Ongoing notes: Meet the Presses (part two,

[view from my table]

I’m sure by now you’ve seen the first part already, but here are some further items I picked up at the recent Meet the Presses fair in Toronto last weekend; might we see you today at the ottawa small press book fair? I mean, there might even be cookies!

Toronto ON/Vancouver Island BC: Vancouver Island poet and critic Sonnet L’Abbé’s latest title, produced through Carleton Wilson’s Junction Books, is the beautifully designed and bound poetry chapbook Anima Canadensis (2016). Composed as part of a “larger project,” Anima Canadensis opens with the sequence, “PERMANENT RESIDENTS’ TEST,” a poem that speaks to Canadian cultural and historical contexts, referencing Indigenous displacements and European settlement through, among other means, discussing flowers (“Identify the native species in this passage.”) and other “agricultural products.”

Answer the following questions.

In order to stay in what form? In order. In order to keep the nuclear grazing, the gentle seep? In order to keep? To keep order. The way and flow and the way of things. The order of things. The will to keep, to keep on, to go on, to sustain. To keep out of trouble. To maintain. Love your ability to sustain. In order to sustain in what form? Please complete this human form. This formal question. How will you stay? Is the order complete? What form sustains? Where there is will some will remains. How will you sustain order? Prove your ability to sustain. Please fill out this shape. Take a new form. Prove your ability to love.

I’ve been utterly fascinated to see the shift in L’Abbé’s work since the publication of her first trade collection, expanding outwards from metaphor-driven lyric to more experimental works that attempt to navigate and explore issues around race, identity and colonization [see her recent Touch the Donkey interview that touches on some of the same]. Her work, in both form and content, has become more socially and politically engaged, more open to alternate forms and, to my mind, has become far more compelling, putting her on a Canadian poet shortlist of required reading. As she writes to open the poem “LOVE AMID THE ANGLOCULTURE” : “Is it not of the same gravity / as going to war, / the decision to love?”

BRAIN STEM

Strong neck the channel through which your roots become branches. Strong neck the trunk through which your impulses flow, tides of perception and reaction. You are a battery of cells, positive of material, anti-positive of nervous potential. You, a dyad of bunches of waving branches and bundled branches, of bunches of searching roots and rooting roots. The spine of your decision-making: a flexible tension between head and heart. The moving tree grows in more dimensions than knowledge: in its reach, yes, in its span, but also, if it is lucky, in its rootedness, in its density, in the neck’s rough skin thickened to injury, that lifts above its heart a head of power—ever spring-fond, ever fall-wise—a tender, leafy power to love light.

Toronto/Picton ON: New from Leigh Nash and Andrew Faulkner’s The Emergency Response Unit is Toronto poet Phoebe Ka-Ir Wang’s chapbook HANGING EXHIBITS (2016), a title constructed of poems that respond, predominantly, to visual art. Obviously, ekphrastic poems (poems that respond to other creative works, including poems, visual art, etcetera) have been around forever (works by Diana Brebner, Stephanie Bolster and Robert Creeley come to mind), and far too often simply describe or explain the artworks they claim to be “responding” to, but the narratives of Wang’s poems seem to respond sideways to the original works. She seems to compose intriguing little narratives that emerge from, or are even influenced by, the originals. As she writes at the end of the poem “STILL LIFE WITH ANCESTORS”: “She’ll tell us there’s more to the story.” Wang’s poems do seem to suggest far more than what they say, offering both alternate considerations and even addendums to their source materials.

STILL LIFE WITH SURFACES

after Matisse, Goldfish and Sculpture, 1912

She’s gone in ahead of us, testing

the bathwater. When she winces

we feel it too. The heat applies

its deep vermilion to her knees,

her thighs, the tract of her tummy,

forcing them to bloom.

We slough off cotton

socks and tank tops, climb in

as if into a second skin,

first my sister, then me.

we’re slippery as fins.

The light amniotic, rinsing us

in cerulean, and even when

we’re clean and we don’t emerge.

