12 or 20 (second series) questions with Misha Solomon

Misha Solomon is a homosexual poet in and of Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. His work has twice appeared in Best Canadian Poetry and in journals across Canada. He is a student in Concordia's Interdisciplinary PhD program. His debut full-length collection, My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet, appears with Brick Books in March 2026, and his third chapbook, Misha Solomon's Biodôme: A Bestiary after Stephanie Bolster, follows with above/ground press in April 2026.

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?

My first chapbook, FLORALS (above/ground press, 2020), made me feel like I was actually a poet. It changed my life in that it opened up the possibility of pursuing poetry in a real and public way. My upcoming first full-length book, My Great-Grandfather Dance Ballet (Brick Books, 2026), feels different from FLORALS in that it has a strong central concept/narrative. But it also feels like a natural extension of some of the things I’ve been exploring since before FLORALS came out, a sort of closing of this first long chapter of my poetic “journey.”

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

I happened to take a Quebec Writers’ Federation poetry workshop taught by Derek Webster and just liked it. I had been taking QWF prose workshops for a few years, just as a hobby, but it wasn’t until the poetry workshop that I found something I felt like I could really do. The contained, brief nature of a poem (or at least of the poems I wrote back then) was appealing to me. They were things both with and without rules, and I like applying structure to creativity and creativity to structure.

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 not sure how long it takes me to start a project. Sometimes projects starts before I know they’ve started. My writing comes quickly and first drafts are reasonably close to final drafts, for me. I edit, of course, but I write quickly and when I write a poem I write to completion. I think my poems can sometimes trick me into thinking they’re done because I am good at having a beginning, middle, and end all figured it out, so that’s why I like to write in some sort of community to get early feedback.

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?

Often poems begin with a prompt of some kind, maybe one I’ve been given or one I’ve given myself. Sometimes they come out of just an idea, a feeling, a thesis, but that’s usually once I already have a project on the go. In the past I’ve been an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, but these days I’m more focused on working on a “book” right away.

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

Public readings are an essential part of my creative process. I love them. I would do them all the time. They are my favourite part of being a poet. I write to an audience.

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?

Yes! Or at least I hope so! In My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet, I think my editor, Leah Horlick, really nailed the questions I was asking in the back cover copy she kindly wrote for the book: "What if the queer ancestor you always wondered about had really existed—and could speak to you across all time? When there’s only one document to be found in the archive, can our misheard or half-remembered family stories be enough?” In my new work, I’m focused on questions of (non-)reproduction, of what it means to be an animal, of what it means to be a human with an animal in your house.

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?

Writers certainly have a role. Different writers have different roles. I think, at my core, I see myself as an entertainer? That sounds vaudevillian, song-and-dance-y, but what I mean is that I want my writing (or my performances of my writing) to provide distraction and engagement. I want people to enjoy my writing, even if I also want my writing to shift a political consciousness or evoke negative emotions.

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

I love working with an outside editor. I had an incredible experience working with Leah Horlick on this book. I don’t find it difficult. I really enjoy seeing how my work is landing for someone else. In my non-poetic employment, I give notes to screenwriters, so I’ve very used to the process, and it’s fun to be on the other side of it.

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

What does it say about me that I cannot for the life of me think of an answer to this question?

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

I haven’t really moved between genres in a public-facing way yet. My current project involves a lot more prose and lyric essay and academic writing, and the shift has been fluid. It has felt like the right time, especially since so much of my poetry is prose-y already. The appeal for me is the ability to dig further into ideas in a single work. There’s also the appeal of the potential of a wider audience, since readers are for some reason more “comfortable” with prose than with poetry.

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

I do not have a writing routine of any kind. A typical day begins with my fiancé, Guillaume, and my dog, Mugcake.

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

Frank O’Hara. And Mugcake.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Of my current home? Mugcake. A mostly pleasing doggy odour.

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’m influenced by science. My BA is in biological anthropology, and I grew up wanting to be a zoologist. My current work is interdisciplinary and heavily influenced by thinking about primates, biological reproduction, animal studies, etc. In My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet, I was influenced by ballet, which isn’t something I knew (or know) very much about, but I’ve always been interested in it and loved being able to research it and write about it. There are also a few ekphrastic poems about the art in my home, so I suppose I am influenced by visual art on occasion.

