Natasha Sajé , Vivarium

Q

A Phoenician letter the Greeks discarded, having no use in their language for a Semitic sound. If the soul has a qualm, the body shows it. The body queries what it means to be true. Quilty! Humbert’s doppelgänger—a sack of feathers? Another name for the quill of a feather is calamus, from Greek, kalamos, reed. Who first filled a quill? The Phoenician Q meant qoph, monkey, its tail lingering in the language. I propose introducing some English words that use Q, but not U, naming new conditions that will kill Scrabble players, among others: qib, the eye disorder that results from staring too long at a computer screen; qell, the nausea that accompanies the mixing of incompatible therapeutic drugs; and qatch, the moment before the articulation of a sound, that split second when the brain tells the throat and tongue to speak.

I’m fascinated by American poet Natasha Sajé’s third trade poetry collection, Vivarium (North Adams MA: Tupelo Press, 2014), a collection built as a kind of lyric abecedarian. As the back cover informs, “A Vivarium is an enclosure for living things, which might likewise be said of a poem.” There is something quite compelling in the playful way in which Sajé’s poems stretch, bounce and lean, accumulating themselves into a kind of map-making structure, opening into parts both familiar and unknown. Poems are included alphabetically, titled either by single letters or phrases, and left to accumulate towards a structure that is held together with ease; a single unit that is playful, tight and almost bulletproof. As she writes in the poem “S”: “we say one thing is not another thing / and in this language every letter is pronounced [.]” One might say that terrain is all over the place, and it includes the Phoenician alphabet, Greek history, philosophy, Herman Melville, George Harrison, classical paintings and fairy tales, but she manages to weave both a complex and simple tapestry across great distances. “Easily the nicest bit I’ve read all evening,” she writes, to open the poem “Vanessa Redgrave Marries / Franco Nero After Forty Years,” continuing: “fine piece of frivolous / gossip that is also oddly gratifying.” This is a quietly smart, thoughtful and even mischievous poetry collection, and one that manages to end up in the most unexpected and playful places. The finest description I can imagine for Natasha Sajé’s Vivarium is that this is a book made up entirely of living things. And what wonderful things they are.

HAPPY AND SAD

come different way through the brain—

in one a feather is lofted on

warm currents. In the other, lead talons

drag you around a volcano’s rim.

One’s a beach resort

with sparkling pools and attentive staff.

The other’s a town in the interior,

hordes scratching dirt with rakes.

That one’s a deck of marked cards,

the other a blank book

of creamy pages. Back and forth

between windows, fort/da,

the fear of losing or the freedom of knowing

love remains. Two

spigots, one Chateau d’Yquem,

the other piss, the brain a bartender

trying to regulate

alternating or sometimes even simultaneous

spurts. You never know what

will fill your mouth.

I don’t know how she does it, but reading the poems in this book makes me enormously happy. And how often does that happen? Not often. I think of Elizabeth Robinson and Sylvia Legris, of Cole Swensen and Pattie McCarthy, and not too many others. And now: Natasha Sajé.

N

Normal: Latin, norma, a carpenter’s square

No, non, nein, na, no, nah, näo, nee, ne, nei, nil, no, no, nu, nope, nej, nyet, nnyaa, no, non, nay, never, nei, nie, nope, nou, negative, nenni, not on your life, nå, no, no, no …

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Andrea Routley

Andrea Routley’s work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including The Malahat Review and Room Magazine, and in 2008, she was shortlisted for the Rona Murray Prize for Literature. She is the founder and Managing Editor of Plenitude Magazine, Canada’s queer literary magazine. She edited Walk Myself Home: An Anthology to End Violence Against Women (Caitlin Press, 2010), which continues to receive praise from magazines like Bitch, Herizons, Prairie Fire and the Vancouver Sun. Her collection of short fiction, Jane and the Whales, was published by Caitlin Press. In 2012, she completed a degree in writing from the University of Victoria. She lives in Halfmoon Bay, BC.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My book came out just a few months ago, but definitely one of the ways it's changed my life is by putting me in touch again with Vici Johnstone, the publisher at Caitlin Press, who recently hired me as the new publicist. After years of seasonal work, punctuated by university classes and odd jobs, I have a regular paycheck and it feels fan-fucking-tastic.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I wrote a little non-fiction as class assignments, but it just never fired my imagination the way fiction does. I love not knowing what's going to happen to a character. All those fabulous "ah-ha" moments I get to have. Or,"Of course he has to kill those freaking birds!" Things like that. I get to collage all kinds of personal experiences and decoupage the crap out of it with interesting facts and notions. Does that metaphor work?

