Ongoing notes, mid-November, 2019: Don McKay + Diane Schoemperlen

[what the children and I looked like, at least last week; as always, note the 1998 Bay Photo Studio glossy on my office wall, when eldest daughter Kate and I had professional photos done]

Normally (or at least, the past few years) I would post something referencing one of my mother’s relatives, a number of whom were involved in military service (her paternal uncle, her maternal grandfather and a number of his brothers-in-law, as well as his father-in-law), but the hard drive with all of those pictures and scans are inaccessible right now. You can see links to previous acknowledgments with some of these people here. Even without a new post, I remember them, still.

Kingston ON: I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to receive copies from publisher Maureen Scott Harris of the small chapbooks of lectures from Queen’s University’s Page Lecture. Originally founded by then-writer-in-residence Phil Hall, the annual series acknowledges the now-late Kingston poet and journalist Joanne Page, and Play and Work in the Work of Joanne Page by poet, editor and critic Don McKay (A Fieldnotes Chapbook, 2019) is the ninth lecture in this annual series, “delivered on October 23, 2018 in Watson Hall, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario [see my review of the prior publication here]. As Harris writes as part of her introduction, both to the publication and to the public lecture:

McKay’s poems and essays are about us and our complicated relationship with the larger living world we inhabit, the need to learn where and how we fit within it. What it means to be human, how to trim our sense of ourselves to an appropriate scale. He offers us moments of encounter and exchange, dizzying openings into larger understanding, and stunned celebration and grieving. Names and naming, making, birds, rocks and stones, engines, wonder, paradox are abundant in his thinking and writing. Have I mentioned his apt and antic acrobatics, clownish leaps and tumbles, the wonderful jokes that animate the poems? His wit is a corrective to the high seriousness of Romanticism and our enthrallment with the world as site and occasion for attending to our own sensations, emotions, and reactions. Let’s try to see the thing itself, he says. We might approach tree, bird, rock with courtesy, introduce ourselves to them, and listen for what or how they might speak back.

I find it interesting that throughout the lectures in this series, McKay took it upon himself to focus on the work of Joanne Page herself, she for whom the series was named [see my 2015 obituary for her here; my review of her third collection, Watermarks, here]. It seems to be an entirely McKay approach, as well, getting to the heart of what most others may have overlooked: a Joanne Page lecture actually on Joanne Page—and a delightful and playful essay, at that. As McKay writes towards the beginning of his lecture:

            What possessed me to pursue this road scarcely ever taken? In part I was moved by a wish to emphasize the efficacy of poetry, through its capacity for redress, to use Seamus Heaney’s term. I knew that I would find no better vehicle to convey this point than the works of Joanne Page. This wish was partnered with another—perhaps its twin—to buck a current trend emphasizing poetry’s supposed uselessness. Joanne Page’s poetry, while frequently playful and even mischievous, does not aspire to what Heaney calls “the glissando of postmodernism.” It occupies, believes in, and exploits gravity, and perhaps nowhere more effectively than when it’s having fun. So, giving work the last word serves to underscore a point Joanne’s writing exemplifies: poetry matters.

This lecture series is always uniquely compelling. Now that they’re nearing a decade of lectures and subsequent publications, might there be a larger published collection of essays for a wider distribution and readership?

Windsor ON: The first title in the chapbook series “Writers at Rest: Authors on Their Pastimes & Hobbies” produced through Woodbridge Farm Books [see their “12 or 20 (small press) questions” interview here] is Kingston writer Diane Schoemperlen’s One Thing Leads To Another: On Collage (2017), a marvelous short essay on her ongoing work with collage, and the blending of visuals and text in both her artworks and writing. As she writes towards the beginning of the essay:

            From the beginning of my writing career, my fascination with the intersection of the written word and visual images has persisted. My first book, Double Exposures, published in 1984, was a fictional story I wrote to accompany a series of forty-eight old family photographs. These were rescued from my ferocious mother, who had threatened to throw them away. From a photo of my father and his friend looking like cool gangsters in the forties, to one of my young and beautiful mother posing in a barnyard with one white chicken and a hoe, to a nudie shot of myself as a big-eyed baby on my stomach on a towel on the kitchen table, the photos appear on the verso (or left side) of each two-page spread, with the accompanying story on the recto (or right). They face each other but do not intersect or overlap. They interact without touching, separate but still creating connections and echoes in both directions. I did not realize it at the time, but this book was my first step on a long and winding exploration of the symbiotic relationship between text and image.

