12 or 20 (second series) questions with Sam Wiebe

Sam Wiebe [photo credit: Mel Yap] is the author of the bestselling Ocean Drive (2024), as well as the Wakeland novels, one of the most authentic and acclaimed detective series in Canada, including Sunset and Jericho (2023) and The Last Exile (2025), the fifth book in the series. Guns Across the River, the sixth book in the Wakeland series published in March 2026. His work has won the Crime Writers of Canada award, the Kobo Emerging Writers prize, and a silver medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and been shortlisted for the Edgar, Hammett, Shamus and City of Vancouver book prizes. Wiebe lives in New Westminster, BC.

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 was very gratifying, but it also made me realize this is a business. You have to work to write something you care about, and then work to get it out to people. Guns Across the River is more polished and has been a terrific experience.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
Reading what my parents had around the house. Crime novels, mostly.

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?
Guns Across the River took three or four months for the first draft, about the same for revisions, and then a month of editing.

4 - Where does a work of prose 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’ve worked both ways, but mostly I set out to write novels.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I don’t mind doing readings.

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?
The story always comes first.

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?
No idea!

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I love editors. Derek Fairbridge at Harbour has caught some terrific gaffes.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
“You have to start on insufficient knowledge.” It was in a Robert Frost documentary my American Lit prof showed us. 

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?
Up at 4:30, at work into the afternoon, walk, teach or tend to business.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Mostly books, both in my genre or far-flung.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Coffee and tea.

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?
All those things are interesting.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Ross Macdonald and John D MacDonald are both influences.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Pay off my mortgage.

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?
Film editor or piano player.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
It’s really fun. And cheap! 

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
James Kaplan’s Frank: the Voice and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. I really liked the new Naked Gun. 

19 - What are you currently working on?
Screenplays, film articles, and procrastinating my way towards a new novel.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Wendy Donawa

Wendy Donawa [photo credit: Chris Hancock Donaldson] left her natal Victoria as a young woman to settle in Barbados. She attended the University of the West Indies, taught college literature and became a curator at the Barbados Museum. Decades later, she returned to Victoria to complete her Ph.D., taught literature for several years and turned her focus to her first love, poetry. Her poetry collection, Thin Air of the Knowable (Brick Books, 2017), was longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award and a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award. Her second collection, Our Bodies’ Unanswered Questions (Frontenac House, 2021), launched with the Frontenac Quartet. The Time of Falling Apart is her third poetry collection. Her poems are published in Arc Poetry Magazine, Prairie Fire, Freefall, The New Quarterly, The Literary Review of Canada, Room and others. She is a contributing editor with Arc Poetry Magazine and a board member with Planet Earth Poetry reading series. She writes a monthly review, “Unpacking the Poem,” celebrating the diversity and creativity of BC poets. She and her wife live gratefully on the unceded territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen-speaking) Esquimalt and Songhees people, in Victoria, BC.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

My first book, Thin Air of the Knowable, anchored me in poetry, gave me encouragement, and a reason to stay committed. The manuscript had gathered up what I’d selected from my writing life, but finding a publisher followed two discouraging years of rejections. Finally being accepted by Brick Books, a publisher I so admired, was validating; it told me I wasn’t wasting my time.

How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

It’s hard to bring a rational perspective to about one’s own progress, but I’d say the craft and complexity of recent poems developed, through my second book, Our Bodies’ Unanwered Questions, and now, The Time of Falling Apart, from Harbour Publishing. 

Also, the world being the way it is, my mood and tone is frequently darker, less ebullient. And now that there’s so much more behind than ahead, I muse on my own mortality, and the urgency of using time well.

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

Although my family was not bookish at all, we did have (as well as the Bible) many of the children’s classics, and I knew by heart much of Robert Louis Stevenson, AA Milne, the doggerel poems of the Alice books.  Before I thought of them as poems, I loved the rhythm and wit.  Once in high school, I loved literature courses, I became and remain a compulsive reader. I started writing poetry as a private hobby, no one I knew did anything so eccentric.  Anyhow, I thought I was going to be an artist, a printmaker, and that’s where my creative energy went.

