12 or 20 (second series) questions with Peter Dubé

Peter Dubé is the author, co-author or editor of a dozen books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. His novella, Subtle Bodies, an imagined life of French surrealist René Crevel was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award, and his recent work, a novel in prose poems entitled The Headless Man, was shortlisted for both the A. M. Klein Prize and the ReLit award. He was a member of the editorial committee of the contemporary art magazine Espace, art actuel for 18 years and is currently co-editor of The Philosophical Egg, an organ of living surrealism. He lives and works in his hometown of Montreal.

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?

As is the case for so many questions, there are at least two answers to this. One concerns the writing of the book, which involved teaching myself how to write a “book” rather than a poem, a story, or an essay. Thus in some ways it changed my approach to writing, and assisted in shaping my process, which had a profound impact. A second answer regards publication. The appearance of Hovering World (my first book) did not have a significant impact on my life in material terms, but it did expand my community of writers as it led to new encounters through more readings, touring, joining the Writers’ Union, and so on. And those encounters and friendships are things for which I am profoundly grateful. In terms of its effects on later work, a first book can, and in my case did, lay the ground, as it were, It established a number of concerns which I continue to explore –-hopefully – in greater depth and in diverse formal permutations.

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

The truth is I have written across genres (poetry, fiction, and nonfiction) for most of the time I’ve written in a serious way. Genre represents possibility for me, rather than constraint. Thus I will usually gravitate toward a form I feel suits a particular project particularly well. This also partly accounts for my interest in hybrid forms. My earliest publications were poems and short stories. They appeared in literary magazines and journals; then I began to publish reviews and articles in newspapers and art magazines. My first book, however, was a novel, Hovering World. What unites my work across the plurality of genres, is an enduring interest in figuration, specifically metaphor: its possibilities as a mode of thought and perception rather than simply a literary technique, and its larger import in the realm of the social, the way it creates associative leaps and consequently, connection.

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?

An honest answer to this question is tricky since it requires one to define what is meant by “to start.” I raise the point because I maintain a regular notebook practice and am constantly writing down notes, observations, fleeting thoughts, things I see on the street or overhear in the metro, and very often it is one such note or other that will spark some writing. This can happen weeks, months, or more after the note was initially taken. Once the spark is struck however and I begin writing. a form often emerges and solidifies relatively quickly. That form may shift a bit over the course of composition, but will generally still be at least somewhat recognizable at the end. What does shift a great deal is the details. (And I am a committed polisher of my work, so the veneer or surface definitely changes.)

4 - Where does a poem or work of 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?

The answer to this one is already present in my answer to question number 3 above. But perhaps I can offer a concrete example here as an elaboration. My book The Headless Man, for example, grew out of my interest in George Bataille’s image of the “acephale”. My interest in him led to a long period of reading, after which I’d thought I’d worked through the obsession. Of course, he resurfaced one day and insisted on being heard. I was looking through some old notebooks and found a few pages recording some of my findings regarding that acephalic figure. I wrote a poem responding to the image, a single poem, in which I sought to tease out a contemporary significance for this figure. However, in no time at all it proved to need more room to grow. And, it became a book, a book as hybrid as the image’s history. (The image first surfaces, as far I’ve been able to determine, in the Greek magical papyri, but subsequently mutates over time becoming an antifascist allegory in the Twentieth Century and then - in my hands — a novel in prose poems that I hope honours the complexity of his millennia long trajectory.

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

The short answer to this one is: absolutely yes! Readings are important in all sorts of ways. First I see literature/writing as partly (an important part) about sound, rhythm, voice (in a variety of senses), and - once again — connection. Reading directly to an audience centres those things. On top of that, it is a unique opportunity to see and hear from your readers/audience in real time and determine what is working especially well, and how. It is a conduit for feedback. And the conversations after a reading are often revelatory and engaging too.

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?

Although ideas and questions certainly emerge in a piece during the writing process itself, I have noted that a number of recurring theoretical/philosophical concerns run through the body of my work in ways both more and less subterranean. One of the main ones, for example, is phenomenological in nature, and about the tricky relationship between experience and account — the manner in which our lives are made meaningful –- indeed are made — by how we talk about or explain them. Another, and clearly related one, might be language and its operations, the ways in which it embodies/enables/elaborates thought. Beyond such abstract philosophical matters however, the work tends to investigate the desire for, and experience of, community and its tricky relationship to individuality too.

