Kayla has performed her poetry with accomplished NB musicians, the NB Youth Orchestra, and Tutta Music Orchestra. She composed, and performed, three original poems for the Tutta Musica Ovation project. Other notable collaborations include CraftNB's Atlantic Vernacular and Fundy projects, and broadside with Hard Scrabble Press.
Kayla holds an MA in English,
Creative Writing (UNB, Fredericton). She has worked as a technical editor on some
of Canada’s largest infrastructure projects and designed courseware for Air
Traffic Controllers. In 2021, she received a Top 20 Under 40 Award from the
Greater Moncton Chamber of Commerce for her dedication to the literary arts.
She works as an editor
and writing consultant.
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, That Light Feeling Under Your Feet, was actually my MA thesis (University of New Brunswick). It examines the two years I worked on three different cruise ships and the exploitative nature of that industry (racism, misogyny, neoimperialism, flags of convenience). In 2016, it won the WFNB Alfred G. Bailey prize for Best Unpublished Manuscript, and NeWest Press also selected it as an inaugural edition for their Crow Said poetry series which honours poetry in vein of Robert Kroetsch. A year after its publication, Jean-Philippe Raîche and I became Moncton's inaugural Poets Laureate (2019-2022).
As a narrative poetry collection, it took me five years to publish; I had to rewrite it twice. My goal was to pen a collection that could be enjoyed by general readers, but anyone interested in close reading would be able to pick out finer, theoretical points. The poems were more a part of a whole than individual pieces.
My most recent work is still narrative, but I am interested in narrative's relationship with itself as well as the page and performance, so story and form and sound. I like to experiment, and I tell a good story. I feel I have a gift to create an immersive experience.
Perhaps my recent work feels mysterious, freer, yet more condensed. I'm interested in inheritance, incantation, and surrealism. How space and image refocus text. Many readers have told me That Light Feeling feels as though they are absorbed into one long story, told in vignettes, and that it doesn't feel like poetry. A few fellow writers have told me that my recent work has a known yet otherworldly quality, like I am bringing them through a strange yet inherently familiar place.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Poetry was my first love. My mother taught me to read when I was two. My father read poetry to me and taught me to recite, so poetry and story have been with me since the beginning. I wrote short fiction for about ten years and perhaps I'll return to it, or finally get around to drafting my first novel. I also enjoy lyrical prose and the personal essay. For a time, I was a writing life advice columnist for the Miramichi Reader.
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?
Good question. I believe I just start the project and usually within the first year, something shifts the original focus, but not the concept. I am not a fast writer; during university I made peace with the fact that I wouldn't be publishing a collection every two years. I'm still working on my second book, so I'll let you know how long that project took me when I'm done ;).
Things usually gestate for a while and then rise to the surface when I'm ready for them (this could be days or years). Sometimes things just come to me, suddenly, and I must write them down.
An old friend of mine says that I "puke down the page", so my first drafts rarely look like the final versions. Depending on my subject I do sometimes write from copious notes, but I try to trim those down, as they can distract from my original concept.
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?
Poems usually begin with an opening and ending line, or a concept that has its own rhythm or language. Typically, I write longer pieces and experiment with line breaks, space and form.
Honestly, I'm not sure as I'm still working on my second book. I can say that overarching themes are important for me, both for structure and inspiration, but my poems are a random bestiary. So, I would say that my concepts, interests, and experiments inevitably build a collection.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I like to read publicly, and I love to read with writer friends. (I run the Attic Owl Reading Series with my friend Drew Lavigne, Moncton's current Anglophone Poet Laureate.) Readings can be great test runs for works in progress. Audiences are usually responsive to my work, and at a reading I can hear if the poem is working—does it flow, is the rhythm on-point, are my ideas carried through well, is my work connecting with the audience? An audience will generally trust an author, so I have to be sharp in discerning if more clarity is needed, or if something is too heavy, doesn't have the reaction I intended, etc.
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 first book looked at simulacra but I'm more interested in theories about "doing things to" language. For example, Jan Zwicky's concept of gestalt and metaphor, exploring and reinterpreting traditional styles and forms, poetry of the female grotesque, where visual art intersects with writing etc.
