Dale Tracy is the author of the chapbook The Mystery of Ornament (above/ground press, 2020), the chapbook Celebration Machine (Proper Tales Press, 2018), the chappoem What It Satisfies (Puddles of Sky Press, 2016), and the monograph With the Witnesses: Poetry, Compassion, and Claimed Experience (McGill-Queen’s, 2017). Her first full-length poetry collection is Derelict Bicycles (Anvil Press, 2022). Her poetry has appeared in publications like filling Station, Touch the Donkey, and The Goose: A Journal of Arts, Environment, and Culture in Canada. She is a faculty member in the English Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and lives on unceded Coast Salish territory.
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?
The process of selection for these publications helped me know better which sorts of my own poems I like best. Through that process, I think that I’m increasing my precision when I write.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I think that I process the world in a way that is like reading and writing poems. My memory is not great in terms of facts and chronology, even for my own life. I seem to remember around things (pattern, mood, and relationship) more than the things themselves.
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 don’t often have a project in mind. I write and see what happens, with many returns for revision.
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 think in short pieces. A longer project only comes into being when enough short poems call together.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I like the communal listening of public readings. It’s a form of attention that feels, to me, uncommon.
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’m trying to answer the questions of how to live and what sorts of things living can mean.
The theoretical concerns involved in trying to answer those questions are something like these:
-what meaning is
-what kind of knowledge poetry can make
-how reading and writing are experiences
-how expectations held in form and pattern shape meaning
-how much to directly express and how much to indirectly enact the ethical responsibilities of entering public discourse
-how experience (idiosyncratic) fits with communication (shared conventions)
-how environments shape the environment of my mental life
-what it is one aims for when it isn’t mimesis (is it ornament?)
-what the relationship between life and art is (since art is part of life)
-what self-reflexive art performs
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 writers have as many roles as people in general do, in that we need people doing all kinds of different things so that we can each get a more complete idea of the world through collected efforts.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I wish I could have an editor for all my actions. It’s comforting to have someone else confirm that what I’m doing is working out before it carries on in its life in the wider world.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I can’t remember if anyone told me this advice, or if I learned from watching: the best way to write poetry and happen upon poetic opportunities is to be around other poets. (In-person events aren’t the only way—online, on radio, and in the mail have been other ways that I’ve felt part of poetry community.)
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
I’m trying to answer the same questions in poetry and in critical prose, so I don’t feel the move in that way. Writing in critical prose took a lot more training for me because the conventions are more standardized and because I think in a spiral rather than a linear shape. Spirals are great for poetry.
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?
I write for poetry, for teaching, and for research, so I usually have multiple documents open to move between. I’m writing or reading something for most of the day, most days.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I learn about something new, usually about biology or physics.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
The smell of the pulp and paper mill—not a desirable smell, but it’s a truth of how encompassing industry can be, especially in a small town.
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?
Nature and science influence my work the most. I think this is because I use writing poetry as a process to understand things I don’t already understand.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
The answer to this question is different all the time (I need different writers at different moments). Faced with questions like this one, I panic, and I get the urge to list everything I’ve ever read. I think that the truest answer to this question is that I need a huge diversity of writers and writings for work and my life more broadly more than I need any particular ones.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I can’t think of anything! I mostly approach the world with an open curiosity instead of goals. I think that not having specific goals in mind helps me to notice exciting opportunities when they get nearby.
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 would like a job that lets me be moving around outside, like a mail carrier. Unfortunately, my body wouldn’t have put up with that work very well. I’m lucky that I have the job I have and that I can walk to work.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I feel best when I am reading or writing. I need that kind of disappearance of myself to recharge for being in the world.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Books: Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Dispossessed; Helen Oyeyemi’s Gingerbread; Nick Harkaway’s Gnomon
(I obsessed over what “great” might mean to people, and then I cheated with three. They’re all novels because I can straightforwardly tell you if I enjoyed reading a novel, but for poetry and plays I find that my feelings about them have to do with what I do with them in my mind after I read—I enjoy putting them into new action.)
Film: Swan Song (2021)
20 - What are you currently working on?
At Kwantlen Polytechnic University, I am preparing to teach a course studying life writing and I am working as part of an interdisciplinary team to foster critical and creative thinking around climate change and social inequalities related to climate.
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