Laurie Anne Fuhr, Night Flying

prairie cryptic

combines in the dark

could be harvesting anything

Given she is both a former Ottawa poet and original Peter F. Yacht Club member [she reads in Ottawa on Friday as part of our annual gathering], it is gratifying to finally see a copy of Calgary poet and musician Laurie Anne Fuhr’s long-awaited debut collection, Night Flying (Calgary AB: Frontenac House, 2018). Night Flying is organized as a collection running the length and breadth of some twenty-plus years of writing, including her time in Ottawa during the 1990s, as a book of poems focusing on her multiple geographic shifts. Raised as an army brat, Fuhr includes her full posting dates in the notes at the end of the collection—Cold Lake 1981-1985; Baden-Soellingen 1985-1990; Cold Lake 1990-1994; Ottawa 1994-1998; Winnipeg 1998-2001; Cold Lake 2001-2004—noting, as well, that she has lived in Calgary since 2004. One could say that Night Flying is a book composed on the fly: Fuhr writes of a childhood defined by her father’s multiple postings, of her own long teenaged and twentysomething stretches on Greyhound buses, of situating herself in new locations and weather patterns; of constant leaving, and constant arrival, and of what is both gained and lost through those shifts, as well as what might be held. As she writes to close the poem “leaving Germany”: “we close eyes, / brace against hollowness, // our still reflections / ready to be packed.”

Fuhr’s poems are composed as short first-person scenes, sketching out notes to help situate herself, with individual sections focused on the prairies, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Cold Lake, Alberta. Through poems spanning years, Fuhr unfolds her locations and her dislocations, attempting to articulate where she is, even as she works to figure out where it is she might be heading. “[W]hoever or wherever you are,” she writes, in the poem “under pressure,” as part of the section “posting: Winnipeg (1998-2001),” “Alberta’s coming for you.” I’m impressed with how the book is structured, focused on those geographic shifts, many of which she, as the child of someone in the military, she often had no say in, before moving into her own shifts, before finding herself in the midst of Alberta, and her centreing, there, in Calgary.

melancholia

sunlight through smoke-yellow drapes

is chloroform, special occasional jewelry

little anchors to drag her down.

queen mattress frothed in bedskirt

produces undertow.

after school in Germany

we find her drowning in bed,

feed her air from a paper bag.

long red hair fanned upward like a diver’s,

panic lowers her down

without a bell,

hydrophobe dreaming front crawl

how others dream flight.

dirt fills ears like water,

fear resounds through deep earth.

a bedroom is a natural subwoofer,

its reverb chamber

drums rudiments to hell.

death hears Dad

come home early,

turns its ready ghosts away.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Laurie Anne Fuhr

Laurie Anne Fuhr is a former Ottawan poet and singer-songwriter now living in Calgary. Her first book, night flying, was released in Fall 2018 from Frontenac House (Calgary), and her first EP, love in the digital age, is available at https://birdheat.bandcamp.com. Laurie's poetry has been published in various magazines and anthologies, and her manuscript for night flying was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. In Calgary, she instructs poetry at the Alexandra Writers Centre Society, organizes and hosts the Single Onion Open Mic, and daylights in secretarial and security. Laurie also plays upright bass in a lyrics-driven 7-piece Eastern European folk and post-punk band called Total Gadjos. Connect with Laurie via @Multimodalpoet on Facebook.  

[editor's note: even though Laurie Fuhr is already included in this series, it felt long enough ago that a repeat, especially surrounding her first trade collection, seemed worth doing; she launches her new book in Ottawa on December 28th as part of The Peter F. Yacht Club Christmas party/reading/regatta]

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?

Inspired by the Ottawa poetry community when I was a teenager, I made a chapbook on the family inkjet printer called Newsprint Butterflies, started blue moon cut n' paste poetry zine, and launched the micropress activities of blue moon books. Since then, I've made a few broadsides and chapbooks for classes I've run in Calgary under blue moon, but I was busiest in Ottawa and Winnipeg. It was a fun but difficult task, and it made me appreciate micropresses like above/ground that get so much done! My first chapbook that wasn't self-published was accident: a chain reaction from above/ground press. That adults might think my poetry worthwhile really encouraged me to keep writing; I am still grateful. 

Comparing my new work to my old work -- interesting prospect! Right now, I've noticed that I already write differently from how I wrote the book that was just released from Frontenac House, a small press in Calgary. It's got to do with the process, rather than the resulting work. When I wrote chapbook poems as a teenager, and the poems in night flying as a young adult (written 1998-2004), everything was written immediately, or in-the-moment. If I was writing about it, it was happening to me. I would often make notes during, or directly after, something happened. The work was very personal, and it took years and workshops and the hard deadline of the book to learn how to edit those very personal poems into pieces that others might like to read.

Lately, I am able to write both the immediate, and about memories of things past, or about other people, ancient history, aliens, or anything else I want to, with intention. Taking workshops as well as instructing poetry has freed me from certain superstitions about writing that I didn't know I had. Poetry that you write after the fact can be just as valid, and feel just as immediate, as poetry you write in media res of your own life. However, I suspect romantic poems will always pour out at the time the romance is happening, and with a passion and excitement that could never quite be matched after the fact. That might be one superstition I don't mind holding on to 'til death do us part (me and writing).

