12 or 20 (second series) questions with M.W. Jaeggle

Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, M.W. Jaeggle is the author of three chapbooks, Janus on the Pacific, The Night of the Crash, and Choreography for a Falling Blouse. He lives in Buffalo, New York, where he is a PhD student in the Department of English at SUNY Buffalo. Wrack Line is his first book of poetry.

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

It feels more accurate to credit Wrack Line with confirming the various ways I experience the world than with precipitating a momentous change. I will continue to pay attention to the sensuous qualities of words, continue to place emotion in service of the natural world, and continue to try to put the work before the ego—and I can point to the book as confirming my sense that these things are pretty good ways of being in the world.

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

One of the very few benefits of learning to read and write late in childhood is being able to draw upon distinct memories of struggling with words. I remember slowly pronouncing a certain word, dragging my thumb across its letters so as not to be overwhelmed by the thing in its entirety. I remember the joys and frustrations of reading those first words, and later of stringing them into sentences of my own. Poetry came first, and continues to come first, because my early difficulties with language taught me to be patient and approach words as a tenuous meeting of sound and sense.

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 cannot say how long it takes to start a creative project because I don’t know when any of mine have really started. I don’t keep track of when one idea gives way to another or when the words hit the page. It takes some time, that’s all I can say.

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?

I don’t typically write a poem with a predetermined sense of how it will fit within a larger project. I try to stay open for as long as possible.

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

Reading poetry in front of others is great on the condition that everyone in attendance is a willing participant. I will never again read in a pub while the Habs-Leafs game is playing on the TV.

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?

In 2016, as part of his commencement speech to graduates of Simon Fraser University and as part of his acceptance of an honorary doctorate from the university, the poet Robert Bringhurst said something to the effect that in order for one to respect the earth one had to think like an ecosystem. Think like an ecosystem is the closest thing I have to a theoretical concern.

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?

To make the case for more humane and ecologically attentive values than the ones that characterize our neoliberal moment. To develop words, phrases, and sentences commensurate with our encounters with the nonhuman world. To exercise a claim on the imaginations of others.

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

It’s absolutely essential to have that outside perspective. If I have ever faced difficulty during the editing process, it’s always proved worthwhile in retrospect.

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

Get some air.

10 - 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 don’t have a writing routine. I steal the time to write from other tasks.

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

I go for a walk. I listen to music. I get in touch with friends. I give it some time.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Smoked salmon.

13 - 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?

Fine art and the natural world influence my work just as much as books.  

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

There are too many writers to list here. Most of them belong to an earlier generation.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven’t yet done?

Grow my own vegetables.

16 - 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?

A Zen monastic—more of a calling than an occupation, I suppose.

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

It’s portable and low-tech. All you need is a few inexpensive instruments, some solitude, and some time.

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

Hugh MacDiarmid’s A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle.

Terrence Mallick’s Days of Heaven.

19 - What are you currently working on?

Too many things—all of which resemble people in that they don’t like to be talked about when they’re not present.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Angeline Schellenberg

Angeline Schellenberg’s poems appear in journals such as CV2, TNQ, Grain, and Lemon Hound. Her first chapbook, Roads of Stone (the Alfred Gustav Press), launched in May 2015. Her poetry won third prize in Prairie Fire’s 2014 Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award Contest and was shortlisted for Arc Poetry Magazine’s 2015 Poem of the Year. Angeline lives and reads in Winnipeg with her husband, their two teenagers, and a German shepherd-corgi. Tell Them It Was Mozart (Brick Books) is her first full-length collection.

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

The day I got the email from Brick Book’s acquisitions editor Barry Dempster – asking for permission to shortlist my manuscript – was one of the happiest days of my life. Even if Brick had chosen not to publish this book, knowing Barry Dempster thought my work “had guts” and “resonated” made me feel like I’d become an author.

How the book will change my life remains to be seen! I expect it will give me opportunities to see more of Canada.   

The difference between my 2015 chapbook Roads of Stone and this book is that Roads was inspired by other people’s stories, whereas Tell Them It Was Mozart is all about my own. And Mozart has more variation in form and tone; overall, Mozart is more playful, less serious.