Outside, the air is frigid

and hostile. We’d rather live here,

inside the dance of chiaroscuro,

where the hour’s tropical.

Mom passes something to us—

a scrap of cloth, a white pill of soap

(her impulsiveness, her innate talents)

gives us no choice but to use them.

Notes on Five Canadian Small (micro) Publishers: Apt. 9 Press, The Emergency Response Unit, AngelHousePress, Nomados Literary Publishers and Greenboathouse Press

A piece I wrote for Australian online journal Cordite on five Canadian small press publishers is now online! On Cameron Anstee's [photo by Lisa Greeves] Apt 9 Press, Leigh Nash and Andrew Faulkner's The Emergency Response Unit, Peter and Meredith Quartermain's Nomados, Amanda Earl's AngelHousePress + Jason Dewinetz' Greenboathouse Press! includes a list of a ton of other Canadian small publishers.

Profile of Leigh Nash + Andrew Faulkner's The Emergency Response Unit at Open Book; Ontario

My profile of Leigh Nash + Andrew Faulkner's Toronto-based chapbook press, The Emergency Response Unit, is now up at Open Book: Ontario.

Ongoing notes: late December, 2011

A photo from our recent Christmas party/reading/regatta for ThePeter F. Yacht Club; hopefully we can get another issue out soon. But, of course, a new issue of ottawater is in the works, due to launch in January, and another issue of seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics is forthcoming as well, with new works by Monty Reid, Marcus McCann and others.

Nearing the end of another year. I find it staggering the amount of changes over the past year, and the year before. How did I get here?

Phoenix AZ: It’s lovely to get this year’s card from Sheila E. Murphy, a tradition I suspect she borrowed from the late Toronto poet bpNichol, sending out some three hundred cards of original material every Christmas for years. A few years back, Grain magazine even featured Nichol’s cards in an issue [see my review of suchhere]. His widow, Ellie, and daughter still send out a stack every year. For a while, Gil McElroy did the same, changing his a few years back from printed card in the mail to a poem over email. Doesn’t this all make you a bit jealous, knowing you aren’t receiving them? Thank you, Sheila, Gil and Ellie!

Toward the Year Twenty-Twelve

I have spent my life rehearsing to become a child.

Holiday jazz dissonance throughout the room

distracts from tonal sentiment

of past tense.

A double bass plucks percussion

next to woodwinds in a minor key.

I watch the toddler riding in its stroller,

and send a blessing

valid as a citizen’s arrest.

Infants and adults, a single species,

propelled by will

amid the soft perfume of being wanted,

faced with disentangling others

from an infinity of selves.

Toronto ON: I don’t know anything about Julie Cameron Gray, but from the first poem of her chapbook Coordinating Geometry (Toronto ON: The Emergency Response Unit, 2011) I am impressed.

After a Stage Performance of Anna Karenina

Ugly, unloved month. How

partial I am to the muddy clouds,

the concrete defining your sightline.

Stone planter, cement steps—

you would be marble in the sun.

Already you’re only enduring,

the quick night curled in the sling

of your scarf. Slip a small coin

down a magic slot and hear

whatever you have to say

come rattling from your mouth.

Surfeit, these graphite branches,

these milk-grey skies of November.

Take my ears, completely,

haul them back through a Russian

Pastoral, a theatre in St. Petersburg.

Drag me through a wedding ring,

a dark velvet train.

There is a slight unevenness to the short collection of poems, but in the pieces that work, there is an ease, an attention that is compelling, such as in the poem “Viral,” that includes the last line, “Collects the small secrets and loose change of your body and builds an aerie in the hollow of your shoulder blades, where it begins to write its memoirs.” It’s as though her poems are still working to discover a balance between ease and seriousness, working still to hold back a formal sense from tripping her up. I am intrigued, certainly.

