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 creative work was a short novel, Calla & Édourd. It provided the confidence to return to my great love, poetry. Since Calla & Édourd, I’ve published a full poetry collection and three chapbooks. Now, The Blue Gate is being released by Frontenac House this spring. It’s been more challenging than the other works, more personal, and feels more risky. The Blue Gate is essentially one long poem written in series with a long titular poem at its core – not dissimilar to the novel.
2 - Where does a poem or work of fiction 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 as attempts to articulate the emotion that hovers around situations. In The Blue Gate, they witness: the surprise of love, the surreality of grief. One thing is constant, true to the lyrical form, my writing ravels and unravels in natural settings, and it tends toward lament. In this way, writing toward understanding, I focus on a collection as I write. However, I am also constantly scribbling pieces that become independent, stand-alone poems that coalesce around subjects and themes. It’s the writing, in the first instance, the book follows when I reach a certain place and the fire catches.
3 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love reading. I enjoy the reactions of listeners and the discussions that follow. That doesn’t mean that I don’t stew about what to read and what to wear, worry about which poems to read, about whether my voice will modulate, be soft and strong, be engaging.
4 - 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?
I’m fascinated with the way mythology and folklore repeat and repeat in life and in writing. For example, the ‘call’ or invitation that comes when we’re perched uncomfortably on the threshold between what is known and the unknown. Accept the call and you’ll step into a quest (think Joseph Campbell; think Phil Cousineau; think Rebecca Solnit). It happens all the time. In The Blue Gate, after Jim’s death, I was bereft, a mess, when a surprising invitation came to travel to Kenya where I confronted questions around love and death and what follows bereavement. With respect to the current questions, they swirl around destruction the natural world, the political world of oligarchies and capital, the apparent blindness (helplessness?) about genocide in Palestine, and the economic isolation of Cuba to name just a few. While I collect volumes of ‘witness’ poetry and read it on the web, I write only occasionally in that genre.
5 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Both a pre-publication editor, who can identify strengths and weaknesses in individual poems and the overall structure, and an editor to work with during the publication process are both essential. I love the challenge of working with an editor, love discovering what s/he finds in my writing. Of course, I fluff my feathers with positive feedback, but knowing what editors (and other readers) read into or miss in my work is a growth experience. I welcome it.
6 - 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 have the luxury of being able to write daily, but reading others’ poetry books is important to my writing process and a part of my writing day. A few years ago, I began writing reviews for my website, trying to figure out what makes a book work; more recently, I’ve been publishing reviews. My reading also includes books that discuss poetry. For example, How a Poem Works by Adam Sol, The Elephant of Silence: Essays on Poetics and Cinema by John Wall Barger, Ten Windows by Jane Hirschfield, books by Mark Doty, Robyn Sarah, and so on that discuss writing and reading poetry are inspirational.
7 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
What a fascinating and unexpected question. Lilacs. Lilacs bloomed outside our bedroom window in the first home that Jim and I shared together here in Amherstburg. And when we moved north of Kingston, lilacs were wild and rampant on the limestone rise on which our home stood. Lilacs always remind me of nights with the window open, the scent of love.
8 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Long-poem books have a special attraction for me. A few on my bookshelves draw me back again and again, as both inspiration and insight into the form. Each in its own way demonstrates how to maintain movement and interest over pages. Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf is an all-time favourite, as is Derek Walcott’s Omeros, they articulate a myth or are written over the skeleton of a myth. I’ve been a sailor and have a particular fascination with rivers and seas, so Dart by Alice Oswald, which is written in the voice of “the river’s muttering,” is often pulled off the shelf. Magnetic North by Jenna Butler describes a sea voyage and environmental damage to the Svalbard archipelago, a beautifully crafted collection about a desperate situation for place and people. Another long-poetic narrative is Karen Clavelle’s Iolaire, which captures people, place, an historic tragedy, and I respond to its political undercurrent. For similar reasons, I return time and again to The Caiplie Caves by Karen Solie – the surface story and the theme written between the lines.
9 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Dreaming big: I would love a long retreat in the Hebrides and/or Highlands of Scotland to concentrate on figuring out that shadow identity – to explore generational memory that lingers and why does it matters – a universal question. While I research, I learn most through my body, hence, I’d love to sail through the Northwest Passage and experience something akin to Jenna Butler’s discoveries during her time aboard the Antigua and the exploration to the Svalbard archipelago. I’d love to see the world at peace, to see equality, the end of genocide, and a valuing of nature on this fragile earth and wish I was the kind of poet who writes timely and engaging witness poetry.
10 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Most of my work has included writing – anonymous reports and speeches, editorial work on magazines and books, teaching literature and writing at the college level. I cannot imagine not writing.
11 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last great book shifts like the wind. I’m presently rereading Leaf Counter by D.A. Lockhart. He brings Indigenous questions to Al Purdy country and the Loyalist county in which the Purdy A-Frame stands. Lockhart’s craft is impeccable; his voice passionate; his point of view fresh and timely. I am haunted by The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow by Armand Garnet Ruffo. In a completely different vein, I read and reread Hunger: The Poetry of Susan Musgrave. It reminds me of her early influence on my writing, and it reminds me that as writers we grow, even when our themes remain similar.
12 - What are you currently working on?
Currently, I have three or four chapbook collections. As for a work-in-progress, I’m also trying to understand what my pull toward travel means, what draws me to the way we build beliefs and conversations upon mythic and folkloric structures, the pull toward the complexity of identity, the repetition of patterns. I write on the Canadian canvas where the majority of us have come from elsewhere, across generations, where we build on land that has a pre-colonial history and reality today. I feel as if there are answers hidden in places, answers I want to uncover and understand.
