a poem & some upcoming Edmonton readings



after having spent so much time indoors


the space is bigger, after all; the office
where I spend & make my,

daily

a wall of thistles speckled flat

marked mid along the grain; canola
yellow talking soft

tween cellphones

every morning skip of soft white pages
slip between departments

Apparently I've got three upcoming readings in Edmonton, the first being on Friday, September 21 at 10pm, doing a 10-minute set as part of The Roar: Spoken Word Festival. It happens at AXIS Cafe, 10349 - Jasper Ave. After that, I'm doing a longer set a week later, Thursday, September 27 at 7:30pm at Audrey's Books, 10702 Jasper Ave NW, ph# (780) 423-3487. I'll be reading with Ottawa writer Chrisitian McPherson, touring around with his first collection of short fiction. After that, I'll be doing a reading in the English Department on Wednesday, October 3 at 3:30pm (venue tba) with U of A's writer-in-exile Jalal Barzanji. Will I see you at any of those events?

12 or 20 questions: with Erin Mourebio: egad. i like chus pato's answer: "insofar as all biography participates in fiction, i prefer not to have one." but well, i live in montreal, first book from anansi in 1979, Empire, York Street, and most recent also from anansi, O Cadoiro, 2007. many books in between. many more grins. grew up in calgary, lived after that in edmonton and banff briefly before spending 10 years in vancouver then moving to montreal. is a freelance commercial translator in quebec (french to english) and translates poetry whenever possible (no money in it but when i can eat from other sources, i translate poetry!) from galician, spanish, portuguese to english. lives in french. likes cooking, cats, bicycling, balconies, and Life.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

It scared me. I wondered if I could do it ever again. I couldn't believe it was attributed to me. Did I write it? Would it distract me forever? I solved that problem by not reading any of the reviews. Then I read in a newspaper it was nominated for a GG. I was relaxing in a train bedroom in Edmo station waiting for boarding and I fell over out of the chair. That was months later tho. Life went on. It just did.

2 - How long have you lived in Montreal, and how does geography, if at all, impact on your writing? Does race or gender make any impact on your work?

Race and gender make impacts on everyone's work, and on their being in the world! We're social beings, live in communities, and some features of identity are more priveleged than others. I can cross the border into the USA easily because I look very white. And men walk into me in the street because they see a woman and their bodily sense of space assumes I'm smaller than they are and they don't have to move much to get by me. Crash. Can what affects us when we move not affect us when we write?

Je suis montréalaise depuis 23 ans. My geography is relentlessly urban. Most of it is paved over, though I find parks in it, and patios, and delicious smells! Geography is in my writing too. The childhood geography too: rivers, creeks, grasses. And the mental geography: languages. Which brings me to other geographies, less urban.

3 - 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?

Coa música das palabras, dunhas palabras. And it grows from there; from the beginning I am only working on how words look beside each other, and how they affect each other. If I am lucky, after about 10 or 20 pages, the book starts to emerge, I start to see its forms, its being.

4 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?

I like reading out loud to my friends at certain points when I am making a poem. But public readings as such occur long after the pieces are written. They are more ways to get the work out to readers. I like audiences, though, I like hearing how they respond. And I respond too. But to write the work I need quiet and to be with the words.

5 - 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 current question is why write poetry at all? Though one writes without a why. Tis a deeper insistence that wants to make language instead of something else. And keep making language. As for answers, it is, rather, questions that emerge in the work, I think, and I don't think they expect me to answer them. If they expected answers, they'd show up in someone else's work. I prefer questions, the questions.

What is a theoretical concern? My concerns are all very real, even the ones about language, and how we are constituted as beings in language. They are everyday questions. How does language work? Why does any one word next to another mean something? These are ordinary questions.

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

Not difficult, I like hearing the way other people think about the work and engaging with that. Mostly it is not essential, but near the end it is, before the book is published. I wouldnt go with a publisher if I couldnt have an editor to wrestle with. On the other hand, feedback of friends is critical to me early on. I have some friends who ask tough questions, pull no punches. I trust them.

7 - After having published more than a couple of titles over the years, do you find the process of book-making harder or easier?

I am more at ease with the difficulty of it, I thrive on it. A process of curiosity and perseverance. And the book never ceases to amaze me: its shape, its leaves, the recto and verso of these leaves. It is a structure so open to possibility. Impossible to exhaust this possibility! It is not harder or easier to make a book, it is more curious, is all.

8 - When was the last time you ate a pear?

I just bit a really wrinkled one that I got from a porcupine. It's too green, I can't eat it. But I have four others from the store, and some blue cheese. I'm thinking I'll eat one after dinner. But here I am back after dinner and I'll eat it tomorrow, I'm too full!

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

"Go outside and enjoy the day."

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

I don't do genres. I write. This and that happens. I just do what I feel like doing. Genres are other peoples' business.

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?

With coffee, and email, normally, alas, as when I wake up it is 6 hours later in Europe, and they have been at it already and I am behind, and I really can't put it off for very long or I screw up other peoples' work. I like best to stay home and work early in the morning on poetry, though, do commercial work till 2 or so, go to the gym, come home, eat lunch, work some more, someone comes over or I go to their house, we talk and talk and read and laugh, and make supper. Then it is very late and I go home to bed or my guests go home to bed. That's a typical day. There aren't very many of them, alas. But I think of them as typical because they suit me. The other typical day is, of course, to get up and go to an airport, and spend all day spying out electrical outlets to charge my laptop battery while enduring the waits for planes. My favourite untypical day is to go out in the morning for no reason, and marvel at how amazing it is, because I rarely go out then!

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

Books, amazing books, powerful writing. But not for "inspiration," because I believe in "work". Unless you are talking about breathing. Inspiration is good then. But I read for nourishment, and for joy.

13 - How does your most recent book compare to your previous work? How does it feel different?

I don't compare! Previous to what? I guess I could say it's different, they are all different. More and more, maybe, the other languages enter my work. Until the point arrives where they are my work.

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?

Ah but books come from books because writing is in language! You may have a zillion other influences, but when you start to make language, you are using words that have been used before you ever used them.

Influences from visual art, architecture, biology, philosophy, abound in my work. I'm a curious person, I think I must be. I feel curious.

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

Fellow poets whose work is sympathetic (in the French sense, maybe symbiotic is a better English word to convey what I mean) to my endeavours and dreams: Lisa Robertson, Phil Hall, Chus Pato, Xabier Cordal, Nicole Brossard, Robert Majzels, the medieval Galician-Portuguese trobadours, Alexander Pope, Lyn Hejinian, Caroline Bergvall, Myung Mi Kim, Paul Celan, Cesar Vallejo, CD Wright, Andrés Ajens, Oana Avasilichioaei, Angela Carr, Chaucer, Federico García Lorca, Heiner Müller, Lani Maestro (oops, she's an artist, but in her art, there is amazing writing)...

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

Ouf! Too much. I want to learn Romanian well enough to live in Bucharest for awhile, live in Paris sometime for a few months, go to my mother's village, go to the Panama Canal, go to Alaska, sing Shenandoah in tune. Learn another language after I learn Romanian.

I like doing again things I've done before, too. Esp that I dont get time to do. LIke fishing. In a creek or river, where you can stand, not off in a boat somewhere.

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 dont know what I would have ended up doing, there's so many interesting things to do! and I am curious and love learning nearly anything. Early on I wanted to run a restaurant, but I wouldn't have ended up doing that. I already have had a 20 year career cooking and managing and so on, before I became a translator. I like being a translator best.

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

Inner insistence, plus it was cheap and compact: all you needed was a typewriter. I was too scared about money to be a visual artist, rent a studio, buy huge materials, etc. I still am.