Vancouver BC: Vancouver poet and critic Stephen Collis’ Lever (Vancouver BC: Nomados, 2011) continues his engagement with the social consciousness of his immediate, with the opening of the first poem, “The Felt World,” that writes: “Sit on a / Pacific beach / watching the ocean / die—acidification / hypoxia toxic / algae blooms to / thermal maximum / the giant carbon / sponge a sink / for tailings / fertilizer killer / microbes hormone / runoff all the / plastic that’s fit / to pitch.” The poisoning of the ocean comes up a couple of times in this small collection, less a theme than an accusation or a desperate realization, both of which they more often should be. The more I read work such as Collis, I wonder why poems and poets aren’t more political, and wonder just how it is that so many on the west coast are? As does Vancouver poet nikki reimer’s that stays news (Nomados, 2011) [see my review of such here], Collis deals with the recent “Occupy” movement in his seven-part “Dear Common” (the idea of the “Common” one that recurs in Collis’ work) as the third section opens:

Vancouver is not a

march or an

occupation but it

seems so in its

unfixed fixity

where we’d

unleash all this

movement

course together

but work on

smoothing the edges

where one breaks

off and another

begins

Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair

Can you believe another small press fair has come and gone? If you need more, the fall edition of The Toronto Small Press Fair comes up on December 10 at the University of Toronto’s Hart House. Otherwise, you have to wait for spring. Can you wait that long?

Don’t forget the triple-launch on December first at the Carleton Tavern [details here], with Christine McNair launching a chapbook (see Cameron Anstee’s review on the ottawa poetry newsletter here), Matthew Firth launching a collection of short stories and Bardia Sinaee launching a chapbook as well. Might we see you?

Ottawa/Toronto ON: It was great to see Ottawa poet Nicholas Lea participate in the pre-fair reading, especially since he gave perhaps his finest reading so far, to launch the chapbook Actual Girl (Toronto ON: The Emergency Response Unit, 2011), following up his trade collection, Everything is movies (Ottawa ON: Chaudiere Books, 2007). Quiet in the interim, Lea’s poems have deepened, lengthened, and developed a level of maturity. When I say quiet, I mean almost completely silent, with little released into the world in the four years since his trade book appeared, nary a poem appearing in an anthology or journal but for the rare one or two. Just where has he been?

Reading Fanny Howe

It's gotten to the point

where it isn't about an image

but the drug of its self.

Every calamity has

its certainty-music

and by contrast

its unreality.

It's true I've been wanting

to be someone at all.

Wires swing

like skipping ropes, but

I promise

it's not about images.

Sun in the haze

a milky bulb.

I promise.

Nicholas Lea has always been partial to the formalists, existing somewhere between lyric metaphor and more abstract surrealism. Imagine, if you will, somewhere in the scale from David O’Meara to Kevin Connolly to Stuart Ross. I admire his careful poems, quietly reworked as far away as possible before releasing them, carved and ready to an eagerly awaiting audience. The poems take as long as they take, I suppose.

Actual Girl

A vital flower winks

at the gawking boy

holding a candle popsicle.

This was no average savage

bicycle romp. We sat lipless

on a rock with ocean spiders.

I saw you renew,

watched you chew

the mush dark, you,

actual girl.

Ottawa ON: Pearl Pirie released In Air/Air Out: 21 Poets for the Guatemala Stove Project (phafours press, 2011), quietly edited and published by her as a fundraiser for a project that provides stoves for Guatemalan homes (one can find out more information, as well as donate directly at their website, www.guatemalastoveproject.org). A lovely small chapbook already going into a second printing, it is filled with new text and visuals by Amanda Earl, Allison Armstrong, Shai Ben-Shalom, James DeMers, Rick Kempa, Rhonda Melanson, Mike Montreuil, Nedjo Rogers, Luminita Suse, Robert Swereda, Danielle Susi, Kevin Spenst, Jade Scapillato, Monty Reid, My Name Is Scot, Adrienne Mercer, Phil Hall, Candra, Dawn Corrigan, Jeremy Colangelo and even myself.

Breathe In the Difference

Choose our brand of air. It’s the purest

and each canister lasts a guaranteed eight hours.

Don’t trust what our competitors say.

We begin with pristine elements. Our oxygen

is recovered from pockets in the last of the polar ice.

