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1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
This is my first book, so excited! At 37, I think I’m a bit later to the game than some of my peers. That’s okay though, I feel like I’m on a different timeline.
The process of writing my book really changed my life. I grew up in a lot of upheaval and poverty. We moved frequently—including large moves from Airdrie, Alberta to Water’s Lake, Florida (moves too numerous to list). Like my mother, I dropped out of high school and worked.
As an adult, I went back to school to get away from working minimum wage at Subway as a single mom. I had just left an abusive marriage and felt lost. I woke up each day and did what was in front of me, placing one foot in front of the other—making moves myself from Moscow, Idaho to Kelowna, British Columbia.
In Kelowna, I had no furniture and made a bed for my son out of my clothes and some blankets on the floor. I slept on the bare floor. I eventually got some furniture through the help of a women’s shelter. I kept going to class and kept going no matter what. Each day, one after the other.
I never thought someone like me could be a writer. Practical concerns and the practically oriented world told me I shouldn’t bet on art for liberation from poverty. However, I signed up for a creative writing class on a whim and then I got introduced to the world of writing by Matt Rader, Michael V. Smith, Nancy Holmes, Anne Flemming, and Margo Tamez. My life clicked into place when I spent my energy on writing creative nonfiction and poetry. Lyrical experimentation allowed me the intellectual and artistic freedom I needed so desperately. I applied to the MFA at UBC Okanagan and I wrote under the supervision of Matt Rader.
My MFA manuscript became my book. The process made me learn that I could be an artist. It was life changing to go from being cloistered in silence to solidified in lyrical expression.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I struggle at times with genre conventions and stricter boundaries between poetry and creative nonfiction. I think I work in a hybridized space of creative nonfiction and poetry—maybe I’m an experimental lyricist.
To get it out of the way, I’m not a fiction writer because I just gotta respond to those poets I love so much. I want to be in that long and ongoing poetic conversation even if I’m just a quiet contributor from the sidelines.
Sometimes people tell (what are to me) very funny narratives about what poverty means. You might hear someone say something like, “Poor people can’t understand such and such academic jargon…” and I have to chuckle to myself. I grew up poor in Alberta, Canada and then later rural Florida. Living poverty as a single mom myself felt almost natural, but my world was always full of poetry and conversation. My stepdad got me interested in W.B. Yeats as we drove backroads to the tent where we lived in north Florida. These conversations led to my love of Yeats, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Sonia Sanchez, and many more. I remember my stepdad explained in detail “Cuchulain’s Fight with the Sea” and to this day it’s still one of my favorite poems.
Poetry is a vignette that folds on itself. A moment of time I can revisit over and over. I always wanted to learn to time bend like Yeats or Hughes.
Big inspirations include Alicia Elliott (A Mind Spread Out on the Ground) and Chelene Knight (Dear Current Occupant). (It might be time for people to stop saying that class divides preclude people from lyricism and intellectual pursuits).
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?
A lot of my writing process happens when I’m walking or doing similar kinetic activities (even driving, shout out to John Keats and negative capability!) An image appears in my mind and then my thoughts shift laterally between seemingly unassociated memories, sensory information, and “school type” knowledge. A poem forms in the spaces connecting everything. The process is lightning or a dripping faucet that stains a bathtub red over years and years.
Sometimes deadlines motivate me to move thoughts onto the page, but generally I write after sequences and patterns of images have sufficiently developed.
My drafts are often close to the final shape, but I spend time paring down superfluous language and ideas. Then I give the work a lot of room and revisit it with fresh eyes and change what I stumble over.
4 - Where does a poem or work of creative non-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?
When I was a teenager, I had a huge collage of punk rock pictures, Polaroids, and ephemera all over my walls. Flyers from shows, discarded drumsticks, patches, stickers, pieces of fabric.
