Dean Steadman’s work has been published in Canadian journals
and e-zines, as well as in the anthology Pith & Wry: Canadian Poetry, edited by Susan McMaster (Scrivener Press,
2010). He is the author of two chapbooks: Portrait
w/tulips
(Leaf Editions, 2013), and Worm's Saving
Day (AngelHousePress,
2015). He was a finalist in the 2011 Ottawa Book Awards for his poetry
collection, their blue drowning (Frog Hollow Press, 2010). His second poetry collection, Après Satie – For Two and Four Hands,
was published by Brick Books in the spring of 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?
The
publication of my first book, their blue drowning,
gave me confidence in my talents as a poet. Up to that point, I had had some
small success in getting individual poems published in magazines and journals,
but the rejection letters far exceeded the letters of acceptance. A bit demoralizing.
However, the publication of their blue
drowning changed that for me and gave me reason to continue to develop the
voice that was beginning to emerge in my poetry. The book received very little
critical attention, although I am proud to say that it was nominated for the
2011 Ottawa Book Award for English fiction. That was as good as a win for me
and, with that encouragement, I went on to write two chapbooks and the
collection, Après Satie – For Two and
Four Hands. I’ve been told by fellow writers that Après Satie marks a new stage in my development as a poet. I see it
as a departure from the big-picture, mythological worldview of their blue drowning. It’s much more
surreal in tone and heavily flavoured
with a Dada sensibility that tends to give the collection a feeling of the
absurd.
2 - How did you come
to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I’m
an avid reader of novels and short-stories. I probably read more prose fiction
than I do poetry and almost everything I write has a narrative flow to it. But it’s
the concentration and precision of poetry as a literary form that attracts and
challenges me as a writer. Poetry allows me to explore the same themes that I
would as a novelist or short-story writer but, as an art form, it imposes constraints
in terms of time and space. These constraints push me beyond the linear
continuity of most prose fiction into a creative discipline where the devices
and techniques at my disposal work to impede normal perceptions and disrupt
habitual ways of thinking and seeing. The Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky
wrote: “[A]rt exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to
make one feel things, to make the stone stony.
The technique of art is to make objects “unfamiliar,” to make forms difficult,
to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of
perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.” I think that this
is particularly true of poetry, or, at least, the kind of poetry that interests
me. Certainly, prose fiction can achieve these same results, as novelists such
as Elizabeth Smart and Michael Ondaatje have skillfully demonstrated. But even
then we tend to think of such works as “poetic prose” which for me is
recognition of poetry’s inherent ability to make “strange and wonderful,” to
use Aristotle’s description of poetic language.
3 - 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’ve
been interested for some time now in studying the characteristics that distinguish
poetry from prose fiction, and to some extent this has spilled over into my
poetry. I think such an investigation is essential to formulating a personal
poetics. The collection, their blue
drowning, was in some ways an exercise in exploring this topic. There I used a prose “chapeau” with each poem
to make the storyline more accessible to the reader, often pushing the prose as
close to poetry as possible and, likewise, letting the poetry drift away from
metaphor into something closer to the denotative language common to much prose
fiction. Après Satie is also concerned
with poetic language and with what distinguishes it from denotative language. A
few years back I started delving into the different schools of literary theory
and my studies have provided me with a wealth of insight into the functions and
functioning of language. Some of the poems in Après
Satie give poetic expression to the linguistic theories I’ve come across, particularly
those advanced by the literary formalists and the structuralists of the last
century.
4 - Do you find the
process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Working
with talented editors has been my most positive learning experience as an
emerging poet. I came to writing poetry in earnest in my late fifties after
retiring from a lengthy career in areas of international trade policy with the
federal government. I had a lot to learn quickly and benefited greatly from two
sessions of the Banff Wired Writing Program where I had the very good fortune
to work on early versions of their blue
drowning, first with Don Domanski and then with Stan Dragland as my
mentors. I learned more about poetry from those two than I could even begin to
describe and the editorial advice they provided resulted in the manuscript
being accepted for publication by Frog Hollow Press. At Frog Hollow, I worked
with Shane Neilson to fine tune some of the poems in ways that never would have
occurred to me without his assistance. Stan was also very instrumental in
helping me to prepare Après Satie for
submission to publishers and, when it was accepted by Brick Books, I worked
with Sue Chenette, another very gifted editor, not to mention a wonderful poet
in her own right. I owe all of these people a huge debt of thanks for making me
look more talented than I am. And there are others who in workshops and writing
circles have helped as well, including a young man you may know named rob mclennan.
