12 or 20 (second series) questions with Bruce Hunter

Bruce Hunter is an active writer, speaker and mentor. His award-winning novel In the Bear’s House was just rereleased by Frontenac House. In 2024, as Nella casa dell’orso, it was published in Italy as was his 2023 poetry collection Galestro, following in 2022, A Life in Poetry, all by iQdB edizioni. 1n 2021, his memoir essay “This is the Place I Come to in My Dreams” was shortlisted for the Alberta Magazine Publishers’ Awards. In 2024, his eco-poem “Dark Water” also originally published in Freefall won the gold prize for poetry for the same awards. Bruce’s poetry, fiction, reviews, interviews, translations, and nonfiction have appeared in over 100 publications and in seven languages internationally.  www.brucehunter.ca.

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 trade book Benchmark was released by Thistledown Press in 1982 in my second year at York University. It included a long poem about government military action against Canadians I wrote in bp nichol’s class and published as a chapbook by Chris Faiers’ Unfinished Monument Press. CBC Radio broadcast a section and Benchmark received positive reviews across Canada.  The title refers to the starting point of a survey or mapping. Indeed it was.  In the forty years since, so much of my prose and poetry came out of the seeds planted in that first book.  I still use nichol’s teachings on the breath line in near everything,

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?  
After listening to many lofty sermons at our tiny local Anglican Church and much reading, I wrote a lofty long epic love poem. I was thirteen. I knew little about poetry and even less about love.  Suddenly, I now existed.  At least  on the page. As a deaf kid, it was a kind of hearing aid. Before others can hear us, we must hear ourselves.  I could hear myself now.

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?  
It depends on the project.  In the past, I’m just wrote,  then gathered poems or stories until I can see a narrative arc that brought the gathering together. Now that I’m I’m in the grandfather years, I make lists or a fictional table of contents and go to work.  I’m profoundly aware these are the legacy years. Life is so brutally swift and short.

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?
Poetry especially often starts with a word, a musical note like a high C hum, or a discovery in another’s poem or in random research and reading, or daydreaming.I have many points of departure. It seems different every time.  There are many paths to the waterfall, as Raymond Carver once said.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?  
When I started out, readings were essential sounding boa.  I still enjoy hearing and meeting other writers.  As a mature writer, I work in relative solitude and read in many genres and topics including the earth sciences, a lifelong passion.  I’m more content in solitude now. I find workshops tend to distract me from my quiet routine, my mad method.
 
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 shy away from theory and prefer experimentation outside the lyric, including the anti-pastoral,  the dystopian, the noir, and mixing lyric with then dramatic, with “dirty” or documentary realism, or even magic realism . The Italian call me a jazz poet.  I bring as much of the world into my work as I can. My work is not cloistered, so I hope.

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?  
I d believe my role as a writer is to expose the secrets of unacknowledged truths.  Other times, the voice is simply a quiet exaltation or exhalation.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?  I’ve always sought out editors. I enjoy the process.  
A good editor amplifies the work.  I make a distinction here between a proofreader and  a substantive editor. I wish more writers sought out a substantive editor who can take the work to the next level.  I very much enjoy seeing the work grow as we  edit it.  A good editor is a coach who challenges us to do better.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?  
B.C.’s Ron Smith was my very first writing teacher and told us, no matter what anyone says  about your writing, just say thank you.   I believe it’s best to be gracious even if it means gritting your teeth.  It’s not about you but about what capacity someone brings to your work.  And that is beyond your control.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to essays)? What do you see as the appeal?  
I was naturally drawn to longer poems which led to longer narratives so short stories and novels seemed an inevitable step for me.  When I started publishing my pants were baggy and my poems were skinny — all lower case, two words to a line. I’ve come to love the expansive poems that bring in all the world’s rhythms, cacophony and euphony. 

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 need my caffeine, often a workout  and my best time is between 2 and 4 pm. I’m awake, energized and ready to sprint. Then it’s time for supper prep as my wife is still working.  Work/life balance is critical in the long haul. 

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?  
I garden, do research to jog my mind and extend my range.  Our minds need breaks and it’s often doing something away from my desk or home, that gets the brain’s light flickering again Overthinking and anxiety restricts risk taking which is essential for creative leaps that bring our work alive.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Tom Bentley-Fisher