One thing leads to another. slowly.

Through fourteen trade books that include works of short fiction, novels and creative non-fiction, Schoemperlen has explored an interesting line between collage and creation, and writing and visuals, able to employ an intriguing array of strategies equally in both forms, and overlapping, blending and colliding the two when required, making her one of the most vibrant prose writers in the country. For some time now, as well [see my 2016 interview with Schoemperlen for Ploughshares here], I’ve considered her to be a rare small press author (in terms of vibrancy, language and experimentation) able to publish with larger, more mainstream presses, so it is fascinating to see her write on some of how she builds both writing and visual art, and the relationship she sees between the two. Further on in the same piece, she writes:

I am composing this essay one piece at a time, as if it were a collage. One thing leads to another – for reasons that aren’t always clear and don’t need to be. Decades ago, I read somewhere that asking a writer to explain how she did it is like asking a centipede how it manages to walk with all those legs. After being thus questioned, the centipede was never able to move again. The same could be said of making collage. I worry about this.

Please don’t ask me what it means. I might say I don’t know.

I begin a new collage with hope and curiosity, eager to embark on a spontaneous sequence of discovery. As a person who has always liked to have a goal, a plan, or, at the very least, a detailed to-do list, I find this exhilarating and liberating. I enjoy making collages so much that often it feels like a guilty pleasure.

            Let’s face it. Sometimes writing is hard. Sometimes it makes me want to fling myself into the pit of despair. Gertrude Stein, in How to Write, said, “I return to sentences as a refreshment.” I would say the same about collage: I return to collage as a refreshment. Sometimes I return to collage as a relief. A collage has never kept me awake all the night. A collage has never made me want to bang my head against the wall. A collage has never ever made me want to tear my hair out. For this I am thankful. I have to admit I am rather fond of my hair.

Other works in the series, which connect to their ongoing writing retreats and residencies, include Dani Couture’s A River in a Drought Is Still a River: On Not Running and Alix Hawley’s Your Eye: On Photography.

12 or 20 (small press) questions with Grant Munroe on Woodbridge Farm Books

Woodbridge Farm Books is a small press based in Kingsville, Ontario.

Grant Munroe is the co-publisher and editor of Woodbridge Farm Books. His fiction, essays, interviews, humor, and reviews have appeared in several U.S. and Canadian outlets, including The Walrus, One Story, Globe and Mail, Los Angeles Review of Books, Toronto Star, Literary Hub, National Post, Literary Review of Canada, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and more. He's a graduate of New York University's MFA Program in Fiction. Born in Miami, Florida, he holds dual United States and Canadian citizenship.

1 – When did Woodbridge Farm Books first start? How have your original goals as a publisher shifted since you started, if at all?

The press started as the publishing arm of the Woodbridge Farm Residency, which I founded in 2016. The residency’s set on my family’s ancestral property in Kingsville, Ontario, on the north shore of Lake Erie, near Windsor and Detroit. We’ve been fortunate to host several award-winning authors, including André Alexis and Diane Schoemperlen, among others. My friend and co-publisher, Chris Andrechek, though it would be exciting to publish chapbook essays by our guests, both to celebrate and memorialize their visits. So we started a series called Writers at Rest: Authors on Their Pastimes and Hobbies.

Given the interest the chapbooks are garnering, our goals are expanding. We’re currently working on the start of a new series, which we hope to publish soon.

2 – What first brought you to publishing?

Chris and I met at Biblioasis, where we worked together for several years. Until recently, Chris was Biblioasis’s Production Manager. From 2014 to early 2017, I ran their Marketing and Publicity department. In that sense, we were already in publishing when the press began.

