12 or 20 questions: with Joe Rosenblatt

Joe Rosenblatt was born in Toronto in l933. He started writing seriously in the early sixties, and in l966 his first book, The L.S.D. Leacock, was published by Coach House Press. Since then he has published more than a dozen books of poetry and fiction. His selected poems (1962-1975), Top Soil, won the Governor-General's Award for poetry. Another volume of selected poems, (l963-l985), Poetry Hotel, won The B.C. Book Prize, l986 for poetry. His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals in North America.

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 think a poet’s first book is a commitment to a life’s course in poetry. It is a declaration of faith, so to speak. My first work was a pamphlet of poetry titled “The Voyage of the Mood,” published by a friend of mine, Peter Dorn who then had a private letterhead press. That was in 1963. I never asked myself with the first publication of my poems: where is it all going to lead to? My most recent work was a collaboration with poet Catherine. We used the sonnet form and were inspired by the photographic images of photographer Karen Moe, who took poignant shots of homeless street dog of inner Havana when she was there back in the nineties. The collaborative efforts of the “dogateers” resulted in a volume of poetry titled Dog The book was published by Mansfield Press of Toronto two years ago and included a dozen dog pics of Karen Moe’s. So my first publication is vastly different as night and day. My poetry now is far more refined and mature and settled stylistically, not groping for a style of writing poetry. The first publication will always be a starting point in my writing life.

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

The poetry was always there waiting to be unleashed from Day One. I never ever thought of writing fiction or non fiction. It was poetry first up from the time my grade teacher introduced to Kipling and the Empire of course. It was only after I had published a number of poetry volumes that I set about to write non fiction. I started to write memoirs of growing up in Toronto in the forties, being the son of Jewish immigrant parents from Poland. My boyhood memoirs, Escape from the Glue Factory was published by Exile Editions back in 78 and went into a second printing. I love the essay form and never once did I ever think of writing fiction, turning out a novel, for example. I am primarily a poet and a visual artist.

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 is a slow process, for sure, and while some projects take longer than others, I never think in terms of churning out a book of poems every year. It is a Labour of Love for me. Each poem leads to another poem tied thematically for some inexplicable reason, and soon I have a chain or bridge of poems. But that agglutinated bridge could take years. So if it takes five years to bring out another book of poems or essays—I say to myself, each title published is an event unto itself, to be celebrated by myself and my readership, and merely another book. I don’t work that way. I have to be inspired, or feel a tad inspired; obsessed with the project or why the hell do it at all? If you have no obsession you should be writing poetry. You have to have a creative pulse to write the stuff, be challenged in the process.

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?

A poem might begin with a fragment, a musical line running through my upper storey, and then this fragment germinates and tries to link itself up with other fragments and word linkages and then slowly ever so slowly a coherent pattern emerges on the page. The poem writes the poet, not the converse. It is a strange birthing process.

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

After forty years of writing poetry and non fiction, public readings are a conveyance of reading what is on the page and making it come alive for me and the audience. I usually do public performances to promote a recent book. After all I have a commitment to promote and sell the books for my publisher and get my work out to poet tasters and company. I never think that a public reading is counter productive, or counter to my writing. I have ever entertained that notion.

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 would be dead in the water if I entertained a theoretical concern about this poem or that poem. It would be like asking the magician to reveal a hat trick. I let the sublime do the theory and never ask question of myself as what is the theoretical concern or rationale in writing a given poem. If I did that I wouldn’t write poetry at all. My poetry speaks for itself. Some people have referred to me as a nature poet, others as a green poet concerned with the environment and there is an element of that in my poetry. I leave the matter of the theoretic in poetry to academics. The matter is foreign to me. As for the current question in my poetry—I can’t answer that, although I am sure some busybody psychoanalyst has the answer.

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?

The writer should fulfill his or her role as sage to the human tribe, and impart increments of intellectual illumination to elevate humanity, if the latter can be elevated by poetry. In my case, I write because I have to write. I have to constantly challenge myself in doing far more complex projects. I have no answer what the role of the writer should be. I write to escape hyper reality, while other writers in the real world thrive and make money for their publisher writing what is currently in vogue, like novels, you know, relevant things that I don’t want to ever concern myself with. I do, however, believe that my poetry is relevant, to those who seek the sublime art form, if it wasn’t for those haute poet tasters, my readers– I wouldn’t be motivated – vent my obsessions complete with demons --to write a damned thing. I leave the matter of the larger culture as it relates to me and my muse to me to Canlit academics and aesthetes outside academia to make value judgements on my poetry. Again I never ask why I have written this or that. I am not into self-analysis.