Tom Bentley-Fisher [photo credit: Miranda Bentley] is an award winning theatre director, teacher and published fiction writer and playwright. He has directed over one hundred productions, taught at numerous universities and theatre schools, and served as the artistic director of five professional theatres, working throughout North America and Europe.
            His fiction has been published in Canadian magazines, including Grain, The Dalhousie Review, and NeWest Review. His collection of short stories, Blind Man’s Drum, was a finalist for Saskatchewan Book Awards, and his short story, "Wars and Rumours of Wars," a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Humour. He has been produced by Canadian Broadcasting Company, written the foreword to sixteen publications of new plays, and penned lyrics for plays produced in Barcelona and Canada. His play Friends was published by Red Deer Press.
            During his twelve year tenure as an artistic director of Twenty-fifth Street Theatre in Saskatoon, Tom gained a strong reputation for developing and producing original Canada plays, and was the founder of the Saskatoon International Fringe.
            In 2008, Tom became the artistic director of Tant per Tant Theatre, developing, directing, and exchanging plays between Canada and Catalonia. His accomplishments include directing a critically acclaimed all-female version of The Iliad for Festival de Teatro Clásico de Mérida and a multi-lingual production of Marie Clements Burning Vision for Barcelona’s International Grec Festival.
            He is now the Artistic Director of The Yat/Bentley Centre for Performance, an international theatre company based out of San Francisco. He divides his time between his work outside Canada and his home in Saskatoon.

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, Blind Man’s Drum, published by Thistledown Press, was a series of Short Stories. At that time, almost twenty years ago, I used the name Tom Bentley. Writing initially was a way of running away from the pressures of being an artistic director of a theatre. When I began to write, spurred on by the great Canadian poet, Anne Szumigalski, I realized I could live in my aloneness. It was an interior world where I didn’t need to be an artistic leader, but was being led. I felt entirely at home.

It was then that I realized I could fully engage with the main thing that always fascinated and drove me - the connection of the inner and outer life.

The Boy Who Was Saved By Jazz is my first novel - It has challenged me in new ways. I only wrote for a few years twenty years ago and then found myself back in the theatre. During those few years my focus was trying to discover what was beneath language. Strange way to get back into language but there we are.

This book feels different in that I am not involved with results. It feels honest and vulnerable. I am not hiding behind humour. I have been in the ‘zone’ and am willing to expose by eccentricities.

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

I love the work of Alan Bennett. I loved how he suggested so much in the turn of a phrase. I am a bit of a sensationalist I think, and I enjoyed exposing the quick and dirty bizarre part of my mind that was challenged in short story writing.

Also - my life’s work has been inspired by the theatre training of my mentor Yat Malmgren, who is known for how he developed one of the most significant approaches to acting. That work has guided me. It has taken me to a roadmap I’ve been developing and now teach internationally called Character Transformation. Yat’s original title for it is ‘The Psychology of Movement’. The premise of the work is that it takes us to the unknown in ourselves, allowing us to view the world through others’ eyes,  which I  believe is essential in these troubled times.

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?

A first draft is usually a quick process. I let it flow. I don’t care if it’s accurate. I try to find the essence. I feel it emotionally and write emotionally. I love secrets. Then comes the hard part - the rewrites. Trying to say what needs to be said - and trying hard not to fall into the state of being clever, or anticipating what people might think.

4 - Where does a 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?

I meet the human being before the circumstance in prose. I ask the questions - Who are you? Who are you trying to be? And how are you perceived? And I know that these three questions provide very different answers. Then comes the detective work. And them I fold in given circumstances and relationships that challenge the characters the most. I

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

Yes, I love reading and performing. My short stories are longing to be read out loud. I have been an actor - Including being part of BBC’s Radio Four Monday Night dramas when I was an actor in England. I’m a story teller. When I ran a theatre in Canada, the administrative staff wouldn’t start work until I told them a story.

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?

How can get out of the pockets of ourselves?

How can we discover the unknown in ourselves?

How can we communicate beneath borders and language?

How can yield down the resistances and conflicts of our time rather than taking a sledgehammer?

How can we contribute as artists and let go of the ever present ego?

How can we live within our contradictions.

Can we experience the world upside down?

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?

I think I may have responded to this above,  but would add:  

The current conditions of the world demand that the role of the artist is to be the one of the healthiest persons in society - Emotionally psychologically, spiritually, physically. And that our greatest tool is one of empathy. As a writer I do not believe we should judge. We should live within the contradictions.

We can produce a change. We must.

And always, the writer must come from love. That gives us the freedom and license to explore hate.

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

It helps enormously. As a director of theatre I tried hard to match the playwright with the best dramaturge for the project.

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

Listen deeply.

In order to see you must be willing to be seen.

Never look once - Look again and again.

There are no straight lines in creativity.

Be guided by mystery and wonder. What you don’t know is magnificent. 

Live below your personality.

Love the chaos.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (short stories to the novel to directing to playwriting)? What do you see as the appeal?

I’m a cheap sensationalist. I bounce well. If you are stuck within a single medium, you can get lost in form. Different ways into the artistic questions are important. In fact, the question is often more important for the writer than the answer.

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 am obsessed for several weeks. I wake up thinking - is too early to get up and start writing? Then I leave it entirely. It is when my dreams start guiding me that I’m back. I try to write for  few hours in the morning before anything else.

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

I have a hard time not blaming myself for a stall. I try to allow myself to live in the insecurity fully.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Gas fumes. My true home - Many years ago.

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?