As a young woman, having married a Barbadian, I settled in Barbados. I taught at the college, attended UWI, painted, eventually worked as a museum curator. My time coincided with Barbados’ Independence, and also with the emergence of several major Caribbean writers: Vidia Naipaul, Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, Jean Rhys. All this influenced my writing, which still was mainly academic or educational.

After nearly four decades, I returned to Victoria, still writing, and in 2007, joined Patrick Lane’s annual poetry retreats. I’d say I “came to poetry” then; I owe him more than I can say. This is where I began a regular writing practice, started sending poems out and in 2009 published my first chapbook. Three chapbooks later, Brick Books took my first collection, “Thin Air of the Knowable”, and I started calling myself a poet.  

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?

A slow process, usually, unless I’ve been musing on a particular theme or topic. Occasionally if I’ve been close to sleep, turning a topic over and over, several lines appear in their final form, and if I race to write them down, the rest of a draft poem will take something close to its final shape. That said, I more often work on large sheets of paper, mapping my thought processes. Copious notes, freewriting, looking up the linguistic roots of words. I think on paper and write by hand; when it’s finished enough to be edited, I type it.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you?

A poem often begins from a memory, often my own, but also often an historical memory or a geographical one.  I’ve always lived by an ocean; my life in Barbados and now on the BC coast, both landscapes shaped by colonial conquest, so the land poses its own questions.

Or I read a current event  or respond to a question posed by something I’ve observed. But these are all starting points; the real work is finding a through-line for what the poem is really trying to say.

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?

Short pieces that combine.  I’ve followed single themes through my four chapbooks, but an entire poetry collection dictates a more complicated structure. Each of my books has taken about 4-5 years of writing, and I can’t keep to a single theme that long. I try not to think “book” during the process of making meaning in each poem. After two or  three years, I find a large bare floor and lay the all poems out—they generally sort into several themes or categories, then I shift gears into collection mode, and start trying out titles for the whole.

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

I love doing readings! Writing is necessarily a lonely business, so it’s very rewarding to share with listeners who want to hear what you say.  Often there are searching comments that fuel me to push a poem harder, or to continue a dialogue.

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 think the current questions are?

These are thorny questions!  It’s often said that poetry tries to articulate that which is beyond language, but if that is so, why bother?  I find my efforts tend more to articulate a question or mystery, to unpack a dilemma or situation or ambiguity that the reader may engage with.

The current questions that surface for me are often linked to casualties of misused power, whether they illustrate personal failures of empathy or all along the spectrum to war, oppression, genocide.

Other questions concern mortality: have I used my time well? Has my life made a difference? What remains to be done?

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?

Poets are society’s truth-tellers. Unfortunately, poetry seems to have very little role in our present culture, and poets are frequently seen as dilettantes with a frivolous hobby.  Perhaps our current role is that we are Cassandras, our warnings falling on deaf ears. 

But history may tell a different story: one trend I’ve noticed is that the egregious political forces unleashed over the last decade have led to an outpouring of really fine, powerful, poetry in all styles, forceful and articulate and outraged. These will last the ages, always relevant: Ada Limon, Carolyn Forché, Margaret Atwood, Terrance Hayes, Jericho Brown, Jan Zwicky, Adrienne Rich, Tracy Smith, Anne Michaels….many more and many young writers.

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

Both!  I’ve been very lucky in all three books, to have had empathic, intelligent, insightful editors, whose council pushed me push harder on one aspect or delete another (ouch). A few times I’ve argued successfully for a poem’s continued form. So I can be confident only my best writing “survived.”

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

Can I choose two pieces? But both require unpacking:

1.      “nobody cares about you!” From one of Ellen Bass’ instructional videos.  It felt shocking, but she was talking about giving your poem energy and distinction, deleting all the excess, particularly the tendency to start: “I woke from sleep /and I/and I was so sad/I cried as I looked out the window/and I…”etc.   Get to the point, said Ellen, what is your poem trying to say? Nobody cares about you! 

It was good advice and an editing strategy I use frequently.

2.     “What behooves us?” (Adrienne Rich, An Atlas of the Difficult World)

This is a bigger, metaphysical question, and one I use thinking about the purposes of my own poetry.  Surely poetry can be a call to action, to stir the imagination and the conscience, to deepen understanding, to “sing about the dark times. 

