Carl Hare has written poems and
plays including The Eagle and the Tiger, which has been successfully produced and is in the archives of the
National Library of Norway. His children’s poems have been set to music by
Canadian composer Malcolm Forsyth and was commissioned by the National Arts
Centre for part of the libretto for Forsyth’s A Ballad of Canada, performed to
acclaim in Ottawa and on tour in London, UK. He has a degree in English
Honours, and an MA from the University of Alberta and a Diploma with Honours
from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in England. Among his awards are the
Rutherford Gold Medal in English and the Sterling Award for Outstanding
Contribution to Theatre in Edmonton. For more information on Carl Hare visit www.carlhare.ca
How did your first book change your
life?
In one way
it didn’t. I had delivered a poem about
Malcolm Forsyth at his memorial service, and afterward a poet I knew asked if I
would submit a book of poems for his publishing firm. I put together one from my etudes, but it was
rejected. Subsequently the collection, A
Weathering of Years, was accepted by Iguana Press and published.
In one way
it did. The experience I had with this book was the first time I had dealt with
the book industry—a complete change from my professional world of the theatre
and university instruction.
How does your most recent work compare
to your previous ? How does it feel
different?
On the
River of Time, an epic
poem in three volumes, compares to A Weathering of Years as a whale to a
minnow. It feels different in
scope: it ranges over 3,000 years; the
other deals with seasons of the year as they reflect our aging years. It deals with major figures in the eventful
journeys; the other with family, friends, and strangers glimpsed fortuitously. There are many other differences, but these
should give the idea.
How did you come to playwriting first,
as opposed to, say, poetry, fiction or non-fiction?
This is
really a chicken-or-egg question. I was
fascinated by the relationship of Ibsen and his wife Suzannah and wanted to
write a play about them. In studying
Ibsen’s life I realized that up to the age of forty he wrote primarily in
verse, and even in his prose plays the use of symbol and image pervades his
work. And so I decided to write a poetic
play. But you don’t just sit down and
write poetry. I wrote many etudes in
different forms, styles and rhythms, many of these as occasional poems for
birth, death, weddings, etc. And then I
wrote the play. And then I started
writing my wife sonnet sequences, odes and other forms from our fortieth
wedding anniversary on. And the rest
follows.
How long does it take to start any
particular writing project?
It depends
on the circumstances. One time I
discovered that a wedding couple wanted a poem from me, and I hastily wrote a
sonnet on a napkin during the wedding feast and gave it to them before they cut
the cake. The longest is for my present
project, an epic poem in trilogy form—the shock that provoked it happening
twenty-five years ago.
Does your writing initially come
quickly, or is it a slow process?
It depends
on the circumstances that provoke the writing, as in the wedding incident
described above. For lyric pieces I may
take a while to decide on the form to use—I am, I think, basically formalist,
although I do write free verse as well.
First drafts of lyric pieces definitely look close to the final
shape. For the epic I’m working on a “book”
from the very start, which involves as a narrative work much time considering
the subject, time, and place in a lengthy work.
I have a shelf of binders and workbooks for the material I researched
for three different periods. Each of the
three books has been through nine drafts, although the basic material has on
the whole remained constant.
Where does a poem usually begin for you?
For lyric or
short narrative poems, from a memory or sparked by the sight or sound of
something. For the epic, the shock of
learning that one of the great English poets, while he wrote The Fairie
Queene, simultaneously wrote a treatise that in essence advocated the
genocide of the Irish by starvation. My
short pieces can end up as a collection—A Weathering of Years, for
example. The epic definitely involves
working on a book from the very beginning.
Are public readings part or counter to
you creative process? Are you the sort
of writer who enjoys doing readings?
My major
professional career has been as an actor, a director, and a professor of
theatre. I not only enjoy doing public
readings, of which I have done a number, but also recording poems. As well as another poet’s poems I have
recorded the seventeen hours of Odysseus, Book One of the trilogy On the
River of Time, and Spenser,
Book Two. Audible may be issuing them as audio books in the fall once the
technical problems for Book One have been solved.
Do you have any theoretical concerns
behind your writing?
It all
depends on what I am attempting to do.
Every generation tries to move on from the previous, and presently there
is still the tension between the formalists and those who want to break down or
work through forms. For example, the
beat poets, who in their material plunge into the social and personal crises of
society, work in a very basic formal way.
My own questions deal with the choice of the epic form to explore the
serious questions of what we are and what we do—what are the themes? What styles to explore, then? How will these affect a work that in three
large books explores what has happened in three thousand years of our history? It is no accident that my motto is: “Imagination is the breath of life.”
What do you see the current role of the
writer being in larger culture?