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

Most recently read and seen? Os libros arden mal, Manuel Rivas' latest novel. And I enjoy films so much, and like a lot of them! I saw Les spectres de Goya (Goya's Ghosts) the other night and liked that: harrowing. And I saw the latest Claude Lelouch too, Roman de Gare (I think it is called Crossing or Crossing Tracks in English): he makes fine fine intelligent romantic comedy-thrillers! And I saw the Moscow Bolshoi Opera in Ljubljana in August: wow. And I love the theatre, theatre in French in Montreal is the best anywhere.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Cooking stuffed peppers for dinner.

And translating Chus Pato's latest, Hordas de escritura. Still don't know what I will do with that title! As hordes in English has ceased to have the basic meaning it has in Galician and just means lots of something.

And a book of essays, gathering various talks and essays I've written in the past 20 years or so. And a collaborative translation-based but wide ranging long work in poetry with Oana Avasilichioaei... it might be a book, it's ongoing. Parts of it are on the web (Jacket) and in the latest Open Letter. She's pretty darn challenging to work with.

12 or 20 questions archive

12 or 20 questions: with Phil Hall



Phil Hall was born in 1953 & raised on farms in the Kawarthas region of Ontario. He attended the University of Windsor in the 70s, where he received an MA in English & Creative Writing.

His first book, Eighteen Poems, was published in Mexico City in 1973.

Since then he has published 13 other books of poems, 4 chapbooks, & a cassette of labour songs.

He is also a publisher of broadsides & chapbooks under his Flat Singles Press imprint.

In the early 80s he was a member of The Vancouver Industrial Writers’ Union. In the early 90s he was Literary Editor at This Magazine, & also edited a shortlived literary journal called Don’t Quit Yr Day-Job.

Among his titles are: Homes (1979), Old Enemy Juice (1988), The Unsaid (1992), & Hearthedral—A Folk-Hermetic (1996).

Trouble Sleeping (2000) was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for poetry.

In 2005, Brick Books (celebrating 20 years as Hall’s publisher) brought out An Oak Hunch, which was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2006.

Hall has taught writing & literature at the Kootenay School of Writing, York University, Ryerson Polytechnical University, & many colleges.

He has been poet-in-residence at the University of Western Ontario, the Sage Hill Writing Experience (Sask.), The Berton House in Dawson City, Yukon, & elsewhere.

This fall (2007), Book Thug will publish Hall’s new long poem, White Porcupine, & also issue a revised second edition of his essay/poem, The Bad Sequence.

Over the years, Hall has collected two full decks of random playing cards from the streets, numerous albums of found photographs, & too many boxes of paper ephemera. He calls all this junk “The Pedestrian Archives.”

He is learning to play clawhammer banjo.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

It arrived on a bus from Mexico City to Windsor, Ontario, 1973.

I spread copies of Eighteen Poems out on my cot in residence. I got down on my knees. I smelled them.

It was a dreadful little book. Already, I knew that. I loved its typos.

Until then I had thought it was easy.

2 - How long have you lived in Toronto, and how does geography, if at all, impact on your writing? Does race or gender make any impact on your work?

I have lived in Toronto since 1985, amazingly, because I grew up only two hours north of here,
& when the Guidance Counselor in high school asked where I wanted to go, I said, “Which university is furthest away?”

Toronto, for years, was just a place to take a leak between Windsor & Bobcaygeon.

I grew up on various farms between Bobcaygeon & Fenelon Falls, & when I fall asleep I go back there to walk around. I suspect my brain contours match that landscape: Red Rock, Bury’s Green, Martin’s Creek. I would prefer they didn’t.

I have outgrown my urge to apologize for being male, although there is much always to apologize for. As I get older, I feel more ashamed of being white & speaking only English. When I grew up where I did, there were only Scottish Presbyterians & Baptists. The towns were dry. My dad hated Catholics.

When a teacher asked my daughter what religion her family was, Brette said, “I’m not sure, but I think my dad said we were Pedestrians.”

These race & gender & geographic issues mean that I write from a very cramped position. Shame & guilt are at war in each line. Any pride I muster has a slow hole in it.

My early closed poems used to hiss & deflate as I worked on them with gum & rasp & patch, but open & long forms have allowed all that old stale air to be the element I sail on instead of the substance I carry.

3 - 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?

Although I haven’t titled individual poems in years, I often work from titles. As phrases strike me, I try them as titles; it’s a way to put a tracking light on them to see how they look & sound.

Because the autonomy of each line matters to me, I work epigraphically. So the challenge is to avoid sounding definite.

Yes, I write bits & pieces & slowly begin to figure out / make up their relationships to each other.

A title is often an early bag or drawer into which notebook lines & stanzas go.

But the aim is always a book because each book is a door I go through & grow through.

4 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?

Readings are entertainments. I used to think that poems were too, but that was when I wrote for praise.

I like to entertain people, but I don’t kid myself: a poet’s depth or sensitivity or craft cannot be conveyed from a stage. People just can’t hear very deeply or widely in such a setting.

They can be flattered into laughter. Their nostalgia bones can be poulticed or slapped. A ritual of sacred sharing can be invited.

But writing poems is about being alone with focus.

5 - 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?

Error is character. Rhythm is knowledge. The words & the letters are interchangeable.

As I say in An Oak Hunch, I am trying to “build lack into a merit of language.” To achieve
the Music of Error.

My limitations & failings have the urge to sing & find family within the history of literature.

An important issue is that blood means nothing. Heritage & lineage are oppressive antiques.

Relation is psychological, & not even limited by Time. If I say Dr Johnson is my father, he is.

I am trying to understand & outgrow myself by using musical integrity as a tool. But if you quote me, I'll deny it. I'll say, "Duh."

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

Because I work in long forms, & am a nervous lout who finds his calm in submerged tinkering, I can’t see what I’m doing most of the time. So my editors have been essential to me. They show me what I’ve been up to. What I’ve made becomes what we can make of it together.

While midwifing a manuscript into book form, they transfocus the long poem’s nail-biting privacy. They invite it into community.

When I see the finished book, I often think that other names should be on the cover too.

7 - After having published more than a couple of titles over the years, doyou find the process of book-making harder or easier?

It was easier to make a book early on when I worked in closed forms.

When I wrote “square ones” as I call them now, all it took to make a book, seemingly, was to have enough of them. For a book of closed lyrics the order is essentially arbitrary. They don’t really need each other too much. (The anthologies like it that way.)

But at some point the safes turned to water! An open lyric has traded its safety for harmony. Then the poems in a book lean in to the microphone together. That’s harder.

And if we’re talking open long forms, the problems of sound co-ordination become symphonic.

Then the only way a poem feels finished is by physical changes, a phase of craziness ends; I’ve changed my tone & preoccupations one morning…

8 - When was the last time you ate a pear?

An over-ripe pear for each of my hands to squeeze until the urge to just use someone passes.

(His big pain is a one-winged hornet trying to wear a fallen pear as a helmet.)

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

When I lived in Windsor, one time Eugene McNamara & Alistair MacLeod & I drove to Ann Arbor to hear William Stafford read. That night what I remember him advising us all to do is: “Listen to the vowels.” I try to.

The line that really haunts me though is Simone Weil’s “All diversion is suicide.”

To counter it, my mantra these days is Robert Kroetsch’s (that’s where I found it) “Poet, no thyself.”

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 work from notebooks. I keep the notebooks nearby all the time. I work in the mornings if I can.

I keep a rough draft in the notebook as long as possible to see if it’s going to die on me. This keeps the early workings closer to drawing, more physical, less technical.


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

When all my new poems are crap, I tell myself that this is an important phase: I’m no longer satisfied with what I have been writing, & I haven’t figured out how to achieve a different poem yet.

