe to break the frozen sea inside us." But a writer shouldn't consciously be trying to do anything other than write a good piece of work. That is the ultimate role and goal.

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

I had an excellent experience with my editor, Susan Safyan, at Arsenal Pulp Press. She made suggestions that I could accept or refute; we worked as a team to create a better book.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I like a quote by Samuel Beckett: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

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?
I aim for a similar working day as that of all the other working Joe's and Jill's out there. Start around 9:00 a.m. and carry on as long as possible, Monday to Friday. I don't usually write beyond 3:00 p.m. though. My brain is best in the morning.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I read. Walking and music are good too.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Pines in the Gatineau, autumn leaves on Mount Royal, the hot wind in Jerusalem, the sea in Victoria. I feel I have many homes and none is my ultimate one.

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? 

Not really.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
So many. One of the writers I'm currently in love with is the Israeli author, David Grossman. Others I've read recently are Ian McEwan and Wayson Choy. I'm influenced by everything I've read. There's no one master (or mistress) I've studied and tried to imitate.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Write my next book.

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? O6, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Perhaps I would be a naturalist. But how does one make a career out of that? Nature tours?

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Shyness and a yearning to communicate.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Someone to Run With by David Grossman. Harder for me to remember films. I liked Adoration and Broken Flowers.

19 - What are you currently working on?

A novel set in 1930s, 1940s Palestine about a Jewish woman's love affair with a British policeman and the consequences of this relationship.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

2 new above/ground press chapbooks: Marilyn Irwin + rob mclennan

for when you pick daisies
by Marilyn Irwin
$4


16 Yonge
by rob mclennan
$4

a/g subscribers receive complimentary copies
to order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, $2) c/o rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa ON K1R 6R7

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

rob mclennan reads Tuesday, August 10th at the ART BAR (Toronto) with Marcus McCann + Sandra Ridley


Three Ottawa writers at Toronto's Art Bar Reading Series; featured readers + open set; free admission, Tuesday, August 10, 2010; 693 Bloor Street West, Toronto. 8pm.

rob mclennan is the author of over twenty titles of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, most recently the poetry collections wild horses (University of Alberta Press) and kate street (Moira), and the novel missing persons
(The Mercury Press). An active editor, publisher, writer and reviewer, he posts regularly at robmclennan.blogspot.com

Marcus McCann is the author of eight chapbooks and one full length collection, Soft Where (Chaudiere Books, 2009). Canadian Bookseller calls Soft Where "poetry for a new age"; Ottawa Magazine calls it "a collection of throbbing, muscular poems"; RM Vaughan says, "this is not poetry for cowards"; John Barton calls his work "nimble, energetic, orgiastically astute." Guerilla Magazine says, "lock up your sons." Find more of the same at www.marcusmccann.com.

In 2009, Sandra Ridley was co-winner of the bpNichol Chapbook Award and was a finalist for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Fallout, her first book of poetry, was published this spring by Saskatchewan’s Hagios Press. An earlier version of this manuscript won the 2008 Alfred G. Bailey Prize. Ridley’s poems can also be found in journals including Fiddlehead, Grain, New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, RAMPIKE, and This Magazine, and as a chapbook titled Rest Cure published by Ottawa’s Apt. 9 Press.

http://www.artbar.org/

Monday, July 26, 2010

12 or 20 (small press) questions: Brian Clements on Firewheel Editions/sentence magazine


Firewheel Editions publishes books and chapbooks of poetry, prose poetry, cross-genre writing, and other hard-to-classify projects. Firewheel also publishes Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics, which is devoted to the prose poem and to the gray areas around the prose poem, especially in work that exists on the boundary between prose poem and free verse on one hand and the prose poem and the essay on the other. In early 2011, Firewheel will launch Kugelmass, a journal of literary humor.

Brian Clements edits Firewheel Editions and Firewheel's flagship publication Sentence. His most recent books are An Introduction to the Prose Poem (anthology from Firewheel), And How to End It (prose poems from Quale Press), and Disappointed Psalms (poems from Meritage Press). He coordinates the MFA in Creative and Professional Writing at Western Connecticut State University.


