Today would have been my mother's seventy-seventh birthday,

On the day they married, emerging from her parent's house on Ridgemont.

m a n y _ g e n d e r e d _ m o t h e r s : f o u r _ r e c e n t _ e s s a y s

many gendered mothers is a project on literary influence featuring short essays by writers (of any/all genders) on the women, femme, trans, and non-binary writers who have influenced them, as a direct or indirect literary forebear.

This project is directly inspired by the American website Literary Mothers, created by editor Nadxieli Nieto and managing editor Nina Puro. While we hope that Literary Mothers might eventually return to posting new pieces, our site was created as an extension and furthering of their project (in homage, if you will), and not meant as any kind of replacement.

We've now twenty-five essays posted! Our most recent include:

Andrea Nicki on Elly Danica

Sue Rainsford on Helen Cixous, Eimear McBride, Bhanu Kapil and Lidia Yuknavitch

Lorin Medley on H.D.

Terry Abrahams on Anne Carson

Please check out our submissions page for more information (we are seeking submissions!). We've even a Facebook page!

We are also still accepting signed books for our upcoming fundraiser! and check out our new Patreon page! All donations go directly to paying contributors.

12 or 20 questions with Elaine Feeney

Elaine Feeney is an award-winning writer from Galway. Rise is her third full poetry collection following Where’s Katie? (2010) and The Radio was Gospel (2014), all published by Salmon. She published her first chapbook, Indiscipline, with Maverick Press in 2007. Feeney’s work is translated into over a dozen languages and is widely published. In 2016, Liz Roche Company commissioned Feeney to write for a national production to witness and record through dance, film and narrative, the physical experience of being a woman and bodily choice in Ireland. Entitled Wrongheaded, a film of the same name, directed by Mary Wycherley, accompanies the production. It premiered at Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival and is currently touring. Feeney has just finished both a pilot comedy series, The Fannypack, with writers Aoibheann McCann and Aoife Nic Fhearghusa, which was highly commended by BAFTA, and her first novel, SIC[K]. She intends to take a break now and perhaps keep bees or make furniture.

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 chapbook, Indiscipline, was published by Maverick Press in 2007, shortly before I gave birth to my second child and while I was in hospital. The book changed very little about my life, except a life long acceptance of my penchant for regular typo and a good double spacing here and there. As for the kid, well, let’s just say, he was an ultimate game changer.

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

I was sitting in class when I was thirteen or fourteen, (strokes chin) and hearing Patrick Kavanagh’s Inniskeen Road, and that part where the bicycles are passing by and Kavanagh is excluded, well that was my experience of youth. And it was just remarkable to realise this man felt the same, and the rural setting excited me because it was relatable, but there’s a mild savagery at the end of the poem, where he is boss and owns the situation. Depsite the awkward isolation and exclusion, he’d have it no other way. Poetry was like suddenly having a friend who didn’t cause me social anxiety. Poetry has a profound impact on me. It’s always been like this for me. Oh god I loved it, I used to sit in the library at lunch and steal poetry anthologies. Dylan Thomas, RS Thomas, anything they had. They must have liked the Welsh in my school! I never regretted it. I considered it like the timber used up in woodwork. Had to be replaced, books should be considered in the same way.

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?

It comes in many different ways. My best work is oddly instant and catches hold, but I will work at something for years. If I’m commissioned, I work insanely hard on the process, I just copy the way my husband works, he’s a designer, and sweet lord, he doesn’t half plan before anything begins. I write poems in my head a lot when I’m driving. It can be irritatingly intrusive though. Obsessive, almost.

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?

Never working for a book. If someone gifts me something, a line, a phrase, an odd gesture, something weird, I snap it up. I love language, listening to people interact, and then it develops, but no, lots of my poems haven’t seen the light of day, nor will they, but I know what I was trying to do. Some of the best ideas I’ve had I could never execute the poem properly. And I leave it. Like I’ll leave a book unfinished, unread or I quit the theatre or cinema mid way. Life is too short for that, but I do work hard. I’m working on a sequence of poems at the moment about Theodore Roethke’s time on Inisbofin. I’m going to spend some of the summer there I hope.

