12 or 20 (second series) questions with sophie anne edwards

sophie anne edwards is an environmental artist and writer who works on and off the page, at her desk and in the bush. Her first collection of visual and text-based poetry, Conversations with the Kagawong River (Talonbooks) was recommended by CBC as an October 'must read', and made both CBC's and Quill & Quire's most anticipated fall release lists. Her work has appeared in Empty Mirror, The Capilano Review, CNQ, and the Pi Review among others. A graduate of the Humber College creative writing certificate program, she was longlisted for the 2021 CBC poetry prize, as well as Arc Poetry Magazine's 2019 Poem of the Year. Recently, she was long-listed for Omnidawn's 1st/2nd book prize. She's been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council. Born and raised in Northern Ontario, she lives on Manitoulin Island with her dog Bea and a roster of other Woofers who help in the garden.

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

Seeing my debut book of poetry out in the world is wonderful, but really, it’s the writing itself that changed my life, not the book itself. Writing after wanting to write for so very long has been very healing and fulfilling for me, confidence- and community-building. In the process of writing the book I connected with so many incredible writers and had the opportunity to attend a number of writing residencies. I remember people in the upper years of my literature program being very competitive, so I think I was half expecting something similar in the writing community, but instead I’ve found that writers have been generous, thoughtful, and supportive, which has been so uplifting.

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

I’d say it came to me. I didn’t aim to write a book, and not a book of poetry when I started spending time at the River. I followed the process and found my way to what became a very interdisciplinary, multi-tributary book.

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?

Thirty-five years? Almost forty? I was seven when I decided I wanted to write books. But childhood aside, I’ve had a number of books floating in my head for many years. Some of the writing happens in my head – it floats around, gathers threads, forms and reforms itself – and comes out on the page ‘quickly’ once I get started, then I build it up, or edit it down. Other stuff is very slow – I start something and it just doesn't gel, so I leave it. I’m obsessed with notebooks. I don’t journal anymore, but I have loads of sketch- and notebooks in which I jot thoughts, gather quotes and references. I’ve learned to number the pages, and keep a reference at the back of each notebook so I can find various thoughts later when I sit down to write. My work feels like research. I think of my poetry as non-fiction, so I tend to approach the process in a field research way, probably influenced by my time working on a Geography PhD. I often work in analogue ways, as with the notebooks. I use my typewriters a lot. I write drafts in them, or build up notes as I type, then I eventually transcribe those to the computer and rework or edit them on the computer. I create visual maps of what I’m thinking, and spread stuff around. So, the short answer is it sometimes comes out in a way that might seem quick after a long, slow, thinking and gathering process.

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’m pretty new to all this, but I’m finding each ‘thing’ has its own demands, its own energy and process. My second book, coming out in the fall, is an experimental novel. The first twenty pages ‘just’ came out of me (again, after some of the words circulating in my brain for twenty or so years). The text of those pages have pretty much not changed since (although their order has). Those pages defined the shape of the book, the energy of it, the style – I just followed those first pages and wrote the rest. The hardest part was finding the order as it’s not a traditional novel with an arc, more of a twining narrative. For another project – non-fiction – that I’m mid-way on, the concept came first in combination with some note-taking that didn’t know it was note-taking for a project. This one needs more development to find its shape, which isn’t quite there yet.

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

I didn’t know I would enjoy readings. I live in a pretty rural place, so readings are a rarity. The Talon launch in Vancouver was my first public reading (apart from reading stuff in workshops and at residencies). So now, as a seasoned (ha) reader after four or five events, I’m finding that I enjoy reading the work aloud. The voice does something with the work that isn’t found on the page, and I love the quiet vibe when folks are really into it.

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?

Underneath a lot of my writing are my attempts to situate and to understand my love of this place as a settler, and to not be complacent about, nostalgic with, or to romanticize that love. I’m also very interested in form, and work that challenges the dominance of the page in terms of size, shape, and scale, and what that means for language, form, and reading.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I love Naropa’s slogan – Making the World Safe for Poetry – and what Anne Waldman says about that slogan: that if the world is safe for poetry it's safe for many other things. I think poetry can also make poetry safe for all kinds of ideas, people, histories and make them visible too. Words do work in the world, and I think we need to take that seriously. We’ve imagined and constructed a very particular kind of world, and I hope writers and poets can help us re-imagine a different one.

