A short interview with Stephen Brockwell, Jacket2

My 28th 'commentary,' "A short interview with Stephen Brockwell," is now online at Jacket2.

Joshua Clover, Red Epic

There will be a revolution or there will not. If the latter these poems were nothing but entertainments. If the former it will succeed or fail. If the latter these poems were better than nothing. If the former it will feature riots fire and looting at these will spread or they will not. If the latter these poems were curiosities. If the former it will feature further riots manifestos barricades and slogans and these will leap into popular songs or they will not. If the latter that’s that. If the former these popular songs will be overcome or they will not. If the latter these poems were no different than the songs. If the former the popular itself will be abolished via riots barricades manifestos occupations and fire or it will not. If the latter we will spend several more decades talking about culture. If the former the revolution will at this point be destroyed from within or without. If the latter these poems went down fighting. If the former it will feature awful confrontations with former friends and there will be further manifestoes new slogans ongoing occupations and communes and lovers will be enemies. We do not know what will happen after this point but surely this is enough to draw some preliminary conclusions. The poem must be on the side of riots looting barricades occupations manifestos communes slogans fire and enemies. (“The Fire Sermon”)

The first title from Oakland, Californian publisher Commune Editions, an imprint of Edinburgh, Scotland publisher AK Press, is poet, film critic, translator and cultural theorist Joshua Clover’s Red Epic (2015). As their press release provides introduction:

Commune Editions began with friendships formed in struggle, with the antagonisms that define the last five years of the San Francisco Bay Area: the occupations formed in resistance to University of California tuition hikes in 2009-2011, the anti-police uprisings after the shooting of Oscar Grant that continued with the deaths of Mike Brown and Eric Garner, and the local version of Occupy, referred to by some as the Oakland Commune. All of these antagonisms have been poet-heavy in the Bay Area. And they are producing their own poetries, ones full of ruptures, strange beauties—and also strangenesses, defined by explicit politics, the ones shaped by anarchist and communist organizing, theorizing, and struggle. This work inspires. And poets Juliana Spahr, Joshua Clover, and Jasper Bernes formed Commune Editions to publish anticapitalist poetries and poetics. And to also put this work in dialogue with poetries from other countries and from other historical moments, times and places where the politicization of poetry and the participation of poets in uprisings large and small was the conversation.

We want to avoid self-important claims about poetry changing the world. Poetry is no replacement for forms of action: strikes, blockades, occupations, protests, as well as the meetings, houses, libraries, and sharing of resources that enable them. But poetry can be a companion to these activities. Like the “riot dogs” of Athens, it can accompany the movements of the streets, provide support and pleasure, loud barking too.

Through such a declaration, Clover’s Red Epic, even before one begins, connects to an intriguing collection of writers, publications and activities, whether Stephen Collis and Christine Leclerc as part of Enridge Pipeline activism, capitalist critiques by poets such as Jeff Derksen, donato mancini, Roy Miki and Clint Burnham, a variety of Aboriginal issues explored through works by Jordan Abel, Marie AnnHarte Baker, Shane Rhodes and Liz Howard, or even the explorations into Vancouver’s missing and murdered women by writers such as Sachiko Murakami, Shannon Stewart and Anne Stone (I know there are far more examples for all than what I have mentioned). Poetry-as-activism has a rich history, and it is good to see contemporary writers pushing to explore further what might be possible, especially in the place where poetry and activism might intersect. As he writes to open the poem “Apology”:

 

Oh capital let’s kiss and make up

And I’ll take back all those terrible things I said about you

To my friends in poems.

Or elsewhere, as he ends the poem “Fab, Beta, Equity Vol”:

The world which extruded six story apartment blocks

and warehouses of brick and filthy glass which made

making and finally faded when we used the word

real behind the back of consciousness we meant that

we meant industry and the industrial age you want

a total philosophy well there is my metaphysics

Red Epic covers issues surrounding the global economic crises, political upheavals both current and historical, the Occupy movement and a series of barricades, by turns infused with both wreckage and hope as he spins a “Top 40 soundtrack full of Robyn and MIA.” The author of two previous poetry collections—The Totality for Kids (University of California Press, 2006), and Madonna anno domini (Louisiana State University Press, 1997), which was chosen by Jorie Graham to receive the 1996 Walt Whitman Award—there is a rush and a push to Clover’s lines, from breathless prose to poems constructed from a series of staggered phrases to the compact lyric. His cultural and critical theory background allows his poetry to articulate a series of critiques against capitalism, equity and equality, pop culture and labour, utilizing all as material in which he is able to craft poems constructed to question, argue and pry open conversation. As he writes in the opening poem, “My Life in the New Millennium,” “Once fire is the form of the spectacle the problem / becomes how to set fire to fire.”