5 - What is the best
piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
During
my first session of the Banff Wired Writing Program, I learned two important
writing mantras: 1) Get out of the way; 2) Show up for work. Inspiration will
provide a starting point but poems are written during the editorial process
and, unless you’re extremely lucky, will require numerous sessions of writing
and rewriting.
6 – 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’ve touched a bit on this already. For
me, the role of the writer, particularly the poet, is to defamiliarize the
familiar. I’m most satisfied with my work when it presents objects and
experiences from an unusual perspective or in such unconventional and
self-conscious language that the reader’s habitual, ordinary, rote perceptions
of those things are disturbed. As linguists and psychoanalysts, such as Roman
Jacobson and Jacques Lacan, conjectured during the last century, language makes
us, or perhaps more accurately, language thinks
us. Reality for humans is “textual,“ Jacques Derrida concluded. But when our
use of language becomes stale and automated, life is reckoned as nothing.
Poetry, however, works to create the vision that results from de-automatized
perception so that, as quoted earlier, “we may recover the sensation of
living.” Boris Eichenbaum, another of the Russian formalists, wrote in one of
his early essays on poetic language: “Art is conceived as a way of breaking
down automatism in perception and the aim of the image is held to be, not
making a meaning more accessible for our comprehension, but bringing about a
special perception of a thing, bringing about the “seeing” not just the “recognizing”
of it.” I can’t say it better than that.
7 - 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’m
very much an intuitive writer and my initial (Banff) approach to a new poem is
to get out of the way and let the poem take its own course. That is to say, I
don’t start out with any specific thematic content or set objective in mind
and, as a result, the initial stages of writing a poem are for me as much a
journey of exploration and discovery as the experience of the finished poem is
for the reader or listener. I find the process of writing poetry to be something
analogous to dream and the interpretation or analysis of dreams. The initial
sitting involves an outpouring of the unconscious mind that provides me with
material that I don’t fully understand but can shape with the devices of poetic
language into something meaningful during the editorial process. It is at this
stage that my conscious mind goes to work to detect what might be a plausible
interpretation of the dream-like narrative with which I’ve been presented.
Interestingly, the interplay between the unconscious and conscious minds
continues throughout the editorial shaping of the poem with the result that the
finished poem is without fail considerably different from the initial
composition. It can be a slow process but it’s a process I find so fascinating
that I’m convinced it’s one of the main reasons I continue to write poetry.
8 - When your writing
gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word)
inspiration?
Reading
is my main source of inspiration. “Poetry envy” can be a great motivator. Freud
had it all wrong.
9 - What kind of
writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a
typical day (for you) begin?
I
tend to write daily (an advantage of being retired) and, as part of my Banff
work ethic, I’m typically at my desk by 8:00 am. The idea for a new poem or
solutions to problem areas in whatever it is I’m working on at the time often
come to me in the night during that semi-conscious state between waking and
falling back to sleep. I usually manage to jot these down before they slip from
my mind and then, if I can read my writing, use them to kick-start my morning routine.
Continuity during the writing and editing stages of a poem is very important to
me. There’s a critical mass that builds with each writing session and I find that
disrupting this momentum for any length of time can set back the completion of a
poem considerably. The length of my daily writing sessions fluctuates widely.
The economic analyst in me is still at work and recognizes that there’s a law
of diminishing returns to the creative process.
10 - Are public
readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of
writer who enjoys doing readings?
I
might use an open-mic opportunity to test a new poem for its rhythm and flow
and then follow-up by correcting anything that felt awkward. I read my poems
aloud to myself during their composition but there is an altogether different
dynamics to a public reading that can be very useful as an editing tool. The
public readings I’ve done to launch or promote their blue drowning, Après
Satie, and the two chapbooks have, of course, occurred after publication
and have not fed into the creative process per
se. But they have provided occasion for a more theatrical type of
creativity and I’ve come to enjoy bringing my poems to life for an audience and
presenting them in the manner I want them to be heard. On several occasions,
I’ve had other poets join with me in a more orchestrated kind of reading of my
work. It makes for an interesting effect and demonstrates, I think, poetry’s
natural affiliation with music.
11 - What fragrance
reminds you of home?
Apple.
Possibly a biblical (Genesis) thing. Definitely Lacanian.
12 - What are you
currently working on?
A
Dell Inspiron 15R. Although I’m thinking of switching to Apple.
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