12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jacqueline Valencia

Jacqueline Valencia is a Toronto-based poet and critic. Jacqueline is a senior literary editor of The Rusty Toque and a CWILA board member. Her debut collection There's No Escape Out Of Time will be out with Insomniac Press Spring 2016.

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 it was 2008 when I decided to gather up some of the poems I'd written for the past few years and self-publish a chapbook with them. I called it Tristise. I'd say it changed my life because before then I'd sporadically submitted poems, but the rejection got to me and then I suffered many years of writer's block. The time came where I felt like I needed to shake myself into action.

I'd say it changed my life because I haven't stopped writing and/or submitting every day since then. It's been a long road to getting my work out there in publications, but it's been worth it. My new book, There's No Escape Out Of Time (Insomniac Press, 2016) will be my first full poetry collection. It's comparable to Tristise because it is back towards feeling rather than technique, but it feels more raw because I'm writing about very confessional stuff in it.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Most of the women in my mother's family write or have written poetry. My grandmother Ruby is constantly reciting new things whenever I visit her. As in, "Grandma! We're just watching television. Can we just watch the show without you praising how miraculous the sky look in it right now? Geez."

I'm kidding. I don't stop her because she is my grandmother after all.

My mother's greatest gift to me has been a library card. My first trip was to the library-mobile and I took out a Raggedy Ann and Andy book and a  book interpretation of Disney's Alice In Wonderland. My mom's English was still a bit rusty so she'd read a bit of it and expand upon it by retelling parts of the movie. Eventually she had me read the whole to her and I remember one night writing some of my thoughts down on how I wanted to be Alice. They were in point form, but from that I created my first poem without knowing it. School rhymes and songs always stuck with me and I'd write them down and make my own versions.

Fiction feels like an extension of that though. I'm still trying to parse what the difference is between poetry and fiction in my writing.

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 procrastinate a lot. I drink too much coffee. Also, I probably drink too much, but I don't think it helps. Booze, while not a muter of truths, it isn't a motivator.

I actually have several things due right now. They'll get done, I swear.

The only time I really put my foot down is when I have deadline or when inspiration takes me over. I find my greatest strengths for pushing myself are when I'm working through a crisis or need to react out loud in some way. I'm a horrible editor of my own work. I have no patience with myself.

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?
Usually an event or something I've seen provokes a poem in me. It will also ferment for a while in my mind before I set it down to paper and when I do, it's in my moleskine without any context whatsoever.

I work from smaller ideas and build a book, poem, or essay from there. I once wrote a poem about erotic clowning just because I wrote "There was a clown and a lobster. Erotic?" Don't ask. I don't even know. Pass the coffee.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I used to hate readings, but for some reason or another my readings have taken on a stand up comedian format. Sometimes I introduce props. Andy Kaufman is huge influence on me when it comes to public speaking in any way. His ability to take an audience somewhere completely unexpected is something I hope to cultivate and acquire. I guess, it has to do with the defense mechanism whereupon I'd rather self-deprecate than elucidate anything to do with the poem itself.

I currently looking for a good mime routine to bring to my repertoire.

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 struggle with the idea that language is unique to everyone, that colours look different to everyone, therefore there aren't enough words out there to describe the universal experience of every day. That and the fact that I'm using and thinking in a language by my ancestor's colonizers is a huge concern for me. I rarely think in Spanish and even Spanish is a colonizing language to the people my parents' came from.

Right now I'm trying to learn some of the methods the people in my parents' family have used language and what was there evolution with the Spanish language and how my brain processes Spanish versus English.

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 role of the writer is to report. No matter what a writer writes about, they are journalist of sorts first and foremost. You can be a reporter of your own ideas and your own expressions, but even our minds are foreign to us. Using language is like have a universal translator like in Star Trek. We don't know exactly how it works, but we use oral and written language everyday as if it was a part of us since birth. Was it? Where did the rest of our expressions go when we started writing? What are our hands doing? What are our faces doing?