(We lived in a cloud of recklessness)

We lived in a cloud of recklessness south of Market in a house with an accent when he said Taylorism it sounded like terrorism we lived in a cloud of restlessness and felt ourselves to be adrift east of China west of France south of Market north of Chance we lived in a fog of remorselessness in a long wave of a K-wave we sang I’m going back to Cali to Cali to Calligrammes we saw the world through world-colored glasses it was a situation known as snowglobalization down there south of the Market in a cloud of recklessness on a sea of credit and correlation in the winter of the long wave in the deep sea swell of the Market and the candidates threw roses and we ate the roses in the jaws of the present as we once ate Robespierre’s raspberries

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Alexandria Peary

Alexandria Peary maintains a dual career in Creative Writing and Composition-Rhetoric. Her third book of poems, Control Bird Alt Delete, won the 2013 Iowa Poetry Prize and was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2014. Her other books include Lid to the Shadow (2010 Slope Editions), Fall Foliage Called Bathers & Dancers (2008 Backwaters) and Creative Writing Pedagogies for the Twenty-First Century (forthcoming, co-edited with Tom C. Hunley). Her work has received the Joseph Langland Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Slope Editions Book Prize, the Mudfish Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2012 Theresa J. Enos Rhetoric Award. Her scholarship has appeared in College Composition and Communication, Rhetoric Review, Pedagogy, WAC Journal, Journal of Aesthetic Education, and New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing. Her poems and nonfiction have recently appeared in New England Review, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, New American Writing, Volt, Verse Daily, Map Literary, Guernica, Hippocampus, and The Chariton Review. She is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Salem State University and maintains a mindful writing blog at alexandriapeary.blogspot.com.

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?

Fall Foliage Called Bathers & Dancers was published by Backwaters Press in 2008. The publication seemed to correspond with other life changes (my first child, my decision to enroll in a doctoral program). Life was forcing me along to write. It’s something I describe at a guest post, “Water Breaks, Writer’s Block,” at Mother Writer Mentor: http://www.motherwritermentor.com/2012/05/07/water-breaks-writers-block/. The first book allowed me to enclose in the amber of publication writing I might normally have hesitated over. So the book made poetry low-stakes and informal in my own perception (all that really ever counts for a writer). I’m currently writing my fourth book of poetry, and it feels like a joy because I’m at last able to take on certain themes that I’d looked longingly at since the late 1990s.

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

Purely by accident. As a pre-teen, I was intent upon going to medical school. One day after school while dissecting a suicide goldfish using an ancient microscope a neighborhood physician had given me, I looked out at the April rain and the sheen of green on the leach field. I put down my tweezers and wrote my first poem.

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 don’t usually “do” drafts. I also don’t predetermine the length of any writing project or separate actions into “starting,” “continuing,” or “finishing.” My writing comes out of a mindful process; it engages the language that occupies the present moment.

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 begins for me with a fragment from my internal voice. This fragment is mindfully perceived and written by hand in an ordinary $1 composition notebook.

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

It’s interesting to have one’s audience a few feet away (as opposed to the separation of space and time that occurs when doing the actual work of writing). The best readings and audiences make me feel like I can sing duende.

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 am interested in the presence of language—so meta language or references to writing frequently occur in my poems.

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?

Don’t we all play a role in a larger culture just by purchasing, expressing, and breathing? I’m not sure writers are all that different except that they have the potential to give other people inner experiences, ones maybe not easily found in the social world.

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

It depends. I’ve been blessed with working with several extremely professional and insightful editors. Actually, I plan on posting shortly at my blog (alexandriapeary.blogspot.com) about the experience. Last summer in the Roman Colosseum, I learned the etymology of the word “editor,” and it’s one that will put a wry smile on any writer’s face. See my blog in a few weeks.

