D.S. Stymeist’s
debut collection, The Bone Weir, has
just been released by Frontenac House. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines,
including The Antigonish
Review, Prairie Fire, Dalhousie Review, and The Fiddlehead. His work was
featured as the Parliamentary Poet Laureate’s Poem of the Month (February 2015)
and was short-listed for Vallum’s
poetry prize. He teaches poetics, crime fiction, and aboriginal
literature at Carleton University. He grew
up as a resident of O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation, is the editor
and founder of the micro-press, Textualis,
and is the current vice-president
of VERSe Ottawa, which runs VerseFest, Ottawa’s annual poetry festival.
1 - How did you come to poetry, as
opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Strangely
enough, what began the process of writing poetry was putting my daughter to bed
when she was a baby. Until she went into deeper sleep, I had to stay up with
her, and she would fall asleep right on my chest. For long periods of time, I
couldn’t move, or get up. This situation of having to be physically still led
me to start playing with lines in my head. Considering the constraints of the
situation, I couldn’t work with longer forms. Later in the evening, I’d try to
jot these lines, sound sequences, or phrases down.
A few days
later, I might play around with what I’d written until a poem fell out. So I
guess I owe a lot to my daughter. She’s a peach.
About the same
time, I heard Robert Pinsky read at the Ottawa Public Library as part of the
Writer’s Festival. I’d always loved his work, but what really grabbed me was
how after the reading he talked about how he grew up in small town New Jersey
without being really aware that there were people who wrote poetry for a living.
He liked to doodle with words, play around with them, rearrange lines and
syntax just for the sheer pleasure of it. For me this idea of doodling with
words was really important. I’d written poetry in my late teens, but as I
became more aware of poetic traditions and the strictures of form I became more
intimidated by it. Pinsky’s ideas about doodling with language helped to
deflate some of that intimidation.
2 - Do you have any concerns behind your
writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work?
Among my many, many other concerns, I have a strong
interest in revisiting indigenous legend to reimagine our national landscape. These
sacred stories and traditions have a lot to teach Canadians, all of us.
I grew up on a
Cree reservation in Northern Manitoba in a household of mixed heritage.
My stepfather was Cree, my mother is Northern European, and my younger siblings
are metis. While there is some Choctaw blood in me (a few generations back),
I’m mainly a white guy that grew up as a part of an indigenous community. Living
in the Northern bush, and living off that land has given me some insight into
the importance of having sacred stories that write the genesis of geologic
forms and landscape. These stories are significant to my sense of self and
place, and part of my role as a writer is to share this sense of significance.
In many other parts of the world, the land is tied
directly to particular legends and myths. There are many indigenous stories
that write the origins of local topographies, but these stories are either
generally not very well known or have lost their resonant significance for most
Canadians. Even among many first nations communities, there has been a tremendous
loss of tribal knowledge due to religious conversion and the residential school
system. There is a growing hunger and need for these stories.
There are many great Canadian writers like Gregory Scofield,
Armand Garnet Ruffo, Thompson Highway, and Thomas King who write from
perspective of re-purposing and adapting traditional legend for contemporary
meaning. The mixing of cultures and traditions can be a potential strength of
our country, something that defines us as a nation, but this can happen only if
our culture as a whole starts acknowledging, valuing, and utilizing indigenous
knowledges.
3 - Where does a poem usually begin for
you?
It may sound utterly banal, but a poem begins with
some subject, idea, or experience that I’m passionate about. For example, one
of my abiding interests is the complex interconnections between animals and
plants in specific environments. Animals don’t simply evolve—they co-evolve
with other species.
When I found out that the pronghorn antelope, one of our
iconic prairie animals, co-evolved with the American cheetah, I was taken with
the idea that we live in an age of ecological ghosts.
Everywhere we look in modern habitats there are
species that no longer exist but their biologic effect is still present in the
bodies of other plants and animals.
After writing an elegiac ode to the American Cheetah,
I subsequently wrote one about the Avocado, a central American fruit that you
can find in any grocery, but one with an interesting biological history. As the
avocado’s natural partners in its seed dispersal died out about 10,000 years
ago, it has become largely dependent on human cultivation for continued survival.
While we are currently experiencing one of great
extinction events in our planet’s history, from the very inception of humanity as
a distinct species, we’ve been implicated in the extinctions of many
species—Mastodons, Mammoths, Giant Sloths, etc, etc. This is the inheritance of
the Anthropocene.
Some of my poems attempt to grapple with this legacy. Part
of that elegiac process is bearing witness to the impact of our presence, our
activities. Another part is to celebrate and pay homage to ecological ghosts.
4 - Are public readings part of or
counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing
readings?