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

My limited experience so far shows me it’s kinda like working with a really good therapist who’ll call you on your shit, redirect you, and push you to work on stuff between sessions. Writing seems to find itself on/through the page, and sometimes I don’t quite see the connections, the ribbons, the tangles that are either working for me, or tripping me up. My readers have been like good therapists, helping me to see what I need to see more clearly, and also reminding me to not be so hard on myself, and encouraging me to go out in the world.

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

There is so much stuff out there about being disciplined, getting up early and staying up late to get a certain number of words written a day, to be productive and focused. I’ve found that quite debilitating and difficult given what I have to balance and needing to work within my very variable capacity. Chris Turnbull encouraged me with writing slowly, in my head, to not be burdened by productivity. My own best advice, which I always tell the writers I support, is to keep the best hour of each day for myself – whether that’s reading or writing, or thinking about either.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to prose to photography)? What do you see as the appeal?

In my River book, prose, poetry and photography are interconnected. I was working on site-specific, or installation-based poetry as the base, so documentation (photography) went hand-in-hand with that process. The prose was part of my reflection process and just happened as I went. I am always reflecting upon the work I do, it’s just part of the process. I suppose the poetry bit – the text-based poetry bits – were the hardest part, in terms of requiring more research, more thought, more pen to paper thoughtfulness.

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 love it when I spend an hour or so writing or thinking about writing or reading and taking notes in the morning. But that doesn’t happen regularly, as life and those in my life have their own demands and rhythms. I also have to go by my energy as I have a couple of chronic conditions that mean I never know how I’ll feel in a day.

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

The bush. Water. Books. Quiet. I really need quiet and rest to be creative.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Juniper bushes, pine, lake breeze.

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?

Books come from (out of) life and its traumas and inspirations, and for me are also entwined with visual art, particularly drawing, installation, and site-specific work. They resonate and speak with everything, really.

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

That’s a hard one to answer. I have a continually shifting stack(s) of books beside my bed, my desk, the couch … a lot of it is poetry (particularly experimental and/or visual), but also novels, gardening books. I really love The Capilano Review, Brick, and TNQ. I love spending time with those each time they come out.

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

Writing’s kinda the thing I hadn’t been doing until my 50’s. So I just want to write. I am saddened that there is so little time left (certainly the dial is on the shorter side of my life at this point), certainly not enough to write all the books in my head. I’ve done all kinds of things before this: curator, waitress, houseplant manager, tomato picker, grant-writer, executive director, organizer, facilitator, after-school art teacher, co-operative sector educator … I would like to write a novel, but I’m not sure I have that kind of steam in me.

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?

Same answer at #16. I guess if I wasn’t writing now, I’d probably be doing more work with the early learning community. I would have liked to have been a biologist/ecologist. I’d love to be a full time gardener.

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

Couldn’t not do it anymore.

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

I took a class with Hoa Nguyen recently, and read her A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure. So good. Through her, I read a number of books that just floored me, including Alice Notley’s Being Reflected Upon, Wanda Coleman’s, Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge’s, A Treatise on Stars (I’ll be rereading that one several times for sure), and Cecilia Vicuña’s, Spit Temple.

I haven't watched a great film in a while. I have a fond memory of cuddling with a friend; we watched a black and white Japanese film that she picked (I can’t remember the name of the film, sadly). It was slow and gorgeous. Just like our evening.

20 - What are you currently working on?

...

A couple of early learning books that extend my thinking in the early two. I’m in the editing process of an experimental novel, and am about mid-way on a non-fiction project.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

the green notebook : , regarding a snow day,

Today is a snow day, with school buses cancelled for both children, as well as Rose’s basketball tournament. Her team was scheduled to land at Ashbury College, a private school in Rockcliffe Park. The late Matthew Perry (1969-2023) went there, you know, as did Ottawa poet Max Middle (pseudonym of Mark Robertson). Up to 10cm today, online sources suggest. I should probably move the car up the driveway, for the sake of the snowplow.

