12 or 20 (second series) questions with Gabriel Ojeda-Sague

Gabriel Ojeda-Sague is a Miami <-> Philly gay, Latino Leo living in Philadelphia, PA. He is the author of the poetry books Jazzercise is a Language (The Operating System, 2018), about the exercise craze of the 1980s, and Oil and Candle (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2016), on ritual and racism. He is also the author of chapbooks on gay sex, Cher, the Legend of Zelda, and anxious bilingualism. His third book Losing Miami, on the potential sinking of Miami due to climate change and sea level rise, is forthcoming from Civil Coping Mechanisms.

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?

I’ve said before that my first chapbook JOGS taught me how to write. It was an experiment in using the same words as are in the 1977 book The Joy of Gay Sex to create poems. Though I have some regrets about how I did it, the writing taught me a lot and my language today is very similar to what that book is like. I still revel in the kind of campiness beside darkness that is found there. Nowadays, my work is less guided by conceptual constraint, which motivated much of my early work, and I am less afraid of talking about myself. Whether that’s good or bad, I’m not quite sure yet. I’m still interested, however, in taking on close analysis of media people find unworthy, as I do in Jazzercise is a Language.

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

Actually, I didn’t come to poetry first! In fact, my reading and writing both started in fiction. As a teen, I read a lot of Faulkner, Joyce, and Woolf. I basically had a big thing for the modernist titans. I tried writing stories for a bit, even did a few in college, but I could never stick with the practice. If I blame it on a personal flaw, it might be that I just struggle to write narrative. I guess I’m not very interested in telling a story. I’m interested in trickery more so. I started reading poetry when I was exposed to poets. Other than a few, I really didn’t read poetry until college. And it took reading poetry to feel like I could and should write poetry. And it stuck.

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?

When it comes to book length projects, it tends to start at an idea, or even a phrase. And I try to write thinking of this idea to see where it might take me. For example, Jazzercise is a Language started with exactly that phrase, said after watching a compilation of Judi Sheppard Missett and commenting on the specific words she was using. And I thought it was a nice phrase and could mean something in practice on the page. So, I started working from that idea: what is the language of Jazzercise and how can you play with it. And I started to write out based on these ideas. What I had I thought was pretty convincing, so I decided to embark on it and see how far it took me. And then I had a book. I basically think the best way to know if a project is viable is to start writing it. This is also why I end up trashing a lot of projects. Once the thing is done, I tend to edit little. Not because I’m against it, I just find nothing inspiring in the process, personally.

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 almost always starts as a phrase I think of. I usually write these phrases in a note on my phone and when I make time to write I see where they might take me. For example, the phrase “a beehive is someone’s backdrop” came to me in the shower, randomly, and for while I couldn’t figure out where to go with it. One day I was writing a poem, one that began because I decided I wanted a poem that started with the words “Simply put” (which, because I’m me, I thought was really funny) and I came to part where I described never being alone, and I thought hey! it’s like living in a scene that is a beehive! And so, I switched the phrase to “this backdrop is someone’s beehive” and stuck it in the poem where it works quite well. So, the poems come like that, as if from a room in my brain that occasionally lets out odd phrases.

I don’t tend to collect poems into books. When I am writing a book, a mode I feel very comfortable with, I am thinking of it as a book the entire time. Very rarely am I surprised to find that I have a book. Individual poems, or page poems, I see almost as a test field for me. Where I am doing my most serious and committed work is in a book. An individual poem is like a short test for ideas of mine, and will likely never be collected into a book.

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

Oh, they’re hugely part of it! I don’t know if it’s clear to a reader, but I focus a lot on the sounds of words and often will put in lines only because of the sounds of them. I’m working always on sound. So I love to read the poems aloud. I’ve said before that I find the reading to be an instance of the poem, and not necessarily a truer or falser version of the poem. Implicit in that is that the written version is also just an instance of the poem.

But the bigger reason readings are important to me is because my work is only possible because of the community of poets in Philadelphia, where I live now. The community meets in readings and similar events and we grow together. It’s amazing what my peers do. And I’m really blessed any time I can read for them and any time I get to see them read.

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? / 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?