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

When I was a kid, I loved reading fiction, and I loved writing stories for school assignments, so technically I came to fiction first. But I was a kid living on air force bases, and I didn't know there was a community for it, or any way to publish unless you got picked up by the Big Five. I did enter a poem into the annual Legion Remembrance Day contest, and got second place for a poem in the style of John McCrae about the soldiers in his poem ascending to heaven ('In Flanders Fields we do not lie / no longer bound 'neath earthly sky', I don't remember the rest), so I thought I might have a thing for poetry.

When I visited my Cold Lake skating friend Cyndi in Nova Scotia at around age 13, where she'd been posted, there was a poetry anthology in the room I stayed in, and I got into it. She saw that and gave me a pink floral notebook for a gift, and wrote inside that she hoped I would write poetry in it. We went to Peggy's Cove, and my first poem in my first poetry notebook was about that -- well actually, it about wishing the ocean would magically inspire me, and being disappointed that it didn't!  My preteen voice was a little cynical. As an adult you look back and think, well of course, the ocean did inspire you because there's a poem in a book. A few years later, my friend Armour in high school who lived two doors down on Rockcliffe Base (the Ottawa base that is no longer there) put pen and paper in my hand, put on old records, and said write. There is a magic when you write knowing that someone is going to read it soon, and knowing who it will be. I had just had to give up figure skating for medical reasons, so I think my determination and passion transferred from one art to the other as a survival mechanism. Armour really encouraged me, and soon after, we walked into Cafe Wim as two kids on the lam from the 'burbs checking out the downtown underground, and there was "Hi, Steve!" running the Dusty Owl series, and all the likely characters were there, people like Ronnie R. Brown, David Collins, b stephen harding and Allison Calvern. Some guy who looked like Captain Morgan gave us poems and handbills about other readings, and the rest is history.    

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 have definitely gotten into the prompt and freefall method. A few years back I took Stuart Ross' Poetry Bootcamp, because years before that, his readings and books launched in Ottawa sparked my imagination into a blaze of surrealistic insanity that I still draw on to warm up my work. His Bootcamp inspired me to run a Poetry Cafe in Calgary where we try different prompts every week. I get them from my own imagination, from other poets, from books (Pearl Pirie sent me some awesome resources! Thanks Pearl!), or as suggested by our surroundings at cSpace, an arts incubator founded in an old sandstone school that houses arts of every kind. My next book will probably be random, humorous, playful, and wild when I gather up the best work I've been writing on Sundays.

So far, I haven't tackled a major research project, but I've been getting excited about the Canadian Long Poem (thanks Dymphny Dronyk!), and learning amazing things about my family history that I never knew before, so I'm going to have to do some writing.

There's also a lot of work I'm sitting on that can be edited into publishable -- everything I've written since 2004! And a lot of work that didn't fit into night flying. So to answer your question, writing comes quickly, but editing could take years. Maybe I'll get the poetry of age 25 to 35 out by 45, and age 35 to 45 out by 55...if I live that long.

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 begin with something I notice in daily life that seems bizarre or otherwise noteable, or some metaphor or turn of phrase that pops to mind, or an outside prompt, whether taken at face value or twisted. I have always let them be individuals and wrangled them after, but after the recent challenge of putting together work into chapbooks and books, linked by themes or styles, chronology, or other possibilities, I have been having book ideas! The other day I was approached by a cowboy poet about doing programming at the Poet Tree on his ranch. I thought that was charming, and why not, with cowpoke experience, a book of freeverse cowboy poetry? Is it an oxymoron, or a possibility? I'm still stumped about that one. It makes me laugh, but it also excites me! What if it worked? Or what if no one read it because eww, cowboy poetry always rhymes and is full of cliches? Could I mess with expectations and cliches and make something new? Ideas like that scare me a little, because they can be risky, and risk can bring trouble or reward, there's no telling which. Without risk, though, I think we get complacent and boring as writers. My poetry might not look like the most experimental work you've ever seen, in the context of the contemporary -- my stanzas try to communicate rather than obfuscate, for the most part. I'm still trying to make meaning. But I'm constantly experimenting with who I am as a writer, and how to present my poetry, thus the @Multimodalpoet social media moniker. One good thing about having to do your own marketing as a writer is that it forces you to examine who you are as a writer.

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

Readings are a lot of fun, and I have a feeling they are going to become even more a part of my creative process than they have been. Just yesterday I was talking to another fellow writer-musician, Jim Jackson, about collaborating on an event coming up, combining poetry and music and creating a purposeful confusion between the two in places. Another poet friend goes by BeatsxHellsHeart on Instagram, so we're going to explore some avenues with recording poems that respond to his creations, and vice-versa. Meanwhile, a couple of loop stations sit beside me on the desk. Why rule anything out? My narrative lyrics have an element of spoken word to them, and certain pieces in particular. I'll never go the slam route because I dislike a lot about it, competitive pettiness and gross behaviour and rules, but I might go entertain the spoken word kids now and then with something they haven't heard before, in a way they might not have heard it, and let them know about other local poetry events and workshops outside of their circle. Nothing will ever replace the communicative simplicity of reading from the page, though. I will always organize and participate in those readings because I think developing the skill of listening to poetry is essential to the process of becoming a better poet.

