Jason Heroux, UNFINISHED WILDERNESS

SNOW

Some languages have fifty words for you. Others, none. This would is different from the cloud you left behind. Down here you’ll see pain, how easily we bruise and hurt, but not why. Very few things get along in our land. It takes years for a voice to be heard, centuries for a stone to feel at ease. Don’t worry if someone shovels you from here to there, or there to here, or not at all. You may end up packed in a ball, someone might taste you on their tongue or hold you for a moment in their hand. Don’t be surprised if you disappear. You may even grow to love your life before you go, or after you’re gone; you may even feel you belonged.

The sixth full-length poetry title from Kingston writer (and former Kingston poet laureate) Jason Heroux is UNFINISHED WILDERNESS (Vancouver BC: Anvil Press, 2026), the most recent title in Stuart Ross’ surrealist poetry imprint, “A Feed Dog Book” [see my reviews of other recent titles in the same series here and here and here and here and here]. “We are both echo / and voice, wave / and shore,” Heroux writes as part of the poem “ONE ANOTHER,” “we are // one wandering lost / along another road, and another // welcoming one / inside our home.” Composed through a cadence of short poems assembled in four numbered section-clusters, Heroux’s poems each offer their own sequence of gentle turns and twists, narratives moving in and out of concrete focus. “Everything in this life struggles to struggle,” begins the short poem “HEAVEN,” “all ages of waves love to break against the shore. / The quietest note in a word fights to be heard.” A few lines further, as the short piece concludes: “Like a shadow warming under the sun, / I have no idea how happy I am.” With poems comparable to Kingston poet Michael e. Casteels [see my review of his latest here, also edited by Stuart Ross] for their quiet rebellion, Heroux’s poems present themselves as being more straightforward than they are, turning almost invisibly towards and into the unfamiliar. Listen, to the opening of the poem “SHOPPING CART,” a piece that suggests the inanimate object as an abandoned, grieving narrator: “I waited at the edge / of a vacant glistening / lot and wept. You // weren’t there. You / didn’t hear, but are you / nearby, listening, // now?”

It is interesting that Heroux works through such purposefully-slippery narratives ,given his own belief on poetry earlier this year as part of the Spotlight series, citing his own response to a 2014 interview question, in which he suggests that poetry is, in fact, a grounding response to our external barrage of advertising and corporate-speak: “Poetry is a way for the inner self to answer back, to have a voice in the world. The tradition and craft of poetry helps create a secure and enduring space for the hushed human spirit to shout out loud and clear.” And what, one might ask of any reader, do you hear through the work of Jason Heroux? Something surreal, certainly, but always and ever deeply human. Or the poem “NOVEMBER EMAIL,” dedicated “from and for Dag,” being his friend and occasional collaborator, Norwegian poet Dag T. Straumsvag. As the poem reads, in full:

The beautiful
naked trees,
all of a sudden
letting us see
deep into forests.
An autumn door
we didn’t know
was there, opening,
I think Tom once said.

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Brian Kaufman

Brian Kaufman [photo credit: Columpa C Bobb], writer, editor, and publisher, has been active in publishing for over thirty years. He has ushered over 250 Anvil Press books and over 100 issues of subTerrain Magazine into print since 1988. In 2009, Brian received the City of Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for his “significant contribution to Vancouver’s arts and cultural community, for shaping Vancouver as a creative city, and for enriching the lives of Vancouver’s citizens.” He was given the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2014 Western Magazine Awards, and the Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award. He writes fiction, poetry, memoir, and drama. Cascadia Subduction Shift is his first book of fiction.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Well, my first “book” was a publication of one of my plays, Fragments from the Big Piece, so the production was the big thrill, in my opinion. Having it in print was also great, but not quite the rush of seeing it mounted on stage. So this is a whole new experience, being a first book of fiction. Funny, though, both works are told in “fragments”, or smaller pieces that culminate into a larger whole.

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

I had a fantastic Grade 10 English teacher. He turned us onto Beckett, among other great writers, and Godot got me. My brain turned into a blooming flower. But around the same time I also read Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and was deeply moved by the story, so much so that I set out to write my own family’s sprawling story. The first novel attempt petered out after about 30 pages. But maybe it was typing on the Remington manual typer that wore me out!