If you don’t mind, I’m combining two of your questions because I think they are related. I have held for a long time that writing does not “do” anything. I do not believe in an “activist poetics” as such. Instead, I think writing does something quieter. I think that the book creates a climate in the mind, for a question to be warmed, an anxiety cooled, or an apparatus bothered. In other words, I see poetry as the making of a simulation of thinking and experience, so that others can tune into the simulation in whatever way they deem right for themselves. This is what I believe the writer can do, ask others to interface. When it comes to me, I choose to write on issues of gayness, Latinidad, exilism and marginalized media. This is because my mind comes to these issues often. I find it interesting to consider the media we take in and how we can analyze it. I find my life to be composed of and enriched by these sister identities (gay, Latino, child of Cuban exiles) so I write in relation to them. My overarching question is how does the gay Latino subject read the world. But my poetry on this, with its specific edge, does the same work as somebody else’s poetry on a different subject, which is to simulate the mind on record.

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

I hope that I’m an easy writer to work with! I try to recognize the work editors are putting in, especially in the small press world, especially when nobody is being paid, and when I do recognize that, a lot of the decisions and changes they suggest are easier to swallow. I can usually take the small changes that come with editing a manuscript, and I’m lucky to have never had an editor who truly wanted to take a knife to my work. You’ve always got to give a little room and recognize that your poem draft is not the end-all-be-all text of the poem, and that it can change in the publishing process, but you also can’t accept being stepped on. I just want to make sure every change is a conversation.

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

The best advice I’ve heard is the way CA Conrad talks about imaginary careers. I don’t have an exact quote off hand, but he has said before that there is no reason a poet should step on others to defend or build up their imaginary career. Like Ashbery says, there is no such thing as a famous poet. And almost none of us, at least in the small press world, are making money off of this stuff. So better to be generous and help others grow in writing than to stomp forward until you have—what? the nothing career of poets. Nobody should be writing for fame. When I choose that I want fame more than other things, I’ll become a Youtuber.

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

When I was young I wanted to write in every genre, as I mentioned above, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve committed full heartedly to poetry. I see my essay practice as a critical one, not as a “creative nonfiction” practice, so it’s easier to separate mentally. As in, here is my creative practice (poetry), here is my critical (nonfiction). It’s a very reductive binary, but sometimes setting that binary up can help you clear your thoughts. It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything that wasn’t a poem or an essay. Maybe one day I’ll return to it.

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 typical day doesn’t include writing, I’m ashamed to say. My typical day goes like this: wake up, go to work, come home, work second job remote, make dinner (unless it’s my partner’s turn), play a video game, read, go to bed. I know a lot of people who write every day, but it’s just never been my thing. So, what I typically end up doing is, if I don’t have a current project in progress, saying to myself “jeez, I should try to write something today” and I’ll dedicate a bit of time to doing that and see what comes out. But if I have a current project, I’m like an animal. I write fast and edit very little. Oil and Candle took me 2 weeks to write, Jazzercise is a Language took me a semester. When I’ve got a good idea going, I can really hammer into it. It’s the “off season” that is a little tough.

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

The text in the room around me is the best immediate remedy. My apartment is full of prints and posters with text on them. And of course, every home has a lot of objects with text on them: food containers, clothing, toiletries. If I am stumped in the middle of a line, looking for a good word, I scan around me and see what I can find. If it’s a more serious stump, that is a tougher question to answer.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Humidity.

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’d say my biggest non-book-artist influences are Stephen Sondheim, drag queens, and certain musical ladies like Björk, Cher, Bernadette Peters, and Joni Mitchell. I also get a lot of my tender heartedness from gay visual artists, with a big focus on Cy Twombly, Tom of Finland, and David Hockney.

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

Oh, I could fill a lot of pages here. Let me be brief, but divide this into two categories. The authors I tend to read the most and who affect my work from that reading are: CA Conrad, Rae Armantrout, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Sawako Nakayasu, Caroline Bergvall, Samuel Delany, Yoko Ono, David Melnick, Brandon Shimoda, and Rosmarie Waldrop. The writers who are my big in-person influences and who help me in the lived experience of being a writer: Raquel Salas-Rivera, Emji Spero, Julia Bloch, Alina Pleskova, Roberto Harrison, Emma Sanders, Andy Emitt, and Frank Sherlock. And you can really throw in the whole Philly poetry scene as influences on me and my work.

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

I’d like to write a song and sing it in a public setting. It has long been a dream, but there are lots of barriers to entry there, many of which are only psychological.

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?

The boys of my immediate family are/were musicians, so that feels like the natural step. I used to play oboe (the details for why I stopped are for another time) and I really loved it. I miss playing oboe and somewhere in me there’s a symphony member. Every time I hear the sound of it, I feel like I have a sun lamp shining on my collarbone.

