1 - How did your first book change your life?
My first book, Thin Air of the Knowable, anchored me in poetry, gave me encouragement, and a reason to stay committed. The manuscript had gathered up what I’d selected from my writing life, but finding a publisher followed two discouraging years of rejections. Finally being accepted by Brick Books, a publisher I so admired, was validating; it told me I wasn’t wasting my time.
How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
It’s hard to bring a rational perspective to about one’s own progress, but I’d say the craft and complexity of recent poems developed, through my second book, Our Bodies’ Unanwered Questions, and now, The Time of Falling Apart, from Harbour Publishing.
Also, the world being the way it is, my mood and tone is frequently darker, less ebullient. And now that there’s so much more behind than ahead, I muse on my own mortality, and the urgency of using time well.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Although my family was not bookish at all, we did have (as well as the Bible) many of the children’s classics, and I knew by heart much of Robert Louis Stevenson, AA Milne, the doggerel poems of the Alice books. Before I thought of them as poems, I loved the rhythm and wit. Once in high school, I loved literature courses, I became and remain a compulsive reader. I started writing poetry as a private hobby, no one I knew did anything so eccentric. Anyhow, I thought I was going to be an artist, a printmaker, and that’s where my creative energy went.
As a young woman, having married a Barbadian, I settled in Barbados. I taught at the college, attended UWI, painted, eventually worked as a museum curator. My time coincided with Barbados’ Independence, and also with the emergence of several major Caribbean writers: Vidia Naipaul, Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, Jean Rhys. All this influenced my writing, which still was mainly academic or educational.
After nearly four decades, I returned to Victoria, still writing, and in 2007, joined Patrick Lane’s annual poetry retreats. I’d say I “came to poetry” then; I owe him more than I can say. This is where I began a regular writing practice, started sending poems out and in 2009 published my first chapbook. Three chapbooks later, Brick Books took my first collection, “Thin Air of the Knowable”, and I started calling myself a poet.
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 slow process, usually, unless I’ve been musing on a particular theme or topic. Occasionally if I’ve been close to sleep, turning a topic over and over, several lines appear in their final form, and if I race to write them down, the rest of a draft poem will take something close to its final shape. That said, I more often work on large sheets of paper, mapping my thought processes. Copious notes, freewriting, looking up the linguistic roots of words. I think on paper and write by hand; when it’s finished enough to be edited, I type it.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you?
A poem often begins from a memory, often my own, but also often an historical memory or a geographical one. I’ve always lived by an ocean; my life in Barbados and now on the BC coast, both landscapes shaped by colonial conquest, so the land poses its own questions.
Or I read a current event or respond to a question posed by something I’ve observed. But these are all starting points; the real work is finding a through-line for what the poem is really trying to say.
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?
Short pieces that combine. I’ve followed single themes through my four chapbooks, but an entire poetry collection dictates a more complicated structure. Each of my books has taken about 4-5 years of writing, and I can’t keep to a single theme that long. I try not to think “book” during the process of making meaning in each poem. After two or three years, I find a large bare floor and lay the all poems out—they generally sort into several themes or categories, then I shift gears into collection mode, and start trying out titles for the whole.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love doing readings! Writing is necessarily a lonely business, so it’s very rewarding to share with listeners who want to hear what you say. Often there are searching comments that fuel me to push a poem harder, or to continue a dialogue.
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 think the current questions are?
These are thorny questions! It’s often said that poetry tries to articulate that which is beyond language, but if that is so, why bother? I find my efforts tend more to articulate a question or mystery, to unpack a dilemma or situation or ambiguity that the reader may engage with.
The current questions that surface for me are often linked to casualties of misused power, whether they illustrate personal failures of empathy or all along the spectrum to war, oppression, genocide.
Other questions concern mortality: have I used my time well? Has my life made a difference? What remains to be done?
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?
Poets are society’s truth-tellers. Unfortunately, poetry seems to have very little role in our present culture, and poets are frequently seen as dilettantes with a frivolous hobby. Perhaps our current role is that we are Cassandras, our warnings falling on deaf ears.
But history may tell a different story: one trend I’ve noticed is that the egregious political forces unleashed over the last decade have led to an outpouring of really fine, powerful, poetry in all styles, forceful and articulate and outraged. These will last the ages, always relevant: Ada Limon, Carolyn Forché, Margaret Atwood, Terrance Hayes, Jericho Brown, Jan Zwicky, Adrienne Rich, Tracy Smith, Anne Michaels….many more and many young writers.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Both! I’ve been very lucky in all three books, to have had empathic, intelligent, insightful editors, whose council pushed me push harder on one aspect or delete another (ouch). A few times I’ve argued successfully for a poem’s continued form. So I can be confident only my best writing “survived.”
