Andrea Actis, Grey All Over

 

Well truly I think it is something that you cannot really measure in this present. The soul is something that is going to be eased upon death that goes back to how it goes back really goes. Goes into this whatever this plasticine this kind of playdough kids use. So it’s going to be fun again to be some other persons. Like is going to be transmitted and you should get a really big chunk of oh my. In their sadness or even health or what have you. See in the future it’s not you it’s not me. You might actually resemble Jeffrey just because by chance you took a piece of that playdough. But you know a well-defined shape? You know a random assimilation? You gotta be so so so good that that was truly the case no I know you put people in the drawer. You know gathering all kinds of ashes from people and giving them a line in a drawer in your apartment. (“SOUL ASH”)

Poet and editor Andrea Actis’ full-length poetry debut is Grey All Over (Kingston ON: Brick Books, 2021), a book titled after the email handle of her late father, assembling the accumulation and detritus of loss and what remains. Structured in nine sections, Actis examines the limitations and the excesses of the archive, including photographs, emails, handwritten letters, old receipts and other scraps as the structure, the scaffolding, upon which her texts stand. Dedicated “For my dead dad,” Grey All Over explores how and through what process one grieves the loss of such a complicated person and a complicated relationship. There is a heft to this collection, moving through the intersections between two whole lives—hers and her father’s—including conversations with the dead and the remains of the dead. This is less a book of ghosts than, quite literally, memory and the archive, how one impacts upon the other, and how both allow, in their own ways, for interpretation and uncertainty.

Messy, open and devastating, Grey All Over is composed as a poetry-memoir build as a scrapbook, both in form and in content: not seeking completion but an assemblage, where craft is less about the carved form than the consideration of memories, mementos and, quite simply, what remains, whether from him directly, or through her. This is a polyvocal book exploring echoes on addiction, trauma, memory and conversation, all around a beloved parent that she found, at times, extremely difficult to interact with. Grey All Over explores the ways in which death prompts consideration and reconsideration, and, as Sachiko Murakami writes as part of her back cover blurb: “When a loved one dies, there’s all this stuff to deal with, and in the midst of grief we begin to collection, sort, document, store, and discard.” As part of the extended “VOLTA: ONE POEM,” Actis writes:

To be honest, this is the first time
I’ve written a poem and been
able to hear myself saying something inside of it.
In listening, my own
exactitude takes shape.
Unmiraculously.
This isn’t a prize or a price.
We are labouring together
even though I owe you.
The fearlessness might be
surplus itself.
We will keep renaming everything.
I will keep fucking up.
I will keep not killing myself
for fucking up; instead
I will quietly grow loud
and finally learn to drive
so I can wait for you in the car
as you’re stealing your things back
to take us wherever
we need to go.
It will be
a better here, but here.

 

Moon Bo Young, Pillar of Books, trans. Hedgie Choi

 

DOWN JACKET GOD

God wears a massive down jacket. Humans are the countless duck feathers trapped inside, the poet writes. Sometimes a feather pokes out. God plucks it carefully. That’s what people call death. A feather gets plucked. That person dies. A feather gets plucked. That person expires. A feather gets plucked. That person breathes their last breath. A feather gets plucked. That person disappears.

After death there’s no heaven or hell, no angels or devils, the poet writes. There’s only a feather. It swings in the air. Gently, the feather settles on the ground.