3 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?

Some small presses approach publishing with heaviness. They yoke themselves to the burden of advancing literature within a culture that ignores its importance, hang their heads, and groan under the weight. That’s good for some, but not me. I don’t share that mentality, that gloom – it’s not in my nature. Apart from the responsibility we have to do the best for our authors, I feel no pressure to meet any role. For us, publishing is serious play. Each new project is a puzzle and wonder. We surround ourselves with friends, collaborate, and beauty results. The process is a joy, as it should be.

4 – What do you see your press doing that no one else is?

Not many chapbook presses exclusively publish prose. In the future, when we expand from chapbooks, our focus will remain on developing works that reflect the good humor I mentioned earlier. Nothing weighty, no books that readers should consume out of a sense of responsibility or “betterment.” There’s too much of that already.

Quality also sets us apart. Chris sources the finest paper to make our chapbooks. He designs and typesets each to perfection. We fold, hand-bind, and number every copy. The two of us are exacting – no sloppiness allowed, no corners cut! This is part of the fun.

5 – What do you see as the most effective way to get new chapbooks out into the world?

Events are key. We throw parties. For those who can’t make these, we offer the chapbooks through our website.

6 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?

It depends on the draft. Because we’ve been lucky enough to publish works by established writers, my touch is typically light.

7 – How do your chapbooks get distributed? What are your usual print runs?

Through parties, as mentioned above, and online through our website. As of now, our runs are small: 100 copies. Just recently, we printed the second edition of Diane Schoemperlen’s essay on collage. That meant designing, printing, and hand-binding another 100 copies.

8 – How many other people are involved with editing or production? Do you work with other editors, and if so, how effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?

I edit the essays myself.

9– How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?

I approach it with the same perspective I’ve always had.

10– How do you approach the idea of publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he still ran Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Press’ editors had titles during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman and bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see the whole question as irrelevant?

I favor the white-shoe Manhattan model: out of respect and professional esteem, editors of one house publish colleagues from another. The gentility of this tradition is charming. In practice, though, I can see how a press might be tempted to publish one of its own – especially when the pool of publishers is limited, as it can be in places like Canada. If Chris or I were ever tempted to write a local interest book, for example, I wouldn’t hesitate to put it out through our house. Control over the process is crucial, not only to ensure the highest quality of the book itself, but to guarantee that the work is well marketed and distributed.

11– How do you see Woodbridge Farm evolving?

Like I mentioned above, we’re developing a new series of chapbooks. In the future, I see us publishing books. This might not happen for several years. Or it could happen next year. 

12– What, as a publisher, are you most proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have overlooked about your publications? What is your biggest frustration?

We’re proud of everything we publish. The press is still too small for anyone to have “overlooked” an aspect of the work we do. As for frustrations: there aren’t many. Laboring under tight deadlines is something we aim to avoid. It hasn’t always been possible, but we make every effort to manage the process in a way that eliminates stress. Much of publishing involves planning. The better the plan, the better the process, the better the publication.

13– Who were your early publishing models when starting out?

Given our origins at Biblioasis, that press was certainly an influence. But concerning chapbooks, specifically, I’m enamored by the format’s early history. There’s a wonderful old book from 1882 titled Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century. It’s a collection of pieces from that period, many of which are illustrated with rude woodcuts. Some are poems, but the majority were written in prose: folk tales, morality tales, spurious histories, and comic fictions (or “comic relations”). They’re typically light and humorous. Both then and today, by their ephemeral nature, chapbooks offer freedom. They aren’t encumbered by the implicit authority of books. With few exceptions, people with access to the simplest technology could (and can) publish anything. We assume that “fake news” is a recent phenomenon, but any scholar of publishing knows this isn’t the case: in past eras, pasquinades, pamphlets, and nouvelles à la main spread false information about conspiracies, scandals, and political intrigue. The incredibility of these texts is what makes them a pleasure. So are the accompanying images, which is why our chapbooks feature interior black and white photography.

