12 or 20 (second series) questions with Lauren Turner

Lauren Turner is a disabled poet and essayist. Her chapbook, We’re Not Going to Do Better Next Time, was published by knife | fork | book in March 2018, and her full-length debut, The Only Card in a Deck of Knives, came out with Wolsak & Wynn in August 2020. Her work has appeared in Grain, Arc Magazine, PRISM International, Poetry is Dead, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Maynard, The Puritan, BAD NUDES, canthius, and elsewhere. She won the 2018 Short Grain Contest, was a finalist for carte blanche’s 2017 3Macs Prize, and made the longlist for Room Magazine’s 2019 creative non-fiction contest. Originally from Ottawa, she lives in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal on the unceded land of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation.

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

Oh, I couldn’t say yet! The Only Card in a Deck of Knives was published by Wolsak & Wynn during the middle of a global pandemic while I was personally living with a collapsed lung, thanks to my cystic pulmonary disease. It was, and still is, a very surreal time. I don’t think I’ve even properly processed what having a first book means. But I loved my experience with Wolsak & Wynn and would like to publicly thank them for their team’s dedicated work, first in publishing and now in promoting The Only Card.

In terms of projects, The Only Card staggeringly differs from my chapbook, We’re Not Going to Do Better Next Time (knife | fork | book, 2018), which was a third-person reimagining of the Samson and Delilah parable through a modern lens. As a shy, private person, I used to find it humiliating to write auto-poetry. But then, I fell in and out of love (a few times), started to come to terms with my own trauma history, and learned I was terminally ill. Things change.

Like how Anne Boyer wrote in Garments Against Women, “I decided I would be a poet so that I could complain publicly of this,” arguably, I have a few bones to pick. If you want to know more, I’d invite you to read my book.

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

My mom has a BA in English Literature and I was fortunate enough to benefit from her love of poetry. I was read a lot of poems as a child, so growing up, I never made that hard distinction between poetry and prose. She even gave me these Shakespeare Can Be Fun! books in Grade 3, which had poetic dialogue from the actual plays included. I was obsessed with the Macbeth one—like, really obsessed. I feel like knowing that tidbit about Baby Lauren gives you a lot of insight into my poems.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

I’m an exceptionally slow writer, maybe because of my Taurus Mars. I often need to ruminate for months, even years, before I can start to write a poem. When I read during my MA program that Louise Glück had writer’s block for multi-year spans, it was oddly validating for me and my glacial writing practice. There’s no need, after all, to assign capitalist values of productivity to artmaking: poems go where they go in the end.

My first drafts sometimes look like final drafts, and sometimes not. For The Only Card, I didn’t work from notes, but recently I’ve made a concerted effort to keep a research practice. Essentially, I write lines from books on flashcards with the intention of incorporating them into a future project. It’s also just a soothing way to preserve words that I love. I enjoy the deliberateness of it.

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?

A poem usually begins on a gut feeling. As someone who scrupulously pillages my own life for poetic material, I tend to write towards a specific person. I fully ascribe to this Ani DiFranco lyric: “Every song has a you/ A you that the singer sings to/ And you’re it this time/ Baby, you’re it this time.” If something or someone is weighing on my mind, the poem will give me away.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on the intricacies of disabled friendships and relationships, which is leading to a series of interlocking poems that one could say is starting to resemble a manuscript. Planning a book leads to expectations, which lead to failure, so I’m not questioning the direction right now.

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

The reading environment isn’t a comfortable one for me but I’m learning to adapt. What has helped, with all these Zoom events lately, is being able to watch myself post-reading. When I read poems to an audience, or try to banter, my inner monologue is badgering me with charming comments like wow, you’re coming across like a total weirdo. But upon watching myself at the virtual Wolsak & Wynn launch in October, I was surprised to see how calm I appear. And normal, yes, I also seem normal.

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?

For The Only Card, many of the poems were anchored by Alexander Chee’s question in his essay, “On Becoming an American Writer,” where he asked: “Dying, what stories would you tell?” Yes, I put that kind of pressure on myself. Existing inside the awareness that my body is slowly disintegrating requires a lot of living, writing, and loving others with intention.

I often ask myself, “What is helpful?” If I write a poem purely to blow off steam, I won’t share it. My writing practice is for me, but I’m beholden to the work I put into the world.

As for theory? I’m a babe in the woods of theory.

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?

