U of Alberta writers-in-residence interviews: Fred Wah (1988-89)

For the sake of the fortieth anniversary of the writer-in-residence program (the longest lasting of its kind in Canada) at the University of Alberta, I have taken it upon myself to interview as many former University of Alberta writers-in-residence as possible [see the ongoing list of writers, as well as information on the upcoming anniversary event, here]. See the link to the entire series of interviews (updating weekly) here.

Fred Wah was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan in 1939, but he grew up in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia. He studied music and English literature at the University of British Columbia in the early 1960's where he was one of the founding editors of the poetry newsletter TISH. After graduate work in literature and linguistics at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and the State University of New York at Buffalo, he returned to the Kootenays in the late 1960’s where he taught at Selkirk College and was the founding coordinator of the writing program at David Thompson University Centre. He retired from the University of Calgary in 2003 and now lives in Vancouver. He has been editorially involved with a number of literary magazines over the years, such as Open Letter and West Coast Line. His work has been awarded the Governor General’s Award, Alberta’s Stephanson Award for Poetry and Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Fiction, the Gabrielle Roy Prize for Writing on Canadian Literature, and B.C.’s Dorothy Livesay Prize for Poetry. He was Parliamentary Poet Laureate 2011-2013 and he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2013. He has published over 20 books of poetry and prose. Recent books include Sentenced to Light, his collaborations with visual artists, is a door, a series of poems about hybridity, and a selected, The False Laws of Narrative, edited by Louis Cabri. A recent collaboration, High Muck a Muck: Playing Chinese, An Interactive Poem, is available online (http://highmuckamuck.ca/). His current project involves the Columbia River. Scree: The Collected Earlier Poems, 1962-1991 was published by Talonbooks in the fall of 2015.

He was writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta during the 1988-89 academic year.

Q: When you began your residency, you’d been publishing books for nearly two decades. Where did you feel you were in your writing? What did the opportunity mean to you?

A: 88-89, 25 years ago. Dredge. Most remembered: Pauline picking me up at airport September 26 after flight from Vancouver and telling me that bp had died during his operation the previous day. That was pretty hard. beep and I had taught together that summer in Red Deer where had egged me on to try writing some prose. “Start with the Pulp 3-day novel contest” he said. First thing I did in Edmonton was that, on Labour Day weekend. Managed about 60 pages of what later became the biofiction Diamond Grill. I remember Rudy Wiebe’s startled expression on the Tuesday morning when I told him that I’d written a novel over the weekend. That year was a transition year for us, from B.C. to Alberta, since I had accepted a job at the University of Calgary to begin the summer of ’89. I was intrigued by the sudden shift in our lives, from rural to urban, from the Kootenays to the prairies, from a very local address to a more academic discourse. And the year free of teaching and exploring writer-in-residence connections was invigorating. We had access to a wonderful community of intellectuals with whom we socialized and collaborated, a writing community that included astute artists like Doug Barbour, Greg Hollingshead, and Janice Williamson. The Salmon Rushdie affair blew up that fall and my writing around that engaged me with faculty in Graphic Arts like Peter Bartl and Jorge Frascara. At the time, I felt my writing attentions were moving in a number of directions. I was also becoming quite involved in the Writers Union and the growing interest in and awareness of race, supplemented through intense coffee yaks with Myrna Kostash. While I still felt grounded in a geographical sensibility in my poetry, I was trying to apprehend the possibilities of writing prose and prose-poetry through working on Diamond Grill and being able to play with some visual artists. The opportunity of the residency was, for me, a welcome opportunity to explore new forms and ideas and relish the energy of an intelligent and vibrant community.

Q: Was this your first residency?

A: No. Daphne Marlatt and I shared a residency at the University of Manitoba 1982-83 (her in ‘82 and me in ‘83). And then I did SFU in 2004-05 (I think).