Oral and written language are translators of the inner workings of brain. The current job of the writer is to strip it to the basics and figure out how the hell we can get to the root of those inner workings.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I love every editor I've ever worked with. I wish book publishers or journal publishers would put the name of the editor on the front of the book or on the article beside the author's. They're part of a collective voice in how we transmit our voices to the world.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Liz Worth once said to me, "Write your truth. Write it now and don't edit it until it's done." I know it sounds cliché, but it works. Liz is a good friends and one of the most important writers in Toronto, if not the world, that I read and listen to.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
I love writing about film and books. I love finding connections because if you meditate on two things long enough, you'll find everything connects somehow. Everything is always influencing everything else, especially in art. Poetry is no different than critical prose because it's a commentary on expression or on situations. You can separate a work from an analysis of it, but you can not keep poetry from being ingested and analyzed. That's what it's there for.

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 used to have no writing routine, but lately I've setting aside time in the day. I've felt it necessary for novel writing.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Conceptual writing or rewriting texts. They could be anything, like a receipt, a piece of mail, a book (hi James Joyce), or a poem. From there I'll find myself cutting it up or using a word or phrase and I get unblocked that way. Experimental writing moves me to create something if my mind is blank.

Of course, I find conceptual writing to be like any other type of writing, and in the right and now, it is very necessary for experimentation to be a part of a poet's work. Even with the continual controversies in poetry with lyric versus conceptual, it's all experimental. It's how you use it to decolonize or reveal truths that is important.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Blue Power laundry bar soap. My mom used to scrub stuff before putting it in the laundry and the scent is huge in the outdoor laundry patios in Colombia. I keep a bar in the bathroom for stains and such.

And petrichor. I learned that word the other day. Petrichor is the smell of earth after rain. It reminds me of love for some reason and there's not greater home than love.

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?
Music influences my writing a lot. My dad used to be a dj and after that I became a dj and I play music constantly at home. Nature inspires me as well during my runs or cycling. Riding or running through Leslie Spit at 6am to watch the sunrise over the lake is probably one of the greatest things someone in Toronto can do to get inspired.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
James Joyce is huge, but I talk and write about him all the time. As well as, Anne Sexton and Mary Shelley. Science fiction fantasy has been an escape for me in the past, but it's only recently I've tried my hand at writing it. Robert E. Howard's Conan The Barbarian series and Larry Niven's Ringworld series have both been high up there for me in terms of importance. Oh and comic books. Too many to list.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Complete the novel I'm currently writing and getting it published. Climb Mount Everest, which I would never attempt to do because I have kids and can't die. I love watching documentaries or films on Everest climbers. I might go to the base camp one day though. I'd also like to do indoor skydiving because I've always wanted to fly to Superman or surf like the Silver Surfer.

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?
a) A spy.

b) An international spy.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Reading. I've been writing in my journal since I was a kid because of reading and don't know how to think in anything, but words.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I've felt speechless about Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts for a while now. When I finished reading it I was just so impressed I couldn't find the words to say how good it was. There's reading-writing modes: either you read something so good you want to write an essay on it, or you read something so good, and wonder if there's someone else who has read it so you could just rejoice in the afterglow of it.

As for film, there are lot of films that I've thought were pretty good this year, but nothing that has blown me away. I think the latest has been Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson's Anomalisa. It's a short animated film that hit me right in the gut. I mean, Kaufman has a way of articulating the embarrassing parts of our psyche, especially as a depressive. Some of us live entire worlds inside our brains and Kaufman captures that sense of disconnect and isolation like very few directors out there. The fact that the film animated gets forgotten and even in the middle of the most despairing moments in the film, there is a tiny sense of hope to grab onto.

I love when artists hold no bars back when it comes to the black dog. Kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight, as the Bruce Cockburn song goes.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I'm putting together the Toronto Poetry Talks: Racism and Sexism in the Craft (http://torontopoetrytalks.wordpress.com) and I'm writing my first novel set in Toronto. It's a fantasy occult feminist future of sorts.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

VERSe Ottawa 2016 Hall of Honour : rob mclennan

Thrilled to be inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour a week-plus back, along with Gatineau poet Andrée Lacelle [see the write-up on the VERSeFest website here; see the official press release here]. It has been quite humbling and gratifying to receive such an outpouring of support and congratulations, such as this incredibly kind and generous post by Cameron Anstee.