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 varies, depending on the project. Sometimes I get an idea and it just seems to pour out, other times it is protracted — research, thinking, revising, drafts, etc. But I find that my final version is often fairly close to the original idea, or inspiration. I make notes, on scraps of paper, and toss them in a box and then later I “go fish” and see what that note says to me. Does it make any sense? Does it inspire a bigger idea? I like David Lynch’s idea of “baiting” ideas. Putting a little bit of bait out there (or a small idea, or part of an idea) and maybe the bigger fish takes that bait and on you go. But as he says, if you want the “big fish” you have to dive deep, because that’s where they hang out.

4 - Where does a work 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?

In the case of Cascadia Subduction Shift, the idea was there from the start. I wanted to write these very short “fictions” that were between three hundred and a thousand words, give our take. Very much inspired by Joy Williams’ 99 Stories of God and Thomas Bernhard’s The Voice Imitator — as a form. I wanted to plumb childhood memories, explore those — what did those events mean? How did they affect me, form my world outlook, if they did? And what do they mean to me now?

A work usually arises from an image or a voice in my head. How does a character talk? Who are they, what are they all about. I have a novel percolating based on a photograph I saw, taken in the ’60s sometime. It is a photo of a young couple walking down Burrard Street, I think, holding hands. It appears to be late spring or summer. They are lightly dressed. It just struck me. Who are they? Where are they going? What is happening in their lives? I wanted to unfold their story. And it has been driving me crazy for a few years now that I can’t recall where — what book, gallery — I saw the photo! I want a copy to stare at, and now I can’t find it. But I will!

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

No, readings aren’t really part of my creative process. I quite loathe public speaking and doing readings — though I will do them if it helps to promote the book. It’s funny, because when I was young I wanted to be an actor. I’d dress up and entertain my friends and crack them up. But I lost that somewhere along the line — probably one of the ills of puberty. So when I got interested in theatre I went backstage, did some directing and worked on writing scripts. I am in awe of actors. I don’t know how they do it: the theatre goes dark, the lights come up, and you walk out onto an empty stage in front of a theatre full (one hopes) of people. Amazing!

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?

Well, with this project I was concerned with the blurry line between memoir and fiction. That disputed non-genre of “autofiction”. Most of the pieces in this collection are based on real events, things that either happened to me or things I heard about when growing up in Vancouver in the ’60s and ’70s. But, of course, I’ve tried to turn them into art, make them interesting and engaging. I’m not trying to answer any questions, but I do hope to inspire some discourse, and, hopefully, entertain the reader. I think there’s only one question we should be concerned with in the current age and that is How should we live and engage with one another? In an increasingly polarized world, I think that is humanity’s major challenge.

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?

Well, they don’t have a prescribed role like a dentist or a plumber. I don’t think there is any specific role “the writer” — in general — should be expected to fulfill. Aspiring to be a journalist and aspiring to be a poet are two very different endeavours, yet both deal in words and language. If you’re doing “creative writing” then the key is in the first word: be creative. You should want to engage, entertain, or inspire wonder in the reader or audience member. Or what are you doing, self-flagellating your ego and expecting others to be interested? Writers — and any artist, for that matter — should not feel any obligation or responsibility to the culture at large. They need the freedom to create whatever they are driven to produce.

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

As I am most often in the “editor” or “publisher” chair, I’ve had very little experience being “edited”. But with this collection, and working with Stuart Ross, it was fantastic. Everyone needs an editor, a fresh perspective on the work. A good editor pulls you up in front of yourself in a way most of us can’t do on our own. Like Hemingway’s “built-in shit detector” — maybe he had that, but most of us have a hard time detecting the shit or “killing our darlings”. A good editor calls you on your shit.

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

“Push through to the end.” I don’t know who said it to me, but I always keep that in mind, whether or not I adhere to it is another matter. But good advice: don’t get hung up, just push through, even if it’s not how you envisioned the work by the time you get to the end, keep going, get from A-Z. Think of it as a fence — just build the entire thing, you can always go back and replace a post or a few slats, or whatever later, but get the basic frame in place in one go if you can. Now I just have to listen to myself!

