the city on the edge of forever, : Victoria, part three,

Okay, so I clearly had too many adventures in Victoria, British Columbia [see part one here; see part two here]. I thought I could contain it all in one post, so there you go.

Saturday, April 25: My final morning in Victoria, with a noon check-out, so I had to get my bags figured out. My high school pal Jennifer (who originally collected me from the airport on day one of this trip) arrived for the sake of my many bags, and we headed out to get coffee and sandwiches. There were rowboats in the water. The sky was an incredible blue. We drove out for sandwiches to a place she likes, realizing we were parking right by that art gallery that was closed on Thursday, when I wandered that same way, able to go into the "multi-media debut solo exhibition by Mila Rio," You Do Not Have to Be Good (again, a line from this Mary Oliver poem). Rio is layering animal imagery in a really interesting way, from paintings to works of felt across frames, stitching ideas together that intrigue and slightly trouble the imagination. I hadn't realized until after that we had actually met the artist, sitting in the space, so that was pretty cool. I think Rio is doing some interesting work. If you are in Victoria, you have until May 28th to see this small show, and I would recommend it.

Sandwiches by the water, the low American hills in Washington State across the bay. Sandwiches, as we talked about who we still knew from high school (Glengarry District High School, class of 1989), and where they might be. Who we still spoke to. Where has everyone gone? A handful still around home, while others (that we know of) scattered across Ottawa, Germany, Lethbridge, Texas, etcetera. The long arm of Glengarry wanderings.

Mile Zero, where I think I might even have visited with Joe Blades, back in the spring of 1998 (we attended that year's League of Canadian Poets AGM, and launched a five-poet anthology we were in, that he edited/published). A photo, most likely. I wonder where that might be? Mile Zero: the end of a poem by Robert Kroetsch, naturally. Or is this the beginning?

Afterwards, Jen offered to keep my bags in her car until the evening event, and she dropped me at Miniature World, a museum near enough to the reading venue that I knew I could catch this, sit somewhere, and then head off to the event fairly easily. This place is magnificent and everyone who goes to Victoria must go there immediately. When I looked on a map, it seemed close enough and intriguing enough, and I thought, why not?

Some of the battlesites were pretty cool, as were the occasional trains, but the best part had to be a wrap-around single train-line heading from Canada's west coast through to the east, catching most of the main stops along the way across the period of some of the original founding of our country's national rail. Victoria, Calgary, Regina, Toronto. Although it jumped immediately from there to Quebec City and a generic "The Maritimes," which I thought a bit nonsense (I wanted to complain, but the end of the tour leads one to the street, and not back to the front desk). It was a remarkable display, either way. But I wanted to see my house!

And then the lights went low! And the train lights went on, and the train whistled through! And then it was daylight again, the sunlight lifting up across the whole stretch of country.

There were historic European and American battlesites, fairy tale settings, circus city-scenes and a whole room of dollhouses. A stretch of buildings and totem poles reminiscent of the Great Hall in Gatineau's Museum of History (formerly the Museum of Civilization, which is a better name, despite what former Prime Minister Stephen Harper thinks).

No gift shop, which was admittedly a surprise (and disappointing; I would have picked up something, at least). From there, I wandered slightly, collecting postcards (and a block further, stamps to accompany), before landing at the Sticky Wicket, "Vancouver Island's biggest pub" (it's not always about size, fella), attached to the city's Strathcona Hotel (very different than, say, the Edmonton namesake, which had been a perpetual favourite of myself and pals such as Andy Weaver, Paul Pearson, etc circa 2000). I sat with pint, wrote postcards and read further from The Paris Review for a couple of hours, catching my breath. Why didn't I take any pictures? The pub was fine (and there was a woman across from me reading, also, so it felt the right place), although there was an artwork, a drawing, along one wall I found confusing, and didn't know the reference, something about "preparing the troops for Sevastopol," a sketch of the army that I realized, upon looking it up, was a reference to the Crimean War (1854-56). Why would a pub in Victoria, British Columbia be holding a sketch referring to the Crimean War?

I eventually met up with Jennifer, who had my mound of books, and went into the on-stage recording of The Poet Laureate Podcast, in which I interviewed Kyeren about her experience around being Victoria's (seventh!) poet laureate for the first half, with the second half focusing a bit more on me and my work, my thoughts around writing, etcetera. She kept saying throughout that we would have cake in-between, so the audience listening would have to imagine us eating cake. The third poem she read, leading into our break, was one that referenced Marie Antoinette. So, as I said, let us eat cake.

The crowd was grand! Rhona McAdam [my generous host], John Barton again [who later said I reminded him of the late Victoria poet Robin Skelton, which I would like him to explain, as I don't have enough direct knowledge of the man to speculate], and Terese Svoboda [I knew Donald Sutherland, she said, and you have his eyebrows!]. Allegra Kaplan. I was able to return Sara Cassidy her charger cord, which saved my computer while west. During the half-time, a familiar face came up to me (the woman on the couch) and reminded me that she was a waitress at The Royal Oak I frequented in the second half of the 1990s [ex-partner of my late pal Greg Kerr, also] and had been a therapist in Victoria for years, interested in the fact that I was doing an event, and came out, which was very cool. Kyeren had suggested I read three poems, so I read only my three poems from the new Coach House Books anthology On Occasion: Poems for the People, ed. Sina Queyras [see the write-up I did on the collection here]. Given I'd read healthily from my two University of Calgary Press collections, it seemed a good idea to read from the new collection, since it was brand new.