14– How does Woodbridge Farm work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What journals or presses do you see Woodbridge Farm in dialogue with? How important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?

Our parties and readings always include local authors from the Windsor-Detroit region. I’m not sure we engage in “dialogue” with other journals or presses, but we have friends everywhere, from big corporate houses to the smallest micropresses. Just recently, we had lunch with Karen Schindler of Baseline Press in London, Ontario. She’s been publishing beautiful chapbooks since 2011. I’m astounded by their quality. She binds each by hand at her dining room table.

15– Do you hold regular or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other events?

Our events take place in the summer. They coincide with visits from the authors we host at the residency here in Kingsville.

16– How do you utilize the internet, if at all, to further your goals?

Like I mentioned earlier, we sell our chapbooks on the Woodbridge Farm website. We spread word of recent publications on social media, via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. At present, the press doesn’t have dedicated accounts on any of these sites. It will eventually. In the meantime, you can keep up to date by following me on Instagram at @grantmunroe, or on Twitter at @grantcmunroe. I post on the former more frequently.

  

17– Do you take submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for?

Our essays are solicited. We don’t take submissions. The exception is commercial work. Last spring, for example, we published an exhibition catalog for Arts Council Windsor and Region.

18– Tell me about three of your most recent titles, and why they’re special.

To date, we’ve published chapbooks by three authors: Diane Schoemperlen, Dani Couture, and Alix Hawley. Each wrote essays about their hobbies, and how those hobbies influenced their award-winning fiction and poetry. For decades, Diane has been assembling fantastic collages. Much of her material comes from old Victorian textbooks. Dani wrote about long-distance running – or not running, in fact, which, after an injury, became a hobby unto itself. Finally, Alix wrote about photography. Her Instagram account (@alixhawl3y) offers a trove of everyday scenes. In her essay, Alix describes how they purposefully reflect a mood of patient observation.

It’s common to assume that the authors we love are entirely focused on writing. But like most creative people, they’re engaged in a variety of interests. Nabokov chased butterflies. Slyvia Plath kept bees. We all know about Jonathan Franzen’s birdwatching. That’s a hobby he shares with Margaret Atwood. In No Time to Spare, the last book written by Ursula le Guin (embroidery), she tackles the subject of free time, and the way people fill it. “The opposite of spare time is, I guess, occupied time,” she writes. “In my case I still don’t know what spare time is because all my time is occupied. It always has been and it is now. It’s occupied by living.”

With this series we’ve undertaken, my hope is to collect as many essays by as many authors on the subject le Guin identified: the occupation of fruitful living. Who else is doing this? No one that I know. The result is wonderful. It deserves to be shared.

12 or 20 (small press) questions;

Queen Mob's Teahouse : Megan Arden Gallant interviews Diane Schoemperlen

As my tenure as interviews editor at Queen Mob's Teahouse continues, the twenty-sixth interview is now online: Megan Arden Gallant interviews Diane Schoemperlen (originally written as an assignment for Natalee Caple aspart of the Brock University Creative Writing Program). Other interviews from my tenure include: an interview with poet, curator and art critic Gil McElroy, conducted by Ottawa poet Roland Prevost, an interview with Toronto poet Jacqueline Valencia, conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham, an interview with Drew Shannon and Nathan Page, also conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham, an interview with Ann Tweedy conducted by Mary Kasimor, an interview with Katherine Osborne, conducted by Niina Pollari, an interview with Catch Business, conducted by Jon-Michael Frank, a conversation between Vanesa Pacheco and T.A. Noonan, "On Translation and Erasure," existing as an extension of Jessica Smith's The Women in Visual Poetry: The Bechdel Test, produced via Essay Press, Five questions for Sara Uribe and John Pluecker about Antígona González by David Buuck (translated by John Pluecker),"overflow: poetry, performance, technology, ancestry": kaie kellough in correspondence with Eric Schmaltz, and Mary Kasimor's interview with George Farrah, Brad Casey interviewed byEmilie Lafleur, David Buuck interviews John Chávez about Angels of the Americlypse: An Anthology of New Latin@ Writing and an interview with Abraham Adams by Ben Fama, Tender and Tough: Letters as Questions as Letters: Cheena Marie Lo, Tessa Micaela and Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Kristjana Gunnars’ interview with Thistledown Press author Anne Campbell, Timothy Dyke’s interview with Hawai’i poet Jaimie Gusman, Hailey Higdon's interview with Joanne Kyger, Stephanie Kaylor's interview with Kenyatta JP Garcia, Jaimie Gusman’s interview with Timothy Dyke, and Sarah Rockx interviews Hamilton, Ontario writer Gary Barwin.

