12 or 20 (second series) questions with Elizabeth Treadwell

Elizabeth Treadwell lives and writes in Oakland, California, where she was born. Her books include Chantry (Chax, 2004) and Birds & Fancies (Shearsman, 2007). Posy: a charm almanack & atlas is forthcoming.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
The publication of my first book, a novel called Eleanor Ramsey: the Queen of Cups, came in 1997 just as I turned thirty and finished the MFA program at San Francisco State. It affected me in the usual ways, I suppose, by allowing me to feel affirmed and seen as a ("real") writer.

I've had the chance to regret it, though, as having come too early in my particular life. Seventeen years later it's clear to me that this book and its publication marked the beginning of my pouring a lot of very important aspects of myself into my writing, rather than having the courage and ability to allow their expression in the world of the living. I wrote that book during an incredibly painful and challenging time in my life. And who knows, things happen as they occur, right? It's hard to say because now I'm at a very different place in my life and in my writing. Even just within the last few years.

I also published a chapbook, Eve Doe (becoming an epic poem), in 1997. Oh! And Joyce Jenkins at Poetry Flash printed a write up about both books alongside my photo. That was exciting.

Regarding the new place I'm at in writing, I've gone fully beyond a strand of bitter nervousness that was there (for good reason) and I have a much deepened appreciation of the potential power of writing. It actually reminds me of the new Disney film, Frozen – it’s about learning how to use and integrate your gifts, whatever they may be. Going beyond (through) fears of all sorts.

My younger girl just said, Mom and remember, your poems are the way we tell the stories. Poems are like stories without pictures.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I do think poetry just comes first, historically and in actuality; but as for myself, I began writing poetry and fiction by the 4th grade for sure (9 years old) – I would make little side stapled illustrated novels which took their cues from Laura Ingalls Wilder and Lois Lenski, and our teacher would let us house these in the classroom library. I remember the feeling of slipping them onto the shelf, alongside the “real” books. I also had my first poem published that year, through Poets in the Schools or some earlier version of that organization.

As an adult I tried to be a fiction writer. This somehow seemed more “practical” (lol).  But I was always writing poetry, and my fiction tended to be structured in a poetic way. By my mid-twenties I’d started MFA school as a fiction writer but drifted over to poetry pretty quickly. My thesis was my book of prose poems, Populace. Nowadays I’ve accepted it: I’m a poet.

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?
Every project is different, thank goodness. There are some things that I get glimmerings, or even quite a full sense, of years before I am able to write them.

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?
Again every project is different. For a long time I was really into making everything as condensed and dense as possible: that is a major thread of what interested me and what arrived. That was just how it was, really. It wasn’t conscious like that; it was more that less dense poems seemed flimsy and not interesting, un-write-able in a way. Things have shifted a bit now it seems. There’s a new openness, which is a lightness, and which accompanies a new gravity too. Of course everything is always there.

Over the last twenty-five years I have written books that seemed definitely to be coming all of a piece (some of these are not published) as well as books that I assembled later out of what I had.

Right now I am interested in slowly doing a book length project, writing mostly on paper (in pencil even) rather than the computer (or phone!). It reminds me of how privacy and time worked before the internet, and contemplation.

(However I am sharing aspects of my process on tumblr!)

I think the main thing I can say to this is how completely my daily life is of a piece with whatever project I am working on; I suppose this is probably true for most writers.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
At present I do enjoy doing readings, and they contribute to the process of writing.

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 don’t really know how to answer this question; poetry is probably my theory if a theory I must have. And I don’t think there could possibly be just one set of current questions; the idea of that is disturbing.

Over many years many of my questions have been about race, gender, American history, literary history, environmental disaster and change, form and time and change … all of these I experience in my body … “in earthling measure.”

I have sought the expansion rather than the constriction of ways of knowing.

My most recent book, Virginia or the mud-flap girl, is “about” Pocahontas. As an undergrad, I studied Native American history and literature at UC Berkeley, because of deeply felt questions stemming from my own family history, and just because I was born here and I live here, in the U.S.

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?
Writers are visionaries and witnesses; we provide information and solace. Our work matters.

I think the role of writers and other artists should be respected, in practical, sustaining ways. I think children should not be discouraged from being artists.