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Matthew R. Loney

Matthew R. Loney is the author of That Savage Water (Exile Editions, 2014) – a collection of backpacker-themed short fiction. He was a finalist for the 2013 and 2014 Gloria Vanderbilt Short Fiction Award and his work has appeared in a range of North American publications, including the political short fiction anthology, Everything Is So Political. His book reviews have appeared in Plenitude, The Puritan, The Maple Tree Literary Supplement and Broken Pencil. He lives in Toronto.

www.matthewrloney.com Instagram and Twitter: @mattorero

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
This might sound unusual, but publishing my first book gave me permission to release my grip on “the dream” of becoming a writer. Having focused for so long on one goal – and challenging myself to see whether or not I could achieve it - I’m now able to see a gigantic and beautiful world of possibilities outside of literature. My new work has a different energy to it – less personal angst, more skillful observation of the way we live and connect. Overall, a nicer hot-tub to stew in.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
My early journals are mostly poetry but I quickly realized most were rubbish. Fiction is more forgiving. I grew up reading The Hardy Boys, The Famous Five and whole summers of R. L. Stein. It must have connected me with the pacing of fiction, how it could lead you along for a while, lure you, and then change course once you’ve become invested. Poetry can do similar things, but the game is shorter.

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?
So far everything has come quickly. Too quickly sometimes and I resent its bad timing. The novel I’m working on came to me so furiously that I was scared to lose it if I set it aside. Short stories have come with similar speed, out of the blue, but aren’t as disruptive to normal living. I have a difficult time altering anything major after the first draft is down but I’ve learned the hard way that first thoughts are not anything to show anyone, despite how connected you may feel to them. I think writing from notes is essential for a novel’s structure, but less so for a short story which I think can be more organic.

4 - Where does a poem or work 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?
Stories usually begin with an image or fragment of conversation that ripples out into a bigger world. My newest story came out of a series of Instagram photos a friend sent me. The fragmented chronology was too interesting to ignore. I like to think I begin writing where the story begins, but the feedback I get usually tells me that the story actually begins much later in the work.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Counter. I can’t imagine any writer who enjoys standing in front of a crowd and reading their work. It’s against everything in my character to drone out loud what’s meant to happen in the readers’ ear. That said, the applause at a reading is likely to be the most visceral feedback a writer will ever get from their work, so it’s a trade off.

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’m really interested in culture shock, culture clash and the way that technology can both bridge and obstruct the meeting of different worlds. Over the last ten years, the world became so interconnected, so bridgeable, but I don’t think the human psyche has been able to keep up with how best to approach it. Stylistically, my questions have been around how to invent and be original in an industry that is currently risk-averse. When readers get lazy, they turn into “the market” and so everything slides toward the predictable.

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’m of Ginsberg’s mind that the writer/poet is a kind of oracle, and not because it’s an identity that you seek out or strive for, but because it’s simply the way we observe the patterns of the world. But there is a reason oracles were confined to caves – they don’t always give desirable answers. We’re censored now more than ever – through political correctness, through funding, through “the market” – which means our role is being defined for us. I’d like for the writer to have more of a renegade role – more prophet, less profitable.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential because I make too many mistakes and have a bizarre sense of literary aesthetic that doesn’t always land on the reader the way I aim it to, but difficult because I’m stubborn and too precious of my own work.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
When I worked with Paul Quarrington in the last year of my M.A., he asked me, “What about this character would make a top actor/actress foam at the mouth to play this part?” I realized that much of what I had written was boring and stock as hell. I run each character I write through this criterion now.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
Mental homeostasis is the appeal. Poetry and fiction cleanse different parts of me.

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 don’t have a routine because that sounds like I should do something the same way whether I’m feeling like it or not. If I’m enjoying a project, I’ll work on it any chance I get. If I’m procrastinating or the project is weak, I’ll find myself routinely on YouTube. I wish my answer could be ‘a kale smoothie followed by three-mile swim’. One day.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I usually just need to take my hands off the wheel if I’m continually driving into a ditch, or not moving at all. Drawing or sketching allows me to cleanse the palate. If I’m lucky, I can travel somewhere. A change of cultural scenery does wonders for me.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Vim floor cleaner or the smell of a hot dishwasher.

