rob and Christine at Lunch Poems at SFU: a report,

Christine and I were fortunate enough to make our way to Vancouver last week (leaving our wee girls at home with their Oma, who was kind enough to watch them while we were away), to read at the monthly Lunch Poems at SFU series, lovingly hosted and co-curated by Renée Sarojini Saklikar. We’d originally been scheduled for last October, but Christine’s health wouldn’t allow for it, but we were able to reschedule for February, just in time to keep the funding from The League of Canadian Poets in the same fiscal year (so complicated). We flew out on Tuesday night, just making our flight, where we sat beside a four month old and her father; we assisted, of course. The baby sat with me for some time, and coughed on me repeatedly, which provided me with a head cold for many days once we returned home (I regret nothing).

It was a grand crowd! We’d already had a head’s-up that there would be a classroom’s worth of thirteen year olds (forty in all), but they barely made up half the assemblage of people attending: Fred Wah, Michael Turner, Daniel Cowper, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Laura Farina (who now assists with the series as well), Kevin Spenst, Pete Smith, Warren Dean Fulton, Meredith Quartermain, Michael Edwards, Ted Byrne, Diane Tucker, Jenny Penberthy, George Stanley and many others. It was glorious! Although at least half the people I wished to say hello to had vanished by the time I had any attention, and Warren flew in and out during Christine's reading (apparently he was "at work," so wasn't technically there at all), but he did slip me a couple of new Pooka Press items.

I focused on reading from the "book of magazine verse" manuscript, which includes my new above/ground press chapbook and my new Anstruther Press chapbook. It was odd to read a poem referencing Quartermain and Turner with them both in the room, as well. Christine read sprinklings of both her published collections, as well as her third manuscript-in-progress. 

One thing I quite like about this series is that we were taken to lunch after, and it was grand to be able to spend some time talking to Renée and Laura (I see her so rarely, that every time I do, she's living in a different province; the last time I saw her was in spring 2008, when she was working at Banff under Steve Ross Smith; I originally met her when I read to her grade ten class at Ottawa's Canterbury High School), as well as some good time with George Stanley, who has an above/ground press chapbook forthcoming (meaning that all three of our poet-lunch companions have now been published through the press). Renée was also good enough to take us to The Paper Hound, where, of course, we spent handfuls of our book-money on even more books.

We flew in the night prior, which was an improvement over what I’d done with Stephen Brockwell [see my report on such here] three years earlier, when we left Ottawa at 4am Ottawa time and landed in just enough time to read at noon Vancouver time, and stay only the one night. Christine and I stayed two nights, at least, and at the infamous Sylvia Hotel, no less. As Christine was aware, I'd published a poem on Errol Flynn, who infamously (also) stayed his last nights at Vancouver's Sylvia Hotel, attended by Dr. Gould (uncle of Glenn), who would witness the actor's death. Here it is, a poem from my poetry collection paper hotel (Broken Jaw Press, 2002):

errol flynns last lover


breaking 40 years of silence & bad stigma,
            well after his swash & buckle days.

dying of everything in vancouver, a failure
            made complete - of liver, heart.

like malcolm lowry, death by misadventure,
            an accidental yankee caught for good.

theres love at seventeen & then theres this, the starlet
            & the alcoholic cad, old misfit.

the magic of life & bigger than, shrunk down to copy,
            when none of it matters. never did.

as the couple lands in canada, 1959, the final stop
            in all adventuring. the airplane touching earth.

Oh, Errol Flynn, you damned, damned fool. Apparently the hotel was also a favourite of Malcolm Lowry. Christine had stayed once prior, with Sandra Ridley, during a reading tour they were doing a few years back, so she had some familiarity with it. English Bay, which always makes me think of Victoria. They have one in Vancouver too? Oh, yes. And after the reading we didn't do much, didn't stray much, exhausted. We deliberately, it seemed, refused to adjust for the time-change, which meant we were up at 5am local time, but in bed at 7:30pm. We wandered the beach for a bit. We made for dinner. We made for our room.