As a chronically ill writer, I do feel accountable to the sick/disabled community. I have a public platform to address disability issues. And even a small platform, like mine in CanLit, is a form of power and power needs to be handled responsibly. It’s always possible to write with more inclusivity, generosity, and compassion—all very pressing goals of mine.

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

I quite like working with an editor! Paul Vermeersch at Wolsak & Wynn edited The Only Card and it was an enjoyable, validating collaboration because he really believed in the work and understood what I was trying to do. (I often think others perceive my poems more clearly than I do.)

On the flipside, I’m not someone who asks friends for edits on individual poems—which is probably to my detriment because I know some exceptional poets. It’s not an issue of ego, I can be shy amongst my peers.

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

Trust your own intuition. As a younger poet, I was often swayed by reputation and other poets’ starry eyes for a certain writer or press. Ultimately, my life was happier when I read what I wanted, sent my work to publications that I liked, and didn’t pander to community members if I had a bad gut feeling about them.

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

Lyric essays give off a siren’s call for me. I’ve always liked the long poem as a format. Approaching a single issue from a multiplicity of angles delights me. I love changing my mind—a trait that gets me in trouble in my personal life but seems to lend itself well to poetry.

Thanks to my (many) Gemini placements, I can play devil’s advocate with reckless abandon. It’s a matter of amusement for me—exploring ideas to their fullest and teasing out different pathways for the poem to follow down.

So, over time, these long poems that I was writing morphed into lyric essays. I dabble in calling myself an essayist, because I think it’s a touch reductionist to refer to everything I do as poetry, even if poetry is my first and most abiding love. The Only Card has two lyric essays included as “appendixes,” and for my next book-length project, lyric essays will hopefully play an even larger role.

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?

My writing routine is relegated to weekend mornings, at the moment, since I work a 9-to-5 marketing gig on the weekdays. Generally, I like to sleep in and then have my two coffees and a chocolatine in bed before diving into a poem (still in bed, of course).

Even if I didn’t live with chronic pain, I think I’d still write from bed. The appeal of desks alludes me.

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

Music. If I hit a snag in a poem, it’s generally because my mood has shifted. Like I was feeling my feelings and then I got distracted by Instagram. In these instances, I’ll put on a suitably emotive album—such as Phoebe Bridgers’s Punisher or Fenne Lily’s BREACH—and manipulate my inner state until I can write again. Sounds healthy, no?

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Laundry mats on a subzero winter’s day. I used to think that was an amazing smell as a child in Ottawa.

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 gets my synapses firing. After I received my first CALQ grant, I booked a wintertime flight to Paris, so I could see the Ana Mendieta exhibit at Jeu de Paume in-person. It’s still one of the best decisions I’ve made. My art history knowledge is slim-to-none, so I get to just be a fan, inhabiting a state of pure appreciation and wonder as I walk through museum galleries.

Really, anything that makes me feel alive can influence my writing. To quote the wonderous Mary Ruefle, “I hated childhood/ I hate adulthood/ And I love being alive.” Being sick smashes my heart with a sledgehammer every day—but I like being here, experiencing life and translating it into poems.

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

This is my favourite question. It’s like show and tell in kindergarten, except I’m 30 and want to personally host a guided tour of my bookcase. Once, at a housewarming party for an old apartment, my friend and I sat on the floor beside my book collection and talked about the different titles. I’m terrible at hosting parties but I adore books, ok.

These books have been the most impactful on me (for a myriad of reasons, in no particular order): Anne Boyer’s Garments Against Women and The Undying, Amy Berkowitz’s Tender Points, Tess Liem’s Obits., Anne Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband, Sally Rooney’s Normal People, Kate Zambreno’s Heroines and Book of Mutter, Hieu Minh Nguyen’s Not Here, Richard Siken’s Crush, Lynn Crosbie’s Liar, Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, Suzanne Scanlon’s Promising Young Women and Her 37th Year, an Index, Adèle Barclay’s If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You, Natalie Eilbert’s Swan Feast and Indictus, and Sachiko Murakami’s Render.

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

Write another book? I’m living on borrowed time with my progressive illness, so I like to say that there will be a next collection. It feels like making a pledge to optimism and to the future.

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?

A psychologist. I loved my psychology courses in undergrad and I probably should have pursued that line of work, instead of my English degree. Sometimes, I still debate going back to school for it (despite my health constraints) and offering therapy for patients also dealing with chronic illness. I’d actually like that a lot, maybe I will.