1 - When did Firewheel Editions and sentence magazine first start? How have your original goals as a publisher shifted since you started, if at all? And what have you learned through the process?
Firewheel first started in the mid-late 90's in Dallas. My friend Joe Ahearn and I had gotten the idea into our heads that an anthology of Texas writing would sell well in Texas, so we published the first Best Texas Writing under Joe's imprint, Rancho Loco Press. We turned out to be wrong, of course; apparently people in Texas love all things Texan except Texan writing. Joe threw in the towel after the first volume; I wanted to give it another shot, so I set up Firewheel Editions (which was named after the section of Garland, TX, where I lived at the time) to publish a second volume of Best Unwanted Texas Writing, and I expanded the scope a bit to also publish chapbooks. I did a great little collection by Kristin Ryling of her wonderously strange poems on loose leaf pages wrapped in rice paper. I still have a number of copies of that signed and numbered production. I loved publishing Kristin's work, which has some points of contact with some of my own work, though they may not be immediately apparent; I caught the bug then for publishing work that for one reason or another--style, typography, scope, content, whatever--is difficult to place for publication or that in some way pushes normal expectations of a book.
Sentence started a few years later to fill the void left by the closure of Peter Johnson's The Prose Poem: an International Journal. Peter was very kind to serve as a Contributing Editor and to lend me a lot of advice and contacts which made the launch of Sentence go more smoothly and successfully than I could have hoped it would.

The goals of Firewheel have remained pretty consistent. I still am interested in publishing authors and texts who have a hard time finding publication elsewhere, for whatever reason. I would like to be able to do a lot more books than I currently have time to do, and
Kugelmass will take up a lot of attention in the coming year.

What have I learned? I have learned that the time and effort that you put into training interns is greater than the value of having interns on staff. I need to find some folks who are interested in the mission of Firewheel and
Sentence and who are interested in volunteering their time.

2 - What first brought you to publishing?
An aversion to publishing. The whole generally accepted notion of what publishing is, what it means, what it does, is for the most part totally out of line with the actual function of most of the publishing that goes on in poetry. In the US, at least, poetry publishing is not about reaching large audiences or becoming a part of the general culture--that happens sometimes, but rarely, and hardly anyone ever goes into poetry publishing for that reason and succeeds. The publication of poetry is an exercise in recording a number of small conversations that are going on simultaneously. Most poets are aware of the conversation they want to be in on, and have inserted themselves into poetry communities where they are able to engage in that conversation with other folks they know are interested in that conversation. Publishers do what they do not in order to make money, but as a way of participating in the conversation, just like the poets (indeed, the publishers tend to be poets). This is why all of the "What's Wrong with Poetry" critics are entirely off base from the beginning when they argue that poets only write for other poets. They have this assumption that the real poetry market is a commercial market that includes Garrison Keillor and is attached in a direct line to Robert Frost--their proof is that the public doesn't read poetry, as though sales and popularity were the measure of an entire genre. That market is just the shadow of some imagined Golden Age created by the New Critics and handed down to school children for almost a century via the vehicle of high school (and college) English teachers. In reality, poetry isn't a commercial market, it's just a conversation that we're having with ourselves and with our culture, with our language. We don't publish to reach the public; we publish to reach those who are genuinely interested in the conversation.

3- What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?
See #2.
4- What do you see your press doing that no one else is?
The highlighting of prose poetry, mostly. I think with our books and chapbooks we probably hit a “crossover” market that not many people are doing. There are journals and presses out there that claim to sit on the fence between the mainstream (whatever that may be) and outside the mainstream, but I’m not sure they actually do that. They actually end up publishing work from outside the mainstream that is able to work well by using a mix of traditional and experimental techniques. Firewheel also, I think, does a good job of matching book content to book form—but I think there are a lot of small presses out there doing good work in that area.
5 - What do you see as the most effective way to get new publications out into the world?
If by the “most effective” you mean the most efficient, then it would probably to be by distributing .pdf files readable on computers and handhelds for free. Firewheel is about to move into doing e-books, but they wont’ be free.
6- How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?
I only propose edits when I think a piece is 95% there in terms of readiness for publication and only needs a little touching up. Otherwise, I will have a frank discussion with the poet on what I think needs to be done only if it’s something I think will be right for us in the end and only if the poet expresses interest in having that discussion. I think that’s probably the way most small press/journal editors approach it.