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

I’m interested in multiple genres, and have been since a young age. My first serious attempt at writing was poetry. But I got a nasty swat-down from an editor at a press. Not “constructive criticism” in the least and that pretty much killed my desire to write poetry for a couple of decades. To me, the project dictates what it wants to be, or has a feel that tells me it should be expressed in poetry or prose, fiction or drama. So right now I have project ideas for a poetry collection, a suite of longer short stories, a novella, a play, and a series of monologues. I tend to work on different manuscripts/ideas at the same time.

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 to squeeze the writing in between a lot of other things — so my writing “routine” is erratic at best.

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

I don’t tend to get “stalled” so much as run up against problems that need to be solved. Inspiration doesn’t seem to be an issue (thankfully!) … I’ve got all sorts of ideas churning about. But logistical things, plot related stuff, that is often what stalls me. Figuring my way through the thickets, sometimes to the point that I want to abandon an idea. But then I say to myself, there’s a way through, you just haven’t found it yet.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Good question, and nothing is springing to mind. Is that sad? Boiling potatoes, perhaps.

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 think that’s true, “books come from books” — to a large degree. But writers and other artists are influenced and inspired by everything around them. Music, for me, is a big thing, a big influence on me. And images, photography, painting — as I mentioned earlier, that one photo I saw of a couple walking down the street in the late ’60s triggered something in me. I think inspiration can spring from anywhere, if you’re open to it.

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

These are a bunch of writers that have been (or continue to be) important to me: Beckett, Pinter, Mamet, Ionesco, Kafka, Cormac McCarthy, Sam Shepard, Mary Gaitskill, Paul Auster, Ottessa Moshfegh, Diane Williams, Thomas Bernhard, Martin Amis, Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Sam Lipsyte, Mark Jarman…there are so many…

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

Get hypnotized or sawn in half as part of a magic show. Swing from a trapeze.

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?

Maybe a psychoanalyst. I’m apparently a very good listener. I’ve been doing it for free all these years. Or a detective with a sideline in rare art restoration.

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

Since my early teens it has been music and writing. The two things that having really interested me and I have toggled between them my whole life. I completely abandoned music (playing it, that is) for about thirty years and have just come back to it in the last decade.

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

It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken. The last great film I saw — or one that has stuck with me — was Poor Things. It has so much of what I love in films or novels. Unexpected turns, messing with reader/viewer expectations, something that explores the weird, the strange.

20 - What are you currently working on?

More stories — longer ones— inspired by beer names; a poetry manuscript all about those things at the ends of our hands — fingers, I think they’re called; a play about greed and corruption and a reprehensible CEO of a huge corporation; and a novella about a guy that treats all the people in his life horribly, but for some inexplicable reason everybody makes excuses for him, and think he’s really quite an amazing guy. As I say, no shortage of ideas! There may be a shortage of time, but not ideas.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Spotlight series #126 : Dawn Macdonald

The one hundred and twenty-sixth in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring Whitehorse, Yukon poet Dawn Macdonald.

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, Kingston poet Jason Heroux, Vancouver poet Scott Inniss, Lethbridge-based Brazil-born poet Carlos A. Pittella, Toronto-based Palestinian and Iraqi writer Hajer Mirwali, Calgary artist, poet and musician Kevin Stebner, Canadian-American writer, editor, and educator Suzanne Zelazo, Brooklyn poet Gregory Crosby and Chicago-based Chinese-American writer Elena Zhang!
 
The whole series can be found online here.

We are such stuff as Sainte-Adèle is made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

Another Sainte-Adèle Thanksgiving long weekend (an hour's drive north of Montreal, into the Laurentides), most likely the last, as mother-in-law has the place up for sale, finding the ongoing maintenance a bit much, especially for a two-plus hour drive each way. We were there in September, which was plenty fun, but do you remember the first time I made my way up there? Another Thanksgiving, eighteen years ago, Christine and I exploring the cottage that her parents purchased back in the 1990s. This time, there with Christine's mother, as well as his brother and his family in from Halifax, four kids younger than Rose. The cousins always enjoy seeing their cousins, which adds to the chaos but I think they wouldn't have it any other way.

We did bring the kittens along this time, uncertain if we should prod the neighbours again to check in on them at home, and they howled the whole drive up and the whole drive back. It was a good twenty-four hours before they calmed down once landing, with Goose rarely leaving the basement, although happy enough, as long as the children didn't frighten him too much. Too many kids for his liking, and Frankie nervous as well, but at least he would wander around where we were. Goose quite literally wouldn't leave the carrier for a full day, but at least his complaining slowed. Perhaps had we been a further day or two, they might have figured it out.

