Paul Vermeersch, Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020

            Before getting to these answers, I first want to compare Vermeersch’s unconventional organizational method to the traditional New and Selected. The convention of the genre is that poets order their poems chronologically by collection. With Vermeersch’s unusual approach, we do lose one feature of the customary method: the ability to track his development as a poet. We are not given the chance to chart the evolution of his work from narrative autobiographical realism (Burn, The Fat Kid, Between the Walls), to a more imagistic, inventive, and visionary mode concerned with the arc of civilization from its origin (The Reinvention of the Human Hand) to its collapse (Don’t Let It End Like This Tell Them I Said Something) to its reimagining (Self-Defence for the Brave and Happy). At the same time, though, we do not lose the more important feature of the traditional New and Selected: the opportunity to read exemplary poems by a talented, distinctive, and prescient poet.
            This small loss, the capacity to chart Vermeersch’s evolution as a poet, is minor compared to what is gained through his unique approach to the New and Selected. Why, then, has Vermeersch ordered his New and Selected by idea and mode of expression, gathering the poems under new titles in alternate collections? What, exactly, is gained? (“Ships, Silences, and Sanctuaries: On Paul Vermeersch’s Shared Universe,” Daniel Scott Tysdal

I’ve been curious to see Toronto poet and editor Paul Vermeersch’s long-awaited Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020 (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2020), in part due to my ongoing fascination with selecteds, as well as my interest in seeing the overall framing of the work-to-date of a poet I’ve been following since before the publication of his first full-length poetry collection, Burn (ECW Press, 2000). I suppose one could say I saw a teaser for this new selected when I reviewed his self-published chapbook Further Communiqués from the Imaginary World (A Saint Bigfoot Book, 2019) [see my review of such here] not that long ago.

It is interesting to see how insistent Daniel Scott Tysdal is in his introduction that this book was selected, ie: rewritten and reconceptualized, by the author. It is reminiscent of another Canadian poet who insisted they rework their own selected poems, as Perth, Ontario poet Phil Hall reworked threads and selections from the length and breadth of his own published work as well, to assemble, not a selected poems, but “a selected poem,” the collection Guthrie Clothing:The Poetry of Phil Hall, a Selected Collage (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015). Otherwise, it would seem any author would be too close to their own material to be trusted to assemble such a collection. Instead, Vermeersch has reframed and restructured his published work-to-date, both highlighting his more recent directions as well as repurposing earlier considerations, perhaps expanding upon what had always been quietly there. What is lost, as Tysdal asks? A progression, I suppose, although I would suspect that copies of all of his previous trade collections are still in print, so the opportunities for seeking out Vermeersch’s progress is easily enough done. What is, instead, gained? Perhaps a way for each individual poem to live outside it’s original book-length context, and, therefore, more on its own merit, as well as part of this broader context of his current, more expanded, thinking.

Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020 selects and reframes poems from his six published collections—Burn (ECW Press, 2000), The Fat Kid (ECW Press, 2002), Between the Walls (Toronto ON: McClelland and Stewart, 2005), The Reinvention of the Human Hand (McClelland and Stewart, 2010), Don't Let It End Like This Tell Them I Said Something (ECW Press, 2014) and Self-Defence for the Brave and Happy (ECW Press, 2018) [see my review of such here]—as well as a handful of newer, uncollected poems into thematic sections: “Psalms for the Metaoccult,” “Apparatus and Procedures for The Imaginary World,” “Suburban Hauntology,” “Creatures of Another Ark,” “(Post)human Origin Stories,” “Required Modifications for the Transhuman,” “More Poems of Prophet and Clairvoyance,” “The Imaginary World is Now Available in Your Choice of Two or Three Dimensions” and “Quickly, Into the Lightverse!”

In a 2018 interview for THIS magazine, conducted by RM Vaughan, Vermeersch reveals that some of the poems that ended up in the collection prior to this selected, Self-Defence for the Brave and Happy, were composed prior to the publication of his first collection, as though his books, somehow, had to catch up to encompass the entirely of his work. As part of the interview, Vaughan describes the books’ section “Nu Rhymes for Nuclear Children” as “a selection of nursery rhymes imagined from a post-nuclear war childhood. They are blunt and scary, and almost read like placards or protest songs.” Vermeersch responds:

I started writing these nursery rhymes in 1995, and they never really fit in with anything I wrote until now. I think they were waiting for this book. They’re all about 20th-century tragedies like the Kennedy assassination or the election of Ronald Reagan. I wanted to update the concept of traditional nursery rhymes that were about horrible things like tyrants and plagues. When the rhymes were redacted with thick black lines to hide parts of the text, they were finally ready for the 21st century.

