Olivia Tapiero, Nothing at All (trans. Kit Schluter

 

In Fez, my grandmother, still a child, feared the scarred faces of the men who had been placed on the front line, the cannon fodder recruited from the French colonies. Still, in the Montreal winter, she regrets her fear, remembers the sadness of those disfigured men when she whimpered in terror as they waved at her on the bus, and then her mother, that orphan from the mountain who threatened her if she didn’t behave. Be careful, I’ll hand you over to the Senegalese… My grandmother tells me this story and cries over her dumplings, so I tell her, Mamie, you didn’t know, you were so little and she repeats, but poor things, poor things, after all they’ve seen…

The latest title by Montreal-born Olivia Tapiero [performing virtually next week as part of VERSeFest] is Nothing at All (New York NY: Nightboat Books, 2026), translated into English by Kit Schluter, and published with a Foreword by Anne Boyer. Nothing at All is a collection that Boyer describes as “a vital, accruing, distributed process.” “The threat precedes me. The chkoumoune,” Tapiero writes, via Schluter’s translation, mid-way through the collection, “the shour, which my grandmother pronounces zhor when she tells me about the spells the crumpled spirits impose on those women who attract the evil eye. One morning, in a village where the wind drives people mad, her mother wakes her up screaming, forbidding her to look in the mirror: the zhor has disfigured her, her childlike features have drained from the right side of her face.” Nothing at All reads as an expansive lyric gesture of shadow and liquid, relaying story and trauma across an expansive suite of fragments composed via an accumulation of prose poems, prose poem sections, writing of endings and beginnings; writing history and its devastations, accumulations; its ripples, and its waves. Set in sections of self-contained but interconnected prose sections—“Black Hole,” “Now You Say Nothing,” “Letter,” “Here I Am, a Dull Transplant,” “Zhor” and “The Unthinkable Orifice”—Tapiero’s precise, prose abstracts on and around war and memory, family story and upheavals read as echoes of works by the late Etel Adnan (1925-2021) [see my review of her most recent here] or even Canadian expat Nathanaël, asking, precisely, what one inherits through such a history, and one so deeply present.

I speak to you of buried flesh and names that can’t be found. I speak to you of the limits of literature, and of its tentacles. What do you want me to say? The premature sacking, the cannibalistic maternity, the coffee the rapist pays for the day after, the colonization of Algeria? Where does the wound begin? I’m trying to find out whose ghost I am. I know how to inhabit other people’s childhoods, not this inherited void, not the crossed-out names of those who came before me. I’m ashamed, disarticulated. I repeat the crime the way one learns a lesson.

 

today is my fifty-sixth birthday,

and I’ve been wearing my ‘birthday boy’ pin since Monday, given I take the whole week.

Here, this annual check-in, to see where I’m at. Where was I last year? Ten years back? Where culture suggests New Year’s as the moment to collect, recollect, I’ve always done on my birthday, these fifty-six years since I first appeared at the former Grace Hospital on Wellington Street West, two blocks or so from the Carleton Tavern.

As some might know, I’ve been in the basement since the last day of August, having spent eighteen months relocating my home office from our main floor (where I’d been since we landed in our Alta Vista house, the same season our Rose was born), so our young ladies didn’t have to share a bedroom anymore. For the first three months, at least, we barely saw either of them, set behind their closed doors, in their spaces. Once made, the move felt immediately more comfortable than I might have imagined, mid-point through an essay on the trauma of the relocation, but then there simply wasn’t, and I went immediately to work (although winter and the spring thaw does make it a bit cool down in the back corner of the basement, but mother-in-law did gift a space heater, which I use when required). A much smaller space, so the bulk of the work of the move was two-fold: carving and curating a particular corner with what I would need, and attempting to not just physically move everything else, but figure out where the hell to put it (that last part is still working itself through).

We also have two new kittens over the past couple of weeks, but you already know that. This, also, a prompt for the young ladies to keep their bedroom doors open. With kittens, we actually see the young ladies more often.