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

What made me write was how many good books I was reading and seeing in the world. I needed to put myself there.

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

The last great book I read was Ann Lauterbach’s Clamor. But that is an old book. The last great book I read from this year was Mark Johnson’s Can of Human Heat. And that’s one too many people are sleeping on. The most recent great film I watched happened to be Death Becomes Her. Somehow, as a gay man, I hadn’t seen that movie until Halloween 2017. But the last great film I saw in the theaters was easily The Witch.

20 - What are you currently working on?

For the first time in a while, I actually don’t have any current committed book length projects. I’m testing out many ideas right now and letting myself be a free spirit. But one thing I am trying to put energy into is a series of love poems. I know, an experimentalist doing a love poem, sounds romantic, but hey, they’re pretty good I think.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Arc walks, 2018 : centretown

[official Arc Poetry Magazine twitter photo by Chris Johnson] On Tuesday, I hosted the first of a series of “Arc walks” that Arc Poetry Magazine approached me to curate on their behalf, aiming for a series of hour-long literary (poetry specific) walks around various Ottawa neighbourhoods, to showcase a series of known and unknown landmarks, sites and whatnots. The first walk focused on a fragment of Centretown, walking along a stretch of Bank Street to Parliament Hill, before ending up on Sparks Street, just at Elgin. One of the challenges of these walks is not only to find a series of spots that might be interesting enough to discuss, but that would fit into the space of an hour’s walk (Lowertown, I think, might be a bit of a challenge, given how scattered around some of the research seems, so far). With this one completed, I’m now looking around on figuring out my Glebe walk, and then a potential Lowertown walk, with six to be completed this year in total, including a French walk and an Aboriginal walk (the curators/hosts of such as yet to be determined). For information on the days/locations of the further walks, either check out Bywords.ca or the website for Arc Poetry Magazine (or, like, just come back here). Thanks to Arc Poetry Magazine, Frances Boyle and Chris Johnson, and everyone involved for the opportunity! It was more fun than I might have thought (the walking part, I mean). And we even ended with a pint at D’Arcy McGee’s.

Here’s a slightly edited version of the script I read from on Tuesday (with a guest-appearance by poet Jennifer Baker, who read a poem by John Newlove as well as one of her own).

WALK ONE:

For this series of walks, I’ve deliberately aimed to be more contemporary than much of the information on Ottawa’s literary history, forgoing much of the facts of the Confederation Poets Archibald Lampman and Duncan Campbell Scott, for example, for more contemporary examples such as John Newlove, Michael Dennis and jwcurry, among others. Some have claimed the history of the city is made up of examples of those who have moved through the city but chose not to remain, and writers in this category are numerous, from Norman Levine, Al Purdy, Raymond Souster, Hugh MacLennan and George Elliott Clarke to Joan Finnigan, Stephanie Bolster, Robin Hannah, Elizabeth Smart, Robert Fontaine, Carol Shields and John Barton. While elements of this might be true (I’m not convinced this occurs more in Ottawa, as suggested, than any other city), there are lots of people and activities that have existed here for years, some of whom continue to inspire activity.

FIRST STOP: 248 Bank Street: In the early 1960s, 248 Bank Street was the second of three locations of Ottawa’s infamous Le Hibou coffeehouse, which would have been run at the time by William and Sheila Hawkins. From 1960 to 61, it lived at 544 Rideau, relocating here until 1965, when it moved 521 Sussex for Le Hibou’s final decade. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, William Hawkins [archival photo provided by Cameron Anstee] was known as Ottawa’s most dangerous poet, and easily one of the most well-known Ottawa poets of the period, publishing numerous poetry books, organizing readings and generally causing trouble. It would have been here that Hawkins ran fundraisers for himself and Roy MacSkimming to be the only poets east of the Rocky Mountains to make it out to the Vancouver Poetry Conference of 1963, asking friends and enemies alike for cash to help him get out of town (Toronto poet Victor Coleman was apparently offered the opportunity to ride with them, but didn't trust their car to make the trip). And when their car broke down on the way home, it was Black Mountain poet Robert Creeley who paid for the repairs, preventing them from being stranded in the interior of British Columbia.

Le Hibou in the first half of the 1960s included numerous readings alongside the musical performances, and some of the literary activity in and around the coffeehouse included poet Harry Howith and his short-lived Bytown Books, designer/printer Robert Rosewarne and his Nil Press, poets Roy MacSkimming and George Johnston, and the single issue of Something Else, edited by William Hawkins and Denis Faulker. It was only later on that Le Hibou moved over to Sussex Avenue, where it continued to host poets and musicians alike, including Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, bpNichol, Victor Coleman, Robert Hogg and many, many, many others. In 2013, VERSe Ottawa made William Hawkins one of the first two inductees of the Hall of Honour, and he died three years later.