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

Editors play a vital role in the process of creative writing. A good editor is more than a mere copy editor, or general editor, but an advanced reader, the first reader, so to speak; he or she is on the ground floor, a vital reader with a carborundum eye-- who tells you exactly what is wrong with the direction you are taking in a narrative, whether it a poem, a novel, or a short story.. Now poetry editor is a more specialized editor. I sometimes work with an editor. Suffice it to say, if several or more intelligent readers, object to a line or word in a poem, or don’t understand what I am saying, then I had better say it differently --so that they have an inkling of what I am trying to say in a given poem. I am not short of vocabulary pertaining to poetry, the one thing I don’t want to do is get so private in my language that I baffle or lose the reader. I respect an editor who is brutally honest in his or her opinions of my writing. I am very suspicious of praise.

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

Back in the sixties a New York matron, Marguerite Harris, herself a poet was devastatingly gory in her honesty --of what in her steel trap of a mind, constituted a poem. She told me that neurotics merely defecate but poets do it in patterns. She also sternly advised me to “ put a little moon in your poems.” By that she meant that blandness could kill a poem. Another mentor, Al Purdy used to get his back up when I mentioned the word inspiration. He thought that perspiration got the poem written and inspiration just sparked a poem, but you had to work up a sweat in writing a poem. Another mentor, Milton Acorn, used to say it was the poem that wrote the poet. Hard to explain but he felt that poem would emerge when the poem wanted to emerge on the surface when the time was ready. There were qualifiers to go with that process, like sweating it out. until your guts hurt, for as Milton used to tell me when a poem didn’t arrive, “search your guts, Joe!”

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

I try to find my prose voice level. I find that too much in the way of poetics in prose, can occlude the narrative, obfuscate its meaning, and put the reader off. I aim for clear sentences, cut down on the adjectives, deathless prose, easy flowing, uncluttered. Hemmingway is my guide in that respect. In short, keep poetry and prose apart. Never amalgamate the two, else you will end up with an exotic stew and no readership. Read Harrison’s Generals Die in Bed, the best anti war memoir written by a Canadian about the carnage of the First World War. That’s the best example how prose should written, a minimalist book that ever was written. It should be a primer for Creative Writing Departments in this country. I write for intelligent readers in discipline, creative non fiction and poetry. I suspect there are less than five hundred readers in English Canada who might actually crack the covers of a poetry volume. Most books of poetry end up warehoused and gather dust, few poetry volumes actually sell. There is no market for poetry and salesmen from the more viable publishing houses I am certain take anti-acids when asked to promote poetry books in the book chains.

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 can honestly say that I have no consistent routine. Look, I wear two hats. I write and I paint, and now I am drawing angels for a project I have in mind. If the muse is with me perhaps a suite of angel poems will materialize. With respect to the visual art, I have drawing shows coming up in Poetry Month, April and other shows in view, so I am busy. I live in the now. The now is my typical day. Sure, I have the odd writer’s block, but I am patient, knowing that lightning will strike in my backyard—and I write poetry. There are days when I find that I don’t want to do a damned thing. I try not to feel guilty about it.

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

I wish I could tell you that I turn to God. I don’t. Rather I go and finish an unfinished oil that I have been working on in my studio, and have abandoned for months.

13 - What do you really want?

Fun. Why should the younger set have it all? Maybe a trip to Pago Pago would be fun, at least before the place is submerged by the rising sea level

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?

David is right. I am a voracious reader of scientific essays and I have a passion for history, and historical research, and I must mention a penchant for exotic zoology I constantly read up on new species that are discovered in dormant volcanoes, and bizarre life forms in underwater caves and even more bizarre critters in the deepest ocean trenches, giant squid sucking in nitrogen from active volcanic chimneys at the bottom of the deepest oceans. I marvel at strange bioluminescent critters—vampire fish and giant clams that would eat your for a snack. It is all fuel for my imagination. Yes, David is right.

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

As I mentioned, I read scientific journals, focus on non fiction writings. Okay, I re-read Hunter Thompson and study his writing techniques and his dark humour. Poor guy shot himself—it was predictable, the Dark Side took over.

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

I would have followed my hunches, and didn’t –invest in gold when it was at the low mark of fifty bucks per ounce. I didn’t so I deserve to be on a tight budget when I travel abroad. Alas, I squandered my imagination on poetry instead of utilizing it to make money like “normal” people. Why couldn’t I have become the bourgeois poet?

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 probably would have been a currency speculator or developer. Okay, seriously, I don’t know, maybe I could have started a cult on one the Gulf Islands?

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

The devil made me do it, write poetry. My mind is not ready for loftier pursuits like attempting a novel.

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

I have no answer. The bulb has gone out in my upper storey.

20 - What are you currently working on?

At present I am working on a series of angel drawings eg angels in fur, dogs and cats, yours truly as an angel. Indeed, every angel has my face and sexy feathers, bright wings. As well as drawings angels, I accompany my angels with monsters and birds of prey. If I get lucky I will have another un-sellable product, a volume of angel poems.