I think most, if not all, of our structures – our financial and educational models might be at the top of my list – need to change, and will change, must change, are changing. This is the 21st century (although progress is a flawed idea too): my daughter does not need to be taught that rocks are not alive; that making lists of what is and isn't alive is a good use of our time; that in order to learn grammar she must also absorb a lot of propaganda about the pilgrims; that the weather where she lives is not normative; that normative is somewhere in New England; that the brain is the most important part of the body. All of these are just outcroppings of limiting belief systems, and thoughtlessness. In the meantime, the rocks sing, and we can play with them.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Depends on the editor! I’ve been lucky to work with some wonderful ones. Some can be detrimental, especially to newer writers.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
From Kathleen Fraser, about chauvinism in the poetry world, “one must simply pick off the lowlifes like flies.” Or something like that. It was quite off-handed but stuck. She also told me a gorgeous story about meeting and being given jewelry by Djuna Barnes in New York, when she (Kathleen) was very young and Barnes very old. I also got (get) a lot of advice from Gertrude Stein’s writing. And from Paula Gunn Allen, who told me that being willing to say the things that need saying, but which no one is willing to say, can actually be a decent “career” move, rather than somehow self-destructive; people (eventually) appreciate it. Not saying what you need to say is what is self-destructive.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
I do like writing the occasional essay. As long as it is completely on my terms, like the poems.

The appeal is thinking in language. And the appeal is contributing to the critical dialogue, rather than having it entirely imposed from outside.

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?
Before kids I structured my life so that I could write seriously at least three days a week (while working whatever job to eat, have shelter, etc.: I don’t come from money, nor has its accumulation ever held my interest; for better or for worse). Since kids, um, I’m not entirely sure how I’ve done it, but I have. Nowadays, just this year 2014, I have one day a week again. But I often write out of doodling with my kids, or from dreams in the middle of the night, or into my phone in the middle of a hike or a run, as well.

The best days start by drawing and writing with my kids in bed, or reading on the sofa while they play on the floor. The best days begin with the sun.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I don’t push it. I just let things ebb and flow, really.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Geranium.

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?
Definitely nature, music, science, and visual art. Also film, fashion, the city, the water, the news, the animals, the plants, dreams, weather, motion and stillness.

I always loved how Margaret Christakos put it, in an interview with you: “Being in the company of children and understanding the way they think and feel is a major influence and passion in my life. I’m also influenced by many other art discourses.”

We are part of a folk singing group in our neighborhood, led by a woman who knows a lot of very old folk songs from Europe and elsewhere. The structures of these have been influencing me – giving me a lot of sustenance and resonance – over the last couple of years.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
This list could be extremely long. I don’t even know where to start. I do count on the women, hidden as they’ve been. Early novelists from England (Eliza Haywood, Aphra Behn, and so on); modernist visionaries (here I would include such figures as Ella Cara Deloria, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Anita Loos, and Mae West, alongside the usual Left Bankers); a lot of Native American women writers and a lot of feminist theorists (most recently Ellen Key), both contemporary and historical.

I’m not against men, but I need the women, and at times they’ve been quite hard to find. I am very grateful to the scholars and presses who have brought their works to light in these times; this access has changed my life for sure.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’m not sure! We’ll see!

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’d be a nurse. An intensive care nurse in some way, whether hospice, psychiatric, labor & delivery, etc. To be there at the junctures in people’s lives when they are brought to their knees and need love and care would be very fulfilling I think. There are certainly nurses I’ll never forget.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I’m a writer; it was not encouraged; in fact was discouraged; but that’s me.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I loved these films in 2013: Stories We Tell, The Punk Singer, The Butler, The Spectacular Now, Quartet, Still Mine and Philomena. The Punk Singer was definitely my movie of the year. I love Jane Campion, especially Holy Smoke and Bright Star. As for books, hmm. Great is a big word! I am rereading H.D.’s HERmione, Laura Riding’s The Word ‘Woman’, and C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series at the moment. I really loved Joy Harjo’s recent autobiography, Crazy Brave.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m currently working on a book called Penny Marvel & the book of the city of selfys.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Sommer Browning, Backup Singers

I saw many many clocks, the clockman said of his first day. As the butcher cuts meat, the architect hides the sun; hesitancy blooms urge. Tonight, there is a horse in the painting above your bed. Tonight, a mole on the back of your love’s hand. At day’s end, the grocer pulls shutters across the glass complicating the thief’s anonymity.