Further interviews I've conducted myself over at Queen Mob's Teahouse include: Geoffrey Young, Claire Freeman-Fawcett on Spread Letter, Stephanie Bolster on Three Bloody Words, Claire Farley on Canthius, Dale Smith on Slow Poetry in America, Allison Green, Meredith Quartermain, Andy Weaver, N.W Lea and Rachel Loden.

If you are interested in sending a pitch for an interview my way, check out my "about submissions" write-up at Queen Mob's; you can contact me via rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com

Ploughshares : an interview with Diane Schoemperlen

Until the end of 2016, I'm a monthly blogger over at the Ploughshares blog! And my second post is now up: an interview with award-winning Kingston writer Diane Schoemperlen, author of the new memoir This Is Not My Life: A Memoir of Love, Prison, and Other Complications (HarperCollins, 2016). You can see the interview here. My first post, an interview with award-winning Toronto poet Soraya Peerbaye, author of Tell: poems for a girlhood (Pedlar Press, 2015), is still online here.

What I'm Reading Now : Drunken Boat

I recently participated in "What I'm Reading Now" over at the Drunken Boat blog; in which my list includes titles by Margaret Christakos, Amelia Martens, Diane Schoemperlen, Soraya Peerbaye and Dennis Cooley.

Blog Hop: what the stories make of us,

The lovely and talented Montreal writer Tess Fragoulis (who we really don’t hear enough from) tagged me in this “Blog Hop” meme [her answers to the same questions are posted here]. I agreed to participate before I realized that I had already done such, under a different title, earlier in the year. Given that I answered such on my current poetry work-in-progress (our wee babe adds much, but slows all projects down, as you might imagine), I thought it might be worth going through the process again (especially since I’d already said yes) for the sake of my current fiction work-in-progress.

[Photo of myself on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, October 4, 2014, taken by Stephen Brockwell]

What are you working on?

For the past couple of years, I’ve been accumulating a collection of short stories tentatively titled “On Beauty.” I’m not entirely convinced by the title, but have set such considerations aside for a while, allowing myself to focus on the stories themselves.

The collection is made up of roughly eighteen short stories, each constructed to be roughly three manuscript pages in length (I suspect the manuscript is nowhere near long enough yet). What appeals to me is in a compact exploration of character and situation, attempting to say an enormous amount in a very small space in the most compact language possible. What appeals are those small or large moments of a character’s life or consideration that have enormous repercussions later on, even if that character might not be aware of the whats and the whys of those triggers. We are such complex creations, and so little of what we do, what decisions we make and why are really understood, even in the midst of our actions. My fiction appears to focus quite heavily on that, for reasons I, myself, have yet to determine.

The title originally came from picking up a copy of the Zadie Smith book of the same name; I’d read a piece by her in Brick: A Literary Journal a few years back and been extremely impressed [I even wrote about that here], so when I saw such at a used bookstore in Perth, Ontario (the former BackBeat Books and Music, when Christine McNair and I did a reading there), I had to pick it up. I have to admit, the book didn’t strike me—I suppose it wasn’t whatever it was I thought I expected (I know this is my issue and not hers); I was surprised by the information overload Smith was providing, and I felt that however skilled the work, there was just too much in the way of what I wanted from the story (I’ve since gone through a collection of her essays, and the book was spectacular).