[Joe Rosenblatt reads in Ottawa on November 13 at Gallery 101 as part of Max Middle's A B Series]

12 or 20 questions (second series);

12 or 20 questions: with Chris Hutchinson

Chris Hutchinson was born in Montreal and has lived in Victoria, Edmonton, Nelson, Vancouver, and Phoenix, Arizona. He now resides in Kelowna, where he teaches English at Okanagan College. The author of two books - Other People's Lives (Brick Books, 2009) and Unfamiliar Weather (Muses' Company , 2005) - his poems have been translated into Chinese and have appeared in numerous Canadian and U.S. publications. Over the years he has led poetry workshops in college, high school, and elementary school classrooms.

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

My first book did not change my life. Perhaps a few people took me more seriously because my poetry now came as a product with a barcode. I did get the chance to go on a brief tour, reading in a few cities across the country, which was a blast. But then, after about two weeks of gallivanting around and playing poet, I was back to my job as a short order cook.

With my second book I was thinking more architecturally, more in terms of prosody; and I was reconsidering some of my assumptions vis-à-vis the lyric mode. I wanted to try new things, play around a bit, take some risks. I had decided that much of contemporary Canadian poetry was boring, including many of my own published poems, and that, if nothing else, I didn’t want to be boring.

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

I did not come to poetry first. Back in the day, I tried to write long, sprawling, self-mythologizing novels. It was the early nineties, I was living in Victoria, but I imagined I was living in Paris in the twenties. And in a way, I was. Poetry came later, and then the real trouble began.

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?

My first drafts are pig slop. It usually takes me at least twenty drafts just to redeem myself. There are exceptions of course. Occasionally there are gift poems, the ones that miraculously appear perfectly healthy and fully formed.

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?

A poem for me almost always starts with a line that floats in from who-knows-where and touches down on the page. If the line is good, if it’s a line I really like, I’ll try to write it a companion line, something to keep it company; and it goes on like that. Really, it’s a process of continual self-delusion. But the longer I fool myself, the more lines I write, and thus the more raw material I will have to toy with later.

I’ve been working on longer, book-section-length pieces lately, and this has required a bit more preparation and forethought than the writing of individual, discrete poems. But I’m not sure if the day will ever come when I deliberately sit down to write an entire book about ‘X’. I don’t like knowing what I’m doing or where I’m going. I can’t even stay in the same job or city for more than three years it seems. The fun of writing poetry for me is the not knowing of it all, the unpredictability of the process and the outcome, and the strange places poetry takes me. It’s a hard thing to try to explain on a Canada Council grant application form.

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

I enjoy the act of reading poetry aloud in front of people. I don’t mind a little attention now and then, a little company. Though there is something weird about moving from the solitude of writing to the public stage of performance.

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?

Yes, all my work starts with the assertion that language is nothing more than a delivery system for political ideology.

I jest, but only partly. I am fascinated by theory, in a purely amateur sense—literary, political, social, etc. My readings in other disciplines have no doubt influenced my attitudes and beliefs about a great many things, including language and poetry.

I was recently talking with this young guy who is an accomplished academic and a talented poet, who told me, after much premising, that he wrote poetry in order to “redistribute wealth”. Ever since, I’ve been meaning to ask him if he was serious or joking, or if I heard him right.

For me, the current questions are: “What is poetry?” and “What can poetry accomplish?” and “Who the hell am I writing for anyway?”

In this they resemble the old questions.

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?

In my Ideal Republic, the poet would play the following roles:

1. IIconoclast

2. Jester

3. Pirate

4. Recipient of large amounts of praise, money and affection

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 look over my work near the end of a project. I have certain idiosyncratic blind spots.

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

Expect nothing. Write poems for the sake of writing poems. Eat well, and get some exercise.

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

I don’t move around that much, genre-wise. Occasionally, I’ll write a light-hearted book review or a close reading of a poem I like. I used to write fiction, but over time my prose lines morphed into poetry. I have friends who have encouraged me to write more critical prose, to enter that arena. But for now, I’d rather write poetry.

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 get up at six in the morning and ride my bike to campus where I plan a variety of lessons for the day. I teach four different English courses, and I have over one hundred students. For the first time in fifteen years, I don’t have a writing routine. I have a teaching routine. So I write in between things now, sneak a few lines onto the page when I can. It continues to haunt me, this writing addiction; it finds a way.

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

My writing itself hardly ever ‘stalls’. But my relationship with my writing certainly gets derailed from time to time: life gets complicated and messy. But a writer’s task is to write through it all, regardless. I find inspiration in the act of writing.

13 - What do you really want?

I want to move on to the next question.

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?

Dear David McFadden,

Books come from books, and poetry begets poetry, and money makes money—but what makes money make money? If poetry did not exist, would it be necessary, or even possible, to invent it?