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

Both. When I went to the Banff Centre Writing Studio in 2016, I shared my work with three major poets. They all gave me different, conflicting advice! This was freeing because I realized, no matter how many credentials an editor might have, there is much of poetry that remains subjective. eg., there is no right or wrong poetry, it's mainly a matter of taste.

When it came to my first book night flying, I expected things to go differently with the editor of the press. I thought I was entitled to a thorough, substantive edit. As you know, that's not usually what you get at the small press level, at all. That was a huge wake-up call: no one is going to fix my work for me. It forced me to learn to do it better myself, and that was super difficult, but so essential. They did teach me a lot about avoiding lazy grammatical constructs and the value of immediacy in poetry, unforgettable things that will always help me as a writer, for which I am grateful.

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

I keep looking for the quote without being able to find it, but Gertrude Stein said something to the effect of, a true artist has no critic. The way I take that is not that you should ignore criticism -- in fact, you should seek it out -- but that you should take every criticism with a grain of salt, keeping in mind that you're the artist, you're the one in control. 

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

It seems like I get caught up in one for awhile, and then the other for awhile. While focussed on songwriting, ideas more readily come out as songs than as poems; while focussed on poetry, I get more poems than songs. When I manage to have both going on at the same time, I get musical poems and lyrical songs. Sometimes that really works out, and sometimes it doesn't work as well. I think it has produced my best songs, but my worst poems, somehow!

9 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

Every day, I still carry a notebook with me, just in case I have an idea and a chance to write it down. We are creatures of habit to the extreme however, so by instructing and participating in the Poetry Cafe I run every Sunday, I'm finding that's when my creativity is ready to flow the most. These days I am working a lot to get out of a financial hell-hole I created for myself a few years back before I had as many job prospects, and unfortunately that takes a lot of time away from creativity. One day maybe I'll do what many writers have done, and find a sugar daddy or mommy -- so far, however, I keep falling in love with fellow bohemians!

10 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Trees. Mom and Dad live in Forest Drive in Cold Lake, I used to wander around the provincial park forest when I wrote some of the poems in night flying. In Germany, we snuck under the barbed-wire fence and played in the Black Forest, not knowing until much later that they want to keep you out of there in case of "unexploded ordinance" from World War II. Trees have always reminded me of home. I feel fortunate to live beside one of Calgary's biggest parks right now.  

11 - 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 of the above. Ekphrastic approaches to writing excite me. Reading nonfiction or watching films, going to museums, and taking in live music or plays often makes me pick up a pen, sometimes right in the dark of the theatre. A few years ago I had poems published in a Leonard Cohen anthology that were written at a Cohen concert in Vancouver. I guess it goes back to conversation about the immediate writing vs. storing experiences for later approach.. I'd tell my students, do whatever motivates you most to actually get the work done, and I should take my own advice.  

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

Favourite poets include Karen Solie and Lisa Robertson by now, but Leonard Cohen, Al Purdy, Milton Acorn, and Carolyn Forche are early influences I still return to frequently. I'm always excited to read as many contemporary Canadian poetry releases as I can get my hands on and make time to read. Stuart Ross is still my absolute favourite since his first book, and I love reading your work, too -- it always gets my brain firing poetic and has me pick up a pen. The editor of my first book night flying, Micheline Maylor, writes incredible, magic poems, and Alice Major from Edmonton writes very important political and environmental work, poems that effectively move people to deeper thought and moral action. Ottawa Review of Books just agreed to accept a review of her Welcome to the Anthropocene from me. I'm eagerly awaiting a copy of Anne Michaels' most recent poetry book that a local independent bookstore ordered in for me last week, and I'm really enjoying Liz Howard's Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent, she's writer in residence at University of Calgary right now. Billy Ray Belcourt's breakthrough from last year, This Wound is a World, is a must-read. Locally, Richard Harrison, Weyman Chan, and Kirk Miles are my favourites, and those they've inspired are coming out with incredible books. George Elliott Clarke and George Amabile and George Bowering -- Georges all day. But those closest to us, I find, are the most essential to our progress. In Ottawa, my friends who went to Tree and Sasquatch and Factory readings, people like Jim Larwill, Sylvia Adams, David Collins, Ronnie R. Brown, Lynn Alsford, Stephen Brockwell, jw curry, and Pearl Pirie got me going and kept me going, both with their writing and their participation in the writing community. In Calgary, their names include Bob Canuel, Pam Medland, Paul Swift, Miranda Krogstad, Leonor Henriquez, Josephine LoRe, and David Martin. David recently released his first trade press book, and I hope the others are working on theirs. If I could, I would get my favourite poets on the East side of the country read the work of my favourite poets on the West side of the country, and vice versa. Too many poets write but don't read enough.

13 - 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 my dysplastic hips hadn't stopped me, I was very determined to be an Olympic figure skater. By now, that career would have been over if I had made it, maybe even the Stars on Ice part, and I might be shilling for Nabisco or teaching runny-nosed kids how to do a salchow. It's my hope I would have come to poetry anyway, where anything can happen on the page -- no matter what shape your physical body is in.

14 - What are you currently working on?