I am interested in the small moments, and in brevity, wishing to include only the information that is essential to the story. I am not interested in providing needless physical description, for example. So much can be suggested through so very little; and so much of it distracts, and has nothing to do with the goings-on of the action (or, inaction) itself.

So far, I’ve had stories from the manuscript appearing in a few venues, including online at Numero Cinq, matchbook lit, Control Lit Mag and The Puritan, in print at Grain magazine, Matrix magazine and Atlas Review, and one forthcoming this month in The New Quarterly.

There was a period I’d hoped to complete the manuscript before the baby arrived, but that didn’t happen; then I’d hoped to complete the manuscript before Christine’s maternity leave ends in November, but I don’t really see that happening either. Now I’ve got my eyes set upon spring. Optimistically.

It might not be moving as quickly as I might like, but I’m still pretty pleased about it, overall. It feels as though I am accomplishing something that is really moving my work forward in a very positive direction.

How does your work differ from others of its genre?

I would think the lyric density alone might be enough to differentiate my work from the work of others in the same genre. I also tend to steer clear of dialogue.

I also tend to focus on particular moments, often leaping over a whole slew of action sequences: the moments of my fiction appear to either work up to a particular action, or away from a particular action, exploring the results of such. There is so much more to explore after the effects of an action, as opposed to the action itself.

I admired very much an episode of Mad Men that, instead of focusing on a particular wedding (which, narratively, wasn’t terribly important), decided to focus on what happened around and after that wedding. So many television programs would have focused on the wrong thing: a wedding episode. There is something about well-written television and film (such as Mad Men, or the film Smoke) that have prompted my fiction for quite some time. How does one tell a story without giving anything away, and yet, leaving enough space to suggest what hasn’t been shown?

Of course, also, the decade-long swath Brian Michael Bendis recently finished carving through The Avengers over at Marvel Comics (he’s currently working his way through an impressive run at All-New X-Men) is a display on how long-form storytelling is constructed: magnificent.

Why do I write what I do?

I think anyone writes the way they do because it is the only way they know how. Throughout my twenties, during my first few attempts at fiction, it took me far too long to abandon ideas of what I thought fiction was supposed to be and look like, instead of attempting to discover exactly the form that worked best for my own writing, and my own processes. Once I finally managed to clear that hurdle, it was far easier to continue and complete manuscripts that I was happy with.

We do what we do because we can’t do it any other way. And yet, experimentation and exploration are (obviously) essential to any writer’s craft and development. But I could never be able to (even if I wished to) compose a straightforward literary work akin to, say, David Adams Richards or Guy Vanderhaeghe. Even as a reader, the form simply doesn’t appeal.

When it comes to fiction, I’m difficult to impress: I often consider literary fiction to be far too long and wordy, and overly and unnecessarily descriptive, and so the amount of books of fiction I deliberately stop reading mid-way through are endless. Fortunately, I have been enormously impressed by recent works of fiction by Tessa Mellas, Marie-Helene Bertino, Lydia Davis, Lorrie Moore, Lynn Crosbie, Ken Sparling, Michael Blouin, Jim Shepard and Douglas Glover (for example). It does happen; I just wish it would happen more often.

A decade back, I was amazed to finally read Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections (despite finding many of his non-fiction opinions rather annoying); it was one of the first books over two hundred pages I’d read that I couldn’t see to excise a single word.

I’m currently in the midst of the new Diane Schoemperlen collection, and am duly impressed (as I suspected I would be—I love her work).

How does my writing process work?

Slowly, and accumulatively. I begin with longhand, and once I’ve exhausted such, I enter fragments, sections, sentences and paragraphs into the computer. I then print out the story-in-progress and spend time scribbling on the page, adding and subtracting, and composing additional fragments via longhand in my notebook to then return to the computer and go through the process again. Some of the stories in the manuscript-so-far have gone through this process daily for many months. Some have taken nearly three years to complete, and others I haven’t quite decided on yet. There is still much to do.

For further interviews, I tag thee: Cameron Anstee; Aaron Tucker; Ryan Eckes;