12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jenny Haysom

Jenny Haysom was born in England and raised in Nova Scotia. She completed a Master's degree in English Literature at the University of Ottawa in the 90s, and has since worked for independent booksellers and the Ottawa Public Library. Her writing has appeared in a variety of magazines—most recently in The Walrus, The New Quarterly, and The Fiddlehead. A chapbook of poems, Blinding Afternoons, was published by Anstruther Press in 2017, and her debut collection, Dividing the Wayside, came out this fall (2018) with Palimpsest Press. Jenny was on the board of directors for Arc Poetry Magazine for several years, guest-edited a special issue of children's poetry (2012) and was prose editor from 2014-16. She lives with her family in Ottawa.

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

My first chapbook (Blinding Afternoons, Anstruther Press) and my first book (Dividing the Wayside, Palimpsest Press) have made me feel legitimate, helped me to come out––in my forties!––as a writer and a poet. Until now, writing felt like a secret pastime, as something I did to avoid housework. Elizabeth Bishop once said “there’s nothing more embarrassing than being a poet.” Occasionally, I’ve felt embarrassed––or even ashamed. Many of my friends and family members don’t read poetry––don’t value it the way I do––and that’s okay. But now I acknowledge my vocation.

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

I do write prose, but poetry certainly came first to me. It’s easier to write a bad poem than a bad novel. All my life, I’ve had ‘great’ ideas––but seen few of them through to the finish line. I’m also a perfectionist. A poem is the best place for brief, compressed and refined expression.

As well as loving the musical qualities of language, I like its visual possibilities. Arranging words into lines and stanzas––using the space on the page––adds a wonderful dimension to the art. Also, what’s more exciting than a fresh and vivid metaphor?

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

It takes me a long time to do anything. It’s a slow process with copious, painful drafts (that I find––perversely––somewhat pleasurable).

Very occasionally, something comes to me almost fully formed––and I experience a joyful rush of energy that feels a bit like the first warm and sunny day after a long winter. 

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

Ideas for poems really do strike me like lightning––often in the shower. Then I spend hours and hours refining that first flash of insight. In between poems, I try to write some prose and do the laundry.

I don’t often think about the larger project or the book.

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

Do you want me to be honest? Readings are terrifying and draining for me.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

I always have theoretical concerns and try to write about ideas and problems––but I seldom provide answers and prefer to pose questions. It may not be a popular or fashionable position to take, but I believe that poetry––like all writing––should try to communicate with the reader (rather than obfuscate and confuse). A poem can be––should be––complicated, or even difficult. But clarity and meaning are important to me.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I don’t think that there’s one role to be played by any writer or artist. Today, being a poet seems to mean being a good or ethical person––or at least being seen to be good or ethical. In my view, artists––like all people––are flawed and complicated.

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

I’ve found it to be both: difficult and unhelpful/ essential and productive. It all depends on the editor––and the chemistry between the two writers.

I should mention that I’ve played both roles.

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

Go for a walk. 

Don’t judge.

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

On a perfect day, I wake up early, drink lots of coffee and write all morning until one or two in the afternoon. Then I go for a long walk and solve a problem on that walk.

Those days are few and far between.

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

I like the word ‘inspiration’––it suggests breathing in.

I find inspiration everywhere. The last poem I wrote was inspired by my mother-in-law being upset that her son––my husband––had holes in his socks.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

A tangy smell in the woods. The sad, sulphurous stench at the beach. Ivory soap. Toast and coffee––my favourite foods.

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?

I must admit––other people’s books have been essential to my own creativity. In past work, I’ve been influenced by or made reference to Chaucer, Donne, Bishop, Dickinson, Auden, Larkin, Stevie Smith, Roethke, Plath… not to mention living poets. I also like natural history and visual art, and enjoy reading books on these subjects.

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

As well as those oldies mentioned above, I’ll list a few contemporary writers who are inspiring me these days. Some Canadian poets––Julie Bruck, Kerry Lee Powell, Bruce Taylor, Robyn Sarah, Ben Ladouceur, James Arthur. For fiction, I’ll go abroad––Lorrie Moore, Rachel Cusk.

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

Live in another province or country (which I did in my youth). Master the French language (still working on it––though it’s probably too late).

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I could have been a visual artist of some kind––maybe an illustrator. I haven’t yet given up on the possibility, but maybe I should.

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

Writing requires fewer tools, demands less space than other creative pursuits.

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

A great book that I recently read was Lorrie Moore’s novella Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? My daughter and I went to see Ladybird at the Mayfair Cinema last winter and we both cried at the end. Both are coming of age stories.

19 - What are you currently working on?

