Ben Robinson
is a poet, musician and librarian. His first book, The Book of Benjamin,
an essay on naming, birth, and grief was published by Palimpsest Press in 2023.
His poetry collection, As Is, was published by ARP Books in September
2024. He has only ever lived in Hamilton, Ontario on the traditional
territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and
Mississaugas. You can find him online at benrobinson.work.
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 chapbook helped me meet poets. It took this
thing—poetry—that I was spending an increasing amount of time thinking about,
and gave me a way to connect with like-minded folks through reading and mailing
and editing and exchanging.
My first book was maybe an extension of this, but also its
opposite. For all of the grief about the decline of the book, I think there’s
still a certain amount of cultural capital attached to the idea of having published a book, such that my first one
brought me back into contact, even briefly, with old neighbours, former
classmates, friends from out of the country, etc.
As for how my most recent book, As
Is, compares to the earlier work, I think there are common concerns around
closely investigating inherited pieces of my identity, like my name, my
relationship to Christianity, or my hometown, and trying to come to both a
deeper understanding of the way these forces have shaped me, and also how I
might want to relate to them in the future. That sounds somewhat
individualistic, but I hope these reflections also scale up, that they might
contribute to broader conversations.
I think As Is differs
from my past work in that it’s perhaps the most explicitly political. Perhaps
that’s because it’s about place and, while I share other aspects of my
identity, the communal aspect is undeniable when thinking about a city.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction
or non-fiction?
I’m not sure that I did come to poetry first. I used to write short
fiction but it never felt quite right. I took a lot of my early work in many
genres to the various writers-in-residence at the Hamilton Public Library. One
WiR that I took stories to helped me, in maybe an inadvertent way, to see that
I didn’t really care about the rules of fiction, or at least conventional
fiction. I would bring in a story and she would ask these questions about plot
and character development that I had no clue about and ultimately wasn’t
interested in. I’d say that I came to poetry because of its comparative
openness. I’m not always sure that what I write are 100% poems, but there seems
to be a higher tolerance for divergence in the poetry world.
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’m a real notebook writer. The poems often come when I find the
connection between a couple of images or lines in my notes, when it feels like
there’s a charge, like there’s something that merits exploring. Sometimes it
takes a while to find exactly why I’m drawn to a line or how it might be used,
but once I find that connection, the poem tends to emerge quickly as I find it
difficult to think about much else in the meantime.
Lately, I’ve been trying to keep my drafts unsettled for as long as
possible. I often find it hard to get back to the generative space with a piece
once I’ve gone into editing mode, so I’ve been letting my poems stay unfinished
for as long as possible, giving them time to morph and stretch.
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?
A bit of both, I think. I wrapped up writing As Is at the start of 2023 and I wasn’t sure what would be next. I
didn’t write any new poems for almost a year, and when the new ones did come, I
didn’t immediately see what the connections were, but it’s exciting to watch
the themes slowly emerge and start to coalesce; there's something akin to the
way a poem reveals itself in the writing that can also happen with a
collection, I think.
The first new poems I wrote were about my experience of fatherhood
and then, seemingly out of nowhere, I wrote a couple of poems about bad advice
I’d received in my life, almost exclusively from men. While the connection
might seem obvious now, at the time I wasn’t convinced these two sets of poems
were part of the same project. I’m trying to increase my tolerance for that
divergence, trusting that the variety will ultimately make for a more
interesting and less predictable collection as opposed to working backward from
a theme and intentionally writing poems on particular subjects.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative
process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I think it depends when you ask me. On the day of a reading, I
might say that they’re counter to my process because I find the anticipation
kind of immobilizing, whereas once I’m about two minutes into a reading or
after, I’d probably say they’re part of the process. It’s great to meet other
poets and readers of poetry, to share the poems I’ve been tinkering with in
solitude, but it takes a lot out of me. Maybe the nerves will go away one day,
but they haven’t yet. Now I just know to expect them and keep going.
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 find this kind of question hard to answer. I did an interview with Kevin Heslop for my last book and it felt like a kind of creative
therapy—he had such great language for the connections between my projects that
I’m not all that conscious of. Each project has its particular theoretical
concerns, but the broader ones are more elusive. I guess I’m interested in the
big questions: How should we live? What to do with life’s many coincidences and
contradictions?
I think I’m more concerned with the effect of my writing. The books
that I love feel essential, both as pieces of writing, and also to my life in
general; they keep me attuned to the many nuances of experience that tend to
get flattened out in daily living. I read a blurb once that talked about
“obliterating cliche” [Anne Boyer, The
Undying] which I like—to take the old standards (life, death, love, home,
family, etc.) and find some small particularity that might make them feel
urgent again.
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?
I’m not sure that I operate in the larger culture, but I’m okay
with small. The writers I respect, even in their limited and local ways, are
doing the difficult work of thinking deeply, of escaping the rut of what has
already been thought, or written down, or is Googleable and are revealing how
much more complex life is out beyond the bounds of the feasible, the realistic
or the expedient.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor
difficult or essential (or both)?
Yes, certainly both. I’ve tried to get better at emotionally
preparing myself for editing, to resist defensiveness. My default position
tends to be either wholesale acceptance or rejection of suggestions, but I’ve
been getting better at slowing down and evaluating edits individually.
Lately, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some great editors
(as well as poets in their own rights) like Karen Solie and Annick MacAskill.