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 make excellent resolutions! At times that works, but often it goes downhill from there.  I work best in the morning, I write in my journal and have fits and starts of productivity.  I don’t write every day but I can’t imagine a day when I don’t read. Sometimes I scribble notes, or freewrite, or prowl the library.  When I get on a roll, the start of a good poem, or an idea for a sequence of poems, I work almost non-stop. When I’ve got a dry spell, I defrost the fridge and tidy my closets.

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

See “dry spell” above.  I try to find ways to tease out a difficult poem by looking up linguistic sources, or historical analogs. If there’s an interesting workshop coming up, I join.  Collect snippets from good journalism and see if they’ll work as prompts.  Try using different forms.  Try ekphrastic poems. Go back through some  excellent writers’ instructions (Tony Hoagland’s Art of Voice,  Ted Kooser’s manual, Adonizzo and Laux, Dobbyns’ Best words…etc

I have a couple of poets’ groups who meet monthly.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

I’m always pulled in two directions. When I lived in Barbados, I was nostalgic for the scent of cold salty air, the smell of cedar, the resiny woods smell, good coffee.  From here, I’m nostalgic  recalling the heavy smell of frangipani, the tumultuous pounding and smell of the seasonal rains that broke the long dry season. All the cooking smells. But the pandemic nearly erased my sense of smell, which in turn diluted my sense of taste. Tragic for a foodie like me—where I used to cook by taste and smell, now I cook from memory and conjecture.

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?

My early leanings were with the visual arts, mainly printmaking, painting, I worshipped the Japanese printmakers and dreamt of Japan.  As inspiration for poetry, early music, pre-Baroque enthralls me, nature sustains me, and the interaction of science and art is compelling. I’m definitely not any kind of expert in science or math, and do a lot of (admittedly superficial) learning on the spot. E.g. I was reading an agricultural report to find out what abscission was; the article began by saying describing it as the time of falling apart. Halleluia! This was the title I’d been looking for, and so many things fell into place.

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

Despite an annual pruning, the  groaning boards of my bookcase reach the ceiling. But here are some of the keepers I re-read and re-read for their heart, their intelligence, their  insight and foresight, their magical craft: Margaret Atwood, AS Byatt, Michael Crummey, Margaret Drabble, Esi Edugyan, Katherine Govier, Hilary Mantel, Jane Urquhart, Ann Patchett, Zadie Smith, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Abraham Verghese.

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

I’d love to be proficient in at least one musical instrument and in more than one language.

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’d probably still be a teacher and artist. Or a museum curator

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

Opportunity.  I always wrote privately. When I settled back in Victoria, I discovered a poetry community, and Planet Earth Poetry with its weekly open mic.  Many fine poets are also teachers, and I took advantage of that, and particularly Patrick Lane’s annual retreats.

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

In Winter I Get up at Night Jane Urqhuart

Films: two because they both blew me away with their astonishing visual qualities:

Dark, dark in every sense, totally absorbing 

The Tragedy of Macbeth, with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as the regal pair. Wish I’d had this on hand when I was teaching Macbeth.

Conclave: Another visually stunning film, this one in arresting colour.

A coincidence I chose these two: both about power and its uses, both a struggle between good and evil, But ambiguous, not an obvious goody/baddie dichotomy. Both with powerful visual metaphors—saturated colour in one, pure light and dark in the other.

19 - What are you currently working on? 

I’m currently in a dry spell, but busy with the business of looking for and arranging readings and reviews—that’s really hard work for a shy person. It’s a short window of opportunity until the next poetry season launches its new poets.

A few projects hanging in mid-air: 

• A half-finished illustrated chapbook called  Something has Been Left Out, poems noting the unawareness, the lacune around  some aspect of Indigenous history or rights. I fear trespassing, so have left it hanging …

• My column, Unpacking the Poem, about 2 years of monthly exegesis of a BC poet’s poem. Intended to catch the interest of those new to poetry, or who like to see how and why a poem works   http://planetearthpoetry.com/unpacking

It would be nice to develop further, see if a book were possible

• A long time ambition, to see if the focus of my doctoral dissertation, a study of the dynamics of womens friendships, A Rebel  Band of Friends—to see if its substance could be translated into a long poem.