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?
Books that come from books seems like a superbly dull idea, although I can see what he means. I wish writing could take more from the visual arts world, or dance. If I could find a way to infuse a short story with influences of M.I.A.’s “BadGirls” video or Gustavo Santaolalla’s guitar music, or with the same core energy as krump, I’d consider it a personal triumph.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
My writing tends to be dialogue and description heavy. I think this comes from a strange fusion of having playwrights and travel writers as my major influences. Paul Theroux, Martha Gellhorn, Eugene O’Neill and Edward Albee sing in the background of a lot of my work.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’d love to plan a motorcycle trip circumnavigating the Mediterranean. Or from Scotland to Singapore. I’d also love a ten-year stint sailing around the islands of the South Pacific repairing my own rig and catching my own fish. Fill my passport with stamps, is the short answer.

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?
Professional adventurer. Some have been able to make this work as a profession. Also, an airline pilot seems a pretty awesome gig. I love airports and meeting customs agents in new countries and supremely enjoy the idea that it’s always a sunny day above the clouds.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Escapism made me write. It was the easiest way for me to leave where I was for where I wanted to be. Small-town Ontario was ultra-boring for me growing up. I remember losing myself in an Edith Blyton children’s adventure book. It was a magical out-of-body experience that I wanted to recreate.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
In the Heart of the Country by J.M. Coetzee was insanely good, as was Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty. I can watch anything by Alejandro González Iñárritu over and over, so I’d say Birdman.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I have so many unfinished projects half-alive and squealing for attention. I don’t feel compelled to dive back into my novel so I’m drafting out a series of travel essays that deal with how technology - maps, apps, webcams, Oculus Rift etc – will alter how we approach the travel or exploration experience.

12 or 20 (second series)questions

6 x 6 : issues #32 + #33

I thought to write

and wrote a language

that I use, I didn’t write to that

language as in a letter or something

but one cannot be blamed

for thinking so. Isn’t it odd

the channels words cut open like

look over here I am stuck in one

and there’s an earthen weight

bearing down with lexical meaning

so it’s really hard to talk any longer

about this, if not entirely

impossible but I’m learning

effective communication skills. (Tony Iantosca)

I’ve long been an admirer of the American poetry journal 6 x 6, produced through Brooklyn’s Ugly Duckling Presse. As the title suggests, each issue features healthy selections of work from six contributors, and the most recent issues to appear at my door include work by James D. Fuson, Lyn Hejinian, Barbara Henning, Tony Iantosca, Uroš Kotlajić (translated from Serbian by Ainsley Morse) and Morgan Parker (issue #32), and Amanda Berenguer (translated from Spanish by Gillian Brassil and Alex Verdolini), Jeremy Hoevenaar, Krystal Languell, Holly Melgard, Marc Paltrineri and Cat Tyc (issue #33). Part of the appeal of the journal, other than the obvious appeal of a journal that supports strong writing, is the variety of form and style displayed in each issue, as well as translations from other languages (and countries), and a list of contributors running the length and breadth of emerging, established and all points in-between. This list can include poets I’ve known the work of for years, to those I’m being introduced to for the first time. Take, for example, this excerpt from Brooklyn based filmmaker/poet/video artist Cat Tyc’s “Memory Is Not a Test”:

10. Being the sixth wheel, she wishes for a bigger dance floor to watch the lunar eclipse from.

More copper than red, and everyone goes home to spoon and make babies.

Baby this, and baby that. They always get the last word.

Her cab driver says, that in his country, it is believed that if a pregnant woman sleeps through an eclipse, her child will not come to term.

His stern sensitivity garnered prudent reservation.

She saw herself in him. Sometimes when no one was looking, she would walk around the apartment without a shirt on.

Just to try on that petulant boy role.

Enough already, it is fall, and she is still swatting mosquitoes.

