Canisia Lubrin, The Dyzgraphxst

dysgraphia by the imprint the link the image displayed through nothing here

| the kinds of given names | the coming away unmarked | the wonder at this

edge if it is I’s edge | at this head if it is I’s head-full of a disappearing act |

assembled cautiously in I as those children of today | as the mouth turning out

the speed of sound-now | in this 6: 21 am breeze with someone

maybe you still alive with familiar irresistible mystery where I choreographs | the

manoeuvre of to-come and give-way | where the world is full of reasons to push

the back seat down and set a life-force soaring back to its ragged world | to the

ones preoccupied with the ragged that is I | the ragged that implores the ragged

that turns all narcotic and detour | that a thing can name what

it survives in the in and gives hell on the way out (“PROLOGUE”)

Toronto poet and editor Canisia Lubrin’s second full-length collection, after Voodoo Hypothesis (2017), is the seven-part epic, The Dyzgraph^xst (Toronto ON: McClelland and Stewart, 2020). In a recent CBC article on Lubrin’s new book, it offers: “Pronounced ‘Diss-GRAFF-ist,’ the book is set against the backdrop of contemporary capitalist fascism, nationalism and the climate disaster, where Jejune, the central figure, grapples with understanding their existence and identity.” Structured in seven acts, with prologue and epilogue, The Dyzgraph^xst is lyrically dense, ambitious and grand in scale, examining and vocalizing the polyvocal spirit of the diaspora through her narrator, Jejune, who speaks, as she writes, from “the Créole mouth”:

hem ya haos blong mi kaye sà là sé mwen

hum here house belong me

like I’s at the gate not like I’s a gate (“ACT I: Ain’t I at the Gate?”)

There is such an evocative and insistent music throughout Lubrin’s lyric, one that sparks and swirls and pounces and jangles. Lubrin writes of hope, solidarity and erasure in a wildly-expansive, playful and at times joyful evocation against silence, speaking loud and out into an epic on family, community, loss and tragedy. “it is difficult to live in the dark,” she writes, referencing racism and the ugly ends of nationalism, of ongoing wars and atrocities. Further on, her lyric offers: “the word was a moonlit knife // with those arrivants / lifting their hems to dance, toeless / with the footless child they invent [.]” The Dyzgraph^xst weaves through disarray, distraction and generations of oppression in an attempt to weave together multiple voices through and against the ongoing storm, continuing to seek out the other side. “What am I to make,” she writes, to open “RETURN #2,” “Of two or three small sons // Of anger with its talent for mixtures [.]” The poems here collect and corral a sequence of acts of defiance, acts of reclamation and response and exhuberant exclamation. Including all of language and history through her diaspora, The Dyzgraph^xst is both celebration and dirge, joyful noise and declaration of intent, both dream and return. “so when you call me Jejune,” she offers, “when you call me I / i’ll say Aye! I will answer because to know we are / one in the same, to know this, this much // enough for the nights / in which to sleep well / this year, the next [.]”

DREAM #13

like a stack of worn shirts piled before us

sigh in Polish, or the fights that await us

fifteen houses hence in Arabic, how un-

changed the work of anything into shape

a shard, sharp with hope, a look can draw

the missing piece into masterpiece, whole,

Cree it not? Draw these Earths we refuse,

prepare for them a whole existence hostile

to the shopping cart, yet unrealized future,

the spider means to understand this war, &

do i know? What was then has come again,

do I know of the thing that could be wrong

again, the thing that slows and slows again

that hits and hits again, sick-ness & my pro-

blem with dream

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Canisia Lubrin

Canisia Lubrin is the author of Voodoo Hypothesis (2017) and augur (2017). She is consulting editor at Wolsak & Wynn, serves on the editorial board of Humber Literary Review and as an advisor to Open Book. She is 2017-18 Poet in Residence at Poetry in Voice.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I had a poetry chapbook (augur) released a little over a month after my debut full-length collection. Apart from the obvious differences in format, the chapbook is made up of some work that didn't make it into my debut and new work. I've been so busy promoting Voodoo Hypothesis that I can't quite characterize what has changed in my life other than to suggest that maybe a lot more people know my name. It's too early to tell.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
That I published poetry first is one hell of a thing. I wrote my first poem in 2008. I've lived with fiction for a very long time, my whole life it seems.

