12 or 20 (second series) questions with Robert Bringhurst

Robert Bringhurst winner of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence and former Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, trained initially in the sciences at MIT but has made his career in the humanities. He is also an officer of the Order of Canada and the recipient of two honorary doctorates. He lives on Quadra Island, BC.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Writing books is like putting one foot in front of the other. It hasn’t changed my life; it’s been my life. Not doing it would have changed me quite a bit, or so I imagine – but I can’t tell you exactly how, since in fact that didn’t happen.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

There was never any question. Even in the beginning, when I really didn’t have a clue what poetry was, I was pulled in that direction. I’ve written a lot of nonfiction in my life, and that’s what pays the rent, but poetry came first, and comes first, because it is first.

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 can’t tell you how or when anything starts. I’m always looking in the other direction when it happens. I don’t guess anything would start if I were standing over it watching. It’s clearly a biological process, but it often feels more geological: slower than molasses, with inexplicable, unpredictable sudden lurches, like spring floods and mudslides. Scott Fitzgerald said all good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. Maybe so. For me, it’s more like trying to get my head out of the torrent often enough to keep on breathing. Yet there’s no sensation of speed. That’s what I mean by geological.

4 - Where does a poem or work of translation 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?

Books grow like trees. They start in the ground. I’ve written the odd piece for periodicals, and I’ve worked – this was decades ago – for both daily and weekly papers. There are people who do that kind of writing brilliantly; I don’t. Books are what make sense to me. I like, and need, their glacial sense of time. But trees start as seedlings, not as trees, and books don’t start as books; they start as a fragile mouthful of words.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

Readings for me are a vital part of the editing and revision process. That’s because I hear the poem differently when I’m reading it in public than when I’m reading it to myself. If I were in charge, most readings would be scheduled in the month or two before a book goes to press rather than after it’s been published.

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 have no theoretical concerns.

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?

There are many kinds of writers, serving lots of different roles. But when a culture is disintegrating, as ours is, most writers are going to play their roles, whatever they are, on a pretty small stage. Some will find their audience in a single town or a single archipelago. For others, it might be an equally small number of people scattered all over the globe. If a role in the larger culture were what I wanted most, I’d have a better chance now as a demagogue than as a writer. That’s too steep a price to pay.

We always used to console ourselves by saying the best writers have their impact after they’re dead – and that was in fact partially true for 2,500 or 3,000 years. Now it’s a fantasy: the literary counterpart of the tooth fairy and Santa Claus.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Every writer needs an editor, but not all writers need the same editor, and not just any editor will do. Great publishers have a knack for making matches between editors and writers. It seems to me great editors are even scarcer than great writers, and great publishers are scarcer than great editors. On the whole, nevertheless, I’ve been lucky.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Shut up and listen. Or to put it more politely, Pay attention.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to non-fiction to translation)? What do you see as the appeal?

It took me a long time to learn to write half-decent poetry, and even longer to learn to write half-decent prose. Translation helped, on both fronts. Being able to move from one to another is just as important to me as being able to go for a walk. It’s a way of keeping fit and rounding out my education.

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 work all the time – waking and sleeping, walking and sitting, writing and not writing. But the thing I most want, first thing in the morning, is just to be left alone so I can find out what I’ve learned since the morning before.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I live in the country where there are always things to do. I don’t mean there are always amusements and distractions; I mean there is always broken stuff to be fixed, half-built stuff to be finished, there’s trail maintenance to do and a forest to be cared for. When I don’t have anything brilliant to say to a piece of paper, I do carpentry or typography or forestry, or I put on my boots and head up the trail. Or if all else fails, I go read a book.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

No fragrance really, but quite a few sounds. The sound of ravens talking, and of tree frogs singing, and of nighthawks diving, pileated woodpeckers beating their slow tempo, band-tailed pigeons cooing, juncos ticking, nuthatches honking their little horns.

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?

It’s true, David said that. Many others have said it too. But not all of them were saying the same thing. Some books, of course, are just reactions or responses to other books, and the farther you travel in that direction, the thinner and slipperier the ice gets. It seems to me the best books come from reality: from the attempt to say hello and thank you to reality. Even those books are related to other books – and to music, science, visual art, as you say. But “coming from” and “related to” or “benefiting from” are not the same.

It’s also true that more good books – and string quartets and sonatas and sculptures and paintings – get made in healthy cultures, where other such things are being made, and fewer get made in sick cultures, where goodness is more likely to get squished before it flowers. “Books come from books” could refer to that fact: the fact that good books are good for each other. It could also mean – and this, I think, is how David meant it – that literature is basically self-referential, like social media. He and I disagreed about that.

A lot of so-called literature (and music and science and visual art) is indeed fundamentally self-referential. And for that very reason, it’s dispensable. The important work – in art and science alike – might include a few self-referential echoes, but essentially it’s not about itself.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

All the good writers and all the good books are important to me. But a lot of the most important “writers” for me are not writers at all. They’re oral poets, most of whom couldn’t read or write and never needed to.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

See how this plays out: how this gruesome and beautiful species does itself in.

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?

When I was eight years old, living in Calgary, the guys who came up the alley once a week with their garbage truck looked to me like the most interesting people around, and maybe the happiest. So I wanted to be a garbage man. I still take an active interest in garbage. Some years later, I wanted to be a percussionist, then a lutenist. In fact I was a working drummer for a time, but I never worked as a lutenist, and the life of a back-up musician wasn’t for me. Still, in a way I got my wish: I’ve been, like everybody else, a non-professional garbage man most of my life.

When I started university, I had in mind to become either a physicist or an architect. In middle age, my chief regret was that I hadn’t majored in biology.

Except for playing the lute, all these professions seem to have changed quite a lot in the course of my lifetime. They’ve changed because society has changed. In North America, garbage collectors spend less time on the ground and more in their comfy air-conditioned cabs, with music machines plugged into their ears. And they don’t look as happy. Garbage itself has also changed. It’s now mostly plastic. And physicists now join teams and sit at computers hooked up to still bigger computers. Physics has changed, though physical reality hasn’t. But writing is still just writing, as playing the lute is still playing the lute – a nice thing to do; very nice, but I’m better at writing.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

For one thing, speaking poetry, and composing it, is another form – a subtle and quiet form – of percussion. That’s what distinguishes speaking from singing. The speaking voice is tuned to no specific pitch, and it isn’t tied to a metronome, but its syllables vary in pitch and intensity and duration, and they do this in patterns and increments, not arbitrarily. So the speaking voice can play the drums and talk at the same time. That, for me, is a reason for writing.

Another quite wonderful thing about literature is, it’s low-tech. No supercomputers or fancy equipment required. No expensive and delicate instruments either, apart from mind and voice and heart. Yet you can peer into the universe by doing it. Really you can.

And another excellent thing is, it’s essentially private. No assistants or apprentices required, almost never any meetings to attend, and really not much time in public. Yet you can share whatever you learn. And others can too. What could be better?

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

The last good book I read is the one I just finished: Annie Proulx’s Fen, Bog & Swamp. But you asked about great books. That question has no answer. All the great books I’ve ever read are books that I’m still reading. None of them is the last. Nor could I tell you, at this late date, which was the first. As for great films, I just don’t know. I live in the boonies, where there are no movie theatres, and I spend too much time with computer screens as it is. I’d really rather look at a printed page. So, much as I love a good film, it’s been years since I saw one.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Too many things at once, but it’s bad luck to talk about what’s cooking.

[24 March 2023, updated 17 April 2023]

12 or 20 (second series) questions;