12 or 20 (second series) questions with Dani Netherclift

Dani Netherclift is a poet and essayist living and writing on unceded Taungurung Country in Australia. Dani has a PhD in Creative Writing with a specialization in the elegiac lyric essay. Her shorter essays and poems have been widely published in Australia in literary journals and anthologies. She has won or been otherwise commended in multiple writing competitions. Visit her online at dani.netherclift.com.au.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I’m not sure my first book changed my life, however, my writing in this book is now being read in another hemisphere. Also, I must say, having Helen Garner read my work and say nice things and send me a card felt quite huge last year!

My recent (as yet unpublished) work owes so much to what I learned in writing Vessel, especially as I had the privilege of writing Vessel as the creative component of an arts PhD, which means that I had superb mentorship and feedback throughout the process. With my new book, I really missed that guidance but realised I could write a book without it. The new book is also about grief but is also very much rooted in eco-lit.

2 - How did you come to lyric essays first, as opposed to, say, fiction or poetry?
I came to writing and reading fiction and poetry first, but when it came to this book, I was looking at a form that's not really understood outside the academy where I live (Australia), so I wanted to explore that form from the point of view of a niche subject as per the requirements of a PhD. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, I found the form of the lyric essay was a perfect “container” for this long-held grief and the wider cultural, historical and literary stories attached to it. The lyric essay shares the project of meaning-making with its readers and lends itself to the white spaces of what can’t be known or what is unspeakable. Being a poet first, I also loved the convention or lyric language inherent in this form.

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?
Vessel took about a year to write. My current project has taken about two years. Because I write in a fragmentary form, I often think of other fragments that don’t quite fit into where I’m at in the manuscript, but I have a section at the end of the working manuscript that I call composition notes. I have pages and pages of composition notes, and then it’s a matter of mosaicking things together where they fit just ‘so’ and land with meaningful connection with other fragments. There’s also the work of association, where writing about or researching one thing will lead you creatively and cognitively in an unexpected direction, and I find that that part of things keeps happening right up until final edits.

4 - Where does a work of prose 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?
Vessel was always a book. The PhD was actively researching how one might write a longform lyric essay, how it would come together, though I didn’t initially know what it was about. The book I’m currently working on began as a shorter piece, though.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love doing readings! Because the work is crafted as lyric in nature, it lends itself to being spoken aloud. 

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?
Vessel is certainly thinking through theoretical questions. Another reason the lyric essay works well for this project is that it enacts a thinking through of questions, or meditations; it emulates in some ways how our memories work i.e. in a nonlinear, meandering, associative way. In Vessel I’m thinking about what it means to not view a body after death, but the larger questions have to do with reconciling presence to absence. To think about that, I was reading hauntology, elegy, and theory on fragmentation, among other things. I was also thinking about a theoretical framework for the lyric essay.

As to what the current questions are, well there are so many. I just started reading Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom, and that seems terribly pertinent at this present moment. What does “freedom” mean? 

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?
For me, writing and reading are both types of “medicine”. Words can console and heal, or they have done so in my own life. With the current parlous state of the world, writing should serve to also clarify how people are feeling, and that’s something that AI/large language systems are so incapable of doing. People’s blithe use of AI slop everywhere you turn is depressing precisely because of its lack of meaning and spiritual or intellectual value. I’m turning to the writers I admire to see how they’re interpreting the moment we find ourselves in, wherever we are in the world. It’s great that we can also read such writers in near-to-real time, and I enjoy the thoughts of Jeanette Winterson, Patti Smith and Annie Lamott for example landing regularly in my email inbox.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I think it’s essential to have another set of eyes on your writing. What that process is like depends on the editor. For Vessel, I had the wonderful Felicity Plunkett, a prodigiously talented poet, reviewer and essayist, and I never met a suggestion from her that I didn’t immediately recognise as something that would enhance the text. The process of editing with Felicity felt like a nourishing, writerly conversation, and I was and remain so grateful for it.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Give yourself permission to write an average first draft. The real work comes after that, when you have something to start with, and perfect.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (lyric essays to poetry to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
It’s easy to move between these genres. Within Vessel, especially, I move between genres, or the conventions of them. It’s appealing because some things are better conveyed via one genre and others via a different genre. Sometimes, things suggest themselves in a particular genre.