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

I enjoy readings when I can’t see my audience, everything else is hard for me. That said, the audience are an integral part to the life of any writer, I am indebted to them, they give my work life. And if they put their arse on a seat, they deserve my respect and in a lot of ways they are the book buyers and the supporters. I also love the intimacy of a relationship you can work up with an audience. It’s special (until you see the fucking thing on YouTube and you’ve seven chins and squeak like a chipmunk, drop your water, whatever I hate that, I hate that everything is now public.)

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?

Of course, the anxiety of influence, saying the word ‘cunt’ or the word ‘cock’, the confessional poetry naysayers and giving them way too much headspace, the Socratic anxiety that comes with more learning, and more learning and knowing how little I know, the form, the appropriation question is huge for me, because I love telling stories, not writing in the first person, or worse, writing in someone else’s first person and not doing a particularly good job at it, offending people, offending everyone (I think I’ve almost managed this) offending the state, (Glad I manage this, but what an ego the ‘state’ has everywhere, it’s a contagion, the ego of a state, the state of an ego) and the day you write a sonnet and realise there’s fifteen lines (not that this has ever happened to me, but I’ve heard stories, hehehe, not sure it’s a theoretical concern, but concerning nonetheless!).

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?

All actions have consequences, even no actions or inaction. Everyone knows this, of course the writer shouldn’t obsess about this, but they should take some care, mostly of themselves and then of the reader. Poetry is very different to prose in this. Though some would claim it’s not. The role of the writer is as broad and deep as the human experience, it’s not ergomically quantifiable. More’s the pity, how handy if it just passed a user test, but not so. The goalposts are always moving. Truth, it has to have some to do with truth, and good observation. If I met my twenty year old self though, I’d have a very stern chat with her. She’d tell me to fuck off.

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

I think it’s very useful, of course there are very many different editorial styles, I’m rarely bridled by anyone, I need it this way, my life is constrained enough. I think my editor knows this. ‘Leave her be,’ sort of thing, it’ll come nearly alright. And this has to be enough for me, I’m an incredibly random writer, and person. I’m terribly impulsive. It can only ever be nearly enough. And I loathe myself for being this way.

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

A doctor that looks after my care once said, at a very stressful moment; ‘it is what it is Elaine, and that’s what it is, and that’s ok. Now we need to move from here.’ Hardly ground-breaking, but he was so earnest, and so respectful to my fears. And I just thought ‘you’re a legend.’  I live by the ‘never ask permission’ mantra also. Always have, my mother told me I was a nightmare to rear because of this. I take after my father this way, the freest man I’ve ever known, sadly in some ways. Wheels can really come off like this.

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?

Completely erratic. There is no simple answer. A typical day begins around six am, answering emails, washing clothes, preparing food, Husband grinding coffee beans (he starts at 5 am), make up, hair straighteners, kids whinging, kids eating, kids looking for socks, or football boots or pokemon cards blah blah, school bus drop, school run for older son, belt down the road to my own school, where I teach, about a forty minute commute, staffroom banter, staffroom flirting, or fighting, (love both) coffee, classes, café across road for ‘me time,’ more editing, answering emails, tears the odd time, six or seven loo trips, putting kids outside the door, sitting through detention, corrections, union business, laughter, long run in the forest near my house, pub every Friday straight after work, seven hundred other stupid chores, evenings are reading time, two three hours, cooking, good food, chats with family, wine drinking, gin drinking, writing, editing, chatting to friends, kids gazillion extra curricular things, time for watching the football or the boxing or box sets, music runs, kiss husband or fight, lights out around 12-1 am and back at it next day. Oh and form filling. Always forms to fill. And therapy. Always time for therapy.

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

Always writer friends, always. The conversations get me going again. Read this, read that, did you read this, did you edit that?

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Cooking a goose. That smell.

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?

Yeah, the great reinvention of the few stories there are to be told, or so we’re told. I agree to some extent with this for the fiction writer. Seems to be the way they do things. Poetry is somewhat different I think. Influences, definitely other poets, but also musicians, art, paintings, people, people, people, history, social history especially, carpentry, wood carvings, design, animals, manual workers, students, people, people and more people, everything about them, the way they talk, walk, carry on. Governments and the absolute state of them. They get me going.