I call this “Pickle Time”. Something is stewing. Something I don’t know is coming. So far it always has.

It may still be crap, but the results start to satisfy me more & more.


12 - How does your most recent book compare to your previous work? How does it feel different?

I have learned to equate change with health, so if a new book looks different when I throw its bones, if it sounds different that the books before it (as I feel different from the guy who wrote those other stinkers), then I think the process (for all its slumps & doubts) is evolving healthily.


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?

What really delights me is the musical equivalent of outsider art: amateur songs sung with little or no accompaniment or talent, in every country, in every period of history, the cruder the better.

Jazz: Mingus, David Murray, Jerry Gonzalez, Sarah Vaughan. A lack of caution from moment to moment, word to word, that’s what I’m trying to learn here.

Paint & line swamp me. I let them. In Canada: Greg Curnoe, Joyce Wieland, Jean-Paul Riopelle.

Animals come to the church in the wildwood, & I come to paper.

The Periodic Table is my ground-sheet flag.

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

The major Ontario voices are important to me: Alice Munro, James Reaney, Al Purdy, Dionne Brand. My friends Erin Moure & Tom Wayman, have been influential too.

Much of Canadian poetry is imitative, so I try to mostly read outside of Canada, absorb the sources.

Clayton Eshleman has been a big influence. As has Odysseas Elytis. Susan Howe. Medbh McGuckian.

Early on I was a huge fan of Philip Levine’s, Anne Sexton’s, Doctor Williams’s, Shelley’s.

Like everyone, I go through enthusiasms that are determined by what is happening or trying to happen in my own work at the time. I burn through other writers until I exhaust their worth for me. If someone mentions a writer I haven’t heard of, I go find them & read them. Because I grew up in an un-booked home, I’m insecure enough of my bookishness to not want to miss anyone that might be just who I need…

The point is never hero worship, but rather a voraciousness that keeps my own work flowing & changing.

As a kid, it was animal fiction: The Yearling, Silver Chief, Beautiful Joe, Rascal. . .

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

I’d like to leave Ontario, leave Canada, leave North America & never come back. Ireland. Greece. A portable kayak & a good pen.

But I’d like to see my daughter & step-son graduate from university. My older son is drywalling Calgary; sometimes he calls. My kids have been essential anchors. And there have been other things holding me back over the years.

I’d like to visit Vienna; maybe I can do that. The Wiener Werkstatte, Klimt, Hundertwasser, Schiele, Schubert, Bernhard…but I’ll end up coming back to this embarrassment of a country. I’m stuck here.

My voice is stuck here, & that is its dilemma-merit.


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?

If I hadn’t gotten through high school & away to university, if I hadn’t educated myself (with help) out of my class & region…well, I’m no good at anything else. But I often wish that I did something I wasn’t ashamed of, something solid & respected & visible, like cabinet making, or stained-glass work.

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

At first the voice was conscience, yelling. Then a distracted, dithyrambic irreverence. Then the voice found defiance & wouldn’t stop singing. I used to turn vinyl with my finger on a broken turn-table to try to sustain some gravelly semblance of life-line to intensity somewhere. If I hadn’t listened & begun to write I’d be dead. (So what does quality matter?)

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

Alma, or the Dead Women. Alice Notley. New York City: Granary Books, 2006.

Sweet Charity, Shirley MacLaine, 1968, directed by Bob Fosse (his first?), based on Fellini’s Nights in Calabria (an even greater film). Shirley sells dances instead of sex, so the bathos is turned down from the original, & there’s an outlandish cameo by Sammy Davis Jr (he’s a hippy priest) that seems an incongruous nod to the times now, but MacLaine’s vibrancy, & Fosse’s choreography, colour-work, & use of stills, are all enduringly stunning.

Generally, though, I prefer cheesy B films whose flaws have a glow that seems to come directly from the collective unconscience.

19 - What are you currently working on?

Just what the world needs.
12 or 20 questions archive

ongoing notes – early September, 2007

So here I sit, broken-hearted. Okay, maybe not. Finally in Edmonton, finally in my office, trying to get work done yet still feeling completely overloaded (hence the lack of reviewing lately); did you see the nice stuff that Amanda Earl wrote about me on her blog? Also, I’ve started an interview project that started on the Alberta blog and seems to have bled through into three different blogs (apparently it’s been noticed by a few folk there and here; including this note on various reviewers for that Chicago poetry anthol…)? What surprises me most is just how many people have eaten pears lately…

Did you see this article on me in yesterday's Edmonton Journal by Todd Babiak?

Edmonton AB: Part of the fun of being in Edmonton at all is being able to get to the Olive Reading Series [see the interview I did moons ago with then-organizer Adam Dickinson], now run by T.L. Cowan, Jeff Carpenter, Thea Bowering, Douglas Barbour, Jenna Butler, Maria Chen, Meena Gupta and K.L. McKay, with featured reader, a free small chapbook by that reader, as well as an open set. Last night, the first reading of the new season was Edmonton poet Bert Almon, with his chapbook Waiting for the Gulf Stream.

It might not be the kind of poetry that jump-starts any part of me, but his reading was pretty entertaining (and it was a packed house, which was pretty cool). He also launches a new poetry collection alongside Ben Murray with Brindle & Glass at Greenwood's Books, September 16 (7925 104 St., 7pm). The next reader for the Olive Reading Series (Hulbert’s Café, 7601 115 St) is Ottawa poet Stephen Brockwell [see the interview with him here] on October 6.

Kane’ohe HI: It’s always good to get a new issue of Susan M. Schultz’s Tinfish in the mail, and I’ve been (finally) able to start going through #17, from June 2007. Part of why I love this journal is for the strong writing, and for the always interesting design; some of it is just for the geographic range of it, moving Pacific Rim from where she exists on the island-that-is-a-state, all along the American west coast and into parts of Canada, publishing authors such as Kaia Sand, Kim Hyesoon, Meredith Quartermain, Shin Yu Pai, Jane Sprague and Truong Tran. Who wouldn't love a poem with such a title as "The Exiled Filipino Poet Translates into Pidgin ENglish" by R. Zamora Linmark? Or this piece, writing:

A peppery road, well oiled and ready for the taking. A man is standing on
the empty sidewalk. The sky a grayish blue, the air thick and sweet. He
considers entering the road as a stream enters a river. He would integrate
into the larger whole, perhaps adding to its darkness or width. He hesitates,
thinking to himself, “although dedicating completely to this road would
relieve me of all attachment, I am not quite ready to give up the illusion of
self.” Before he has come to a decision, a large wave arrives, pausing for a
moment, allowing the man to witness its greatness, and with a hiss and a
crumble, washes away the sidewalk, the road, the man, his thoughts. (Matt Rohrer)

Montreal QC: It’s good to see former Ottawa poet Wanda O’Connor publish a new poetry chapbook, her self-published Romance & the Tidal Boar (ImPress, 2007), produced for a reading she recently did on the east coast [see this piece I wrote on her moons ago].

my autobiography as a staircase

there is a staircase vining up the tall blank of building. it reaches the sky
and forms its metal around the elements. the staircase does not end as
a staircase. there is nothing beyond it, around it, or in support of it.

there is a building.

three elements are present. the first reaches toward the earth for support.
the second becomes the atmosphere for rest, the third, a solid form,
for comfort, the metal supports me.

anatomy is destiny.*

I imagine this as my maxim and as my civilization. the long arm of the handrail of
concept.

there are hands that run along that rail.
there is some kind of love in this.

weightless elements combine and form a mountain. I reach the speak to Moses,
gain a prophecy. I can see Hollywood from here, its loss of charm.

there is an idea of wanting, but only an idea. here I need all things. I need to feel hu-
man.