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

Necessity. I depend on writing as an outlet to temper my anxious and depressed tendencies. If I don’t write, you’ll notice a dramatic shift in my moods, which must mean I’m addicted to poetry. Alarming.

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

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney. I like being reminded that love is complex and intense, and often just awful. On a related note, the last great film I watched was Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu). I was pleased with myself for correctly guessing that the director, Céline Sciamma, is a Scorpio. So much smoldering want!

20 - What are you currently working on?

I guess I’m working on a manuscript? I have a folder on my ancient MacBook’s desktop labelled “NEW PROJECT,” which I hope holds the bones of my second book. Its working title is Victim Complex and I’m quite serious about that, although everyone I’ve told seems to assume I’m bluffing.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Lauren Turner, The Only Card in a Deck of Knives

There are women in life’s prime with soft hair and clear eyes.

While under the canopy of skin, their lungs blossom with minute holes. They

live inside shattering hourglasses. Sand settles their organs as tumours, as

cavities, as increments of dying.

It sounds like a fairy tale meant to scare little girls, but I can’t find the moral.

Tongues struggle to unfurl this illness by name. so, we called it LAM. Sweetened

down to a baby sheep. Something to carry around, tenderly, as it chews us

through.

Bodies, you know, are tedius to deflate. (“Quit Dying to Die”)

Montreal poet (originally from Ottawa) Lauren Turner’s full-length poetry debut, after the publication of her chapbook We’re Not Going To Do Better Next Time (knife|fork|book, 2018) [see my review of such here], is The Only Card in a Deck of Knives (Hamilton ON: Wolsak and Wynn, 2020). Turner deliberately offers this observation at the onset of her notes at the end of the collection: “A book of poetry isn’t a memoir. This collection is an imperfect gathering of personal thoughts. As Bjōrk said, You shouldn’t let poets lie to you.” The benefit of such a distinction is, in part, suggesting hers is a structure of narrative lyrics in assemblage or collage, as opposed to the usually-more stringent overarching narrative requirements of prose memoir. Reminding her reader frees her from certain biographical considerations, as well as allowing her more freedom of movement through and around the subject matter of illness without having to attempt any overt resolution (it makes me wonder if she’s read American writer Sarah Manguso’s incredible memoir on the subject of living with extended illness). Basically: she is writing poems, and doesn’t have to answer your questions. “My disease is female-gendered. The afflicted cohort calls themselves Lammies,” she writes, as part of the prose sequence/section “A Masculine Division”: “sports pink feather pins and bemoans the babies deflating their lungs. I commit / none of these acts, presuming myself above it all being medically barred / from reproduction. I refuse to join the league of dying women who believe grief / is impolite, somehow unfeminine and should be hidden.”

Her lyric narratives are powerful, engaged and self-aware. Imagine a lyrically-dense craft blending elements comparable to those of Lynn Crosbie and Stephanie Bolster writing on love, loss, endurance and terminal illness. As she writes to open the sequence “Blitzed Out,” a poem set in the opening section:

I will never know you and it will always be painful.

Two truths to keep as doves under my silk hat. They coo

Their baleful song, neck in neck as lovers who forgot the proper

Appendage for handholding.

I wanted to be your Vivian, had a faulty childhood

Understanding of that story.

Merlin never slept. Lined his own cave with lamé teacups, a menagerie

Of taxidermied fowl, all stuffed up with burning sage.

He embraced me as the wrong lover. That inarticulate fucking

Of indiscriminate bodies. My deer, he’d murmur to my skin.

Call me adorable.

Say, I’ve forgotten how sweet you are.

The collection is structured into seven sections—“I/ Botched Mythology,” “II/ The Cards Dealt,” “Appendix I/ Quit Dying to Die,” “III/ The Knives Held,” “Appendix II/ A Masculine Division,” “IV? Rigged Games” and “V/ Final Play,” the third, fifth and final sections each composed of but a single poem. “I want to take the violence out of my life and replace it with a swan pond.” she writes, to open the final sequence, the final section.