This book comes from the inner experience of music. Between the notes, within the transitions of chords, there is a world that is entirely awake. It is where I feel comfortable. Obviously my career in the theatre has also influenced my work. What is active? What is really going on?

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

Poetry is very important. Problem is that I’ve always felt unworthy to be a poet myself. I feel like a coward.

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

I want to perform my own work. I want to bring my acting, writing, directing, music, and teaching under one umbrella. I want to turn the corner and meet someone amazing who challenges me - revolutionizes me - And takes me on an artistic voyage I never thought possible. I want to live in my beloved Catalonia. I want to direct Medea. 

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?

Coming to writing is late for me. I do know that if I wasn’t an artist,  and I’ve been employed as an artist from the age of sixteen, I’d be utterly lost. I’ve been a single parent most of my life. That has been my other joy. Maybe a teacher, although all the vocation tests I took at school said I’d be best suited as a forest ranger. Once it came back as a light house keeper

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

It was a time when I didn’t have to take care of anybody - I could enter my own mysteries, and that includes the pain.

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

I re-read Crime and Punishment last week. I tend to re-read books - Dostoyevsky, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Shakespeare. I saw The Taste of Things.

20 - What are you currently working on?

The Naked Reveal -  something I’ve been carrying on my shoulders for years. I started it in New York last summer and can’t stop. It is about the creative process, but reads in part like a novel,  memoir, and a new way of looking at acting in the 21st century.

Almost a Therapist - a series I am writing with my daughter about a therapist who needs therapy badly.

Metamorphosis By Chaos - a series of short stories about the eccentricities of loneliness. 

Almost a Hamlet - a collaboration about ‘something’s rotten .…’ 

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Cara-Lyn Morgan

Cara-Lyn Morgan is a citizen of the Metis Nation and the descendant of enslaved people in North America.  She was born in Oskana, the area commonly known as Regina, Saskatchewan, and her work explores cultural duality, decolonization, motherhood, and the historical and present-day impacts of colonization.  She currently lives and works in the Greater Toronto Area.  She is a wife, mom, gardener, and neighbour.  Her first collection, What Became My Grieving Ceremony was awarded the Fred Cogswell Award for Poetic Excellence and was followed closely by her second collection, Cartograph.  Her third book, Building A Nest from the Bones of My People, has been warmly received since its release.

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 I made my decision to go to art school and to study writing and visual arts, I had a foreboding sense that I had disappointed everyone.  As the child of an immigrant, it can often feel like you are on a set path of success and there’s a great deal of anxiety that surrounds a life choice that threatens “security.” I had a feeling that my parents felt I was indulgent and somewhat petulant in my choice, believing that writing was essentially a “hobby” and that I should explore options that were much more stable, writing in my spare time.  But I believed that I had a story to tell and that I was worthy of the investment to tell it, so when Thistledown accepted my first manuscript and my book was eventually published, I felt very vindicated and validated in my choices to that point.  The physical book felt like proof that I was not just writing as a way to entertain myself.  

My most recent work is a complete departure in style and in content from the previous two works.  This is because I am a completely different person than I was when I started telling stories, specifically ones about my family.  Since I first published, I have become a wife, a mother, someone who understands the mechanics of editing, someone who understands colonization and intergenerational trauma differently—I simply navigate the world from very different eyes.  I’m a matriarch, and I feel a greater responsibility to this current book because it is a new legacy for me.  These family stories are uncomfortable and sad, so I have shifted from writing “love letters to the family” as my previous books have been described.  But no, maybe that’s unfair.  This collection is a love letter to the family as well, because it was written out of a deep love and loyalty.  I wrote this collection because I love my children and I want them to know where they come from.  

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I began my studies at UVic thinking I was a fiction writer—I fully expected to write novels.  But part of the curriculum was to do introductory courses in a variety of media and I was blessed to study in one of Tim Lilburn’s poetry classes.  He told me early on that my work was important and no one had ever said this to me.  I had always felt like writing was a luxury that I indulged in and was kind of good at, but no one had ever read my work and said “this work is important and people should read it.” I found that poetry was the medium that worked for the stories I wished to tell.  It was the medium that connected with how I walked in the world—paired down, hyper focussed.  It was the closest thing to painting and visual arts (which I was also studying) in a writing style, and so it felt very organic and familiar to me.  There’s a purity in poetry, it is the embodiment of art for art’s sake—we spend a great deal of time and energy creating it and are rarely compensated financially for the work we do.  It’s a shame but it’s beautiful as well.  

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 first two books were written rather quickly and came out relatively close to each other, within a few years I believe.  This current one took a great deal longer, for a variety of reasons.  First, it deals with very fresh trauma which I experienced in real time, recorded as journal entries as a mechanism to process the trauma, and then wrote into poems.  Simultaneously, I met my future husband, got married, and was quickly pregnant, all while navigating a totally alien reality without my family (as I knew it) and dealing with post-partum anxiety, post-trauma stress, and a gamut of other things all culminating at once.  So, the book took much longer to conceptualize and to flesh out.  I remember editing and revising while my newborn slept on my shoulder, being interrupted mid-thought by her as she stirred.  I no longer had endless time to work, my time was no longer my own.  