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

I was working on my dissertation and had told my adviser that I was planning on quitting the program. This admission was not said lightly since I (and my family) had sacrificed tremendously for five years for me to obtain a doctorate. But I was finding it impossible to proceed with the writing of the dissertation—not because I wasn’t excited about the subject but because of what felt like the manhandling of my potential ideas by one of the faculty readers. This person inserted the most unkind, sarcastic comments in his/her pink “Comment” balloons—the kind of relentless critique I myself would never ever perform on a student at an early stage in their composition. I still recall one comment: “This is one birthday party to which I don’t want to be invited!” I told my dissertation adviser I was thinking of dropping out of the program but would finish the dissertation regardless as a book outside of academia. He understood that what was under attack in my perception was my integrity as a writer. He told me, “From now on, don’t write a single word you don’t believe in.” I copied his emailed advice on a Post-It and proceeded to write the dissertation at a running pace.

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

That ability to move between genres is essential to the mindful writing I practice. Genres are ultimately preconceptions; they shortchange the offerings of the present moment. I do not limit myself by genre during any given writing session and now write poetry, creative nonfiction, and scholarship.

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?

An early rise (between 4 AM and 5 AM). A cup of espresso. A mindful observation of my breathing and physical-psychological state. A jump-start poem by another writer (currently John Ashbery, Caroline Knox, or Wallace Stevens). The opening of my notebook and retrieving of my fountain pen. Sitting in the reflective pool of writing until around 6:30 AM when one of my two daughters invades my study.

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

I permit myself fallow periods and turn to another genre or project.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The scent of lost time that is emitted from the question, “What fragrance reminds you of home?”

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?

Most definitely visual arts. In addition to consulting poetry before I write each day, I look at paintings by 20^th century artists—Roy Lichtenstein and Fernando Botero right now. Or a book on the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice.

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

Caroline Knox, Wallace Stevens, John Ashbery, Italio Calvino, Francis Ponge, Jean Follain, W.S. Merwin, Paul Celan, Pablo Neruda, the Buddha, Emily Dickinson, oh most definitely, Emily Dickinson.

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

I have a current prose project that means a great deal to me. It’s based on years of observing people struggle and succeed with writing. It’s about mindful writing and the sources of writing anxiety or blocks. I would like it very much if my theory of mindful writing could be of use to others, and this might entail a couple of sidekick projects branching off this main theoretical one.

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?

The other occupation is one I made up: a writing psychiatrist. I adore classroom teaching and would not want to give it up, but I have a dream of starting a private practice where I could meet one-on-one with individuals from all walks of life who struggle to write. I’d like to start a whole field—writing psychologists. My approach as a writing psychologist would mix mindfulness and various theories from the field of Composition-Rhetoric.

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

As a child, writing allowed me to have an inner life. That inner life afforded me chances for insight and awareness that seemed greater than what could be found from other types of activities or professions. So now I use what I learn from my writing practice in other activities during the day—teaching, parenting, being a colleague, being a friend.

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

Italio Calvino’s Cosmicomics

Film: The Great Beauty

20 - What are you currently working on?

I like to balance multiple projects at multiple different stages; it’s part of mindful writing. I do a sort of call & response, asking my internal voice each writing session, “what am I honestly interested in working on right now?”  When I have a variety of interesting projects, that variety corresponds with the fluctuation and quantity that can be found in the internal voice. I just wrapped up an academic article and sent it out, and my co-editor Tom Hunley are on the cosmetic proofreading last stages of our forthcoming Creative Writing Pedagogies for the Twenty-First Century (Southern Illinois University Press in June 2015). So I’m working on a poetry book, various individual pieces of creative nonfiction, and a longer creative-scholarly project on mindful writing.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

"The Alta Vista Poem," Queen Mob's Teahouse

I've a new poem, "The Alta Vista Poem," now online at Queen Mob's Teahouse.

A short interview with Christine Leclerc, Jacket2

My 27th 'commentary,' "A short interview with Christine Leclerc," is now online at Jacket2.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Yvonne Blomer

Yvonne Blomer’s most recent collection of poems is As if a Raven (Palimpsest Press, 2014). Her first book, a broken mirror, fallen leaf was short listed for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Since 2009, Yvonne has been the Artistic Director of Planet Earth Poetry, a weekly reading series in Victoria, BC. In 2014 she became Victoria’s fourth Poet Laureate. www.yvonneblomer.com.

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 came out in 2006, titled a broken mirror, fallen leaf. I got the first copies the day before my son was born, so my life changed with that book but in ways beyond the book.

a broken mirror, fallen leaf was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert and I was utterly surprised by that, so in that way I think I gained something, perhaps encouragement or courage, because of that unexpected recognition.