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?
Depends so much on the story. One of my favourite stories in the collection, called "Reflection Journal," is a story about a teenaged girl who is accused of sexual harassment by her male teacher. I wrote that story in two weeks, changed a few sentences, et voila. But other stories are virtually unrecognizable when compared to earlier drafts. The opening one, "Habitat" -- about an older dad coping with the loss of his sister and projecting like crazy onto his daughter's neglected guinea pig, Bubble Gum -- started out with twice as many characters and three times the page count. "Dog" started out on a football field at an urban Pride Festival and ended up in a campground up-island.

4 - Where does 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 think I'm a short fiction writer. I read novels and I think, Why is this story so long? Why doesn't this story start on page eighty? It's a whole other rhythm, but I'm reading more novels lately so I'm kind of getting into the swing of it again.

For my short stories, it varies. Sometimes I have a first sentence and run with it. Sometimes I have something that's going to happen to this person at the end and build to that. Other times I just want to write about a crazy class-conscious etiquette-obsessed insecure asshole.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
It's funny because I've been performing music for years now. I stand in front of audiences -- sometimes big halls, sometimes small intimate rooms, in Canada, in Germany -- and I sing. Some people think that's sounds terrifying. Sometimes I sing and play accordion at the same time, which is kind of embarrassing, isn't it? Accordion. Puh-lease! 

But reading from my book is actually pretty scary to me. After so many years of forcing my girlfriend to listen to me read my shitty first drafts, it just seems impossible that people may actually want to hear this. But they do!

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
One thing I'm conscious of in my writing is how I contextualize certain experiences. For example, the title story, "Jane and the Whales," is definitely about a queer experience -- searching for spiritual depth and meaning in the marginalized spaces of a gay bar, the historical centre of queer culture. But other queer characters are simply queer without it having any bearing on the plot. In "Art," a story about a middle-aged daycare worker hoping to find fulfillment in a new career in education, there is one line alluding to an ex-girlfriend, and that's all. By making details like this incidental, it characterizes them as "normal" (not quite the word I’m looking for, but you know what I mean). When a queer character appears, they don't have to represent a "queer experience."

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?
Art is always asked to justify itself, to measure its own value. But to take a stab at it (because that first sentence was really just a cop-out) I think different writers see themselves as having different roles -- not always the same ones that others' perceive them to have. Some books are not the most fantastic literary crafted wow-look-at-that-technique, Holy Metaphor! kind of books, but they are powerful because they tell stories that have been historically overlooked. Sometimes they are both Wow, and telling those stories.

I thought my stories were "playful and poignant" but people are telling me they are "dark, smart and witty." That sounds good to me, but certainly suggests my role may not be what I thought it was ...

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential, and not difficult at all. I love it. It's transformative and exciting to see a piece evolve with that kind of guidance and attention from experienced editors. If it's "difficult" for some, there may be some ego getting in the way ... just sayin'. A story is not you, it is a story.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
“You can't please everyone.”

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
My genres are fiction, book reviews, emails, press releases, tweets and Facebook status updates. But actually, it is difficult to write informal emails and blog comments all day and then sit down to work on a story. I think this is a challenge that a lot of people can relate to …

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I suppose I've maintained my teenaged routines of binge and purge. A lot of food/alcohol/writing followed by periods of nothing at all. But during the "dry spells" I do try to write a little in the morning before work, either some prompts or writing scenes, or working on a story -- something to stay in touch with that part of me, and keep me paying attention to the world and its inhabitants.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I read something excellent. Madeline Sonik's Afflictions and Departures has inspired many frenzied writing prompts. She is so inventive.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
My apartment in Victoria with my girlfriend Auto -- she burns cedar sometimes or smudge sticks. She is the inspiration behind every cute butch character I write.