It’s a secret.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ongoing notes: Meet the Presses (part two,

[Michael e. Casteels and his Puddles of Sky Press]

Further to my recent participation in Toronto’s Meet the Presses’ annual Indie Literary Market [see part one of my notes here], here is another item I collected at said event (don’t you feel bad for missing it now? I mean, you could just show up today to the ottawa small press book fair to feel better about missing out on such a grand opportunity):

Toronto ON: From Emma Dolan and Catriona Wright’s Desert Pets Press comes Montreal writer Kasia Van Schaik’s debut chapbook, Sea Burial Laws According to Country (November 2018), a remarkable assemblage of short prose pieces writing on violence, loss and grief, playing with the comparisons between  countries, from recent events to cultural differences. Her lines are quite striking, utilizing a straightforwardness that manages to strike with great force, writing a series of first-person narratives interspersed with short, self-contained asides, writing the murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall on a submarine off the coast of Denmark, to drowning, and bodies of water, stingrays and the Portuguese man o’ war, to this small tidbit to open the short prose poem “US,” writing: “Family members are not allowed to attend a burial service on board a military vessel.”

DENMARK

A freelance journalist is last seen on the deck of a homemade submarine. Her body is found five days later, on a beach south of Copenhagen. Her head is missing. Her torso weighted down with metal rods. This, the submarine owner explains when questioned by police, was to ensure a proper sea burial.

Setting the tone for the collection, the chapbook opens with “SEA BURIAL LAWS ACCORDING TO COUNTRY,” a single-page scene that begins: “He wants to be cremated and she wants a burial at sea. Not that she’s dying, but eventually, when she does, she wants a water burial. This is a deal breaker for him but she will not compromise. Predators. Bathers. Contamination, he says. Water burials are restricted, even prohibited, in most countries. What is her reason for wanting one anyway? Why does she always have to complicate things?” It’s not often that I see a publication so compelling that I have to tell everyone to pick up a copy. Kasia Van Schaik’s work is damned good. Pick up a copy.

Yesterday the sea was thick with pulverized jellyfish. I met a 5-year-old girl collecting deposits in a net. She held the net out to me so I could see the blue threads that ran through the viscous. Do they still have brains, she asked, or memories? Actually, she didn’t say “memories.” What she said was “feelings.”

I walked along the margin of the tide, thinking about a photograph I’d seen of a girl waist-deep in a dumpster filled with fortune cookies. I hadn’t recognized her at first but then realized I knew her, or had known her when she’d been unhappy, or less happy, than she was now.

But again that could be a feeling (memory).

I’m aware of the waves all night, receding, then rushing towards me. I dream about a friend I have given up thinking about. He’s wearing a white suit, about to be married, trying to convey an important message to me, a set of instructions, but his voice is drowned out. (“STINGRAY”)

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jenn Stroud Rossmann

Jenn Stroud Rossmann is a fiction writer and an engineer. Her first novel, The Place You're Supposed to Laugh, came out November 14, 2018, from 7.13 Books. She writes the essay series An Engineer Reads a Novel at Public Books. Stories have appeared recently in Hobart, Cheap POP, JMWW Journal, Literary Orphans, Jellyfish Review, and failbetter, and have garnered multiple Pushcart nominations. Rossmann earned her BS and PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a professor of mechanical engineering at Lafayette College, and previously taught at Harvey Mudd College. She throws right, bats left.

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

I suppose the major change is that it now feels possible to imagine there might be a second book. I’m thrilled that this book, unlike the previous novels I ultimately consigned to a drawer, will be out in the world. In my most recent work, I have become more comfortable with experimentation—particularly with form and structure. My newest book project is crazily nonlinear and spans more than a century, with settings all over the world. Each of my previous book-length projects was much more contained and generally followed a straight chronological path. I think part of that is probably due to the confidence boost of (finally!) publishing a novel, but I also give a lot of credit to flash fiction, a genre I’ve been reading and writing in for a few years. The achievements of writers I admire in this form just expand my understanding of what fiction can do, and make me want to shoot for the moon.

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

I was a kid who got lost in stories. I wanted to be Trixie Belden, Turtle Wexler, Meg Murry, Jo March. And then I wanted to create an absorbing experience, similarly indelible characters. I love to read poetry, but I am at best a workmanlike, narrative-minded poet, with just enough of an ear to be acutely aware of how far I fall short of the work I most admire.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

I have a thing about notebooks, to keep track of thoughts before I have time to work on a draft. On any given page there’s an assortment of (a) ideas for new stories, (b) ideas for revisions, (c) sketches of scenes or characters, (d) to-do lists related to my Real Job, and (e) runic notations that may have been intended to be (a) or (b) but are equally likely to be my grocery list. Someday perhaps my subconscious will finally dislodge the fiction I meant to be reminding myself to write when I jotted down “marble rye / marmalade.” Alas, I tend to discover my structure and what stories are really about only after writing quite a bit of them, so there’s plenty of revision to be done along the way to something I could call “final.”