*Freud

Although a strange little production, and somewhat uneven, I very much like her use of the direct statement, and keep hoping that she will someday let above/ground press produce a chapbook in the future, perhaps a combination of this, newer work and perhaps something older as well. For information on her chapbook, or to contact her, check out her blog.

12 or 20 questions: for Jessica Westhead

Jessica Westhead is a Toronto writer who has published stories in litmags such as The Antigonish Review, Matrix, THIS Magazine, Geist, Taddle Creek, Forget Magazine, Word, and Kiss Machine. Her fiction was also included in the anthology Desire, Doom & Vice: A Canadian Collection, and her short-story chapbook, Those Girls, was published by Greenboathouse Books in 2006.

She has been involved in Toronto’s literary scene since 1999, when she unleashed her poetry winner zines (a tell-all exposé of the National Library of Poetry, aka poetry.com) on the Small Press Book Fair. Jessica has been featured in several local reading venues, including the Idler Pub Reading Series, Lexiconjury, Pontiac Quarterly, Pages’ This Is Not A Reading Series, and the I.V. Lounge. She also volunteered as a co-organizer of the 2004 Scream Literary Festival Gala. And somehow, on a perfect Cinderella evening, she and her literary partner in crime, Sarah Selecky, crashed the 2003 Giller Awards.

Jessica originally hails from Whitby, and studied English at Trent University. She works part-time as a freelance editor, but has also racked up a lifetime’s worth of “permanent” and temporary office jobs, as a receptionist, filer, photocopier, telemarketer, data-entry clerk, and transcriptionist.

Pulpy and Midge (Coach House Books, Fall 2007), a story about an orange juice legacy, love, and the perils of office life, is her first novel. It’s launching, office-party-style, in Toronto on Tuesday, September 25 at the Gladstone Hotel (with further readings in places like Ottawa and Edmonton). For more details have a look at: http://www.chbooks.com/content/?q=events/sept_25_pulpy_and_midge_office_party

1 - How did your first book change your life?

I have to say it's made me quite gleeful. I was a fairly happy person already, so I didn't need a published book to get that way... But ever since I was a little kid I've dreamed about getting a book published by a press that really cared about my writing. And then it actually happened! So THAT was pretty freakin' awesome.

2 - How long have you lived in Toronto, and how does geography, if at all, impact on your writing? Does race or gender make any impact on your work?

I've lived in Toronto since the summer of 1998. I started off at the west end of the Annex, and now I'm on the Danforth. I guess city life in general has an effect on my writing, mainly because I write about office life a lot... But I don't reference Toronto in particular in my work--I like to keep things sort of faceless. Ditto, race- and gender-wise.

3 - Where does a piece of fiction 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 usually start with a few lines of dialogue (overheard or imagined), and then I'll see if characters emerge from that conversation. And if I've got an idea for a plot, I'll try to figure out how that conversation between those characters might have something to do with that plot, and then I'll attempt to build the story from there. I'm definitely a person who begins with shorter pieces, but in the process of writing Pulpy and Midge I learned the importance of considering the "big picture" (i.e. plot) as well. Years ago, before I started Pulpy and Midge, I wrote a novella about a girl and her mascot boyfriend, in which I basically just cobbled together a bunch of (what I thought were) amusing scenes. And it fell totally flat because I had no idea where the story was going, so I scrapped it--which was hugely liberating, at least once I stopped thinking about all the effort I'd put into the project.

4 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?

Definitely part of it. I love doing readings, and getting an audience's reaction to my work. Way before I had anything published, I was doing public readings. When I'm working on a story, I sound out scenes in my head to see if they'll read well out loud. Considering a live audience also helps my writing process because it makes me think about whether or not a scene makes sense--when you're onstage reading your work to people who aren't familiar with it, you want those people to be able to follow along. Because if your audience gets confused, you've lost them.

5 - 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?

Hmm. I don't think I set out to shine a light on any big, serious issues when I write a story. But when I look at the majority of my fiction, certain themes do seem to pop up over and over again. I have a thing about personal space and personal boundaries, and what happens when those boundaries are crossed (usually something bad). And I'm also fascinated by the small ways that people mistreat each other, and get away with it.

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

So far I've only had really great experiences with the people who've edited my work, so for me it's been an essential part of the process. I'm also an editor myself, so I have a lot of respect for what editors can do for a piece of writing.

7 - When was the last time you ate a pear?

A few weeks ago. I think it was a Bosc. I meant to eat it with cheese, but then I ate the cheese without the pear so I just cut the pear up on a salad. Which maybe wasn't as delicious as a pear with cheese, but it was still a good salad.

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

I've got three: 1) "A writer writes." -Lorne Hicks (a wise and hilarious man I know) 2) "You're not invisible! They can see you!" -Derek Wuenschirs (my husband--he hisses this in my ear whenever I'm staring open-mouthed at the people I'm eavesdropping on; I'm near-sighted and don't wear my glasses too often, so I figure since the talking people are blurry to me, I'm just as blurry to them) 3) (I'm paraphrasing here, but only slightly:) "Wake up and enjoy every day you've got--life's too short to be miserable. Also, when you see a bench in a mall, sit on it. Ahhh, benches." -Marion "Matriarch" Westhead (my 93-year-old grandmother)

9 - 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've got a story going, I like to write in the mornings-- usually for three or four hours at a time. If I'm between stories, I don't have much of a routine... I try to carry paper and a pen with me at all times, so if an idea or some overheard dialogue grabs me I can write it down right away. I usually start a story from one of those scribbled ideas--I'll type them up and start a computer file for the story, and then I'll print out a hard copy that I can write on. Then I'll transcribe that new text into the electronic file and maybe print it out once more--which is not very tree-friendly, but I have a hard time generating new ideas when I'm sitting at the computer. Walking helps to get me thinking, and so does commuting on public transit. I also like to sit in pubs and write, but I have to start out drinking tea and THEN a beer, because if I start out with beer, I lose all concentration. Because writing's fun and all, but I love beer. A lot.

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

I like to read "how-to" writing-craft books that have been recommended to me. That way, I can justify not writing because I'm still doing something writing-related--not beating up on myself for not writing is definitely half the battle. Plus, often in the middle of reading one of these books I'll suddenly be struck by an idea, and then I'll start writing something. Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft is excellent, and I'm currently reading and enjoying How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead by Ariel Gore, and From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction by Robert Olen Butler.

11 - How does your most recent book compare to your previous work? How does it feel different?

Aside from the scrapped novella, I only wrote short stories before Pulpy and Midge. I celebrate whenever I finish a short story, but when I finished writing the novel, I went all out. Sparkling wine, chocolate, Kool & The Gang. That was a really good day. Writing a novel is hard!

12 - 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'm definitely influenced by the books I read... But when I'm reading, I'm reading--I'm not also thinking about my own writing. But I've noticed lately that when I'm around other creative people who are doing their (non-literary) thing, I'm able to slip into that wonderful, dreamy headspace where writing ideas float around. For example, if I'm at a concert and I'm enjoying it but I'm not totally into whatever song the band is playing at the moment, or if I go along with my photographer-husband on a picture-taking jaunt and just stand back and watch him snap away, then I can pretty easily enter that blissful right-brain state where a story starts revealing itself to me. This usually only happens when I'm in the midst of working on a particular piece, though.

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

Some of the fiction writers I'm excited and inspired by are Raymond Carver, Lynn Coady, Ernest Hemingway, Amy Hempel, David Mamet, Lorrie Moore, George Saunders, Sarah Selecky, Russell Smith, and Craig Taylor. As for writings, I'd say certain writing-craft books, like the ones I mentioned in my #10 answer. And I'm also in love with my old, battered copy of Roget's College Thesaurus In Dictionary Form--a gift from my English-teacher dad, ages ago.