We had big family dinners, with days mostly allowing the kids to interact, each of us in our corners. I held to the sunroom with my notebook and stack of reading, naturally, poking at notes towards eventual reviews. I attempted, as well, to use the time to read longer prose, which is always a challenge (I often save a couple of books for rare flights, knowing the opportunities for reading that travel provides). Oh, and we saw an array of nearly a dozen wild turkeys wandering the yard, which was curious. We often see deer, also, although not this particular time. Perhaps the turkeys chased them away.

Oh, and the final full day we were there, Rose produced, directed, wrote and edited not one but two short "horror movies" involving her and the rest of the children. Her editing and use of music was quite impressive, honestly. I'll be interested to see if she continues along this particular trajectory.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with A.D. Sui

A.D. Sui (London, ON) [photo credit: Yoah Sui] is a Ukrainian-born, internationally raised speculative writer, Nebula winner, and Aurora and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist. They are the author of The Dragonfly Gambit, The Iron Garden Sutra, and more than two dozen short stories. A failed academic and retired fencer, they spend most days wrangling their two dogs and tending to their myriad tropical plants.

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’ll focus on the first book published. The Dragonfly Gambit was a fun book to get started with. It eased me into publishing and working with an editor on a long-form project. It then went on to win the Nebula for best novella, which was wild. Our Infinite and Inevitable Ends will be my third book published and it feels a lot less panicky, and a lot more deliberate. I’m starting to get to a place where I’m gaining a grasp of how publishing works, of which gears need turning and when. Maybe, I’m even beginning to enjoy the process. 

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

I grew up reading nearly exclusively fiction, and I am an awful poet. I think there was always a gap in what I was reading where I wasn’t seeing myself in these works, and while they were good works, I was still left wanting. I came to writing the way many people do, through fanfiction, which in itself was an exercise of creating stories that I wanted to see on screen, just with existing IP. It took many years for me to have the guts to try something original. You know the rest. 

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 tend to draft very quickly. Usually, I’ll plan for a week and then hammer out the first draft in a month. If I stop, I lose momentum and then I lose interest, and then the manuscript goes to the graveyard with the other projects that died at 30k words. I try to draft lean. Most of my speculative manuscripts are about 90k on first draft and then grow to maybe 110k or a little longer on subsequent drafts. I rarely change plot points after the initial draft, but I will dive deeper into characterization and environment in subsequent 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?

I think I know what the story is after I finish plotting. Some stories are short stories, some are novellas, others are novels. I strongly prefer novels. I’m not sure how people write short stories. I try, I really do, but they are so difficult for me that I’d rather write a lot of long-form projects instead of a few short stories. The pacing is completely different. The density of prose is different. It’s a completely different medium to work with. 

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

I can do public readings, but I much prefer to just gab about the book instead of reading from it. I do read my drafts out loud to myself as I edit, but I’m not a super strong public reader. I can’t do voices or anything like that. I am far too serious. 

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?

Most of my work centers themes of grief, and loss. Recent works have started to speak far more to climate change and its consequences, which in a way, is also about grief and loss. 

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?

I believe it’s whatever we decide it is. If we want to be entertainers, then we are entertainers. If we want to be fortune tellers, then we can be the crystal ball. There is no manual on how to be a writer. The only requirement is that you write. While writing, in of itself, isn’t advocacy, it can inspire advocacy and can still have strong messages to relay. 

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

I have been very fortunate to work with editors who shared my vision for the book and who allowed me a lot of creative freedom to fine tune all of the elements. So far, I’ve had nothing but great experiences working with editors and I hope this trend continues!

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

You can’t edit a blank page. Honestly, probably the most useful thing when I hit “writer’s block” (which I do not believe actually exists). 

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

Ha! I laugh and then I cry. Difficult. Very difficult. Although the difficult part for me has always been writing short stories and not the novels. Short stories have a great way of training word economy and tightening my prose. In a short story, each and every word needs to justify its existence. In a novel, I can relax a bit and meander, but in short stories, I simply can’t get away with that kind of spending.

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 tend to aim for word counts instead of hours at the laptop. I’ll do 2-3k words a day during drafting, depending on what I want the final wordcount to be and the rest of my time I spend reading and gallivanting about. 