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

I did go to non-fiction first because it felt less risky. About ten years ago, I started sending good news stories about non-profits to a monthly newspaper, and they took them every time, eventually offering me a mental health column. Now I write/copyedit part-time for a national church magazine. I love it when an interviewee says things like “You captured the heart of what we’re about.” I’ve met some interesting people, from matchmakers to Elvis impersonators. 

I always wanted to do poetry, but there was an anxiety in the way; I was afraid of writing bad poetry. What I discovered is that all poetry starts as bad poetry. You just have to keep writing past it. In 2011, my desire overcame my fear.

What I love about poetry is that I (as a reader and a writer) can dip deep into an emotional experience, and then come up for air in a hurry. I didn’t need a long attention span (what mother has one?) or a great memory (lost that too). The intensity of poetry was perfect for giving others an experience of mothering autism and for subverting some of the negative messages out there.

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 hear other people talk of running to a notebook because a great line just popped into their heads. Don’t I wish! I start scribbling and ideas come only as my pen is moving.

I find the blank page less frightening than the flashing cursor, so I start with erasable pen in notebooks and then I type out and rearrange the words on the screen.

I have the rare poem that keeps its original form (I think the final poem in the book is one of them), but most of them have gone from prose poems to couplets and back, been turned backwards and upside down.

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?

I always work on full manuscripts from the beginning. I need a topic, otherwise I don’t know where to start. With the autism poems, I had lists of things I wanted to cover; e.g., drug trials, echolalia, bolting. And every day, new experiences made the list longer. I never had to wonder what to write about.

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

I love public readings, both as reader and a listener. The spoken poems buzz in my brain, and the energy of the audience adds to the experience.  

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?

With Tell Them It Was Mozart, the political questions were always in my head. Am I portraying autism too negatively and thereby doing a disservice to the autism community that deserves to have their strengths known? Am I not being honest enough about the difficulties, thereby disrespecting other parents fighting for support? Am I putting myself on every psychiatrist’s blacklist by saying this?

Autism conversations can be polarizing. They get derailed quickly when someone wants their child referred to as “autistic,” and someone else prefers “person with autism.” Or when one parent thinks a vaccine causes autism and another says it’s a gluten issue. The very people who might actually be able to understand one another are sometimes the ones at each other’s throats. (Mostly it’s because we’re so darn tired!) The book rarely mentions autism directly (and when it does, it’s usually in the context of found poems) because the focus is on who the children are, not how they’re labelled.

Your question about questions makes me laugh because, well, here are the sorts of things Tell Them It Was Mozart asks: “Have already we watched ‘The Survivor in the Soap’?” “Did you notice I was holding a banana?” The media asks all kinds of things about autism. I think these are closer to the right questions.

The main thing I want to get across with this book is joy. The joy of looking at the world differently.

The joy of connecting as family, even if that looks different from what you expected.

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 have any grand notions about changing culture. But eventually 600 people will own a copy of my book: that’s 600 people who may respond more gently to a child screaming in a checkout line or flapping his hands at his desk. If even just one reader tells a mom, “I’m here with you” (instead of “you should have been spayed”), that’s a big win.

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

 Definitely both!

Murphy’s Law: it often happens that the poems I want help to completely rewrite, editors beg me not to touch, whereas the poems that sing in my head are the ones they suggest I revise or cut completely.

At first, in the editing process, I had the mental picture of ripping seams, but then I realized that the fabric was intact. All we were doing was pulling out a few embroidered flowers and replacing them with equally beautiful songbirds. Then I felt better.

It was so valuable to hear an editor say that the effect I was going for wasn’t getting across yet. The tricky part was clarifying the message without losing the music. Sometimes I argued for my original, sometimes I fell in love with my editor’s wording, but more often it led to the creation of something brand new – a very productive process.

I recently went back over the many poems that I ached over cutting from the book, to see if I could turn them into a chapbook. I realized that none of them were worth keeping. And when I read the proofs, some of the new poems – which I was originally unsure about adding – became my favourites.

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

Don McKay told me to “Let the dog off the leash.” In encouraging me to write more prose poetry, he said, “The lyric is a bird flying from treetop to treetop. The narrative is the dog sniffing here and here: it brings home unlikely things.”