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?
Music is definitely a major influence in the title story, "Jane and the Whales." And certainly nature -- animals, specifically. Many of my stories explore connections with animals, not simply as projections of human emotion, but our shared experience of attempting (often failing) to find a place in the world.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I'm sure everyone says Alice Munro, right? But Alice Munro. Madeline Sonik is an awesome writer and an amazing teacher. Really enjoyed Kilter by John Gould, his collection of flash fiction. I love his sense of humour. Michael V. Smith's short story "What We Wanted" kind of jolted me out of my literary closet. I came out in 1996, but it took a LOT longer for a queer character to find its way into a story ...

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I want to follow my friend Yang around SE Asia while he does his PhD research in contemporary art of the Chinese diaspora. Yang is a funny guy and we're both kind of lazy, so he'd be a great travel buddy.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I was an opera student once at McGill. I have to stop bringing that up. Yes, I quit. Now I am a scummy fiction writer.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I feel really cluttered and despairing sometimes. Writing gives a shape to all this. (This=life stuff). Someone said to me recently that she thought it was odd how many of my stories are “dark” because I seem like such a happy person. And I am a happy person, but I think it may be in part because I can write about all that other stuff. I sometimes joke that I was a depressed and self-injuring teen because Hey, it was the 90s. You know. Grunge music and all. Turn it into fiction and it becomes something else.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Leaving Now, by Arleen Paré. Elegant, moving, poetic and daring novel.

20 - What are you currently working on?
Thinking a lot about salamanders these days and parthenogenesis. Maybe it's my biological clock, although I have no plans to parthenogenesize at this time …

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

some recent poems -- Molly Bloom + Moss Trill

Four poems from "Glossary of Musical Terms" appeared last week in the online journal Molly Bloom, as did a new piece in Bill Allegrezza's Moss Trill. Thanks much to the editors!

Six Questions with John Terpstra: 2014 Raymond Souster Award Shortlist

From early April to early June, I’m featuring short interviews with the authors of the six shortlisted titles for each of the three awards run through The League of Canadian Poets – the Raymond Souster Award, the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Pat Lowther Award. Today’s feature is Hamilton, Ontario poet John Terpstra, whose book Brilliant Falls (Wolfville NS: Gaspereau Press, 2013) is on the shortlist for the 2014 Raymond Souster Award. See my previous Raymond Souster Award shortlist interviews with Anne Compton, Jenna Butler, Vancy Kasper and Catherine Graham. The winners to all three awards will be announced on Saturday, June 7, 2014 at The League of Canadian Poets 2014 Annual General Meeting in Toronto.

John Terpstra is the author of eight books of poetry, including his most recent, Skin Boat: Acts of Faith and Other Navigations and Two or Three Guitars: Selected Poems.  An earlier work, Disarmament, was short-listed for Canada’s Governor General’s Award.  His poetry has won the CBC Radio Literary Prize, the Bressani Prize, and several Arts Hamilton book awards in both poetry and non-fiction.  His non-fiction work, The Boys, or Waiting for the Electrician’s Daughter was short-listed for the Charles Taylor Prize and the BC Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. He lives in Hamilton, where he works as a writer and carpenter.

1. Brilliant Falls is the most recent of a number of trade collections of poetry you’ve published over the past thirty years. After some dozen books of poetry and prose over the space of three decade, how do you feel your concerns as a writer have developed? How do you feel the work, and even the process of writing, has evolved?
The process remains a mystery. I still feel like a beginner. This may sound disingenuous. What I mean is that it doesn’t seem to get any easier, and I still wonder where the next poem is coming from, the next book. The thrill is still there, together with the uncertainty. I am one of those writers whose subjects choose him (usually) rather than the other way around. My ongoing challenge is to accept the often insignificant-seeming and trivial images, thoughts, words or other prompts that try to get my attention, to understand and trust them as the particular way in which my imagination is sending out or reaching for a life-line to engage the deepest parts of me. You’d think I would have learned by now, but…

2. Who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?
What reenergizes my own work is usually music. I was recently the guest poet-reader at a choral concert and heard a new work by a Norwegian composer which had that effect. Stray piece of classical music that I catch on the radio can do it too. 