Currently I'm working on making extra money to come to Ottawa and launch between Christmas and New Years, and buying Christmas presents. It's hard working a lot and shopping when you'd much rather stay home and write, or head to a cafe. Wish me luck! Writing project wise, I plan to dig into some work that is ready for editing in January -- there is a workshop group I've been meaning to try out, and a blue pencil session I've signed up for with Richard Harrison. My next book is likely to contain puzzle pieces that fill in narrative gaps in night flying, when things I couldn't write about immediately, or that weren't edited to satisfaction for the book, come together. And it'll probably take us to France and Turkey, where I ended up for a few months, and which is what landed me in Winnipeg -- but that's another book and another interview.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

The Dirty Dozen, Open Book: Ontario

For the sake of the reading Christine McNair and I are doing in St. Catharine’s, Ontario tonight (and tabling tomorrow at the Virus Book Fair, with various above/ground press and Chaudiere titles, as well as my own titles and her own recent BookThug), Open Book: Ontario was good enough to post this "questionless" interview with me yesterday, and another with Christine, the day before. Thanks, Open Book!

After going through my list of twelve things folk might not know about me (only one of which Christine didn’t know, which I was a bit frustrated by), I thought of a few other bits I could add to the list. Am I just pushing myself to find bits that Christine might not have known? Possibly.

13. I have been the subject for a number of artists, photographers and illustrators over the years, whether formal or informal, nearly all of which I have been extremely pleased with, and many of which I’ve slipped onto the back covers of various chapbooks and books. Some of those who have drawn, painted or photographed me have included Dave Cooper, Diane Woodward, John W. MacDonald, Charles Earl, Tom Fowler, Heather Spears, Patrik Jandak [see my post on such here], Robin Kelsey, Jenn Farr, Pearl Pirie, Gavin McInnis, Rob Nelms (Emily Whist), David Cation, Robert McTavish, Christine McNair, Heather Gilberds [her 2010 portrait of me, left] and Greg Kerr (there might possibly be one or two others I can’t recall at the moment).

Poet and Bookninja George Murray even did a sketch of me, quickly, once, that I put on the back of a chapbook, somewhere around 1997. I am still hoping, possibly, someday, to be able to include Kate Beaton and Adrian Tomine, but perhaps those are pipe dreams. I am hoping someday to be able to collect all the pieces together in a single publication, perhaps. God only knows.

14. If I say that I situate myself somewhere between atheist and agnostic, it means I'm not sure what I don't believe.

15. I have a guitar in my possession (apparently) signed by the band Counting Crows. When Laurie Fuhr left Ottawa for the west over a decade back (she currently lives in Calgary, where she was, until recently, managing editor of filling Station magazine), she left it at my house for safekeeping. This is one of a series of guitars I’ve received from others, with my first in mid-teens from my cousin Patti (a Christmas present she received when I was pre-school age; it disappeared during a late 1990s break-in, resulting in Fuhr’s temporary offer of hers), a classical guitar from Stephen Brockwell, another from Marilyn Irwin, and a more recent acquisition (along with a lime green ukulele) from Sharon Harris.

It was years before Fuhr told me what the black marker scribbles on the face of her guitar meant, let alone by whom. When it finally gave up the ghost, I couldn’t throw it out, and even considered putting stamps upon, and shoving into a mailbox, just to see what might end up at her address in Calgary. I considered burying it in the woods, and photographing a small ceremony to send to her. Instead, it lives in our storage unit, waiting. Considering it isn’t mine to toss, how can I not keep it?

16. I can tell you from experience that being a Cub Scout when your ill-tempered mother is a Cub Leader is a terrible combination.

17. I taught Sunday school weekly, all the way through high school, and later ran a home daycare until my daughter Kate was nearly four. But these are most likely things you already know.

new from above/ground press: THE DUSTY OWL QUARTERLY VOLS. 27-42

THE DUSTY OWL QUARTERLY VOLS. 27-42
edited by rob mclennan
 $4

Contributors:
Cameron Anstee
Amanda Earl
Laurie Fuhr
Warren Dean Fulton
Marilyn Irwin
Alastair Larwill
John Lavery
Marcus McCann
rob mclennan
Christine McNair
Pearl Pirie
Roland Prevost
Monty Reid
Sandra Ridley
+ Janice Tokar.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in an edition of 200 copies, May 8, 2011,
for the triumphant return of Steve “Dusty Al” Zytveld
to The Dusty Owl Reading Series
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
write for submission/subscription info, c/o 858 Somerset
Street West, main floor, Ottawa ON K1R 6R7,
or check out rob_mclennan@hotmail.com or www.abovegroundpress.blogspot.com

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2 & in US $) to: rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7.

12 or 20 (second series) questions: with Laurie Fuhr

Laurie Fuhr [photo: Messagio Galore III, Calgary by ryan fitzpatrick] has lived in Cold Lake, Germany, Ottawa, and Winnipeg, but now lives in Calgary, where she is Managing Editor of filling Station Magazine. Her work has been published in various Canadian periodicals and anthologies, usually with colons in their titles, most recently Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament (Mansfield Press 2010) and Leonard Cohen: You’re Our Man (Foundation for Public Poetry 2009). Her most recent chapbook is night flying: Cold Lake Poems (Pooka Press 2009).

