Michael Flatt, I Can Focus If I Try

 

Lost in the full stop of fascination, I see a fly land on the window screen and choose not to attack it. My own screen at present a darkened android face. Is this a failed lyric or a fuse? Please don’t show me how big the future child is with your fingers. A dusting of snow brings out the detail in a treeline, as driving through the mountains distorts our perspective, cinematically.

I was curious about the latest by American poet, critic and publisher Michael Flatt, his full-length I Can Focus If I Try (Toronto ON: knife|fork|book, 2023). Currently a PhD candidate in the Poetics Program at the University of Buffalo, Flatt is also the author of Absent Receiver (SpringGun Press, 2013) and, with derrick mund, Chlorosis (The Operating System, 2018). Entirely a collection around seeing, looking and the limitations and possibilities of perception, the lyrics that accumulate into I Can Focus If I Try work up to a boundary of perception. The book is built as a quartet, a progression, of four individual sequence-sections; the collection begins with prose sentences and prose blocks, focusing on the body of the text, that eventually evolve, across this quartet, into a literal outline, articulating an absence. Flatt offers a self-description of his poetry on his website, writing: “My work seeks to examine the formal boundaries of traditions involving the codex and the lyric. Themes include fraught relationships with the environment, the digital, and the other.” And yet, this is very much a book on the combined elements of seeing, looking and perception itself. “What do we do with these gaps in our beauty?” Flatt asks in its opening piece, set at the top of an otherwise empty page. The poems seek, and seek out beauty, seeing the gaps that exist between and amid everything else. His four numbered sections offer structural shifts from the core of the lyric prose sentence into text clusters, pulling the words and phrases apart and, finally, setting his text as that literal outline surrounding the empty page, focusing the gaze, perhaps, on that absent, outlined middle. “And now a scene from something like nature,” he writes, as part of the opening section, “unabstracted, providing an unobstructed view / of deer grazing by graves.” There is almost something theatrical in his structures, something of the performative gesture across the arc of this collection; something that wishes both attention and participation.

Lindsay Turner, The Upstate

 

what would it be like to stay here forever

we went up a mountain and went up a fire tower

the seasons themselves felt annulled like a marriage

it doesn’t matter if it was never gone through with (“Tennessee Quatrains”)

The follow up to her full-length debut, Songs & Ballads (Brooklyn NY: The Prelude Press LLC, 2018)) [see my review of such here], is Cleveland, Ohio-based poet and translator Lindsay Turner’s collection The Upstate (Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2023). The Upstate is a collection of lyrics that seem to be composed from a place of wisdom and experience, albeit one hard-won and hard-earned, offering lines worn and clear and present. “Why doesn’t anyone here speak for their own life,” she writes, to close the opening poem, “Planning,” “Once in South Carolina there was a flood behind the storage units / Once it was believed relief from was a thing in store / In my life the major errors accumulate behind me as I go / Soon you will be able to read them like a poem [.]” The lyrics offer optimism at points but are otherwise pragmatic, offering lines and lyrics of fierce directness and density, moment-think and short, accumulating as narrative-fragments across an ethos of the known, the unknown and any possible future. “I was in another state when it happened,” she writes, to open the poem “Song of Accumulation,” “long since left out under the sky / I felt the glass grow lighter in my hand / I thought, I should pay more attention to what’s strange [.]” Or, as the poem “Vacation Song” opens:

Sorry to interrupt your peace. No it’s my job just to sit around soaking up beauty like a sponge. The tall weeds blew in circles, a big gull flew by. Black shards from a campfire. Everybody’s thinking there might not be much else left soon. Burnt shards. No everybody’s thinking that.

Get it tattooed on your calf or your forearm. The only being on the rocky outcrop, some things present in their outlines while the others sink into the sea. The other things dissolve in toxic fog. The other things are sold in pieces so small you couldn’t recognize. Everybody’s thinking it. speculated on all you ever loved. Told to be itself properly or it couldn’t exist. We all did it.