I’ve been working, lately, short essays: focusing on a particular poet, a particular title, as a way through thinking on a particular form. I worked a piece on Kingston poet Joanne Page (and Sadiqa de Meijer and Bronwen Wallace etc), but evolved into a subsequent piece on the prose poem/Anne Carson’s Short Talks (1992); currently working a piece on (a particular version of) the Canadian long poem/Don McKay’s Long Sault (1975). To revisit classic works, specifically across my own reading, to see if there might be something new to learn. Not sure where I might go next (I do have some thoughts—Monty Reid, John Thompson, etc), but think I may better serve the work by focusing purely on one piece at a time. Otherwise, I recently put the project-based poetry manuscript “Fair bodies of unseen prose” to bed [I wrote on such here], having sent it out into the world to a potential publisher. I’ve also been shopping around “the genealogy book” and “the green notebook” for some months now, as well as my Covid-era essay-book, “Lecture for an Empty Room” (I’ve returned to such recently, for the purposes of revisiting/cleaning up that particular manuscript). I keep thinking non-fiction might be where I think best, especially when publishers keep saying how great the writing is in these manuscripts, but then add how they aren’t able to publish them. It makes for a frustrating process.

I’m close to also completing my further project-based poetry manuscript, “dream logic: poems from a Sunday prompt,” working weekly across the length and breadth of 2025, thanks to Benjamin Niespodziany’s “Sunday poem and prompt” substack. I’m announcing a chapbook from the same project via above/ground press a bit later this morning (the press turns thirty-three this summer; can you imagine?), in case such intrigues. I’ve been slowly working on my “Museum of Practical Things” since July [a project I wrote about over here], as well as a collaboration with Jessica Smith—“Lake Ontario.” I had a dream not long ago that she and I each wrote 20-30 page long poems on “Lake Ontario,” prompted in part via Lorine Niedecker’s “Lake Superior,” but this as a counterpoint across an international border with increased tension, thanks to that most ridiculous orange monster over there (when I first met Jessica, circa 2004, she was living in Buffalo, so the argument of us being across the same pond from each other, say). When I offered the prompt, I was very pleased Jessica agreed to work on this, as I’m always wishing to see further work by her. I am slowly inching and centimetreing along my “Lake Ontario.” It moves slower than I would prefer, but it is moving. Naturally, the pull these days is to return to fiction—whether my in-progress novel that sits between my two short story collections—On Beauty (2024) and the as-yet-unpublished “Very suddenly all at once” (or that other novel we don’t really discuss anymore, “Don Quixote”), as well as the potential for further short stories, some two years after that prior collection completed—is strong. But not yet, not yet. Finish one thought before starting another.

Mostly, the past three months (honestly, back to July, but the past few months have really ramped up) have been working on next week’s festival, our sixteenth annual VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival. I’m also working new above/ground press titles by Jennifer Baker and Misha Solomon for such, as well as a very cool reissue by Stephanie Bolster.

Otherwise, I’m reading (twice, it would seem) in Victoria, British Columbia on April 24^th via Planet Earth Poetry, and, while there, even hosting a podcast! Three weeks later, I’ll be a week at Banff Writing Studios as part of the fiftieth anniversary of the writer-in-residence program at the University of Alberta! (I was there as such in 2007-8, don’t forget). A week in the mountains, alongside ryan fitzpatrick, Fred Wah, Margaret Christakos, Daphne Marlatt, J.R. Carpenter, Thomas Wharton, Joshua Whitehead and multiple others (we’re doing at least one online reading as part of same, also; I’m sure closer to the time there will be further information/a link on that sort of thing). Naturally, I’ve already been working to produce new above/ground press chapbooks by fitzpatrick, Carpenter, Marlatt and myself for such, with possible others as well, and even an anthology through above/ground of as many participants as are willing to submit (the process is still very much in-progress). It is very exciting. What else might fifty-six bring?