Today is a snow day. Each school sends an email, and Christine forwards, to make sure I saw. She is in Edmonton all this week running courses for work. Edmonton, far warmer than here, at least this week. Above zero, she says. Yesterday, we were minus twelve, which was an improvement over the prior few days. Once again, I pick up Etel Adnan, her Surge (2018):

I also hear the air flowing with it, its unbroken surface leading one’s imagination to more water, more destabilization, more wind.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve gone through four drafts of proofs for my collection Snow day (2025), a book out as soon as we clear all corrections. A sequence of sequences, held by the title sequence, one composed at the prompt of another snow day, back in 2019. The snow fell and it fell and both children remained home.

I’m all for a snow day. I’m tempted to return to the extended prose poem, as I did for the original “snow day” poem, six years ago. How different or similar I might play with the form. Where might this go.

Our young ladies in their corners, on their devices. They are eight and eleven years old. The snow, falls. Outside, the snowplow. If everything, seasons. The snowplow, attends. The ground, and the groundless. A stellar cold. For why, the lament. Alta Vista: snow descends in straight lines. These shadows, blue. The rules of the game. Nothing rests. What the tides don’t permit.

Yesterday, a cluster of birds.

Rose is attending a craft. If anyone, to witness. Can I have this box. I want to make something out of this box. Yes, you can have that box.

*

A temporality. Emails, from both of their schools, from the snowplow company. It is here, it is coming. Snow. How many words for it. Remain in your homes, they say. Our young ladies, relieved. Blizzard, onding. An outcrop of flurries.

The air, a crispness. A sharp edge. I brush layers from the car, abandon sentences. Return to the house.

Mid-morning, I tell the young ladies to put away their devices. They spend the rest of the day taking turns coming in to request things or register their complaints of the other. By early afternoon, a silence. They are in the dining room, quietly playing a card game.

As I wrote on social media, responding to another: my poems these days seem to be composed through me stepping directly into the middle of the poem and pushing out in every direction, until I am finally able to free myself.

I used to write poems that began at the beginning and moved their ways forward until finding the end. It seems I do something else, now.

*

Jeff Weingarten prods me via email, reminding me that I agreed to write a blurb for the collected letters of John Newlove, which he’s been working on for more years than he would probably wish to consider. Apparently the collection is due to land in print this year. After a few back-and-forths, we agree on this as my blurb for the back cover:

It is good to hear John’s voice again through these letters, back from those days when letters (well before the advent of emails, text messages) were a stronger means of communication between writers, between poets. As Weingarten offers in his detailed introduction, this is where battles were fought, shots were lobbied, generosities offered and questions answered, all of which John composed in thoughtful detail. Every gesture was for the sake of the work. Weingarten puts the spotlight on an important Canadian poet and the context in which he existed, across a wide-ranging literature.

Winnipeg poet and lawyer Chimwemwe Undi is announced as Canada’s 11th Parliamentary Poet Laureate. From her Scientific Marvel (2024): “All that distance, / built.”

*

The snowfall eases, drifts. By mid-afternoon, the streets and sidewalks plowed, some more than once. More than a few times. I convince the young ladies to get dressed, and we prepare to head out for Aoife’s ukulele lesson. Our first and only outing.

 

DM Bradford, Bottom Rail on Top

 

                                                Not a poem

but plantation dining room
    ceiling pulley fan
boy fatherlands and rope

I’m just now seeing a copy of Montreal-based poet and translator DM Bradford’s second full-length collection, Bottom Rail on Top (Kingston ON: Brick Books, 2024), a follow-up to Dream of No One but Myself (Brick Books, 2021) [see my review of such here]. Composed across an accumulated thirteen poem-sections, from “rope to” and “ashes to” to “new corps” and “lil chug,” the short poems of Bottom Rail on Top exist as sketch-notes, lyric bursts that suggest the gesture but are intricate and precise in their execution. As the back cover offers: “Somewhere in the cut between Harriet Jacobs and surveillance, Southampton and sneaker game, Lake Providence and the supply chain, Bottom Rail on Top sees D.M. Bradford stage one personal present alongside American histories of antebellum Black life and emancipation—a call and response between the complications of legacy and selfhood.” There is a kind of call-and-response to how these poems assemble, a through-line of notes and their commentary, akin to a kind of Greek chorus or counter-narrative. Each section, a cluster of short sketch-poems, with the occasional prose-commentary, providing a blend of further narrative, additional information and a kind of summing-up, set at the end of a handful of sections. The third section, “stock,” for example, ends with a prose block that begins: “Not a poem but a succession of little cuts. You hear about Sally Hemings over and over again. You don’t hear that much about Martha Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson’s first wife, being Sally’s half-sister. You don’t hear much about Betty Hemings, Martha’s father’s enslaved mistress, Sally’s mother. You don’t hear much about the other half-siblings, how many of them Martha, along with Thomas, inherited, the Hemings family among 135. Commonplace horrors.” Not a poem, Bradford repeats as a mantra across the title of each poem and the opening of each commentary, suggesting a push against the impossibility of the lyric while simultaneously offering its artifice, even as the poems work through and across it, connecting Bottom Rail on Top to works such as M NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! (Toronto ON: The Mercury Press, 2008) [see my archived review from The Antigonish Review here], for example. “Not a poem,” Bradford writes, near the end of the fifth section, “but to write at last / past the old place / one last time // by boat / the breeze and the sunshine / north by fatherlands / ten days and ten nights [.]”