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 have a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old, so most of my writing takes place during school hours during school terms. I walk my daughter to school nearby, then come home and do an hour or so of household tasks, before sitting down at my desk and hoping to work for 4-5 hours. 

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
When I feel as though I can’t get into the flow of writing, I turn to reading and research. Reading certain writers, like Anne Carson or Carol Mavor for instance, always inspires me in a new way to get back into setting words on a page. I’m a big believer in the power of daily practice though, so I always write a page in a journal even if I’m not otherwise writing, so that I’m always somewhere in the flow of writing.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I live in a rural mountain town. I think in winter, it’s a smoky smell from all the fires burning in people’s hearths. 

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 would say “all of the above”. Observing nature is an important part of my writing practice generally, and there are references to music, science and visual art all throughout Vessel, in addition to the many references to other books and poems. Creative work is derivative of the world around it in so many ways.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Anne Carson, Kate Zambreno, Sarah Manguso, Eula Biss, Roxane Gay, Helen Garner, Susan Howe, Heather Christle, Joan Didion, Annie Ernaux, Olivia Laing, Deborah Levy, Claudia Rankine, Maggie Nelson, and Carol Mavor are all writers I’ve found important for my writing and examining ways of looking at and thinking about the world. I also love Michael Ondaatje and Leonard Cohen. 

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Travel to places I haven’t yet been, like Canada! And I’d love to teach a class on the lyric essay.

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?
I came (back) to writing late; after having my children, I returned to university (having dropped out of two courses in my early 20s), completed an undergrad and honours in creative writing and then went on my PhD. Before that, I spent a lot of my life selling costume jewellery and selling homewares from India to shops, and working at trade fairs around Australia, though I wouldn’t say this is something I loved. In my head, I was always a writer. But otherwise, I helped to run a writer's festival in the town where I live last year, and that was a thrill (and a lot of hard work). I’d love to do more of that. I’m not sure I would have ever gotten to do that without first being a writer, mind you.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I’ve always wanted to write, and I’ve always loved to read, so I guess that’s where the impetus came from. I did what I felt I could do well. 

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I loved The History of Sound, by Ben Shattuck. I can’t remember the last great film, though I am so looking forward to the adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s wonderful book, Hamnet.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m working on edits for a book called Preludes for an Ending, that weaves together fragments anticipating the death of my mother (she died last year) with observations on extreme climate events as they unfolded during the process of writing, and the mediations of French linguist Roland Barthes’ in his Mourning Diary, written in private fragments after the death of his mother, Henriette. 

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

J.R. Carpenter, p a u s e.

 

we walk past a log cabin. the white mud. between the logs.

has volcanic ash in it, so it dries into a hard clay, she says.

 

I’ve been reading about the specific volcano.

the eruption. that this ash came from, I say.

 

we agree that 2,350 years ago feels recent.

for an eruption.

 

geologists say the river formed 12,000 years ago.

post glaciation.

 

they say, she says.

aye. all rivers are recent.

 

people are stories.

and stories are ancient.