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

Write a second novel. Mmm, yeah.

15 - 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'm currently a writer and a freelancer editor, and I love being both. But if were to pick a totally different occupation just for the heck of it, I'd say a professional sports player. Any sport. That would be pretty cool, because I totally suck at all of them. And I don't even watch sports. I don't like sports at all. I wouldn't say I hate them, because hate is a pretty strong word. But if I was suddenly amazing at a competitive sport, I would like to make a million dollars playing it.

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

I've just always wanted to write, and I've always written. Instead of running a lemonade stand when I was a kid, I sold my stories on our front lawn (never mind that my only customers were my parents and my babysitter--my dad still raves about my grade 2 epic "The Zombie Cats: My Scariest Dream"). I wrote and put on plays with neighbourhood kids in our garage. I loved The National Enquirer and The Weekly World News, so I made up my own versions. In my Grade 12 Drama class I wrote and acted in plays and the cinematic triumph, "Five Youths Spend a Weekend at an Old, Deserted Cabin and Die Violently." And several years ago I was telling my friend Cyla about my fears of "not making it" as a writer, and wondering whether I should give up, and she shrugged and said in this great, deadpan way, "Well, what else are you going to do?" And I didn't have an answer for her, so I figured I should just keep writing.

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

The last great book I read was Lorrie Moore's Birds of America. Her writing makes my eyes bug out of my head. The last great movie I saw was Superbad--I haven't laughed that hard in a theatre since I don't know when.

18 - What are you currently working on?

I'm in between finishing up a collection of short stories, and turning some longer, related stories into a novel. This was fun-- thanks for the interview, rob!

12 or 20 questions archive

12 or 20 questions: with Lance Blomgren
Lance Blomgren (b. 1970, Cumberland, British Columbia) is a writer, curator, artist and teacher. He is the author of Practice (Intrepid Tourist Press,1996), Manual For Beginners (with Yvette Poorter, ITP, 1997), Walkups (conundrum press, 2000), Oasis (with Yvette Poorter, Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts, 2001) and Corner Pieces (conundrum, 2004). Éditions Adage published a French-language edition of Walkups in 2007 (trans. Élizabeth Robert). Blomgren’s writings have been recently published in Geist, Matrix, Fillip, Spur, Ascent, Terminal City, Doppelganger, Visual Codec and Art Asia Pacific, and have appeared in the anthologies You and Your Bright Ideas: New Montreal Writing (Véhicule Press, 2002), The Portable Conundrum (2006) and Helen’s Cookbook (Helen Pitt Gallery, 2007). In 1998 Blomgren was the recipient of the bpNichol Chapbook Award for his text Liner and in 2005 Corner Pieces was a finalist for the ReLit Award. In 2003, his radio drama, A Room Full of Birds, was produced for CBC Radio One. His art projects and text-based installations have been exhibited in Montreal, Vancouver, Banff, Berlin, Brisbane, Barcelona, Chicago and Las Cruces, New Mexico.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

It didn’t. I think photocopying my first small batch of writings for my family and friends ultimately indicated the sort of change you’re suggesting, rob…a coming out of sorts.

2 - How long have you lived in Vancouver, and how does geography, if at all, impact on your writing? Does race or gender make any impact on your work?

I’ve been in Vancouver for two years, after ten in Montreal. It’s hard, if not impossible, to be left unaltered by your surroundings, but really I don’t think too much about my local geography in terms of writing. Even for my book Walkups, ostensibly about Montreal apartments, I didn’t really think too much about the city…the apartments and architectural focus of the project became a kind of unifying structure after the fact, something to encapsulate a series of texts that were, at the time of writing, not really about anything, weren’t set in apartments at all, and certainly were not related to Montreal specifically. Actually I began these writings while living in New Mexico under the guise of a science fiction project. Theoretical notions of space—my hobbyist’s love of the architectural works and writings of John Hejduk, Constant, Capability Brown, Saskia Sassen, Eyal Weizman, and Stalker, the Italian research group—definitely inspired an attention to the social complexities of space which have underscored a fair percentage of my recent work. But within the writing itself I often seem to prefer a kind of fictional non-space, or everyspace. That said, I recently composed a series of public text-works for the city of Banff, which focused on the history and mythos of the location. But this was definitely an outsider’s perspective, not my home landscape whatsoever.

3 - Where does a piece of fiction 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?

While I have always tried, and continue to try, to be working on a book, I haven’t had much luck. Most of my published writings are short pieces that initially have no sense to them—no rhyme of reason for their existence. At some point the emergent, quixotic qualities of putting two texts together, side-by-side, begin to suggest a larger form.

4 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?

Public readings are a satisfying way of engaging with the audience in a direct way…a nice, less-mediated way of visualizing an audience. But I can’t say they influence my practice on way or the other. They’re fun, or perhaps terrifying…I can say that.

5 - 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 don’t begin with any real concerns or questions per se, but I have noticed that once I’m going I often return to fundamental questions around the nature of representation in writing, questions like: how do we believe in these words and worlds, how do we make sense of things? And then there’s perhaps the fundamental question—or promise—of almost all writing: mystery. From the drug-store whodunit to the figurative language of poetry, or even constraint-based experiments in writing, the notion of mystery seems to be a consistent unifier. Donald Barthelme’s writings on the idea of “Not-Knowing” continue to resonate for me in this light. It gets complicated quickly—for me not a good thing to be worrying about while I’m writing—but I recognize a political dimension to this mystery, which at some point I can’t help thinking about. The mystery inherent in most writing either lends itself to supporting dominant structures and lazy, predictable responses, or it can, more idealistically, work to unravel the whole power dynamic inherent in “knowing.” I do like to work with a sense of mystery in mind…how little I can get away with in order to make something happen; how can meaning emerge from virtually meaningless text; what kind of mysteries can occur when one does away with many of our normal, literary signposts of meaning altogether.

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

It’s an essential pain-in-the-ass that always makes your writing better, no matter who the editor is, but also places you squarely in the way of your own ego.

7 - After having published a couple of titles over the past few years, do you find the process of book-making harder or easier?

It remains the same. Writing is writing...work. Like all work it can often be very rewarding, sometimes enthralling, and occasionally dreadfully boring and soul-destroying.

8 - When was the last time you ate a pear?

Almost a year ago.

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

Don’t worry.

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 either writing consistently or not writing hardly at all, depending on the nature, or flavour, of my daily life. I feel quite lucky to have found other outlets for my writing… curating art exhibitions, commissioned articles or text-based art projects. This means that these days even when I’m not writing, I’m writing. Having lots to do makes it easier to keep going. That said, an ongoing book project can often be left on the back burner for awhile. I either write during the day like regular office hours, and which can often be regular office hours literally, or, more ideally I stay up very, very late.

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

I have found that if I have numerous projects on the go, getting stalled doesn’t even seem to be an option. Get stuck on one thing, move on to another. Or start something new. And never underestimate the inspirational power of deadline panic.

12 - How does your most recent book compare to your previous work? How does it feel different?

Corner Pieces (2004) was very much a compilation of scattered writings that upon closer inspection seemed to be about the great outdoors, mainly the urban environment. In this sense it seemed to be the counterpoint to Walkups (2000) which was all set indoors. They seem similar in a sense, even if Walkups was a contained novella of sorts and Corner Pieces was a collection. Both deal with psychological and emotional responses to the constructed environment, and both do away with notions of plot or character to a large extent. And in both projects the basic unit of composition is the paragraph…perfect for bus rides and trips to the washroom.