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

Oh wow. So many! I am fortunate to have many writer friends. Allegra Kaplan, a fantastic Victoria-based poet and friend, recently said something about how so much of my poetics is about community, which I thought was a very nice way of putting it. Sarah Burgoyne, my poetry fairy godmother, has been a fundamental source of inspiration, support, encouragement, and friendship. Stephanie Bolster, my MA and PhD thesis supervisor, whose work (especially her zoo-related work) has been an inspiration (stay tuned for a new above/ground press chapbook…). My generative writing group (currently mostly on pause), with André Babyn, Sasha Manoli, and (previously) Lauren Peat. My current writing/workshop group in Montreal, with Robin Durnford, Madelaine Caritas Longman, Domenica Martinello, Melanie Power, Sarah Wolfson (we miss you, Patrick O’Reilly and Carlos Pittella!). Other poetry mentors/teachers I’ve had over the years, including Liz Howard, Sina Queyras, Lisa Richter, and Danez Smith. I could go on and on, truly. And I haven’t even gotten to poetic inspirations like Frank O’Hara.

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

There are lots of things I haven’t done that I’d like to do, but I feel like I can’t quite put them into words. That’s not true — I just don’t want to put them into words, for fear of their not happening.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

If I hadn’t been a writer, I would have surely continued working full-time in scripted television development, which I still do as a freelancer. But going back to my childhood dream of zoology would be fun. Hosting an animal-centric documentary series. 

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

I wanted to express myself artistically and publicly in some way, and this is the way I enjoy most and am best at.

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

I just finished Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told by Jeremy Atherton Lin and found it fascinating and moving. I also loved his previous book, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out. I also just mostly completed by annual year-end film catch-up — I think The Secret Agent may be my favourite film from 2025.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m currently putting the finishing touches on my spring above/ground press chapbook. Kinda sorta putting together a second full-length collection while working on my PhD project.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

 

Gwen Aube, missed connections with tall girls

 

at digby house, before steve sold
the place to hop trains in mexico 

at digby house you were playing the drums
while screaming. 

you didn’t really have boobs,
but your boobs were out. 

you were hitting the drums very fast.
anarchopunk thrash metal fast.
you called stephen harper a fag. 

i crushed a beer can on my head,
thought “holy fucking shit” a lot of times,
got kicked in the face, and went home. 

six years later at a party i saw you,
wearing a dinosaur onesie
and holding a beer with both hands,
like a nervous dinosaur. 

like a meteor shower,
four trans girls swooped on you at once.
you ran away because we scared you. 

three years later your boyfriend is visiting—
we watch you play drums in your basement. 

        he says:
she is going so fast. 

        i say:
i think she has been doing this forever.

From Montreal-based poet Gwen Aube [performing later this month in Ottawa at VERSeFest], following her chapbook debut, pulp necrosis (above/ground press, 2025), comes the full-length missed connections with tall girls (Brooklyn NY/Athens OH: LittlePuss Press, 2026), a sly, savage and saucy assemblage of intimate first-person lyric gestures filled with youthful vigor and gestural language, elements of poverty and deep grief. “you really were the enby dyke folk hero / of the Grand River housing projects. // your desktop tower full of Japanese autopsy / photosets, werewolf omoroshi, Linkin Park AMVs,” begins the poem “raised by wolves,” “neopets begging for their lives as guts hung / from their pixels like ball gowns.” Across a landscape of poverty and precarious living, working class life and transgender experience, and ridiculous and wayward adventures with friends and situations that occasionally move well beyond control, Aube’s delightful and exuberant poems articulate a meditative flamboyance, joyful optimism and playful language and use of the line. “waiting for a boy to take my bag outside dufferin station,” begins the poem “dao owes me a burger,” “the big blue duffel thing paint-stained & exploding socks / shirts skirts pants panties & broken // laptop, i lock eyes with a girl / in a lemon yellow crop top / posted up on the sidewalk, / hey sis, she slinks from somewhere behind / that sweet-sly smile, a jutting eve’s apple, / appraising my spills— [.]”

I do agree with the back cover blurb, appraising that Aube’s “hilarious and uncompromising poems chronicle a precarious, debaucherous carnival of trailer-trash divas and Discord autistics, living and delightful in survival at the edges of technocapital,” and comparing her work to “a transsexual Kevin Killian” [see my review of Killian's posthumous collected here], although some of the language-layerings and gestural flourish of her work just as much provide echoes of the work of Toronto poet MLA Chernoff [see my review of their latest here]. As well, the work of all three share a joyousness that is just as much a strategy for survival as it is a celebration, gesticulating a lyric-as-protection, writing out document and elegy, mournful ballads and memorials, playful gesture and theatrical waves. Either way, Aube’s poems remain grounded in narrative experience, which of course allows elements of the language to flourish, almost flail, suggesting an untethering or even an unravelling, but very much walking that line between order and chaos, both through lyric structure and narrative intent. Or, as the ninth poem in the ten-poem sequence-section “Wearing a Fur Coat to the Welfare Office” ends, writing:

i know this is no way to end things
but i hate it here, in ottawa.
& i’ll need to come back soon
to finish a poem— 

not this one.
this one is done.