Part of the benefit of that was being up in the morning for our flight, with a 7am opportunity to have coffee with Vancouver poet and critic Soma Feldmar, who I hadn't previously met, despite our years of email correspondence. She was absolutely delightful! And I loved her first book. She should have more poems out in the world. Don't you think? She was even good enough to drive us to the airport, which allowed for a slightly longer visit (and we barely made our flight, honestly). Maybe next time we'll stay a bit longer?

DUSIE : ISSUE 22, kollektiv 9 : for Marthe Reed, curated by elisabeth workman & susana gardner

A while back, I participated in the 9th dusie kollektiv, one of an array of poets self-producing chapbooks composed and published in tribute to the late American poet, editor and publisher Marthe Reed (1958-2018) [see my obituary for her here]. All the participating chapbooks (including mine, produced last year through above/ground press) are now online as free pdfs, which you can very much download. 

s o m e w h e r e i n t h e c l o u d o r i n b e t w e e n
dusie.org          ISSUE 22         kollektiv 9          
D  U  S  I  E                  ISSN 1661-668  
jessenissim  lauramullen  michaelkalish marthereed   gillianparrish  erintrapp adraraine  johnbloombergrissman bronwentate elisabethworkman julietcook barbaratomash  charlesalexander  jaredhayes  ejmcaddams  eileentabios jonathanskinner  carriehunter  danateenlomax skrave cscarrier annareckin fengsunchen paulacisewski haleylasché  megankaminski kenningjeanpaulgarcia andrewpetersen robmclennan michaelruby aliciacohen margrethekolstadbrekke marklamoureux crischeek  annalenabell susanagardner meganburns
 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Bart Vautour

Bart Vautour is a writer, editor, and teacher. He is editor of the Throwback Series of books for Invisible Publishing and co-editor of a series of texts about Canada and the Spanish Civil War. He lives in K’jipuktuk/Halifax with his partner, daughter, and Marley the dog.

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

Having published critical work, edited collections, and scholarly editions, publishing my first collection of poetry was both a familiar as well as disorienting process. I think it was mostly so much fun—especially working with the good folks at Invisible—that the poetic floodgates have opened: I’m seeing future collections swirling around everywhere. Oh, and I’m probably willing to take a few more poetic risks now.

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

It feels as though answering this question betrays prose, but here goes: I find prose’s imaginary fully present in poetry but find difficulty finding poetry’s contentment with an unresolved constellation of things when I turn to prose. There are exceptions, of course, but poetry is where I want to go to work with a concept. Prose is where I might end up when that concept becomes rote enough for a more critical explication—when I want to work through the concept. 

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?

Starting? Starting isn’t the problem. I’ll start lots of things. Planning and starting things is the closest I’ve come to getting the poetic equivalent of “runner’s high” (which I’m told is an actual thing. I’m quite happy to leave it to the experience and expertise of others). Once the planning is there…do I write it or am I happy to look at a blueprint as a proof-of-concept? Depends.

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

I have tended to work in two modes: 1) I write poems for the pleasure of writing poems and rarely will anyone else see these…and I’m absolutely fucking delighted with this scenario; and, 2) I work on a project that takes a shape wherein each poem in the project or collection relies on the other poems to build that shape. Did I mention that I love the project-planning stage of writing. Like, I really love it. Once a concept arrives that I’m keen to explore and once I’ve got a plan of how I want to explore it, the writing usually comes quickly. The two processes (poems and projects) strike an important balance for me. It’s a way of keeping some for me, while making some to share.

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

I enjoy readings insomuch as they are one way of making art with friends (and making new friends through art). I’m certainly not my happiest as the centre of attention.

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?

Yes. Hmmm, I’m mostly interested in thinking through a poetic epistemology where theoretical expectations and anticipated patterns of thought can stray from expected routes (where it is ethical for such meaning to meander) rather than rest in solidified or consolidated modes of making meaning. I’m not the first to be interested in actively using poetics as an opening rather than a closing. I’m both very structural and very irreverent in my thinking, which has sometimes caused some hard contradictions. But those two things allow a great deal of playfulness too…somewhere along the lines of thinking subversion is only subversion because structural conditions are there to subvert.

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?

