12 or 20 (second series) questions with Carmen Rodriguez

Chilean-Canadian bilingual writer Carmen Rodríguez (carmenrodriguez.ca) is the author of Guerra Prolongada/Protracted War (poetry); a body to remember with/De cuerpo entero (short stories); and Retribution (a novel). Rodríguez also has an extensive career as an educator and journalist, including work in adult literacy and popular education, particularly with Indigenous Peoples and other marginalized communities in the Americas.

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

My first book was GUERRA PROLONGADA/PROTRACTED WAR, a bilingual (Spanish-English) volume of poetry (Toronto, Women’s Press, 1992). Until then, the professions and activities that had defined my place in the world were “educator,” “journalist” and “activist.” This book expanded that repertoire to include “poet and writer.” Also, its publication allowed me to become a member of The Writers’ Union of Canada. Since then, I have been an active member of the organization, serving twice on its National Council (an elected position), participating in its Governance and Membership Criteria Task Forces, and chairing or co-chairing its Minority Writers’ Committee and Social Justice Task Force.

My most recent book is the novel ATACAMA (Halifax/Winnipeg, Roseway/ Fernwood Publishing, 2021). My two previous books are RETRIBUTION, also a novel (Toronto, Women’s Press Literary, 2011), and the short story collection AND A BODY TO REMEMBER WITH (Vancouver, Arsenal Pulp Press, 1997).

AND A BODY TO REMEMBER WITH introduced me to bilingual writing. While GUERRA PROLONGADA/PROTRACTED WAR offered me the opportunity to collaborate with Heidi Neufeld-Raine in the translation of my poems from Spanish into English, the short stories in AND A BODY TO REMEMBER WITH triggered my interest in writing in both languages. This resulted in two books authored entirely by me: one in English and one in Spanish, which were published simultaneously in Canada and Chile.

RETRIBUTION was my first novel, which I wrote using what I now call “my teeter-totter methodology.” This involves going back and forth between English and Spanish, an approach I have continued to use until now. Unfortunately, EL DESQUITE, RETRIBUTION’s Spanish counterpart has yet to be published, but Juritzen Forlag translated the book into Norwegian and released it in Oslo as CHILES DǾTRE in 2013.

It took me fourteen years to complete this novel -- the story of the Martinez family, as told in the voices of Soledad and Sol, a mother and her daughter, with book-end interventions by third-generation Tania. At times I struggled with the scope of the narrative, which spans seven decades and unfolds in two countries, while exploring the intersection between catastrophic political events and the personal lives of the protagonists. Furthermore, the main theme of the novel did not become evident to me in the early stages of my writing it, which meant that once I decided on it, I had to reformulate the story and practically start all over again. While I am happy with RETRIBUTION, in hindsight I think that a slightly different structure would have yielded a better result.

I’m very satisfied with ATACAMA. With the invaluable help of Linda Little, my editor, I believe that I succeeded in telling an important story and telling it well. I studied literature for many years and taught it for many more, so I think I know how to recognize good fiction when I read it. Modesty apart, I believe that ATACAMA is a good piece of literary work: it tells the story of and delves deep into the psyches of two lovable, interesting characters, while examining the interplay between their personal lives and the crucial historical events that define their journeys in this world. Their voices are well defined and reflect their temperaments and interests. The plot is dynamic and entertaining. The structure works. The settings are compelling. All in all, I feel that the ten years I spent working on ATACAMA yielded a good result.  

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

I did not come to poetry first. From an early age and along the years I wrote both poetry and short fiction. My first attempt at getting published professionally was in 1972, when I sent my short story “Acuarela” to the Paula Magazine literary contest (Paula was a very popular women’s magazine published in Santiago by a collective that included Isabel Allende). My short story won an honorary mention and appeared in the March-1973 issue of the magazine.

A United States-sponsored, Canada-supported military coup was executed by General Augusto Pinochet and the Chilean Armed Forces on September 11 of that same year. Democratically elected President Salvador Allende was assassinated, bringing his “Peaceful Road to Socialism” to an end and unleashing a brutal wave a terror throughout the country. The coup marked the beginning of a seventeen-year dictatorship.

