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?
My first collection of poems, Sew with Butterflies, was the realization of a dream. I was so young when it was published, and I knew nothing about publishing, except that a publisher (Steel Bananas) had heard me give a reading and asked if I had a collection I could submit. Their belief in me at that stage meant everything. The book that emerged held, at the heart of it, that moment of humility: that my poems had spoken to another human being. It was frightening and filling and fuelling.
Bonememory, my forthcoming second collection of poems, took a long time to write – or at least to arrive at writing. Although I published two chapbooks in between, Bonememory is set to appear about 10 years after my first collection. I needed that time to grow and believe in myself as a poet, and I think Bonememory represents that growth – it holds the poems I feel most proud of.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
In another interview, I’ve written about how at seven years old I asked my father for a notebook and began writing poems. I can’t explain this in any other way, except to say that poetry came to me, not I to it. I wrote it before I understood what it was – I am still trying to understand what it is.
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 am a slow writer. Excruciatingly slow. In conversation with my creative writing students, I’ve been championing the slow writer, the non-prolific writer, the ‘I-just-moved-a-comma-today’ writer. But I’ve also been reminding them that writing takes place off the page as much as it does on the page – I am constantly thinking about and in poetry.
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 my writing fits into both of those descriptions. Bonememory began as individual poems whose patterns I later traced and pieced into a collection, as did Sew with Butterflies. But the new project I’m working on began with an idea for a collection, which each of the poems is moving toward.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Even after all these years of reading my poetry aloud, I still get nervous before and exhausted after readings. It’s a kind of exposure (in both uncomfortable senses of vulnerability and publicity). But I do enjoy readings, especially when they allow me to connect with others in the audience; I deeply appreciate conversations after a reading. To hear how a poem landed is a gift.
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?
In Bonememory, the questions I am working with are about how memory is held in our bones and what that means personally, familialy, intergenerationally, collectively. While I was writing many of the poems in Bonememory, I was simultaneously working on a postdoctorate project that centred around listening to Holocaust testimonies. And I was also watching and reading about horrific world events, including Russia’s invasion of my home country of Ukraine, and, here in Canada, the findings of unmarked graves at former residential schools. These violences are part of the questions, too, as are my own limits as a viewer of these violences and the potentially nefarious tentacles of empathy.
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?
Dionne Brand described Inventory, her 2006 long poem about the socio-political crises at the turn of this century, as an “antenna of the time.” In my own writing, I am often drawn to responding to the cultural and political moments we live in (when I can stomach writing about them, and that often takes time) and to ethics. But I don’t think that needs to be the role of the writer, especially if it doesn’t feel honest for that individual writer. I think it’s dangerous to prescribe a role for any artist.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I am so often a solitary writer, but I think working with an editor is a remarkable and imperative opportunity. My editor for Bonememory at the University of Calgary Press’s Brave and Brilliant Series, Helen Hajnoczky, was wonderful – attentive, honest, thoughtful. She offered care not only to each individual poem but also to the collection as a whole. It’s a gift to receive that kind of attention – it makes the work stronger. When I published my chapbook Stone Blossom with Anstruther Press, Jim Johnstone was likewise incredible, which I knew he would be from working with him as a mentor through Arc Poetry Magazine’s Writer-in-Residence mentorship program. Jim helped select the poems that became Stone Blossom and read each with a keen and honest eye. I am deeply indebted to the editors who have made my poems stronger.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I once heard a writer say, paraphrasing Lynda Barry, that one should touch the work every day. I like the spaciousness the word “touch” allows: you can shift a dash; you can move a word from one line to another. Touching the work keeps it close to you, keeps it breathing inside of you.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
My academic work means I am constantly moving between poetry and critical prose. I am at my best when I am merging the two. But, honestly, I think what I know best is how to write poetry, and I’ve learned to pass it off as prose.
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?
Most of the time, I don’t have a routine so much as a commitment. In the “my (small press) writing day” essay I previously wrote for you some years back, I speak of my writing day as an attempt to reach for the magic of poetry. That commitment to reach for poetry can look like dedicated writing time, but it can also look like reading or watching a sunset. There are periods when I have more of a set writing routine, and there are periods when I come to writing when it calls me. I work at not being too hard on myself during the routine-light times, but I am happiest when I am writing.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Other words. The writing of other writers reminds me what can be done with language. Also, moving away from the project – allowing the time it needs to awaken again – is part of the writing: this can look like walking, reading, listening to music, staring out a window.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
The smell of my sweetheart.
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?
All of the above. A sound can lead to a poem. Or a smell. Or a brush stroke. Or science – I recently wrote a poem about a blue whale’s heart. I am especially enamoured of light, “a certain slant of light,” as Emily Dickinson wrote.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Oh, this is a huge question, because there are so many – poets and otherwise! Paul Celan has had an enormous influence on my writing – both my approach to language and my approach to the silences around and within language. Other writers that are indispensable for me include: Emily Dickinson, Anne Carson, Toni Morrison, Ilya Kaminsky, Ocean Vuong, Dionne Brand, Wisława Szymborska, Valzhyna Mort, Zadie Smith, and Rainer Maria Rilke.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’d like to write more creative nonfiction and, perhaps someday, even fiction. But mostly I feel that I love poetry too much to stray far from it for long.
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?
A professor, which I am fortunate to be, and which allows me to write and be inspired by the writing of my students. Alternatively, a psychologist: I am interested in the inner thoughts occupying (tormenting?) people’s minds, in what’s underneath the surface. I think a psychologist and a writer have this in common.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Was it Elie Wiesel who said one should only write if they could not live without writing? That’s why I write.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I recently read Elizabeth Rosner’s Third Ear: Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening, which was published last year. It’s a compassionate and thoughtful nonfiction book in which Rosner beautifully threads together personal narrative with science, art, and theory. I had the pleasure of listening to it as an audiobook read by Rosner.
I’ve been watching some wonderful world cinema. I particularly love Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love. It’s visually stunning, and there is so much power in what remains unsaid in this film.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I am working on a new collection of poems through a Calgary Institute for the Humanities Fellowship: the poems are about the tension between my intolerance to noise (I have auditory sensitivity) and my reliance on sound (I often rely on auditory accommodations). It’s a collection that challenges me to work with and through sound.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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