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

I go for a run! Most plot holes usually get resolved by the end of a 20km run. 

13 - What was your last Hallowe'en costume?

I have never dressed up for Halloween! I have, however, once worked in a haunted house as a creepy tree trunk. 

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 take a lot of inspiration from anime!

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

Outside of writing, I tend to read a lot of academic papers. Usually, this is because I’m going down a rabbit hole of something that’s sort of important to my daily life, like iron supplementation. I am in a very privileged position where I have access to a lot of primary literature on pretty much any topic. So, I can do deep dives into many everyday topics.

Recently, I’ve been nerding out on nutrition during endurance races, so that’s been fun!

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

I want to follow the caribou migration across Canada.

But in terms of writing, maybe do an epic fantasy based in Ukrainian folklore. 

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 used to be an academic, but due to the hiring freezes post COVID that didn’t pan out, or maybe I just didn’t allow it to pan out, but here we are. I think in a different world, I’m a professor, doing my research and teaching my lectures, but that’s a very different world.

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

I think there’s a massive power to being able to create stories that you wanted to read growing up. That’s it, really. My goal with writing is to fill that niche. Selfish, I know.

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

Playground by Richard Powers. In terms of film, I’d say Past Lives.
 
20 - What are you currently working on?

I have several books under contract, each at various stages of development. So, I’m doing a little of dev edits, and a little of line edits, and some pass pages, and some second pass pages. It’s a tasting menu of edits!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Benjamin Friedlander, One Hundred Etudes

 

By a clumsy
Caress, stands on
Ceremony, not on 

Legs, and speaks,
But under duress.
Thirty: A LITTLE 

BOOK for Robert
Creeley ANSWERING MACHINE
A slurred question

Given that Orono, Maine-based poet, editor and critic Benjamin Friedlander has been publishing full-length poetry collections for nearly four decades, I’m rather late to the game, just now going through his One Hundred Etudes (Washington DC: Edge Books, 2012), the first of his books I’ve properly sat down with [beyond a title he more recently co-edited]. “Prophecy History, driven // From prayer,” Friedlander writes, as part of the book’s thirty-third etude, “lets / The private utterance / Declare its public // Aim: the difference / Between what must / Be and is, [.]” The opening of the collection offers itself as “ONE HUNDRED ETUDES / En hommage à / Louis Zukofsky,” referencing the infamous Objectivist poet Zukofsky’s epic masterpiece, “A” (the first elements of which began being published in the 1940s, with the first complete edition produced through University of California Press in 1978, and a corrected edition produced through New Directions in 2011). One hundred, as Friedlander offers, individual lyric compositions prompted by a particular Zukofsky project, attempting to respond to technique via technique. The stop and start of Friedlander’s line breaks, three lines per stanza, three stanzas per page, offers a curious effect, simultaneously staggered, staccato and continuous. “NATURE / Golden ants gather // Around a brown / Beetle’s crushed armor.” he writes, circling the ends of his thirtieth etude, “MNEMONIC DEVICE for // Jackson Mac Low / My very eccentric / Mother just said // Up now please.”

Capturing some three hundred pages of clipped, extended, continuous sketch-lyrics, Friedlander’s stanzas purposefully bleed into each other; numbered, and with the suggestion that each new etude begins mid-poem, mid-stream; titled within the body of the lyric, with complementary numbering system at the bottom of each page. There’s a curious effect of such a dense lyric, layering and collage, from bolded text and dedications into clipped notes, as though stitching together moments of fragments together to form each poem. One might be better to refer to this, even, as a continuous book-length lyric, through one hundred individual jumping off points into or through this shared, lyric pool. I would only hope that someone more familiar with Zukofsky’s work would attend a proper comparison between the two, to see just how attuned Friedlander’s work remains in conversation, both with his declared source text, and the myriad constellation of all else that may have contributed. Either way, One Hundred Etudes is composed very much a “love letter” of sorts to form, and to Friedlander’s old masters. The single page of “twenty-nine,” set amid multiple pages across “twenty-eight” and “thirty” reads:

Surface on a
Toll road with
Numbered exits. Twenty- 

Nine: CAPTION FOR
A PHOTOGRAPH for
David Levi Strauss 

The orphan frown
Of a war-
Torn town, healed