In terms of my process, I normally begin writing long-hand through a process Tim Lilburn taught me called “emptying the hands” where I basically write subconsciously, just a stream of thought for a set amount of time without editing or even reading it back.  From there, I return to the writing a few months later and comb through the rambles to find a good line or thought, phrase or feeling, and that is usually where the poem comes from.  They are born there, and I build from that.  I’m also a note writer—I find scraps of paper with short lines of poetry or phrases which I compile over time and sometimes those become the poems.  

Definitely my writing at the beginning of my career looked very different in draft than it did as a finished collection, but I feel like this current work had a much more cohesive flow and content—I knew what I was writing and why, so it came together for me.  The order of poems, for instance, stayed relatively consistent from draft to draft.  

I would also say that one of my main editorial tricks is that I have no problem sacrificing my lines—some writers get very attached to a certain line, or image, or phrase, but I am not this way.  I am happily ruthless in the culling of words if it makes for tighter writing.  

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 think currently I do write with a collection in mind—I have become a much more conscientious writer as I have matured.  This is, I think, motherhood, and the necessity to use my time as efficiently as possible, as so little of it now belongs to me.  I used to have a lot of space in my life to writing about just everything and anytime in an attempt to find beauty.  I have experienced a lot of changes in my life over the past decade and those changes have altered my perspective and my approach to writing.  These days, I eek out a bit of space for my work and have to get written what I need to write with the awareness that at any moment some aspect of my life will emerge, and that if I have not writing my thoughts down I may not get an opportunity to do so again.  So I write very feverishly these days, my poetic lines are shorter and my images are more plain.  This is because likely a small child has popped into my poetic space to ask a question or be comforted, or whatever it is they require at that moment.  I lose lines and thoughts and phrases just as my children lose their cleats, this piano music, their matching socks.  

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love reading my work in public, even though I am an introvert by nature and relatively shy person (though I am often accused of saying this falsely because I am able to mask my shyness after four decades), I have always enjoyed readings.  I think this is because I write poetry to be read aloud, it is an aural art form and part of a storytelling tradition that feels good to me—this is the good medicine of our Elders.  Storytelling is healing, and so reading feels like that to me.  
 
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?
Definitely I have many concerns with my work as it is rooted in family, history, and is extremely intimate.  In my current collection, I had to be extremely aware that the story I was telling was about my own perspective and my own experiences of trauma, despite the collection being centred on the family, their experiences, admissions, stories, memories, etc.  I wanted to ensure I was telling the stories without adopting any one else’s trauma, and that I was fair to my own perception and my own navigation of a very difficult circumstance.  I actually had to rewrite the collection in the editing phase when I became aware that a family member who had read one of the drafts was feeling extremely stressed and vulnerable due to some of the stories I had decided to tell—there are no words that I could ever write that would be worth putting that kind of pain in to the world, so I made a choice to rewrite.  My publisher was generous in allowing this, and I think the work was far more successful as a result of this.   In terms of questions—I am always trying to answer the questions about who I am, and where I come from.  I have always been interested in family stories and the ways in which they influence how we walk in the world. Now that I am a mother, I also seek to write in a way that will help my children to understand our history-whatever that may be.  I think as a Metis person and as someone descended from enslaved peoples, there will always be mystery.  There will always be questions about who we were, and what our people endured to get us here.  I want to write down everything I know, as I understand it, so that they will have access to their own stories.  

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?  
I can’t speak to all writers but I can speak to poets, who I believe have an essential role in society.  Poetry, with its curated lines, holds up a mirror to society in a way that perhaps other genres do not. It is hyper-focussed—we are the recorders of the precise way that dust flutters in a ray of sun, of how the swirled bark of a tree feels when we place our finger tips on it.  We consider the daffodil, the pucker of sumac in the hinge of the jaw.  Poets remind us that we are interconnected, that we are all relations.  And poetry is a genre that is the embodiment of art for arts’ sake.  We write because we are drawn to create work, not because of the promise of financial compensation or even because of the desire to be read.  Poets quietly record the world almost in opposition of attention, and I think that in a world that is constantly demanding attention and is constantly seeking a wider audience, we need that.  

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Absolutely essential.  I think that outside editors remind us that not everyone navigates the world as we do.  They are so important to helping us see beyond our own writing—I often hyper-focus on whether I should be using a semi-colon or if I broke my line before or after a specific word, and miss that something I have written can be interpreted in a completely different way or that from a cultural perspective may mean something other than what I had intended.  When we are creating work that we intend to send out in to the world we have to do so with the understanding that no everyone will understand what we are saying and not everyone will be engaged, and having an outside set of eyes grounds the work by letting us block interpretations.  Often editors will say to me “you said this, but did you mean to say this other this?” and if I don’t want a line or a stanza or image to be read in a certain way, I can use language an other poetic tools to block that reading.  