There is an enormous amount of joy that comes with the announcement of a new work by Denver, Colorado poet and illustrator Sommer Browning, and the recent AWP in Seattle saw the release of Browning’s second trade poetry collection, Backup Singers (Birds, LLC, 2014). Given the amount of her quirky and hilarious comics were utilized as part of her first poetry collection, Either Way I’m Celebrating (Birds, LLC, 2011) [see my review of such here], I must say that a book by Sommer Browning without comics is unexpected (and even slightly disappointing). Still, there aren’t many contemporary poets with her penchant for tight lines and terrible jokes (Montreal poet David McGimpsey is a rare exception), and the results are absolutely stunning. Constructed in four sections, the first two sections are striking for the fact that they each contain groupings of single-page, untitled prose lyrics, collected in such a way that they could be read singularly, or as a narrative of accumulation, each poem acting and reacting against the ones that sit prior. One could say that her individual poems are also built accumulatively, each phrase and line pushing and piled, allowing for the oddest connections to exist in the reader’s imaginations. The rush of her prose also makes one wonder just how these poems might be heard, most likely as striking as how they appear. 

Goodbye fast-forward, goodbye alphabetical order, so long curlicue of the g’s tail looping on and on into each o and so on, icy line prismed into meaning: Varda on the absolute voyeurism of a door or the way the last drop releases the bottle into peaceful vacancy. Cassette tape roadkilled the DOT. On and on until the bun in the oven explodes golden over the Thanksgiving table, on and on stormy celluloid, on Donner and Blitzen, ontologically beautiful portmanteau Juneteenth, this most personal ecstasy drawing a monster from mythology.

There is a joyful, lively energy to her poems, one that can’t be diminished even through poems that might appear cranky, discordant or just damned odd; instead of wading through the dark, even her poems that work through some darker subject matter or references are radiant with energy (with some poems that rush at a near-manic level of urgency), one that is utterly intoxicating and impossible not to get caught up in. As one poem opens: “I told you he spanked me before work, how weird it was, how nearly non-sexy. Where did you go when I went to work?”

How long does it take to get to a funeral? The windshield wipers crazy across the window, out of pace so one runs over the other until the other careens so far to the left it hooks itself onto the edge of the car, the pathetic machine-sound of it straining to do its job. We pull into the Walgreens’ parking lot to search for tools. Since my first car needed pliers to open the window, I’ve always kept tools in the car. The bandage over the cure. Before this, we were received at an Irish pub by Sarah and her family and friends to celebrate the death of Sarah’s mother. Is celebrate the right word? I convince you to drive us back to New York so I could take another pill at the funeral. In the language of death, I want to say thank you.

Sommer Browning is one of a small number of contemporary American poets composing tight, observational lyrics on how to live in the world, all of whom utilize subversion, distraction, discomfort comfort and use of the straight phrase, and a blending of lightness against such very heavy dark subject matter. And when I suggest a list of such poets, I would include: Emily Pettit, Bianca Stone, Hailey Higdon, Hillary Gravendyk and Emily Kendal Frey. Browning uses terrible jokes more than most (far more subtle here than in her previous collection), but often as a distraction against more serious topics. In my mind, these are a grouping of poets who manage to say an enormous amount through allusion to far darker things; and when they do speak of such plainly, it can catch a reader off-guard, and nearly be missed.

Information

There is a reason

division is an operation.

A reason I know

the math behind the body.

It’s a girl

and the wires she needs

open her hands

before they’re fists.

The third section of Backup Singers is made up of the forty-one part sequence “Multifarious Array,” a space in which she’s able to stretch out and display her talent for composing, point by point by point, across a wide canvas. Part of what appeals about Browning’s writing (and comics) is in the way her unusual perspective and humour allows her incredible insight and observations, as “Multifarious Array” opens with: “A broken Xerox machine dominates the corner. It doesn’t reproduce mistakes, doesn’t allow gradual fade, it’s broken because it forces vividness.” The sequence even allows a perspective into Browning’s own work, existing as an extended lyric essay on the work of an unnamed poet, as Browning writes:

Her poems live between intimacy and devastation. After I read them, I marvel that within each, a feeling welled and filled me, then receded.