The author biography on her website writes that her work is “interested in exploring the paradoxes of class,” and her work in this issue of 6 x 6 is enough to make me curious to see what else she’s produced. In a recent interview over at Weird Sister she says: “I am identifying as a writer first mostly these days because that is my primary creative act in this moment in time. The last few years I have been focusing on filmmaking but after a while I found myself wanting to differentiate from the conversations I found myself in. If I called myself a filmmaker, the conversation would always devolve towards film festivals, camera models, distribution models, financing…. All of that felt really disconnected from some of the things I feel most passionate about in filmmaking and making art in general which are story, character development, and directing. After being frustrated in this way one too many times, I remembered that all of those aspects I loved stemmed from writing and I realized it might be a lot easier to get back to my favorite parts of filmmaking if I just stopped and said, ‘Hey, I’m a writer.’ I think creative identity, like most identifying quantities, is for the individual and the individual alone to decide. It also feels important to mention too that in honing my focus back on writing…it helped me reconnect to the literary, or to be more specific, radical poetics, which are at the foundation of my education and have been my primary creative community for most of my life.” Another is poet Tony Iantosca, author of Shut Up, Leaves (United Artists Books, 2015), a poet with, beyond a handful of pieces posted in a variety of online journals, a remarkably small online footprint. As one of his untitled poems from his “Excerpts from Creative Writing” in issue #32 reads: “A cloud in the shape / of a shape. It is shaped / how it’s shaping itself and being /shaped too I suppose because / it’s a cloud. All my problems / shape up to be rainstorm / and then it all becomes / something else entirely.” Of course, one can never overlook Barbara Henning, who has a striking and powerful matter-of-fact meander on life and film reminiscent slightly of the work of Toronto poet David Donnell:

Madagascar

I’m watching Madagascar

with the boys—hilarious

hip city zoo animals end up

in Africa but long to come

home to the Central Park Zoo.

With the emergence of zoos,

pet keeping and animal toys,

John Berger explains that animals

were slowly disappearing from

our daily lives. When the boys

take a bath, Like stretches his

long young thin body under

the warm water and we play

with little action figures

and plastic frogs. Then I put

my feet into the tub, singing

row row row your boat gently

down the stream. Later

it’s raining and we’re together

under an umbrella, walking

through the park. Surely,

radioactive ocean water

from the Fukushima Daiichi

nuclear plant will migrate

around the globe and even if we

don’t die this year, we will

all die eventually, so for now,

let’s hold each other loosely.

12 or 20 (small press) questions with Joshua Edwards on Canarium Books

Established in 2008 and sponsored in part by the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan, Canarium Books is an independent press dedicated to publishing poetry by established and emerging authors from the United States and abroad.

Joshua Edwards directs and co-edits Canarium Books. He's the author of several books of poetry and photography, and he translated Mexican poet Maria Baranda's book-length poem, Ficticia. He lives West Texas and works at Marfa Book Company.

1 – When did Canarium Books first start? How have your original goals as a publisher shifted since you started, if at all? And what have you learned through the process?
The press began in 2008, with our first single-author collections in 2009. It emerged out of a magazine, The Canary, and I don't think our goals have changed much ever since it's formation in 2002. Basically, we want to participate in the conversation and publish great poetry. One thing I've learned to appreciate more through editing is time.

2 – What first brought you to publishing?
My mom is a librarian, so I guess you could say that promoting literature is a hereditary addiction. Also, books have long seemed to me to be a better use of printing technology than money. I clearly remember feeling, in my early 20s, immense power in certain books-as-objects. One that comes to mind is the New Directions edition of The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca with the title in a burst of light surrounded by branches. Great poems and great books like that made me want to get in the publishing racket.

3 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?
I can only speak to our sense of responsibility, which is to publish writing that pays attention to language and the world in ways that are not of interest to the market and larger presses.

4 – What do you see your press doing that no one else is?
I don't think of Canarium as doing anything that no one else is doing, we're just contributing what we can. Details and specifics distinguish every press.

5 – What do you see as the most effective way to get new books out into the world?
That's a tough one, and I definitely haven't figured out the answer. I only have more questions: What is the life of a book and how does it find that life? What sort of audience does an author seek? What is one's relationship to readings? To time? To travel? To translation? How to get a book beyond a border?