I’m charmed by Korean poet Moon Bo Young’s newly-released Pillar of Books (Boston MA: Black Ocean, 2021), translated by poet and translator Hedgie Choi, currently a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers. Through the translations, at least, Choi presents Moon Bo Young as a poet of sentences, from the lyric to the prose poem. “When the book is opened,” the piece “THE BOOK FROM FAR AWAY” begins, “the sentences are immersed in creating / double knots. They twist their bodies constantly. Like little bugs under / a rock, they repeat pointless motions for years. The sentences burn / black at the edges because they focus only on themselves.” The lyrics extend across thought, offering a mix of humour and joyful observation, odd commentary and contemplations, such as this fragment of the poem “BRAIN AND ME,” that reads: “The brain has one defect. It remembers more than it sees. A considerable amount of DNA gets damaged as a result. What mechanism does the brain use to make memories? This is a very difficult question, but since the etymology of the word for the brain’s nerve cell, neuron, comes from rope, we can guess that a rope is used.” I’m charmed by the poems within, and by the introduction by Choi, laying out an array of the difficulties she had in working on this particular translation (including the fact that “Korean has distinctive sentence-ending particles,” the mixing of tenses, pronouns and conjunctions), as well as some of the joys:

Moon Bo Young is both super-funny and super-serious. “Down Jacket God” is a good example of this—it’s also the first poem in her book. There’s levity and surrealism, but there’s also God and Death. The poet exists explicitly in this poem, breaking the fourth wall and writing in real time, but it seems like an exaggeration to say that this ironic move “undercuts” the rest of the poem. Rather than undercutting, there’s juxtaposition and playful interaction. These elements are all there, together—God and Death and Love and Literature hanging out with feathers, chopstick, a blanket being dusted, and little bugs—and the poet is tinkering with all of them, without reverence but with great curiosity.

The structural considerations between Korean and English, at least laid out by Choi regarding this particular translation, offer an intriguing insight into both the Korean language generally and in Moon Bo Young’s work specifically, and make me wonder about the use of language-play by contemporary Korean poets. This is something that was also brought up in the recent Yi Sang: Selected Works, edited by Don Mee Choi (Seattle WA/New York NY: Wave Books, 2020), translated by Jack Jung, Sawako Nakayasu, Don Mee Choi and Joyelle McSweeney [see my review of such here]. I find it interesting that Boston publisher Black Ocean has established the Moon Country Poetry Series, publishing English translations of poetry titles originally published in Korean by contemporary Korean writers (all of which include design-echoes each other), a series that also includes the recent Whale and Vapor (Black Ocean, 2020) by Kim Kyung Ju, translated by Jake Levine [see my review of such here]. As the series self-describes, at the end of the collection: “Moon Country publishes new English translations of contemporary Korean poetry by both mid-career and up-and-coming poets who debuted after the IMF crisis. By introducing work that comes out of our shared milieu, this series not only aims to widen the field of contemporary Korean poetry available in English translation, but also to challenge orientalist, neo-colonial, and national literature discourses. Our hope is that readers will inhabit these books as bodies of experience rather than view them as objects of knowledge, that they will allow themselves to be altered by them, and emerge from the page with eyes that seem to see ‘a world that belongs to another star.’”

WHITE FACTORY

The research center is a cube building with a neat chimney plunged into the right side. The researchers are covered head to toe in white cloth. Unrelatedly, they are sexless. They don’t draw lakes in forests. They don’t play classic guitar.

The endless sound of plastic curses mankind: through endless observation, experimentation, and verification, this hypothesis is becoming as scientifically sound as the flight formation of migrating birds. All existing types of truth have the same status. Researchers, who are pursuers of truth, dream of egalitarianism.

Truth goes beyond consent and nonconsent, tolerance and distrust. The researchers prefer facts over truth and falsehood. As a matter of fact, facts have no feelings. Facts don’t require consolation.

What the researchers are fond of isn’t a picture but a photo. This photo—which required over two hundred million altitude measurements, which is a combination and synthesis of over a thousand photos, which shows the entirety of the surface of Mars—illustrates what form of love the researchers are pursuing.

The collection of facts isn’t a matter of taste. The researchers want a revolution.