Thank you for the opportunity to tangle with these though-provoking questions! 

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Amy Mattes

Amy Mattes loves PNW rainy days powered by too much coffee and writing to epic movie scores. She has a vintage suitcase full of old journals and a heart shaped rock collection. She is inspired by the grit and beauty of human connection, often drawing story out of struggles with identity, sexuality, grief and addiction. She holds an Anti-Oppressive Social Work Degree from the University of Victoria and is currently enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts School of Creative Writing at Vancouver Island University. Amy is represented by Carolyn Forde of Transatlantic Agency and is currently writing her second novel and raising a child. She holds gratitude for the Snuneymuxw First Nation whose unceded territory she lives, learns and loves on.

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

Late September is my fictionalized story that begged to be written. There was a lot of healing for me in having it come to fruition. It is a dream come true. A dream I worked at, but I don’t think I ever want to go back into the headspace of a 19-year-old character again. For my work in progress, the main female lead is closer to my age now. There is a wisdom that comes with ageing that I couldn’t have tapped into in my current writing until I’d been through it.

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

My novel contains a lot of non-fiction experiences and observations woven in and embellished or mutated and I’ve been writing what I call ‘scrap’ poetry my whole life. For some reason calling myself a poet feels superfluous, though I am starting to take more ownership of that term. A lot of my note taking starts out as poetry. Writing a fiction novel, however, was just something I always felt that I needed to make happen. I believed in the story that was developing and kept on with it, despite a gap where I went to university. Writing a fiction novel was what I always wanted to accomplish, now I feel like the possibilities are open ended.

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 a mix of all those. Some works come and I have to get them down immediately and others I sit with. My drafts usually maintain their bones. I free write and journal a lot and then move to my computer. I try to make sure I really live outside of my writing time, doing so gives me more passion when I get the opportunity to craft.

4 - Where does a work of prose 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?

So far, I’ve started both books from the beginning, though they don’t take a linear trajectory after that. My first novel I wrote the start, then the end, then the middle over the span of six years. My second, I’ve promised myself won’t take that long, and I am trying something different with perspectives and timelines, so I am jumping around even more.  

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

I wouldn’t say readings are part of my creative process, but I do enjoy them. They help me develop a dialogue with people who care about the same things I do and being given gracious opportunities to read from my work feels cathartic, though I’m learning they need to be sustainably planned.

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 debut novel is about the coming-of-age themes I experienced like grief, addiction, and sexuality and I look to other authors to read the ones I haven’t like immigration, and racism. I think the questions we ask are still the basics of who are we? What unites us? What hurts us and divides us?  I really value connection and listening, and I imagine most of my work will cover personal growth in one way or another.

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?

Like any artist, a writer reflects life. I think part of that role is a responsibility to be political and just and current. To be more than tolerant, to teach and to learn. A writer should aim to channel and articulate issues and values.

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

Patients wouldn’t survive to tell a good story if their surgeons didn’t perform their best. The editors I’ve worked with have fixed me up, made me a better writer. Got me exercising my writerly muscles. Editing is a big and miraculous undertaking. I’m enthralled by their abilities to see within.

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

Most thing aren’t worth anger.

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

As I said before poetry has always been there for me, but it’s felt less tangible. I’m taking some poetry classes right now and since my days are busy, I love that it gives me the chance to read and write in shorter spurts, but with the same command.

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?

On days when I don’t have my son, I drink coffee leisurely in bed while I think, no phone, no book. Then I will write at my desk for an hour or so before heading to work. When I do have him, life is more hectic, but I always carry a notebook everywhere and will write on my phone. I’ll puts words down wherever and then try to amalgamate them in the evenings when he’s asleep.

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

I take my dog for a walk in the rainforest to quiet things down. I usually focus my thoughts on where I am stuck, and I will problem-solve and breathe and usually get the answers I’m looking for. If that doesn’t do the trick I will rest or read. I am a big fan of sitting in stillness.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

I have a sensitive sense of smell, so this conjures up seasons and memories over a lifetime of homes, but to choose one, since “home” here feels like the past, or the first, I’d say the crisp, but stale inside of an old hockey rink.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Music all the way. I am moved to tears on a regular basis by song. I also really love film moments where the music is just right, and feelings are captured and slowed down. I aim to reconstruct that in words. My novel was influenced by skateboarding and the use of public space as a context for adolescent development. Skateboarding is a hobby that is emulated in fashion and art, but if you are a real skateboarder, you’re usually apathetic about inspiring the trends, the true focus is on creative expression without boundaries. Grit and determination, play. I don’t think we play enough as adults.