Conjured at a different angle, the worn memory becomes the missing piece.

Phil Hall, Notes from Gethsemani

The mouth wide open in wonder & amazement

*

I have killed a bug on the page I am reading

Like a shooting star—the smear of its innards—starting amid the text—& stretching into the white margin

I do not know what kind of bug it was—nor did it know what force befell it

As if the bug had been walking on a tree (the page once)—& a shadow covered it

The page as bark—the valued smear—it takes the page—back

The smear aims off—away—out from the text—the smear animates my reading

The smear—the spill—the dog-ear—the line in bold that is also underlined—then hi-lighted

The whole book has been hi-lighted—owning—it’s about owning

To underline one passage is to help you locate it again

But to underline almost everything—is to say—look I read this I read all of this I come in to the exam room bright yellow

Having yellowed many dense passages I shall never return to again

*

Originally presented as the “Inaugural Page Lecture—in Honour of Joanne Page” on November 14, 2012 as part of his writer-in-residence tenure at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, is Phil Hall’s poem-essay chapbook Notes from Gethsemani (Vancouver BC: Nomados, 2014). “Think of what a page is—of what a poem is—what / they hint at being,” he writes, near the beginning of the thirty pages that make up Notes from Gethsemani. Award-winning Perth, Ontario poet and editor Phil Hall has been increasingly blurring the distinction between poem and essay in his work, most recently in his eleventh trade poetry collection, The Small Nouns Crying Faith (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2013) as well as through his previous, Killdeer (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2011), his work of self-described “essay-poems” that won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry and the Trillium Award, as well as being shortlisted for the Griffin Prize. The lecture-poem Notes from Gethsemani was composed, it seems, quite literally as notes during a retreat: “At the Abbey of Gethsemani—in Kentucky—May / 2012 // I was allowed a week of access to the monks’ library / & archives // To consider Thomas Merton’s personal library—to / contemplate the nature of rare library collections— / paper—page // To have the Abbot’s permission—to be allowed into / the book vault—to feel the door shut behind me— / us—a pressure[.]” Hall’s meditations on the page, text and the physical act of placing works upon various medium float, ebb and flow in a variety of directions, exploring the relationships between form, mechanism and distribution in a way that hasn’t been done before, or so well. Early on in the poem he writes: “Before it is written on—the page is a skin—a / surface—a weight—a bond—a field—a zone of / potential // Once marked—any skin is reduced—is as if / domesticated—fenced—lined—harnessed by ink & / rhetoric—it becomes readable—it becomes page [.]” Discussing Phil Hall and the Joanne Page Lectures in The Kingston Whig-Standard (posted October 17, 2013), Wayne Grady wrote:

As a poet, Phil is interested in the way writers relate to the page. When he was writer-in-residence at Queen’s University last year, he received an endowment from the English department to institute a lecture series dedicated to that very topic.

“I’m very proud of that,” he says, because he sees the series not only as a lasting legacy of his time there, but also as a way of honouring Kingston poet Joanne Page, after whom the series is named.

“The Page Lectures will be loosely based around the subject of the page,” he says, and will be given annually, by men and women alternately. He himself gave the first one last year.

“Every year,” he says, “I go down to the Abbey of Gesthemani, in Kentucky, on a kind of retreat.”

Sketched as a series of notebook entries, Hall’s poem writes out the physical act of writing from the mark on the wall to the page to the computer screen, and the nature of what that physical act requires and means: “Anyone who thinks that violence is not an element in / marginalia—not a factor in marking up a text[.]” Including textual examples by Susan Howe, Erín Moure, Ronald Johnson, George Bowering, Laurie Duggan, Souvankham Thammavongsa and Michael e. Casteels, Hall explores a fantastic meditation through his mastery of the essay-poem, weaving and meandering a variety of inquisitive and even folksy byways: “The fences that were captivity narratives—are in / Howe’s hands—a logjam of squeakings // The slash that will become the scar is what Derrida / calls différance—or pure trace [.]” Hall might entirely be one of the most thoughtful and inquisitive poets we have, able to explore questions and terrain that had, until now, not even occurred to others; and all in a way that would make any reader wonder: why not?