What I can’t help but return to is the music that Van Morrison produced from 1971 or so until the early 1990s, especially albums like Veedon Fleece, Common One, and Hymns to the Silence. Albums that Bob Dylan produced after his motorcycle accident, from John Wesley Harding to Self Portrait (ha!), New Morning and Blood on the Tracks. There’s something about all these that tap into the root of my own creativity and purpose. What exactly that is defies explication, but I always come away inspired and challenged and refreshed. The urgency is still there.
   
3. You’ve lived in Hamilton for quite some time, and I’m curious as to how the community of writers around you, as well as the landscape of Hamilton, have contributed to your work. Do you think you might have been a different kind of writer had you lived in another part of the country?
Hamilton, as a geographical location and as a place where people have congregated in wood, stone and brick structures for two hundred years plus, has been particularly inspiring to me. It’s partly because of the contradictions: the beauty and the dereliction. The tension has proven productive. Another geographical location may not have inspired me so deeply, or simply inspired me in a different way. As it is, I feel as though I ended up in the right place at the right time. And this applies to the writing community too, a community that includes our independent booksellers and publishers. It’s a good city to quietly go about your business of writing, and still participate in the community. Hamilton has been receptive to my work. I am in the position feeling that I may have contributed and be contributing to this local culture. That feels like a big thing to me, bigger than I may have thought earlier in my life.

4. In Brilliant Falls, you have a number of poems that explore ideas of religion and the spiritual life. This can often be considered a tricky subject matter, and many have attempted to explore the same in poems that end up sacrificing quality for subject matter (with Margaret Avison’s work being an obvious exception). How aware are you of this when composing poems in the collection such as “Crossing into Heaven” or “Topographies of Easter,” or does it come more naturally?
The subject matter is nothing new in my writing, and though it may be tricky territory, it is also pretty rich. It’s the air I breathe, or have breathed for so many years, so yes, it does come naturally. Many writers have breathed the same air, though not as many lately, and not as many in this country. For the record, I know that that air is often as suspect or tainted as the atmosphere of Hamilton is—or was, before most of the industry left. Often, what I am trying to do is re-frame or re-translate stories I know by heart into a language that makes sense to me, that I can understand, because the old language is in some ways a foreign tongue. But the stories are life and death, and there is always something unexpected to be found.

5. What do you feel cabinet making brings to your writing and writing life? Or are the two entirely separate?
Cabinetmaking is something I more or less fell into, that has kept me out of trouble, psychologically and financially. It’s rewarding to make something by hand. I come by this honestly, from my handcrafting mother. As opposed to writing, it is a supremely tangible activity. There may not be much to show for a morning’s worth of writing, but an afternoon in the shop will produce a physical, material object. I never really make much of a connection between poetry and cabinetmaking, partly because it seemed too cute for words, but once I started writing non-fiction I came to realize that both it and woodworking involve the assemblage of disparate elements. The disparate parts that go to make a book or a dresser may not be comprehensible individually, but they make sense, hopefully, when they’re put together.

6. Literary awards have been known to shine spotlights on individual works and authors, as well as writing generally, but has also sometimes brought with it a particular kind of pressure, and a frustration for those works overlooked by awards. As a writer, reader and, once again, shortlisted writer, what are your feelings on literary award culture generally?
The majority of writers, I would think, are overlooked, even by their own families, so having the light shine on you for a few moments is a gift, for the light shineth where it will, and tomorrow is gone. It helps to have acted as a judge for a national award. It gives me a bit of distance and perspective. I want to win, but won’t be holding my breath. It is honestly (almost) enough to have bubbled up onto the short-list. And if the moment should come that I am called to the podium, one part of me would like to be able to repeat what I understand Margaret Avison said when she accepted her Griffin Prize: “This is ridiculous: it has nothing to do with poetry.” She’s right—if she said it. On the other hand, easy for a winner to say.