As supporters of the Allende government, my family and I were persecuted by the regime. We feared for our lives. Thanks to the help of generous friends and the hard work of Canadian churches, unions and human rights organizations, we were able to leave Chile and settle in Canada in 1974. I dedicated the next ten years of my life to support the resistance movement against the dictatorship. Then I became involved in educational work with First Nations communities across Canada.  

In 1989, the Chilean military dictatorship was replaced by a lukewarm democracy. The neoliberal economic system and the 1980 Constitution imposed by Pinochet were left intact and the dictator himself remained as Head of the Armed Forces and Senator for life. It was a change, but not the one that I and many others had wanted. The socialist Chile we had fought for so fiercely had eluded us once again.

I turned to my writing. I collected the poems and stories I had written along the years and also began to write new material. In the early nineties I decided to take a stab at publishing my work. That’s how my poetry collection GUERRA PROLONGADA/ PROTRACTED WAR was launched into the world, followed by my book of short stories AND A BODY TO REMEMBER WITH and the novels RETRIBUTION and ATACAMA.

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 genre. Poems and short stories tend to come quickly, but are often followed by days, weeks or months of rewrites. In the case of my novel RETRIBUTION, the concept came quickly, but the execution took many years and the final product had little resemblance to the early drafts. ATACAMA, my most recent novel, involved considerable field and archival research, which resulted in copious notes and attempts to incorporate such research into the story. The first draft and the final product ended up looking similar, but closer scrutiny reveals that I made important changes to the book, mainly regarding character development and some parts of the plot.

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?

Again, it depends on the genre. A poem or a short story are discrete units that in time may become part of a book. A novel is a book from the very beginning.

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

I love doing public readings and preparing for them – choosing the poems, story or novel excerpts I will read, practising by reading aloud and timing the presentation. Sometimes I add singing to my readings because I love music and I love to sing. Also, I believe that a bit of singing here and there helps to keep the audience engaged. Preparing for and doing a public reading helps my writing as the process forces me to stop and look at my work from a different vantage point.

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?

To me, writing is a political act. I came to understand the connection between language and power early in life through both my work in basic literacy education with marginalized communities and through my readings. From Paulo Freire and the Popular Education movement I learned that language is not a neutral means of communication, but rather a powerful tool and at times, a loaded weapon. That the oppressors have used it since time immemorial to keep large sectors of the population subdued and to explain and justify their actions. That the oppressed can and do use it as a tool for liberation: to name the world, reflect upon it, exchange stories and ideas, and articulate the actions they can take towards building a better world for all.

From Eduardo Galeano, Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Alfonsina Storni, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Luisa Valenzuela, Gabriel García Márquez and many others, I learned that meaningful and affecting stories (and poems) can also depict and denounce the realities of an unjust society, while presenting visions of a different, more equitable one.

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?

For me, to write is to protest. To write is to remember. To write is to bear witness. To write is to denounce. To write is to provoke and to propose. To write is to use the tool, the weapon called language in pursuit of justice; so that horror can turn into beauty, shame into dignity, and deceit into truth. This is particularly true in these times of unfettered neoliberal capitalism, when the one per cent continues to accumulate riches, while a good part of the world’s population lives in abject poverty; when half the world is on fire and the other half, under water; when exported and internal violence and wars, in addition to climate catastrophes, are pushing millions of people out of their territories and into unwelcoming, desperate situations.

This may sound like an enormous responsibility for a writer to bear. It is. It may also sound like a burden. In my case, it is not because I enjoy the challenge of translating-transposing the chaotic nature of Life and The World into the linear, orderly nature of language; of exploring the dialectical relationship between my characters and the places/circumstances they live in; of telling their stories in the context of the societies and realities in which they are inserted.  

I come from a country and a continent where writers have been killed, imprisoned and tortured for what they write; where their books have ended up in a pyre; where their publications have been banned. For the last forty-seven years I have lived in a country where the stories and cultural practices of the original inhabitants of the land were banned for decades. I applaud their resistance to assimilation and their determination to keep their traditions alive; their skill at mastering the colonizers’ tools – their languages and their literary forms, to release their stories into the world.