*

Page backwards spells a new word—egap—& we half-understand such e-words now

There is an egap in our relation to writing on paper this day—perhaps it has always been there

Example—what of the strangeness of electronic signatures—the hand has not been a shadow or weight on that page—the written has been photographed & clipped & pasted

There is an egap between the legend of John Hancock & the legend of rag-paper

Or what of the persisting cult of the signed copy—what is treasured is the evidence of the maker’s body having been a shadow over that copy of that book—she wrote it & was here & left a tracing

(Like the bug on my book left a tracing)

We want the page & the body to have proximity—& this is being taken from us

At Gethsemani—the sign says—silence is spoken here

*

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Laurie D Graham

Laurie D Graham grew up in Sherwood Park, Alberta, and now lives in London, Ontario, where she is a writer, teacher, reviewer, and editor of Brick, A Literary Journal. Her first book of poetry, Rove, came out with Hagios Press this past fall.

1 - How did your first book change your life?
It lends a tiny whiff of legitimacy. It’s a concrete thing that vouches for me. It took me to Edmonton, Regina, and Victoria to read. It makes my bio easier to write. It also brought with it the daunting expectation of a second book.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I’m told I was one of those freaky infants that bopped to the rhythm of a song on the radio before she could walk or talk. I spent my whole childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood dancing and playing music and every once in a while writing something down, and more often than not what ended up on the page was poem-like. It seems to me now that all these modes of expression and interpretation that I was engaged in as a young person were of a piece. They all involved bopping to the rhythm.

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?
Oh I can start things no problem. I’m just full of starts. Middles and ends take an awfully long time, however.

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?
Writing starts small, a few words at a time. “Accretion” is the best word I can think of for how I write. And things form into pieces, yes, before they form into wholes. My ideas for things to write, though, are big, seemingly complete, sometimes book-sized ideas.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I enjoy doing readings quite a lot, but they’re odd things. They depend on so much. Wind direction, aura comingling, what shoes you and the people in the room all wear that day, the mood that the room and the people end up making. I’m used to performing, and I like the challenge of grabbing a person’s attention, but reading is its own creative process, and for me it’s a different thing than writing.

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 think I’m always writing about how we’re still at the very beginning of understanding the move on this continent from colonial theft to nation-state, and how it might yet unmake us all. And how that act of theft reproduces in everything the non-native inhabitant does, and how little we really know, and want to know, about ourselves and our transplanted home. And how we’re too slow and the earth moves much quicker.

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 have no clue. I think you could listen to Eleanor Wachtel’s interviews on the CBC or read them in Brick magazine and get a sense of what the writer’s role in the culture might be. So many interviews with writers end up framing the writer as an expert in the subjects her books cover, so that might teach us something about what people want from writers or think writers are good for, but I don’t know if every writer can reliably be considered an expert on much of anything besides maybe writing. I find Wachtel to be one of the few who asks a writer about writing, who sticks to what her interviewee knows best, and the result is really gripping and thought-provoking and entertaining.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Both, but I hope you mean difficult in a good way. Harold Rhenisch, who was my editor for Rove, was the king of the wild suggestion, and I tried all of them. I very rarely said No. Saying Yes to his wild suggestions brought the book into its own, whether or not we ended up using everything he suggested.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
“Just ignore them and they’ll go away.” —Mom

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
I find it relatively easy to make that shift. You’re using different parts of yourself for each, and I find it nice to give one a break and use another for a while. It ends up helping both.

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’ve tried and tried, but I can’t do a routine, or rather I can’t keep to one indefinitely. I eventually, inevitably revolt. So I aim to do some sort of writing every day, or nearly every day—that’s the extent of my routine. Sometimes I work for hours and hours and hours, and sometimes I just mince and read and jot words down. The “Sit your ass at your desk and write” school of thought or the “You will write X number of words every day, goddamn you” school is my recipe for a most perfect failure.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I go outside, go for a walk, get the body moving. I read or play the accordion or paint something. I tend to plants or wash the dishes. I sit/fret/lament.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Mowed grass, exhaust, frying onions, a watered garden, ozone, tar, canola.