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?
All of that happens.

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?
My first book came out of some great fortune and just writing poems as they came. The revision/editorial process helped me figure out its shape and obsessions. I'll let you know how the next one happens.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I don't like what, according to me, is the lime light; I'm just way more comfortable behind the scenes even though I can switch in and out of either mode with relative ease. But I understand the value of readings; I do co-host Pivot Readings after all. The bottom line is that literature's also social. So while I've done readings that have often left me more acutely editorially aware of the work I read, other times I simply regret reading certain works in public. Basically, the jury's still out. One thing seems constant: I should always decide what and how to read based on the vibe in the room.

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?
Big question. Big job. Ask me later.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I'm weary of "shoulding" the world and its human inhabitants at all. Yet if I were to put forth a theory, I'd say that writing is how we test our solipsistic nature through the value of everything else. In that sense writers disrupt and reveal, reveal and disrupt and this is parallel to holding up a necessary mirror to culture. The trouble is, it is hard for us to know ourselves well enough or to trust the complexities of our judgements enough to not proselytize about what is in that mirror. So maybe the writer's relationship with society is complicated, which also means that the writer's role is what the writer decides, which is also, by proxy and essentially, complicated.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I think the truth of this moves somewhere along this continuum depending on the stage, genre and measure of the writing.

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

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 don't have a routine so to speak but I get most of my writing done between 3 am and 6 pm on the good days. Other than that I wake up and make lunches and dress little people and bid them all kinds of good as they're out the door.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I haven't yet experienced this thing folks call writer's block. The world is so full of stimulation and I am #blessed enough to have all of my major senses still functioning.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
The smell of Bay leaf tea. Fresh fried fish. Mangoes. Bleach and the scent of certain "lemon fresh" dishwashing liquids.

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?
Definitely everything you've mentioned in your question and certainly more. I practice a kind of multiplicity in my writing that sees me again and again rejecting the individualist logic of modern education; we are taught to view things in specialty or in isolation because god-forbid there can be any other measure for professionalism. I find the whole jig kind of churlish and myopic. And, you know what, I may be completely presumptuous in my thinking, but I think our imaginations depend on opening ourselves up to the inner lives of various modes of knowing and interpreting the world. How these converge make for fertile ground for artistic inquiries and creation. Resonances are very interesting to me and I like to follow these in whatever form they come.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Dionne Brand. Kamau Brathwaite. Derek Walcott. Vladimir Lucien. Simone Schwarz-Bart. Patrick Chamoiseau. Aimé Césaire. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Safiya Sinclair. Cherie Dimaline. David Chariandy. Zadie Smith. James McBride. Toni Morrison. Christina Sharpe. Sina Queyras. Phoebe Wang. Dani Couture. Many others.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
A writing residency via NASA.

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've long been obsessed with the Cosmos. Likewise drama and the movies. Music, too.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I'd like to think I came out of the womb full of stories. If not that, I definitely came into a richly storied Caribbean world aided by my brilliant storytelling St. Lucian grandmother. Language is a home I know well enough; I started reading before any formal instruction, so that when I started pre-school at age 4, my teacher, the lovely Ms. Adjodha joked that I should be with the older kids. I didn't take this as a joke, mind you. She had one hell of a time talking me off that precipice because all I wanted to do (as I just about reminded her too many times daily) was to be with the older kids who always seemed to spend more time with books. To hell with all this singing (which I loved) and clapping (which I also loved) and all these brightly coloured plastic things (which I hated) and give me reading. I was other kinds of fun-enough during recess and after school, I thought. What became clearer to me in my prepubescence, though, is that through writing, I could be anything I wanted to be. I find the richness of the writing life a particular and flawed response to the notion that writing can occur in a vacuum. Writing isn't necessarily anathema to contradiction but it is how we test writing's solipsistic nature through the value of everything else.  

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last great book: The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart.

Film: Get Out. Black Panther. And I simply must mention the cinematic genius of the Netflix series Black Mirror.  