As the acknowledgments of Canadian poet J.R. Carpenter’s latest poetry title, p a u s e. (Llandysul Wales: Broken Sleep Books, 2026), offers: “the writing is born of a sustained engagement with kisiskâciwanisîpiy (the North Saskatchewan River) as it flows east through amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton), in Treaty 6 Territory, Métis Region No. 4. this is the territory of the Papaschase Cree and the homeland of the Métis Nation. this is the territory of the poplar, silver birch, black spruce, tamarack, willow, and wild mountain ash. this is the homeland of the beaver, moose, muskrat, coyote, nuthatch, and chickadee nations. this is a traditional gathering place for the Cree, Blackfoot, Metis, Nakota Sioux, Iroquois, Dene, Ojibway, Saulteaux/Anishinaabe, Inuit, and many others travellers, including swallows, red-winged blackbirds, bohemian waxwings, and trumpeter swans.” There is such a clear, purposeful and precise cadence to this book-length suite, how Carpenter captures deep listening, slowness and the pause across an incredibly sharp lyric. Her subject, of course, is around, within and through Edmonton’s river valley and North Saskatchewan River, a subject matter she shares with Edmonton poet Jason Purcell, a thread through his recent Crohnic (Vancouver BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025) [see my review of such here], although perhaps more deeply and thoroughly with Edmonton-based poet Christine Stewart, as displayed in her own book-length essay-poem Treaty 6 Deixis (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2018) [see my review of such here]. The poems of p a u s e. explore walking the physical space of Edmonton’s river valley and Covid-era space, as the well-known mudlarker Carpenter works to examine this geographic and historical space on its own terms; and with the added layer of the Covid-era, stretching the isolations and the silences and the pause. “two weeks. in quarantine. // learning. what dry smells like.” she writes, “learning. the difference. between. // conifers. fir. spruce. and pine. /// two weeks. of heat. and bright. and then. // the sky darkening. the thunder rumbling.”

As Carpenter’s note at the back of the collection also offers: “this writing began during my time as writer in residence in the English and Film Studies Department at the University of Alberta 2020-2021. all the buildings were closed, and gatherings were restricted, due to Covid.” I’ve long been intrigued by residency-specific poetry titles, ever since finding a copy of George Bowering’s The Concrete Island: Montreal Poems 1967-71 (Montreal QC: Vehicule Press, 1977) somewhere in the early 1990s, a title composed during Bowering’s time as writer-in-residence at Sir George Williams (which later became Concordia),. I later composed my own wild horses (Edmonton AB: University of Alberta Press, 2010) during my time at University of Alberta from 2007-8, purposely conscious of Bowering’s own prompt. Further to those, Montreal poet and translator Erín Moure’s hetronym “Eirin Moure” composed Sheep’s Vigil by a Fervent Person (Toronto ON: Anansi, 2001) out of a University of Toronto residency, and Toronto poet Margaret Christakos’ That Audible Slippage (Edmonton AB: University of Alberta Press, 2024) [see my review of such here] roughly holds to a loose temporal boundary from her time as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta in 2017-18 (I’d be eager to hear of other examples, by the way). To hold a residency is to hold to not only a contained temporal space, but, more often than not, an entirely different geography and cultural context for a writer to enter into, which can’t not prompt at least some kind of consideration of wishing to understand this new landscape one has entered.

considering compiling a field guide.

but to what.

 

walking. with ears instead of eyes.

standing. with hands open.

 

inviting. the touch. of other creatures.

listen. they find you.

 

then. the thrum.

breath into lungs.

 

wings into air.

For those unaware, Carpenter is a Canadian-born UK-based artist, writer, and practice-led researcher, and the author of a handful of poetry books and chapbooks, most recently the curiously-bilingual Le plaisir de la côte /The Pleasure of the Coast (Pamenar Press, 2023) [see my review of such here] and Measures of Weather (Swindon UK: Shearsman Books, 2025) [see my review of such here]. What is interesting about p a u s e. is the multiplicity of approach and effect, from the author’s exploration of a different landscape and cultural space, to the “pause,” perhaps, both of attention in the moment and the away-from-home of another continent.

put the bin out. and keep going.

out the back way. down the alley way.

 

walking. through the fresh snow. falling.

following. an extremely. high frequency.

 

an earful. of bodies.

a static. of waxwings.