Anyway, the book was my first, and one needs a first in order to get to the second and third which were piling up behind me.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Through an interest in the play of language over narrative or story. Narrative and story can also be in poetry, but language and line, metaphor, image and play are what drew and still draw me to poetry.

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 and most recent books are contained either by place or theme, so they each provided a space within which I was writing. With my first book, I began writing as I was experiencing life in Japan through journaling. As if a Raven, my most recent book, started as my dissertation thesis, so I had to have a project, and I wanted a series of poems that were linked, but I didn’t know how they would be linked when I started.

As far as drafts of poems, anything is possible and they begin in a myriad of ways.  Sometimes a poem in a first draft with few edits, sometimes notes, or the first few lines are on paper and I carry them around and build, sometimes the first few lines and I stall and return.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
My second book was made of poems that built over time and then I looked at them together and drew on common themes. As if a Raven was built over time as a book and I’m beginning a new project which is the same…it is a question or a series of questions so the writing that comes out will likely be linked. That said, there are always those free poems that just appear and they build into their own something.

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 public readings and enjoy attending readings and lectures by writers. Readings provide food for thought, or fertilizer for future poems.  Touring a book of poems and working on new writing at the same time is tricky to juggle. Even a five minute appearance at a festival takes a lot of energy to prepare for. I take it seriously, it is a performance, and part of the job so it takes focus, time and energy.

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, I do. I’m not sure what the current questions are but as a newly appointed Poet Laureate I’m concerned with how politics and poetry can merge and work for real change. Naively I want to use poetry to protect the Pacific Ocean. I think poetry is not simply image but image married to idea. The poet is concerned with/obsessed with/ has a question about something that leads to the images. Those images lead back to the concern or question and hopefully to some thought, an opening of thought and understanding in the writer and reader.

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?
This question carries on from the previous a little. I think a writer should draw attention to – a thought, idea, concern. A writer can open a door for readers. They also entertain, bring beauty, and bring attention to the moments of life.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Both. That engagement and back-and-forth on the poems or the order of the poems is vital to the end product and is part of the process. Engaging with an editor is another step in the process of making it as close to finished. It is often a deeper engagement because it is the last step in the process so there is more or a different kind of pressure on the writer, me, and the poems, to be their best.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Mark what you love in a poem with a highlighter and see what you have. I tend to mark what I don’t like. Focusing on what is working allows you to highlight the positive parts of the poem, even if it is just one line, and build from there. Also at Whistler Writers Festival last fall, Sue Goyette mentioned that she was allowing herself to take a break. It was superb to hear that. I was touring a lot and trying to write and feeling pretty worn out.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to creative non-fiction to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
I think it is not that easy. I feel like I bring poetry with me into nonfiction, which is fine, except sometimes I want to write a “true” essay, or in my mind I think I do, and then I begin writing and it leans toward the lyric.  For many many years I’ve been working on a travel memoir, but not consistently until the last year and a half. I was letting myself get pulled to poetry projects and in order to finish this memoir, I needed to allow myself to refuse poetry for a while. Now as I’m getting closer to being finished, and beginning to write more poetry, I’m finding my lines are long and narrative so am trying to pull myself back toward the poetry. One way of helping to do this was I took a one day workshop on form poetry with Kate Braid offered through Wordstorm in Nanaimo. Just spending a day working on forms helped remind me of what I know, and push that different way of organizing my thoughts  and words back to the foreground. 

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?
Well I have an 8 year old son. Once he’s at school, on an ideal day, I take a brisk walk around Cedar Hill Golf Course then head home to gather papers from the cluttered kitchen table and go out the back door to my studio. I stay there as long as I can, usually until 2 when I come back in to get ready to pick my son up. At some point between 10-2 I nip in for tea and a bowl of random snacks to crunch on. Crunchy food is good for writing (so says fiction writer Julie Paul).

On a more typical day, with Planet Earth Poetry and Poet Laureate duties there is a fair amount of emailing between gathering papers and laptop and getting out to the studio (where the wifi is weak).

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
A walk helps. Jumping around on-line further stalls me and shuts down the thinking self. Reading poems by Steven Price, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Meira Cook, Cornelia Hoogland, Iliya Kaminsky etc…helps too. Picking up a magazine like The Malahat, Arc, TNQ is always great to inspire.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Rain, earth, light fragrance of cherry blossoms/magnolia (spring in Victoria) The damp air.