Yes, if anyone has seen me read, I think it is readily
apparent that it is something I enjoy. Public performances are essential to the
task of my writing—the expectation that the written has to become oral shapes
how the poems are composed.
I’m not a fan of opposing the term “page poet” to the
“spoken word poet.” We are all poets, and the genetic origins of poetry ultimately
lie in orality. That historical link to oral culture has a huge influence on
how I go about constructing and reciting a poem
Homer was not writing for the page when he composed
his versions of the Odyssey or the Iliad. The Nordic Scops who belted out
early versions of Beowulf or the
Sagas for their fellow tribe-members were not writing for the page. In a
communal, aural environment, narrative meaning, rhythm, and sound become
essential.
While I have great respect for concrete and visual
poets, I write primarily for a public, oral audience. It’s always a privilege
to get to share the work, shout out the words, while I still have voice.
5 - Does your writing initially come
quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their
final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
It depends on the subject and mode of a particular
poem. Some poems, often the more lyrical or personal ones, often come quickly.
Even a six page rant like the “401 Series” only took a couple of frenzied hours
to jot down a first draft.
Other poems, like the ones that revisit forgotten
moments of colonial history or excavate ice-age extinctions often take months
of research before I come to actually sit down and write.
6 - Do you find the process of working
with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
At times it can be difficult, but it is definitely
essential. I rely on editors noting when I’ve completely gone off the rails. I
thank them for their work.
7 - What is the best piece of advice
you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Definitely what Robert Pinsky said about poetry as doodling with words.
Also, I say to
myself: “there is no absolute need to write; write only when it feels
necessary.”
8 - How easy has it been for you to move
between genres (poetry to critical prose)?
It hasn’t been all that easy to move between different
forms of writing.
In order to be successful, even in a limited way, at
grad school and then as an academic, I found that I had to crush most of my
creative impulses. To write critical work that would be publishable in
peer-reviewed journals not only demanded all of my energy and time, it demanded
that my thinking be rigorously analytic.
Over time, I believe that my mind became habituated to
particular ways of thinking. When I began to write creatively, it was difficult
to avoid some of the habits of the academic mind. The last few years have been
about strengthening atrophied creative neural pathways. It has become easier
and easier to write poetry and creative prose, but this transformation was certainly
not without its pain.
9 - What kind of writing routine do you
tend to keep, or do you even have one?
I only find time to write when all my other
responsibilities have been taken care of. I like to find blocks of undistracted
time, but this can be very, very difficult. Moreover, I don’t write to a
program or a schedule. If there isn’t something that is urging me to get it
down on paper, I will not write.
10 - When your writing gets stalled,
where do you turn, or return, to for inspiration?
I place no pressure on myself to write. To “stall”
implies that there is an abstract desire to write something of import. If you
have something to say, then say it. If not, then be silent.
If I have a spot of time to write, but find myself
listless or under-motivated, then I will read, or revise older work (or have
sex, or go for a hike, or bake some cookies—there is always something good to
do with your time).
11 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I like the way
that some people have a sense of home. I’m not sure I do.
12 - 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?
Pop music. The
lyrical sister-art of poetry. Speech, inflection, rhythm.
Arcade Fire,
Talking Heads, Serge Gainsbourg, Gorilaz, Massive Attack, Neil Young, Johnny
Cash, Guided by Voices, Daft Punk, Iggy Pop, Pixies, Sigur Ros, Charles Mingus,
etc, etc, etc.
13 - What other writers or writings are
important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
This is an
overwhelming question. I’ve been thinking lately of Yusef Komunyakaa’s object
poems. I’ve been drawn to the genre of the object poem in my own work (“The
Levelois Point” for example). I like how meditation on a material object can
provide a welcome relief from the confessional self as it is posed through the
lyric form.
Komunyakaa’s object work on artifacts, such as “The Helmet” and “The Catapult,” is
astounding—so precise, chiseled even. The paradox, of course, is how much these
object poems reveal about humanity.
14 - What would you like to do that you
haven't yet done?
Write a good
novel.
15 - If you could pick any other
occupation to attempt, what would it be?
My health now
precludes the attempt, but if I could, I might have been an archeologist, or
paleontologist. Something to do with uncovering the buried, I think.
Remember that
career test that we took in high school, the “Strong Interest Inventory”? I
remember that my closest match was Female Army officer. Perhaps there’s still
time…
16 - What was the last great book you
read? What was the last great film?
I’m reading
Paisley Rekdal’s Imaginary Vessels.
Some of the poems make me sick with envy.
We live in the
golden age of the independent mini-series. I’m watching Fargo right now, to my
great delight.
17 - What are you currently working on?
Poking at a few
poems. Hopefully, in a year or two, a collection will drop out. We’ll see.
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