Well, I keep telling my students to be generous and generative. Given what we know about our current social, cultural, and economic conditions, we know that “roles” are going to be different and dependant on the situatedness of the writer. But if we are going to resist the homogenization of different writers into a single role, we also have to be generous and generative as community of writers. Easily said, eh?

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

An editor has been crucial for getting me to polish things…to push beyond conceptualization and a “good-enough” project and into a place where, upon reflection, there are far fewer loose-fitting parts.

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

Don’t be a jerk. Seriously though, there is a very particular and rather ridiculous circulation of a jaded scarcity narrative among some poets (among other ungenerous ideas) that leads people to be weirdly unsupportive and competitive. This tends to result in people not playing well with others, trying to form poetic camps, or making spurious arguments centring on formal distinctions. Just…don’t be a jerk.

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

The major appeal is that they are different things… My attention span (and my work) demands that I switch between the two in order to remain productive. Also, see #2, above.

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?

My writing has seasons: a day during the academic semester is quite different than a day during my research and writing time (April through August). Away from my university office, I have a dreamy writing and research scenario: my (shared) desk is 20m from the ocean and I take breaks from writing to pull weeds in the garden.

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

My partner is also a writer and, rather amazingly, we tend to give our stalled time to the other person to work on some things. That often takes the form of an adventure with our kid while the other person gets some writing done.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The ocean.

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

I’ll take it where I can get it…which means I’m interested in finding things both inside and outside of poetry. Many of my close friends are visual artists or musicians and I am continually in awe of the way they make work and the way they show their work…it feels—to me—a little less like a closed network of conventions.

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

My early academic work was on the 1920s and 1930s in Canada, so Dorothy Livesay and Frank Scott feel like they are each on a shoulder variously yelling into my ears. I mostly ignore it, but there is a poem in The Truth About Facts—“Facts about Vancouver, 1938”—that I wrote as an imagined collaboration between the two (in reality, they wouldn’t speak to each other). Now, I tend to look for poetry where you can feel the genuine curiosity in the work…poets such as Sue Goyette, Sachiko Murakami, Gary Barwin, Sonnet L'Abbé, Lisa Robertson, Sina Queyras, and Stephen Collis (among others).

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

Write a collaborative collection of poetry.

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

If my work wasn’t with books...I don’t know what I’d do. I think my favorite job ever was working on a farm as a teenager making hay on the Tantramar Marsh…but (surprise, surprise) I’m happy to remember that from afar.

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

The lack of pressure. I wasn’t a bookish child. I learned to read later than most. I think if there had been any expectation that I might write, I would have run the other way.

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

I’m going to dodge the weighty notion of “great” books (I’m too irreverent for that), but I’m happy to say that Tess Liem’s Obits. was my favorite book of Canadian poetry last year. The 2018 Spanish documentary The Silence of Others (El silencio de otros) was a film that is extremely close to my heart and my thinking (much of my academic work has been focused on the Spanish Civil War for the past decade…keep an eye out for a new anthology of Canadian writing on the Spanish Civil War).

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a poetry collection that explores the ways in which the rapid movement of both capital and people is continually collapsing a rural/urban divide between the Maritimes and so-called cosmopolitan centres.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Christmas music

If it is true that the history of music has come to an end, what is left of music? Silence?

                        Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

1.

Since realizing pregnancy, Moira declares: I am no longer interested in fictional characters.

I want only what I can see, taste and touch, she says. Moira has become increasingly tactile. Needles and pins.

At seven weeks, morning sickness less a crest and fall than a permanent wave. She feels nauseous, nauseated, most of the time. At least to throw up would be a relief.

It never comes.

2.

The minimum length of time before public announcements is twelve weeks. At eight weeks, our midwife presents baby’s heartbeat. Twelve weeks, just short of the differentiation of sex. Moira can’t yet distinguish a boy or a girl vibe.

A heartbeat, hummingbird, under her own. I have a person inside me, she smiles.

Roots run, deep as the water-table. Strawberry plants, a system of underground tendrils that burrow for miles.