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

Technically, I feel like I had three first chapbooks. My first first chapbook was self-published in only 10 copies or so, printed out painstakingly on an inkjet printer, one side of a ½ piece of paper at a time. It was called Newsprint Butterflies, and I got my boyfriend Pat to draw a picture for the cover. If you could judge a book by its cover, then it was beautiful, but I’m sure the poems weren’t great.

My second first chapbook was a bunch of surreal love poems I’d written in bed while spaced on codeine after I’d gotten my appendix out; there was only one copy, which went to the same boyfriend who I felt in my delirium had saved my life by calling for help, and the deal was that it was his and I didn’t even get to keep a copy. His best friend took pleasure in telling me that he’d burned it after we broke up. In response, before the love of my life got married just one year later, I papered his neighbourhood with a poem I’d written for him. That experience could have been life changing; first, because it was a crazy act of poetry that I hadn’t known I’d had in me til then, and second, that most of my poetry since has been like underwater communications with past or unrequited love(rs). I’ve lost that a little bit in adulthood, done my best, but it’s been hard to rewire.. I still write the most under romantic duress.

When I received my first real chapbook by an actual established micropress (above/ground), I thought, now I’ve really gotten somewhere! Now I had something of my own to leave on the tables at the Royal Oak like a guerilla poetry activist, and I got to be the one signing copies. I fully  believed I was a great poet and that I would publish my first small press spine book in the next couple of years, not wait until I’m 30 or so like the other poets. I’m 31 now and I was wrong. I seemed to spend all my 20s just trying to survive, it took many broke years before I finally even had my hands on my own computer. At first, I let myself be drawn into my Ottawa friends’ bohemian lifestyle on purpose because it had a kind of Beat appeal for writing, but later, those choices plus bad luck created the circumstances that forced me to move back to Mom & Dad’s.

Since those early works, my poetry has changed for sure. Despite my surrounds in Calgary, amongst these very experimental writers they’re breeding like rabbits in the English labs of U of C, I just haven’t had the heart to go far in that direction. If I suddenly thought of some super awesome concept no one else had, maybe I would, but for the most part I find concept poetry disappointing, the poetry that comes out of the concepts is usually not as good as the concepts themselves. At the same time, I really respect the work experimental writers are doing. I do believe experimentation is absolutely essential to the growth and continuation of Canadian lit and to lit anywhere. I read what they do with excitement and awe. It’s just that in the end, what I really hope to find when I feel the urge to go looking for poetry on bookshelves is poetry that I can personally connect with, usually those revelations that come out of creative and original metaphors and similes. When they’re not cliché, they’re the blueprints to thought, and the best poems don’t completely show you all their plans – they leave some walls and windows out and force you to fill in the blanks yourself, so that you’re having a similar eureka to what the poet had the moment they thought of the poem. So with those ideals in mind, that’s what I hope can happen for people when they’re reading the writing I do lately.

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

Well, truthfully I did write stories first when I was really little; I remember I wrote a haunted house story, probably ripping off every cliché Halloween creature story front left and centre like a Grade 4 JK Rowling, and my teacher made a big deal out of it and told my parents they thought I was onto something. Naturally, they decided to encourage an interest in figure skating.

When I think about it, I came to poetry several times before it stuck. I wrote a couple of little poems when I was a little kid too, eight or so, mostly as an excuse to type on the Commodore 64 with two fingers and to print things out on the noisy dot matrix printer, they were poems about saving wild horses and spooky Celtic sounding junk.

Poetry started in me again later on when I was looking at an anthology of poetry at my best Cold Lake skating friend’s house during a visit to her new place in Sackville, NS, when I was fourteen I think. She saw I was interested and gave me a little flowered notebook with a note in it that she believed in me, by far the sweetest thing anyone had ever done, especially since my own family were very emotionally inexpressive, at least in nice ways. My first notebook poem was about disappointment that the sea at Peggy’s Cove when I was visiting didn’t fill me with inspiration like it did for people in books, but I guess it did in a way.  

Anyway, later still in high school poetry, came for me again in the form of the school’s only hippie, who pretty much insisted I be his friend, even though I was trying to be cool and hang out with the preppy girls despite their vacuity -- I was determined not to be an outcast as I’d been in junior high, Cold Lake, where the kids decided since I had a German last name and moved there from Germany I must be a Nazi. Armour the hippie rescued me from prepdom, he lived 2 doors down, and we’d sit in his basement listening to early metal records or obscure classic rock while we’d both write something for about an hour and then show it to each other. His basement had a weird smell, probably eau de unwashed hippie plus the curbside furniture he and his Mom used to find (I honestly just caught the scent of it again as I was writing). Soon, he and I stumbled into a café in Ottawa one night and came across a Dusty Owl reading, so that we learned there was a lit community. A handsome old guy handed us flyers and told us to come to things. I’m now a bit older than that old guy was, and I’m the one handing out the flyers.

However, I’ve been writing more songs, short fiction, and creative non-fiction now than I ever did before, moreso than poetry.. for some reason, I really like writing when I’m in motion, like on a Greyhound Bus going through all the odd little towns on the way up to visit my parents in Cold Lake. On a bus trip like that, you’re not obligated to do anything but ride it, you can’t distract yourself with guilt about needing to do the dishes. Also, I think the constant motion of the scenery in your eyes reflects somewhat into the way your brain works, it can keep your thoughts in motion too. I filled half my notebook on my way to Cold Lake at Christmas, a lot of it about the scary Edmonton terminal and goings-on there.