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?
Yes. Not anything as a rule (besides books, actually). Nature, probably most of all. Photographs, the sounds of people’s voices, archives.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I had a few talisfolk while Rove was coming together: Andrew Suknaski’s Wood Mountain Poems, Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill, Jan Zwicky’s Robinson’s Crossing, Dennis Lee’s Civil Elegies. Myrna Kostash is big for me. Dionne Brand, Tim Lilburn. I’m awfully Canadian in my tastes in terms of writers that are important to my work.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
a) Start a literary journal. b) Publish a second book. c) Travel down the west coast, BC to California.

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?
Dream jobs: arborist, session drummer, market gardener. Had I not gotten into writing I would have no doubt occupied myself with some other means of creative expression. I’ve never been without that in all my life.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I write and I do other stuff; it has always been that way, out of necessities of various sorts. But I need writing differently than I need anything else. I care about it differently than I care about anything else.

19 - What was the last great book you read?
Two great books I read/re-read recently: James Baldwin’s Nobody Knows My Name and Stephen Reid’s A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden. Both books of essays. Both astounding at numerous points. Carolyn Smart read in London a little while ago and I’ve just started her book Hooked and I quite like what she’s doing in it, the voice(s) in it.

20 - What are you currently working on?
A thing based on the Northwest Resistance. I have no idea where it’s going right now, but it’s poetry. I’m also working on a shorter thing about being edge-of-life broke—also poetry. I’ve got a short story and a few essays I’m trying to make exist. I’ve got a novel that I keep chipping away at. There’s plenty.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Barbara Tomash, Arboreal

the trees we wanted to climb—we wanted

to taste, see how they tear themselves up at the roots

near, very near ripening, these sleek purple fruits

but what are they called again? and is the moist skin

edible or poison? see how they bow dark dreadlocks

break open the cracked crust from underneath

with long buried fingers

fingers they stand on and walk away on

flinging them in front of themselves

whipping the air, dusting it (“Against the Glass”)

From Berkeley, California poet Barbara Tomash comes her third poetry collection, Arboreal (Berkeley CA: Apogee Press, 2014), following Flying in Water (New York NY: Spuyten Duyvil, 2005) and The Secret of White (Spuyten Duyvil, 2009). Composed as a series of extended lyrics, Arboreal explores the language, perception and textures of the California forest, as she writes in the title poem, “not in the fullness of language, but as a child’s code of dried torn leaves and / captured skipping stones [.]” Hers is an articulation of abstracts, specifically marked, dissolved and studied. The questions she raises in this collection are fairly straightforward: how do we relate to the natural world, and how is the tenure and tone of the land changed through our relationship to it, and ourselves changed in turn? As she writes in the poem “Forest of Names”: “what is this desire to touch the teguments, / to reach inside the enigma of escape?” Tomash’s poems expand on the smallest moments, exploring the intimate details of what lies hidden, often in plain sight.

Relict

when the wolves come into the city to keep warm

she has to go back to choosing words

the small watery ones, the narrow arrow slits

it is a time of bitter cold

completely outside the structure of American life

girdle of walls, tangle of reeking streets

when the bridge finally disintegrates

she miraculously recovers the conditional tense

conical roof with lacy ridges, pointed spires

and some glamour of spirit

nearly everybody is running away

the icicles shaped like girls

raining flowers down on her

These are complex questions worth asking, and repeatedly; questions explored in other works by a great deal of poets, including (off the top of my head) Julie Joosten’s Light Light (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2013) [see my review of such here], Brian Teare’s stunning Companion Grasses (Richmond CA: Omnidawn, 2013) [see my review of such here], Sue Goyette’s Ocean (Wolfville NS: Gaspereau Press, 2013), Anne Simpson’s The Marram Grass: Poetry & Otherness (Gaspereau Press, 2009) and Don McKay’s The Shell of the Tortoise: Four Essays and an Assemblage (Gaspereau Press, 2011) [see my review of such here], among so very many others. There are shades of Cole Swensen in the way Tomash has constructed her collection around a particular thesis and series of ideas, collaging her poems around and through varying degrees of subject into a single, solid form. She writes on trees and the forest, able to see both very clearly, in fact.

give us dissolution and we’ll show you—

here comes a break in cloud cover (hands poised over the keys)

delicate vine-like growth of camellia reaching over the fence

whatever reaches into the space between walls is love

                          (except when it isn’t) (“Against the Glass”)