Brian Foley, The Constitution

SELF ASSESSMENT

Already we need

hay to fill

our effigies.

The silence

of the heart

undermines

the body

which moves

in habit.

Put something

in it & leave

it to leaven.

It will rise like

the chimney

that stands

after the house.

The poems that make up Massachusetts poet and publisher Brian Foley’s debut trade poetry collection, The Constitution (Black Ocean, 2013), move in a series of rhythmic hesitations and pauses through explorations of awareness. In the title poem, he writes: “With you scrib- / bled beside me / I don’t know / who I’m not. / Awareness is / just punishment.” He writes in a cadence with echoes of San Diego poet Rae Armantrout’s work, but with the combined explorations of both internal and external landscapes, and how the two are intricately linked. His poems seem to skim and bounce like stones across the water, hiding far deeper, more subtle depths through a remarkably deceptive simplicity. As the back cover suggests, Foley does work to question what we might take for granted, as even his lines unsettle, shifting an appearance of sentences that break down into phrases that collide and accumulate, forcing connections that might otherwise remained impossible in such a short space. As he writes in the poem “HERE DOES NOTHING”: “It would not take gun- // point to fit me into / a simple question, // a chance more de- / finite than ever I was // worth, not knowing / gone came earlier.” Through his series of small collisions, there is a wonderfully vibrant sense of wordplay and pun that underscore each poem, one that exists as a series of wry gestures, from the poem title “You Are On Fired,” to the opening of the poem “THE BIRTHDAYS,” that reads: “children per- / forming parents / photo albums // reach / their image / & cease / existing[.]” Composed in a series of lyric meditations, The Constitution is remarkably cohesive for a first collection of short lyrics, and one can enter anywhere in the book and get at least an idea of the larger portrait, without giving too much away. Throughout, The Constitution works to deliberately evolve, and even unsettle, questioning and updating, from the early inclusion of the title poem, followed throughout the collection by a series of “Amendments,” including:

AMENDMENT

trouble is

resemblance

performs

an autopsy

pronounces me

out of body

then nothing

fits back in as it did

before it was

taken out

the bones I know

hunt for me

in someone else’s rind

Writing, Fatherhood (fragments, at Open Book: Ontario

My piece, "Writing, Fatherhood (fragments," nearly as an extension/continuation of my four-part "Writing Fatherhood" essay, is now online at Open Book: Ontario.

Six Questions with Juleta Severson-Baker: 2014 Gerald Lampert Award Shortlist

From early April to early June, I’m featuring short interviews with the authors of the six shortlisted titles for each of the three awards run through The League of Canadian Poets – the Raymond Souster Award, the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Pat Lowther Award. Today’s feature is Calgary poet, teacher and performer Juleta Severson-Baker, whose book Incarnate (Calgary AB: Frontenac House, 2013) is on the shortlist for the 2014 Gerald Lampert Award. See my previous Gerald Lampert Award shortlist interviews with Laurie D. Graham, Murray Reiss, Jordan Abel and Julie Joosten. The winners to all three awards will be announced on Saturday, June 7, 2014 at The League of Canadian Poets 2014 Annual General Meeting in Toronto.

Juleta Severson-Baker is a born-and-raised Calgarian. She has taught drama and speech arts for 21 years, worked as a birth doula and has recently begun a new career answering 911 calls. Incarnate is her first full-length manuscript. It is short-listed for both the Gerald Lampert and W.O. Mitchell book prizes.