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

I’m a huge fan of Miriam Toews and Joshua Whitehead. The Kite Trick by Bill Gaston changed the limits of what I thought was possible in a short story. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, to me is the most eloquent production of a poem and I just bathe in those words when I lose track of where I am going.

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

This question is so perplexing to me. I’ve done a lot in my lifetime. Take my son to Disney? Travel the World? What is one supposed to say? In my truth, there is something deeper percolating: I want to enter a relationship with the vulnerable task of communicating my needs calmly. I want to be seen and heard in love. I don’t think I’ve done that.

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 have a full-time career as a Probation Officer on the side. It’s humbling and forces me to show up for people and bear witness to their stories. I try to fudge the system how I can, I am not in it for the law enforcement. I love connecting with people and being a part of their lives in a positive way.  

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

Strangely enough, writing has been the constant. It’s as though if I am not writing I am not breathing. It’s the way I process life. In my elementary school writing books, I was always asking the teachers for more library time and more art!

I played a lot of sports, played in band and did drama, but when things fell to the wayside, writing was always there.

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

I can find greatness in nearly every book I finish. I recently adored Rouge by Mona Awad. As for film, I was very moved by the remake of All Quiet on the Western Front. I am a sucker for dramas with an epic score.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I am currently working on a collection of poems, and a second novel about an infertile woman returning to her unincorporated hometown for the funeral of her childhood best friend, a woman whose addiction resulted in the loss of her kids. One desperate to have a child, the other incapable of caring for them. It is a walk down the memory lane of a secret-holding, shady and depressed community.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Robert Bringhurst

Robert Bringhurst winner of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence and former Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, trained initially in the sciences at MIT but has made his career in the humanities. He is also an officer of the Order of Canada and the recipient of two honorary doctorates. He lives on Quadra Island, BC.

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

Writing books is like putting one foot in front of the other. It hasn’t changed my life; it’s been my life. Not doing it would have changed me quite a bit, or so I imagine – but I can’t tell you exactly how, since in fact that didn’t happen.

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

There was never any question. Even in the beginning, when I really didn’t have a clue what poetry was, I was pulled in that direction. I’ve written a lot of nonfiction in my life, and that’s what pays the rent, but poetry came first, and comes first, because it is first.

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 can’t tell you how or when anything starts. I’m always looking in the other direction when it happens. I don’t guess anything would start if I were standing over it watching. It’s clearly a biological process, but it often feels more geological: slower than molasses, with inexplicable, unpredictable sudden lurches, like spring floods and mudslides. Scott Fitzgerald said all good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. Maybe so. For me, it’s more like trying to get my head out of the torrent often enough to keep on breathing. Yet there’s no sensation of speed. That’s what I mean by geological.

4 - Where does a poem or work of translation 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?

Books grow like trees. They start in the ground. I’ve written the odd piece for periodicals, and I’ve worked – this was decades ago – for both daily and weekly papers. There are people who do that kind of writing brilliantly; I don’t. Books are what make sense to me. I like, and need, their glacial sense of time. But trees start as seedlings, not as trees, and books don’t start as books; they start as a fragile mouthful of words.

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

Readings for me are a vital part of the editing and revision process. That’s because I hear the poem differently when I’m reading it in public than when I’m reading it to myself. If I were in charge, most readings would be scheduled in the month or two before a book goes to press rather than after it’s been published.

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 have no theoretical concerns.

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?

There are many kinds of writers, serving lots of different roles. But when a culture is disintegrating, as ours is, most writers are going to play their roles, whatever they are, on a pretty small stage. Some will find their audience in a single town or a single archipelago. For others, it might be an equally small number of people scattered all over the globe. If a role in the larger culture were what I wanted most, I’d have a better chance now as a demagogue than as a writer. That’s too steep a price to pay.