Spotlight series #119 : Scott Inniss

The one hundred and nineteenth in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring Vancouver poet Scott Inniss.

The first eleven in the series were attached to the Drunken Boat blog, and the series has so far featured poets including Seattle, Washington poet Sarah Mangold, Colborne, Ontario poet Gil McElroy, Vancouver poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Ottawa poet Jason Christie, Montreal poet and performer Kaie Kellough, Ottawa poet Amanda Earl, American poet Elizabeth Robinson, American poet Jennifer Kronovet, Ottawa poet Michael Dennis, Vancouver poet Sonnet L’Abbé, Montreal writer Sarah Burgoyne, Fredericton poet Joe Blades, American poet Genève Chao, Northampton MA poet Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer from Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1 territory) poet, critic and editor Joshua Whitehead, American expat/Barcelona poet, editor and publisher Edward Smallfield, Kentucky poet Amelia Martens, Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie, Burlington, Ontario poet Sacha Archer, Washington DC poet Buck Downs, Toronto poet Shannon Bramer, Vancouver poet and editor Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Vancouver poet Geoffrey Nilson, Oakland, California poets and editors Rusty Morrison and Jamie Townsend, Ottawa poet and editor Manahil Bandukwala, Toronto poet and editor Dani Spinosa, Kingston writer and editor Trish Salah, Calgary poet, editor and publisher Kyle Flemmer, Vancouver poet Adrienne Gruber, California poet and editor Susanne Dyckman, Brooklyn poet-filmmaker Stephanie Gray, Vernon, BC poet Kerry Gilbert, South Carolina poet and translator Lindsay Turner, Vancouver poet and editor Adèle Barclay, Thorold, Ontario poet Franco Cortese, Ottawa poet Conyer Clayton, Lawrence, Kansas poet Megan Kaminski, Ottawa poet and fiction writer Frances Boyle, Ithica, NY poet, editor and publisher Marty Cain, New York City poet Amanda Deutch, Iranian-born and Toronto-based writer/translator Khashayar Mohammadi, Mendocino County writer, librarian, and a visual artist Melissa Eleftherion, Ottawa poet and editor Sarah MacDonell, Montreal poet Simina Banu, Canadian-born UK-based artist, writer, and practice-led researcher J. R. Carpenter, Toronto poet MLA Chernoff, Boise, Idaho poet and critic Martin Corless-Smith, Canadian poet and fiction writer Erin Emily Ann Vance, Toronto poet, editor and publisher Kate Siklosi, Fredericton poet Matthew Gwathmey, Canadian poet Peter Jaeger, Birmingham, Alabama poet and editor Alina Stefanescu, Waterloo, Ontario poet Chris Banks, Chicago poet and editor Carrie Olivia Adams, Vancouver poet and editor Danielle Lafrance, Toronto-based poet and literary critic Dale Martin Smith, American poet, scholar and book-maker Genevieve Kaplan, Toronto-based poet, editor and critic ryan fitzpatrick, American poet and editor Carleen Tibbetts, British Columbia poet nathan dueck, Tiohtiá:ke-based sick slick, poet/critic em/ilie kneifel, writer, translator and lecturer Mark Tardi, New Mexico poet Kōan Anne Brink, Winnipeg poet, editor and critic Melanie Dennis Unrau, Vancouver poet, editor and critic Stephen Collis, poet and social justice coach Aja Couchois Duncan, Colorado poet Sara Renee Marshall, Toronto writer Bahar Orang, Ottawa writer Matthew Firth, Victoria poet Saba Pakdel, Winnipeg poet Julian Day, Ottawa poet, writer and performer nina jane drystek, Comox BC poet Jamie Sharpe, Canadian visual artist and poet Laura Kerr, Quebec City-area poet and translator Simon Brown, Ottawa poet Jennifer Baker, Rwandese Canadian Brooklyn-based writer Victoria Mbabazi, Nova Scotia-based poet and facilitator Nanci Lee, Irish-American poet Nathanael O'Reilly, Canadian poet Tom Prime, Regina-based poet and translator Jérôme Melançon, New York-based poet Emmalea Russo, Toronto-based poet, editor and critic Eric Schmaltz, San Francisco poet Maw Shein Win, Toronto-based writer, playwright and editor Daniel Sarah Karasik, Ottawa poet and editor Dessa Bayrock, Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia poet Alice Burdick, poet, writer and editor Jade Wallace, San Francisco-based poet Jennifer Hasegawa, California poet Kyla Houbolt, Toronto poet and editor Emma Rhodes, Canadian-in-Iowa writer Jon Cone, Edmonton/Sicily-based poet, educator, translator, researcher, editor and publisher Adriana Oniță, California-based poet, scholar and teacher Monica Mody, Ottawa poet and editor AJ Dolman, Sudbury poet, critic and fiction writer Kim Fahner, Canadian poet Kemeny Babineau, Indiana poet Nate Logan, Toronto poet and editor Michael Boughn, North Georgia poet and editor Gale Marie Thompson, award-winning poet Ellen Chang-Richardson, Montreal-based poet, professor and scholar of feminist poetics, Jessi MacEachern, Toronto poet and physician Dr. Conor Mc Donnell, San Francisco poet Micah Ballard, Montreal poet Misha Solomon, Ottawa writer and editor Mahaila Smith, American poet and asemic artist Terri Witek, Ottawa-based freelance editor and writer Margo LaPierre, Ottawa poet Helen Robertson, Oakville poet Mandy Sandhu, New Westminster, British Columbia poet Christina Shah, poet, critic, curator and former publisher Geoffrey Young, Calgary poet Anna Veprinska, American expat poet in London Katie Ebbit, Brooklyn poet Nada Gordon and Kingston poet Jason Heroux!
 