7 - How do your books get distributed, and the journal? What are your usual print runs?
We’re going into POD now, so won’t have traditional print runs. We distribute online through our own website, via Small Press Distribution, via EBSCO, and via Amazon.

8- How many other people are involved with editing or production? Do you work with other editors, and if so, how effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?
I have been the lone editor of Sentence for the first 8 issues, but I’m about to turn the editing of the journal over to Brian Johnson. Ellen McGrath Smith has been a great addition to the Sentence staff as Reviews Editor for the last couple of issues. David Holub will be editing Kugelmass, and I will be focusing more on Firewheel’s book publishing. So, since the Texas anthologies that Joe and I edited, I’ve never really been in a situation where I’ve had to share editorial duties with anyone, and that’s probably for the best. I think multiple editor situations usually end up in a selection for the middle that can rip the power out of a publication’s editorial vision.

9 - How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?
It probably has helped me to become less concerned with publication, which can only be a good thing for the writing. I realize, in a way that I wouldn’t have before I started Sentence, that the conversation is what’s most important, and there are many, many voices and audiences available for conversation.

10 - How do you approach the idea of publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he still ran Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Books' editors had titles during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman and bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see the whole question as irrelevant?
I made it a policy never to publish my own poems in Sentence because I did not want anyone to see the journal as a vehicle for me to promote myself. I did write reviews for the journal early in its development, which I see as a significant difference from publishing one’s own poems. I would not publish a book of my own poems with Firewheel, but I did publish an anthology that I edited,An Introduction to the Prose Poem, which, again, I see as a significant distinction from publishing one’s own poems. The anthology is designed as a textbook, and I think it’s a significant contribution to the field, so I see it as a kind of service publication. I like the idea of the cooperative press, where the editors publish their own work but also publish the work of others outside the cooperative.

11 - How do you see the press evolving? How do you see the journal evolving? Do you see them as separate?
The future of Sentence is directly connected to the future of Firewheel, and I hope Sentence continues to thrive well into the distant future. It certainly will change, perhaps in subtle ways, under Brian Johnson’s editorship. We will continue to offer the Sentence Book Award. My goal right now is to help launch Kugelmass and to develop Firewheel’s list of poetry titles, including moving into e-books.
12 - What, as a publisher, are you most proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have overlooked about your publications? What is your biggest frustration?
I don’t really have many frustrations regarding the press, other than the fact that I haven’t been able to release as many books as I had hoped by this point and that I haven’t been able to devote any time at all, really, to soliciting grants, which certainly would have helped with producing more books. I’m proud that we were able to publish a few truly excellent titles—especially Denise Duhamel’s Mille et un sentiments, the anthology, and Catherine Sasanov’s Had Slaves. I’m proud that Sentence has had many poems anthologized in Best American Poetry and Best New Poets. I’m extremely proud of the quality of work that Sentence has maintained, the quality of the special feature sections in Sentence, and the fact that the journal has come to be recognized as a significant contribution to the study of prose poetry.
13 - Who were your early publishing models when starting out?
Really liked the look and feel of Jubilat, so we modeled our look on it partially. Peter Johnson’s The Prose Poem: an International Journal, of course, was Sentence’s immediate precursor, and Sentence would not exist if it weren’t for that journal’s existence (and demise).
14 - How do the press and journal work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What journals or presses do you see your publications in dialogue with? How important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?
If by “immediate” you mean “local”, then hardly at all. We live in a part of Connecticut where most literary attention is directed toward New York and no local literary community to speak of has risen. The university (Western Connecticut) is greatly supportive of the journal and press, though. Most of Sentence’s connections have been internationally widespread, and I think that’s appropriate. The international representation in the pages of the journal certainly has been big part of Sentence’s success. When we first started, there was probably more interest in the prose poem abroad than in the US. That may not be the case now. I think Sentence is in dialogue with Quarter After Eight, Double Room, Quick Fiction, most directly, because of their scopes.