There are some essential differences though. Walkups was composed as a kind of voyeuristic project—the narrative voice is quite distant from the subject, an almost spectral protagonist hovering off in the distance, perhaps masturbating or in the midst of crying jag or euphoric rush...I’m not sure. In Corner Pieces, the voice becomes much more intimate, inextricable from the subject. In this project the reader would probably assume the voice to be closer to myself as the author—the classic poetic utterance—although this would be largely false.

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?

Well, it’s hard to argue with this guy…the closest thing we have to Frank O’Hara in Canada. For sure, books remain the key things that teach me about writing. But I’d have to admit that there are only a few books or writers that influence or inspire my work these days. For the most part, I find a more kindred sense of community, tradition and creative lineage in other fields—architecture and urbanism for sure, but also contemporary art, curatorial studies, sports.

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

I tend to return to a few writers, or subjects, or books regularly. A few recent re-readings have included the tape-recorded, oral novels of Mohamed Mrabet and Driss ben Hamed Charhadi; the non-fiction works [of] Mike Davis; the poetry of René Ricard and Yannis Ritsos; the writings and pictograms of Gabriel Pomerand, to name a few.

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

I’d like to visit Russia.

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?

As an avid fan of competitive swimming, I have always wanted to be a coach of Olympic-level, elite swimmers. Unfortunately, I haven’t even received my basic coaching certification. Writing is not the only thing I do, so I feel that alternate careers are presently on the go already, with likely more to come. Presently I am working as the Director/Curator at the Helen Pitt Gallery in Vancouver, an artist-run centre. I like to organize and plan, and enjoy large-scale, collaborative endeavours…so for now this seems to be a good job. I sometimes think it would be exciting to invent and market a new product—I have a design for hot-water-bottle slippers, for those with chronically cold feet, that I would love to find some investors to help support.

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

Unlike most things, writing just came easy… I never really decided to become a writer at any point, but knew it was something I could do. As a child, I had a good friend who would join me in composing the most nonsensical and hilarious written routines. At the age of nine or ten, the two of us were creating fictional newspapers and Playboy magazines, and were writing pages and pages of stuff that would entertain us for hours.

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

I really enjoyed a few of the Rita McBride collaboratory novels: Naked Came the ****, Future Ways, Crime Ways and Heart Ways. The last great film I saw was Herzog’s Grizzly Man…what a film!

19 - What are you currently working on?

A collection of interlocking ghost stories, based loosely on Scandinavian folklore, where the protagonist is a ghost—an absence—that never actually appears in the story.

12 or 20 questions archive

Some Workshops: Toronto & Quebec

Apparently it's not just Stephen Brockwell in Ottawa running workshops these days; here are a couple of others I've just heard about.

INFLUENCY 3: A TORONTO POETRY SALON
8 POETS, 10 WEEKS! Sept 26 to Dec 5, 2007
Antonio D’ALFONSO, Triny FINLAY, Maggie HELWIG, Clifton JOSEPH, Robert PRIEST, Stuart ROSS, Karen SOLIE, Souvankham THAMMAVONGSA
facilitated by Margaret Christakos
What: A unique Poetry lecture/reading Salon Series, offered as a 10-week course by The University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies Creative Writing Program, for readers and writers alike.
When: September 26 to December 5, 2007; Wednesday Evenings, 7 pm – 9:30 pm. (No class October 31.)
Who: Eight accomplished Toronto-based poets working in distinctive contemporary styles —Antonio D’Alfonso, Triny Finlay, Maggie Helwig, Clifton Joseph, Robert Priest, Stuart Ross, Karen Solie, and Souvankham Thammavongsa— will appear as guest critics in this unique lecture-reading salon series, to be followed by a half-hour live poetry reading by the poet under discussion and a facilitated Q & A.
Where: University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, at the University of Toronto St. George Campus. This session the class will be held in the U of T Pharmacy Building at the northwest corner of College & University, in “The Pod.”
Why: To celebrate and explore Toronto’s diverse poetry scene. To build appreciation and understanding for contemporary poetry.
How Much: $199 plus $100 course materials (8 books) for 10-week course. Register online for SCS 1777 – 003 by going to http://learn.utoronto.ca/.
Email mchristakos@hotmail.com for more info.

WORD/CRAFT: AN INTRODUCTION TO POETRY WRITING AND PRACTICE
Sunday, October 14, 2007, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Morrin Centre, 44 chausse des cossais, Quebec City
Workshop Leader: Aurian Haller
Fee: $65

INVENTING THE TRUTH: CREATIVE NON-FICTION, PERSONAL ESSAY AND MEMOIR
Saturday, October 20, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Lac-Brome Community Centre, 270 Victoria St, Lac-Brome QC
Workshop leader: Joel Yanofsky

To register, or for more information: (514) 933-0878 or info@qwf.org.

12 or 20 questions: with George BoweringGeorge Bowering, Canada’s first Poet Laureate, was born in the Okanagan Valley and schooled on the West Coast and in Montreal. His work is inescapably rooted in British Columbia, with stories of growing up in the Okanagan, haunting poems of urban Vancouver, and his innovative treatment of historical B.C. events.

A distinguished novelist, poet, editor, professor, historian and tireless supporter of fellow writers, the highly esteemed Bowering has authored more than eighty books, which include works of poetry, fiction, autobiography, biography and youth fiction. His writing has also been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Chinese and Romanian.

After serving as an aerial photographer in the Royal Canadian Air Force, Bowering attended the University of British Columbia where he earned a B.A. in History and an M.A. in English. He is one of the founders—along with Frank Davey, Fred Wah, Daphne Marlatt and Jamie Reid—of the avant-garde poetry and poetics magazine TISH. Bowering has taught at the University of Calgary, the University of Western Ontario and Simon Fraser University. He continues to act as a Canadian literary ambassador at international conferences and readings.

In 2002, Bowering was recognized by the Vancouver Sun as one of the most influential people in British Columbia.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

Before I had a book published, I said that I wanted to have a book of poetry published by Contact Press, and a novel published by McClelland & Stewart. Well, my first book of poetry was published by Contact, and my first novel was published by M&S. So then I felt that what I had known for so long could now be generally known.

2 - How long have you lived in Vancouver, and how does geography, if at all, impact on your writing? Does race or gender make any impact on your work?

I moved to Vancouver to be a UBC student in 1957. I went to Calgary to be an assistant professor in 1963, so there's 6 years. I came back to Vancouver in 1971 and have been here ever since, except for temporary gigs elsewhere and a year in Port Colborne. So there's another 35 years. Let's say I have been in Vancouver for 41 years. As for the impact of geography on my work, see all that stuff about the subject in the early issues of Tish, where we went on and on about locus, having taken the term from Olson. Race and gender have no impact on my work.

3 - Where does a poem or piece of fiction 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?

Most of my life I have been working on books. Some of them can be short, such as the 30-page chapbooks (12 of them) that I wrote in 2006. Back when I wrote a lot of short lyric poems, I would usually start with a "tune" in my head, the lines of the poem without any words yet.

4 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?

Public readings sometimes give me a first outside reading of something I have written. I do not go to the extent that Lionel Kearns used to go to--he would taker a pencil to the podium and make changes to the manuscript depending on the sounds he was producing. Come to think of it, I have done that a few times. But generally public readings are done for money or friendship.

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

I am not hip here to what an outside editor is as compared with an inside editor. Maybe we are talking about publishing houses and freelancers. I have worked with editors a lot, and have sometimes benefitted from the experience. Some-times I'll hop, as when I once left M&S when they didn't like the ending of Burning Water. Once, with an editor from Key Porter, in an Eaton's cafeteria that was trying to close for the day, I cut 100 pages from Shoot despite David McFadden's heckling from the side.

6 - After having published more than a couple of titles over the years, do you find the process of book-making harder or easier?