You don’t want to take any chances

when you’re on a road trip

protected from the choking multitudes only by

your thin membrane of bulletproof glass. (Nedjo Rogers)

Given that the chapbook was produced as a fundraiser for Guatemalan families to be able to breathe cleaner air, as opposed to fire-pits in their homes that filled their lungs and their rooms up with smoke, the “air” theme is quite interesting, a provides for an interesting grouping of poems. What might a group of writers do with such a similar theme or idea?

11. Denver – Mexico City

All air is hard air.

There’s a storm in the Gulf and another

winding itself up in the Pacific

and the continent is squeezed into a funnel

through which we all eventually disappear.

If you put the air into the machine

it will make you anything.

It will make you butterflies. (Monty Reid)

Ottawa ON: Odourless Press, as well as hosting a website of new and reprinted material (sometimes, unfortunately, without permission, which has got them into a speck of trouble), has edged into producing chapbooks, with sealed envelopes holding copies of Jeff Blackman’s Back To My Old Self (2011) and Bardia Sinaee’s Royal Jelly: five poems (2011). Both poets originally came out of CarletonUniversity’s In/Words magazine and press, an informal group that produce a journal, occasional chapbooks and a reading series, and a number of writers have come through their ranks, including Cameron Anstee, Ben Ladouceur, David Currie, jesslyn delia smith and plenty of others.

Progress

“by fifty, I’ll be great” think myself a natural wonder waiting to be discovered or maybe win the lottery (everyone will eventually) or would I tend to keep my faith in the mirror, scale in proportion to the neighbours, avoid failure, those conversations

(never having been through revolution) a genuine surprise when the rally ends

the pals from the old neighbourhood get real quiet when the lyrics change the song

not what the earnest expect, like the wrongly imprisoned;

muster an excuse that rhymes with dupes

so sing a psalm: everyday I’ll make mistakes tomorrow I’ll make most of them

Ottawa writer Jeff Blackman edits/publishes the journal Moose and Pussy, and was recently the first runner-up for Carleton’s 2011 George Johnston Poetry Prize. His small leaflet/chapbook Back To My Old Self contains a small handful of uneven poems. There are some good moments here, including in the George Johnston-shortlisted “Mario in Koopaland circa Movember,” but are often obscured. His shorter-lined poems, perhaps the constraint of shorter lines themselves, provide more clarity, purpose and strike, such as the end of the poem “Single Player’s Revival,” that reads:

a bliss of gravity

against the centre

Iranian-born and Canadian-raised Bardia Sinaee, author of Royal Jelly: five poems and the broadsheet “Clearing Up the Question of It’s Doing By Us” (Moose and Pussy/In/Words, 2011) has started to have work appear in other venues as well, including Arc poetry magazine and PRISM International.

Four Ways to Eat Your Dandelion

1

Misanthropes, consider our public parks:

more trees than a hawk’s beard has feathers,

jogging paths to discover spandex

and revel in the names of dogs.

2

Protestors and false prophets may demonstrate

for themselves within the Free Speech Zone

between the waterfowl preserve

and the experimental farm.

3

From the roots up under marble shrines

for those late-onset philanthropists

whose descendants today fly coach

for our secular libraries and museums.

4

For representatives and councillors

at the municipal level, catered affairs

are encouraged, both for the local economy

and as a chance to compare spouses.

Sinaee’s poems are tight, compelling, carved monologues, and, like Blackman’s poems, far tighter when the lines are reigned in, such as in the three part “No Sparrow,” a poem that, by itself, is more than worth the price of admission. Composed, it says “1995: Tehran, Iran,” it begins with:

The prayer calls moaning from the minarets

follow us home from the video store, hanging

like clotheslines between the tenements. This

is how and when we see the thing

wiped on the asphalt: half its wing and the insides’

coral clockwork on the street. We are helplessly young

and the bird still breathing. We lay it by a tulip stem

on a bundle of your father’s briefs.

