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 book changed my life in that the publisher I most desired agreed to publish it, and my dream came true.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I saw poems doing things that no other form of writing or art could do. They were more eviscerating and life changing than any painting or song. I didn’t want to make anything else.
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’s a slow process with many drafts, revisions, edits and pencil marks.
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?
A poem usually begins for me in the woods behind the house, in a field, along the shore or in the garden.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
They’re neither part of my creative process nor counter. I don’t absorb information well aurally, so I don’t listen to the radio or podcasts or attend poetry readings. I’ll sometimes do readings if asked because I understand other people enjoy them. In terms of promoting poetry collections, I think readings are one of the most inefficient ways of raising awareness about a book; they’re the literary equivalent of burning coal to produce electricity—dimly lit, energy intensive and unsustainable in the longterm of a writer’s daily life.
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?
My poems are generally situated in the place where I live and grew up—the south shore of Nova Scotia.
My first collection, Naturalism, An Annotated Bibliography (Gaspereau Press, 2022) explores the way humans’ relationship with nature is often mediated through text and guidebooks, engaging with things in the forest that show humans once lived there: wild apple, stone walls, clearing piles. Just as we can’t seem to understand nature without naming the things we see, we’re unable to move through it without leaving markers of the lives we’ve led. In this way, a rain-worn ironstone wall in a clearing of hemlock inadvertently becomes the name we tried to form for what we saw in nature, but failed: a mark or word that even the rain couldn’t wear away.
My second collection, currently in draft, is titled Folklore of Lunenburg County and uses Helen Creighton’s 1950 ethnographic collection of fragmented experiences of the supernatural in this part of Nova Scotia as a departure point on the way to something darker and more hidden, exploring the way that the supernatural has been an analog for loss, disappearance and violence, and the way that early experiences of the supernatural in this area were often mediated by love, community, and neighbours. The collection is supported by a Research & Creation Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I think that the role of a poet is to burn what can’t live and cauterize what mustn’t die.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I find that literary magazine editors in Canada rarely suggest or request edits, though magazine editors in the U.S. are more proactive in this regard; magazine edits, when offered, are valuable. In terms of book editors, working with Andrew at Gaspereau when editing the book was more than essential.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
It was what Alice Munro told The Paris Review in 1994 in relation to what place and landscape meant to her and all that she had written: “I’ll never leave.”
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?
I get up around 5:30 a.m. and sit on my kitchen floor for a while, writing in my notebook, before I make coffee. Just after waking up, my brain is still making analogies and strange connections between things before the rational part of the world has come into focus. I fit in writing and edits into various points throughout the day: parked in my ’98 Rav4, sitting on the porch, waiting for dinner to cook, waiting for appointments and in the bath.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Nature, and the places in nature that show humans were once there.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Garlic, just harvested.
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?
If that’s what David W. McFadden once said, I think he is dead wrong, and the idea that books come from books is monstrous, framing their growth as a kind of cancer. It’s truly levelling and devaluing of all that is rich in the world.
Your question also frames nature as a form, like music or visual art, which is an interesting concept. Nature is the most important influence on my work, but I don’t see it as a form. If we’re talking about human life, we’re the form of the work, and nature is the ending. In a while, when all of this is gone and there are no longer humans, nature will still be here—the blank page after the book ends, the cover that holds it together, the table on which the book is set, the bedrock under the table.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Alice Munro, Robyn Sarah, Carl Phillips, George Johnston, Jack Gilbert, Jenny George, Gabrielle Bates, Aria Aber, Patrick Modiano, Louise Glück, Mavis Gallant, Thomas Wyatt, Chaucer, W.S. Merwin, Linda Gregg, Richard Siken, Anne Sexton, Denise Jarrott, Jose Hernandez Diaz, Despy Boutris, Catherine Pond, Taneum Bambrick, Hailey Leithauser, A. E. Stallings, Alice Oswald, Kevin Young, George Oppen, Ashley Anna McHugh.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’d like to buy a woodstove.
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?
If I couldn’t write, I’d rather be dead.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
It was the smallest and most fatal knife in the drawer.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. Near Dark by Kathryn Bigelow.
19 - What are you currently working on?
I’m working on my next collection of poems, Folklore of Lunenburg County.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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