It was an engaging conversation, kind of all over the place, but one I quite enjoyed (worried slightly it was my usual rambling nonsense). I shall let you know when the audio lands online. After, Jen and Allegra [it was good to hang with her and get a sense of her, as I'd only caught her in passing at that first reading] and I caught a quick drink at a hotel (fancy) bar. I mentioned the artwork at the Sticky Wicket, and Allegra suggested it could just as easily be an interest in British-isms by whomever designed the space, and not any deeper or more specific connection between anything here and anything there. That makes the most sense, I think.

And then Jen drove me to the airport for my 11:30pm overnight flight, which left late, bumping my landing in Toronto enough to put me on a further flight back home. But home by noon, exhausted, pleased. Hopefully it won't be another two decades-plus before I land in Victoria again! (and hopefully next time Wayde Compton is actually in town, as well).

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Terese Svoboda

A Guggenheim fellow, Terese Svoboda is the author of seven books of fiction, seven books of poetry, a prize-winning memoir, a book of translation from the Nuer, and a biography of the radical poet Lola Ridge. The Bloomsbury Review writes that “Terese Svoboda is one of those writers you would be tempted to read regardless of the setting or the period or the plot or even the genre.”

1 - How did your first book change your life?

Utter despair disappeared, I felt that at last there was a crack in the literary world that would admit me. How does your most recent work compare to your previous? The stories in Great American Desert aren't as oblique as those in Trailer Girl and Other Stories, and the new ones are linked by clifi, a genre that came into being very recently. How does it feel different? My most recent book, Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet, was a biography. It was a delight to abandon the declarative.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction? I recently uncovered a notebook written when I was eleven, listing my poems and their date of completion from age seven – but the box also contained a file with the weekly newspaper I put out at the age of eight that ran several fictional pieces. “First” is lost in the sauce. This question of genre-flitting is answered in Europe by the appellation “woman of letters.” I've even written a few letters.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Define “starting.” When the first draft looks viable? Or the first notes? Ideas are cheap and I'm easily entertained by utter nonsense. I work from unintelligibility. 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 write quickly so as to block thinking, that activity that so easily destroys interesting work. Seldom, however, do drafts arrive complete. More often than one likes to admit, a poem or a novel or a story takes ten years to piece out. It's kind of like killing an animal, peeling off the skin, staking it to the ground to cure, then turning it into a fur coat. The original experience would be the animal, the fur coat, the beautiful (down PETA) result of a long transformation.

4 - Where does a poem or work of poetry usually begin for you? Poetry appears in the half awake state, the hypnagogic, when the censors are still sawing logs. 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? I have tried both approaches, stirring the pot until the mess begins to stick together, and building on an idea. The second only seems easier because you just keep rotating one idea, but at some point you start repeating yourself. Okay, maybe you repeat yourself no matter what.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings? I don't mind readings, they seem to be important to publicity and publicity sometimes equals sales and sales always helps get a press interested in another book which in turn holds back the utter despair. (see answer to first question). In this regard, however, I've only had the same press twice.

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? Any time I approach theory, the whole project loses air and nothing is worth the pixels I put down.

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? A writer should play. It's an art form. That play can be serious but it must be outside the confines of the strictly rational in order to tap into the larger meanings that make art worthwhile and eternal. An artist doesn't live in a vacuum (see above “loses air”), her mind must stay labile and open to whatever cultural materials present themselves. Artists can be bad.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)? I have seldom been disappointed by an editor, outside or in, flattered as I am by the attention. It's like being in love with the dental hygienist.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)? I walked into the Columbia grad office carrying a baby in a pouch and met Grace Paley. She said only one thing to me: Low rent.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to memoir to biography)? What do you see as the appeal? It is never easy to move between genres. The inspiring image shreds or blossoms during the move and that result can't be anticipated. The writer has to discard many learned feints and thrusts to accommodate herself to any new genre. For example, very little poetic compression is allowed in biography and if that's where one's expertise lies, it can't and shouldn't be done. For my memoir, Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, I grafted on the form of the long lyric poem and inserted a little playlet in the middle to stir it up.

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? Adoration of the screen, sometimes even while getting dressed, transcribing whatever half-awake scribbles have been given to me. This is followed by trying to forget things – an activity these days doesn't seem to be too difficult – in order to write.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration? I'm never stalled. Sometimes I pace during my impatience to get the next image, or open the fridge. This last is so frightening I am compelled back to my seat.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home? Burning onions.

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? Chris Marker's video, Sans Soleil. Inspired by his work, I curated an exhibition called “Between Word and Image” for the Museum of Modern Art. I was fascinated by how one can join imagery with words to make metaphor vs. dramatic illustration, and this led me to produce 15 art videos myself.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work? My library's yelling.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done? I've done everything I've wanted to do. That doesn't mean everything's been published.

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? Real estate agent. This comes from being from a long line of peasants who venerate land over everything else. When I was nineteen, I was the rare manuscript curator for McGill University, bleeding from papercuts and stabbed by century-old straight pins holding letters together. Good reasons to move on.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else? I thought I decided to write when I discovered that creative writing classes had no finals or quizzes, but going through my boxes, I seem to have been writing as soon as I learned to make words.

19 - What was the last great book you read? Poetry: Twerk by Latasha Nevada Diggs, fiction: Insurrecto by Gina Apostol, nonfiction: The American Slave Coast by Ned Sublette. What was the last great film? Moonlight.

20 - What are you currently working on. Odalisque, an impossible novel about a multi-ethnic harem that meets a Chinese poet fleeing from re-education on the Sudanese pipeline, a book of poems God Gave Noah The Rainbow Sign that is nearly finished, and a book of short stories, Nothing Bad Has Happened Yet. I'm available.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;