The book-length stretch is interesting, as well, in how Carpenter approaches this Alberta space through the uniquely British tradition of ‘walking’—see here for my review of Carpenter’s Longbarrow Press stablemate, the Leicestershire, England poet and sound artist Mark Goodwin’s fourth full-length poetry collection, Steps (2014)—providing a detailed immediacy to the landscape rarely articulated so closely (although one could say Margaret Christakos’ work attends the same attention to small detail). How the only way to truly understand this particular space is on foot. As well, Carpenter writes as the returning outsider, the self-proclaimed “migrant,” as she described as part of her February 2020 “Spotlight series” statement: “I am a migrant. An immigrant born of emigrants born of immigrants. I was born in Mi’kma’ki. In those parts in those days they used to say: you’re not from here until you have a grandfather buried here. So even where I come from, I come from away. I lived for nineteen years in English as a minority language on the French-speaking island of Montreal. In 2009 I emigrated to the island of England, where my English will forever mark me as a foreigner.” Or, as she offers, early on in the collection:

people keep asking me.

how it feels to be back.

 

in this place.

I’ve never been.

 

Canada, I guess they mean.

but what does that mean.

 

 

four poems from Fair bodies of unseen prose,

 

Hanging a frailty on a flame.

An impulse, light enough. Drawn close. Must we break, divide? Childhood. The frequency of green, articulates. Articulations. Clock beside my bed, an apparatus. Thumb, to finger. Rhythm. Out of the word. Ambiguous, mezza. Preposition. Hillside, bespoke. Articulate. Thus, pronouned. Alpine, outlined. The signs, of course. To settle down, surface. To love, unblemished. This risk of falling. May not be enough.

 

 

How to regain the solitary mist which endorses inner rooms?

Repeated, structure. Decentred lungs. Among the folds of words, sense. Come to their senses. I descend some steps. I descend, from. What have you. Ancestors, declarative. Each tiny fibre, mechanized means. Atonal. Blood, a moving picture. Critical perception, walls. An ocean. Action. Shush your shushy mouth. The literal figurative. Index. Bathe, in serious light. Tactfully. To ask a question, to move like a statue. Start again.

 

 

, or a series of waves in air.

To be literal. Weight. The shape of this vowel. With one left eye. I connect one gesture. Blur. The very edge. Reluctant, compatible. To venture, a line. This green promise of spring. Disposition. A distance, untold. This space between projects. Illuminate. Voice is no help. How to eat fish, slice bread. A tomato. Precarious. You could not read the paper. And yet.

 

 

Thirst sung.

Fingertips. Some chords, scorched. Subdivided. Half snow, rain. To compose, in the light. We hold these curiosities. Shoulder. I am not parallel. Beams. In America, does. The narrows, of family. To drop this veil. The world is not logical. Wine moms, rejoice. A slight breeze on a rock. Minnesota, strong. Sing it. Shout it out. Whirls our vertigo, ferment. Whirls out forever. Must the language? Such ambition, hark. The morning, silver. What will come of it.

 

 

Fair bodies of unseen prose is an homage text for, around and after American poets Laynie Browne and Rosmarie Waldrop, furthering my exploration around and through the lyric sentence and prose poem. All poem titles (which appear in italics above each brief prose poem) are taken in order from the last line or phrase of each poem-in-sequence of Browne’s In Garments Worn By Lindens (Tender Buttons Press, 2019), itself an homage text to Rosmarie Waldrop, with all of Browne’s titles taken from Waldrop’s Lawn of Excluded Middle (Tender Buttons Press, 1994). As my own sequence progresses, echoes of texts by both poets resound throughout, especially from Browne’s In Garments Worn By Lindens and Practice Has No Sequel (Pamenar Press, 2023), Rosmarie Waldrop’s Blindsight (New Directions, 2003) and Gap Gardening: selected poems (New Directions, 2016), as well as the collection Crosscut Universe: Writing on Writing from France, edited/translated by Norma Cole (Burning Deck, 2000).

In early 2023, I reviewed three recent titles by Laynie Browne, and quickly realized just how much affinity there was between her work and my own, an element of which is certainly due to our shared love of, and deep influence from, the work of Rosmarie Waldrop. Browne and I soon exchanged books, and In Garments Worn By Lindens prompted this response.