A writer—and
in this case, a poet—today has the same role s/he has always had: to respond to the world in all its aspects—culture,
nature, the sense of being—and in doing so find the means of expression that
can touch the mind and feelings of those who read her/his work.
Do you find the process of working with
an outside editor difficult or essential for both?
Essential. I have worked with the same editor for
forty-eight years, Carolyn Zapf. She was
the dramaturg/writer for my theatre company, Company One; created the script
for my production of Survivors of the Holocaust at the Saidye Bronfman
Centre, in Montreal; and has edited the work I have published and am working
on. She is thorough, shrewd, and
honest. We can argue over a point—we had
an argument over an incident in Spenser for a month and a half—but it was an
argument, not a quarrel, and good things came out of it.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve
heard (but not necessarily given to you directly)?
Do not
compromise in what you are doing and have the courage to follow it through to—if
possible—a satisfactory end.
How easy is it for you to move between
genres (playwriting to poetry)?
I don’t
think “easy” is the way to describe it.
With an Honours degree in English and an M.A., with training at the
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, with Jacques Lecoq and the Laban School of
Movement, I have learned to explore deeply a play in all its aspects—in
research, in directing, in acting, and in visualization. In Company One we explored the creation of
new events as we became an ensemble. It
was not difficult to imagine and create a play in the form necessary for the
subject. And for poetry, my experience
in acting in or directing eighteen of Shakespeare’s plays has fostered in me
sensitivity to the nuances and moment of the word. None of this was easy; but all of it was
worthwhile.
What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have
one? How does a typical day (for you)
begin?
Throughout
my career I have worked when and where I could.
When my family was young, I would work on a script while the children
played about my chair in the living room.
When I realized that to complete the epic trilogy I would have to
complete a canto a month—at least thirty pages of verse, and twenty-one cantos
in each book—I worked wherever I was. I
wrote on a bench in front of a restaurant while waiting for my family in Disney
World. I have written in my grown
children’s homes, in hotel rooms, while the children were skate boarding—almost
anywhere you can imagine, including, of course, offices. The key to work is concentration, absorption
in the work at hand. I have no set
schedule, only the need to do what is necessary at the time.
When your writing gets stalled, where do
you turn or return, for (for lack of a particular word) inspiration?
I am
presently working through the final draft of Book Three, Archer, with the notes given me during a
three-hour meeting with my editor. Work
needs to be done to deepen some of the characterizations, for example. I do not have the answers yet, but the
characters are in my mind constantly; I talk sideways to friends about similar
people; I get slight glimpses of what might occur, but I’m not ready yet to
reveal them fully. The writing has not
stalled; it is fructifying in the mind.
Throughout the work on these
three books, the scenes that came onto the page were visualized in my mind, and
the characters developed and changed as time went on, with new figures arriving
and maturing on their own.
What fragrance reminds you of home?
“The odour
of old books”
David W. McFadden once said that books
come from books, but are there other forms that influence your work, whether
nature, music, sciences or visual art?
In terms of
form and thought, books of poetry do expand my horizon. But nature affects me strongly, both
physically and visually. All the other
influences also affect me, particularly in the way they continue to expand my
conception of the world and the universe and our intricate selves.
What other writers or writing are
important for your work, or simply your life outside your work?
I love
Seamus Heaney, Yeats, Dylan Thomas, Lorna Crozier, Leonard Cohen, Sean O’Casey,
Keats, Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Ben Jonson.
But a writer who was the first to excite me with the power of words was
George Bernard Shaw. Just before I began
to write my Grade Twelve provincial exams in Alberta I happened to read one of
his plays. It struck me like the
proverbial thunderbolt. I was entranced
by the music and form of his showers of words, and I spend night and day
reading all fifty-two of his plays. To
this day I don’t know how I passed my exams.
What would you like to do that you haven’t
done yet?
Finish what
work I have started.
If you could pick another occupation to
attempt, what would it be? Or,
alternatively, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been
a writer?
I have
retired from my main career as actor, director, playwright, professor; writing
has become the “other occupation.”
What made you write, as opposed to doing
something else?
The writing
of the play The Eagle and the Tiger in verse.
What was the last great book you read?
What was the last great film?
What are
you currently working on?
The last
draft of Archer,
Book Three of On the River of Time.
Waiting for
the illustrations to be finished for Sleepy Wing, a book of poems for
children from 2 ½ to 4.
Doing the
fifth draft of Clara: Life, Death,
Love, about my late wife.
Editing the
first draft of Crannies of My Folded Days, a collection of my wife’s
vignettes about an immigrant Norwegian family on a prairie farm.
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