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?
Everything influences my work. A question.  Students’ work. Prompts I give to students and their responses sometimes open a response in me. Books I’m reading. A passage or an entire book, for its tone or how the author approaches the subject. I feel like I’m a composting worm...I take anything and everything. Who knows where it might reappear years or days or minutes from now. I think that is part of the process. Art, science, a word, a walk, an animal (my dog), a scent.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I love reading fiction, mysteries, really good fiction, anything (even vampire stories) before bed. During the day I read nonfiction and poetry. I sometimes read poetry before bed, but it often over-stimulates me. A powerful nonfiction novel can be just as good as a book of fiction, but I love sinking into a novel. Right now I’m reading Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay, which is set in the Northwest Territories. I started it in the Yukon (when I was up there reading), so I have partly stayed north due to reading it. It is a wonderful story with sublime descriptions and a creepy/unsettled feeling throughout.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Work in translation. French and Japanese. Have my poems translated. Finish my travel memoir.

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?
Spy. Well, I doubt I would have been a great spy. Maybe a bicycle tour operator. When I first moved home from Japan I was beginning to start a cycling company called Pacific Pedals. My sister reminded me and encouraged me to keep at the writing, so I did. 

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
That is a tough one to answer. I’ve always loved writing, communicating with myself in the written word. I think that love lead to a desire to communicate in a larger way. I started with journalism courses at College and then took poetry with Patrick Lane at the University of Victoria a fair while ago. He scared me. Fear and passion are cousins to nerves and excitement.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Boundless by Kathleen Winter, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and Wild by Cheryl Strayed.

I loved the film version of Wild, as well as The Lunch Box. I also loved Paddington my son’s new favourite.

20 - What are you currently working on?
Did I mention a memoir?

I am beginning a new project and ending (hopefully) an old one. I have been (re)reading Virginia Woolf and Gwendolyn MacEwen and reading about Janis Joplin. I watched part of the Downton Abbey series and began to wonder how we went from Pre-WWI and how women’s lives looked to creating Virginia Woolf and how we got to Joplin in the 1960s and where MacEwen and her genius came from and how it fits in. So I’m exploring female artists and how one led to the next and whether society can or does support genius in women. I’m doing this in poetry or lyric prose. I kind of hate to say I’m doing it as I’m so so so at the beginning. Truthfully, I’m reading a lot.

And I’m finishing a memoir set in Southeast Asia where my husband and I cycled for three months from Vietnam through Laos, Thailand and on to Malaysia.

And I’m a new Poet Laureate with Poetry Month fast approaching so feel more like an arts organizer (plus PEP) than a writer many days. I think that balance between writing time and planning events will get easier (I hope).

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Jordan Abel, Un/inhabited

uninhabited

Changing horses frequently, one day out I had left Red River in my rear, but before me lay an          country, unless I veered from my course and went through the Chickasaw Nation. Out toward Bear Canyon, where the land to the north rose brokenly to the mountains, Luck found the bleak stretches of which he had dreamed that night on the observation platform of a train speeding through the night in North Dakota,—a great white wilderness unsheltered by friendly forests,          save by wild things that moved stealthily across the windswept ridges. This done, they would lead the ship to an           part of the shore, beach her, and scatter over the mainland, each with his share of the booty. How lonely I felt, in that vast          bush! Except for a very few places on the Ouleout, and the Iroquois towns, the region was          . This was no country for people to livein, and so far as she could see it was indeed          . But for the lazy columns of blue smoke curling up from the pinyons the place would have seemed          . It appeared to be a dry,           forest. In the vivid sunlight and perfect silence, it had a new,          look, s if the carpenters and painters had just left it. it was in vain that those on board made remonstrances and entreaties, and represented the horrors of abandoning men upon a sterile and          island; the sturdy captain was inflexible. The herbage is parched and withered; the brooks and streams are dried up; the buffalo, the elk and the deer have wandered to distant parts, keeping within the verge of expiring verdure, and leaving behind them a vast          solitude, seemed by ravines, the beds of former torrents, but now serving only to tantalize and increase the thirst of the traveller. It kept on its course through a vast wilderness of silent and apparently          mountains, without a savage wigwam upon its banks, or bark upon its waters. They were at a loss what route to take, and how far they were from the ultimate place of their destination, nor could they meet in these          wilds with any human being to give them information. They forded Butte Creek, and, crossing the well-travelled trail which follows down to Drybone, turned their faces toward the          country that began immediately, as the ocean begins off a sandy shore.