6 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?
It depends on the book, the poet, and the editor. Each book we publish is assigned an editor who works with the poet. Sometimes the book is ready as-is, other times we push back on lines, structure, titles, and every other little thing.

7 – How do your books get distributed? What are your usual print runs?
Our books are distributed through Small Press Distribution. We typically print 1000 copies.

8 – How many other people are involved with editing or production? Do you work with other editors, and if so, how effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?
There are four co-editors: Robyn Schiff, Nick Twemlow, Lynn Xu, and myself, and Russell Brakefield has been our essential managing editor for many years. We also have great assistant editors and interns at University of Michigan who help us select books and proof them. We get a ton of submissions each year, so fresh eyes and a variety of minds are essential. The toughest thing is figuring out a schedule that works for everyone.

9 – How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?
I tend to think about my own poems as pages in a book way more than I'd like; that is, it's increasingly difficult for me to write a poem without thinking of the architecture where it will live (or rest in peace). I do this with photography too.

10 – How do you approach the idea of publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he still ran Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Press’ editors had titles during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman and bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see the whole question as irrelevant?
We'd never publish our own books through Canarium, but I don't think there are any essential reasons for an editor to not publish their own collection. In the States, however, the poetry community's connection to academia complicates this. My next book, Castles and Islands, is being published by Liang Editions, a press that my wife, Lynn, has started for projects that are unconventional in one way or another. That book is photography and poetry and will serve as the catalog for a couple of upcoming photography exhibitions, and the photography world has very different ideas about publishing. Many of the best photobooks are self-published because the book object is so important (see the publications of Motoyuki Shitamichi). I look forward to more small, beautiful editions of poetry books (see Cuneiform Press).

11 – How do you see Canarium Books evolving?
In the context of this question, I think of evolution as staying alive.

12 – What, as a publisher, are you most proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have overlooked about your publications? What is your biggest frustration?
We've published many first books, and I'm most proud of introducing these poets to a wider audience. Readers have been very good to us; there are a couple of books I think are mind-bogglingly brilliant that haven't gotten as much attention as I feel they deserve, but I can't complain. My biggest frustration is there isn't time or other resources to do everything we want.

13 – Who were your early publishing models when starting out?
Our aesthetic concerns are a carryover from editing the magazine, but for inspiration and energy we definitely looked to legendary presses like Burning Deck, New Directions, The Jargon Society, North Point, etc., as well as newer publishers, such as Flood, Fence, Verse/Wave, Ugly Duckling, etc..

14 – How does Canarium Books work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What journals or presses do you see Canarium Books in dialogue with? How important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?
I don't want to put up any velvet ropes or categorize our authors since they're all doing their own work. Books and authors do the real conversing, we just help them out as best we can.

15 – Do you hold regular or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other events?
The years that Lynn and I have been in the States, we've (usually) organized road trips with some of our authors. These have been terrific fun and were especially important early on for introducing the press to the people. Now that we're in Marfa we're a bit less mobile, but we've had a couple of authors out for book launches and we plan more. We go to AWP each year and host readings, and although can be weird/nightmarish, it's been great for getting books to readers.

16 – How do you utilize the internet, if at all, to further your goals?
We do the standard social media stuff.

17 – Do you take submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for?
We do take submissions. In fact, we're accepting manuscripts until the end of December and we don't charge a reading fee (although we appreciate when submitters order a book from us).

18 – Tell me about three of your most recent titles, and why they’re special.
Ish Klein's Consolation and Mirth includes a remarkable section of enigmatic riddles writ in red ink. Emily Wilson's The Great Medieval Yellows shows, better than any other book I can think of, the world up close, through a macro lens. Michael Morse's Void and Compensation is a heart-breaker that also cracks your brain wide open.

12 or 20 (small press) questions;

two new poems : NOÖ Journal

I have two new poems up in the sixteenth issue of NOÖ Journal! Here and here.