Other forms that influence my work? I’m fascinated by the linguistic expressiveness I hear in certain jazz phrasings. And it makes me happy when conceptual artists make raids on fallacious cultural assumptions, values or beliefs. I love fashion and design, film, photography, architecture.... In terms of my own work, I don’t know how much I’m directly influenced by other forms, but I’m thrilled and delighted by any artist who can make my world bigger, stranger.

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

My life outside of my work?

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

Receive a Canada Council grant.

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’ve always envied painters, their tangible creations, their well-lit studios, the physicality of the labour itself. Yes, for us lit-theory types, there is something called the “materiality of the signifier”; but whoever first dreamed this up probably had painter-envy.

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

I’m terrible at everything else. God knows how many other things I’ve tried to do and failed at miserably.

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

Last great book: Rae Armantrout’s Versed. Last great film: Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Other than marking college English papers, I’m plugging away at a new collection of poems that will undoubtedly puzzle editors, Canada Council Jury Members, and anyone who enjoyed my first two books. I’m hell-bent on obscurity these days. I should have been a pirate.

12 or 20 questions (second series);

the ottawa small press book fair; pre-fair reading

the semi-annual pre-ottawa small press book fair reading
lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
at The Carleton Tavern (upstairs)
Armstrong at Parkdale, Ottawa

Friday, November 27, 2009; doors 7pm, reading 7:30pm

with readings by:

Michael Dennis (Ottawa)
Spencer Gordon (Toronto)
Michelle Desbarats (Ottawa)
Garry Thomas Morse (newly in Ottawa)
& Lisa Pasold (Toronto)

author bios:

Michael Dennis is an Ottawa poet with several books to his credit, most recently Coming Ashore On Fire from Burnt Wine Press.

Spencer Gordon writes and publishes. More juicy details can be found at dangerousliterature.blogspot.com.

Michelle Desbarats was born in Winnipeg, grew up in Montreal and Charlottetown and resides in Ottawa. Her first book of poetry, Last Child to Come Inside, was published by Carleton University and McGill-Queen's University Press. Other publications include work appearing in Arc Magazine, Decalogue, Transpoetry, Burnt Toast, Speak!, Meltwater Review and on CBC Radio and at the Writers' Festival in Ottawa. Michelle was a finalist in the CBC Literary Awards. She has received writing grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the City of Ottawa. She has also participated on Jury boards and as a judge for writing contests both in Canada and the US. Her work has been described as luminous and Don McKay, on the cover of the sold out Last Child To Come Inside, writes "This is poetry full of quick and acutely angled insight, moving with great sureness to glimpse the raven's wing inside the ordinary." Michelle is currently teaching poetry at Carleton University and working on two manuscripts.

Garry Thomas Morse has two books of poetry published by LINEbooks, Transversals for Orpheus (2006) and Streams (2007), and one collection of fiction, Death in Vancouver (2009) published by Talonbooks. His work has been featured in a variety of publications, including Canadian Literature, The Capilano Review, dANDelion, filling Station, memewar, The Vancouver Review and West Coast Line. Morse has received the 2008 City of Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Emerging Artist and has twice been selected as runner-up for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. After Jack, his poetic homage to Jack Spicer, will be available from Talonbooks in April 2010. He moved to Ottawa from Vancouver but a few short weeks ago.

Lisa Pasold has been thrown off a train in Belarus, been fed the world’s best pigeon pie in Marrakech, learned to polka at Danceland, and been cheated in the Venetian gambling halls of Ca’ Vendramin Calergi. She grew up in Montreal, which gave her the necessary jaywalking skills to survive as a journalist. Her first book, Weave, appeared in 2004 and was nominated for an Alberta Book Award; her second book of poetry is A Bad Year for Journalists, described as "critical, darkly funny and painstakingly lyrical" by The Globe and Mail. Her work has appeared in publications such as Billboard Magazine, The National Post, The Chicago Tribune, New American Writing, and Geist. Her first novel, Rats of Las Vegas, has just come out from Enfield & Wizenty.

for information on the book fair, starting the following day at noon, check here;

12 or 20 questions: with Theanna Bischoff

Theanna Bischoff was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, where she completed a BA Honours Degree in Psychology at the University of Calgary with a Concentration in Creative Writing. In 2006, she moved to Toronto, where she completed a Masters degree in Psychology, and is currently pursuing a PhD. Her research has explored how women experience a cancer diagnosis, as well as the development of creative writing skills in adolescents.

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

My first book, Cleavage, was a pleasant surprise that almost didn’t happen. I wrote it for a class I was taking at the U of C that I wasn’t going to take, until the last minute. Then, midway through the year, Suzette Mayr, the class teacher, suggested I work towards publishing it. As publishing a novel had always been a childhood dream of mine, I went ahead with it, even though it hadn’t been my original plan. When Cleavage got accepted, I was 22 years old – so my childhood dream came to fruition much faster than I originally thought. I was even more pleasantly surprised when it was shortlisted for the 2009 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and the 2009 ReLit Awards. I think my first novel made me believe that writing could be more than just a hobby and a dream for me.