1. Incarnate is your first trade collection of poetry. What was your process of originally putting the manuscript together, and how long did it take? How do you feel your concerns as a writer has developed over the space of starting the collection to finally seeing a finished copy at your front door? How do you feel the work, and even the process of writing, evolved?
The poems in Incarnate were written over a five-year period. I was very lucky that Micheline Maylor, my editor at Frontenac House Press, put a huge amount of energy into helping me shape the manuscript. I adored working with her. We had some intensely creative sessions together with my poems taped up to my kitchen wall, working on the order of poems and finding a rhythm to the collection. Her vision was to find a kind of breath to the book - to have the poems that are earth-bound balanced by the airy ones and the poems that are long and visually dense on the page to be balanced by short, visually wispy ones. I think there are also thematic threads through the book that one can pick up early in the manuscript - elegies for my mother, experiences of birth and miscarriage, a wrestling with mother nature herself - that return 3 or four times each through the whole book. I also tried to structure the book so the poems become more structurally complex as the book goes along. The process of learning to see my work in book form took about a year to complete. 

2. Who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?
While writing Incarnate I was deeply immersed in Robert Hass and Czeslaw Milosz. I also read a lot of Louise Gluck. The american poet Marcia Falk inspired me a great deal. The poets from my earliest inspiration that I return to over and over include TS Eliot, Hopkins, Sharon Olds and Patrick Lane. Often that re-energizing sense you speak of comes from reading the newest of the new work of my friends in the Calgary writing community. Dymphny Dronyk's work is so soulful it makes me cry. Rosemary Griebel can capture our city in a way no one else can. Joan Shillington and Bob Stallworthy write with insistently unique voices and they are brave enough to write what is true. Their poems and their process energize me when I am stalled out.

3. You’ve lived in Calgary for quite some time, and I’m curious as to how the community of writers around you, as well as the landscape of Calgary, have contributed to your work. Do you think you might have been a different kind of writer had you lived in another part of the country?
Certainly being a member of Richard Harrison's Thursday poetry workshop has shaped my writing profoundly. The reader-response theory we use to offer feedback to one another accelerated my learning as a poet to a great degree. I'm glad for the co-incidence of living in Calgary and joining Richard's group when I did. My life-long obsession with the prairie landscape finds its way into my poems. I live in the city but my body feels very close to the dry grasses, the windy coulees and all the natural energy of Southern Alberta. I am a poet whose words begin in the sensual body, and a person whose body aches to be close to the very elements of the ecosystem around it, so I suppose if I lived in another part of the country my imagery would be drawn from other ecosystems.

4. In Harold Rhenisch’s review of Incarnate in Arc Poetry Magazine, he speaks of your poems being very physical. How do you feel about this description? Given your history as a performer, how much might you consider writing (or even performing) to be a physical act?
For me writing is as physical as breathing, as physical as the discovery an actor experiences while choosing blocking on-stage or while experimenting with different ways of speaking their lines. I am a runner too, and writing a first draft of a poem is just as physical for me as running - the breath is involved, sense memory is involved, trust is involved (something beautiful or meaningful or new will emerge on the page, just as tired legs will carry me as far as I set out to run). Editing is more intellectual. 

5. What do you feel teaching has brought to your writing and writing life? Or are the two entirely separate?
All my years of teaching drama and the performance of poetry gave me the ability to listen carefully. I use that process of "tuning in" when I am writing - but instead of listening to what is going on in a student's voice or in their mind, I am listening to what is going on in my voice and my mind. 

6. Literary awards have been known to shine spotlights on individual works and authors, as well as writing generally, but has also sometimes brought with it a particular kind of pressure, and a frustration for those works overlooked by awards. As a writer, reader and, now, shortlisted writer, what are your feelings on literary award culture generally?
I came to the writing community slowly. I spent a long time in the theatre community and felt the tensions of competitiveness between actors, the constant need to sell oneself, and all the schmoozing one had to do were very distracting from the joy of the creative process. Then I happily cocooned myself in my teaching studio and gave my main creative energies to my students. When I started taking the writing of poetry seriously, about 8 years ago, I had zero knowledge of the literary community and no interest or ambitions to become a part of it. I was writing for the pure creative satisfaction of it. Slowly though I have begun to learn more about the writing world - it's people and processes. As a reader I quite enjoy the award culture - prizes do shine spotlights on writers that I may otherwise not have known. Finding myself on the Gerald Lampert short list was a complete surprise. I am happy for Micheline Maylor and Frontenac House for any recognition this award short-listing can bring to their dedicated support of new Canadian poets. And I feel gratitude that the jury took the time to read my book closely. I am determined, though, to keep my energies focussed on writing new poems.