Dinosaur Porn, eds. Gordon, Faulkner, Nash

Downloading Pornsaurus Rex Instead

Of Downloading You

Nathaniel G. Moore

Goodbye and goodnight cave girl extreme

Your club asleep at cave mouth, your mouth

Diligent, lean.

I clean the barrel of my mischief.

Can it be you that I hear snoozing

In the Dino Mart staff lounge in leopard print

Tart wear? Let me view you, then,

Sleeping with terror broom, terribly constructed

Standing as when I drew near to the pile of dry leaves

And twigs where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,

Even to the original nightmare blouse.

Or is it only the trees, and their dutiful chemistry in its twitchy night

Scratching at my cave door?

Dusty kisses travelling across the mulch and oh my manners.

You being ever so consigned to itemized profit sharing employee

Discount debate, heard no more of my poetry.

Thus I; cave slammed hard, leaves around me crying and pouting,

Wind a sore oozing cream across my chest, my nostrils delighted in thorns

And the pornography calling.

I finally received a copy of Dinosaur Porn (2010), edited by Spencer Gordon, Andrew Faulkner and Leigh Nash as a co-presentation between their two small Toronto publishing houses, Ferno House and The Emergency Response Unit. This is an anthology that asked potential contributors to submit poetry and/or fiction on the theme of “dinosaur porn,” and was published with the following warning at the beginning, seemingly in lieu of an introduction:

WARNING: This anthology contains sexually explicit material and/or fossils. In order to excavate this anthology you must certify to the following:

Under the governing law of my continent, I have reach the epoch of majority and the epoch required to excavate sexually explicit material and/or fossils (i.e., at least the Lias Epoch). I am excavating this anthology from a location where sexually explicit material and/or fossils are legal and permitted. Furthermore, I will not permit any person or hatchling to excavate this anthology if said person or hatchling is not legally permitted to do so.

I would presume so much of this anthology, even to them, is either self-explanatory, or like a joke one doesn’t get, making it impossible to explain. What does that mean, exactly? Responses vary, but highlights included work by Nathaniel G. Moore, Gary Barwin, Andrew Faulkner, Louise Bak, Leigh Nash, Carey Toane, and Shannon Rayne, such as this piece, the first of her three in the small collection:

Primitive

Shannon Rayne

Therizinosaurus: This odd dinosaur had immensely long muscular arms (2.5m) that ended in three-fingered hands with huge 60cm long scythe shaped claws. Some experts suggest that it behaved like a giant ground sloth, sitting on its haunches to feed.

Douglas Palmer,

Dinosaurs

There is no much thing as an unflattering position. Bellies slap, hips tilt back. Thighs part just wide enough to expose our sex, our most vulnerable parts. Butterfly and lotus poses are nothing more than glossy labels given to sell books. Think downward dog, think bucking bull, primitive and raw squatting over cock as bellies roll and breasts flop. Make plenty of noise. Squeal, grunt, scream. Burrow your nails into your lover’s chest, bite down, reveal your teeth.

Beautifully produced in a numbered edition of two hundred copies, there are few anthologies of Canadian writing this odd, and with a variety of interesting work as well. But where the hell did they get the idea? Why do I suspect that the lack of introduction simply confirms that this was an anthology originally conceived over too many drinks?

Drink up, I say, dear editors. I, for one, would like to see what else you might imagine.

the ottawa small press book fair: today,

When James Spyker and I founded the ottawa small press book fair in late 1994, we were patterning our event loosely on what we knew of the Toronto version, co-founded some seven years earlier by Toronto writers and small press enthusiasts Stuart Ross and Nicholas Power as an extension of their monthly ‘Meet the Presses.’ During the early 1990s in Ottawa, there was an emerging, albeit scattered, community of small press, all without a venue to properly display and sell their wares. Those interested in such were forced to look further afield for attention, whether Toronto or Montreal, or even Vancouver, and New York. There were certainly no outlets available to discuss chapbooks, or coherent bookstore space. As well, like little islands of production, most of these producers of poetry, fiction and/or non-fiction books, chapbooks, journals, comics, zines and pamphlets seemed to barely have any awareness of each other. The first thing we wanted was to help develop a community that was at least aware of themselves, even before introducing that community to the larger world. How can anything improve or develop when compared only to itself?