As Bradford’s debut worked through an absent father, Bottom Rail on Top also runs as a book-length project wrapping around layers and application of lyric study around history, ancestry and echoes of slavery and the American south. To close the first section, Bradford’s untitled prose-block begins: “Not a poem, but a big house is a big house. Imagine I’m standing in one being told every brick that makes it up was made on site by children. That said children didn’t not look like me, and kept the fire going around the clock. Imagine the tour guide announcing all this, dressed to look like the mistress of the house. Someone helps dress her in the morning, pile the whole thing on, button it up the back.” The shadow of history is long indeed, even moreso if one doesn’t attempt to understand it, as Bradford writes to open the acknowledgments:

This work would not exist without the tether of ancestors enslaved in the so-called United States and Jamaica. In these outgrowths of the simple history I was raised with, that was meant to raise a Black man and an American, I look for them and find I can’t possibly know them. Looking at my life, I’m certain those ancestors, along with the many enslaved Africans this book is indebted to, would sooner recognize its mastery than its subjection. This work was in no small part shaped by that thought. And everything that connects me to them despite it.

 

Ongoing notes: late January, 2025: Spencer Folkins, Katherine Duckworth + Michael Sikkema,

Okay, so I’m doing another one of these. Folk should send me chapbooks for review. Are you out there making chapbooks? I like chapbooks. And you know that above/ground press is running a sale right now, yes? Given the recent increase in mailing costs, I haven’t much of a choice.

Fredericton NB: It is good to see new chapbook presses popping up in various corners of the country, recently seeing a copy of new Fredericton, New Brunswick chapbook publisher Gridlock Lit’s POEMS FOR BURNING (2024), the debut chapbook by Fredericton poet Spencer Folkins. I wonder if Folkins was aware of the late bpNichol’s small item, Cold Mountain (1992), a poem set for assembling and dropping a lit match into? Folkins’ poems are slightly wider, which prompted the publisher to set the title lengthways (instead of using legal-sized paper), which does make for a slightly trickier reading experience, admittedly. Across some thirty pages, Folkins has composed a suite of narrative first-person poems that offer declaratives and descriptions amid meditative wandering. “We came to convince ourselves / and others / we are still alive,” Folkins writes, as part of “POEM FOR BURNING II,” ‘still here, / hearts / beating.” These are poems of observation, seeking to articulate what is already there, reaching for insight and wisdom through uncertain paths. Seeking out, as the original “POEM FOR BURNING” ends: “a desire innate / for the end is in everything / we touch [.]”

Brooklyn NY: I only saw a copy recently, but I’ve been going through Brooklyn poet Katherine Duckworth’s chapbook Slow Violence (Beautiful Days Press, 2023), numbered third in their chapbook series. Slow Violence is a stunning and expansive fifty page suite constructed via lyric and prose fragments held together in a beautiful coherence around sports, survival, social justice and resistance, pinging from the intimate to the immediate to the political. “This fracture, or / a small breach on screen or // stadium,” she writes, early on in the collection. The lyric moves from UAW workers on strike in the 1980s to the Detroit Tigers winning the World Series, collision and exhaustion, metaphor and purpose, Hank Williams Jr. and Bubba Helms, providing a lyric of work and working class ethos, comparable to works by Philadelphia poet ryan eckes [see my review of his latest here] or some of those Kootenay School of Writers poets such as the late Peter Culley [see my review of his Parkway here]. This really is a remarkable collection, and clearly from a poet that we should all be paying attention to. “Severed hands gather. Relocate. Consider / the concrete suspended, shipwrecked. About / Bubba, he’s working at the Nike employee store. / He becomes again. Contains. Rises and falls in / the mind, like a market.”