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

I’ve deleted what just became a long list of my friends. So you’ll just have to guess. I read all the time. Every day. It’s everything to me in lots of ways. But my life and me are important, the private Elaine, the one my family love.  I write, I’m not a writer. I teacher, I’m not a teacher. I mother, I’m not a mother. I’m married, I’m not a wife. I hate definitions, labels, and boxes, drive me mental.

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

I want to make a chair. I’ve started.

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 wanted to study architecture in university, I was accepted onto a very competitive course, but due to economic misfortune (my father doesn’t agree with paying for learning/education, he believes all knowledge comes from the ground or the bog) I ended up doing a state funded Arts degree. I would like to be an architect or orthopaedic surgeon who dabbles in carpentry.

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

I was just mad for the fame and free wine.

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

Can’t talk in books. Too many.

Just last night movies watched were, Anthropoid, Logan and Jackie. Anthropoid was so fucking sad, and I just adore Cillian Murphy, (And Dornan too) It really was just a lush objectification of men moment, on a serious note, look at the resistance to the Nazi by the Czechoslovakian and how futile it is, Christ History is cyclical, and we really need to tattoo this on our faces. I thought Logan was a disaster, and I know, I know, people will scream at me, but it wasn’t redeemable and Jackie was yawn yawn yawn, but good leading role by the actor, Natalie Portman.

19 - What are you currently working on?

This interview and a good bottle of red.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Queen Mob's Teahouse : Eli Willms interviews Gregory Betts

As my tenure as interviews editor at Queen Mob's Teahouse continues, the thirtieth interview is now online: Eli Willms interviews Gregory Betts (originally written as an assignment for Natalee Caple as part of the Brock University Creative Writing Program). 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 with Ann Tweedy conducted by Mary Kasimor, an interview with Katherine Osborne, conducted by Niina Pollari, an interview with Catch Business, conducted by Jon-Michael Frank, a conversation between Vanesa Pacheco and T.A. Noonan, "On Translation and Erasure," existing as an extension of Jessica Smith's The Women in Visual Poetry: The Bechdel Test, produced via Essay Press, Five questions for Sara Uribe and John Pluecker about Antígona González by David Buuck (translated by John Pluecker),"overflow: poetry, performance, technology, ancestry": kaie kellough in correspondence with Eric Schmaltz, and Mary Kasimor's interview with George Farrah, Brad Casey interviewed byEmilie Lafleur, David Buuck interviews John Chávez about Angels of the Americlypse: An Anthology of New Latin@ Writing and an interview with Abraham Adams by Ben Fama, Tender and Tough: Letters as Questions as Letters: Cheena Marie Lo, Tessa Micaela and Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Kristjana Gunnars’ interview with Thistledown Press author Anne Campbell, Timothy Dyke’s interview with Hawai’i poet Jaimie Gusman, Hailey Higdon's interview with Joanne Kyger, Stephanie Kaylor's interview with Kenyatta JP Garcia, Jaimie Gusman’s interview with Timothy Dyke, Sarah Rockx interviews Gary Barwin, Megan Arden Gallant's interview with Diane Schoemperlen, Andrew Power interviews Lauren B. Davis, Chris Lawrence interviews Jonathan Ball and Adam Novak interviews Tom Stern.

Further interviews I've conducted myself over at Queen Mob's Teahouse include: Geoffrey Young, Claire Freeman-Fawcett on Spread Letter, Stephanie Bolster on Three Bloody Words, Claire Farley on Canthius, Dale Smith on Slow Poetry in America, Allison Green, Meredith Quartermain, 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

Today is my father's seventy-sixth birthday,

Gary Barwin, No TV for woodpeckers

Ocean

dad a pink sea horse

mom a tiny ear

dad remember

the sea

remember the thrum of blood

your body the colour of eyelids

mom the rush of wind

in the ridges of the ear

mom and dad

you curl up in my hands

mom and dad

soft-fisted

not yet

born

Hamilton writer, composer and editor Gary Barwin has been on quite a roll lately, receiving a grand amount of attention and accolade for his latest novel, Yiddish for Pirates (Penguin, 2016). The latest in his long line of poetry titles is No TV for woodpeckers (Hamilton ON: Wolsak & Wynn, 2017), produced as part of editor Paul Vermeersch’s Buckrider Books imprint. Opening with a sonnet on blackbirds (one that, possibly, suggests an extra way of looking at a blackbird, beyond Wallace Stevens’ classic and endlessly-reworked “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”), No TV for woodpeckers quickly establishes itself as a collection of poems thick with detail, distraction and play, constructed, if not to unsettle, but to keep the reader slightly off-balance, albeit through rhythm, chants and repetitions. This book requires attention, one that requires the reader to dig deep into the quick repetitions, the variations on sound and play, and thrums and twists of both language and meaning. As the opening poem, “Not,” writes:

for all the blackbirds

for all the blackbirds

for a million blackbirds

for the blackbirds’ wings

for the blackbirds’ eyes

for a sky of blackbirds

if you paid me feather

if you paid me wing

if you gave me flight

if you gave me nest

for all the blackbirds

for all the blackbirds

for the mind of blackbirds

for the whole heart of blackbirds

In fourteen lines, Gary Barwin argues, in his own way, for a completion of blackbirds. Take that, Wallace Stevens. Barwin’s work has long been associated with that of Stuart Ross, along with a whole slew of “Canadian surrealists,” and much of Barwin’s ongoing work circles around the surreal, bad jokes, quirks and twists, as well as the physical and emotional landscape of his hometown and domestic of Hamilton, Ontario, where he and his family have lived for years. The surreal, one might argue, is as much an element of what he does in his writing as means for his writing to actually be surreptitiously doing something entirely different. Any conversation on his writing should include surrealism, but shouldn’t end with such.

After the initial sonnet, No TV for woodpeckers moves into a small handful of poems playing off rural or small town “field guides,” including Hamilton-specific pieces such as “The Birds of Hamilton, Ontario,” “The Fish of Hamilton, Ontario” and “The Snakes of Hamilton, Ontario,” the first of which opens: “we are for the chuck-will’s-widow / the horned grebe / the fulvous whistling-duck / for looking directly into the semi-palmated plover / for the shearwater / for the lazuli bunting [.]” Thick with sound and description, there have always been two sides to the Gary Barwin poem: the straightforwardness of what the right hand is showing you, and the twists of what the left hand, alternately, is doing. The right hand exists, in part, to distract away from and counterbalance the left.

I do find it interesting how both Barwin and Ross have centred books and/or chapbooks around specific animals, from this current title with multiple poems and references to woodpeckers, to other Barwin titles wrapped around baboons, porcupines, parrots and multiple other waywards beasts. If and when Barwin might have a selected poems, I’m curious as to see which elements of his ongoing menagerie might be included.

Felicia Zamora, Of Form & Gather

In Of Form & Gather, poems become choral assemblages to their proximity, tuned into the maker’s spirit as coiled out from unhurried interactions with ancestral zygotes. Where does identity invoke place over silence—intimate implications of nuance, trust in the reader’s ability to move in concert with the writer’s soul? If even a fraction of beyond-space is gleaned by possibility, the maker’s job is done. If one could imagine what awaits between where one could go and why one has remained, would that bring us to a finite completion—a cyclic undercarriage of removal in the language remaining? (Edwin Torres, “Introduction to the Poems”)

The author of three prior poetry chapbooks, Colorado poet and editor Felicia Zamora’s first full-length collection is Of Form & Gather (Notre Dame IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2017), produced as part of the 2016 Andrés Montoya Prize (as judged by Edwin Torres). Predominantly set in prose blocks, Zamora’s poems shift from meditative narratives to short lyric essays, sketched in ways deceptively straightforward but multiple and slightly askew. The title to this debut is intriguing, suggesting a composition of disparate elements gathered into a series of collage-works set in particular shapes; the collage element might be there, but the poems appear to emerge even as you are reading them. “you remember your cells,” she writes, in the poem “O for passage,” “belonging to others, before the dark grew you [.]”

Of ghosts

You take a photo of the thermometer

outside the window; think degrees of, think

what blurs & what melts from; the truck full;

the tin roof gleams in midday

& her eyes in pools; think torn of; think

vacant; how the ditch overgrows & the table

once held rhubarb pie & asparagus picked;

think an old highway; think a gravel lot; think

three young hearts; think play-

ground; how we memory out of; how place

haunts behind each pupil; how rusted poles

suspend the MOTEL sign; shadows in cast;

think spells; cradle of; of the mulberry tree;

think where fireflies catch; bark once in curve

to your body, towers silent, deep in root.