The days fell out light and hardwood. We almost didn’t recognize it.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Tom Cull

Born and raised in Huron County (Treaty 29 territory), Tom Cull currently resides in London, Ontario near the banks of Deshkan Ziibi on traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lunaapéewak and Chonnonton Nations.Tom works at the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority and teaches creative writing at Western University. He is the author of two books of poetry, Kill Your Starlings (Gaspereau Press, 2023) and Bad Animals (Insomniac Press, 2018). Tom was poet laureate for the city of London from 2016 to 18. He is the director of Antler River Rally, a grassroots environmental group he co-founded in 2012 with his partner Miriam Love.

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 --What the Badger Said (Baseline Press, 2013)-- was a life changer! Karen Schindler makes beautiful books and is a brilliant editor. That she was willing to invest her time in my poems gave me a huge boost in both confidence and stick-to-itness. Her editing was also the crash course in poem-making that I needed.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I came to prose first. I wrote odds and ends of stuff that didn't really go anywhere. I think, maybe, that those first attempts at stories/non-fiction were actually poems trying to be something else. When I did start writing actual poems the form just felt comfortable, natural--the right fit. At that time (back in grad school) I was reading for comprehensive exams and while I loved reading fiction, it was the poetry (modernist/contemporary) that really sparked something. I'm really attracted to the density/precision/distillation of poetry. Poetry is like a well-made multitool: all that utility, craft, and mechanical dexterity packed into something you can hold in your hand.  
 
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?
The writing comes quickly and the editing takes forever. I'll write a full draft in a sitting and then I'll tinker with it before I take it to my writing group. After its first rodeo, I'll stitch it back together and then take it back to the group. Once I get it to a good place, I'll put it away until it is time to send out. At that point, I'll have another go at it to make sure I'm happy with it.

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've never started a writing project with a book or end point in mind. Even my chapbook with my friend Kerry Manders (Keep Your Distance: https://longconmag.com/collusionbooks/digital/2x4two/keep-your-distance/) began as a poetry exchange that we then crafted into a concept/book. This is what I like about writing poetry -- you can build towards a book in a modular fashion. The book is then shaped after the fact. I know some poets begin with a book/concept and I would like to try that. But so far, it has been a process of one poem at a time.  

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love public readings. An audience is a gift. I always feel humbled and grateful that folks are willing to listen and respond. I also like readings because I can add some of the connective fibres/stories that exist alongside the poems but don't make it into the poems themselves. Often, I see the readings as an opportunity to add back in  what the editing process took out. That editing process is necessary and it shapes the poem so it can stand on its own in a collection, but a reading allows me an opportunity to add some 'tell' back into the 'show.'  I also like how readings give you an opportunity to bring out some of the rhythm and musicality of the poems. You have to be careful not to go overboard on both of the above (over-read or over-talk) but I do love sharing my work in this way.  
 
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?
"Concern" is a good way of putting it. I think art/poetry is innately theoretical in that it asks questions and plays with ideas. My concerns are ecological; I'm interested in relationships among things/people/plants/creatures and relationships to home and place. How we dwell well in our dwellings.  

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I think there are as many roles for the writer as there are writers.  One important role is to ask and struggle with that very question. Some would say that their role is to have no role -- that they owe themselves to the work and that the rest is of secondary importance. I get that--it is important for art to resist instrumentalism. On the other hand, I do think poetry and the poet can have a role in society/culture/the civic sphere. I was the Poet Laureate for the City of London (2016-2018). It was a great two years. I enjoyed writing and reading for specific occasions--this helped me see how poetry can crystalize a moment, can concentrate into language a shared space and time, can focus and provide a vehicle for shared emotion, can frame civic concerns in new and subversive ways. The existence of the poet laureate comes from an idea that art and artists have a role in shaping civic space and discourse. Every writer does this in one way or another.  Near the end of my tenure as PL, I was asked to write one "legacy" piece. Instead of writing a poem, I worked with a group of artists, community members, and institutions to organize a three day summitt centred on the river that flows through this city and the traditional territories of this place. We called it "The River Talks: Gathering at Deshkan Ziibi" -- It was a confluence of people whose work, lives, concerns, cosmologies, histories, art, and activism centre on or are defined by the river. I felt very grateful and honoured to be a part of this event -- it fit with how I understand/imagine my role as a writer.  