There is sometimes the misconception that small/micro press purely exists as some kind of farm team for larger publishers, as though the step from one to the other inevitable, and step solely in one direction, presumably up. It’s much like the idea, for some, that writing poetry is automatic precursor to fiction, but those inside know the difference (every poodle is a dog, but not every dog, a poodle). Certainly, some of those who have published poetry chapbooks with Leigh Nash and Andrew Faulkner’s The Emergency Response Unit or Cameron Anstee’s Apt. 9 Press might also engage with book publishers, whether currently or down that hopeful road, but jwcurry and the myriad publications that fill his table exist purely and deliberately along the margins of small publishing. His small items might never see the inside of a bookstore, and are predominantly experienced either through direct knowledge of his catalogue, or attending a small press book fair, otherwise his thirty-plus years of publishing become completely invisible.

One of the things that wasn’t really discussed during the whole Toronto Small Press Fair ugliness a couple of years ago was the real function that these fairs play within the community, whether the Toronto fair, Broken Pencil’s Canzine, Montreal’s Expozine or the ottawa small press book fair, going strong at twice a year since fall 1994. Over the years, other fairs have emerged and disappeared, one as suddenly as the other, including an Ottawa zine fair that happened twice in the mid-1990s, and our own Word On The Street that seemed to come and go without too much real fanfare. Other fairs across the country seem to appear and disappear as well, including those organized in Vancouver, Hamilton, Edmonton, Fredericton and St. Catharine’s, Ontario. Those of us who organize these small press fairs are predominantly volunteers, working unpaid positions of love, and do so as caretakers for inherently community-driven events; if the events don’t fulfill and anticipate the needs of the community they serve, what purposes do they actually fill?

There are still rumours of problems at the Toronto fair, despite a few coordinator shifts since the “struggles,” and despite everything the current organizers have accomplished. Meet the Presses, the original 1984 pre-cursor to the Toronto fair, has even returned, thanks to founders Ross and Power, along with a board of other small press creators. Ebbs and flows, any community knows. Things slow down as one others rise to fill their place, but it can take as many threads of consistency to hold a community together. The landscape was certainly different when we started our little fair in the capital. There were no Chapters, General Distribution still existed, Coach House was still known as “Press,” and we still enjoyed independent booksellers such as The Double Hook in Montreal, Books Canada and Food for Thought Books in Ottawa, and all those west coast Duthie’s locations. The next wave of small press hadn’t yet taken hold, still sullen from the hangovers of the past. Presses have since come and gone and others begun, and yet we are still here, working to support those that insist and persist, including AngelHousePress, Room 302 Books, BuschekBooks, the Ottawa Arts Review and other local ventures, as well as those who travel a bit further to engage in that conversation called literature. We have not only persevered, but thrived, a room of our own twice a year in Jack Purcell Community Centre on Elgin Street, a room we invite the whole world to be part of.

12 or 20 questions: with Aaron Tucker

Aaron Tucker has had poems and reviews published in magazines across Canada and is currently working on a poetry project tentatively titled apartments, a portion of which was published by the Emergency Response Unit as a chapbook (recently shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award), and above/ground press. He also edits and contributes to the online review site agorareview.ca. He teaches and writes in Toronto.

1 - How did your first chapbook change your life?

It hasn’t really changed anything. It’s really nice to be able to hand my work to people and have them read it and discuss it with me but I’m always writing and publishing. I will say though that Leigh and Andrew made apartments a beautiful text – the cover, the interior and layout; it’s stunning.

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

For a long time I wrote mainly fiction but over the last few years I’ve found myself writing more and more poetry and non-fiction (essays and reviews) mostly because I’ve felt more of a connection with poetry books I’ve read. I wrote apartments because I wanted to write like Lisa Robertson and Nathalie Stephens and talk about similar ideas surrounding cities and space that they were.