In terms of how my more recent work differs from my first, it’s hard to say, since my next book is still in progress. However, I would say that there are definite similarities. Both deal with the impact of a traumatic experience on one’s life, both are told in a fragmented narrative, and both are narrated by a female in her mid twenties. However, my book-in-progress is much darker in tone, and should be longer than Cleavage when it is finished.

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

I’ve always written fiction, even in childhood, except for a brief foray into poetry in the 5^th grade. I have always wanted to tell stories and get to know characters, which I don’t feel that poetry really affords in the same depth.

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?

Cleavage took approximately a year to write, but it was written while I was participating in a year long creative writing workshop, so I was fortunate enough to have lots of feedback and input all the way through. When I finished a final draft, it was very polished, because it had been continually workshopped and revised all the way through. Typically, I write slowly, and play with getting the language and the images just right before I move on to the next section. However, I don’t write in any linear way – I write the scenes and the images as they come to me until all the pieces fit together.

4 - Where does 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?

Cleavage, my first novel, started as a short story, partially because I was enrolled in a short story class at the time, and it was written for a final assignment. The teacher of the class was the one who insisted it “felt like a novel,” though, at the time, I didn’t agree with her, and had other stories in my head I wanted to tell. The problem was, I couldn’t seem to get the other ideas down properly. Instead, I kept coming back to Cleavage, and it grew into the novel that my writing teacher saw back when it was just a short story. Since then, however, any project I have begun has been intended to be a novel. Short stories are great, but they always feel unfinished to me – I want to get to know the characters in much more depth and see what happens to them.

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

Initially, I wasn’t a fan of doing readings, perhaps because I tend to be shy and dislike being the center of attention. But that was something I had to get over pretty quickly when I went on tour for Cleavage. Now I enjoy reading from Cleavage, though I have to admit, I like discussing it more; specifically hearing what others thought about it and what questions it left them with.

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?

Because I am a Psychology grad student by day and a writer by night, my work tends to center around psychological themes, such as coping with a physical or mental illness. I have always said that my stories take an average character and mess up their lives, and then watch how they deal with it. I think this is true for most fiction. The question I hope my work stimulates in readers is, how would you cope in this situation? How would it change your life? Sometimes people assume that they would be able to handle the curveballs of life and judge others who are faced with difficult circumstances. I hope that my work makes people think otherwise.

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?

I think the role of a writer is primarily to stimulate deep thoughts and feelings in a reader. A secondary role is to entertain, but I think writing has to go beyond entertaining. After finishing a piece of writing, the reader should be stirred up, either emotionally, or intellectually.

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

I had the privilege of working with a whole “team” of editors while writing Cleavage, because, as I mentioned, it was written as part of a yearlong creative writing class, so it was workshopped frequently. I found their input invaluable, as well as the input of my editor, Suzette Mayr. The frequent input helped me ensure that the story I was trying to tell was coming across the way I wanted it to.

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

I heard Angie Abdou (The Bone Cage; Anything Boys Can Do) say never to read your reviews, but, instead, to just count them. Unfortunately, I am far too curious to follow this advice.

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?

Writing is not my day job – I’m actually doing a PhD in psychology, which occupies the majority of my time. So, often, I carry an idea (an image, a scene, etc.) in my head, letting it percolate, for some time before it gets written down. Sometimes I jot down lists of these “scenes” in notebooks and then, when I have time to write, I pull out the notebook and try to get down a scene or two. Because I had specific deadlines for Cleavage (as part of the class I wrote it for), I had to force myself to write more often than I do now. Any future books will be written gradually over a longer period of time.

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

Sometimes I dig through past stories that I’ve written for an image that was really poignant for me and see if it will work in a new story – I haven’t done this too often, but there are one or two images in Cleavage that are recycled. Generally, I keep lists of powerful images, so that if I sit down to write, I can select any of those and begin.

12 - What did your favourite teacher teach you?

The most powerful thing a writing teacher taught me was how much more powerful a non-cliché image was than a cliché one. This may seem really obvious, but I was in high school at the time and had just started studying writing. In my first writing class, one student wrote a story in which the main character’s boyfriend brought her a bouquet of roses. My creative writing teacher, Nicole Markotic, commented, “Wouldn’t it be far more powerful if he brought her something more personal, like Rootbeer slurpees instead?” In Cleavage, Justin brings Leah slurpees, which is in homage to Nicole and a simple but powerful writing lesson I learned way back when.

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?

My psychology research influences my work, not only because I write about coping with life stressors / mental illness, but because the way I have been trained to look at people is to consider what motivates them to behave as they do – and now I look at characters this way. I suppose that form, then, would be academic writing / case study.