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Sofi Papamarko

Sofi Papamarko is a former regular columnist for The Toronto Star, Sun Media Newspapers and Metro Canada. She’s also written for The Globe & Mail, Chatelaine, Flare, CBC, Reader’s Digest, Salon, Exclaim! and many other publications, both living and dead. Her short stories have appeared in Taddle Creek, Maisonneuve, Room and The Toronto Star. She lives in Toronto with her partner and their children.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Radium Girl is my first book! I don't know how it will change my life. I suspect not overly, since this is Canadian publishing and I am a realist.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I came to fiction after a long relationship with non-fiction. I was a freelance writer for newspapers and magazines for over a decade. I love reading fiction more than anything, but the thought of writing it was intimidating.  I just didn't feel skilled enough to create that magic. At some point, I gained enough confidence as a writer to give fiction a serious whirl and I am never going back. My friend Iain Reid, who also arrived at fiction from non-fiction, once likened the transition as going from lane-swimming to an open, empty pool. There are rules and limitations when it comes to writing non-fiction -- most notably, you have to write the absolute truth. With fiction, there are no rules or limitations at all. It's all about freedom and imagination. But it should still, at the very least, be truthful.

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'm a slow reader, a slow writer and a seasoned procrastinator. It's a wonder I've completed anything at all! I'm in awe of people who can read a book a week and write a book a year. "Radium Girl" took me 4 1/2 years to write. Every short story in there began its life as rough notes, scene ideas, snippets of conversation and just evolved from there. Once I have an idea of where things are going, I can usually create a pretty solid first draft.

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 bit of a commitment-phobe when it comes to writing, so short stories have been my comfort zone. The structure is so much simpler than a novel and I don't have to spend years with the same character or characters. I can get in, be fascinated by the characters for a period of time, and then I can get out when they bore me. I've been trying to write a novel for a couple of years, but it hadn't been going well until recently. I think I've finally landed on an idea I can truly commit to.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I've only done a handful of public readings. They terrify me. It's like being naked in front of an audience --  you feel extraordinarily vulnerable. I mean, you're getting feedback on your writing in real-time! I've had a couple of readings go very well and there's this amazing high afterwards, but I had this one reading go terribly and wanted to die. I chose a story I thought was hysterically funny and the room was dead silent for the entire ten pages. It was so awkward. Anyway, please invite me to your readings! I swear I'm getting better!

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?
My primary concern these days is this: I am yet another educated cisgender white woman from a comfortable middle-class background. What right do I have to be publishing a book when so many BIPOC voices go unheard? I think things are slowly getting better in the industry, but I will always feel a certain amount of guilt around this. I do think my voice matters and what I have to say is worthwhile, but the fact remains that people who look like me take up a whooooole lot of real estate.

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?
The world needs more empathy these days. I think writers hold the key to helping people better understand the lives and struggles of others.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Absolutely essential. I had a wonderful experience with my editor, Jen Sookfong Lee. She "got" my work and helped to make it better. Plus, she's brilliant and hilarious and I want to be her friend! (Hi Jen! Come visit Toronto when the pandemic's over? We can eat cake.)

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

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to journalism)? What do you see as the appeal?
They're totally different mindsets. Journalism is more formulaic. And you have to listen really carefully to the subject/s of your non-fiction pieces and pay attention to the little details. With fiction, you have to tap into something deeper and listen to the voices inside of your head. The little details remain important, but they're whatever you want them to be.

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?
There's no typical writing day for me. I don't write every day. I don't write at a certain time of day. I don't have any specific writing rituals, like sipping chamomile tea or pulling on a lucky pair of socks. I just write whenever I feel the urge and whenever I have the time and energy. I work in communications so I spend Monday through Friday writing for a living. Some days, my day job taps me out and I have nothing left. But other days, I get lucky and churn out a thousand half-decent words in one sitting. There's no rhyme or reason to my writing routine. It's barely a routine at all. But writing is my favourite thing in the world to do, so I keep coming back to it and eventually have had something to show for it.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Books! Any book. When it's better than my writing, which it frequently is, it inspires me to be a better writer. When it's not great writing, it makes me think "Hell, if they can do it, I can do it!" and I want to work that much harder. So I guess I'm inspired/fueled by professional jealousy? Healthy!

