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?
This question has a long answer because there's a lot of context behind it. My first chapbook, These Burning Streets, was published by a micro-press called Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness, which is run by the anarchist writer Margaret Killjoy, and it came out right after I went to jail for the protests in downtown Toronto during the G20 summit in 2010. So I think a lot of people read it because they saw me as this anarchist, and the fact that I also wrote poems was secondary. That put a lot of focus on me, put me in a position where people saw me as this thinker and writer, as someone who understood incarceration, when in reality my experience of it is so limited compared to many others. So while I may have liked the fact that people were reading my work, the way people seemed to focus on me rather than the vast majority of incarcerated people, whose stories are much more important if we're going to understand what the prison system is as a racist and colonial institution, made me think about how I want to conduct myself and in what contexts I should share my experiences.
Regarding how I think my work now is different, I would say I take more time to sit with things before I eject them out into the world. What am I trying to say here? What different impacts could it have? Who am I writing this for, and why? Is anyone already saying it, or is my voice needed here? These things might be less associated with poetry than they are with nonfiction, but I think anything we're creating needs to be looked at through a few different lenses if we're going to be sending it out into the world for other eyes to see.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Poetry has less rules, so I think I found it easier to start writing at a young age. It was something I could do without any real guidance, whereas non-fiction is something I've really benefited from having guidance in, and fiction has always been a struggle for me to actually write from start to finish, even if the fragments come to me easily. I've always liked the lack of structure that poetry allows.
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?
The Hammer of Witches was actually the only time in my life I've written poetry on the clock. I submitted a partial manuscript, and hadn't expected it to be accepted so quickly. So I had to produce more pages on a deadline, and I was actually surprised when a couple people told me that the poems I sat down and intentionally wrote (in a way that felt pretty rushed compared to how I usually write) were their favorite parts of the book. So in that sense it can be good to depart from what's comfortable. You might end up with a pleasing result when you do something different, even if it feels unnatural at first.
4 - Where does a poem or work of prose 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?
Titles or concepts usually come to me first. I had been ruminating over the words Malleus Malleficarum (the original Latin title of the actual Hammer of Witches, which was the Catholic treatise that detailed crimes of witchcraft in Europe) for a couple years before I actually put everything together and arranged it into a book.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Normally the thought of readings would stress me out. But with COVID-19 making socializing more difficult, I really miss public events. Not having access to community spaces has made me realize I was taking those things for granted; we can easily focus on the negatives, like what if we don't perform well, or what if someone we feel awkward about is there, but the truth is we need community. Not having the option of going to in-person events has made me realize that community, for me, is worth those anxious or uncomfortable moments that come along with being in group settings.
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 would say this book revolves around themes of queerness, magic, monstrosity, power, and grief. In a lot of them, I'm trying to reach back in time, through history or folklore, to uncover the origins of how things are. Through poetry, I would say I am trying to answer political questions with emotion and image rather than through theorizing. In their way, emotion and image are in fact a type of theorizing, and we've just been told to think otherwise. A lot of the individual poems are about mourning the loss of specific people, and one of the reasons I've lost so many friends at a young age, is the overdose crisis. When COVID started happening I saw people panicking, fearing these waves of death, and that was a strange feeling in some ways because what they were afraid of has already been the reality, for years now, and many people are just used to it. I never know when I'm going to hear that another person I used to know, or still know, has passed away suddenly. Sometimes the first place I see it is on Facebook, because people have made posts before everyone is informed. Information can travel very quickly over social media, with no buffer. So when some of my imagery verges on the horrific or the macabre, that's the horror of everyday life under a system that values some lives more than others. In that sense the political is always there, even if you can't see it.
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?
Writer is such a broad category, so I think each person needs to sit down and think about what it means for them. Being able to write things down, and publish them, and have people read them, is a privilege and a responsibility. So I think it's worth it to think about what those things mean to you, and what you're going to do with them.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
It really depends who that person is. Normally I really appreciate the experience of having some guidance or feedback. I've worked with a few non-fiction editors who wanted to steer my articles in directions I didn't agree with, or in one case cut out vital quotes from a person whose opinion was really important to the article, without my permission. But when you have the privilege of someone really thoughtful looking over your work, it can enhance your craft in pretty big ways.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
When I was struggling to finish my Masters degree, my uncle told me “it doesn't have to be good, it just has to be done.” And in a way that made my finished product better, because I let go of the anxiety of perfectionism and that allowed me to re-focus.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to essays)? What do you see as the appeal?