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Can I choose two pieces? But both require unpacking:
1. “nobody cares about you!” From one of Ellen Bass’ instructional videos. It felt shocking, but she was talking about giving your poem energy and distinction, deleting all the excess, particularly the tendency to start: “I woke from sleep /and I/and I was so sad/I cried as I looked out the window/and I…”etc. Get to the point, said Ellen, what is your poem trying to say? Nobody cares about you!
It was good advice and an editing strategy I use frequently.2. “What behooves us?” (Adrienne Rich, An Atlas of the Difficult World)
This is a bigger, metaphysical question, and one I use thinking about the purposes of my own poetry. Surely poetry can be a call to action, to stir the imagination and the conscience, to deepen understanding, to “sing about the dark times.
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?
I make excellent resolutions! At times that works, but often it goes downhill from there. I work best in the morning, I write in my journal and have fits and starts of productivity. I don’t write every day but I can’t imagine a day when I don’t read. Sometimes I scribble notes, or freewrite, or prowl the library. When I get on a roll, the start of a good poem, or an idea for a sequence of poems, I work almost non-stop. When I’ve got a dry spell, I defrost the fridge and tidy my closets.11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
See “dry spell” above. I try to find ways to tease out a difficult poem by looking up linguistic sources, or historical analogs. If there’s an interesting workshop coming up, I join. Collect snippets from good journalism and see if they’ll work as prompts. Try using different forms. Try ekphrastic poems. Go back through some excellent writers’ instructions (Tony Hoagland’s Art of Voice, Ted Kooser’s manual, Adonizzo and Laux, Dobbyns’ Best words…etc
I have a couple of poets’ groups who meet monthly.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I’m always pulled in two directions. When I lived in Barbados, I was nostalgic for the scent of cold salty air, the smell of cedar, the resiny woods smell, good coffee. From here, I’m nostalgic recalling the heavy smell of frangipani, the tumultuous pounding and smell of the seasonal rains that broke the long dry season. All the cooking smells. But the pandemic nearly erased my sense of smell, which in turn diluted my sense of taste. Tragic for a foodie like me—where I used to cook by taste and smell, now I cook from memory and conjecture.
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?
My early leanings were with the visual arts, mainly printmaking, painting, I worshipped the Japanese printmakers and dreamt of Japan. As inspiration for poetry, early music, pre-Baroque enthralls me, nature sustains me, and the interaction of science and art is compelling. I’m definitely not any kind of expert in science or math, and do a lot of (admittedly superficial) learning on the spot. E.g. I was reading an agricultural report to find out what abscission was; the article began by saying describing it as the time of falling apart. Halleluia! This was the title I’d been looking for, and so many things fell into place.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Despite an annual pruning, the groaning boards of my bookcase reach the ceiling. But here are some of the keepers I re-read and re-read for their heart, their intelligence, their insight and foresight, their magical craft: Margaret Atwood, AS Byatt, Michael Crummey, Margaret Drabble, Esi Edugyan, Katherine Govier, Hilary Mantel, Jane Urquhart, Ann Patchett, Zadie Smith, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Abraham Verghese.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’d love to be proficient in at least one musical instrument and in more than one language.
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?
I’d probably still be a teacher and artist. Or a museum curator
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Opportunity. I always wrote privately. When I settled back in Victoria, I discovered a poetry community, and Planet Earth Poetry with its weekly open mic. Many fine poets are also teachers, and I took advantage of that, and particularly Patrick Lane’s annual retreats.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
In Winter I Get up at Night Jane Urqhuart
Films: two because they both blew me away with their astonishing visual qualities:
Dark, dark in every sense, totally absorbing
The Tragedy of Macbeth, with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as the regal pair. Wish I’d had this on hand when I was teaching Macbeth.
Conclave: Another visually stunning film, this one in arresting colour.
A coincidence I chose these two: both about power and its uses, both a struggle between good and evil, But ambiguous, not an obvious goody/baddie dichotomy. Both with powerful visual metaphors—saturated colour in one, pure light and dark in the other.
19 - What are you currently working on?
I’m currently in a dry spell, but busy with the business of looking for and arranging readings and reviews—that’s really hard work for a shy person. It’s a short window of opportunity until the next poetry season launches its new poets.
A few projects hanging in mid-air:
• A half-finished illustrated chapbook called Something has Been Left Out, poems noting the unawareness, the lacune around some aspect of Indigenous history or rights. I fear trespassing, so have left it hanging …
• My column, Unpacking the Poem, about 2 years of monthly exegesis of a BC poet’s poem. Intended to catch the interest of those new to poetry, or who like to see how and why a poem works http://planetearthpoetry.com/unpacking
It would be nice to develop further, see if a book were possible
• A long time ambition, to see if the focus of my doctoral dissertation, a study of the dynamics of womens friendships, A Rebel Band of Friends—to see if its substance could be translated into a long poem.
Thank you for the opportunity to tangle with these though-provoking questions!
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