15 - Do you hold regular or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other events?
We have done from time to time. They aren’t great sales generators, but they’re important in terms of spreading word of mouth about the journal. We’ve been particularly successful with that sort of event at a couple of conferences—AWP, ALTA. We’ve done release events in London, San Franciscio, New York, that have been worth the effort, but I don’t see them as essential to the well-being of the journal.
16 - How do you utilize the internet, if at all, to further your goals?
Firewheel’s website (http://firewheel-editions.org) has been a great part of our ability to succeed financially (read as: “remain afloat”), and we’ve been extremely lucky to have the help of two webmasters, first Michael Puttonen and now Tom Nackid, who’ve done great work for free or almost free. Our direct sales through the web site have saved us tons of money in commissions to re-sellers. So, all you readers out there, remember—you do a publisher a great favour when you order from them directly!

17 - Do you take submissions? If so, what aren't you looking for?
Of course we do. For Sentence, we’re not looking for verse, free verse, or stories. Only prose poems and essays related to prose poetry. For Kugelmass, we’re only looking for stories and essays—damned funny ones. Firewheel is currently reading manuscripts only for the Firewheel Chapbook Award and the Sentence Book Award, but will open up at a later date for general submissions.

18 - Tell me about three of your most recent titles, and why they're special.
Had Slaves, by Catherine Sasanov. A book of tightly composed poems based on the poet’s research into her ancestors’ slaveholding. Addresses this complex subject in a way no book ever has, both factually based and personally revealing.

The Important Thing Is… Card Game, by Marjorie Tesser. It’s a game! It’s a book! It’s both! As Bob Holman says, it’s “a riot, a concept, a poem you can play and play with. Beginning from comments solicited at a Suggestion Box at the Bowery Poetry Club, using those metapoems to conceive both the book-as-card-game motif (roll over, Surrealism!) and the fill-in-the-blanks of the cards themselves, [Tesser] slowly builds a breathing inner life through the cards' seemingly implacable random chance operations. How she does this is how a poem works: machinations of language funneling to sorrow and joy, thrills, offhanded and wacky happiness.

An Introduction to the Prose Poem, edited by Brian Clements and Jamey Dunham: Provides a broad view of the development of the prose poem and offers beginning writers a variety of strategies that have been commonly used in the composition of prose poems. The selections is broadly international and ranges from some of the most traditional (lyrical) prose poems to the experimental.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Mark Goldstein's Tracelanguage: A Shared Breath


In the acknowledgments of his new poetry collection, Toronto poet and publisher Mark Goldstein writes on the purpose and constructions of his Tracelanguage: A Shared Breath (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2010):

This “Shared Breath” of Paul Celan’s seminal work, Atemwende, is a transtranslation because, to quote Mauriece Blanchot, “translating is madness.” One would like to feign accuracy where there is none and yet Lagerbrot can never be Challah, no matter how hungry we are. In exhausting this hope, we need no longer circle the poem seeking rest having accepted its groundlessness.


That being said, the idea of “transtranslation,” what Erin Mouré coined as “transelation,” is certainly not new, but the applications on how these shifts are made are certainly becoming more engaged as the form continues to adapt, with some recent examples including George Bowering’s Kerrisdale Elegies (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1986; Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2008), Mouré’s own Pessoa collection Sheep’s Vigil by a Fervent Person (Toronto ON: Anansi, 2001), as well as her more recent collaboration with Montreal poet and translator Oana Avasilichioaei, Expeditions of a Chimaera (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2009). 

To write inside, out and through another work, collaborating a voice between your own and the original remains a challenging task, and one few seem capable of mastering, yet Goldstein’s close and quick attention to the slowness and mutability of Celan show his wide appreciation and knowledge of the late poet’s work.

DEAREST,
regale me with snow, for we worsen –
each soft shoulder greens
a lone oak tree, sheltered by summer
high above that
child’s shriek.

Not that this is Goldstein’s first conversation with a dead poet, the slim volume After Rilke (BookThug, 2008) being a series of letters written to the late San Francisco Renaissance poet Jack Spicer. For this collection, Tracelanguage: A Shared Breath reads as a conversation of another kind, yet still a dialogue between his own writing and that of the late Paul Celan, known for a poetry that does more than survive some of the darkest parts of the Second World War, but manages in such a way that even the darkness brings in light, in a poetry of words broken, smashed and rebuilt, furthering the entire field.