I usually have a few writing projects going on at any given time, and they weave into each other and give me other places to go when I feel burnt out with one particular medium. When I was in university, I would write little fragments of poems in the margins of essay notes, because poems just emerge to me out of different things, even if it's raw data. That being said, I'm not great with fiction because coming up with plot arcs doesn't seem to come naturally to me. I love the idea of writing fiction, and of making up stories, but it's a lot harder for me to do in practice, which is something I would like to change. My policy with non-fiction is that I only write articles which people specifically approach me and ask me to write. That's the case because I'm not very experienced writing on light or fun topics, it's mostly been heavier subjects. I've heard too many people talk about being hurt and made invisible by writers who were jumping on sensitive topics because grief and trauma makes captivating headlines, or because it will boost their professional reputation. And in that dynamic there's no process of people telling their own story, or trusting you to tell it, which is the biggest honor. If somebody wants to share their story with you, you better be careful with it. So maybe that's the poet in me, trying to bring a more sensitive practice to journalism.
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?
For the past three years my main job has been taking care of my kid, so writing is something I sort of steal time for, usually from the hours I should be sleeping. In a weird way it's given me more structure because I know I have to get things done during specific times. It's also made it hard to keep producing on a regular schedule. If you have a deadline, and your baby is sick, and not sleeping at night, you're not going to be able to meet that deadline. And if people don't see you publishing as much, you're not going to be at the top of their contact list when professional opportunities come up. In some ways this is a great thing, because it's been a time to scale things back and really think about what I want to be producing.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Cedar swamp at night.
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?
I like walking when the sky is that deep indigo color that comes before it's completely dark. The way leaves and branches look in silhouette against that kind of sky has always been one of my favorite things.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Lynn Crosbie is someone whose poetry I found at a young age, and I think there's some stylistic and thematic inspiration from her in my work. VillainElle, which she wrote about Aileen Wuornos, was a really important poem to me, in particular after I was coping with the death of a friend when I was about 20. I think Lynn Crosbie really gets that violence is this mundane, unexceptional thing, and that has always been comforting to me. On a similar note, another book I found when I was young was Trap Lines, by Eden Robinson. I was so lucky to have stumbled on her work, it was just sitting in the bookshelf at this youth drop-in center I went to when I was 17 or 18. Because I'm from a pretty rural area, a town with about 3000 people at the time, there were familiar things about those settings to me. She doesn't sensationalize violence the way someone like Hubert Selby Junior (who I actually wish I'd never read) does. I've met people who really glorify Selby, or Bukowski, because they think that work is so “gritty,” but none of those white male authors do what Eden Robinson did in those stories, which is write about awful stuff happening to people, and those characters are still so totally human.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
A children's book or a sewing manual.
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?
That's a tough one, because I have a few different occupations. It seems like permanent, full-time jobs don't really exist anymore and most people I know are getting by with a million part time things. I'm not sure if just being a writer, with no other occupations, is something that would be possible for me, but who knows. It could be neat.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Unfortunately it might be because I was told so much that I wasn't good at much else. One of my teachers called me an “idiot savant” in gradeschool, which of course is a pretty hideously ableist term, because I excelled at writing but wasn't great at much else. So I guess I just kept putting my time into it, even if that was because of negative reinforcement. Today I enjoy writing, so that's what keeps me going back to it. And I like that it can be a practical skill I have on hand, if friends need a cover letter edited at the last minute or anything like that.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last great book that I read was Wrist, by Nathan Adler. After I finished it I actually felt sad about how good it was, because I figured it would be forever before I would find another horror novel that I love that much. But on the bright side I recently started The Devourers by Indra Das, and I may in fact be loving it as much. Maybe there's a lot of amazing horror out there and I just haven't been exploring enough. As for films I don't get much time to watch grownup TV, but I can tell you that I regularly cry during kids' movies. That part during Spirited Away, where the dragon remembers his name, never fails to get me.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I'm working on an article, a few short stories I don't know if I'm going to finish, and some poems, including a prose poem that I'm pretty excited about. It's called Make Yourself At Home, and it's about the idea of hospitality and building a world or even just a small space that could make people want to stay here, if they feel like giving up. Having this book published, and having a positive response to it, was very motivating for me, and made me want to write more. So if you have the chance to tell a writer that their work is good, you should probably act on it, because you might be the reason they make more of it.
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