It is as though, until the publication of Self-Defence for the Brave and Happy, there was a thread of his thinking, and even his writing, that wasn’t being included in his published books; a thread that veered into darker material, reflecting a future closing in or already here. And yet, it seemed the prior collection, The Reinvention of the Human Hand, might have actually been the pivot: writing a tighter first-person exploration of narrative lyric in a linear direction established from his first two collections, but one that was less about storytelling and memoir than about ideas. Those five years between his third and fourth collection might have been important, allowing for a shift in his approach, and his thinking; one that began to formulate a poetic more in keeping with his broader engagements. As “Psalm 2,” the second of the triptych “Psalms of the Metaoccult” reads:

I stand upon a Hill. I stand and know everything
the Hill knows. Green’ry and contour of the land,
the ancientness thereabouts, the inscrutable green
filagree of Hill genius, and áll things. Unless,
it’s Geoffrey—[S T A T I C]—Then: I am dumb. I know
only the theme song to another century: the clank
of tournament | olden swag | secrets of Game
and Variety, Gong and Show, and as above,
the commercial geists of relative good versus
relative evil. O beloved Lyceum, what the fuck
is happening? The world will end on X-Day. Say it!
klaatu barada nikto! | Gét slack! | Ask yourself:
Is eschatology ever that precise? Is epistemology
really all that difficult? Damned if I know. Praise Bob.

Despite whatever interest he might have in the futures described by such as Gene Roddenberry, Vermeersch’s poems are aware of something else, something darker, more macabre. Incorporating nostalgic space imagery and ideas of the future from decades past against an encroaching dystopia, Vermeersch’s first-person narratives write from a semi-optimistic pessimism, a joyful darkness; the future is here, and it is not what we had been hoping for. Nostalgia is, as they say, not what it used to be. In an interview conducted by James Lindsay for Open Book, posted November 6, 2018, Vermeersch responds:

Ah, the world of tomorrow! I admit to having real nostalgia for the optimistic futurism of the Space Age: the world envisioned -- in the popular imagination -- by people like Buckminster Fuller, Walt Disney, Carl Sagan, and Gene Roddenberry: the jet packs, commuter rails and fantastic buildings of a post-capitalist utopia built on the principles of scientific and intellectual discovery. Are these are the dream cities that Jane Jacobs alludes to? I don’t so much long for those dream cities, though, as a time when people believed they were possible. I was born and came of age when the Space Age was already experiencing its downturn, and for the majority of my life, it seems like the dominant mode of imaginative futurism has been the dystopia -- from Mad Max to Blade Runner to The Handmaid’s Tale. We’re far more captivated, it seems to me, by humanity’s capacity for self-destruction, and I have to wonder if our appetite for cautionary tales, rather than aspirational ones, is a symptom of widespread societal regression or one of its causes. I’m haunted by the question: if we spent more time imagining a better world, would we eventually achieve one? It’s this tension between hope and setback that’s at the heart of my new book, I think -- looking toward the dream city while standing in the wasteland, uncertain if the dream city is real or just an image on a billboard.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with James Lindsay

James Lindsay is co-owner of Pleasence Records. His first collection of poetry, Our Inland Sea, has recently been published by Wolsak & Wynn's Buckrider Books.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Finishing my first book was proof to myself that I could do it. Now I feel that if I can do it once, I can do it again. The oldest poem in it was written around 12 years ago. I think it was the one of the first successful pieces I ever wrote, but obviously I’ve changed a lot since then. Most of Our Inland Sea was trying to find a style that worked for me. Moving forward, I’m trying to take what I did, push it further and strip away the old scaffolding I’ve come to rely on.

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

My attraction to poetry started with, and still is, because I find it challenging. I remember looking at a poem and being mystified by the thing. Why these words? Why this form? Why not just say what you had to say as straightforward as possible? These are still the questions I ask myself when I read poetry. And once I started to write it myself, once I saw that I could do it as well I wanted to try to become better at it, and then I started to see it as a craft.

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 constantly taking notes: words, sentences, quotes. At a certain point I begin to notice a theme of the recent note taking and then I sit down to really write. It’s not like I’m just putting the scraps together, but much of the tone and source material comes from my notes. There’s this initial blast of writing where I get much of the body of the thing done, then it’s revise, revise, revise for up to two weeks or so after. But I’m always revisiting them. They’re never really finished.

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 experience writing Our Inland Sea was much like writing a individual poem. I had all these pieces and began to see similarities in them. I used to be afraid to repeat myself, as if every new piece had to attempt to be completely original. But once I got over that, I embraced the repetition I was seeing and I steered it towards an overall theme for the book.

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

I do enjoy readings. I’m nervous every time, but I enjoy it. A big part of writing Our Inland Sea came when I read at the Pivot series. I read a series of new poems I had been working on that were more humorous and socially focused than what I had previously been doing and I got a very positive reaction, laughs in all the right places. That affirmation helped me to realize where I wanted the collection to go.

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 want my poetry to be more concerned with general social aspects than uniquely individual ones. Or more specifically how people see themselves in larger groups, how we identify. I want to try to show personal psychology, but using the group’s language. I try to have a friction of nature rubbing up against culture, playing with ideas of what’s “natural.”