A moment of catharsis, my brothers collide

over a handful of laundry quarters

Weaving syllabics in sleep, scrims that burn off in the sun

The imagination hovers, untethered. Revision, too. But it is

constructed through the life, the I confined to material, to

a specificity. I use a filter to identify the value of

Whitman’s Live Oak with Moss in the NYC parks database.

I choose one in Queens. Number 4141699 has a total

annual benefits value of $82.07. Its diameter is 5 inches

Across the street a green panel says POST NO BILLS

Philadelphia PA: One of the first quartet of titles from the “Cul-de-sac of Blood Series #1” is Grand Rapids, Michigan poet Michael Sikkema’s watch for deer (2024). Obviously, I’ve been attempting to attend the work of Sikkema for years, and have even produced a couple of chapbooks by him through above/ground press. This recent chapbook, watch for deer, is constructed as a sequence of untitled fragments, centred around a particular warning, which he turns in on itself, expanding a clarification into unexpected directions. “watch for deer,” he writes, “their fangs shine / for profit and once // you haggle in / that palace you’ll // yell at the dotted / yellow line while // a pool of ungulates / swamps your / best BBQ plans [.]” The poems are searching, reaching, stretching out into the absurd from that reasonable opening, leaning into similar absurdities as do Canadian poets Stuart Ross or Gary Barwin. From this slow accumulation of pages, Sikkema manages to simultaneously return from that central moment of thought, “watch for deer,” swirling out into an array of impossibilities (akin to Robert Kroetsch, perhaps, the notion of the long poem as one of perpetual beginning). Or perhaps there is something about Michigan deer entirely different from those we see up this way:

they kick out of their eggs
sniff out soft targets
lean into the blur

watch for deer

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Angel T. Dionne

Angel T. Dionne is an associate professor of English literature at the University of Moncton's Edmundston campus. She holds a PhD in creative writing from the University of Pretoria and is the founding editor of Vroom Lit Magazine. Her writing and art have been featured in several experimental publications.

She is the author of a full-length collection of short fiction, Sardines (ClarionLit, 2023) and two chapbooks, Inanimate Objects (Bottlecap Press, 2022) and Mormyridae (LJMcD Communications, 2024). She is also the co-editor of Rape Culture 101: Programming Change (Demeter Press, 2020). Her full-length poetry collection, Bird Ornaments, is forthcoming with Broken Tribe Press in early 2025. 

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

My first book, a chapbook of what I call “strange” flash fiction titled Inanimate Objects, gave me a big confidence boost. I remember getting the acceptance email and thinking, “Hey, maybe my work is worth reading.” That validation pushed me to send in my full-length story collection, Sardines and eventually, my forthcoming collection of surrealist poetry. I feel less constrained by self-doubt.

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

I came to fiction first. I toyed with poetry here and there in my late teens and early twenties, but fiction always felt like home. It wasn’t until I became interested in the surrealist movement that I began to seriously consider writing poetry. I love the freedom that surrealism offers. Before, I viewed poetry as more constrained and “stuffier” than prose. I write fiction, of course, but I have a much deeper appreciation for poetry than I did when I was younger.

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 call my first drafts dumpster fires because that’s exactly what they are – flaming messes. Over time, I’ve learned that this part of my writing process. If I try to write a first drafts that’s too close to its final shape, I become paralyzed by the idea of perfection. I usually write my poetry and prose in a fit of wild inspiration, followed by a much slower and more methodical editing process. 

4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

I’m drawn to short forms. My first book, Sardines, is a collection of short stories. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to stretch a story into a full-length novel. I focus on what I call “cramped” stories – stories that take place in limited settings, stories that have one or two characters at most, etc. It’s difficult to stretch this style of writing into a novel that people would want to read. It’s the same with poetry. I prefer shorter pieces. I believe there’s real beauty in brevity.