It varies. But in general I find most things to be harder to do as one gets more along in life. These things have included teaching and reading and writing essays. I have often, you may find it hard to believe, stopped writing a book because it was not yielding itself enough.

7 - When was the last time you ate a pear?

About 5 weeks ago. It was imported and therefore found wanting.

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

"After the age of fifty, don't pass up an opportunity to have a leak."

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

Well, those are not genres. A genre is something like a detective novel or dramatic poetry. Moving from poetry, say, to fiction, say, is neither easy nor difficult. Most of what I attempt comes after this beginning of a question to myself: "I wonder if you could write a . . . ?" For example, you might want to write a story in which a person breaks all the ten commandments, in order. Or you might want to write a poem about all the letters of the alphabet, in order.

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 have almost always written in the afternoon, probably the least favourite time for writers. I get up around 9:30 or 10:00, have coffee, read the paper, do my e-mail, have a shower, and get to whatever I am writing at about 12:30.

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

If my writing gets stalled, I go and do something else. There are always letters to answer, proofreading to do, and blurbs to write. There is always something to do. If it is not your dear little novel ms, tough tittie. Go cry somewhere else.

12 - How does your most recent book compare to your previous work? How does it feel different?

My most recent book (as of this week) (not counting chapbooks) is Vermeer's Light. It is different in that it collects poems written over a decade. My previous such book covered maybe five years. Long ago, a book of poetry would cover two years. Well, this one is a lot like previous collections: most of it is made up of series and shorter books.

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?

Of course books come from books. Northrop Frye famously said that too. My writing can respond to all those things in your list, but books are made of writing. Young Ornette Coleman had an ear for Charlie Parker. Picasso looked hard at Cezanne.

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

Read Finnegans Wake. I bought it when I was 23. I open it once a year or so. You'd think, given my predilections, that I would have read it at least once by now. There is hope. I bought Conrad's Chance when I was 22, and I read it this summer. I read the first paragraph and rewrote it as a short story a couple of years ago. I haven't done that with Finnegans Wake, though I have stood outside some doors to rooms in which it was written.

15 - 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 like to have been a baseball player. I would not have been skilled enough to make the majors, but if I could have, I would have wanted to be a reader and writer of poetry and fiction, as is Miguel Batista, pitcher for the Seattle Mariners. I would have liked to have become a far-out saxophone player. When my cousin Russ died his mother offered me his horns, and I was too sad to say yes. I would like to have been a post-Coltrane sax guy, who also writes poetry and fiction.

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

I don't know. When I was a kid I was interested in everything. Willy and I had a darkroom in his basement. I drew portraits to hang on the wall at the firemen's ball. I acted in lots of plays in high school. I was in the choir and the band. I composed songs with and without Willy. I was an air cadet. I kept score at the baseball and basketball games. I got to be a disc jockey on the radio once and started a lifelong love of being on radio. But except for the sportswriting I did on two papers when I was a highschool kid, writing was solitary, and I was always very good at solitary.

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

I assume that by "great" is meant something more than the fact that I enjoyed it. I guess the last great book I read was the Holy Qur'an. I read it this past winter, and I have to say that it is not my favourite holy book. Last week I saw "Mr. Hulot's Holiday." And it is great, of course, but nowhere near the pleasant shock it was in the fifties.

18 - What are you currently working on?

An interview with rob somebody. Other than that I am writing a book about a year or so in my teenagedom in Oliver, BC. It is the honest truth.

12 or 20 questions archive

12 or 20 questions: with Nathaniel G. Moore

Nathaniel G. Moore (photo taken in july 2007 by mary williamson in a heat wave moth ball apartment), 33, is the author of Bowlbrawl (Conundrum Press, 2005), Let’s Pretend We Never Met (Pedlar Press, 2007) and the features editor of Danforth Review. He is also the editor of Desire, Doom & Vice: A Canadian Collection, and co-editor of the forthcoming Toronto Noir (Akashic Books, 2008) He is a columnist for Broken Pencil and contributes to Books in Canada, Vallum and Word from time to time. He has performed his work on CBC’s ZeD TV and on radio programs such as CIUT FM in Toronto while recently writing and performing the voice over for Fictional Dance Party (BravoFact, 2007, director Geoffrey Pugen). You can see a lot of his literary-related work on Youtube (keyword NATHANIEL G MOORE) and at http://www.bowlbrawl.com/

1. How did your first book change your life?

Technically my first book was my second book, and it changed my life a lot. I was scheduled to release a book or nearly release a book after a meeting in early 2003 in Toronto with a publisher, but being extremely green and unsure and anxious, within 9 months the deal was off, the book wasn’t working in a standard novel form, so I scrapped it for almost three years, and reworked it as a poetry book with a bit of a play going on as well, and the original story was abandoned.

2 - How long have you lived in Toronto, and how does geography, if at all, impact on your writing? Does race or gender make any impact on your work?

Toronto is perfectly aware that I exist and write, however they will be the last to admit it. I have a strange relationship with Toronto, one I’m not qualified to assess. I enjoy being quite well known for all the wrong reasons in Toronto, but I am too hard on myself. In 2005 Flare Magazine said I was a “Toronto small press fixture.” How Home Hardware of them. Conan Tobias, editor of Toronto’s Taddle Creek morbidly refers to me as Toronto’s Favourite Son. It’s a form of ribbing, which is not a condom thing but a wrestling term meaning “to bug, joke, hassle, etc.” I was born in Toronto in July of 1974 at Women’s College Hospital. After several legendary accidents to my face in the years that followed, I went to Maurice Cody, Northlea, Cosburn Middle School, Leaside High School, East York Collegiate and Glendon College in that exact order. Then in 1995 I moved to Montreal where I lived for a year going to Concordia but I had a lot of mental problems. So I found myself for some strange reason, spending the rest of the 1990’s in Waterloo, Ontario where I lived with a girl who took care of me and we ate a lot of pizza and I got very large. I also wrote a lot, mainly about Catullus and Bowling. I moved back to Toronto in 2004 after a stint in Montreal and New York.

3 - Where does a poem or piece of fiction 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 find that after about three pages of prose I can tell where the story is going. A poem can easily spend two or even four years on its own, only to be reduced to a much smaller version. I like to send the amputated bits into a bank for further study. I love moving things around with the cut and paste tools like Phil Spector.

4 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?

They used to be; now I’m too dangerous for live events. I can see why, the writing communities in Toronto are pretty tame and square. I however am neither. I like to get into trouble. But my version of trouble is not like Axel Rose or anything. I think I have great ideas, and ways to help spread the gospel according to the LPG, but again, no one listens to me, or they steal all my ideas. Kidding. No I’m not. I think readings are dead and even series like THIS IS NOT A READING SERIES are not evolving, or at least no one is following up TINARS with another level of revolution. Trampoline Hall is also something that has been around forever. I think people just go to readings and get drunk. I would like to see better readings and more exciting things happen at them. I like Coach House’s readings, and the Harbourfront series are exciting. I also think TPL (Toronto Public Library) does an atrocious job at promoting books in this city. There are nearly 100 branches in that giant system and they promote seven books it seems a year, and it’s never the small presses. As for me personally, early on I loved readings because I stopped being afraid. I won a poetry slam in 1999, ousting a lot of talented writers including a guy who writes for Eye Weekly now, and anyway, I got some radio exposure. The piece I won with is actually “Curfew The Dead” which of course everyone knows is from my last book Let’s Pretend We Never Met.

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

I loved working with Andy Brown with Bowlbrawl, it was done really fast, he had just been turned into a father through the miracle of nature, so his little son was there watching us for three days straight cut down the monster, so to speak. As for other editors, Beth went away when my book was being created, so Emily Schultz, who I’ve worked with before was appointed my editor. And she was fantastic. We worked on it back and forth in person and over electronic means for about four months. Beth was very excited about Catullus, and my book. Sometimes it’s just the vibe, the energy.