In my fear that what flowed out of me naturally wasn’t “poetic” enough, I’d been privileging the bird and forgetting the dog. Since then, I’ve given myself more permission to write long lines about everyday things like vomit and dryers without fear of being prosaic. It doesn’t have to look like a poem (or smell like roses) to be poetry.

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

On my days off, I get home from dropping my daughter off at school, walk the dog, make my second cup of coffee, sit down on my sofa at my south-facing window, and write most of the day. Saturday morning I go straight to work in my pajamas and don’t stop until “lupper” – like brunch but we eat it between lunch and suppertime to stretch out that Saturday morning feeling. Sundays after church are another peaceful time for poetry. Even on days I’m going into the office, I do some poetry with my first coffee before getting the kids up for school. I write best in the morning – before my inner critic wakes up. My best time of year is summer when I can sit on my backyard swing, or by a campfire, or on a dock somewhere and write.

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

When I get stalled writing new material, I rework old pieces and submit completed ones to journals and contests. Or when it feels like there aren’t any words in my own head, I write found poetry: erasure, oulipo, collage. 

For inspiration, I reread some of my mentors’ work, until I hear the encouraging things they’ve told me in the past singing in my head again. (Don McKay once told me, “You rock!”) I read poets I love, and sometimes I try finishing one of their sentences and see where it takes me.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The farm where I grew up: lilacs, freshly mowed grass, French bread baking.

My current home in Winnipeg: bologna, sweaty teenager, and dog.

13 - 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?

Mostly my work comes from everyday life experiences, either my own or the ones I live vicariously in conversations with others.

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

Joanne Epp and I have workshopped our new poems every month since 2011. I rarely submit anything without it passing her desk first. Our styles are different, but I trust her completely.  

Sarah Klassen’s book Journey to Yalta was the first poetry book I picked up when I decided to become a poet, and she was the first poet I asked, “Is this any good?” 

Meira Cook and Don McKay were a big part of how Tell Them It Was Mozart came together. Meira mentored me through the Manitoba Writers’ Guild Sheldon Oberman Mentorship Program in 2012 when I was just starting out. Don McKay was my instructor at Sage Hill in 2013 when I was getting the manuscript ready for submission.

Jennifer Still led the first poetry workshop I attended and many I’ve attended since. She’s the one who directed me to found poetry.

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

Since my relationships with my husband of 22 years and with God are the most intimate, and sometimes the most difficult, I’d like to write great love poems and devotional poems – both very hard to do well.  

I’ve always wanted to visit the Maritimes. And to take my family to Straubing, Germany – the village where I lived in the summer of 1993, when I volunteered for an organization that assisted refugees.

16 - 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 wish I could be a figure skater, contemporary dancer, or gymnast, but since (growing up Mennonite in the 1970s) I wasn’t allowed to even tap my toes until my twenties, the connection between my limbs and my brain is lacking.

I enjoy languages, so I thought of being a translator or linguist. I studied French and German in high school; and Greek, Hebrew, Ugaritic, and Aramaic in seminary. But two weeks after earning my MA, I gave birth (trading textbooks for Dr. Seuss) and promptly forgot all of them.

Clarinet was my thing in high school, so I considered studying music performance. But I let the competitiveness of the music scene scare me away. I don’t regret it; writing does everything music did for me and more.

I love babies. I think I’d enjoy fostering someday. But I’ve gotten used to not having my cupboards emptied and sleep interrupted, so it would take some adjustment, for sure.  

Someday I might like to be a spiritual director. Walking alongside someone through their spiritual journey is as profound as poetry.

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

Writing makes me happy.

I tried teaching college, and I could do it, but I hated feeling on the spot for three hours at a time in front of a room full of bored 18-year-olds. With writing, I can mull over what I want to say for ages before anyone else needs to hear it.

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

I read poetry almost exclusively. Recently I’ve enjoyed Our Andromeda by Brenda Shaughnessy, Transmitter and Receiver by Raoul Fernandes, Verge by Lynda Monahan, and Heaven’s Thieves by Sue Sinclair.

