1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I don’t think my first book changed much in my life. I didn’t give up my day job. It did force me to stop revising the poems that went into the collection—at least for a while—and move on to others.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I think poetry came to me. I’ve always been fascinated by the natural world around me and by how things are made, and I wanted to be an botanist or an engineer. Unfortunately, when I was nine years old my father gave me The Looking Glass Book of Verse, so that I should “remember that science is not all”. I ignored it for a few years, but when I finally did pick it up and read Blake and Dickinson and Marvell I was done with engineering. I still wonder about botany, but I don’t think I’ll ever get to that.
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’m not a note-taker. I can’t say I know when a project starts. At some point I might notice that I’ve been writing about something or other and make a project out of it. That was the case, for instance, with Insult to the Brain. I noticed that I’d written a number of poems about how some poets died, and decided to pursue the subject. Twelve years on I thought it might be time to stop, or at least pause, and sent the manuscript along to Michael Mirolla at Guernica, who took a chance and picked it up.
4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction 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?
Neither and both. With fiction, I have some sort of story in mind, though not much of one, I confess. Maybe that’s why I don’t write much fiction. With poetry, it’s usually just poems, which I collect, revise, throw out—mostly throw out. Eventually they may make a collection, or as in the case of Insult, which I mentioned, I might notice that I have a collection around a common theme and pursue that. Through the Waspmouth I Drew You was another beast altogether. I began it just like pretty-well every other poem, but in this case it just kept on going and turned into a rather longish poem and eventually a book on it own.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I very much like a good reading. For my part, though, I don’t much like to get up and read in front of an audience, neither in person, not in covid-screen time. I wish I enjoyed participating but I rarely do. I’d prefer if someone else read my poems. When I’m working on a poem I often try to hear it in the voice of another.
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 spent a lot of time trying to work through some theoretical concerns about art, poetry in particular; that was my doctoral dissertation. Those concerns are separate and other from the writing of poetry, though. They are of no concern to me when I write. If theory gets into the creative process it destroys the work. That’s the essence of academicism, whether of the French, the Soviet or the post-modern sort.
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?
In this country we are both fortunate and unfortunate that we can write what we want and not get arrested or shot, though we may be ostracized. We are fortunate because getting arrested and shot are not life experiences usually to be recommended. We are unfortunate because were writers getting arrested that would suggest that they were making someone in power uncomfortable, which is one of the writer’s duties, I think, though not the only one, nor one which every writer must fulfill. Honest writers write what they must.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
If by “outside editor” you mean someone other than myself, then I think it is essential. We all need someone to keep us honest. I’ve been fortunate in that for many years now I have worked with a small group of very talented writers willing to exchange critiques of our drafts. I thank them in every book. If you mean an editor working with me to clean up a manuscript and keep me honest, again, I’ve been very fortunate, in particularly with Elana Wolff at Guernica. I don’t think everyone is so lucky. I have on occasion worked with editors who overstep.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
From the epigraph to Jorge Amado’s Tereza Batista: “Kindness is like water, invincible”. I don’t think this is true for every specific situation. I doubt kindness would help me in an argument with a Proud Boy. It might have helped, though, when said boy was growing up.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to essays)? What do you see as the appeal?
Essays are something else altogether. I think them through, work out the arguments, then craft. The essay may be more or less inspired, but once I work out what I want to argue, I know I’ll get there.
Fiction and poetry, at least for me, don’t work that way. If I know where I’m going to go with them, I’ve already failed. They are written, composed, teetering over the edge of a precipice. So, to answer, switching between essays and poetry or fiction isn’t difficult, as they are completely different enterprises; they just happen to both be made of words. Between poetry and fiction is rather more difficult, as a single precipice is usually more than sufficient for me.
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 essays and fiction, it’s take the day or the evening, write. For poetry, it’s stare at the black page, go walk, wake up in the middle of the night, etc. etc., the perverse dance familiar to every poet, I suspect.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Mostly nothing. Idle hands are the devils tools, or in my version: from idleness, art.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I spent quite some years outside Canada. I learned that home is the weather. So, the smell of melting snow.
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?
Yes, I think everything, the longest list would be far too limiting.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Again, any list would be limiting. And for me these change continuously. If I had to pick one, that would be the Epic of Gilgamesh, in its almost innumerable incarnations.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
That too would be a very long list: finish all those misshapen poems. Or throw them out.
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?
In this country I think there are few poets who don’t do something else to pay the bills. I’ve done quite a few something elses. As far as another vocation and not poetry, well, sculptor, but that would require talent in that domain. Or botanist, but again, requiring talent.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Writing requires very little capital outlay to get started: paper, pencil, and there isn’t much to gather up if you have to move.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
About a month ago I finally read, Virginia Woolf’s, A Room of One’s Own. Brilliant! How had a not read it before? Is it a “Great Book”? I don’t know, don’t think it matters. I’ll leave that sort of thing to Harold Bloom. The mini-series Chernobyl. What a study of human arrogance and vanity. Very timely, I think, in our self-induced plague.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I can’t say. I don’t.
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