We always used to console ourselves by saying the best writers have their impact after they’re dead – and that was in fact partially true for 2,500 or 3,000 years. Now it’s a fantasy: the literary counterpart of the tooth fairy and Santa Claus.

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

Every writer needs an editor, but not all writers need the same editor, and not just any editor will do. Great publishers have a knack for making matches between editors and writers. It seems to me great editors are even scarcer than great writers, and great publishers are scarcer than great editors. On the whole, nevertheless, I’ve been lucky.

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

Shut up and listen. Or to put it more politely, Pay attention.

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

It took me a long time to learn to write half-decent poetry, and even longer to learn to write half-decent prose. Translation helped, on both fronts. Being able to move from one to another is just as important to me as being able to go for a walk. It’s a way of keeping fit and rounding out my education.

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 work all the time – waking and sleeping, walking and sitting, writing and not writing. But the thing I most want, first thing in the morning, is just to be left alone so I can find out what I’ve learned since the morning before.

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

I live in the country where there are always things to do. I don’t mean there are always amusements and distractions; I mean there is always broken stuff to be fixed, half-built stuff to be finished, there’s trail maintenance to do and a forest to be cared for. When I don’t have anything brilliant to say to a piece of paper, I do carpentry or typography or forestry, or I put on my boots and head up the trail. Or if all else fails, I go read a book.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

No fragrance really, but quite a few sounds. The sound of ravens talking, and of tree frogs singing, and of nighthawks diving, pileated woodpeckers beating their slow tempo, band-tailed pigeons cooing, juncos ticking, nuthatches honking their little horns.

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?

It’s true, David said that. Many others have said it too. But not all of them were saying the same thing. Some books, of course, are just reactions or responses to other books, and the farther you travel in that direction, the thinner and slipperier the ice gets. It seems to me the best books come from reality: from the attempt to say hello and thank you to reality. Even those books are related to other books – and to music, science, visual art, as you say. But “coming from” and “related to” or “benefiting from” are not the same.

It’s also true that more good books – and string quartets and sonatas and sculptures and paintings – get made in healthy cultures, where other such things are being made, and fewer get made in sick cultures, where goodness is more likely to get squished before it flowers. “Books come from books” could refer to that fact: the fact that good books are good for each other. It could also mean – and this, I think, is how David meant it – that literature is basically self-referential, like social media. He and I disagreed about that.

A lot of so-called literature (and music and science and visual art) is indeed fundamentally self-referential. And for that very reason, it’s dispensable. The important work – in art and science alike – might include a few self-referential echoes, but essentially it’s not about itself.

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

All the good writers and all the good books are important to me. But a lot of the most important “writers” for me are not writers at all. They’re oral poets, most of whom couldn’t read or write and never needed to.

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

See how this plays out: how this gruesome and beautiful species does itself in.

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?

When I was eight years old, living in Calgary, the guys who came up the alley once a week with their garbage truck looked to me like the most interesting people around, and maybe the happiest. So I wanted to be a garbage man. I still take an active interest in garbage. Some years later, I wanted to be a percussionist, then a lutenist. In fact I was a working drummer for a time, but I never worked as a lutenist, and the life of a back-up musician wasn’t for me. Still, in a way I got my wish: I’ve been, like everybody else, a non-professional garbage man most of my life.

When I started university, I had in mind to become either a physicist or an architect. In middle age, my chief regret was that I hadn’t majored in biology.

Except for playing the lute, all these professions seem to have changed quite a lot in the course of my lifetime. They’ve changed because society has changed. In North America, garbage collectors spend less time on the ground and more in their comfy air-conditioned cabs, with music machines plugged into their ears. And they don’t look as happy. Garbage itself has also changed. It’s now mostly plastic. And physicists now join teams and sit at computers hooked up to still bigger computers. Physics has changed, though physical reality hasn’t. But writing is still just writing, as playing the lute is still playing the lute – a nice thing to do; very nice, but I’m better at writing.

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

For one thing, speaking poetry, and composing it, is another form – a subtle and quiet form – of percussion. That’s what distinguishes speaking from singing. The speaking voice is tuned to no specific pitch, and it isn’t tied to a metronome, but its syllables vary in pitch and intensity and duration, and they do this in patterns and increments, not arbitrarily. So the speaking voice can play the drums and talk at the same time. That, for me, is a reason for writing.