Celan’s Atemwende, originally published in German in 1967 and translated into English by Pierre Joris in 1995 (fragments of such were also translated by Michael Hamburger for his 1972 Poems of Paul Celan), translates to “reversal of breath,” giving Goldstein the opportunity for his “shared breath.” A poem built of fragments not as obvious as Mouré’s “sheep,” Tracelanguage: A Shared Breath is a poem crafted out of deep attention. Goldstein breathes, and Celan’s air reaches deep through every pore, every cell. In the introduction to Poems of Paul Celan, Hamburger wrote that “the anguish, the darkness, the shadow of death are present in all his work, early and late, including the most high-spirited and sensuous.” In Goldstein’s “shared breath,” this darkness feels embraced but with an articulation of something else as well, an optimism across the chasm of years between that text and this, and somehow binding the two.

BLACK,
that evocative wound
where the eye digs after you –
its heart-root, badly bruised
a crown land
where remains our bed:

by the stream, you become –
we become

numb, in a seminal sense, we split the seed and speak
of innermost permanence.

This name-giving has to end: this name-
giving must not end, without you

one knows no providence.

Friday, July 23, 2010

12 or 20 questions: with Nikki Reimer



Nikki Reimer is a poet, blogger, curator, arts event planner and artist
Author of [sic] (Frontenac House, 2010) and the chapbook fist things first (Wrinkle Press, 2009). 
Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Is DeadW 2010West Coast Line, and Matrix. Her East Van Cats photography project has appeared atJust Act Natural and on Vancouver Is Awesome. Two of her poems were featured in the poetry-inspired dance show “Larimer St.” performed by Decidedly Jazz Danceworks in 2005. 
Nikki is an active member of the Kootenay School of Writing collective. She hangs out in East 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?
Last year Nicole Markotic’s Wrinkle Press published my chapbook fist things first, a selection of (em)bod(ied) poems written in 2000 that proved to still have legs, ha ha.
My first book, called [sic] (Frontenac House 2010), came out in April of this year and is my first full-length publication, which I suppose has conferred all the legitimacies that a first book confers. As for being life-changing, I think it’s allowed me to let go of certain anxieties and just write, rather than remaining mired in angst about “being a writer.” Also, my publisher has been great to work with, and the book tour was terrific fun.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I didn’t come to poetry first, actually, though poetry was my first “serious” literary pursuit. I’ve written many stories and plays from childhood through to the teen years, and then switched to poetry to explore my teenage angst. Poetry stuck. (So did angst.)
At University of Calgary I studied poetry reading and writing with Nicole Markotic and Fred Wah. Lately I’ve been exploring a bit of fiction and non-fiction writing as well.
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’m always working on too many things at once; I am prone to having a million little ideas that never make it beyond the incipient stage. I’ve had to try to rein myself in with ideas garnered from time management and project management books, which is anathema to my preferred bohemian way of living. I also tend to binge or not write at all, but when I am not writing, I’m usually soaking up ideas and influences and collecting bits and scraps of potential raw materials. Once I have a first draft, I usually edit pretty heavily, so the final piece is quite different from the initial one.
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?
My process is fairly intuitive, at least at the beginning. Once I’ve been noodling on something for a while I start thinking of it in terms of a project, then I try to structure the rest of the writing to align with the idea, though as soon as I have a limit or structure I seem to want to write away from it. i.e., there’s no way I could write an entire conceptual book, I just don’t seem to have the discipline, or the desire. I’m a proud dilettante.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Yes, much. I enjoy being on stage, and am grateful for the performance training I received as a youth from organized dance and music activities, which I think translates into my performance style, in that I’m attuned to my body and the rhythms of my speech. Audience reactions can be quite instructive as to whether a certain piece is “working” or not.
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 read somewhere that flarf vs. conceptualism is the question du jour, but I can’t say that it’s a pressing concern of mine. I think of my work as being closer to cultural criticism: I am an extremely sensitive, emotional, moody person and from day to day find much in the world that moves me to overwhelming sadness or rage. Cliché or saccharine though it may sound, I write because I have to, out of a response to my own anger, grief, or frustration at forces outside of my control. I’m interested in the lives of women, in spatiality and politics of space and urban planning, in bodies, and in daily quotidian things like how we move through our (corporatized, neo-liberalized, slated for mass-consumption) lives.
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?