Jordan Abel’s Un/inhabited (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks/Project Space Press, 2014) continues the reclamation project begun through his first book, The Place of Scraps (Talonbooks, 2013). Whereas The Place of Scraps was constructed as a collection of fragments, erasures, scraps, texts, visuals and concrete poems constructed out of Canadian ethnographer and folklorist Marius Barbeau’s (1883-1969) canonical text, Totem Poles, Un/inhabited is constructed out of the texts of mass market works of “frontier” fiction. As Kathleen Ritter writes in her essay “Ctrl-F: Reterritorializing the Canon,” included at the back of the book: “A browse through the collection shows that most of these novels were written around the turn of the last century and, with titles like The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories, Gunman’s Reckoning, The Last of the Plainsmen, Way of the Lawless and The Untamed, they are stereotypical of the romanticism of the frontier, the height of North American colonialism and a time when the indigenous population was being dispossessed of their lands and driven down to their lowest numbers in history as a direct result of European conflict, warfare and settlement.”  The back cover describes the project:

Abel constructed the book’s source text by compiling ninety-one complete western novels found on the website Project Gutenberg, an online archive of public domain works. Using his word processor’s Ctrl-F function, he searched the document in its totality for words that relate to the political and social aspects of land, territory and ownership. Each search query represents a study in context (How was this word deployed? What surrounded it? What is left over once that word is removed?) that accumulates toward a representation of the public domain as a discoverable and inhabitable body of land.

There is something quite remarkable in the way that Abel, a Nisga’a writer from Vancouver, utilizes work that now exists in the public domain to reclaim and critique a representative and cultural space, using “conceptual writing [that] engages with the representation of Indigenous peoples in Anthropology through the technique of erasure.”  Un/inhabited opens with erasure of specific words (uninhabited, settler, extracted, territory, indianized, pioneer, treaty, frontier, inhabited) before shifting to an erasure that shows the text almost as a cartographic map, before stripping the erasure down entirely, comparable to a depleting printer ink or photocopy toner cartridge. The only way these texts hold together is in the ways in which Abel allows them to degrade, before collapsing completely in on themselves. In an interview forthcoming at Touch the Donkey, he talks a bit about the compositional process of Un/inhabited:

After I finished writing Un/inhabited, there was a lot of material that essentially fell to the cutting room floor. I had been writing excessively, and knew that there would have to be substantial cuts for the project to be thematically coherent. As a result, there were many threads that had to be removed entirely. Some of those threads (minority, oil, afeared, etc.) were closely related to main conceptual project, but, for one reason or another, didn’t fit perfectly. Those threads were probably the most difficult to cut. Other threads (maps, speakers, urgency, etc.) were interesting explorations and worked individually, but were easy to separate from the main project. However, as the project continued, there were several threads that emerged that had coherent and discrete themes that weren’t dependent on the pieces in Un/inhabited. One of those threads explored the deployment of literary terms, and, surprisingly, seemed to be supported by the source text. That thread included many pieces: allegory, allusion, connotation, denouement, dialogue, flash back, hyperbole, identity, metaphor, motif, narrative, personification, simile, symbol, and theme.

To be honest, after I cut those pieces, I wasn’t really sure what to do with them. The pieces in Un/inhabited (settler, territory, frontier, etc.) worked partially because they explored themes of indigeneity, land use and ownership. Those pieces were actively working towards the destabilization of the colonial architecture of the western genre. But what were these other pieces doing? What did an exploration of the context surrounding the deployment of the word “allusion” accomplish?

I think, if I were to guess at an answer to my own question, that the thread of literary terms engages with an aspect of the western genre that is, at the very least, unusual. You don’t often think about the western genre being rich with metaphors or allusions or symbols, and, perhaps, it isn’t. But those words are there. Those words are doing something that we don’t normally associate with the traditional foundations of literary studies. There is an exploration here that, I think, subverts the tendencies of literary analysis by compressing and recontextualizing common analytic diction.

Right now, these pieces are not part of a separate project. But they easily could be. I think there’s more there to dig through. Other approaches that could be taken.