Silence is also a language – the language of imposed or internalized oppression. In my opinion, the role of the writer in today’s world is to break that silence.  

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

I don’t find the process of working with an outside editor difficult, but I do find it essential. In my experience, respectful, skilled and sensitive editors have helped me to identify aspects of my manuscripts in need of attention and have also guided me through revisions.

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

The best piece of advice I give myself and offer to my creative writing students is a lesson I learned through my own experience: if you feel like what you just finished writing is a masterpiece, set it aside for a few days and read it again. Most likely, you will find out that it is not a masterpiece and that it will need to be revised over and over and over and over again… and again…

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

Most often, I am engaged in several kinds of writing at the same time. Poems and short stories may “happen” impromptu, even when I’m in the middle of another project. Most often, I put those initial drafts aside until I get around to deciding whether it is worth my while to work on them or not.

As not all content fits the same form, it has not been hard for me to move between genres. Elsewhere I have said that my poetry is mainly inspired by elements such as memories and/or sensory stimuli which, in my experience, befit poetic language. Similarly, depending on the scope and depth of a narrative, my prose will become a short story or a novel. In general terms, journalistic reporting and analysis deal with socio-political or cultural affairs, while essay writing explores the world of ideas; and so on and so forth. This means that if I’m working with different content, I must move between genres. This is a challenge that I enjoy as it keeps me alert.

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?

When I’m working on a long-term project, I go through periods of uninterrupted writing (if I have been fortunate enough to get a grant or a residency). During those periods I write every day for about six hours, take a break and then do revisions for about two more hours. If I’m not in the financial position to write uninterruptedly, I adapt my routine and work around my other jobs (most often teaching and journalism).

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

If I’m working in English and my writing gets stalled, I begin to transpose what I have written into Spanish; or the other way around. Inevitably, this switch in languages opens my brain and body to new sensitivities, ideas and forms of expression.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The aroma of burning firewood. I was born in Valdivia, a city that Pedro de Valdivia, the Spanish conqueror, founded in 1552 on the banks of a wide, blue river in the south of Chile. I grew up surrounded by ancient forests and in the company of patient rain. Just like everyone else in Valdivia, my mother cooked on a woodburning stove, which also provided heat to the rest of the house. So, to me, from an early age the scent of burning firewood became synonymous with “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?

My inspiration for writing poetry comes mainly from images, smells, flavours, textures, memories, words, feelings and thoughts. Personal stories and their interplay with socio-historical issues and events inform most of my prose. I love certain types of music, dance and visual art, all of which have found their way into my writing.

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

I love reading literary fiction and poetry. Once in a while, I also read memoirs and literary non-fiction. I particularly admire and enjoy the work of the following writers and poets (in no particular order): Arundhati Roy, Eduardo Galeano, Gabriela Mistral, Julio Cortazar, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alfonsina Storni, Pablo Neruda, Cristina Peri Rossi, J. M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Hay, Jumpha Lahiri, Richard Wagamese, Rita Wong, Monteiro Lobato, Jorge Amado, Luisa Valenzuela, Miguel Hernandez, Alice Munro, Nancy Richler, Wayson Choy, Margaret Atwood (except for her science fiction), Margaret Laurence, Rohinton Mistry, Sandra Cisneros, Joy Kogawa, Michael Crummey, Canisia Lubrin, Oscar Hahn, Clarice Lispector, Omar Lara, Miguel de Cervantes, Virginia Woolf, Jorge Luis Borges (particularly his poetry and realist short stories), Doris Lessing, Nicolas Guillen, Gillian Slovo, and too many others to list.

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

Write and choreograph a ballet based on music and dance from an array of cultural traditions.

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 have done many things in my life. I have been a teacher, a professor, a popular educator, a basic literacy instructor, a workshop facilitator, a journalist, a radio host, a secretary, a social and political activist, a janitor, a cleaning lady, a cook, a musician, the script writer, narrator and director of a video on basic literacy instruction, a writer of educational materials, a dancer, a theatre actor… and a writer. I am also a mother and a grandmother. To me, one occupation or activity does not exclude the others.