The experience has me thinking about a number of things, including some similar awards bestowed upon both of my parents: the period my mother was a Cub Leader in Ottawa (at St. Timothy's Church on Alta Vista Drive, 88th Cub Pack, across the street from where we live; she was later a Cub Leader in Maxville, during my own time in Boy Scouts), and my father's plaque from his time as a 4-H Club leader.

What do these connections mean? Perhaps I attempt to link my own activities to those of theirs, working over an extended period to attempt to assist, direct and offer whatever help one can. One does not do it for the acknowledgement, to be sure. I know I learned my sense of community directly from my father's activity as a dairy farmer: it is impossible to work alone, without help. He helped neighbours with plowing laneways, welding and fixing machinery, among other things. There was the year of the ice storm, when he daily went to multiple neighbours' homes with his generator to heat up their house for an hour or two, before moving to the next; before arriving home in time to get chores done, and my mother's kidney dialysis machine.

I have my mother's small token upon my writing desk, and have for a number of years now. My father's plaque lives on the wall of his home office. I remember some of those final meetings at the farmhouse, as my mother prepared snacks and my pre-school self sat on the floor in the midst of a half dozen or so teenagers in chairs.

Suzanne Buffam, A Pillow Book

*

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote lists. Abraham Lincoln took midnight walks. Tallulah Bankhead paid a series of young caddies to hold her hand in the dark, as did Marcel Proust. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb so he could read after dark. I put a piece of paper under my pillow at night, and when I could not sleep, I wrote in the dark, wrote Henry David Thoreau, who once spent a fortnight in a roofless cabin with his head on a pillow of bricks.

                                    *

There are two kinds of insomniacs: those who fall asleep easily, only to wake up hours later to toss on their pillows until dawn; and those who toss on their pillows from the start, only to drift off just long enough to be roused at dawn by the crows. A little game I like to play, when I crawl into bed at the end of a long day of anything, these days, is to guess which kind, tonight, I will be.

Canadian poet and Chicago resident Suzanne Buffam’s third trade poetry collection, A Pillow Book (Toronto ON: Anansi, 2016), is a book of lists and a study of sleep, or, a lack thereof, akin to Anne Carson’s “Every Exit Is an Entrance (A Praise of Sleep)” that appeared in an issue of Prairie Fire (Vol. 25, No. 3, Autumn 2004), before being included in Carson’s Decreation (New York NY: Knopf, 2005), or even angela rawlings’ collage-study Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2006). As Carson wrote: “I want to make a praise of sleep. Not as a practitioner–I admit I have never been what is called ‘a good sleeper’ and perhaps we can return later to that curious concept–but as a reader.” Buffam’s, also, is very much a praise similar to Carson’s—as reader, admirer and not necessarily practitioner—and written as much as a series of observations amid a history of sleep and, specifically, pillows, which suggest structural echoes to Ottawa poet Brecken Hancock’s prose poem-history of bathtubs and bathing, The Art of Plumbing (above/ground press, 2013), a work later included in her remarkable Broom Broom (Ottawa ON: Coach House Books, 2014) [see my review of such here]. As Buffam writes: “I am awake, begins a seventeeth-century British meditation intended for the dead of night, but ‘tis not time to rise, neither have I yet slept enough. I am awake, yet not in paine, anguish or feare, as thousands are.”