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?

In Calgary, I know people who can do research and sit down at a desk and write an entire book of poems. I’ve wanted to do that; for awhile I was researching the world of lightning survivors, they have this annual conference in the States, and survivors get all these weird symptoms, I thought there should be a book of poetry about that. It’s really fascinating, but I look at research notes I’ve made and they don’t inspire me in a way I can use. Poetry comes to me differently. The process is that I need to have an open mind at all times and sort of have the idea of poetry at the back of it, and I need to carry a notebook. And then I’ll see things and hear things throughout the day that will trigger some thought or line or two, and I’ll write it down. I guess in that way it comes quickly, at least once it’s happening. The city of Ottawa really inspired me more than anywhere else has, I loved to float around all day just being a poet and carrying my guitar around, observing things and meeting people, staring up at Gothic architecture, and I filled countless notebooks. In Calgary, under adult stress and doing administrative dayjobs, it’s been much harder to do a lot of writing.

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 a book from the beginning, so far. About those lines that come on location usually, sometimes I let that first line coax a poem out of me right then and there, if I’ve got time. More often these days I’m on my way to work or somewhere and I can’t get it down, so I find myself with a collection of first lines later which can usually be sewn together into a poem that somehow ends up looking pretty seamless. Personally, more an answer to the end of question 3, I feel that there is no creative hand and editing hand that need to be kept separate, as people like to say; there’s creativity in the editing hand too, at least for me. It’s a usable skill when trying out Plunderverse; I’m a bit of a collagist at times, and similarly, it’s fun to find all my favourite lines in someone’s book and make a poem out of it. I did that with Natalee Caple’s Fall 2010 poetry book, The Semiconducting Dictionary (Our Strindberg), and wrote a song using that method for the first time, all made out of sutured together lines that made a kind of sense together when put in a very specific order. One of the bands I’m in performed it at her Calgary book launch, and unfortunately for the other music I’ve written, it’s probably my best. Still, while it’s fun, I get that it’s not exactly mine because the words are someone else’s. I’ve been so busy with filling Station the past few years, the last sort of ms project I had together were my Cold Lake poems, written over the two years I spent there as an adult after leaving Ottawa.

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

Lately I’m the one arranging the readings, so I don’t do a lot of them since I don’t like the way it looks if I schedule myself in; occasionally I’m asked, and I’m happy to do them, but usually people forget to ask me cause they think of me as an organizer more than a poet I think. This year, I’m hoping to pass on the fS torch to just the right candidate and do a lot more of my own writing again. It’s hard to be too many things at once really well, even though they’re related. I’m starting to think Aristotle was right, that you can only really do one thing well in your life. This is only sinking in after I tried to do everything I’m capable at once these past few years, organizing and editing and writing and operating grants and bands and relationship and friends and work work work, and suddenly went from a happy caffeine junky to just about having a nervous breakdown. My nervous system betrayed me once I had betrayed it. Anyway, more readings one day soon I hope.

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 questions I think I’m answering while I’m writing a poem are, is this the right word to go right here? Does it mean right, sound right, feel right, does it fit what it feels like I’m trying to say in the way I want to say it? Sounds pretty basic I’m sure, but all other questions are put aside until I’m looking at it later. At that point, I can ask the piece all kinds of questions, but it just sits there mutely, being what it is. Maybe that’s part of why it’s hard to get them into book form unless they’re attached to some particular place that lends itself as a theme.

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?

The writer writes, physically, but beyond that what they’re doing is generating new ideas constantly. They are imagination factories. In all other fields, you need to be an expert at something else, for example, a scientist had better be good at physically manipulating the junk in the petrie dish with the little tiny tweezers, and that junk has go to behave in a certain way to make his hypothesis into a theory, and then the theory needs testing. There are all of these physical factors that delay coming to conclusions. The writer is unfettered by any of that. As long as he or she can find the right words, they can cause anything the world can do to happen on a page and see what that’s like. From there, others can take those ideas and see what can be made concrete, but those concrete actions are happening after the ideas, the ideas don’t depend on them. If it wasn’t for writers, I don’t think we’d have a lot of the technology we use every day, or very many of the movies we like to watch for entertainment, or the Constitution and Human Rights act that govern our society (or are supposed to), we wouldn’t have cars or airplanes if someone hadn’t thought of it and written it down first. These are great big concrete examples though; imagine the repercussions on the harder to see, optically elusive world of human thought, of philosophy and psychology and everything we use to see the world. If it wasn’t for writers, we wouldn’t have eyes, just blank windows.  

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

Although I don’t believe I’ve found the right editor for me yet, I’m convinced that finding the right editor for one’s work is key. Because of filling Station, I’ve had people ask me to look at their manuscripts. But if their work isn’t connecting in some way with the work that I do, I feel like I’m not the best person for the job, and also, the right editor should not be a friend, repeat, should not be a friend, which is hard when the writing community is so small. Feeling that to be the case, I’ve friendlied up to far too many writers who could have been my editors. So now, the task is to read and find someone whose work aligns in some way with my own and who I don’t know yet, and who is a good editor, and see if they’ll look at my work. I think it’s good advice for any writer out there. You just can’t get a useful, objective sense of your work from someone you’re pals with, or from someone whose work is much much different from yours.