In finely-carved lyrics, Turner writes of illness, love, literary life and the movement of time, from poem titles such as “Copywriting for Pornstars” and “She Found Me Taking Photos of the Snails / and Wondered Why I Was So Into Being Down” to “Quit Dying to Die” and “I Want to Get Married Before I Start Losing Organs.” There is an urgency to her poems that emerge from the awareness of time passing, and time potentially ending sooner than it should; an urgency that often emerges through as an urgency of the immediate present. She writes of her ongoing illness and her lack of patience with nonsense with an incredible, almost wistful, clarity, as well as an ongoing, layered exhaustion, such as the ending of “Cancer Season (reprise),” that reads: “I’m so violently tired. // Anemic with want, siphoned out, / I wade fading into the indigo // tide of this July. You pass me / a cigarette to satiate a compulsion // I don’t even need filled. Listen to that. / I didn’t need. For once, écoute.” She writes of an exhaustion, and a notion of time that is constant: not enough time, wasting time, bereft of time, I don’t have the time, or simply out of time altogether. This is a solid debut; The Only Card in a Deck of Knives writes with a confidence that refuses to be showy, but finely honed, subtle and fully considered.

In Case of Emergency, Please Hang Up

Mangos are the ripest weapons on hand.

You ask me what I’ve wanted the longest

and I say, A mate whose jugular I couldn’t burst.

Going everywhere in a transparent blouse

only to see

where visitors would leave their signature.

The sky is entrailed with fireworks.

a hobo in Hochelaga tells me not to swallow

gunpowder into my guts like Pop Rocks candy.

Speaking enough French to avoid making

a French exit

at picnics no one packed food for.

I do enough damage without refuelling, tx.

Who are pedophiles when the kiddie pools drain

each night?

I ask hooked questions, keeping catcallers

beguiled and at bay

as Cancer season nicks our ankles to blood.

Ongoing notes: late May, 2018

[I made a gazpacho the other day, as the wee girls made birthday cards for their Oma]

I’m behind on everything, but utilizing part of the long weekend to catch up on some reviews. Christine took the girls to her mother’s cottage, allowing me nearly two full days of work. Huzzah!

Working on reviews, short fiction and an essay on the (so far) twenty-five years of above/ground press…

Portland OR: I’m going through Cincinnati poet Caylin Capra-Thomas’ second poetry chapbook, Inside My Electric City (YesYesBooks, 2017), a follow-up to her The Marilyn Letters (dancing girl press, 2013). Gracefully produced as a square, softbound title, “A Vinyl 45,” I like the quiet hesitations in Capra-Thomas’ poems, composed as a staccato series of small gestures, from the observational to the more intimate breath. Given that 2018 sees her as the writer-in-residence at The Studios of Key West, as well as the Vermont Studio Center, where she was awarded a fellowship, I’m hoping that one doesn’t have to wait another few years for a third selection of poems; might a full-length collection be in the works?

THE GIFT OF TRAIN-FLATTENED PENNIES

            was a gesture towards                          the post-magnificent.

Courting gleam                                    we swallow them

in the copper afternoon.                      Our necks bulge

            like kingsnakes                                    with mousedeath.

We are not choking.

                                    We are settling our accounts.

Toronto ON: Montreal poet (by way of Ottawa) Lauren Turner’s debut chapbook is We’re Not Going To Do Better Next Time (2018), produced by Kirby’s infamous knife|fork|book, a press and bookstore focused on poetry and poets. Another softbound chapbook, gracefully produced, I’m intrigued at the increase in chapbooks produced as softcover, whether YesYes, knife|fork|book or Vancouver’s Rahlia’s Ghost Press, moving a direction separate from the hand-sewn items by, say, Cameron Anstee’s Apt 9 Press, or those presses that hold to the classic folded and stapled. The poems in Turner’s debut write on disillusionment, with both love and the body, and the narrator Delilah, who manages, despite herself, to be completely overcome, writing from that in-between of belief and disbelief, fully aware, or even forced to finally admit, that either is entirely possible.

IN LOVE

There was intoxication at first. A love to be regulated

to rooms made dark by smoke and other people’s limbs.

Those are exciting places. Where nights go to stagger.

Hours drain away with the lowballs. They’re pressed close

as twinned thieves, magnetic in their newness. He’s soft

with the hands and god his neck smells good. Buoyant in gin,

in hunger, she needs it all to kill so delicately. They meet

on a Sunday and left their phones for dead, no sick notes

forged to bosses or paramours. A love to repel outward.

They cluster in his bedding like a shared lung until dusk

air expels them. Mornings spent picking the bones of his

cupboards, whiskey in nescafé. The world, a silhouette

on the curtains. Delilah washes her dress in bath water.

Wants to wear what he does. Mimics her lilac hair

into a man bun and laughs. It’s so nice, everything.