I think when I work on writing, I work in the same collage style. The work is a collection of ephemera and concrete items associated with music duct taped to the wall.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Performance has always been a part of my writing process, but with the amount I work lately I don’t get to engage with readings like I used to. I think I’d like to change that in the future and reprioritize my own writing process through readings and community.
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?
For theory, I’m looking at negative capability, lyric philosophy (Jan Zwicky), lyric inquiry (Nancy Holmes and Lorri Neilsen Glenn), scholartistry (Lorri Neilsen Glenn), poetic methods/methodologies, confession (Melissa Febos), and ekphrasis. Pages could swell with theories. Let me try brevity: what happens when lyric expression meets memory to defamiliarize difficult and taboo topics? How can you sing domestic violence, leaning trailer houses, a tent and an abandoned station wagon in the woods?
It’s all the same well-worn grooves from William Blake’s musings on poverty in London to Alicia Elliott’s invocation of allusion to concretize upheaval. What’s my contribution to it all? A collection of poems that are tannins in the Suwanee River and dust on the Coquihalla.
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?
Writers are important for process. People are collectively forgetting process. Process is slow and creative and unending. I think my role is to hold onto process for myself and my poetry.
I don’t know what the writer’s role should be ideally. I really like when Mary Ruefle writes in Madness, Rack, and Honey about taking a vase and putting it on your head and then you’re an upside-down flower. Maybe writers should be/do that.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I love it! I’m not precious about my work.
Once my former supervisor, Matt Rader, took a poem I was struggling with and broke the lines into tercets. My world shifted with each line and new enjambment. Outside perspectives are fun and interesting. Learning how my work is perceived and received gives me information to incorporate into my lyrical patterns.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
That writing improves with time and practice. Sounds simple, but it’s helpful for me to remember that I’ll get better the more I read, write, and practice over and over.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to creative non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
I don’t view them as divided and sometimes struggle to fit my work into categories. Maybe CNF can be divided into fiction-like CNF and poetry-like CNF. Maybe my CNF is just a bunch of really long prose poems. And for appeal, I suppose it’s not everyone’s taste. Collages of fragmentary vignettes are lovely to me though.
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 teach a lot! Composition, critical reading and writing, literature, creative writing, interpersonal communication. For 3 years, I commuted from Calgary to Red Deer, often waking at 4.00 AM and getting back at 10.00 PM. My life has revolved around teaching and paying the bills as a single mother with skyrocketing costs of living. I write when I can: when I’m not burnt out from grading, emails, and emotionally complicated problems. Seems to work okay enough.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I go for a drive, a walk, tidy up the house a bit. Then I read “The Lady of Shalott” and “Skunk Hour” and will usually be good to go.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Mud and palm fronds on a hot Florida day.
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?
Punk rock, TV shows, Warren Zevon, brands of shoes, history, roadways, abandoned buildings, philosophy, movies. You name it.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Matt Rader, Michael V. Smith, Nancy Holmes, Margo Tamez, Suzette Mayr, Alicia Elliott, Chelene Knight, Molly Cross Blanchard, Mallory Tater, Melissa Weiss, Robert Lowell, Rosanna Deerchild, Sonia Sanchez, W.B. Yeats, Lord Tennyson, Rita Dove, Joy Harjo. I could go on, but these are very important ones.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
See the Grand Canyon. Go on a writing retreat where childcare is not an issue. Gain stability and permanence in my employment. Pay off my student loans. Get a Canada Council grant. Through-hike the Appalachian Trail. Re-watch Krull and maybe Ladyhawke too.
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 used to apprentice with a lay midwife. My great grandmother was a midwife too. Maybe I would have liked to follow that path.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Writing was easier on my body and mind. It was a way out of extreme poverty.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Book:
Molly Cross Blanchard’s Exhibitionist
Movie:
(I know it’s a part of the military industrial complex…) Top Gun: Maverick.
20 - What are you currently working on?
A hybrid CNF and poetry collection using ekphrasis to explore domestic violence.
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