Oh, and a new poetry title in June! edgeless, appearing with Caitlin Press (which includes both my elegy/sequence for Barry McKinnon, and my half of the call-and-response collaboration with Julie Carr, etc). The cover isn’t up yet (an image by our wee Aoife [above]; I’m curious to see how it comes out in the design), but the pre-order link is there. Just as the book of sequences, Snow day (2025), sits as sidecar between the book of smaller (2022) [see my write-up on such here] and the book of sentences (2025) [see my note on such here], so, too, does the book of sequences, edgeless, sit as sidecar between the book of smaller and the as-yet-unpublished third in this particular trilogy, “Autobiography.” A trilogy of five titles? Oh, how very Douglas Adams of you, sir.

VERSeFest / Factory Reading Series : Lydia Unsworth and Nada Gordon,

In case you hadn't caught, The Factory Lecture Series returns to VERSeFest this year, with lectures by Manchester poet Lydia Unsworth and Brooklyn, New York poet Nada Gordon, on Sunday, March 29! A free event! Both poets also read that same evening alongside Jumoke Verissimo! Check out the full schedule and ticket information for this year's sixteenth annual VERSeFest: Ottawa's International Poetry Festival (with some events, as we're able, live-streamed in a pay-what-you-can donation, for those unable to make in-person). Also, there are a bunch of interviews with poets coming to this year's festival up at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics, including with Lydia Unsworth, Nada Gordon, Gwen Aube, Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Paul Vermeersch, Hajer Mirwali and Isabella Wang--and more to come next week!

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Steffi Tad-y

Steffi Tad-y is a disabled artist + writer from the Philippines. She is the author of From the Shoreline, Notes from the Ward, and Merienda. She is based in Manila and Toronto. 

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?
Even though the books were published three years apart, From the Shoreline and Notes from the Ward share similar themes — mental illness, family, kinship with earth and its creatures. Both are also driven by a roving eye. Lots of looking around and writing down what I found.

Notes from the Ward differs in the sense that many of the scenes there are set in a psychiatric hospital. I was also told by my editor, Shane Neilson, that my new book contains more sketches of people in community. 

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
When I was young, I was certain about my attraction towards children’s novels and essays. I remember being blown away by Charlie in the Chocolate Factory and The Giver. Every Patricia Evangelista essay in the Philippine Inquirer held a force I felt in my body. 

Poetry came when I was at a Canadian Lit class (ENGL 474 with Dr. Deena Rhyms) in my mid-20’s and we read Marilyn Dumont’s “Memories of a Really Good Brown Girl.” It cracked me open then I hurried to the library scouring for more. 

I grew an appreciation for poetry last but it changed my life, and sometimes, even became almost all of my life. Oh the follies of youth. But I’m learning to actively resist this because my health matters more now. In a very gentle and forgiving way, poetry showed me that what was happening inside me mattered just as much as all the exterior markers of life. 

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?
Fast in marking the images or phrases that come to me. Slow in making it somewhere close to a poem. 

I can think of only two poems out of many years of crumpled drafts that came out really fast. 

Jonina Kirton calls them “given poems.” 

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?
Something I see, both outside and inside. 

Really short! Notes, lists, images, series of questions… 

But when I applied for a grant for the first time, I had to imagine a full-length book project. I had to state its overarching themes, possible significance, sources and inspiration etc. The book which received a grant (Notes from The Ward) ended up way different from what I said it would be but applying for funding taught me to look at book-making as another skill in and of itself. Before that process, it was very much poem to poem. 

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I don’t always enjoy it because I feel so much and so deeply to begin with but I know it’s really important, humbling, and beautiful. While I’m reading, I get to see how my poems work out there, hear what lands, and what doesn’t. Aside from this editorial function, I also get to be in a circle of people telling stories to one another. That’s very moving to me. 

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?
Hmm.. right this moment, I think I am asking what a poem as a small piece of technology can offer its reader. 