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

Please read my responses to questions 2 and 17.

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

Book: Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese.

Film: Carlos Saura’s Tango.

20 - What are you currently working on?

A bilingual collection of poetry.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Lydia Kwa

Lydia Kwa [photo credit: Pink Monkey Studios] has published three novels and two books of poetry. Her latest novel, Oracle Bone, appeared recently with Arsenal Pulp Press (Fall, 2017). Her writing spans various times and spaces in the Asia-Pacific region and imagination. She lives and works in Vancouver as a writer and psychologist.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book was poetry: The Colours of Heroines (1994) with Toronto's Women's Press. It was amazing to experience the reality of having one's work communicate with readers. The lovely thing too was that George Woodcock reviewed it favourably and called me a "memory writer of almost Proustian intensity." I was so pleased.  Every book is different. I leave it to readers and critics to tell me how my most recent work compares to previous ones.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Who knows? I suspect an adolescence of being immersed in reading Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon alongside William Wordsworth and Gerard Manley Hopkins had something to do with it.

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?
Very slow, very mysterious, very intuitive. Copious notes that circle around narratives that only seem to clarify after about 3 years of wandering in the darkness.

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?
A poem begins in the gut. A strong sensation that rises up to the throat, and insists on being expressed.

These days—in terms of fiction, I am consciously working on a book/novel from the beginning. But my first novel This Place Called Absence began as a series of short monologues. I fooled myself I was writing a short lyrical narrative, etc etc until it dawned on me it was going to be a novel.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love doing readings. Especially around the time a new book is launched.

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 power of the imagination to help creatures transcend suffering. The plight of outsiders. Those hated for their differences: race, queerness, class, gender, disability, etc. The destructive power of sexual violence.

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?
The writer is a lowly creature. Hopefully we are useful because we are so lowly and do not fulfill any greedy capitalist agenda. Hopefully we are the ones crying and wailing along the periphery and pointing to some interesting, more liberating alternatives, or at least wailing about the imminent demise of the human race.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I have been tremendously grateful for all my editors. I've been fortunate. Of course it's a difficult process—editing with another's assistance. Difficult and absolutely valuable and hence necessary.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Don't take yourself (meaning, your ego) so seriously.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
Easy? Difficult? Well, I do move between genres. That's because there's a switch inside that says, "POET" and another "FICTION" :D

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?
Nothing typical in my days. No fixed writing routine. But when I can, maybe 4 mornings out of 7, I write for an hour. And sometimes I do a stretch of 3 hours in the evenings. It gets more intense after year 2 of writing.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I take walks, cook, read, listen to music. Look at art.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Which home?! My own skin, really.

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?
As in answer to Question 12.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Lots of writers' work are important to my work. So so many and too many to mention. A lot of Japanese writers read in translation; Chinese writers in translation etc.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Go to Taiwan or Japan, to some temple retreat and practise taiji.

Go to South Korea and eat food prepared by the famous nun Jeong Kwan.

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?
Would have been a chef.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Well, I am also a psychologist. Writing seems inevitable. I write to stay sane. To express what I cannot express in other ways.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Ken Liu's The Paper Menagerie.

Gukoroku—Traces of Sin

20 - What are you currently working on?
The third book in the chuanji trilogy.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Elizabeth Smart: A Fugue Essay on Women and Creativity by Kim Echlin

I’m rather frustrated that I’ve only recently heard of, but at least finally read, Toronto writer Kim Echlin’s graceful little book Elizabeth Smart: A Fugue Essay on Women and Creativity (Toronto ON: Women’s Press, 2004), published as part of their “Women Who Rock” series. Part essay, part memoir, it makes a fine companion to all the other material by and about Ottawa-born and raised Elizabeth Smart, known predominantly for the heartbreaking lyric prose of By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. Originally published in England in 1945, Smart’s infamous first novel was misunderstood, dismissed, unseen by readers in her home country, and finally went out of print for twenty years, only to be rediscovered in the 1960s in a reissue available to Canadian audiences (it, along with a later title, The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals, remains in print). No matter what else she wrote or produced throughout the rest of her life (she began publishing again after decades of silence in the late 1970s), it was the first novel that she is known for, both for the writing itself, and the situation of what the novel came out of, namely the doomed love affair she had with the married British poet George Barker, with whom she had four children, and received not a speck of support (he eventually had fifteen children with five different women). Echlin’s “fugue essay” writes around Smart as a woman who wanted the two things that didn’t mesh in 1930s and 40s England, let alone Canada—to be both mother and artist—something that caused her not only years of grief and difficulty, but heartbreak.