Following her two earlier poetry collections—Past Imperfect (Toronto ON: Anansi, 2005) and The Irrationalist (Anansi, 2010)—both of which were structured more traditionally as collections of shorter lyrics, A Pillow Book is striking for its structure as a single, extended series of observations and explorations, most of which exist as titleless and seemingly standalone prose pieces of varying lengths. One section, for example, includes but a single sentence: “Men and women sleep on the same pillow, says a Mongolian proverb, but they have different dreams.” Some elements of her two prior collections hinted at such kinds of longer, extended prose structures, but hadn’t the ambition of A Pillow Book. The collection (and title) plays off and explores Sei Shōnagon’s The Pillow Book, an infamous work of prose and poetry fragments (made further known due to Peter Greenaway’s 1996 film) often referred to as the first Japanese novel, composed as a “book of observations and musings recorded by Sei Shōnagon during her time as court lady to Empress Consort Teishi during the 990s and early 1000s in Heian Japan. The book was completed in the year 1002.” (Wikipedia). Buffam’s collection riffs off both content and form of Sei Shōnagon’s work through an accumulation of short sections, most of which exist as prose (or prose poems), some of which are written as short sketches and/or lists. As she writes: “Sei was her father’s name, Shōnagon her father’s rank. For a brief span of time at the turn of the tenth century, we know that she spent her nights behind a thin paper screen, recording her fugitive aperçus by candlelight with an ink stick on rice paper behind the bolted Heian gates. We know that she slept, when she managed to do so, on a small, hollow pillow mad of polished bamboo.”

Many lovers came to see Shōnagon, but few seemed to please her. Those who did, tact prevented her from praising. Anyone turning to her Pillow Book in search of courtly dirty-talk or cozy boudoir scenes by candlelight will turn away unsatisfied. The raciest scene in my abridged bedside edition consists of a woman taking a nap alone under bedclothes that smell faintly of sweat. It is, by and large, a dry read. So many Senior Courtiers of the Sixth Rank, Chamberlains of the Right and of the Left, Middle Counselors, Minor Chancellors, and Chancellors’ Messagers attend so many Festivals of the Fourth Day of the Fourth Month, of the Eighth Day of the Eighth Month, of the Blue Horses, of the Kamo, and of the Cherry Trees, wearing so many unlined robes of green, yellow, plum, scarlet, crimson, violet, rose, and cherry silk, in palm-leaf and wickerwork carriages, bearing herbal balls, hare-sticks, zithers, and thirteen-pipe flutes, it is hard to endure more than a page or two at a stretch. Therein lies much of  its appeal for me. It affords sufficient distraction on one’s pillow at night to transport one to a late Kurosawa dream sequence, but also enough repetitive and inconsequential minutiae to conjure, on a good night, the infinitely gentle god of sleep.

Sprinkled with personal moments of partner and daughter amid proverbs, historical tidbits on the pillow and sleep, as well as a book that works its way through Shōnagon’s thousand year old work, Buffam composes the fragments that make up A Pillow Book through and against an inability to sleep, sketching out short observations, lists and other fragments against what she aims toward but somehow misses—sleep itself:

Not a memoir. Not an epic. Not a scholarly essay. Not a shopping list. Not a diary. Not an etiquette manual. Not a gossip column. Not a prayer. Not a secret letter sent through the silent palace hallways before dawn. Lacking as it does a table of contents, an index, plot, or any discernible chronology or structure, with almost a thousand pages of surviving material, translated, retranslated, and republished in ever-shifting editions, what are the chances, I sometimes wonder, that any two people ever read the same Pillow Book?

And, as Buffam suggests, hers is an entirely different creature than, say, Canadian-turned-American poet Alan Davies’ Sei Shōnagon (Ottawa ON: hole books, 1995), a chapbook composed as a sequence of one hundred and eighty-three tercets which barely reference the title (and alluded source material), writing:

Longing for sweet daybreak

and saying nothing of it

we hang a brazier on our mouth

[Suzanne Buffam launches A Pillow Book in Ottawa on April 18, 2016 as part of the Ottawa International Writers Festival]

Queen Mob's Teahouse : Jon-Michael Frank interviews Catch Business

As my tenure as interviews editor at Queen Mob's Teahouse continues, the seventh interview is now online: an interview with Catch Business, conducted by Jon-Michael Frank. Other interviews from my tenure include: an interview with poet, curator and art critic Gil McElroy, conducted by Ottawa poet Roland Prevost, an interview with Toronto poet Jacqueline Valencia, conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham, an interview with Drew Shannon and Nathan Page, also conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham, an interview I conducted with Dale Smith, on the Slow Poetry in America Newsletter, an interview with Ann Tweedy conducted by Mary Kasimor, and an interview with Katherine Osborne, conducted by Niina Pollari.