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

Writers that share a similar tone to my work are important. Reading books with a similar tone to the story I am attempting to compose helps set the mode for my work. Also, I find research vital to my work. During Cleavage, I read lots of academic books on cancer and interviewed women with cancer, as part of the research process.

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

Because I am still at the beginning of my writing career, what I haven’t done yet is publish more than one book. I have another one in the works, but I’m doing a PhD in a different field at the same time, which makes the writing process slow. Hopefully, one day, I won’t just be a one-hit wonder.

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?

Writing is only one of my jobs – the other is a soon-to-be Psychologist (once I actually get my PhD). I feel these two careers actually fit very well together – they both, after all, explore how humans tick, why they act the way they do, and what happens to them when major events happen in their lives.

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

I don’t even know that I can answer this question. I’ve just always needed to write. When I was 3, I wrote an exercise book with orange and pink magic marker people and told my mom I was going to write a book when I grew up. I’ve just always wanted to tell stories.

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

I love Wally Lamb, partially because he explores psychological themes (e.g., PTSD, Schizophrenia, etc.), but I’m currently in the middle of Somebody Else’s Daughter by Elizabeth Brundage and can’t put it down. Books that really explores the deep, nitty-gritty of human life, not censoring any details, will usually captivate me. One of my all time favourites is also The Time Traveller’s Wife.

As for films, I greatly enjoyed The Reader, which was adapted from a novel, because of the ambiguities in intimate relationships and the fact that nothing is clear cut.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on a novel involving a pair of sisters, one of whom commits suicide because of something the other did. It deals with themes of guilt, grief, and mental illness.

12 or 20 questions (second series);

12 or 20 questions: with Graeme Gibson

Graeme Gibson is the acclaimed author of Five Legs, Perpetual Motion, and Gentleman Death. He is a past president of PEN Canada and the recipient of both the Harbourfront Festival Prize and the Toronto Arts Award, and is a member of the Order of Canada. He has been a council member of World Wildlife Fund Canada, and is chairman of the Pelee Island Bird Observatory. He lives in Toronto with writer Margaret Atwood.

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

Five Legs, which was my first book, changed my life because in desperation I had started another novel while it was being rejected in sequence by a Canadian, an English, and finally by an American publisher before the House of Anansi took it on. Then when Five Legs was published and sold out the first printing in less than two weeks, I experienced the seductive spasm that accompanies notoriety, and my fate was therefore sealed. I was going to be a writer.

My current work, The Bedside Book of Beasts, obviously differs in form and style from the novels. A companion to The Bedside Book of Birds (2006), it feels very different, if only because my preoccupations are a very long way from those of the youth who started out writing novels. Back then I don’t think I’d have understood E. O. Wilson’s remark that “The natural world is imbedded in our genes and cannot be eradicated, or Thoreau’s “In wildness is the salvation of the world.”

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

The story I felt compelled to explore demanded the form of a novel. Anyway, my early attempts at poetry were preposterous.

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 worked on my first novel for almost ten years and all my fiction took forever to finish. Most of my own re-writing and editing was done on each page before I went on to the next one. It was a bit laborious, but there you are. It was what I did.

4 - Where does a book 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?

Whenever I discover an emerging project I know it will be a book -- assuming, of course, I finish it. In the more than thirty years I abandoned at least four manuscripts. With two of them I was well into the second year before I let go.

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

On the whole, yes, I do enjoy readings, partly because when I’m writing I try to hear my sentences and paragraphs. The voice is somehow central to my prose. Margaret Laurence once told me that she didn’t understand what to do with my second novel, Communion, until she’d heard me read from it.

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?

My non-fiction books have both theoretical and practical concerns about how we humans have related to the natural world, and what we have done to it in the process of feverishly trying to escape nature. For me, there’s no shortage of current questions; there are, however, a worrisome lack of answers.

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?

To be his or her own best and most honest voice.

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

This largely depends on whether I think the editor has understood what I was doing, or trying to do.

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

Write for the book and edit for the reader.

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

The appeal is in the material, in the intent, not in the form. When I was writing novels I never thought that I’d write anything else. I did manage to eke out one short story, Pancho Villa’s Head, but it took almost as long to complete as my novels did. I’d like to have written more but they just weren’t there.

I turned to non-fiction because I had resolved the problems that fiction can address and dramatize, at least for me. The miscellanies give me scope to learn, to explore and try to celebrate the deeply moving truth of creatures that are truly wild.

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’m not good at routines. The day begins early, but slowly.

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

Saint Augustine is supposed to have said solvitur ambulando, it is solved by walking. That may be true, however sometimes you have to walk for quite a while.

13 - What do you really want?

Possibly an answer to this question.

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?

Books may come from books, indeed they probably do as a form, but the motives, thoughts and feeling that urge one to write often rise from deep-seated shadows within a whole life.