SECOND STOP: 231 Bank Street/319 Lisgar: While the space above has hosted living and studio spaces for numerous artists and illustrators over the years, including Adrian Gollner, David Cation, Jennifer Dickson and Dave Cooper, Ottawa poet Michael Dennis also lived upstairs for a number of years, roughly from 1985 to 1988, and again from 1994 to 2002. Originally sharing the space with artist Daniel Sharp, he moved out when Sharp got married, and moved back in to replace the Sharps, once Dan and his wife started having children.

Michael Dennis came to Ottawa from Peterborough in 1984 to attend Carleton University, and became one of the most published poets in the city, having managed some two hundred journal publications by the end of the decade, as well as multiple chapbooks and books, culminating in Fade to Blue from Pulp Press. He was also one of a small handful of writers and artist that appeared in Ottawa in the early 1980s from Peterborough, arriving in conjunction with poet Riley Tench, and writer and visual artist Dennis Tourbin.

There are those that might recall that 319 Lisgar Street used to host Invisible Cinema, after years of hosting Gallery 101, where readings were held throughout the late 1980s and into the 1990s by Rob Manery and Louis Cabri’s The Transparency Machine, back in the days when Dennis Tourbin ran the gallery. The Transparency Machine existed under the umbrella of the experimental writers group, a group loosely based on bpNichol and Steve McCaffery’s Toronto Research Group. Focusing on formally innovative English-language poetry, The Transparency Machine hosted a series of readings and talks by a variety of North American poets, including Steve McCaffery, Jorge Etcheverry, Robert Hogg, Lisa Robertson and Tom Raworth, focusing their attention on the Vancouver Kootenay School of Writing, as well as various American and British language writers. Later on, the series rebranded as the N400 Series at the Manx Pub, which existed until Rob Manery moved to Vancouver in 1996, two years after Cabri had left for Philadelphia. Further into the 1990s, Gallery 101 also hosted my poetry 101 series, the short-lived name of what ended up becoming The Factory Reading Series. Subsequent locations of Gallery 101 also hosted Max Middle’s now-defunct performance series, The AB Series.

Another occupant of the same space at 319 Lisgar, prior to Gallery 101, was legendary Ottawa curator and bookseller Richard Simmins, who operated a used bookstore there for many years. Author of the early 1980s novel Sweet Marie, published through Vancouver’s Pulp Press, the precursor to Arsenal Pulp Press, Simmins was also the father of British Columbia poet Zoe Landale.

THIRD STOP: L’Esplanade Laurier Building (140 O’Connor Street/Bank): Despite living in Ottawa longer than he lived anywhere, John Newlove always considered himself to be a Saskatchewan poet. He worked for years as an editor for Official Languages in one of the office towers at L’Esplanade Laurier, originally moving to Ottawa in 1986 from Nelson, British Columbia, after John Metcalf’s wife Myrna (owner of the Elgin Street Diner) helped secure him an interview. Years later, Newlove would joke that moving from permanent job to renewable contract, he had become a government whore as opposed to merely a slave. Here’s a poem he wrote during that period, composed around his experience with government service, originally published as “LEONARD, IT'S WINTER IN OTTAWA” in a festshrift for the Montreal poet and musician in 1994.

IT’S WINTER IN OTTAWA

The streets are full of overweight corporals,

of sad grey computer captains, the impedimentia

of a capital city, struggling through the snow.

There is a cold gel on my belly, an instrument

is stroking it incisively, the machine

in the half-lit room is scribbling my future.

It is not illegal to be unhappy.

A shadowy technician says alternately,

Breathe, and, You may stop now.

It is not illegal to be unhappy.

[Jennifer Baker, reading John Newlove] Across the street, I used to see John Newlove quite regularly, as I sat daily in the Dunkin’ Donuts window to write, from 10am to 3pm, six days a week, from May 1994 through to June 2000, existing in the space for the entire lifespan of the donut chain, living in the space now occupied by Tim Hortons. Newlove would step off the bus at the stop outside my window, nod and wave his cane at me as he would head off to the office. While sitting in my daily space, one that became quite well-known after a few years, I hosted numerous writers and artists who came in to visit me as I worked, including John Barton, John Metcalf, Dennis Tourbin, b stephen harding, Victor Coleman, John Boyle, Tom Fowler and even Newlove himself.