I won’t even try to comment on cinema. I have two teenagers, so I mostly watch things with Iron Man in them.   

19 - What are you currently working on?

Two years ago, I started a side project about colours. It was a fun break from the difficult emotional work of confessional poetry. This research-based work allowed me to write about cultures and history I hadn’t experienced, to explore my darker, sexier, more exotic side. Now that it’s my main project, I really miss confessional writing: that satisfaction of moving something from deep inside me into the world.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Gerald Hill

Gerald Hill [photo credit: Mark Anderson] has published six poetry collections — two of which won Saskatchewan Book Awards for Poetry. His latest collection, Hillsdale Book, came out with NeWest Press in April, 2015. Two sub-sets of that book were published in 2012: Hillsdale, a Map, produced with designer Jared Carlson, and Streetpieces, a chapbook produced by David Zieroth at The Alfred Gustav Press in Vancouver. Also in 2015, Hill published A Round for Fifty Years: A History of Regina's Globe Theatre with Coteau Books. Widely published in literary magazines and online journals, active as both organizer of and participant in workshops and readings, conferences and courses, and winner of Second Prize in the 2011 CBC Literary Awards, Gerald Hill is newly retired from his career teaching English and Creative Writing at Luther College at the University of Regina. In the fall of 2015 he was Doris McCarthy Artist-in-Residence at Fool's Paradise in Toronto.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
When good things happen, I nod and say that’s just the way the universe is supposed to work. No big deal. That’s how I felt when that first book came out (in 1985 from Thistledown). This theory was tested in the 16 years before I published my second book (The Man From Saskatchewan, Coteau, 2001)—years spent at grad school, raising kids, recovering from a broken marriage, with most of my writing done in summers at Emma Lake, Sask. That first collection was very much a collection of lyric poems. Now I write books, not poems. It’s all about the book concept, with individual pieces serving as just that, individual pieces that need not produce a well-wrought urn, say, on their own. It’s a longpoem approach very much in keeping with my first teacher, Fred Wah, at David Thompson University Centre in Nelson, B.C., 1981-82. I’ve always said, though, that I’m grateful for the teaching of Fred and Tom Wayman and Dave McFadden at DTUC and see my own work since as essential a blend of those three writers’ approaches.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
We produced work in all genres at DTUC. The poetry emphasis for me may have been an echo of my father, a Sask schoolteacher, who often recited poetry to his kids as we were growing up. He’d had an old-school education that involved, apparently, much memorizing and oral recitation of poetry. Or the poetry thing derives from those teachers I mentioned, who demonstrated that, all in all, anything was possible with poetry.

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?
All of these things vary. I’ve never had a problem coming up with something to write. I’m one of those who believes that if you keep the daily process going, the larger project will reveal itself, as if I’ve been working toward it all the time even before I knew it. I save hard copy drafts now, with one eye on the archive. (URegina holds the Gerald Hill papers, such as they are.) But yes, initial entries come relatively quickly; I know enough, I think, just to get stuff down knowing I’ll work on them later, a slower process. Along these lines, I really like Michael Ondaatje’s note, in his Afterword (or Foreword is it?) to the newer edition of The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, about just writing ahead, not looking back. For a long time before you start revising.

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?
I rarely assume that the piece I’m working on is discrete unto itself. It’s always a page or fragment of the larger whole. As poems are not about closing in on themselves but gesturing open to the larger constellation.

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 and think I do them well. I like that preparation for public performance brings a different set of editing principles into play. What I don’t like so much is the sense that getting ready for a reading necessitates getting out of the daily flow of exploration of new work.

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?
One way of addressing those questions is to suggest that what I do is deal with/ explore/ fool around with/ dodge the “I”. As a good subject of postmodern and post-structuralist literary theory 25 years ago, I learned—thank God or somebody—to mistrust the authority of that pronoun. The lyric poet is locked into that authority. A poet who works in more open forms—which is where I place myself—will undercut the “I” much more, playing with what we see to be its inherent slipperiness. As a teacher (a job from which I retired just last year) I tried to deny my students the apparatus of nailing down what a poem supposedly means. It was about submitting and allowing the poems contradictory effects to work on us, rather than us on them. The general issue here is openness, multiplicity, polyphony, etc.