Further interviews I've conducted myself over at Queen Mob's Teahouse include conversations with Allison Green, Andy Weaver, N.W Lea and Rachel Loden.

If you are interested in sending a pitch for an interview my way, check out my "about submissions" write-up at Queen Mob's; you can contact me via rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Nick Papaxanthos

Nick Papaxanthos was born in Vancouver, and grew up in Lefkosia, Cyprus. He completed an undergraduate degree at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, where he also co-edited a comedy newspaper and gigged with a jazz quartet. In 2014, he was awarded the John Lent Poetry/Prose Award. His first collection of poetry, Love MeTender, was recently published with Mansfield Press.

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 more I learn about the history of Canadian small presses, the more lucky I feel about my first chapbook, Teeth, Untucked with Stuart Ross’s Proper Tales Press. Proper Tales was born in ’79, about a decade before me, but it feels like my chapbook can share in those years I missed.

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

I wanted to write poetry after reading Nelson Ball’s At the Edge of the Frog Pond. I hadn’t realized poems could be so small, sometimes just two words, and each word did so much work. I saw it as a challenge and started writing my own poems. If Nelson Ball wrote fiction, then I might have come to fiction first.

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 used to write a poem’s first line pretty quickly, and the second didn’t take long either, but the third was still a couple minutes away, and the fourth would cross the finish line disappointed it wasn’t third, and the fifth would lose all motivation, arriving half an hour later. So I decided to write only first lines, which I stack into poems. Each is awarded a participation medal.

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?

Paul Valéry describes the first line of a poem as a piece of fallen fruit on the ground. The poet finds this fruit and can’t identify it, doesn’t know where it came from. There’s no tree for miles. The poet begins to imagine the tree from which such a fruit would fall, and this is what completes the poem. I like this idea and I like Paul Valéry. And I worry I’ve only written cedars.

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

In high school, I had a bad stutter. Sometimes I still have a stutter. A couple years ago, I made a big stuttery mess during a radio interview. I was reading a poem of mine about the tide going out like a toilet roll and the sun wiping the sparkling blue waves or some shit. Afterwards I felt sorry for myself, thinking the voice in my head and the voice in my mouth were irreconcilable. I don’t feel this way anymore.

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 writing does have theoretical concerns. They include, but are not limited to, questions of post-bebop meteorology, ostensible stencils, iconographite gestures, solemnity in the workplace, post-workout stretch-oriented philosophy, and climate change, how to avoid zipping up the green pa(nt)stures without ramifications on the clothing of future generations.

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 thought I liked writers who constantly redefine their role, whatever that role may be, but then Jaime Forsythe, one of my favourite poets, posted on Facebook this excerpt from The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson:

“The pleasure of abiding. The pleasure of insistence, persistence. The pleasure of obligation, the pleasure of dependency. The pleasures of ordinary devotion. The pleasure of recognizing that one may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margins, return to the same themes in one’s work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again—not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life.”

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

It’s very satisfying being edited by someone who seems to understand your work. Otherwise it’s like getting advice on how to make beef bourguignon while you’re drowning in a vat of chicken stock.

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

I like Kenneth Koch’s advice poems, like “Some General Instructions” (online here) or “The Art of Poetry”.

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?

Every morning I plan a new routine by combining parts of other writers’ routines. For example, tomorrow morning I’ll have tea and then, at about ten o’clock, get under way and work until one (Simone de Beauvoir). I’ll write with a felt-tip pen on yellow or white legal pads (Susan Sontag) then go to UCLA and find a basement typing room where, if you insert ten cents into the typewriter, you can buy thirty minutes of typing time (Ray Bradbury). Finally, I’ll numb my twanging intellect with several belts of Scotch and water (Kurt Vonnegut) and sleep in the same room as the writing I’ve done for the day (Joan Didion).