Hillary Gravendyk (March 1, 1979 - May 10, 2014)

Dammit. American poet Hillary Anne Gravendyk Burrill, otherwise known as Hillary Gravendyk, died on Sunday after an extended illness. For those who might not known of her or her work, her poetry collection, Harm (Omnidawn, 2012) [see my review of such here], wrote around the body, and more specifically, the facts surrounding her double lung transplant in 2009. Through the publication of Harm, we began a small correspondence, and attempted to keep up with each other through emails and facebook, and I could see some of what she was dealing with, distracting her away from the work she so obviously fought to return to. We had discussed the possibilities of her engaging the ‘12 or 20 questions’ interview questions, but we never quite managed such. She generously provided a blurb for the back cover of one of my trade collections, and promised that she would get me some poems, once she was writing again. I enjoyed her work tremendously, and, despite not knowing her terribly well, enjoyed her remarkable energy and generosity, especially through her physical difficulties. I am wishing we'd been able to meet. Her last email, from early April, included:

How are you?  I've been enjoying the pictures of your sweet Rose on Facebook.  What a charmer.  My health is always a crisis, but in the last few months I've had a welcome sense of stability.  Things aren't getting better, but they aren't crashing like they were in the fall.  Just adjusting to the new normal, enjoying the pleasant SoCal weather, and taking pleasure in many things: LACMA, many good books, learning to knit, cooking, and finally getting back to the business of writing poems and essays.

If you are interested, I've also got two collaborative poetry projects going now: a book-length one with the poet Cynthia Arrieu-King, a shorter one with the poet Maureen Alsop (whose work I think you'd really like, do you know it?).  I wonder if you might have a good idea of publishers that would welcome (consider, even!) collaborative book projects?

This email includes everything I enjoyed about her missives: the delight she took from others, as well as the possibilities of her writing projects, but also includes both an acknowledgement and subtle downplay of her own health crises. I knew she’d been struggling with her health for some time (and knew it had been quite bad a few months back), but didn’t realize it was as bad as it was. Since the news of her passing, others have begun posting small notes on Hillary and her work, such as this piece on The Eat and Run Mom, a video of her reading posted on Ron Silliman’s blog, a piece posted on the Pomona College website, two poems reprinted at The Mark on the Wall, and a piece by Brenda Hillman forthcoming at Omnidawn. My own little poem "in memoriam" appeared earlier in the week at Moss Trill. With the notice Hillary’s husband Benjamin Burrill wrote on her Facebook page on Sunday afternoon, he included this poem:

Exuberance

To know me as golden is to know me all wrong. Every time I breathe in it smells rusty, like blood, and when I cough there is blood in the air.

If I were in charge of these special effects, I’d make it thicker; it’s so hard to take it seriously. Bright little hearts and stars and carnations on a white cloth.

Let’s go out with a thicker line, a cerulean skylight, rain that gets dumped out of a trough to thwack the pane of glass, a smear of red like tempera paint across the cheek or the hand, streaming from the mouth.

Let’s have a disaster, a lake made of salt, a blackout. Everything riots and unspools, the whole room on one side and all the sound winking out.

You stay here. Let me run into that starring role, pinker and more flooded with blood: remember when it meant exuberance, remember awe? Let’s be that breathless.

In that same email I received in April, she sent along four poems for consideration for the “Tuesday poem” series I curate over at the dusie blog, all of which I accepted, to post on July 22, 2014. I offer one of them, here:

Hillary Hillary

You creep through the air, a voice calling my name

in this dimmer winter where keels freeze to swells

I was lost in the delicacy of your warning, at sea.

Held myself against the roll of your tongue,

the door open like a mouth and the air falling

through more air, a hole in the light—

You carry each pinprick of rain and lay

me in fragments on the counterpane,

you circle the room, a quieting crow.

The window slices absence into segments

the door slaps the side of the house

and I’m ankle deep in clouds.