I would say I am not trying to answer questions so much as find peace, forge meaning, create a narrative around experiences that have indefinable answers. In my work, I don't think there's an answer, just a story, and I have observed that when I forge meaning, it carries a resonance that goes far beyond me. I feel the most valuable thing we can do as writers is to connect with a reader or an audience, to move them.
Perhaps the most current questions, or concerns, are about survival and identity, the individual and the group.
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?
In the larger culture, I would say the writer's role is awareness, and art. The value of both is often in question and undervalued. When I make school visits, I tell students that writing has value, that we, as writers, create culture, report on injustice, and we can change how people think and act.
Some writers feel they have a role and others do not want one. I feel that question is different for every genre and author. And the idea of a role, I think, goes back to who is seen and heard, and why? Perhaps the role of a writer is wonder. And from wonder, equality, equity and justice. Also art. Many of us write because we love to, and writing, in many ways, heals us, frees us.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I am an editor, but I don't have an editor. I prefer to mentor with a more experienced poet, such as Anne Simpson, or take workshops with skilled writers. I do, however, belong to a rather exceptional writing group. Their feedback plays an essential role in my work.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Max Ehrmann’s "Desiderata."
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?
My writing routine has never been a disciplined practice; I prefer to sit down and write when the piece comes. When the idea that has been gestating inside me seems to find its words and bubbles up. But what works best for me now is to write in the morning when I am fresh, and edit at night.
11 - When your writing gets stalled,
where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I usually have to leave the piece alone for about three weeks and then return to it when I've "forgotten" it. Then, it can usually speak clearly to me from the page, without me overthinking it.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Wild roses and cold Atlantic wind.
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?
For me, poetry distills life, distills a life, and therefore is not a one-dimensional expression either. I love ideas and experimenting, asking "what if..." and "what would that look like or sound like if..." which includes folding imagery and documents into my poetry. I have a busy mind, so many things interest me and can influence my work—language, culture, archiving, nature, sound, science, history, philosophy, theory, music and visual art all have their unique role in whatever piece I'm working on at the moment.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Forugh Farrokhzad, Kim Hyesoon, Anne Simpson, Khaled Khalifa, Elena Ferrante, Safia Elhillo, Zeina Hashem Beck, Layli Long Soldier, Sei Shonagon, Ocean Vuong, Jake Skeets, Alden Nowlan, Emily St. John Mandel, Mahmoud Darwish, the Brontës, Tanith Lee. My friends' writing, too, which is at various stages of publication: Shoshanna Wingate, Elizabeth Blanchard, Drew Lavigne, Margo Wheaton, Judy Bowman, Nancy King Schofield, Carol Steel, Rose Després, Jean-Philippe Raîche.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Swim (respectfully) with wild creatures. Travel Central Asia. Start an affordable writing retreat. Write a few novels.
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?
Psychology in some form, most likely where it intersects with criminology. Forensic psychology and behavioural analysis fascinate me. Or art conversation/restoration.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I was five years old when I told my family I wanted to be a writer. Even then it felt like a vocation. While I have worked various jobs, the past five years of my life working as an editor and writing consultant, and as Moncton's first Anglophone Poet Laureate, have been the most fulfilling of my life. There is a draw in my life that has returned me, again and again, to writing.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
It's a tie: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante and In Praise of Hatred by Khaled Khalifa.
Solaris (1972), based on the book by Stanislaw Lem, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, starring Natalya Bondarchuk and Donatas Banionis.
19 - What are you currently working on?
I'm working on my second poetry collection and two chapbooks.
My second book looks at how families mythologize themselves, what stories they tell, what was "forgotten" and recovered, historical influence, what is inherited (in many forms, such as predisposed illness, mental illness), and how we are, or are not, nurtured.
One chapbook examines female relationships and the deconstruction of dominate European patriarchal narratives (in literature and history) through a queer diasporic protagonist as she travels Europe and Canada.
The last chapbook project, which may
be amalgamated into the second poetry collection, examines the sudden death and
difficult life of my late mother.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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