4 - Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

I’m a people-watcher; my idea of fun is imagining a backstory for everyone I see from a table at a sidewalk café, or an airport gate. I start, always, with characters. The scale of the story they have to tell is something I figure out later. I have short stories that started as novels, and vice versa. I do not recommend the first method, at least not if efficiency is something you value.

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

I always read my stuff aloud as part of the revision process. And I love to be read to – at other writers’ readings, or via audiobooks. But as a pretty introverted person, reading my own stuff in public can feel even more like handing strangers my freshly peeled inner organs than handing them my published book would. I’m so grateful to anyone who laughs in the right place, or even offers an encouraging nod.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

I write out of empathy, curiosity, a drive to understand people and relationships. How people think, feel, interact, misperceive, betray, and love. I wouldn’t have thought of these as particularly “current” or timely questions until recently, but of course they are urgent and essential questions, eternal ones.

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?

These are fiendishly clever questions. I believe stories show us possibilities beyond ourselves, and reveal us to ourselves and each other. Also, the larger culture is in desperate, urgent need of more empathy. It is among the writer’s projects to help us develop and practice our empathy.

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

I have been fortunate to have thoughtful and generous editors work with me at a range of journals and at my book publisher, 7.13 Books. Consistently, they have helped me get my work closer to what I was aiming for, in a truly collaborative process. It is always hard to recognize that—as I’d suspected all along—I haven’t quite hit that mark, but what a gift to work with someone whose questions and ideas can help you get closer.

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

I was lucky to workshop with Jim Shepard, who told us to “Embrace the weirdness” in our stories, those passages that get circled in early drafts because they don’t quite match the tone of the rest of things, or they seem to reveal some dissonance. He showed us how often those passages were really the whole point of the story, the story that wanted to be told. Also, my friend Alix Ohlin quotes James Kelman as having told her, “Be bold. Make art. Take risks. Don’t wait another second.”

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

My essays are where I permit myself to be didactic, where I am free to make allusions and references to other texts. In fiction I prefer to be more subtle, not instructive or ideological. My characters don’t wear their libraries on their sleeves—or those who do are understood not to be admirable for it.

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

For the most part my writing gets squeezed into spaces in my overfull life, and I will turn to my writing only after my responsibilities to my job and my family are fulfilled. (Or I’ll be scribbling story ideas in a notebook while fulfilling those responsibilities.) One exception is that one morning a week, I meet with two wonderful writers, and we sit at our respective laptops for four 30-minute sessions, with 5 minutes of stretching/tea-making/chatting in between. I’m dismayed when something comes up at work or elsewhere that keeps us from keeping this routine.

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

Almost always to a book by someone else: to Woolf, or Murakami, Michael Chabon, or Adrienne Rich. For the music, the energy, and the imagination. Sometimes I’ll strategically pick a story or book that does well the thing I’m stymied by, and try to “reverse engineer” it, outlining it and identifying the structure and function of its parts.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Eucalyptus. Takes me right back to the bay area. A couple of other scents can also send me straight back to Berkeley, but I’ll leave it at eucalyptus.

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?

There is nothing like a “forest bath” or walk in the woods to get the gears turning. But an evening at the symphony or opera is a close second. I love the pre-performance talks that highlight motifs or other elements of the music to be performed; they are also storytelling craft lectures in disguise. I have written several stories in response to particular paintings. As for science, it’s half of the way I see the world.

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

I have a core group of writer friends that I’ve known since my Berkeley days. We used to meet each week, with a pile of manuscripts on the table for our homework, and it was a wonderful community that kept me writing and thinking about writing—especially valuable since I was in grad school studying engineering and physics at the time. I’m so grateful for the writing communities I’ve been part of that have arisen out of various workshops or conferences, or online, or at the marvelous reading series being curated and sustained by intrepid heroes among us. And the bottom-line answer to both your questions: Virginia Woolf.

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

I am a miserable swimmer, and I would like to have learnt to swim well.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I have another occupation: I’m an engineering professor. Though for most of my childhood and early adolescence, I fully expected to become a private detective.

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

Chutzpah, I guess: I was too aware of the chasm between my own limited talents and the true art I admired to continue with music; but I stood on that same precipice as a fiction writer, looked across the chasm at what Woolf, Zadie Smith, Jennifer Egan, and Lorrie Moore had made, and leapt.

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

I loved Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers and R.O. Kwon’s The Incendiaries. I think Sorry to Bother You was terrific.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’ve finished a draft of a new novel, and it’s been sitting for a while, so I’m just getting into the revision process there. And I’m always working on a book review. I’ve really enjoyed thinking about technology and culture for my “Engineer reads a novel” series. A few other ideas are in their infancies.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;