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

The best piece of advice is one that I’ve been telling writers and musicians ever since it’s occurred to me, so that it’s even come back around my way from someone who forgot I was the one who’d told it to them, and that way I can say I’ve received it. I was watching Anne-Marie MacDonald on TV once talking about how divine inspiration hits her over the head and she just writes a whole book. That same week, I heard another interview with a writer who claimed she didn’t know where her ideas came from and felt there was a spooky outside force, and that this made writers special people who can be the conduits for those forces. I call bullshit. There are too many musicians and writers I’ve come across that buy into that stuff and they can’t write anything, they’ve got permanent writers block because they’re waiting for divine inspiration to come knocking on their door. But the secret is to write anyway, because you just can’t imagine what it is that’s going to come out of you until it’s coming out. Trust yourself and write and write, and you learn somehow, and that’s how you get good over time.

Also, advice to former self from future self: There’s no God, there’s no heaven, and even the people who will remember you are all going to die, until there’s no one left to remember you or anyone you love. A moment of time is less than a speck, and an era, maybe a grain in the history of the world. Even if you publish a much-loved book that’s the case, so that egotistical making-your-mark on the world stuff doesn’t fly. You might as well do whatever you can to make yourself feel better about the inevitability of these facts, and if it’s writing, you might as well try. Oh, and while you’re at it, try to quit feeling like a victim despite believing all of this, and don’t get depressed, it doesn’t help anyone to like you better.

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?

Wishing I had a writing routine, again I carry a notebook around with me and write things down as they come, or else I open a Word file at work when no one’s watching so I can get a few lines out as they occur. A day for me lately is just too busy. It begins by getting up, getting ready as fast as possible while looking presentable and professional like the other girls in the office, a little cleavage (courtesy) but not too much (professionalism), and then I go get the bus, I only have a short bus ride so I’ve barely caught my breath by the time I get to work, no writing usually there, and then I’m sitting for hours doing up spreadsheets and using weird programs to draw weird reports full of jargon that someone somewhere cares about, and phone calls for my manager who’s somehow never at her desk, and people from my department come to my desk asking for rubber thumbs… lunch comes, it’s just a half an hour, enough time to walk around a bit and stretch my atrophying  legs, notice once more the wishing well with the sign that you’re not allowed to put any pennies in since the chlorine corrodes them, and it’s back to my cubicle.. the end of the day comes, I bus back home, change my clothes, eat something quick, get on another bus, because tonight’s the reading and I should be there if I expect anyone else to go, or else it’s band practice, or else I’m doing door for someone, or else I’m going to visit my boyfriend’s family who like to party in a chips and pop sort of way…

Actually, at this very moment I’m out of work, and come to think of it, I’m pretty glad! But after almost two months of being out of work, applying and genuinely trying but somehow with the economy or whatever not getting the job, I feel like I’m still working through the stress aftershock of my lifestyle. Plus, it’s grant time, so I’ve got to get through that. But after, in a couple of weeks from now, I just might have time and stress relief enough to read and to write! Hopefully by then I won’t be employed… for the first time in my life I’ve got Employment Insurance, hallelujah.

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

Reading is very key for me. I need to read a lot, and I need to discover new writing that really excites me. Somehow out of the act of discovering the screw that turns in the new poems, the ability to make poetic connections in my brain gets turned the right way again too. What comes out as a result won’t have anything to do with what I’ve just read, but it comes out.

12 - What did your favourite teacher teach you?

My favourite teacher taught me to play Stairway to Heaven before I knew what any of the notes or chords were called. More than Stairway, what this taught me was to just dive in and figure out the technical stuff later.

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?

I did a bit of nature inspired writing up in Cold Lake, bumming around the Provincial Park, but it’s not my best.. I love music, but it’s music with lyrics I love, so I’m not inspired to say something different when I’m listening to it, it makes me want to sing along. Science is really interesting, but what I’ve tried to write from looking at amazing articles in Discover Magazine for example have produced horrendous and cold Chris Dewdney nightmares of  verse. Visual art, on the other hand – sometimes that does it for me. My favorite piece I’ve written was at a student art installation, part of a student exhibition at Calgary’s Alberta College of Art & Design (ACAD). Meags Fitzgerald created a room completely out of different methods of fibre and textile art that replicated the room she had been born in. Her mother had birthed her right on the master bedroom’s king sized bed, and there had been pictures. It was a complete room, you could walk in, very pink, and there were embroidered hockey cards on the felt dresser, even woven pop bottles on the night stand. It gave me the idea that as a baby being born, if the first thing Meags felt was the fabric of the bed, the baby’s interpretation could have been that everything it could see was also made out of similar, and that although Meags couldn’t have remembered that, subconsciously it could have somehow informed the work. Weird idea I know, but it inspired a poem I liked quite a bit, which I wrote in her Guest Book and never saw again. I recommend looking up Meags online, really amazing stuff. 