To agitate, to inform, to provoke, to question, to seek, to inspire, to force the reader to pay attention. What is the current role? I dunno. I’m a depressive, a fatalist and a pessimist, and I wish I could be more hopeful about the potential role for critical, challenging, difficult, thoughtful, expressive writing in “today’s fractured multi-media landscape,” but I’m just not. I don’t know who is paying attention, and I don’t know why we (meaning “me”) spend so much of our inner/outer resources on an arguably dead, or at least marginal, art form.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Both. I’ve not had much extensive outside editing on the work that has been published, but I’m fortunate to have a partner who is also an excellent writer, reader and editor, so I turn to him for first critical response on my work.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Mind your own game.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
I find it very hard, but I think it’s necessary for a writer to develop a critical position. I don’t consider myself a naturally critical writer, or thinker, and I’ve been trying to push myself more in this direction. The posts I write on Lemon Hound could be classed as pop cultural-colloquial-pseudo-intellectual-poetic hybrids. I try to be entertaining so no one notices my lack of critical acumen, although I suppose I’ve just outed myself.
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?
I have no typical day; perhaps I’d be more productive if I did. I’m currently living an entirely unsustainable bohemian fantasy, as I haven’t worked for regular pay in over a year. (Not for lack of sporadic, frenzied attempts to find work, mind you.) All this free time has been hard on my writing because I think I need a structure to write/rail against, and because I usually feel too guilty about all the free time to really be productive. (“Ohmigod, I can’t write, I should be doing something important! The laundry! My filing!”) Yes, I realize it’s neurotic. I’m sure when I have full-time work again I’ll look back on this period of time and hate myself for not being more productive.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I find it’s good to shelve it for a while and do other things, read other poetry, read criticism, talk to other writers.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Laundry and coffee.
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?
I’m influenced by the way people use language in the marketplace and the social world. How is language used in the newspaper? Online? On the bus? For daily communication?
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I am fed, challenged and inspired by the writers who are my friends and the writers in my community, specifically my partner Jonathon Wilcke, the good folks at and around the Kootenay School of Writing (Donato Mancini, Michael Barnholden, Pauline Butling, Cris Costa, Nancy Gillespie, Jordan Scott, Jason Christie, et. al.) and also the many women writers I am privileged to know and work and discourse with, in particular Nicole Markotic, Sina Queyras, Jacqueline Turner, Larissa Lai, Rita Wong, Meredith Quartermain, Dorothy Trujillo Lusk, Renee Rodin, Alex Leslie, Jen Currin, Christine Leclerc, Helen Hajnockzy, Sonnett L’Abbe, Natalee Caple, and many other fine people in my community.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
That’s a tough question to answer at what is conceivably the “start” of my “career.” Let me get back to you in 30 years or so.
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?
Artist, photographer, town crier.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I can’t not write. I’ve tried; doesn’t work.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I just finished inhaling a pile of poetry books that I picked up from the wonderful Audrey’s Books in Edmonton: Ken Belford’s Decompositions, Frank Davey’s Bardy Google, derek beaulieu’s How to Write, Susan Holbrook’s Joy Is So Exhausting, Kyle Buckley’s The Laundromat Essay, Nancy Shaw & Catriona Strang’s Light Sweet Crude. Each books works with language differently, but each book inspired, entertained, amused and challenged me and inspired me to work with my own language.

I don’t see much film, but last year at the Pacific Cinematheque’s Frames of Mind mental health series I saw Bill Rose’s This Dust of Words, a documentary about a brilliant woman named Elizabeth Wiltsee with an alleged IQ of 200 who studied Beckett at Stanford, lived fiercely and independently, suffered mental illness, shunned normative society, slept in the doorway of a church in small town California, and died at the San Luis Reservoir. This particular part of the world where Wiltsee’s remains were found is peaceful and breathtaking. Should I be so blessed as to choose my final place of rest, I hope to die somewhere half as beautiful. This movie inspired a suite of crow poems in my current manuscript, dedicated to Wiltsee.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m working on a few things intermittently at the moment. A poetry manuscript that explores notions of collectivity and antagonism and the language of disagreement. An experimental novel about women, mental illness and the ghost of Edie Sedgwick. A feminist, pornographic erasure art book based on a biography of Canadian Tire scion Martha Billes. And I’m trying to read more books than Ryan Fitzpatrick & Jonathan Ball and co. (http://95books.tumblr.com/)