19 - What are you currently working on?
A novel. Short stories. Poetry. Nonfiction. Something for the screen.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

The Unpublished City, curated by Dionne Brand

She moved back all her books and belongings. In our apartment she would look at me from underneath the bed sheets, her bottom half covered, her diary in her hand. She would ask me not to look at her diary. I never have—I remember once she left it on the bed and I stared at it for five minutes. It had a black cardstock cover. I opened it and read the inscription, her full name, the year, how much of a reward she would give if it was returned—20 bucks. I closed it and let it lie on the bed. Her diaries would be here in a closet. I wonder if they might be with the parents. Would they read through them? I wanted to ask her parents to let me move in to her room and let them take care of me.

A small Vans shoebox on the desk that I know is full of mementos from our relationship. It’s black, small, frayed. A note might be in there. (Adnan Khan, “All I Can Tell You”)

While at the most recent Indie Literary Market (hosted by Meet the Presses) in Toronto, I was intrigued to recently discover a small anthology of emerging Toronto writers, “Curated by Dionne Brand,” The Unpublished City (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2017). Constructed as an introduction to a multitude of Toronto-based writers prior to their first trade-length works (although two have since released first poetry titles), the anthology includes work by Ian Kamau, Nadia Ragbar, Chuqiao Yang, Rudrapriya Rathore, Sofia Mostaghimi, Kathryn Wabegijig, Doyali Islam, Adnan Khan, Phoebe Wang (see info on her first collection here), Canisia Lubrin (see info on her first collection here), David Bradford, Laboni Islam, Sanchari Sur, Shoilee Khan, Nicole Chin, Diana Biacora, Dalton Derkson and Simone Dalton. As Brand writes at the offset:

The Unpublished City was conceived to show the (Multipli)City of writers that call Toronto home; that the City of Toronto might hear the wonderful voices of the Citys own true imaginaries. The idea here is to read ‘unpublished’ not simply as not in print, but as the narratives, and imaginations of the City that are present, and not yet fully realized, nor acknowledged. In these stories and poems we apprehend what lies on the surface of the City’s glass walls, in the depths of its rapidly and perennially urbanized landscape, and in its bristling and multilingual streets.

How different such a collection is than some of the Toronto-specific (or really, Canadian) anthologies of the past, whether Plush (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1995), the book that introduced myself and many others to the work of Lynn Crosbie and R.M. Vaughan (for example), or Blues & True Concussions: Six New Toronto Poets (Toronto ON: Anansi, 1997). The focus on diversity becomes an important part of the conversation of literature to engage in, no longer automatically pushing certain writers further into the margins. While I’m familiar with a couple of the names in The Unpublished City (Chuqiao and Dalton from their Ottawa days, for example, Doyali Islam is well known for numerous activities, including her recent appointment as poetry editor for Arc Poetry Magazine, and I recently reviewed Canisia’s latest small publication here), but most names are new to me, sitting just under the radar, it would seem, over there in Toronto. While my own sensibilities might have wished for more poetry than the collection holds (the bulk of the collection is made up of short fiction), one of the highlights had to be the work of Rudrapriya Rathore, such as her short story “Canaries,” that includes:

Grief is a heatstroke stumble through a coalmine. Find me with my parents, thirty years deep. History has gone slower here. The cheese comes in a tin. The bougainvilleas burn like fires. The glass of milk I am given grows a skin of fat.

Everyone calls my mother Baby. Later, I will watch Dirty Dancing and never not think of these things together. My mother’s mother sits on a straw mat in the middle of her home, which is crawling with relatives. A circle of women rock and pray and talk around her. Their heads are covered, eyes downturned, but the children have memorized the patterns on their saris, which is how they clamber into the correct lap. My grandmother, newly widowed, wears pure white. When she hugs me, I don’t recognize her earlobes. Stripped of jewelry, they’re fleshy and naked.

I would be curious to know the selection process for such a collection (Brand’s introduction is no longer than that paragraph quoted above), and where she discovered such a grouping of writers, or even the purpose/argument for the collection itself at this particular moment, but otherwise, the argument (as Brand writes it) is quite clear, quite strong, and quite remarkable: the wide variety of emerging voices that make up Toronto’s writing scene, one that can’t be reduced to a single sensibility, personality or perspective. And this is (beyond the introduction of a whole collection of emerging writers) a very good thing to be reminded of.

Wheezy stardust sucking on gold cellophane

Where they buried the garrison in a gravel pit.

And we are all friends till the snacks run out. (David Bradford, “Why We Can’t Live Together”)