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

Life outside my writing work is that awful dayjob stuff I was describing, and there’s barely enough room in it to fit me into it, let alone books. When I’m reading I’m thankfully transported within my true self, my writing work self. While I love a lot of poetry, writers who always inspire me to write when I read them are Karen Solie, Evie Christie, Carolyn Forche, and Anne Michaels (though I’ve read her work too much, it doesn’t work quite as well anymore). Particularly, the work of French writers in translation seems to get me going, some not all, Brossard over Moure for sure. Brossard has more heart, I can’t outgrow the want of that. Also, when I read your work I tend to read a whole book in one sitting and then I absolutely need to write, I think it’s something about the patterns of the words that get into my head and make my own poetry want to respond. Thank goodness you’ve got a lot of books, keep them coming!

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

The other night, I dreamed I was covered in artistic body paint of really vibrant colours in the blue and red palettes, but basically I was walking around naked. It’s something I haven’t done yet in real life, and wouldn’t, but it felt pretty sexy. I’m thinking I should start a burlesque troupe for girls with miniscule breasts, but then again, I’ve got a lot on the go as it is.

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?

Before writing, I had a couple of near misses when it comes to other occupations. I wanted to be an Olympic figure skater really badly, it wasn’t the artistry that attracted me but the athleticism and wanting to push boundaries and do crazy new stunts, but it turned out I have a bum hip and my body wouldn’t cooperate when it was time to learn the big jumps. If it had, I’d probably be doing that, maybe not Olympic but close, I was really fearless and not lacking in determination and ambition. Since then, I’ve tried to do pretty much everything that I’ve wanted to do simultaneously – writing, playing guitar, playing bass, singing, writing articles for the paper, events management, etc. What’s there to fear when at least your body can’t betray you in those activities? Not unless I get carpal tunnel anyway. Who knows where I’d be if I had more resources and could have afforded to finish school back at Carleton, and/or had better grades, if I had not become a hippie n’er do well in my last year of high school, skipping class to read Howl cover to cover at the Rideau Street Chapters. If I had gotten into my chosen program, I would have become a journalist, which isn’t so far from creative writing at its best - the articles I’ve written about bands and shows have been pretty creative. But what if I had unlimited resources.. hmm. I think I would have tried to become a fighter pilot. There were a few women pilots on the Cold Lake air base with nicknames like Voodoo Zombie that I thought were pretty awesome. Though, at one point I was determined to start a female NHL, after a particularly good floor hockey sesh. So far, despite the skating and mad floor hockey skills, I haven’t had a chance to actually play hockey. I’ll wager wanting to play hockey is more of a national sport statistically than actually playing hockey.

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

I think what’s kept me writing through periods of self-doubt and despair has been loyalty and respect for those who have inspired me, in a way. There’s no better story in my life than the one where I had no passion and no direction, and was really pretty miserable, and this person, Armour, befriended me and gave me the keys to this world where you can make anything you can think of happen on a page, and the laws of physics, or of the lower middle class, or of your parents’ interpretation of the world don’t matter. It’s something no one can take away from me, it’s something I can afford on any budget, it’s something portable I can bring with me, I can use it to escape from people or to connect with people who don’t know I love them. What could be better than writing?   

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

Right now I’m finishing Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott.  For the first third of the book, it was okay, but I didn’t think the writing was Giller worthy. But what happens with the main character hooked me in hard; she has nothing, gains everything she didn’t know she was missing, and then loses everything again, partly because of something that was done to her, but mostly through her own reactions to that, behaving as a tragically disappointed person. It is so emotionally gripping and resonant, I can’t stand it. I’ve only got about 30 pages to go. 

The last great film was a fairly obscure Sarah Polley movie called My Life Without Me. In it, a young woman learns she has terminal cancer, but she doesn’t want to tell anyone. She goes to a diner and makes a secret list of everything she wants to do in the next few months before she dies, and she secretly goes out to accomplish those things. She doesn’t even tell her mother. It’s got to be one of the most emotionally turbulent films I’ve ever seen, it’s gorgeous, and I had to look up one of the obscure songs on the soundtrack, called "Sometime Later" by Alpha.

19 - What are you currently working on?

filling Station’s operating grant for Canada Council. We lost our funding, even though we’d heard from other mags that they’re not supposed to be able to completely cut it. Magazines aren’t selling well enough, the grantors want small mags to go digital so they don’t have to pay the printing bills anymore, but that can’t happen immediately, it takes manpower and funds to transition, and time to transition those subscribers who can be, and attract new ones. Grantors on two levels also hated our Visual Poetry issue, well it was just one feature in one issue and we put it on the cover. The juries felt it was fair to compare visual poetry created by poets for poetic effect with the work of trained, pro visual artists found in other arts magazines. This was part of what inspired our Visual Poetry Mock Trial back in January, Gary Barwin’s been talking about it on his blog. Anyway, fingers crossed – if we don’t get it this round we’re in serious kaka.

Oh, you meant my work? The most recent thing I’ve written was a story set in Ottawa for the Broken Pencil Indie Writers Death Match with the perhaps inauspicious title of Cocaine Wayne and vs. Neon Sam: Or, the Return of Mafia Charlie. I found part of it in my papers up in Cold Lake from ages ago and decided to edit it and finish it, but I ended up not submitting it, it got a bit long and out of control. Still, I had the great experience of being carried away with it for hours, completely oblivious to time, much like I have been with these 12 or 20 questions. It has me excited to try writing more short fiction. I really like the work writers like Ian Orti and Mike Spry have been doing lately, Snare’s been publishing interesting things.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;