Another quite wonderful thing about literature is, it’s low-tech. No supercomputers or fancy equipment required. No expensive and delicate instruments either, apart from mind and voice and heart. Yet you can peer into the universe by doing it. Really you can.

And another excellent thing is, it’s essentially private. No assistants or apprentices required, almost never any meetings to attend, and really not much time in public. Yet you can share whatever you learn. And others can too. What could be better?

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

The last good book I read is the one I just finished: Annie Proulx’s Fen, Bog & Swamp. But you asked about great books. That question has no answer. All the great books I’ve ever read are books that I’m still reading. None of them is the last. Nor could I tell you, at this late date, which was the first. As for great films, I just don’t know. I live in the boonies, where there are no movie theatres, and I spend too much time with computer screens as it is. I’d really rather look at a printed page. So, much as I love a good film, it’s been years since I saw one.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Too many things at once, but it’s bad luck to talk about what’s cooking.

[24 March 2023, updated 17 April 2023]

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Diane Tucker

Diane Tucker is the author of four poetry books (God on His Haunches, Nightwood Editions, 1996; Bright Scarves of Hours, Palimpsest Press, 2007; Bonsai Love, Harbour Publishing, 2014; Nostalgia for Moving Parts, Turnstone Press, 2021) and a YA novel (His Sweet Favour, Thistledown Press, 2009). Her play Here Breaks the Heart: the Loves of Christina Rossetti, was produced by Calgary’s Fire Exit Theatre in 2013. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and in more than seventy literary journals in Canada, the US, and elsewhere. She lives in Vancouver, BC.

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 turns 25 this year, so I’m trying to remember… it didn’t change life as much as I thought it would. I still had small children to raise, and the week that first manuscript was due at the publisher’s my daughter was in hospital with a life-threatening illness. That put it all in perspective (she’s fine).

Some of the poems in this most recent book are quite old (10-15 years), but have been extensively revised. Like, more revision and rethinking than I’ve ever done. A good kick in the pants for a mid-career writer. I hope it means they’re more precise. Have less flab. Some part of me should have less flab.

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

I didn’t, actually. I wrote stories from childhood, lots of them. I didn’t grow up in a bookish home. But from an early age I loved to sing and was musical. I think that’s part of what prepared me for poems. I remember cool 1970s funky language arts classes with short poems, and pop lyrics in school choir, and when I hit college and got serious about studying and read Gerard Manley Hopkins and, well, the top of the head came off, as Dickinson said it would. Certain poems, and poetic prose, did things inside me I thought were impossible. I wanted to do that to other people. Does that sound like a threat? Maybe it is.

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?

No fair, that’s three questions… The first image is likely to come quickly, but of course the mind and heart have been brewing toward it for who knows how long? I don’t think it’s generally a slow process for me, no. Fits and starts. And the final form is generally not totally unrelated to the first draft. I’m not the most patient writer.

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?

Never working on a book from the beginning, or I haven’t yet, anyway. I write about “life”, whatever is arresting me in the moment, and worry about books as needs must. I wouldn’t advise this as a career plan, but there you go. Again, the poet-brain is always bubbling away in there, a long-simmering pot on a stove, and I try to catch the best things as they surface.

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

I get very nervous about readings but I’ve done probably hundreds of them and I do like reading per se. I can’t say they’re part of the writing process, but I definitely see them as part of a poet’s “job”. You should work to serve your poems as skillfully as you can as a reader. For the last few years issues of social anxiety have interfered and complicated things. But I look forward to real readings coming back! I think I’ll appreciate them more than I have for a long time.

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?

Who said “poetry is news that stays news”? That. I am decidedly old-fashioned in that I’m trying to set the texture and truth of lived life into words. Reality as it is, is so bottomless, so complex, so beautiful. Words to get at bits of that, at the heart of the Present Moment and hopefully where it touches the timeless. Where the material is interwoven with the ethereal. Where different times and experiences interpenetrate one another in the consciousness and the memory and the body.