My current book, The Bedside Book of Beasts, emerged from my desire to learn more about alpha predators and their prey. They are central to us, and to our understanding of our place in nature, because the primal fact of hunting and/or being hunted, and the inescapable demands of hunger, have largely defined animal life on earth, and are undoubtedly among the key engines driving evolution. We are what we are largely because we must eat -- and have lived in danger of being eaten.

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

The Bedside Book of Beasts, and my Bird book, are both wide-ranging miscellanies, with texts and images from scores of others who have explored and celebrated non-human nature and our relationships with it. As a result it is really a body of work, a genre, a way of seeing if you will, that is fundamentally important to both my work and to my life.

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

Learn to waltz gracefully in order to delight my partner.

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 dream that I’d escape to sea.

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

When I started writing all other alternatives seemed either impossible for me, or else unspeakably dreary. Moreover it seemed clear that I had to write my first book, Five Legs, in order to set some psychic records straight.

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

The last “great” book I read was The Peregrine by J. A. Baker. It is an extraordinary thing, and hard to describe. It is almost as if Baker wanted to become a Peregrine. There’s something shamanistic in his quest, it evokes that ancient magic when souls moved effortlessly between animal and human bodies.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m trying to catch up on the melancholy pile of busywork left undone by my preoccupation with the Bedside Book of Beasts.

12 or 20 questions (second series);

rob's january - march poetry workshops

If anyone is interested, I've just booked a series of dates for my new seasonal poetry workshops at Collected Works Bookstore, Wellington & Holland, Ottawa, happening on Wednesday nights: January 6, 13 and 27; February 3, 10 and 24; March 3, 10.

$250 for 8 sessions.
7pm to 9pm.

for information, contact rob mclennan at az421@freenet.carleton.ca or 613 239 0337;

an eight week poetry workshop (spread out a little, for the sake of scheduling), the course will focus on workshopping writing of the participants, as well as reading various works by contemporary writers, both Canadian & American. participants should be prepared to have a handful of work completed before the beginning of the first class, to be workshopped (roughly ten pages).

Roo Borson’s Personal History

What is it that makes great writing (and great art of all kinds, perhaps excellence itself) almost unbearable? The anguish of the impotent bystander, who can do nothing but stand and watch. The feeling of being condemned to sit forever in some generic living room while, on television, one after another, Olympic divers transmute themselves into steel, projectile, otter, swan. (“The Road”)

There is just something about this particular group of Canadian poets—Borson, Bringhurst, Lilburn, Simpson—that doesn’t really do a whole lot for me as far as their poetry is concerned (a list that certain I know would be thrilled to be part of, I know), yet I find myself attracted to parts of their non-fiction works (note that I am not including Zwicky or McKay, whom I find exciting, still, as poets). This is certainly the case with Toronto poet Borson’s most recent collection of essays, Personal History (Toronto ON: Pedlar Press, 2008), and sheds a whole new cast of light on several of her interests, as well as a few on her own writing practice. But just how personal is this history? There’s an aspect here that gets completely personal, and in places, even makes me crave more than what is compiled here, in these pieces that seem to stretch a course of years in some hundred-plus pages. In seven personal essays, Borson moves through the range of her intent in reading and writing, to a piece such as “The Silo and Related Works: Andy Patton,” writing on the works of the third in the collaborative Pain-Not-Bread trio that shifted the previous collaborative grouping by Borson and her husband, Kim Maltman (I will admit my bias, by saying my favourite of anything Borson has been involved with is still her collaboration with Maltman published in the mid-1980s by Quarry Press).

I like to think of Andy Patton’s work the way I think (perhaps perversely) of that small black painting: as direct depiction – though of what, we don’t exactly know. Nothing is hidden. The work is not coy. What we don’t know is right in front of our eyes, and doesn’t berate us for not knowing it. I like to rest there, in that private place where everyone is welcome. It’s possible to get lost in his blues. But however dazzling they might seem at first, to look long enough is to enter dusk, where colours settle themselves within a monochromatic scale. Once the eyes adjust to their immersion, subtleties become distinguishable, vagaries, imperfections where the ink ran, blurs of figuration ghostly as a sheet of paper in a dark room. No figure here casts a shadow, but the attention to darkness is palpable. Not the reflexive darkness and insolubility of our seeing (that would put the emphasis too much on us), not the grime of reaction and interpretation laid down, layer after layer, until it too acquires a patina (luckily, words stick to words more than words stick to canvas), but the paintings’ own darkness, what is intentionally indistinct. Within this indistinctness, the workings of perception begin to glint. “We live in a dark time,” he says in a catalogue essay, but there’s no point asking him to explain this. Better simply to look.

I find it interesting that Borson is willing to take this approach to visual art (admittedly, an art she knows not as a practitioner but as an outsider), yet in her essay “Poetry and Knowing” she begins to portray the art of writing poems as something almost dreamily romantic. Still, after reading through this collection of pieces, I am hoping that the memoir/essay form is one that she will continue with.