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?

Needless to say, the present historical moment is a difficult one for writers. Social, political and technological change has complicated life for everyone, writers included. That said, I’m not prescriptivist by nature, so I hesitate to make blanket statements about the role of the writer as such. I am more inclined to feel that each writer will create her/his/their own role and such a role is likely to emerge naturally from the kind of work they produce.

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

This is an interesting, if difficult, question; I will simply say, my experience has varied. The occasions on which I have found working with an editor incredibly helpful and rewarding have consistently been when the editor was sufficiently widely-read to recognize a variety of aesthetic traditions and consequently able to look at, and work with, a particular text on its own terms, with an understanding of its specific stakes, interests and project, and without  attempting to impose some other, arbitrary, form on it. The less successful cases for me were those in which the editor had a fixed preconception of what made for “good” or “literary” writing. This invariably, in the end, produces a mutilated and inauthentic text.

Happily, I have worked with more editors of the former type.

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

If we are talking about writing advice specifically, then it would be the caution I received years ago to not worry about “writing a ‘perfect’ first draft. That a first draft is “a starting point, and not a finishing line.” Happily I did take that to heart; my first complete drafts are now always a place to begin polishing. If we mean advice for getting through life’s tougher moments, I’d have to hearken back to the wise words of Patsy Stone (in Absolutely Fabulous) when she said “Darling, finish the beaujolais and walk away from it.” That’s a handy recommendation for someone like me, who might have a tendency to take the small stuff a little too seriously at times.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (novels to short stories to essays to poems)? What do you see as the appeal?

In fact, this comes quite naturally to me; I’ve been writing poetry and fiction in tandem since I was a teenager. I suppose this stems from my deep interest in all of the possibilities of language, all the cool stuff one might be able to do with it, and the desire to investigate those possibilities. Nonfiction and critical writing came to me a little later in my twenties, I suppose… but those too arise from the same curiosity in many ways.

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 am a morning writer; I prefer to get out new writing early, as close to when I get up as possible –- while the gates to the unconscious, as it were, are still somewhat ajar, and the business of the day has not yet cluttered my mind. Afternoons I tend to focus on looking over and editing stuff.

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

A nice walk is usually helpful to me. I get up and go outside to get my blood pumping in time to the rhythms of the city. The exercise and the sights, sounds and energy help recharge the battery and almost invariably provide me with some image or snippet of talk that will get me back to work. For really serious blockages I have also been known to use some of the techniques I’ve learned from surrealism; a little bit of automatic writing will get the words flowing again and is likely to provide an image or phrase as a kind of starting point for beginning anew.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Chanel No. 5, in some ways. (That was my Mum’s perfume when I was a little fella and it always calls up my childhood for me. Hence the deepest sense of home.) The odour of a particular type of cookie has the same effect on me too, I might note.

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?

Given that I’ve written about and reviewed art for decades, my imagination is clearly fed by works of visual art: contemporary, modern, and some earlier periods as well.  Further, since I’m a movie buff and did graduate studies in cinema, the movies are just about omnipresent in my consciousness. Finally, I should reprise something I said above too: the city. I am an urban creature, and the presence, energy, beauty and brilliant noise of a large city feed my imagination in particular ways few other things can.

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

My personal canon would clearly include the surrealists for sure, as well as gay liberationist writers and the New Narrative group. Those streams of writing are vital sources for my work, my thinking, and my politics. They also help provide a sort-of framework for my approach to daily life at the same time. Finally, there’s no way for me to talk about the important influences on my literary work properly understood without naming Angela Carter. My encounter with her books was absolutely transformational.

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

The list of things that interest and tempt me is very long indeed and features travel destinations, workout objectives, and various possible encounters and experiences, but if I restrict myself to just my creative output: I am presently working on a friend’s film project, and am very much enjoying it. This has somehow triggered my long set-aside interest in movie-making, so who knows…    though time and money are a factor here needless to say.

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?

As a teenager, I trained as an actor for several years, and was fairly serious about it; I suppose, if writing hadn’t intervened, I might have pursued that path. I also, at some point in my undergraduate studies, entertained the notion of studying the law, so that could have been a possibility too, if it hadn’t lost its appeal so quickly. In the end, writing was the only choice that really worked for me.