The whole series can be found online here.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Loch Baillie

Loch Baillie (he/il) [photo credit: LMJ Photography] is a queer writer based in Quebec City. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks, ice, dove parachute (Cactus Press) and Citronella (Anstruther Press), as well as the forthcoming collection River Running (icehouse poetry/Goose Lane Editions, 2026). Loch is an associate poetry editor at Plenitude Magazine, and his writing has appeared in publications such as Maclean’s, yolk, Tidewise, and Ahoy. Find Loch online @lochbaillie or by visiting www.lochbaillie.com.

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?

My debut chapbook Citronella (Anstruther Press, 2024) changed everything for me. In the months surrounding its release, I got really into the Canadian micropress scene and began connecting with other poets. This mainly happened through Instagram, and that platform remains the place I most often interact with other writers. Putting out a chapbook showed me just how generous the poetry community in Canada can be. It’s an incredible community to be a part of.

My second chapbook, ice, dove, parachute (Cactus Press, 2024), came out only nine months after Citronella, but it is quite different. While Citronella introduces broader themes — sexual identity and leaving one’s home — ice, dove, parachute takes these themes further, exploring their repercussions through a more intimate, domestic, and Québec-oriented lens. It is a follow-up in both subject and tone, and a more grown-up work. My forthcoming full-length collection, River Running (icehouse poetry, 2026), will weave together the threads of my chapbooks in a much fuller way, and I look forward to it serving as many readers’ introduction to my work.

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

Funnily enough, I didn’t! I was raised by English teachers, one of whom is a novelist, and so I was primarily interested in prose from a young age. By the time I was a young teenager, I decided I wanted to write novels. This was around the time that young adult dystopian and urban fantasy books were flying off of the shelves. Think The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Mortal Instruments. I started (and abandoned) several projects, and by the time I was sixteen, I became more interested in writing about my own experiences and began taking a more diaristic approach to my writing. At that age, it turned out I could write a poem a lot faster, and more naturally, than a book chapter.

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?

It’s a slow process. I tend to write down a bunch of words or lines and then give my poems their shape later on. This typically happens in my Notes app or in a Word Doc. I’d love to be the type of writer that fills up stacks and stacks of Moleskin notebooks, but it’s never worked for me. I far prefer a word processor, or even just scraps of paper. Some of my first poems were written on notepads at the ice cream parlour I worked at in high school. I’d carry them in my apron pockets alongside customers’ orders.

My first drafts very rarely resemble what I publish. In the case of River Running, the original manuscript became stretched in the middle partway through the editing process. I lost a family member in mid-2024 and wrote a series of poems that would eventually form the book’s third section. River Running was initially concerned with metaphorical and anticipatory grief — but it has become concerned with a very concrete sort of grief, as well. 

