12 or 20 (second series) questions with Mark Laba

Mark Laba is an artist and writer living in Vancouver. He was once a restaurant reviewer for a daily newspaper. He’s also painted anatomical models and faux-finished artist wall tiles, been a darkroom technician, assembled cheap watches for crappy department stores, made nametags, vertical blinds and was a scriptwriter for Flash animations dealing with conflicts in the business workplace, a topic he was ill-equipped to write about. He has published sporadically these days. He’s reclusive, much like the naked mole rat.

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?
Well, after my first poetry chapbook was published I was able to buy a Bentley. Then my career went into a tailspin and I was left driving a Gremlin. Then again, I didn’t learn to drive until I was fifty so I must have been on a bicycle back then. So probably my memory isn’t that good. Which makes me unable to answer the second question. But there were definitely some life-changing things in there somewhere although the chapbook’s role in it all I couldn’t really say but I’ve always loved the chapbook form and for certain poetry projects, believe it’s the only method of publishing.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I think they all arrived simultaneously. Along with comic books, hockey cards and Playboy and MAD magazines.

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 start a new writing project every day. I’ve got thousands of barely started writing projects that die out after a few days. I’m sustained by the endless pursuit of useless things, many of which I’ll never finish anyway. I do work slowly though. It takes me many years to fail at something. Sometimes I take copious notes, sometimes I just sit and think about my glory days. And then I remember I didn’t have any except for that time I found a free unopened and cold beer on the pitch’n’putt course while I was looking for my lost golf ball in the trees.

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?
I’m reluctant to even start a poem. It’s like an affliction, like my psoriasis. Oh crap, not this again, I think and then launch into it. Because I don’t really want to do it but can think of no other way to relay this mix of confusion, idiocy, wordplay and half-baked ideas that don’t amount to a can of baked beans. Sometimes I have a whole project in mind but laziness and inertia soon take care of those ambitions.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I haven’t done a reading in three or more years. My last few attempts, as I recall, may not have been that good. One I know, definitely went down the drain. I used to like them and did many years ago. Again, glory days. Then I got saddled with a bad digestive tract and social anxiety but with the help of my emotional-support ventriloquist dummy, Mr. Puscle, I’m hoping to make a comeback. At least for a week or two.

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 wouldn’t even begin to hazard a guess.

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?
Again, I wouldn’t even hazard a guess.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I think an outside editor is essential for some projects, others not so much if you’re just Xeroxing something on the fly to leave on subway trains or at the butcher shop.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Never flip a burger more than once on the barbeque. And on that note, never poke a sleeping porcupine with BBQ tongs.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to visual art to performance to food writing)? What do you see as the appeal?
As easy as a slug through shrubbery or a trash pile. I secrete a mucous coating that protects me from the sharper things. Perhaps that’s the appeal. Exploring with a protective mucous coating. The secretions are a little embarrassing in public.

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, at first I get up and seek out food which I then regurgitate for my young. Oops, sorry, wrong magazine. My typical day begins quietly with coffee finished with chaos and ranting. I have no writing routine. Somewhere in there, children are sent off to school and I find myself in a cinder-block janitor’s room listening to the hum and thrum of various pipes and machinery. It can be invigorating, or alternately, coma-inducing. Both are pleasurable and conducive to creativity.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I like to run a vacuum cleaner. Or eat a towering sandwich of smoked meat with a sour kosher Strubs pickle and a black cherry cola. Followed by an hour napping in front of a baseball game on TV. If that doesn’t work I turn to Bugs Bunny and trying to figure out European shoe sizing.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Schmaltz herring.

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?
Well, that’s a very good quote and an excellent thought. All I can add is some strange lumpy thing you see from a distance late at night in a parkade when you’re walking to your car or pausing to watch some insects fight on the stucco wall of your condo balcony. Early in the morning though I do like listening to different bird songs. Their intricacy really unravels my brain.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Grocery lists. Odd notes I find in the garbage. The printed minutes of various strata councils meetings if you can get your mitts on them. The last will and testament of Bozo the Clown.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Wrestle an octopus. In front of an audience. And defeating it by wedging its tentacles into the straps of my flip-flops. But then like Russell Crowe in Gladiator, I would override the emperor and bring the crowd to its feet, letting the octopus live while humiliating the ruling class. Later I would eventually rise to become the ruler of an octopus kingdom but I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m still not that great a swimmer.

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?
I don’t actually have an occupation. But I’ll pick heating and air duct cleaning. Or neurosurgery. No, deli platter arranging for celebrity shivas.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I had two opposable thumbs and the only tool they could seemingly use was pencil or pen. Then I failed math so I was doomed. On an opposable thumb note, please check out Stuart Ross’s new book, Motel of the Opposable Thumbs from Anvil Press. It’s quite amazing.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I think the last great film I saw was anything I saw in 3-D. I could watch someone stuffing a chicken or inflating a soccer ball or clearing raccoons out of an attic space in 3-D and not be disappointed. Also, any Columbo episode directed by Patrick McGoohan. As for a great book, take your pick. I’ve fallen asleep in the bathtub with so many. Now I can separate my great books from my trash reading due to the water-stains. Or maybe it’s the other way around and it’s the junky books bearing watermarks. Either way, my bathtub is littered with great books and once I dry them all out I’m going to get back to reading them.

20 - What are you currently working on?
Oh, this, that and the other. Oh, also critical mass theory in relation to stockholder pie-charts and toupee abuse amongst trailer park retirees and those effects on public boulevard shrubbery. Been a lifelong dream to finish this project.

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