12 or 20 (second series) questions with Guy Elston

Guy Elston is a UK-born, Toronto-based poet. His debut collection is The Character Actor Convention (The Porcupine's Quill, 2025). His poems have appeared in The Literary Review of Canada, The Malahat Review, The Ex-Puritan, Grain, Geist and elsewhere. He is a member of the Meet the Presses collective.

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?

Publishing my chapbook Automatic Sleep Mode gave the confidence and direction to focus more on what I’m better at, moving away from more directly ‘confessional’ stuff to the kind of persona, character and dialogue work that makes up a lot of The Character Actor Convention. 

They encourage you to ‘find your voice’ as a poet. Finding that ‘my voice’ could be many voices – or that I could push my voice into many different personas – was very exciting for me.

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

As a kid I wanted to write fiction, not poetry. I wrote some bad short stories. A turning point was picking up Raymond Carver’s collected poems and realising I preferred his poetry to his short stories. Then the bug bit me.

I like the idea of poetry as literary popcorn, literary snacks, literary hors d’oeuvres. You can eat something mind-bending and delicious. Then another, but sadder. Then another, but funnier... and you never really get full. Just tired.

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?

Poems tend to either come together fairly quickly, or not at all. (Apart from the ones that take years. Or never get finished. Or started.)

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?

Poems start in my notes app, graduate to the notebook, and then to the laptop. I like the move between the different mediums to test, break and refine. 

For The Character Actor Convention, it’s very much a book of individual poems. I’d like to work on something with more of a full-length concept in future.

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

My poetry tends towards the page, and I’d usually rather read a poet’s work myself than hear them do it. But I’m getting into the performance side of poetry more, which I think is necessary given the theatricality of a lot of my poems. I like doing readings, particularly when they’re full of hundreds of adoring fans.

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?

My girlfriend teases me by describing my poetry as - ‘What if a chair was sad?’ - and really, can you think of any greater theoretical concern than that?

I don’t see my poetry as truth-telling, proclamation, or a call to action. I see it more as storytelling, and I like being comfortable with ambivalence and uncertainty.

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?

The only role of a writer is to exist. While writing, I suppose.

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

Essential, and something I’ve really enjoyed. Shane Neilson helped me to push my poems into new forms and places. Thanks, Shane!

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

I thought that Kathryn Maris wrote something like ‘If you want a life in poetry, you can have one’. But now I can’t find this quote anywhere. Perhaps I dreamt it?

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?

Not much of a routine – writing poems happens in and around everything else. The notebook stage of writing a poem, which is the biggest chunk of the creative part, typically happens in parks, at the lake, or late at night.

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

Books, news articles, random magazines, Wikipedia. Non-fiction is usually what gives me a jumping off point – if I read enough interesting stuff, something will get me going.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Horses.

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?

Any other type of artform – definitely.

Science – very much so, I love getting ideas from science articles and headlines. Part of the fun comes from my inability to think scientifically.

Nature – not at all. I can’t write about nature. I think it's already speaking for itself.

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

My most influential poets would be people like Simic, Tate, Strand, Szymborska, Milosz, Selima Hill, Michael Bazzett, Matthew Sweeney. Robert Browning. People with an inclination towards storytelling and/or a pinch of surrealism.

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

Write some kind of Pale Fire-like metatextual piece with fictional footnotes from unreliable historians and such.  I know I have to try.

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?

When I was a child, adults would tell me that I should become a lawyer when I grew up. At least that didn’t happen.

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

I can’t remember wanting to do anything else. I loved reading from when I was very young. I remember being about 8, and saying something like ‘when I’m reading a book, I feel like I’m in another world’, and my sister rolling her eyes.

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

Book – The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington. A wild and empowering ride.

Film – I finally saw Metropolis the other day. Kick ass!

19 - What are you currently working on?

More, more of the same! But better...

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