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? 

This might be unusual, but the titles often come first. I love titles. I love the act of naming something. It’s like a generative exercise. A perfect example of this is my poem “Antediluvian,” which is the last poem in Citronella. I was curious about the period of time in the Bible between the fall of man and the Great Flood — what I came to know as being called “antediluvian” (or “pre-flood”). I began asking myself, what happens in a moment of banishment? How does one feel looking back at a place called home while simultaneously seeing some strange land on the horizon? It was the first poem I wrote for Citronella, but in doing so, I knew I’d already written its ending. I wrote towards that closing with the other poems; led the speaker all the way to the edge of that cliff.

I don’t think I’ve yet figured out how books “happen.” But I can say this: the more I write, the more I understand how my poems interconnect. It was clear to me when I had enough poems for my chapbooks, and it was clear to me when I had enough for my full-length collection. 

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

I enjoy public readings but wouldn’t consider them part of my creative process. Being part of a community of writers and receiving feedback is essential to my creativity – but reading the work aloud to an audience, not so much. It is fun, though!

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?

It depends entirely on what I’m writing. What I’m currently working on is heavily informed by theory (see answer to question 19) — but up until this point, my writing has been more concerned with lived experience, such as notions of self, home, and interpersonal relationships. Now that I’m in graduate school, it feels only natural to work on a project that blends my academic interests and my creative interests.

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? 

This is a big question, and one that could be answered in no less than a hundred different ways. I see my own role as a writer as being a sort of truthteller. In Shakespeare’s plays, the truthtellers often operate on the margins and in the fens. Think of the Fool in King Lear or the witches in Macbeth. These are queer, weird (wyrd) characters. I feel similarly as a queer writer. I write to reveal uncomfortable truths. I write frankly, and shy from writing fiction, because there is so much happening in the real world. Fiction is an interesting genre. I read a lot of it, and I value the way it can offer escape or confront me with difficult truths. But in my experience, contemporary poetry doesn’t allow for distraction — it cuts straight to the bone.

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

For me, it is absolutely essential. I often prefer the editing process over the writing process because I feel more lucid there. Writing a poem is like throwing a pack of playing cards on the ground, and working with an editor is playing fifty-two-card pickup. I’m a better writer because of my editors. 

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

Ocean Vuong posted this great Instagram Story about cultivating one’s soil; this idea that writer’s block does not exist and that it’s only a lack of creative stimuli. I’ve taken that to mean: if I’m not reading, moving, living — I’m not writing.

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

I find it quite difficult, but I think I’m getting better at it. Poetry is my default setting, and so when I write prose, it tends to be lyrical. I’d like to develop a prose style that feels complimentary to my poetry — but at the same time, if I ever wrote a novel, I wouldn’t want it to read like a seventy-thousand word poem. I love novels by poets; every word and punctuation mark is chosen so carefully. But for me, I’d rather be known as a poet who occasionally writes prose. 

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

I don’t have a specific routine. I’d like to write more regularly, but I find it difficult without external pressure (a workshop or a deadline, for example). I can’t force a poem. Some weeks I write a great deal. Some weeks I don’t write at all. 

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

A long walk. A hot shower. Rereading favourite poems.

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?

It’s music for sure. I couldn’t live without it, never mind create. I’m often more interested in how a song sounds than what it’s saying. How I hear music is how it feels to write (or read) a good poem.

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

Louise Glück, Richard Siken, Maggie Smith, Ada Limón, and Ocean Vuong have all had a significant impact on my poetry. For specific writings, I’ve turned time and time again to Audre Lorde’s essay “Poetry is Not a Luxury” and the final paragraphs of Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things. 

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

I’d like to give songwriting a try. Writing for someone else, that 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?

I’m trying to get better at plants, so maybe a horticulturist? I was never very good at science, but I’ve become obsessed with orchids thanks to Susan Orlean. I just replanted one for the first time and it bloomed!

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

I’m not sure what that “something else” would have been. When I began writing, I couldn’t stop. I still can’t.

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

White Oleander by Janet Fitch. It’s brilliant. I enjoyed the film adaptation by Peter Kosminsky, too!

19 - What are you currently working on? 

My Master’s thesis! It’s a research-creation project that combines poetry, essays, and interviews with artists about bilingual art in French-speaking Canada. It's called Head Split in Half  and is technically my second full-length book. It is theoretically concerned with notions of confession, belonging, and language. 

12 or 20 (second series) questions;