I’m probably not paying attention to anything calling itself a “current question”. This extraordinary life is worthy only of the eternal questions.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

As always, the writer should try to tell the truth, in whatever genre. Kafka’s statement about a book being an icepick that breaks up the frozen sea within us, that’s always true. As attention spans fragment, I would hope that writers, poets especially, could call, or invite, or woo, people back to slow thinking, long reading, and other-centred living.

The role of some writers should be to call out the bullshit people try to pull off with language – the power plays, manipulations, obfuscations, euphemistic nonsense, and mental laziness. Words have power. They can build or break. And those of us whose vocation involves them should try to see they are properly used to serve human flourishing.

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

Oh yes both! I’m sadly still someone who wants to impress, and this causes me no small amount of anxiety when working with an editor. Still, it’s always been a valuable process. I am an editor as well, and pull no punches. So I expect an editor to deliver all requisite punches when I’m on the receiving end.

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

Assuming you mean writing advice and not general life advice I’d say Annie Dillard’s “Go at your life with a broadaxe.” I’ve not worked my way up to a broadaxe quite yet. Usually no more than a gently-wielded cricket bat.

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

Not easy! I had a great teacher and mentor in playwriting, the immensely talented Lucia Frangione. She helped me do the thing I hate, which is plot. I love to write dialogue and I love those moments in a play when things come to an emotional head and everybody’s cards get thrown out on the table. But that’s not a play. A play is the whole thing together, the process, the journey. It’s bodies in space, not just words.

The appeal of a play? Real people right in front of you living, being transformed, relating to other people or beauty or loss or pain… Few things are more glorious. And a great play is a great incarnation of great words. What a wonderful day it will be when the theatres open again.

And watching people watch a play you wrote... damn, that’s like being inside people’s heads when they read your book. That’s some kind of miracle.

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?

Until very recently I worked at an office job three days a week, so on those days I asked relatively little of myself as a writer. I’m reading more, though, between work and dinner, and loving silence more and more. Almost every day I begin with a short time of prayer with a devotional. And nearly every day I walk a few kilometres. The writing gets fit in around all these things, most particularly after a period of walking and/or silence.

I have recently given up my office job to take over bookkeeping for my husband’s small company. We will see how my routine changes as this new chapter begins.

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

At the moment, walking. We moved from a suburban townhouse to a Vancouver apartment in 2019 and I’m loving long walks around many neighbourhoods. We live not far from where I grew up. Every block is full of the past and the present and I’m always nosy about the details of other people’s yards and gardens and such. I walk down alleys a lot too. They’re quieter, and are a more uncurated look into people’s lives. Wow I’m nosy.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Lilacs. Coffee. Cedar. Rosemary. The smell of a candle just snuffed out.

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’ve written a lot of poems responding to visual art. That’s a really satisfying conversation. I dabble in making some art as well, and the sensuous part of it – the smells, colours, substances… And I’ve always, as I said, been musical and involved in music. Also the language of liturgy increasingly fascinated me. Over the winter of 2019-20 I wrote a sequence of forty prayer-poems based on a very old set of prayers called the O Antiphons.

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

Reading C. S. Lewis makes me feel sane when everything seems shifty and shoddy. Regular Bible study is a connection not only to my faith, but to history and ancient wisdom and literature. The Psalms, for example, are a school of human nature and emotion as well as poetry. Being reminded that people are people, even thousands of years apart from one another, is a stabilizing yet exciting thing to contemplate.

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

Sing with a small jazz ensemble. Let out my inner Dianne Reeves or Diana Krall.

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?

If I had more cojones, I’d be an actor. Preferably Shakespearean. If I hadn’t been a writer and actually had to make a living, I’d probably be an extremely crabby librarian.

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

Fear. Fascination. Alice Munro and Katherine Mansfield and John Fowles.

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

Book: I am currently reading Martin Schleske’s The Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty and it is a wonder!

Film: I find it difficult to take in a movie as “great” if I don’t see it in a theatre. I miss going to movies! So I will say 2019’s A Hidden Life. Struck me dumb.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Dinner (pork chops).

Okay, I’ve been writing poems for children. It’s fun and freeing. And I’ve written a kids’ picture book I think is not terrible... thinking about how to bring that into the world has been occupying my mind lately.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;