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Rest is resistance.  This is something I take extremely seriously as a woman who is both Indigenous and the descendant of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Generations of trauma and oppression have disregarded the need for women (especially women of colour) to engage in rest and self-care, and self-reflection, and quiet contemplation.   But someone once gave me the permission to rest, and they explained that it is the greatest form of protest.  I try to live by this.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to visual art)? What do you see as the appeal? 
I think these two genres serve very specific purposes in my life—I have always loved colour and texture and visual art (both creating and observing it), and so here’s a tactile connection for me between the creation of visual art.  It feels like physical story telling, but is also extremely humbling because it is 100% open to the interpretation of the viewer.  Painting, for me, leaves no room for me to say “No, I meant to say this” when someone looks at my work and tells me “I see this.”  I just have to accept that interpretation and remind myself that we all see the world only through the eyes that we have, not through what people tell us we must see.  Poetry is more about expressing my thoughts.  I have always written to save myself from carrying the heavy stuff.  Writing poetry releases these stories from my brain, and perhaps, from my responsibility.  So that I can continue to grow and evolve and look for new ways to record the world as I see it.  

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?  
Nowadays, my routine is dictated 100% by my family and children specifically.  I no longer have a regular writing practice, and instead seek to find time where I am able.  I supposed I have become a very undisciplined writer but a relatively disciplined mother.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I never worry when the work slows down.  Sometimes I think this happens to give me space to process information so that I can write it better, sometimes it is because I have new stories and experiences unfolding that will eventually become work.  I am proud of the work I have created, and I have always had the feeling that if that is all I was ever meant to write, it would be ok.  That said, usually the “stall” is just a regeneration period, and the work reveals itself either by way of experience or inspiration.  

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Grass.  I have prairie bones, so wet crops. Alfalfa.  The moments before rain falls.  These are prairie smells, that is my home.  

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?
Family stories are my biggest influence.  I have always been interested in memory and how our memories change from person to person, and how all families seem to have that collective desire to speak of the past.  Even if the past they recall is sterilized or even fabricated, there’s a human-ness to sitting at a table late at night and falling in to recall.  I have always loved to hear these stories, and as I have grown to better understand the world, I even appreciate the difficult stories.  I feel deeply that our ancestors, those who know the story’s ending, want us to tell stories because stories are how we heal and grow.  

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I am very interested in non-fiction work currently—I love Helen Knott’s memoirs.  Becoming a Matriarch speaks to me so much, that book came in to my life exactly when I needed to face my own evolution.  The Hon Murray Sinclair’s memoir Who We Are is also close to my heart right now.  I feel like everyone needs to read that book to better understand this country and how to further reconciliation within it.  Bad Cree by Jessica Johns is another recent read that I really enjoyed.   It seems I’ve taken a break from reading poetry.  

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’d like to go to culinary arts school and open up a bakery that caters to people with food allergies.  I have a child with multiple life threatening allergies and have spent a great deal of time and energy learning how to give her food experiences that are relevant culturally and also safe, and I feel like in a perfect world I would have a beautiful little bake shop where people can come in and feel safe and have an experience that makes them happy about the food they are experiencing.  I’d sell dairy-free ice cream and nut free pastries, sesame-free bread and beautiful chocolates.  

I used to make allergy safe candies to sell at local markets, and I can’t even count the times that someone would try them and start to cry.  A mom once said she had never shared a chocolate bar with her son before.  I’d love to keep giving people those kinds of moments.

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?
Well, I spent 20 years as a uniformed officer with Canada Border Services Agency, and in fact, I wrote most of my first draft of my first book sitting in one of those booths where you show your passport.  For some reason that is very funny to most people who know me only as a writer.  And the fact that I write poetry is always so mystifying to anyone who knows me only as a law enforcement officer.  These days, I teach police officers Indigenous culture and history and reconciliation.  But I would have liked to have been a baker or a pastry chef.  How different a person I would have been though.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I was taught to use writing as an emotional tool early on, to help process the trauma of my parents’ divorce and other adverse events.   I journaled and wrote so that I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by things I was experiencing as I grew up, and now I use writing to process intergenerational trauma, and to send stories in to the world so that I do not carry them alone.  I have always written, so I it doesn’t feel like it was ever a choice.  I just did it.  