The great originality of By Grand Central Station is its use of the first-person voice. The voice belongs to a twentieth-century woman who is ironic and passionate, in love with a married man and pregnant. She knows her literary classics and she has a good ear for the advertising jingles and song lyrics of popular culture. It is a classic romantic love story told from a fresh point of view.

Imagine Romeo and Juliet told by Juliet. She might become Rosalind in As You Like It, teach Romeo how to tell his love, and turn her tragedy into a romance. Imagine Tristan and Isolde told from Isolde’s point of view. Or the Persian Layla explaining why she allowed herself to be taken from her lover Majnun. Imagine any of these romantic heroines telling their stories while pregnant. The pregnant female perspective on a romantic love story and adultery was new. There have been few depictions of unmarried, pregnant women in literature.

The narrator of By Grand Central Station is no victim. Her pregnancy is part of the continuum of her love affair. She willingly welcomes the husband’s betrayal of his wife. She feels no empathy for the husband:

How can I pity him even though he lies so vulnerable up there in the stinging winds, when every hole that bleeds me was made by a kiss of his? He is beautiful as allegory. He is beautiful as the legend the imagination washes up on the sand.

For Elizabeth Smart, it is very easy to let her work be overshadowed by her biography, but Echlin works through both sides of Smart’s life in a balanced and interesting way, providing commentary on much of what was published and even unpublished throughout Smart’s career, including detailed commentary on the early work Dig a Grave and Let Us Bury Our Mother, surrounding Smart’s consideration of not only being a mother, but her conflicts with her own mother, which she never quite got over. In a culture that refused to acknowledge single mothers, and women as artists, it was almost as though Smart was incapable of not pursuing both equally, and intertwined, even as the rest of the world around her pushed as hard as it could back, as Echlin writes:

It is important to remember just how unacceptable it was to have a child out of wedlock in Canada in the 1940s. It is equally important to remember just how unacceptable it still is, in certain circumstances and cultures. Birth control and abortion were illegal in Canada until 1969. Our social services are still required to support young women who are estranged from their families because of babies conceived and born outside of marriage. Though we no longer have “homes for unwed mothers” run by religious groups, we continue to need similar services that have evolved from these roots.

It certainly didn’t help that her mother was her harshest critic of all, interfering whenever she could, from as far a distance as possible, including having all the copies that made it into Canada of the 1945 edition of By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept seized and destroyed, with the help of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, a family friend. Even when the novel was subsequently reprinted, her mother only responded with the same ugliness that she had brought to the table from the first edition.

The reissue of By Grand Central Station was a joyful event that Elizabeth celebrated with an enormous party at a former train turntable shed called the Round House. She decorated the great, open space with huge candelabra and buckets of cut flowers and invited everyone she knew. But it was also a year of emotional turmoil beginning with her mothers renewed rejection of the book:

Dearest Betty;
It has disturbed me that you should want to re-publish your book By Grand Central Station … in which you hold up your father & mother to public criticism. Your father gave his life as a result of our mistakes which he so loyally kept to himself that it resulted in stomach ulcers & death…
… In spite of some beautiful poetic writing in your book I am inclined to agree with The New Statesman who a few weeks ago spoke of your book & of George’s “Confessions” as being 20 years out of date. Could you tell me why you should want to revive it when you, yourself have travelled so far since you wrote it. You surely can’t have a desire to lower the stature of your father & mother?

It almost reads as though this enormously talented women who just about everyone admired, adored and fell in love with, still had those closest to her dismissing her work as both mother and artist, and even ruthlessly and carelessly bringing her down at every opportunity.