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?
Beyond my largely ceremonial (but I’m working on it) role as poet laureate of Saskatchewan intending (without much budget) to spread the word of poetry in the larger society, I don’t think the writer has any role in larger culture, necessarily. A writer’s duty is first and last to his/her work.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I’ve had good luck with my editors (incl. Dennis Cooley, Jeanette Lynes, Douglas Barbour, Don Kerr) for the most part. In my experience, they seem less interested in what I imagine the larger theoretical concepts of the book to be, preferring to focus on how bits of text work. I have noticed that I enter an editor-writer relationship warily.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
What comes to mind right now is Ondaatje from In the Skin of The Lion. Trust me, there is order here. Very faint, very human. That’s a paraphrase of what the narrator says at one point—true of the main character and the text in which he appears. So, forget what you think you’re doing. Forget meaning. Forget overly elaborative linking passages. Downplay endings. Trust. You’ll figure out and get to where you’re going sooner or later.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
Easy. Both are wide open.

My blog entries over the years (http://poetshoes.blogspot.ca/) have often served as versions of poems, and vice versa.

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?
The day begins with sudoku and kenken puzzles. Beyond that it depends on how my body is feeling today, what errands I have to do, what deadlines I’m facing. If I’m generating new material, I’m probably walking and sitting down someplace with my notebook or tablet. It becomes an intense paying of attention to the specifics of where I am mixed, as always, with whatever comes up from inside. Generally, mornings for new work. Afternoon or evening for revision work.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
To the next page. It’s always a way out. Or to my library, reading my way out.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
If I ever get my nose on a palm springs cake, that will do it. Caragana hedge and lilac. Fresh-baked bread. Model glue (I specialized in WWI aircraft).

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?
Absolutely. We can learn from artists and works in any discipline. I learned many years ago at Emma Lake that painterly concerns—the continuum of abstraction to representation, for instance—were also writerly concerns. Their solutions might be ours. Dance, theatre, visual art, music—any discipline that calls for and evokes the great highs and lows of human existence and explores its generic protocols—will be instructive for writers.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I got rid of hundreds of books in the last couple of years. I kept about 40 in my tiny apartment: Anne Carson, Daphne Marlatt, Charles Olson, Lorca, Borges, Kroetsch, Calvino, Pessoa, Basho. Saramago, W.C.Williams, Wah, Stevens, Cortázar, Kerouac (my first literary hero, if I don’t get a chance to say this somewhere else), Salinger, Carver, Simic, Ondaatje, bp.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Live for a year in southern Spain. Win the G-G, why not. See my work, and that of many other writers we could name, get thoughtful critical attention. Create an endowment that would fund a fabulous writer’s retreat.

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 was a teacher off and on, here and there, for 40 years. A good one, for most students. An effective writing and literature teacher. For a while I wanted to be a sportswriter. Now that I’m older, I’d love to run—or create, get someone good to run it—a pub that showed what good service means.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Probably had something to do with my dad’s books and poetry recitations. And being read to. Over the years, however, what has made me write is the sense that it is as a writer that I am most Gerry Hill.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
They happen to be the same. Brooklyn. In both cases, I marvel at how the story is told. And the movie, of course, has what’s-her-name—the Irish/American actress nominated for the Oscar. She’s fabulous. I loved Fifteen Dogs as well. Poetry I raid, not read—dipping in and out of Carson or Lorca or . . .

20 - What are you currently working on?
I have a book, poems, begun last summer. Dogabout, I call it. Its central character is a man named dog (lower case) though I’m running into so many dogs in literature these days that I might have to come up with something else. I know I’ve got an idea that’s good when it gives me everything I want in writing, as this one does. Doesn’t matter where I am. In January I sent every page of Dogabout—now in its 8th draft—to various journals. I sent another manuscript to a publisher in January also. And I have another one that’s been knocked back a couple of times.





[Gerald Hill reads in Ottawa on Tuesday, March 15 as part of the opening night of VERSeFest 2016]
 
12 or 20 (second series) questions