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

That decision surely begins with a natural inclination or predisposition, and with being a reader. Being someone who loved words, stories, and poems and found real joy in them led me to understand their power to move. That in turn made me want to try it out myself. Once I began, I discovered exercising the imagination helped one engage with what is in excess of reality: all the vital potential and complex possibility underlying some situations and experiences. Writing about them — putting them down on paper — made that potential feel more real somehow, and –– as importantly –– gave them an enduring trace. That closed the circle for me, and I was hooked.

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

I recently read Brendan Connell's Metrophilias which struck me as walking the line between short fiction and prose poetry wonderfully, and doing so while being imbued with a nicely realized, frequently weird, and sometime disturbing, eroticism.

As for a film, well, I recently enjoyed Jan Svankmajer’s Insect which was, to put it simply, astounding. I watched it as half of a double feature that also included a rewatch of Cruising. (That, I must say — as a sidebar — was an a very interesting combination of viewing.)

20 - What are you currently working on?

Having just published a new chapbook of poems and a hefty work of nonfiction/poetics I am back to fiction and midway through a new novel.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

VERSeFest 2025 : March 25-29 : schedule now online!

OUR FESTIVAL SCHEDULE IS NOW FULLY ONLINE: Check out the schedule for the fifteenth annual VERSeFest: Ottawa's International Poetry Festival! readings and performances by Jessica Hiemstra, Em Dial, Susan J. Atkinson, Oana Avasilichioaei, Kimberly Quiogue Andrews, Xénia Gould, Nshannacappo (Neal Shannacappo), Luna Cardenas, Rebecca Kempe, King Kimbit, Kaz Mega, Dumi Deja, Salem Paige, Laurie Koensgen, Adrienne Stevenson, Chelene Knight, Pamela Mosher, Alexis Vollant, Andy Weaver, Terese Mason Pierre, Phil Hall, Eileen Myles, Zoe Whittall, Chloé LaDuchesse, Stephanie Roberts, Bridget Huh and Sara Berkeley! poetry workshops by Eileen Myles and Phil Hall (with limited spaces)! a free daytime reading at Carleton University by Eileen Myles!

with your usual batch of participating Ottawa-area host organizations, including In Our Tongues, Plan 99, Urban Legends, Arc Poetry Magazine, flo. lit mag, Riverbed Reading Series, Carleton University and the Ottawa Public Library! tickets are now available, as are evening passes, and festival passes! and of course, donations are always welcome (we even issue tax receipts).

https://www.verseottawa.ca/

Terese Mason Pierre, Myth

 

Transfer

Much occurs in the glow behind my eyes.
With every blink, memory expires, guides me
to a new construction. In an ideal world,
my mouth works properly, my hands hold
my skin with love, the body between
my sheets is my own. In the conspiracy of
imagination, birds sound notes above
the coloured truth at high tide. My open chest
can house many stories about loss
and unrequired admiration. I feel every inch of it
like glass. No one mourns more than me.
No one hopes for change more than the sun,
the daughter, the carrier of light through
a lake filled with what looks like water.

I know there have been many eager to see what Toronto writer and editor Terese Mason Pierre could do through a collection beyond a chapbook, so it is good to see the release of her full-length debut, Myth (Toronto ON: Anansi, 2025), a collection of physical and precise poems on and around stories, storytelling and how stories take hold. These are poems as foundational as the earth or the ocean, offering sharp and astute first-person observational, declarative and descriptive lyrics. “My grandfather says we can eat what we kill.” she begins, immediately setting the tone with the opening line of the opening poem, “Fishing,” “We wade into the water and find a shark.” Terese Mason Pierre’s poems tells stories, including those that hint of their implications, meanings and true purposes. She wants you to listen to what these stories are saying. As this particular piece continues: “In the bleeding night, we carry it home, across / the mountain. The way your feet land before // mine, I memorize. I copy your plan for leading / me out of this spectacular cycle—fold it in and over // ourselves until our parents finally call for / the doctor. Our love has never allowed // itself to be gutted.”

Set in five section-clusters of shorter lyrics—“Expanse (the sea),” “Interlude (the deep),” “Brink (the earth),” “Interlude (the cosmos)” and “Swell (the stars)”—she interplays the elements with the cosmos with a call-and-response, the “interlude” of the Greek chorus, providing asides to the main narrative as part of this main narrative. “I’ve done it because it was what I wanted. / My neighbour’s garden grows mangoes beyond / a rotted fence,” she writes, to open the poem “Rich,” “and I stole one as it they’d require / a descendant if caught. But this trope is old. / This means nothing.”