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Lilacs. Christmas trees. Greek Mountain tea boiling on the stove.

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?
All of it! All of it! When I was writing Radium Girl and felt stalled, I would take a long meandering walk in High Park. Somehow, turning away from my creative knot and looking at trees and ducks and chipmunks and egrets helped me to solve the issue when I returned. And of course, art inspires art. Listening to music, a trip to an art gallery, watching the sun set -- as my dear friend Sherwin Tjia once said to me, "You have to inhale in order to exhale."

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I am particularly inspired by women who write or have written short stories that have stuck with me; Barbara Gowdy, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Katherine Mansfield, Shirley Jackson, Lorrie Moore, Jessica Westhead and Carmen Maria Machado, to name just a few.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Write a novel. Have a child. I'm working on both simultaneously.

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 no dream job. I do not dream of labour."

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
It's the only thing I know how to do well.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I am not much of a film buff, so can I just tell you that Harold & Maude is the only film that matters to me? In terms of books, there are so many, but the one I'd recommend the most often from the past few years is Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. Please read it! It is breathtaking and masterful.

20 - What are you currently working on?
A novel and it's scary! I am also gestating a human due exactly one month before Radium Girl is published.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ottawa's fourth (virtual) Promise Walk for Preeclampsia

This is to let you know that I'm helping my dear wife, Christine McNair, fundraise as part of this year's Ottawa Promise Walk for Preeclampsia, so childbirth doesn't have to be life-threatening, as it was for her, with both of our wee monsters. Within a day or three of the births of each of our two children, Christine had to be admitted to hospital with blood pressure high enough that it was considered life-threatening. She spent three nights in hospital after Rose was born, the first two without being able to keep Rose with her. With Aoife, the doctors had kept a closer eye on her blood pressure, as the fact that she'd had this happen once suggested it was possible that it could happen a second time. It did, but it wasn't as dire, as it was caught far sooner.

Christine being that rare five percent of five percent that are struck by this after the birth of their child. Whereas my first wife did have the same prior to Kate's birth, but once Kate was born, everything returned to normal. This seems an affliction that is regularly misunderstood and not always caught. And part of the goal of this fundraising walk is to inform: neither our midwife nor Christine's doctors knew at the time that there were numerous resources for information on preeclampsia, which was enormously frustrating to discover after the fact (and if we were doing the walk in person this year, there would be information booths involving numerous organizations, which hopefully we can get back to again; next year?).

We've been told, basically, that for her to have a third child would certainly mean it would happen a third time (which we don't consider worth risking), and that our two girls run a far higher risk of going through the same, if they ever decide to have children of their own. If you are able and/or willing to donate anything to this campaign, it would be very much appreciated.
 
https://canadahelps.org/en/charities/preeclampsia-foundation-canada/p2p/promisewalk2021/team/christines-awesome-family-and-friends-of-awesomeness/member/rob-mclennan/

The Promise Walk for Preeclampsia™ is the single most important fundraising initiative for Preeclampsia Foundation Canada that supports our mission to reduce maternal and infant illness and death due to preeclampsia, HELLP Syndrome and other hypertensive disorders of pregnancy through patient education, public awareness and research. These walks are more than a fundraiser; they are events that bring together a community of people who have been affected by these disorders, to make connections, and to demonstrate the support of donors, sponsors, local media, community partners, and corporate sponsors, so those affected know they are not alone. It is also a place to honour those we have lost and to make a real stride towards ending preeclampsia!

Please help us reach our fundraising goal as we participate in The Promise Walk for Preeclampsia Canada in 2021! Thank you in advance for your generous donation!

See also: the press release for the first Ottawa walk, as organized by Christine; my report on that first walk; the press release for the third walk,