6 - After having published a couple of titles over the past few years, do you find the process of book-making harder or easier?

This time around I was hands-off. I didn’t want any say in the design, beyond the use of salmon or pink, I just said “Make it pretty.” Bowlbrawl was very involved, and I had trailer makers, website makers, live actors, a whole cavalcade of enslavement and appropriation.

7 - When was the last time you ate a pear?

About two months ago, and I choked. One time on Dallas one of J.R.’s mistresses, I think Mandy was her name had pear juice dripping down her chin. I remember her saying “pear juice” as it dripped down her chin. When you’re 10 you don’t forget that.

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

1. There’s more to life than books you know, but not much more.

2. Duck.

3. Harder.

4. Let’s Pretend We Never Met.

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

I have strange cycles because I’m pretty sure I’m bi-polar. Years of study has lead many to believe this, so within these differentials I am very manic and sleepless and work on two things at once. For example, this summer I have been quite manic, since about June 2007, and have started a new poetry collection and two prose projects. The poetry project was very specific, (it’s a book about phobias) so it involves research and odd sounding word structures, wordplay, it’s without characters or removed of being dialogic. At least up to this point. Whereas my prose are a rambling attempt at humbling the narcissistic creator into a more palpable and endearing narrator. These books have strange storylines but engaging characters and fun settings. So there is much more room to run around in. I also did a voice over this summer for Geoffrey Pugen’s Fictional Dance Party which transcends the writing, performance experience into something clinical. Dozens of takes, edits, and auditory manipulation. Finally, a 1.5 minute thing that will be airing on Bravo as a BravoFact anytime soon. And it paid $300.00.

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?

Well I used to have a day job. Then I had a nervous breakdown at Indigo. I was getting really sad because I was one of the best sales people at Indigo, like 7th in the province (Ontario) for I-Reward Cards at some point in 2006. And they were handing out manager jobs that were like 30,000 a year jobs to my 11,000 a year death sentence to all these 19-year old acne-faced waifs. So I kinda lost it. Now I am living within compromised means and rarely go to readings because people in Toronto always have these terrible FAQ that are non-emotional and impersonal. Then I go to Montreal where I am a huge babyface, second only to, well, you know who, no point in mentioning his name. Asthmaboy! Right now, as in autumn 2007, with no intention of doing anything but write and edit things and be this writer person for about 20 hours a week. The rest of the time I go to the gym where I have a personal trainer. Her name is Sasha and she is a mixed-martial artist and a cage fighter and makes me feel like I’m 70. I also ride my bike and try not to live in my head too much. I also hate going to readings because then I drink and get depressed. I don’t think writers should drink, they should go to the gym. I’m editing an anthology now, co-editing actually, and it’s fun to see how different we all write, but there is always this connection. It’s a big honour really. Then I go online and answer Danforth Review pitches, assign articles and copy-edit articles. We are coming up on our 10 year anniversary, and that is pretty cool for a Canada Council funded online literary resource and fiction publishing place. This I do daily for about 2 hours. Usually if I’m working on my own stuff, I write for about 2-4 hours, sometimes printing it off later that same day and then editing at night. Because of the insomnia I could stay up for days and work on things but I also got very bored. Again I try to just be Nathaniel, citizen of earth for most of the time.

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

I find talking to my audience, my fan-base, those who invite me to their houses to entertain them in New York, Montreal or Scarborough, they inspire me because they want to hear the party line, and then I switch it, become really real and start talking about different things, instead of stupid jokes. I also have stopped doing banter in public and at readings. I think I’m trying to kill off my “literary entertainer” character. Hanging out with The Kliq (whose membership changes bi-annually) is how I get inspired. Because we are psychic to a degree, usually all water signs and it’s how you say…mercurial.

12 - How does your most recent book compare to your previous work? How does it feel different?

Well you said they were very similar in your review, and I’d have to agree, I approach subjects in a strange way, it’s a form of fan-fiction, I think Derek McCormack said that, in an interview, that he writes fan-fiction. I think I do too. Bowlbrawl is very much a tribute to a certain wrestler and his struggle with a certain promoter. And Let’s Pretend We Never Met is my real life struggle with Catullus, which is very legendary. I think the Catullus book is more depressing and sexual. Bowling is not so sexual, I mean on the internet it probably is, but not so much in my book.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are thereany other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I saw David read last night and he was amazing. He seems to have influences from all over. I think people’s personal stories influence me. The biggest influence in terms of how I write came from my internship at Quill & Quire and Scott Anderson and Derek Weiler. They showed me, or attempted to anyway, how to do journalism with whatever skills I had. And that really influenced how most of Bowlbrawl was written. The music industry and terrible lyrics and bad music that exists now has influenced my latest book I’m working on, and I don’t even have to mention how the art of pro wrestling has influenced my work.

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

I want to be on Saturday Night Live. Work with Taylor Rain. Work with George Michael. I want to work with Quentin Tarantino. I want to fight some Canadian writers in either a boxing match or a wrestling match for charity or personal gain. I want to run Book Television. I want to make Heather pick all of us and stop promoting fluff and candles and shut down half her stores. I want to headlining the International Festival of Authors, or at least working coat check, do another book with Conundrum, edit a book for Conundrum, edit a book for Anansi, ECW, Coach House, win some prizes, become an editor for a New York publisher, spend Christmas skiing with the Griffin family (I am friends with Kyra, Chloe and Andrea Griffin who are all daughters or cousins of Scott Griffin) and (with Andy Brown) sell the rights to Bowlbrawl which we are attempting to do as we speak.

15 - 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?

Probably a lawyer or a teacher. Or work in the sewer. I think I’d have enjoyed being a farmer. Who knows. Your early life shapes you, I mean George Michael wasn’t allowed to talk and had to keep quiet, then he became one of the biggest voices in pop music with one of the strongest voices in pop music of all time. So it’s impossible to say for me at least, what occupation. I don’t even think of writing as my occupation because I can’t say it’s what I do for a living. It’s something I do, most of the time. I think I could have been or could be an ad executive. But I’ve been watching a lot of Mad Men so that could just be the brainwashing talking. I believe in Capitalism. I also believe in landfill. I don’t think either are healthy, but they are there. So, an occupation is a con like any other. I could be a professional liar.

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

I have written and wrote to escape the oppressive nature of my upbringing. I made short VHS films, long VHS films, and wrote slash fiction and fan fiction on my Commodore 64. I also wrote soft porn stories on my Commodore 64 in Grade 10. The reality being provided for me was not sufficient to fill the days, nor provide me with any confidence that I would survive. So from a very early age, I began to detach, and believe in another world, one with more depth, and one where I had more creative control.

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

Time’s Arrow, Martin Amis, and Pussy King of the Pirates by Kathy Acker. Film? Breakfast on Pluto by Neil Jordan and Rhinoceros Eyes starring Michael Pitt.

18 - What are you currently working on?

A novel version of my 2003 short fiction single Randy Savage’s Moustache. It’s a coming of rage novel about Ricky Galore and his joy-lean teen years. His father’s name is Randy Galore, and Ricky has this recurring dream where he cuts his father’s moustache off. He feels that it is the root of all the evil going on in the family. He escapes by watching pro wrestling, and has a love interest named Elizabeth, who is his older sister’s best friend. They have a fling for over 10 years. And I’m also working on another novel called Monster Ballads about a poet who kills himself and then becomes head of lyrical output for a horrible teen record label. I also have a poetry book in the works that might end up being called Liticaphobia. Whatever that means.

12 or 20 questions archive