In the end, myths are the stories we tell ourselves and each other, the stories that warn, catch and inform, stories that can propel us forward, hold us back, distract our attention or inform our world-view, including times when all of the above occur simultaneously. “My mother tried to tell me I was broken,” begins “Dead Living Things,” “and I shut her away. Who died and made her oracle? / Where my mouth falters, my skin reserves.” Oh my, this is good. Myth is a striking and deeply complex debut.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jordan Dunn

Jordan Dunn is the author of Notation (Thirdhand Books), Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (Partly Press), as well as various chapbooks and ephemeral prints including Common Names, Reactor Woods, and A Walk at Doolittle State Preserve. He lives with his family in Madison, WI, where he edits and publishes Oxeye Press.

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?

I published my first book, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, with Partly Press in 2022. Partly Press is edited by Chuck Stebelton and housed at the Lynden Sculpture Garden in Milwaukee, which is a wonderful non-profit that has many missions in addition to running its literary press. This meant that my first book appeared in a location slightly off-center from traditional poetry channels. It felt good to appear in a new space, and that experience helped me feel confident that poets can appear in different kinds of venues.

My new book, Notation, is like Physical Geography in that it’s a book constructed out of other books, and it relies heavily on intertexts to bind itself together. The subject matter of Notation was different for me, however, in that it was partially inspired through more personal experiences, including the loss of several friends. Notation also feels different in that its duration is more containable, and it looks quite different on the page compared to Physical Geography.

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

I’ve always been attracted to the portability of poetry—it is an activity that can be adjacent to whatever life I have at any given moment in time. I’m not positive I’m a poet, but the poets gave me a seat at their table, so here I am, enjoying the good company of poets.

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 know when I am beginning a project. After some time, I notice groups of consistencies, and then I focus on those as points of attachment. Because I am interested in book arts, I often make small handmade editions. So, there’s lots of variability with time and process and drafting.

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?

Accumulation over time is necessary for me. I don’t really attempt to compose individual poems when I’m writing.

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

I used to be more invested in performativity when I would give readings because my writing was focused on permutation, and so the reading event felt like an extension of the writing process. These days, I am trying to focus on lifting static text off the page. I feel like I am struggling with that process because I don’t like it when text loses its subjectivity.

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 deeply invested in literary community and the answers I can find through friendship with other writers and artists. I’m also interested in natural history and understanding the local ecologies and landscape histories in my area, as well as areas that I visit frequently.

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?

As I understand it, literary writing is rapidly becoming an analog fixture in our culture. That means it could have staying power and be used as a refuge, or it could gradually empty itself of meaning and become irrelevant. Hopefully the role of the writer is to protect against obsolescence.

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

Essential! Thank you to my past editors: Chuck Stebelton, Kylan Rice, and Lindsey Webb.

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

I finished college at the start of the Great Recession. I was living back at home, I was having a hard time finding work, and I was thinking about taking a job that involved writing scripts for a company that produced training videos for corporations. At the time, my dad was an ex-marine banker involved in commercial real estate lending, and when I told him about the job opportunity he said, “What, are you going to be a fucking sell-out?” So, I instead saved up money working in a warehouse, quit that job, and rode my bike across the country. Thanks, dad. XO.

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?

When I’m at my best and my schedule is at its best: I wake up, let the dog out, make coffee, and then retreat to my lower-level workspace. I like to write in the morning before the rest of the house wakes up. Often, the carnival of being a parent means I write whenever I can, and I often wear noise-canceling headphones.

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

I keep stacks of books around my desk and on shelves above my desk. When I stall, I pick up a book and read it until something wants to be transcribed, and then I’m writing again.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Lake Superior white pine.

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?

All of the above. I feel like books are simply placeholders for those other things.

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

Too many to list! A few writers/writings I return to: Susan Howe, Lyn Hejinian, Thomas A. Clark, & Thoreau’s journals, among many others.

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

A thru-hike, like the AT or the PCT.

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?

Hmm . . . working with living things outside the world of finance?

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

Repetition.