12 or 20 questions: with Angela Hibbs

Angela Hibbs's first book is Passport (2006). Her poems have appeared in such journals asThe Antigonish Review, Exile, Fireweed, Matrix, and CV2. She was born in Newfoundland and has recently moved to Toronto. She holds a Master of Arts in English Literature from Concordia University.

photo credit Rob Kingston

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 did my first chapbook for a class in my undergrad (shout out to Dave McGimpsey). I was 21. I got to use images that are otherwise too expensive for any small press publisher to use; that was nice. My first book, Passport, scared me. I would look at it and know that it was an object with an ISBN number and a public life and it was a feeling of lack of control. My second book is almost exclusively imaginary whereas my first was largely based in autobiography. My earlier work was more wild and spontaneous, a little flashier. Recent work is not subdued but it is more steady-handed. It was about learning to conceive of a book length project and about selecting what went well together and was a very important lesson.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I often write narrative poetry, which is likely a reflection of my inability to answer the question "and then" "and then". Also, I like the control that lineation allows me to have with the reader's breath and pacing. I don’t actually read all that much non-fiction other than True Crime and biography, so it would not be a likely genre for me to start using. I wrote and directed a few plays in undergrad. I realized I wanted to work alone.

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 rarely write more than one or two pieces a week, and then those may not have a very strong chance of survival. I generally write say 20 lines and cut them down to 10 and maybe add a few that are clearer to the point once I myself see what the point is other than, I like the sound of these words or I like this subject/ character. First drafts may be close to the line length I will end up with. My recent long poem went through 3 major re-writes where it was alternately prose poetry, blank verse and now its current shape which is more located in the way it sounds when it is read, this was Paul Vermeersch's editorial suggestion and I like how it worked. Going through many options in terms of shape was great in terms of cutting extraneous bits or less strong bits.

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?
I write short pieces but know that they will become a book. I know that there will be an overriding theme which will make me choose 80ish pages that stand as a book; that are unified but also varied. Books don't scream their themes and to me theme is more an editor's and academic's idea that is talked a lot about in poetry as, to a large extent, we apply for grants based on themes. But the themes essentially are sex and death, right? Those are the Oxo cubes of the arts? From that there are the infinite riffs that are what is actually interesting.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I feel like readings are a bit opposite to being a writer. Writing is solitary and controlled; a performance can only have one of those qualities. Writing is a private performance. Readings are okay, they are mostly clustered around a book coming out. Reading is nice if you are sharing, but the spirit of sharing can often be lost in the competitive spirit and clique-iness of readings. Before I published Passport, I didn't like doing readings because I felt like everyone else had a book. Now I have 2 books but it is not as legitimizing as I thought it would be.

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 thought the current question was if you can taste the difference between starbucks and starbucks instant? My questions are just what do I want to write? What interests me? I feel like the type of questions we face in writing we don't really want to answer... we just want to keep on writing.

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?

Oh, I know this one, "the unacknowledged legislator of the world" right? or "to forge within the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race" and/or to make sure there is always celery in the fridge? Mordechai Richler said something like, nobody asked us to be writers, we all volunteered, so I think I should be humble and grateful that I have the time and luxury to be a writer.

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

An editor, in my experience, is my closest reader, it is a pleasure and an honour to be subjected to an analytical eye that wants to improve without making your voice a little clone of their own.

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

Writing is a marathon. Jealousy is a fake emotion.

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?

Morning is when I write new stuff. Other new stuff may happen, but morning is when I sit down and think about writing. I am fresh in the morning.

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

The paintings of Francis Bacon, films of Catherine Deneuve, photos by Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, and Mina Loy.

12 - What do you really want?

To go on a date with Alec Baldwin.

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?

as above

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

David McGimpsey, Rob Allen, Jason Camlot, Paul Vermeersch, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Mina Loy, Dorothy Parker, Lorrie Moore, Ken Babstock, Karen Solie, Shakespeare, Martin Amis, Lynn Crosbie, Nathaniel G. Moore, Sachiko Murakami, Don DeLillo, Evelyn Waugh, JD Salinger.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Be a man, so my mom can have a son and, more selfishly, so I can take it like a man.

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?

Professions do not really appeal to me. Imagining professions is what I like. If I had a talent for it, I'd like to be a painter or a singer. Doing nails appeals to me but I think that is because of Polanski's Repulsion.

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

The privacy and solitude appeal to me.

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

Great book: The New Layman's Almanac by Jacob McArthur Mooney
Great film: Tetro by FF Coppola

19 - What are you currently working on?

My third book's working title is Bacon Porn, it is about things that people like but think are bad for them, about that holier than thou space and what that pleasure means.

12 or 20 questions (second series);