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1 - How did your first book change your
life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel
different?
The nice thing
about writing a book of poetry is that there is no temptation toward any
outsize expectations. My book is not going to be a bestseller, nobody is going
to make it into a show for a streaming service. So I just get to enjoy the
book, that it exists, that I wrote it, that it occasionally finds its way into
the hands of someone who might connect with it. I wrote a book! Of poetry! If
my life is different in some way, it’s that I feel more like a writer now than
I did before the book. Which is encouraging: if I'm a writer, then I can write
more. Maybe there’s another book in me.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
My writing dreams have always been of writing fiction and essays. But during the pandemic I did some online poetry workshops with a friend, George Murray. I’d always been a little wary of poetry, both as a reader and a writer, but I came to it at just the right moment, I think, and in just the right setting, with a very supportive mentor and a very welcoming community.
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?
Starting things is easy and quick. Most of those things die pretty quickly, although usually that’s a form of mercy killing. (I have a few partially finished novels in my “drawer”; they should probably never be seen by human eyes.) Once I’m on to something that I think has some force, the writing can come quickly. I wrote the poems that would eventually become Green, plus a bunch that did not end up in the book, in about two years, and that was starting from zero miles per hour as a poet. I’m a bit of an editor/revisor, so things often change pretty substantially from first concept to final version.
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?
My book, Green, was formed from individual poems that I wrote as I was beginning to learn to write poetry. There was no idea, at least not at the beginning, that these poems could or would become a book. What I’m working on now is a little more coherent around a concept.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I like doing readings, although I find
reading for people to be emotional. I’m trying to get better at reading my work
aloud. So many poets, even very accomplished ones, are not very good at
reading. They come off as disinterested, perhaps they’re trying to let the work
speak for itself, without the need for any kind of human vector. Must be nice
to be so convinced of the genius of one’s work. But I’d like to get better at
having the reading bring something extra that creates a temporary version of
the poem that is not just the printed words.
I’m very attentive
to the sound of my poems, so I’m often thinking as I write about whether a
piece could be usefully be read aloud. In that sense, the possibility of
reading guides what I’m doing on the page. Not that I won’t write a poem that
can’t be read aloud, but if I have an idea that a particular piece might be one
I’d read, I need to make sure that it stays that way.
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?
I’m trying to write a poetry of “what is”, at the risk of seeming like some kind of antiquated rational materialist. (Guilty.) What you believe has consequences: if you believe in the literal existence of Santa, you need to wrestle with the existence of the surveillance apparatus implied by that belief, you need to acknowledge that this authority in which you believe prefers rich kids, and so on.
So I’m trying to write about the marvellous world we live in, which means that I write about natural phenomena, often through the explanatory lens of science. I deliberately avoid mysticism, metaphysics, spiritualism, and other forms of woo that are pretty commonplace in contemporary poetry. But I don’t think that the transcendent and the numinous — the truly wonderful — are the property of those modes of thinking. I’m trying to write about what it’s like to be in this world, to live in it, to experience its aesthetics and poetics. This is a bit different than the way that many poets write about science and nature: either the natural phenomenon is used solely as a metaphor, as in “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, or the poem is a hymn to the phenomenon. (Grossly oversimplifying here.) I’m trying to do something different with my poetry, to write about the world as it is and about our experience of it.
Adjacent to this is a technical question I’m interested in, which has to do with how poems might be constructed differently. If we imagine that words and lines are the atoms and molecules, respectively, of poetry, what happens if we do chemistry with these? If we pull them apart and put them together. This experiment already exists in poetry, of course, in, for example, enjambment or Manley Hopkins-esque portmanteaux. But how far can this be pushed? To what poetic end? Do there exist poetic polymers and macromolecules? What do they look like? What are they for?
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?
Truth is taking a beating from all sides these days. So the role of writers of all kinds ought to be to tell the truth. But to tell it wisely and beautifully.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I really like revising and editing, so working with an editor can be a really generative experience, so long as the editor has an idea of what I’m trying to do. Poetry is a good space in which to find such editors. (My other publishing experience is in academic medicine, where the “editorial” process consists of some pretty ham-fisted copyediting and the dubious activity of peer review. The aim of most peer reviewers seems to be to convince you that your work is dumb and that you’re ignorant. It’s not hard to understand the smallness and insecurity that lead to these attitudes, but these traits seem harder to find in the poetry community than in the academy or in medicine.)
9 - What is the best piece of advice
you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Writing advice? In
Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott, using the metaphor of chopping firewood, advises
to “aim through the wood”. Have some idea of what you’re trying to do, and
swing as hard as you can to do it, swing through the resistance of the task
itself.
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?
Routine? That’s funny. I have a day job, although I’m on leave at the moment, and three small kids. I snatch moments for writing when I can. The dream is a life that allows more space for writing, where I could have something resembling a routine for writing and reading.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I don’t often get stalled, honestly. There are just too many ideas. (That’s something beautiful about poetry: you can write a poem about the elasticity of nice socks much more readily than you could write a screenplay about the same thing.) The world we live in is so varied, so detailed, so deep, how could you run out of ideas? My problem is finding the time to get what’s in my head out onto the page. Which is one of them good problems, I suppose.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Cats. Waffles. A nice Irish whiskey.
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?
Nature and the use
of science to attempt to understand it, absolutely. I love music, although I
don’t know that my work is particularly musical. I love stories in nearly all
forms (musical theatre being the exception) and some of my poetry has a
narrative element. I would love to write a big epic poem.
14 - What other writers or writings
are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
This will be a
woefully incomplete listing. I’m learning a lot from Paul Muldoon. Dean Young,
although I’m not really interested in trying to write that kind of surrealism;
his approach to lining and pacing are wonderful. Robyn Hitchcock is a musician
I love, not least because of the poetry of his lyrics. Ditto for Wilco’s Jeff
Tweedy. Sue Goyette is my favourite Canadian poet, I think, and the audacity of
her work is really inspiring. When I think about trying to write an epic poem,
Goyette is the contemporary poet I think about.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Write a second book. A really good one. Or maybe a really good third book.
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’ve been a math teacher, and I’m currently a physician. I should have been a physicist, but fear and laziness prevented this. Some days I think I’d like to be a Zamboni driver, or the guy who drives the rake around the infield at a baseball stadium.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I don’t know. But something makes me write. Something that is very unhappy when I’m not writing. It’s been there since I was a kid. It’s been pretty unhappy a lot of the time, unfortunately, until recently. I’m trying to feed it better now.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet is an absolutely wonderful ode to the power of art. I don’t know if it’s the last great book that I read, but Dorian Lynskey’s The Ministry of Truth is a fantastic examination of Orwell’s 1984. We should all be reading 1984 on repeat at the moment.
19 - What are you currently working on?
A few things. I’m putting together the poems that I hope will be a second book. And I’m working on several chapbook-length things, one about water, another about hockey, and a third about a French mathematician. Trying to get my author’s website up and running — I’m not technically inept but I find it hard to be bothered with this kind of thing — and trying to get a Substack about Marvel movies on the go as well.