Kilometre: when writing, I balk at the word. The metric system might have entered Canada before I was born, but we measured distance in miles; my mother her yardstick, and so on. The word sounds too distant. My childhood mapped out a world I have resistance updating.

I tap into black notebook: kilometres to go before we sleep. Once the baby arrives, kilometres to go before we ever sleep again.

3.

Something random and completely terrible happens. Another school shooting in one of the eastern states. Almost immediately, we attempt to ascribe meaning and depth. We attempt to make sense of it. Is this simply a question of faith, of a belief in a higher being, perhaps God? Faith declares that everything happens for a reason. Without that certainty of faith, some might fall apart, dissolve. Aimless. It can be frightening to have no ground upon which to stand.

The entire idea of faith is in believing in something that can’t be proven.

I catch a glimpse of the motorcade for the Prime Minister, a row of black cars driving through New Edinburgh, into Rockcliffe. I can’t help but wonder: if the Prime Minister looks and acts like a duck. He moves like a dictator. The perception of fear, deliberately stitched between him and the populace. Bulletproof glass, in a country with sparse histories of political violence.

The October Crisis. Paul Chartier. The Siege of Montreal, and the burning of York.

Idle No More, and a frustration building to boil.

Years earlier, I met another Prime Minister while walking down Wellington Street, close enough to have done almost anything. But who was the last person who even did anything?

I can’t even remember.

4.

How to write of what is completely natural: the baby grows, sixteen weeks. We discuss names, don’t yet having come to any agreement. Not yet having decided if we will request to know the gender.

            At our next scan: what does it matter? It might facilitate naming, focus our attention on a single short-list, instead of two. The corners where our disagreements hold might be irrelevant. Think of the time we’d save, I suggest.

And waiting to be surprised: won’t we be surprised either way?

Dandelion fluff. Hundreds of seedlings, following the ebbs and gullies of air current over the trees. The air was thick.

            A flock of white, intent with purpose, direction. Each one floating aimless, until a sweep of wind stream corrals and direct.

5.

From a newspaper photograph, Bobby Orr leaps sideways into the air, soars over the ice, celebrating an infamous goal. Recalculating.

When she selected a kitten from their local Humane Society, he already had digestive issues. The regular kitten food quickly replaced with more expensive bags of medicated kibble.

He can see right through you, she says. I find that difficult to swallow.

She says, I asked you to prepare dinner, not invent it.

6.

Twenty weeks: offered the option of discovering gender, we accept. If baby decides to cooperate.

Everyone guesses: boy. How baby appears to rest, in the belly. We know the difference.

My father, his two slices of white bread, and bowl of maple syrup. One wipe.

In the beginning, there weren’t even words.

7.

I can say it now: I hate Christmas music.

Veterans complain, suggest stores restrain further than the boundary of Hallowe’en, to the end of Remembrance Day. The feeling their day washed away in an annual yuletide commercial flood.

The trudge from mall entrance to the edge of the parking lot.

December snow: a mist. Coats the seams in the sidewalk, across car hoods, and catches in corners.

One must stand for something.

8.

Moira posts a photo to twitter, via instagram. She and her favourite aunt a weekend in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to prepare for what comes.

            The southern heat applies pressure upon her chest. She has to remember to breathe. It does not come natural. Air conditioning saves her. That, and virgin daiquiris.

We model our love on the unread book. There will always be more. It can’t be enough. Our love is endless, boundless, held up in boxes, on shelves, on stacks on the floor.

We are held to our Canadian-ness, even if we don’t follow the stereotypes. Hockey, maple syrup, Tim Hortons. I am indifferent to both hockey and winter, a child who preferred to remain indoors and survey the landscape from the safety of window.

            Still: a dull grey sun over sparkling snow is still beautiful.

9.

Moira sleeps, unadorned. The cat wanders in. I navigate around, a wide berth.

News reports on the oil sands. If they could, they would monetize the air itself. What did the newspaper say?

The front of our car, absorbed into the snowbank. A light rain, coating all with a chill, and a layer of ice.

            By dusk, it had learned how to sparkle. Reflecting the moon.

Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

Moira’s skin, always cold to the touch. Mine radiates heat. Sleepy, she reaches out.