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

I return to this poem by Ron Padgett (another advice poem) and I follow the advice.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Pencil shavings. So, maybe cedar.

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?

Once I ate an orange and wrote a poem about it, but the poem had nothing to do with the orange. But, you know, Dave McFadden ends one of his poems, “The English Sheep Dog,” with “I stopped writing, knowing / I hadn’t got to what I meant to say.”

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

Outside of my time spent writing, I like talking about writing, and writers who write about writing help me talk about it. Books like Mary Ruefle’s Madness, Rack, and Honey and Dean Young’s The Art of Recklessness.

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

I lent my copy of Mark Laba’s Dummy Spit to someone. It’s been a couple months and they still haven’t given it back. I’d like to get it back.

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?

I play the piano and used to gig with a jazz quartet. If I wasn’t writing, I’d be giving more time to the piano. I listen to bebop, musicians like Barry Harris, Chris Byars, and Vera Marijt—and I’m envious of their relationship with music. But it reminds me why I write, too.

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

Not owning a piano made me write. For a while I played imaginary pianos on various flat surfaces. Then a plank of wood gave me a splinter. The universe had spoken.

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

Sarah Burgoyne sent me a copy of the manuscript she’s working on for Mansfield Press, Saint Twin, and it’s great. I don’t watch a lot of films, but Sarah also sent me a video she’d recorded of a seagull crossing the street. I really like it!

19 - What are you currently working on?

Promoting my new collection of poetry! Buy it here!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Lissa McLaughlin, Quit

it is astonishing each morning that we wake up sane

waiting to go in is like waiting for a job

interview hope you don’t smell

sorely assaulted

            and you with your tiny stink

The powerful and seemingly quickly-sketched poems that make up Madison, Wisconsin poet, fiction writer and clinical art therapist Lissa McLaughlin’s latest poetry collection, Quit (Providence RI: Burning Deck, 2015), emerge from her work as a “grief worker at a hospice.” Her deceptively-small book, which shares elements of the daily journal (whether personal or professional), packs quite a punch, writing on grief, death, loss, possibility and the ordinary matters and frustrations, within all of this, of daily work. So much of the emotion of these poems live on the surface of the skin, packing an enormous amount into small spaces. The poem “the creation of death panels,” for example, opens: “my mother was named after a suicide                        so / why blame her // for hating a name like herself // or the belief circulating / freely in her family that nothing // kills like disgrace [.]”

why didn’t you send for me sooner

shakes her head at

medicine

            misgivings in a cup

lift your head to

            wet your armpit

In McLaughlin’s poems, life and death is daily but never rendered mundane, and her poems turn quickly from rushed observance to meditative elegy to daily report, often in the same breath. Given the nature of the work, even the smallest moment can become urgent, and her poems articulate that urgency, such as the poem “why didn’t you send for me sooner,” or “remember, gasping is not breathing.” There is an intriguing element of the poems in Quit that is shared with “work poetry,” a term coined and championed by Tom Wayman in the 1970s, but the collection is far more reminiscent of Ottawa writer Andrew Steinmetz’s memoir Wardlife: The apprenticeship of a young writer as a hospital clerk (Vehicule Press, 1998), a collection of short, sharp prose vignettes chronicling his time in the Intensive Care Unit and Emergency Department of a Montreal hospital. As McLaughlin is quoted on the press release for Quit:

“Writing Quit took some athleticism,” the author says, “Fleeing the job I loved I needed to move language, and fast. First raw discharge, then a kind of essay (quoting Buddhist texts; clinical reports; histories of Bedlam, and research into the prevalence of personality disorders in business executives), Quit alternately tensed up and softened. Footnotes disappeared. Humor tried to enter. Lines reincarnated. Ultimately, the distinctions between patient and healer, worker and boss folded up under the recognition that the dying remind us of ourselves. If we can just let life digest us, we might finally taste joy.”