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

Weeds in Winter, by Lauren Brown. A few weeks ago, I watched The Lost Daughter.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a new manuscript that feels attached to the methods used to write Notation. I’m trying to distill two years of daily/occasional writing with infused transcription and travel journals. I’m also working on several little book arts projects that include a disappearing prairie, collages from Thoreau’s journals, images of tidal sand, and images of hackberry bark.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Michael e. Casteels, Furthermore, the Lake

 

The further I walked, the closer I got. To what, I wasn’t sure, but my feet kept moving, carrying the rest of me along with them. They had their own preconceived destination—somewhere they might finally settle down, a little slice of heaven, a place to call home. I was just their solitary witness, a quiet companion, the documenter of their long journey.

It was easy. They walked; I followed.

The path snaked along the lakeside. The sky was a dark canvas the stars punched small holes into one by one. A sickle moon crept up from behind the horizon. A large bird beat its enormous wings, faded into distance. Somewhere a duck quacked, then hushed, and the relative silence resumed.

A few soft waves lapped against the shore with a steady rhythm. The small stones cascading across one another clattered out a soft melody. It was a lullaby, though I wasn’t sure who was being lulled: me, the city, or the lake itself.

The lake sighed. I sighed.

The city drifted off into the night, far above the lake and me.

The latest from Kingston poet, editor and publisher Michael e. Casteels is the debut novel, Furthermore, the Lake (Toronto ON: Guernica Editions, 2025), published as part of editor Stuart Ross’ 1366Books. Following a handful of chapbooks of poetry, prose and visuals, as well as his full-length collection, The Last White House at the End of the Row of White Houses (Picton ON: Invisible Publishing, 2016) [see my review of such here], Casteels’ Furthermore, the Lake is composed as a novel of accumulated scenes that shimmer and ripple, contradict and evolve, across shifting narratives. “A night can drag its feet when it wants to,” he writes, early on, “and that night it wanted to. The occasional car. An infrequent passerby. But when the late hours finally shifted into the early hours, even these ceased. The street lights shone down on nothing but cracks in the pavement.” Casteels’ narrator might be reliable but the scenes they participate in and witness seem to contradict, offering an uncertain view. His prose is composed across short bursts and flash sections comparable to the flash fictions of writers such as Lydia Davis [see my review of one of her most recent here] or Kathy Fish [see my review of her latest here], but one that works a larger shape, although one not necessarily formed across any kind of easy or obvious concrete narrative. One has to pay close attention to detail, even across such lovely passages. And yet, the narrative does progress, moments that build upon moments, a thread within the swirl and field of further seemingly-contradictory elements.

Last but not least, you boarded the train and sat down in a window seat. You looked out at the station platform and smiled. Even from this distance your eyes were tiny lakes that mirrored whatever they saw, and what they saw was me, standing on a shoreline, waving goodbye while you drifted away in your red canoe. Waves drawing you further and further. I didn’t expect to take a second look, but I did: your train long gone for years.

Casteels’ prose has an ease to it, a compelling tone that floats across pages, amid numerous memorable lines and prose-blocks. “The bathtub is surprisingly agile for its age. You’d think it would lumber like a hippopotamus,” he writes, “but it’s more like a rhinoceros charging blindgly into the night. I’m a few hundred metres behind it and losing ground. The bathtub leaps over a white picket fence, rounds a corner, and then it’s gone.” There is something of his shifting narrative reminiscent of Canadian playwright and mathematician John Mighton’s play Possible Worlds (1990; a film adaptation was released in 2000), holding a shifting not of perception but of action, of what is actually being perceived. The unsettling of this foundation is purposeful and beautifully done, and does progress towards an understood meaning, one that rocks a foundation of loss, grief and ultimate through-line, although one that doesn’t unfold or reveal as much as finally allow, all centred around, somehow, this particular image of the lake. “The lake remembers a seagull,” he writes, “but it’s nowhere to be seen. It remembers loons, but they’re gone too. No, wait. I just heard one. A heart-wrenched wail. No response.” As he continues:

This could have been years ago. Or sometime last week. Or three days from now. It’s the type of thing that happens again and again, and once started, can’t be stopped. A strand of hair stuck to your cheek. I brushed it away. It’s the only thing that keeps me from wandering off course. It’s what passes through my mind every time I squirt a little toothpaste on my toothbrush.