Lorri Neilsen Glenn’s most recent books are The Old Moon in Her Arms: Women I Have Known and Been and an updated edition of Threading Light: Explorations in Loss and Poetry (Nimbus, 2024) and Following the River: Traces of Red River Women (Wolsak and Wynn, 2017). Her work has appeared in Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, This Magazine, Juniper and numerous anthologies (Bad Artist, Good Mom on Paper, Sharp Notions: Essays from the Stitching Life), among other publications. Poet Laureate Emerita of Halifax and Professor Emerita, she teaches in the University of King’s College MFA program in Creative Nonfiction. Lorri lives in Nova Scotia.
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book was my dissertation, published as a book. As a narrative, it sat somewhere between scholarly and trade and I recall the thrill of seeing it show up in the public library system. It was an ethnography filled with local stories and, although everyone had freely given permission for me to write about them, it caused a fuss with a few people. It reinforced for me how powerful the written word is. My recent book, The Old Moon in Her Arms, seems to be the closest I’ve come to telling my own story in ways that might appeal to me as a reader.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
After writing and editing scholarly books, I began to write poetry at 50 at the suggestion of a novelist friend who’d read my work. I’d always chafed at the often agonistic nature of academic writing, and back then it seemed using figurative language in research was a bit suspect, lacking gravitas perhaps, a frill or indulgence, when it was naturally how my mind works. Writing poetry made me fall in love with the possibilities of language all over again.
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?
My writing comes slowly. My books come slowly. Unless it’s a research-informed work, I don’t take notes. I simply start writing and see what happens. I’m a string-saver. Soon I become aware of themes emerging and if it’s nonfiction, such as memoir, I typically need several drafts; if it’s poetry, sometimes dozens. Revising is my favourite part.
4 - Where does a poem or work of prose 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?
Except for a couple of anthologies I’ve edited that had a specific goal (the lives of 1950s mothers, for example), I usually write short pieces or poems about what’s on my mind at the time, then if the pieces seem to be gelling in some way, I will then write to that theme. My Red River book (Following the River: Traces of Red River Women) came about as a request from my centenarian aunt who wanted to know the story of her grandmother’s death; after a year or so, my field notes and journal entries from my travels to Northern Manitoba began to feel like the beginnings of a book. When I realized the profound absence of the stories of Cree and Métis women in the archives and in history books—actually, the erasure—the personal search turned into a project to try to give those women, along with my grandmothers, a presence, a voice.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are
you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I’m deeply introverted, but teaching and public events have forced me to learn to override that part of my character. I like readings, yes, and writers’ gatherings, and I love hearing other writers’ works. A voice in a room brings another dimension to the work, deepens it somehow. I’m not sure if my own readings are part of my creative process, but being inspired by others’ writing is.
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?
What’s woven in my writing the last decade in particular include environmental degradation, climate change and the global assaults on women and girls (domestic, institutional, cultural, social, political and more). I mourn the loss of our ability to attend to one another and to honour the natural world. I refer a lot to wahkohtowin, the Cree concept of kinship, the interrelationship of all things—land, people, flora, fauna, all of it—a connection that implies responsibility and care.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
While more books are being published than ever before, it seems fewer people are reading whole books, especially young people. Like all artists, writers can document, question, warn, remind, honour, celebrate and provoke, but only if we’re heard or seen and valued. The arts enlarge our perspective, offer us beauty or stimulation, introduce us to untold stories, particularly stories we need to make room for. I’m grateful for the Canadian writing community—writers in this country seem to be more about the writing itself, how and why it matters, than about climbing a bestseller list.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Editors are essential. I love working with them. We can’t see ourselves clearly without a mirror. Books can take a long time to write, so why publish them without a good edit? The strongest writers I’ve worked with seem to be the most enthusiastic about receiving editing suggestions. Regardless of our experience, we’re all still learning.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster---Elizabeth Bishop
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to
essays to memoir)? What do you see as the appeal?
It’s not the genre that leads me—it’s the moment or the topic or the itch or the stone in my shoe. Only once I start writing do I learn whether the material wants to be poetry or prose. Both appeal to me—and I love blurring the lines between them. I try to resist hardening of the categories.
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 have no routine. Jamaica Kincaid said she’s always been amazed by writers who have routines. “They seem mostly to be men,” she says. If I can find a quiet hour or two with no one around—usually any time during the day—I can write. By around 9 in the evening, though, my mind stops working—when I was younger, it was the other way around. Now that my children are grown, I have the luxury of starting a day with coffee and staring off into the middle distance. If I’m lucky, it leads to writing.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Reading other people’s work—anything from science to research studies to poetry to fiction. An art gallery. A walk. Music of all kinds. Anything that shakes up the neural pathways in my brain.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I’m not sure. I couldn’t tell you what fragrance is in my home now (like the fish who can’t see the water it swims in). Old Spice aftershave used to remind me of my father, the odour of rising dough reminds me of the early days of being a mother when I seemed to bake a lot of bread. Dry grass in the hot summer calls forth my prairie years; the salt of the sea reminds me of days at the beach with my children.
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?
All of them. Anything, really. I found a couple of ladybugs on the window this morning—they got me thinking. The roaring wind I hear as I’m writing this. The whitecaps on the water. The sounds of the guy repairing the eaves on the house. Seeing a name in my contact list and remembering the friend has died.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or
simply your life outside of your work?
I’m a big fan of podcasts—and although they’re aural, not print, I can listen to an author read their work, a scientist explain an aspect of the brain, a psychologist describe personality disorders, a stoic describe daily habits. It’s all information that feeds my curiosity.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Sleep for eight hours at a stretch.
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?
Perhaps a visual artist of some kind. I often joke I’d like to have been a country singer. I have a couple of chords and partial truths, but I don’t always sing in tune.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Probably reading. Once I was of an age to fill the basket of my bike with a pile of books from the library every week, my curiosity was piqued about lives beyond my own. Later, I realized we are all stories and it’s important we hear or read one another’s.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film
you saw?
Ooh, too hard, and too many. Claire Keegan’s So Late in the Day and Small Things Like These stay with me. As do Christina Sharpe’s Ordinary Notes and John Vaillant’s Fire Weather. Great film? I think the South Korean movie, Past Lives.
20 - What are you currently working on?
Since my most recent book was published, I’ve spent most of my time doing readings and giving workshops. Occasionally, I’ll draft a poem. I’m in a fallow period now, I think, so I read, live my life, try to stay open and curious. Something will emerge.