The struggle between Elizabeth and George took on a new cruelty in Ireland. He and his brother Kit arrived for a month’s visit in December [1945]. George found Elizabeth’s home claustrophobic. There was no money for candles and they spent their evenings in the dark. Elizabeth wrote to Didy: “As for Love, it’s OVER—As for sex, it’s revolting—As for cosiness, it’s no longer cosy—As for desire IT HAS FAILED.”

The brothers ran up bills in pubs and stores until the entire village cut off their credit. Then they went to neighbouring Galway and did the same thing. They told an old shoemaker that Elizabeth would pay for new soles for their shoes when her money came from America. Elizabeth wrote to Didy: “…I loathe George now & I am absolutely cured of him forever—he has been revolting all this time that we were eating potatoes & the little people were knocking on the door with their bills. He & Kit spent (I discovered last night) £40 this last month in the pubs here—while refusing to pay a single bill—or even give cash for food--& then complaining like mad at the lack of it--& it isn’t as if they’d even been jolly or gay—just abject & selfish … he spent all my monthly allowance in London & my family Allowance & won’t pay anything back but gets furious if I mention money or bills. Thank goodness at last the pubs refused also to give credit or cash cheques—but now he’s got a store in Galway to send stuff & cigarettes and will never pay them. And if there are 4 chops for 8 people he east 2 whole ones—Jessica sent him a letter last week, too, saying she’s been hounded by debt collections & George has spent about £150 on nothing not even any fun. He’s been poverty-stricken the whole time.

It seems timely, in fact, even as I’m still going through Between Interruptions: 30 Women Tell the Truth about Motherhood (Toronto ON: Key Porter, 2007), edited by Cori Howard, writing about the contemporary difficulties with what Elizabeth Smart worked in vain to navigate a half-century earlier, being mother, sole caregiver and sole provider, and working artist, something that would be difficult enough today, but at least with far fewer cultural difficulties. With a list of contributors that include Denise Ryan, Monika Deol, Ami McKay, Rachel Rose, Carrie-Anne Moss, Chantal Kreviazuk and Chandra Mayor, it sounds as though Smart had the same drive that fueled writer, producer and editor Cori Howard, wanting children and a creative/work life, as Howard writes in the introduction to her anthology:

For as long as I can remember, I wanted babies and bottles and the whole motherhood thing. Never mind that “the whole motherhood thing” came with no visual image. It was like a grey Polaroid—underexposed and murky. I wanted babies the way I wanted a new sweater—something to hug and snuggle and keep me warm. The desire was deep, passionate and desperately naïve.

And how, exactly, can any man compare stories to any such as these? I still remember running a household until my daughter was four, running a daycare during the day (three toddlers, ten hours a day, five days a week) as my still-partner schooled during the day, later going to work, even as I went out to a café a few blocks away to write three nights a week (needing a space of my own to think, let alone look at a piece of paper with any kind of usefulness), from seven p.m. to midnight; it compares just as easily as it doesn’t. I can still remember how, of the three-or-four hundred members of the “Ottawa-Carleton Caregivers Association,” only two of the members were male, and the other male lived but a block away. It might just not compare in the least.

Echlin’s magnificent, smart and compelling essay moves through Elizabeth Smart’s writing and biography from the point-of-view of her determination against all that worked against her, to be both mother and artist, something she struggled with throughout the whole of her life. Other titles by Smart include A Bonus (1977), Ten Poems (1981), Eleven Poems (1982), The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals (1982), In the Meantime (1984), Autobiographies (1987, Christina Burridge ed.), Necessary Secrets: The Journals of Elizabeth Smart (1987, Alice Van Wart ed.), Juvenilia: Early Writings of Elizabeth Smart (1987, Alice Van Wart ed.), On the Side of the Angels: The Second Volume of the Journals of Elizabeth Smart (1997, Alice Van Wart ed.) and Elizabeth's Garden: Elizabeth Smart on the Art of Gardening (1989), as well as a documentary, On the Side of the Angels (1994), and an award-winning biography by Toronto writer Rosemary Sullivan, By Heart: Elizabeth Smart, A Life (1991).

It makes me wonder what other books exist in this same series?

related notes: some brief thoughts about the short novel;