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
As mentioned above, Helen Knott’s Become a Matriarch is top of mind.  I also loved Sinead O’Connor’s memoir Rememberings.  It takes a certain bravery to write a memoir and though I write a lot about my life through poetry, it feels some how easier because poetry comes in breaths and snippets.  I have always love reading the memoirs of interesting women though, and these two are extremely interesting.  In terms of films, I feel like I have been watching Disney cartoons exclusively for the past seven years but recently I took a flight and re-watched the 1986 version of Little Shop of Horrors with Rick Moranis and Steven Martin among others.  That is a great film, I have always loved it but realized that I didn’t understand what I was watching when I had seen it as a child.  I loved the music and the singing and thought it was funny at times, but sometimes you have to revisit these types of stories once you’ve lived long enough to have been through some things.  They hit differently now—but man, the music in that movie is still so good.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m working on a collection of stories about homecoming—I recently travelled to my dad’s birthplace in Trinidad and Tobago and my mother’s/my birthplace in Saskatchewan and have been looking at ways in which returning home after learning painful truths about your family feels different.  I travelled to many of the sites of my own childhood traumas, spoke to myself as a child in those places.  I think there are some interesting poems coming out of those recent travels.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Diane Tucker

Diane Tucker is the author of four poetry books (God on His Haunches, Nightwood Editions, 1996; Bright Scarves of Hours, Palimpsest Press, 2007; Bonsai Love, Harbour Publishing, 2014; Nostalgia for Moving Parts, Turnstone Press, 2021) and a YA novel (His Sweet Favour, Thistledown Press, 2009). Her play Here Breaks the Heart: the Loves of Christina Rossetti, was produced by Calgary’s Fire Exit Theatre in 2013. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and in more than seventy literary journals in Canada, the US, and elsewhere. She lives in Vancouver, BC.

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 turns 25 this year, so I’m trying to remember… it didn’t change life as much as I thought it would. I still had small children to raise, and the week that first manuscript was due at the publisher’s my daughter was in hospital with a life-threatening illness. That put it all in perspective (she’s fine).

Some of the poems in this most recent book are quite old (10-15 years), but have been extensively revised. Like, more revision and rethinking than I’ve ever done. A good kick in the pants for a mid-career writer. I hope it means they’re more precise. Have less flab. Some part of me should have less flab.

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

I didn’t, actually. I wrote stories from childhood, lots of them. I didn’t grow up in a bookish home. But from an early age I loved to sing and was musical. I think that’s part of what prepared me for poems. I remember cool 1970s funky language arts classes with short poems, and pop lyrics in school choir, and when I hit college and got serious about studying and read Gerard Manley Hopkins and, well, the top of the head came off, as Dickinson said it would. Certain poems, and poetic prose, did things inside me I thought were impossible. I wanted to do that to other people. Does that sound like a threat? Maybe it is.

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?

No fair, that’s three questions… The first image is likely to come quickly, but of course the mind and heart have been brewing toward it for who knows how long? I don’t think it’s generally a slow process for me, no. Fits and starts. And the final form is generally not totally unrelated to the first draft. I’m not the most patient writer.

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?

Never working on a book from the beginning, or I haven’t yet, anyway. I write about “life”, whatever is arresting me in the moment, and worry about books as needs must. I wouldn’t advise this as a career plan, but there you go. Again, the poet-brain is always bubbling away in there, a long-simmering pot on a stove, and I try to catch the best things as they surface.

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

I get very nervous about readings but I’ve done probably hundreds of them and I do like reading per se. I can’t say they’re part of the writing process, but I definitely see them as part of a poet’s “job”. You should work to serve your poems as skillfully as you can as a reader. For the last few years issues of social anxiety have interfered and complicated things. But I look forward to real readings coming back! I think I’ll appreciate them more than I have for a long time.

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?

Who said “poetry is news that stays news”? That. I am decidedly old-fashioned in that I’m trying to set the texture and truth of lived life into words. Reality as it is, is so bottomless, so complex, so beautiful. Words to get at bits of that, at the heart of the Present Moment and hopefully where it touches the timeless. Where the material is interwoven with the ethereal. Where different times and experiences interpenetrate one another in the consciousness and the memory and the body.

I’m probably not paying attention to anything calling itself a “current question”. This extraordinary life is worthy only of the eternal questions.

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?

As always, the writer should try to tell the truth, in whatever genre. Kafka’s statement about a book being an icepick that breaks up the frozen sea within us, that’s always true. As attention spans fragment, I would hope that writers, poets especially, could call, or invite, or woo, people back to slow thinking, long reading, and other-centred living.

The role of some writers should be to call out the bullshit people try to pull off with language – the power plays, manipulations, obfuscations, euphemistic nonsense, and mental laziness. Words have power. They can build or break. And those of us whose vocation involves them should try to see they are properly used to serve human flourishing.

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

Oh yes both! I’m sadly still someone who wants to impress, and this causes me no small amount of anxiety when working with an editor. Still, it’s always been a valuable process. I am an editor as well, and pull no punches. So I expect an editor to deliver all requisite punches when I’m on the receiving end.

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

Assuming you mean writing advice and not general life advice I’d say Annie Dillard’s “Go at your life with a broadaxe.” I’ve not worked my way up to a broadaxe quite yet. Usually no more than a gently-wielded cricket bat.

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

Not easy! I had a great teacher and mentor in playwriting, the immensely talented Lucia Frangione. She helped me do the thing I hate, which is plot. I love to write dialogue and I love those moments in a play when things come to an emotional head and everybody’s cards get thrown out on the table. But that’s not a play. A play is the whole thing together, the process, the journey. It’s bodies in space, not just words.