My work is much stronger for their engagements with it, but, despite the fact
that they are both unfailingly lovely people, it’s a vulnerable process for me.
Ultimately, I try to remind myself that there are plenty of people in my life
(thankfully) that I could go to for simple praise, to tell me that the poems
are “good,” and while praise is certainly nice and, to an extent, necessary,
constructive and insightful feedback is so much harder to come by and is a real
gift that ought to be treated as such.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily
given to you directly)?
Put the problem into the poem - Robert Hass. This one works for both
writing and life, I think.
Sometimes I’ll make lists of my worries about a given piece, about
what might be missing, about how it might be misread. Some of these worries
just need to be written down and then moved on from, others help reveal what
might be missing in the project. When I was writing “Between the Lakes” which
is a long poem that threads throughout As
Is, I was concerned that the poem, which is trying to engage with the land,
was doing so largely from within the confines of a car which was of course
actively degrading that same land. After reading Gabriel Guddings' Rhode Island Notebook where he
obsessively lists his mileage and direction of travel, I realized that I needed
to address this tension in the poem and so, in the final version, I included
moments where the smeared windshield, or the gas station—the material
conditions of the poem’s construction—are visible and I think the piece is
stronger for it.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to
reviews to music)? What do you see as the appeal?
I don’t think of the transitions in terms of ease or difficulty. As
much as I love poetry, there are only so many hours I can spend with it in a
given day, and when I reach that saturation point, it’s not easy or difficult
to transition, just necessary. They are all pursuits that I enjoy and they
certainly feed one another, but I move between them in the same way that I
might leave off writing a poem to ride my bike, or make dinner: because I think
it’s important and valuable to fill a life with many different endeavours.
The reviews or interviews are a bit more related, but I think they
started as, and continue to be, a natural outflow of my reading practice, of
trying to think deeply about poetry and then wanting to offer some of that time
and effort to others. They are another way to participate in a literary
community, to escape the limits of introversion and ask brilliant people about
their practice in a structured environment that also hopefully serves to bring
more readers to work that I think is useful or excellent or interesting.
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?
My routine has shifted a lot lately. Right now, with it being
summer and having both my sons home all the time, my routine is no
routine—writing a bit on the bus to work, in the back room of the library on my
lunch hour, at the kitchen counter while the little one naps and the big one
watches his shows, in the rare moments where the boys play quietly together and
I try to stay as still as possible, so as not to disrupt them.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return
for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Like many, I turn back to reading. I go back to the books that have
resonated with me or go looking for something new that will show me fresh
possibilities. I ride my bike, which seems to open up a less conscious part of
my brain that is capable of quickly solving problems I’ve been fussing with for
hours.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I have a poor sense of smell, to be honest. We have a lilac bush in
the yard and my wife loves lilacs so maybe that? My kids love bananas, or at
least the first two bites of a banana, so perhaps the remaining 80% of the
banana that is then abandoned beneath the couch or somewhere similarly out of
the way. Flowers and decaying fruit, like a Caravaggio. There are many things I
like about our house, but its “fragrance” isn’t always top of the list.
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?
Well for As Is, the book
came from historical plaques, local newspapers, neighbourhood watch Facebook
groups, archives, old maps, Google Maps, the land itself, by-laws, lawn signs,
murals, government forms, realtor fliers, and road signs.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or
simply your life outside of your work?
The aforementioned Gabriel Gudding’s Rhode Island Notebook, C.D. Wright, Juliana Spahr’s Well Then There Now, Solmaz Sharif’s Look, Ari Banias’s A Symmetry, Layli Long Soldier’s “38,” Doug Williams’s Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg, Catherine Venable Moore’s introduction to
Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead,
Susan Howe, bpNichol’s The Martyrology
Book 5, Greg Curnoe’s Deeds/Abstracts,
Emma Healey’s “N12”, and Zane Koss’s Harbour
Grids.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Escape monolingualism.
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?
My first thoughts were all writer-adjacent: journalist, podcaster,
documentarian.
There was a time when I wanted to be a recording engineer. I find
cutting audio meditative.
Increasingly, I’m fascinated by photography, but I don’t imagine
the career prospects are much better than poetry.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Probably some mix of the low barrier to entry, a preference toward
working alone, being content to sit in one place for long periods of time, and
an inability to move on from the structure of school.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great
film?
I loved Joyelle McSweeney’s Death
Styles. The music in her poems is blaring and raucous. And she went so far
into the underworld for this one, at once viscerally engaging with the
unimaginable heartbreak of losing a newborn but also venturing off into all the
other realms where poets dwell. It’s both mythic and materialist in the best
way.
As for movies, those seem to be the one art form that I haven’t
figured out how to fit into life as a parent without splitting a 2-hour film
across four sittings. I have a Google spreadsheet of Movies to Watch, like a 2005 version of Letterboxd, which I have
not made much progress on lately. The odd time when my family goes away without
me, I watch as many movies as I can to make up for it. Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up was a highlight of my last
binge—a moving but unassuming look at how art comes from, and is also thwarted
by, daily life. Some great weirdos in it, dysfunctional family, but gentle and
nearly plotless like many of my favourites.
20 - What are you currently working on?
As I mentioned above, I’m working on a collection
of poems that seems to be focused on fatherhood. I have two young boys who
(often delightfully) take up much of my time and energy, so like Hass says, I
am putting the problem into the poem, trying to engage with an experience that
is often either absent from literature or overly sentimentalized, to document
some of the amazing thinking that children do.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