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’ve a relatively slow writer – I usually spend a lot of time reading and researching first, batting ideas around in my head. I surround myself with others’ books. Once I read enough to define a goal (or a question I want to answer) then I try and write something everyday; a lot of that “everyday-writing” is translation of notes and a lot of it is garbage that ultimately gets chucked.

4 - Where does a (poem or piece 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?

Similar answer to the one above. I really like the idea of the long work; the book that I always come back to is The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. I love the collaging of different forms and mediums and try to replicate that in my own work. Stuart Ross reopened the discussion of the long poem and while I agree with him in terms of “projects” becoming grant-bait, the books I love the most are connected, each poem in conversation, even narrative, with the other.

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

Public readings are very necessary. They provide the space for conversation to begin collaborations and relationships.

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?

The question I began apartments with was “How do people live in cities and not go crazy?” Growing up in very rural B.C. and then moving to Toronto, I was struck by how little space and language is afforded to individuals. I wondered how I would keep living in the city and still maintain a vocabulary that was uncorrupted by ubiquitous advertising, how I could carve out a gap to make a home when so many of the living spaces look the same and encroach on each other. On one hand there is something crushing and constant about this pressure but on the other, now that I’ve been here for 3+ years, I’ve realized these concerns and questions are also what makes me adore the city.

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?

Big question. Not sure what “writer” means – Writer of what? Where? I suppose I always tell my students to observe and from those observations, make an argument.

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

An outside editor is essential. At least half of what I write the first time through is trash and I really value the people who have looked through my work and given me feedback. I’m such a sloppy first draft person that most of my time is spent in editing.

I would like to see more carefully and slowly edited books in Canada –as a reviewer, there is almost too much being published in Canada. This is causing houses, because they want funding, to spread their resources thinner and thinner and publish more and more. A book should probably take a year or so just in the editing process.

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

Don’t stop ‘till you get enough.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?

I see the two working hand in hand, especially with apartments and my newest work. I look at engaging poetry as making an argument both in form and content. I try to keep this in mind when I review books; to me, it’s less important whether I like a book or not (who cares what I think?) but rather how well did the book accomplish its goals. In this way, I find it useful in my own writing to always keep questions at the forefront and strive to answer them poetically.

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 try to read more than I write. I’ll usually spend most of my time writing looking at my notes and surrounding myself with other peoples’ books. From this initial cobbling, I try to read each poem out loud and edit, edit, edit.

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

With this last work I just went outside with my Ipod and walked. The energy of certain streets in Toronto is revitalizing; I love Kensington on Pedestrian Sunday.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Cow shit. Every once and while it strikes me as a strange that if I was born and raised in Toronto I probably wouldn’t have seen a cow in a field more than 5 times.

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?

For apartments it was obviously architecture. I am less interested in actual buildings and more in how buildings mesh (or don’t mesh) together – architecture as context. The large gesture like the addition to the ROM or rebuilding of the AGO is interesting but ultimately those are landmarks. To me, it’s kind of silly that Toronto’s downtown core is built largely around a mall; I like wandering the side streets around Dundas Square ignoring the Eaton Center.

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

The list is very very long and I mentioned a number already. Additionally: Margaret Christakos, angela rawlings, Jordan Scott, Charles Olsen, Gertrude Stein, Rem Koolhaas, Jane Jacobs etc etc etc.

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

I have zero musical ability though I’m constantly listening to music. With that in mind I would like to be able to play “Mr. Green Genes.”

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?

I love teaching and I’m really happy I get to do that. Barring that, maybe a hand model.

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

Probably the Hardy Boys, then Fear Street & R.L. Stine, then Stephen King. I devoured books when I was young and it just seemed obvious that I would try and write my own. In the third grade our teacher made us keep journals and I turned mine into a 9 volume terror ride. 

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

Book: Do Androids Dream Electric Sheep – I re-read this recently. Stunning and weird. Movie: I saw Brazil a few nights ago. Also stunning and weird. 

20 - What are you currently working on?

A prose poetry project called under. I’m channelling my inner street preacher and describing the horrors of deep sea creatures.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;