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 don’t think writers are necessarily different from other artists. Writing can be for pure entertainment; it can enlighten; it can be for personal reasons; for profit; it can be public and it can be privet. The difference is that writing is very practical and almost everyone does to some extent. Making a shopping list is writing, a different kind of writing, but its still writing. So, for writers at least, I think the role should be to try to take to push yourself, to make it stronger, something beyond the shopping list. No matter what you write.

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

My editor, Paul Vermeersch, was a big part of the writing of Our Inland Sea. I’m an easy edit, I like to have criticism, it gives me something to work with. By the time Paul got to see much of the first draft manuscript, it was all over the place. But the more we talked about the poems, the more I began to see what this book was all about. It’s not that he wrote any of it, but he was great at pointing out problems. He always had suggestions, but never forced them. It was more like, “Here’s you problem, fix it.” And I’d go back full of energy, excited to try and find a solution. I love the editing process as much as I like the initial inspiration. At times like those, poems feel like privet riddles that need solving.

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

“If you want to be a writer, write.”

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

To be honest, I find all creative writing difficult. It rarely comes easy to me, but that’s also the appeal. That said, I find myself having to concentrate much harder with prose in order for what I want to say to be clear. I don’t often get the opportunity to write prose, but I welcome it when it comes along as I find the struggle tends to strengthen my writing overall.

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 wish I could say I wrote everyday, but I don’t. I read everyday, and like I said, I’m constantly jotting down fragments for later use, but I don’t always have the time to seriously get down to it. But when I do, I start early in the morning, read a bit first while drinking coffee, look at recent notes and jots then start going at it. If I’m revising, that can happen any time of day, but often at night.

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

When things slow down, when I’m not a fan of what I’m producing, I just keep going and try to put any anxiety about it aside. I think to myself, “OK, today is going to be about quantity, not quality.” This helps me explore things I might not have if I was working on something specific, so the next time I’ll have some more stuff to start with.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Cooking. Something roasting in the oven. Curry, cumin, garlic, rosemary. My wife’s pies or banana bread.

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?

Music and visual art both play a part in my poetry, but not necessarily in a direct way. I tend not to write as much about what the piece of music or art means as what was behind the making of it and how it effects. For example, at the moment I’m trying to write about a Goya painting called “The Duchess of Alba and La Beata” that depicts his muse, María Cayetana de Silva, lurching out of the darkness at one of her maids, scaring the crap out of her, as a prank. What really connected with me was that they would have had to plan this in advance, Goya and the Duchess lurking in the shadows and waiting for the maid to walk by. I suppose I liked the implied twisted intimacy between the two rumored lovers more than I actually liked the painting itself.

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

That’s a tough one. I feel like my influences are constantly changing. I’ve worked in bookstores for the last ten years, so I’m very privileged to have had a constant stream of new writers exposed to me. I tend to fall for particular writers and read as much as can of them before moving on to something new and rarely revisiting them after, or feeling less excited about them if I do. But, at various times, I’ve been highly influenced by Gordon Lish, Louise Gluck, Donald Antrim, Dean Young, Tony Hoagland, John Ashbery, and Jack Spicer.

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

I want to say write a novel, but I also feel superstitious that if I do, it’ll never happen. It’s kind of like saying you want to climb Everest because you enjoy hiking.  It’s also one of those clichés people say, “I’m working on my novel.” But I love novels and what they’re capable of. And maybe, like poetry, it’s worth trying to do just for the sake of doing it.

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?

If not for writing, if I didn’t have that motivation, I’d probably still be working jobs that took all of my energy and left me with no time to focus on writing. (I’ve always been enamored by writers who have a full time job, a family, and still are able to find time and energy for creativity.) I’d like to think I’d still be reading a lot, as I did then, but I also think that it was my drive to write, and my involvement in the Toronto literary community that kept me hungry to read as much as possible.

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

I’ve always been interested in books, music and art, but I have distinct memories of being praised for writing at a very young age. So I’ve always thought writing as something that I could do, a realistic possibility, opposed to, say, taking up an instrument, which I’ve never had much inclination towards.  

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

I loved Mary Jo Bang’s liberal translation of The Inferno. She embraces the comedy and updates it to a semi-modern farce. Eric Cartman, Saddam Hussein and Dick Cheney all make appearances in hell and at the end of each canto there are meticulous notes on the changes she made and the historical significance of Dante’s references. I tend to love anything that can simultaneously be that silly and serious.

I watch a lot of horror movies, but few are ever able to extend past the restrictions of the genre. The Dutch film Borgman, while still having good scares and creepiness, was also not afraid to be intelligent and psychological, but so subtlety that you never notice that all of the sudden you’re watching an art house movie. Much like It Follows and The Babadook, which I also adored, the evil in it is not something I’ve ever seen before, which was refreshing considering most of horror’s reliance on the old vampire-werewolf-ghost-zombie-murderer bad guys. All three also resist the easy plot device of the origin story, which always drains the mystery of the film.

20 - What are you currently working on?

After being very busy for the last two and a half months or so, I finally have some time to start writing again and I want to take full advantage of it. When I look back at my first book now I see parts that interest me more than others. I want to start exploring those parts more, seeing where I can push them to.

12or 20 (second series) questions;