FOURTH STOP: Parliament Hill: There is a great deal of literary conversation one could have around Parliament Hill, much of which has been covered multiple times over. When the public service was moved from Quebec City to Ottawa in 1865, we gained numerous writers in both languages, including well-known Quebec poets Antoine Gérin-Lajoie, Joseph Marmette, and Alfred Garneau. Prince Edward Island poet Milton Acorn sold copies of his poetry books on the grounds to tourists in 1970. George Elliott Clarke claimed to host the first poetry reading on Parliament Hill in 2016 [see my report on such here], a claim I’d rather do more research on before repeating too often. Clarke himself launched his 1990 collection Whylah Falls as part of an event in the Parliament Buildings through Southwestern Ontario Member of Parliament (for Windsor-Tecumseh) Howard McCurdy, for whom Clarke had worked previously as a parliamentary assistant.

Instead, I’d like to focus on the late poet Judith Fitzgerald, who wrote a poem on Paul Chartier, the man who attempted to bomb Parliament in 1966. Imagine: he attempted to throw explosives from the second floor gallery into the sitting house, which would have easily killed Prime Minster Lester B. Pearson, Official Leader of the Opposition, John Diefenbaker, and dozens of other sitting Members. Fortunately, the second floor gallery was filled with a school group that included a thirteen-year-old Fitzgerald, forcing him up another floor, and the fuse he lit was too short, causing his death in the third floor men’s room. It is through Fitzgerald I first heard of this at all, from her 1977 collection lacerating heartwood:

ottawa

he descended the fire escape

with the coffee in my hand

and a guitar in his

was running down

my white wrist

you are sleeping

in ottawa

it’s another hot night

after the fashion

of steam and tendrils

the humidity and stains

hamper the delight

you take in your fingers

the audience has claims

on these hands

paul chartier

was on the steps

of the commons

while i was thirteen

in a gallery chair

his face was red

it was april and the washroom

was the high note

in his history

for that split second

stains and humidity

hang in this air

resembling war wreaths

the dried blood

angles its journey

down the porcelain wall

the body was changed

by its explosion

he jacked off with a bomb

the prime minister went white

the arm was holding

the back of the head splinter style

in perfect vertical symmetry

you are sleeping in ottawa

were sweating in fine hair

it gets god-awful hot

sometimes in those bars

and directly above

the spick and span urinals

paul chartier’s body comes violently to rest

I could also point out that on July 29, 2006, Ottawa poet, publisher and editor jwcurry held a marathon public reading of bpNichol’s nine-volume The Martyrology in the gazebo behind the Parliament Buildings [see my brief report on such here]. The bibliographer of bpNichol since the 1980s, this event was held secretly, and promoted almost exclusively by word-of-mouth. As curry said at the time, in what other country could you simply arrive and read poetry for hours publicly outside the seat of parliament?

FIFTH STOP: Sparks Street: Most people know that on April 7, 1868, poet, Father of Confederation and Member of Parliament Thomas D’Arcy McGee was walking home after a particularly late session when he was shot dead while walking down Sparks Street. Tried, convicted and executed for the crime was Fenian sympathizer Patrick James Whelan, who many believe was falsely accused to be a scapegoat for the murder. Known as Canada’s first (and hopefully only) political assassination, a plaque has been erected since in front of the Royal Bank Building at 142 Sparks, identifying the location of Mrs. Trotter’s boarding house where D’Arcy McGee was killed.

What few might know is that the boarding house was owned by George-Édouard Desbarats (forebear of journalist Peter Desbarats and his daughter, Ottawa poet Michelle Desbarats), one of a long line of influential printers running the family business. It was during George-Édouard’s tenure that Prime Minister John A. Macdonald made the Desberats the first official printer of the Dominion of Canada in 1869. The first plaque for D’Arcy McGee was put in place by George-Édouard, but soon after, he received an anonymous warning that his printing establishment in the Desberats Building, at what is now 152-54 Sparks Street, the first building to sit on that corner, would be destroyed. The building was, indeed, lost to a fire in 1869, barely a year after McGee's assassination. Currently, D'Arcy McGee’s Irish Pub sits at the corner of Elgin and Sparks Streets.

The author of over a dozen books and some three hundred poems, his work is still being read, and discussed. One of his poems was read by former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney at the funeral of former U.S. president Ronald Reagan.

[end of walk one; this is where we went to the pub]