The appeal of a play? Real people right in front of you living, being transformed, relating to other people or beauty or loss or pain… Few things are more glorious. And a great play is a great incarnation of great words. What a wonderful day it will be when the theatres open again.

And watching people watch a play you wrote... damn, that’s like being inside people’s heads when they read your book. That’s some kind of miracle.

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?

Until very recently I worked at an office job three days a week, so on those days I asked relatively little of myself as a writer. I’m reading more, though, between work and dinner, and loving silence more and more. Almost every day I begin with a short time of prayer with a devotional. And nearly every day I walk a few kilometres. The writing gets fit in around all these things, most particularly after a period of walking and/or silence.

I have recently given up my office job to take over bookkeeping for my husband’s small company. We will see how my routine changes as this new chapter begins.

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

At the moment, walking. We moved from a suburban townhouse to a Vancouver apartment in 2019 and I’m loving long walks around many neighbourhoods. We live not far from where I grew up. Every block is full of the past and the present and I’m always nosy about the details of other people’s yards and gardens and such. I walk down alleys a lot too. They’re quieter, and are a more uncurated look into people’s lives. Wow I’m nosy.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Lilacs. Coffee. Cedar. Rosemary. The smell of a candle just snuffed out.

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?

I’ve written a lot of poems responding to visual art. That’s a really satisfying conversation. I dabble in making some art as well, and the sensuous part of it – the smells, colours, substances… And I’ve always, as I said, been musical and involved in music. Also the language of liturgy increasingly fascinated me. Over the winter of 2019-20 I wrote a sequence of forty prayer-poems based on a very old set of prayers called the O Antiphons.

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

Reading C. S. Lewis makes me feel sane when everything seems shifty and shoddy. Regular Bible study is a connection not only to my faith, but to history and ancient wisdom and literature. The Psalms, for example, are a school of human nature and emotion as well as poetry. Being reminded that people are people, even thousands of years apart from one another, is a stabilizing yet exciting thing to contemplate.

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

Sing with a small jazz ensemble. Let out my inner Dianne Reeves or Diana Krall.

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 I had more cojones, I’d be an actor. Preferably Shakespearean. If I hadn’t been a writer and actually had to make a living, I’d probably be an extremely crabby librarian.

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

Fear. Fascination. Alice Munro and Katherine Mansfield and John Fowles.

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

Book: I am currently reading Martin Schleske’s The Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty and it is a wonder!

Film: I find it difficult to take in a movie as “great” if I don’t see it in a theatre. I miss going to movies! So I will say 2019’s A Hidden Life. Struck me dumb.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Dinner (pork chops).

Okay, I’ve been writing poems for children. It’s fun and freeing. And I’ve written a kids’ picture book I think is not terrible... thinking about how to bring that into the world has been occupying my mind lately.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Susan Alexander

Susan Alexander is the author of two collections of poems, Nothing You Can Carry, 2020 and The Dance Floor Tilts, 2017, Thistledown Press. Her work received the 2019 Mitchell Prize for Faith and Poetry as well as the Vancouver Writers Fest and Short Grain awards. Writer Chelene Knight describes this new book as a “luxurious, melodic dance to the loudest sounds that come in the quietest of moments.” Susan’s poems have appeared in anthologies and literary magazines in Canada and the U.K., ridden Vancouver busses as part of Poetry in Transit and shown up in the woods around Whistler. She lives and works on Nexwlélexm/Bowen Island which is the traditional and unceded territory of the Squamish people.

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 my first book of poems The Dance Floor Tilts came out, I had to admit to myself that I might be a writer because I’d just had a book published. I was 60 years old. All my life, I’d wanted to write, but had never given myself focused time to finish the projects I started.

This new book Nothing You Can Carry comes out of a more dedicated writing practice.

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

I came to writing poems by writing prayers. I was studying theology at the time, just for my own interest and education. I’d grown up as a pantheist, but was drawn to Anglicanism. My friend Herbert O’Driscoll is an Irish-Canadian priest. We were making a Celtic pilgrimage in Ireland when he stood up on the bus and read “The Bright Field” by R.S. Thomas. I was bowled over by the poem and thought “I want to do that.” I went on to read everything by Thomas and also by George Herbert, both poet priests.

Poetry aside, I have a terrible first draft of a novel in a drawer that I think about at times. I also would very much like to try my hand at a play – I love the theatre.

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?

Part of a poem may come quickly, but it can take me a long time to finish. I’ll work away on a new poem until I can’t do anything else with it. Then I usually have to leave it alone for days or months, like a fallow field. When I come back to it, if I am lucky, I see the poem fresh and it reveals more to me. I can see if something needs to be taken away or added.  Another trusted set of eyes really helps. Some poems require significant research and I get to practice the skills I learned as a journalist. Often what I learn changes the direction of the poem.

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?