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

Would it be wrong to call them a necessary evil? Public readings sell books. They give you a very important opportunity to meet people and network. The best readings are those that take place in bars and little cafés because the vibe tends to be more casual. I often try to advertise my readings as “open mic.” After I do my reading and sign a few books, I open the floor to other writers and musicians who want to come share. That takes the pressure off. I struggle with readings because I’m extremely introverted.

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?

With Sardines, I used fiction to explore the concept of unresolved, existential guilt. Martin Buber’s paper, “Guilt and Guilt Feeling,” was a big inspiration for this collection. The characters in the stories struggle with guilt in one form or another but are ultimately unable to resolve it in a meaningful way. Bird Ornaments is a bit more difficult to define. The poems the juxtaposition of unrelated elements to focus on the language of the body and the dream-like that exists within the mundane.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

Five years ago, I might have given a different answer. Now with AI being at our fingertips, I think the writer’s role is to be uniquely human. Sure, AI can generate text and visual images, but can it truly create? True art and writing necessitates lived experience and emotion. These forms of expression are ultimately going to separate human from machine.

I once had my students use AI to generate poems about loss. Then, they read a poem written by a former student of mine. All agreed that the AI poem lacked that human experience of what it means to deal with loss. At best, it was an empty husk of a poem. The role of a writer, and my role as I see it, is to show others that creation is necessary and that it forms the foundation of what it means to be human.

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

I’m extremely fortunate to be working on Bird Ornaments with William Lawrence from Broken Tribe Press. He’s the head editor and working with him has been an absolute pleasure. He’s helped me refine my work without losing its essence.

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

A good first draft is a done first draft.

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

Since discovering surrealist writing, I’ve found it easier to move between poetry to fiction rather. I’ve also started experimenting with surrealist visual art, which nicely complements my writing. My fiction tends more towards the literary, while my poetry is almost always surrealist or experimental. I think my earlier attempts to limit myself to just “literary” writing might be why I struggled with poetry in the past. I don’t have much to say about the changing of seasons, but I can certainly tell you about flowers blooming from an infected gout toe.

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 wish I had a routine! I tell my students to try and find one, but I also tell them that some people work better without them. It’s funny because in my daily life, I thrive on routine. When it comes to writing, I work in spurts – weeks of nothing, then suddenly a burst of frenzied productivity.

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

I don’t force it. I was once told that writing is a job. You don’t wait for the muses to descend; you sit down, and you write no matter what. That never worked for me personally. I’ve learned that trying to say something when I really have nothing to say is counterproductive. I need to trust my own process.  

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Vick’s vapour rub brings me back to my childhood. I still use it when I’m sick, of course, but sometimes I’ll use a little when I’m feeling anxious.

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?

Visual art has over the years been a huge influence on me as a writer. I’m inspired by artists like Rene Magritte, Leonora Carrington, Unica Zürn, and Felix Nussbaum. I also think there are some wonderful young artists to discover on social media. Toby Ross, a young surrealist painter from the UK, has a knack for creating work that feels like a fever dream.

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

For fiction: Bernard Malamud, Anzia Yezierska, and the philosophy of Martin Buber.

For poetry: the surrealists, especially Andre Breton.

I can’t forget my students, who are always willing to experiment with their writing. They each have something to teach me.  

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

I’d love to learn the violin but unlike my grandfather and my brother, I’m not musically gifted.

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

I’m a writer, but I’m also a professor, which has always been my dream job. If I wasn’t a writer or professor, maybe I’d be a veterinarian. I imagine it would be emotionally exhausting, though.

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

My mother made me into a storyteller.  I grew up in a challenging home environment, and she would tell me bedtime stories to make sure I went to bed with a positive mindset. She’d then have me make up my own stories. This helped develop my creativity and love of storytelling at a young age.

She always hoped I’d become a writer but when I started my undergraduate studies, I chose biology and pre-med. I ended up switching to literature and writing. She was happy that I switched, which is sort of the opposite reaction most parents would have.

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

Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch was a brilliant, disturbing read. I also recently reread Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer.

One film that I recently enjoyed was Hereditary. It’s an artfully done piece of horror cinema. I discover something new, like a small (yet meaningful) word etched into the wall behind a character’s bed, each time I watch it.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m working on another surrealist collection. It doesn’t have a title yet, but it’s coming together in in small bursts. It’s likely going to be a hybrid collection of surrealist poetry and prose vignettes.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;