In both my books, there’s a page that lays out a series of questions. I housed it there in case the reader would like to reflect on the images, lines, or themes they found in the poems. To constellate and draw connections. To pause and have them “reply” to the text. 

Two questions I remember are “What if we wrote about the violets if we can’t yet about the violence?” in From the Shoreline and “Do you have money?” from Notes from the Ward. 

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?
For now, I think it has something to do with witnessing and listening. Something to do with memory and imagination and being human. 

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential! They widen my purview, warn me of my cliches. They encourage me to work on being a thoughtful and rigorous writer. I’m a recipient of their generous work. 

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Listen with a giant ear. Don’t scrimp on sleep. 

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?
Something I observed is I always find something to write about when I’m in transit. Car, bus, train, plane, I have my moments there. One of my wild dreams is to be a poet for TTC or be granted an artist residency by Amtrak.

Other than that, no routine unfortunately. 

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I go for a walk! Last week, I saw people huddled around a food cart at a busy intersection. They each had a small orange bowl to the their chest, slurping noodles, shoulders touching. I was struck by the glow of the bowls against the violet sky. Their hands. Separate but also together. Another night, I saw two kids sharing a pair of rollerblades. One wore it on their right foot. The other wore it on their left. The wheels rushed in opposite directions. 

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Sampaguita. Rain on warm soil. Onions and garlic in a scalding hot pan or gisa in Tagalog. 

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?
Yes, totally. For me, it’s music, movies, sports, memes. Notes from the Ward mentions The Bee Gees. From the Shoreline, Muhammad Ali. 

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Aracelis Girmay, her work is like the sea to me. Rick Barot, his poems that span a world, his faith in the particular. For making a book that ends with “I was wrong.” Raoul Fernandes, for who and what his poems see. Oliver de la Paz, for The Boy in the Labyrinth and Diaspora Sonnets. 

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
A poem that makes you cry and laugh at the same time. Something for my brothers. 

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 dreamed of being a doctor or stand-up comedian. I still do!   

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I feel embarrassed to say this but I suppose I really love it. It’s like a life partner. 

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The Private Life of Trees by Alejandro Zambra translated by Megan McDowell is a short, mesmerizing read. Makes you giggle. Stays in your bones. Sinners by Ryan Coogler is a movie of immense and affectionate imagination. Deeply relational. 

19 - What are you currently working on?
Poems on childhood. My manuscript’s working title is Uyayi. It means "lullaby" in Tagalog.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Graeme Bezanson, Ultra Blue

 

Let the dead wolf speak
Backing out of the night
As the bull’s horns rise
Let the moon shine through
The last translucent gods
No hard beds
For worn-out bodies
Slow volcanoes
On the horizon
These were not the first
Of our misfortunes
So the strangeness
Was filtered from them
Combing burrs
From a boy’s hair
Your name an arrow made
Fast to a tangled
Gust of wind

I am intrigued by Ultra Blue (Toronto ON: Anansi, 2026), the full-length poetry debut by Nova Scotian writer Graeme Bezanson, a collection composed, as the back cover informs, as “a book-length sequence of poems about the emotional lives of boys.” In poems carved and shaped, almost whittled, with straightforward ease and an undercurrent of experience and wisdom, the poems of Bezanson’s Ultra Blue speak with a slow and purposeful care, offering meditations on boys and childhood, fathers and sons. “Remove us / From our places / But never bring us / To another” he writes, early on in the collection. Composed as a book-length suite of untitled self-contained lyric bursts in sequence, Bezanson’s accumulated, almost unspooled, phrases write around masculinity and its toxic elements, how it emerges and how emotions get mangled, comparable to Toronto poet Dale Martin Smith’s Flying Red Horse (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2021) [see my review of such here], a comparison that seems even further fitting, given the inclusion of a blurb by Smith on the back cover. If you want young men to learn, after all, you have to teach them.