Definitely an author of short pieces. I spread my work over the dining room table or floor and see how and if poems relate to each other. This makes creating a book length collection more challenging, but themes do emerge. Sometimes I write chapbook length thematic sequences – I have written dozens of fairytale poems and Echo and Narcissus poems, but many end up in the recycle bin. The best ones appear in my books.

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

It is a real privilege to have an audience listen to my work. But my first public readings were out of body experiences – not a good thing when I am wanting to be present with people and with my poems. I didn’t expect to be so nervous because, in general, I am pretty outgoing and enjoy conversations and meeting new folks. It is starting to feel more like sharing and less like performance.

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 most urgent concern I have is for the planet. I see the environmental crisis partly as an inability to delay gratification. We practice short term thinking even though our species is skilled at long term planning. I often ruminate about who and what humans are and why we are trashing the earth, our home. I fully include myself in this – I see daily how addicted I am to comfort and convenience. For our survival, we must find meaning in life outside of consumerism. What are the limits of human intelligence? We are capable of wisdom but choose expedience. How does this show up in my poetry? Well, the natural world is where I go to restore my sense of the sacred and that comes out in almost every poem I write.

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’d like to say that the role of the poet is to speak truth to power, but that is actually the role of the prophet and a poem that successfully achieves the prophetic is a rare and beautiful thing. Jan Zwicky achieves this in The Long Walk and other books.

Writers also can open aspects of culture that I’ve never been a part of and to me that feels like an action of extreme generosity. I’m thinking of fiction writers like Eden Robinson or Bernardine Evaristo.

A good writer can woo me away from nihilism, give me hope, help me to become a better person by ushering me into a world beyond the small sphere of my own experience.

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

I’ve been so lucky with Seán Virgo, my editor for both books. Working with him is like taking a master class in revision with someone who sees poetry as serious play. He is brilliant and fun and generous, with an amazing ear for cadence. I see working with an editor as an opportunity to become a better poet.

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

The late poet Patrick Lane said that a poet is a catcher, not a pitcher. My friend, playwright Michele Riml told me something I’ve taken to heart – she said it is always more fun to start something new than to finish what you are already working on, but essentially all writing is rewriting.

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’m a morning person. If I don’t arrive at my desk early, my writing day is over. I tend to lose focus afternoons and evenings.

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

I not only get stalled, but I get stale. Sometime I get so sick of my voice that I worry I am writing the same poem again and again. One of the best things I can do is take a generative writing retreat with a wonderful poet like Lorna Crozier. I get introduced to new work and have the opportunity to concentrate on the craft of poetry. I have so much to learn from the wise poets who have dedicated their lives to this art form. They teach me how to read others’ poetry more carefully and deeply, and that in turn inspires me to take more risks. I like trying out new things even while knowing that most of poems that I will write may not be any good and that’s okay. I try not to take myself too seriously.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

That sweet summertime scent you get in the west coast woods when everything is dry – blackberries? or conifer needles? It’s a most enchanting fragrance, reminding me of childhood, of heat, freedom, running with bare feet.

Also, anything that smells of the ocean.

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?

Nature especially and science. And mythology, theology and history.

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

Following on my early obsession with fairytales, I moved into world mythology and legend. As a child and a teenager, I read and reread Tolkien and C.S. Lewis multiple times. As an adult, I began to study the Bible – I didn’t grow up with that multi-genred book, or more accurately, that library, and came to it late. Shakespeare was a big influence as were the Metaphysical and Romantic poets. I was captivated by Blake and Virginia Woolf.

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

I would love to write a book of poetry where I am writing to a theme, something like Lorna Crozier’s God of Shadows. I am also thinking of Louise Glück’s book Averno, her interweaving of myth and ordinary life. Some thematic collections aren’t able to achieve this kind of integrity.

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 would have loved to be a set designer for theatre. You’d get to read the plays, visualize them onstage and you’d create the spaces for the actors and the action to move, be part of that huge collaboration. I think that would be a dynamic, aesthetically rewarding job.

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

I don’t know. When I was ten years old and the teacher asked us “what do you want to be when you grow up?” and I answered that I wanted to be a writer and then I did “something else.” I didn’t write for decades except in my journal. Today, I don’t feel comfortable in my skin if I’m not working away at a poem. I think it’s the way I process the world.

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

The Innocents by Michael Crummy – breathtaking. I kind of loved the movie Knives Out – just so much fun! My daughter gave me Normal People by the young Irish novelist Sally Rooney and I’ve just finished it – a fresh and perceptive page-turner about young fraught love. I’m starting to watch the TV series too, which is astonishingly close to the book.

19 - What are you currently working on?

Random short pieces. I just completed an online class on the craft of poetry with American  poet Ellen Bass and I’m doing some of the writing exercises she suggested. In one talk, she suggested inserting metaphors into a lacklustre poem like you’d put cloves in a holiday ham. I am planning on trying that on some of my “finished” poems.

12or 20 (second series) questions;