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Both! They go hand in hand. The difficulty and challenge of outside editing helps forge a much stronger poem.  

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Reading is an essential part of writing. Also, don't be a jerk.

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?
I write in the pockets of time I can find. I do have a monthly poetry workshop--It forces me to, at the very least, write one poem per month.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Sometimes the field just needs to lay fallow. Reading is always a good way to get back into writing. Going to poetry readings is another way. Galleries/exhibitions/performances can also get the blood pumping. Probably the best thing to do is not to sweat it and just go for a walk. Staying inside your brain is not good when things are stalled. Get outside and go on an adventure.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Fresh-cut hay, WD-40, chainsaw oil, roasted chicken, manure, burning leaves.

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?
Nature, science, and visual art are big influences. Many of the poems in Kill Your Starlings were inspired by gallery visits (The ROM, AGO, National Gallery, Biodiversity Gallery at UWO). Nature is a major preoccupation --both in terms of the living world, but also in terms of how nature is represented in cultural artifacts (in car commercials for example). At UWO, I teach a nature writing course (You're a Strange Animal: Writing Nature, Writing the Self). We spend a large portion of each class outside exploring campus (the river, arboretum, forests, parking lots). We also visit the McIntosh Gallery, go on guided tours with biologists, and speak with Indigenous knowledge holders. We explore UWO's zoology collection, collect and identify benthic macroinvertebrates (stonefly larvae, dragonfly nymph, beetles, etc ) from the river, interview trees, collect garbage--we go on adventures. I encourage my students to research--to learn about the many ways we can approach and understand the living world.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
My editor, Andrew Steeves, at Gaspereau Press recently sent me two beautiful Gaspereau books: Wendell Berry's Notes: Unspecializing Poetry, and Aldo Leopold's Wherefore Wildlife Ecology. Both are terrific. Today I'm diving into Pollution is Colonialism by Max Liboiron.  Two books that I read over a year ago but keep bubbling up in my mind are Elizabeth Kolbert's Under a White Sky: The Future of Nature and Kathryn Yusoff's A Billion Black Anthropocenes Or None. I'm always reading fellow London poets and I'm really looking forward to picking up Kathryn Mockler's new book Anecdotes (Book*hug Press). Annie Dillard is the best, and if you really want to blow your mind, read The End of Everything by astrophysicist Katie Mack--I don't really understand a word of it, but it does give me a sense of my complete insignificance--which I find both comforting and terrifying.  

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Swim in Lake Superior, win a squash tournament, write the perfect poem, buy a farm with my partner and rescue animals.

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?
In school I wasn't strong in math or science, but I would love to be a biologist. I ran in the 2019 Federal Election for the Green Party, so the job of Prime Minister was also on the table.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I've never thought of writing as in opposition to something else. I do a lot of things in addition to writing (work two different jobs, run a river cleanup organization, serve on boards). I don't know if I could ever be just a writer because my writing comes from the other stuff I do (this doesn't mean that I wouldn't like much more time to write).

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Sneaking in two books: Shaun Robinson's If you Discover Fire, and Liz Howard's Letter in a Bruised Cosmos.  Movie: I Like Movies

19 - What are you currently working on?
I was recently part of a group show at Museum London called GardenShip and State (https://www.gardenship.ca/garden-ship). The collective is planning for a new show in 2024, so I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing for that. I'm hoping to work with Michelle Wilson on an installation that combines text and materials recovered from the river. I'm also currently writing a poem about electrofishing.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

rob mclennan, natalie hanna + Nina Mosall launch ARP titles in Winnipeg!

I'll be launching my latest poetry title, World's End, (2023) alongside ARP Books authors natalie hanna (lisan al'asfour; see my review of such here) and Nina Mosall (Bebakhshid) in Winnipeg on Saturday, October 21, 2023 at 6pm, aceartinc, 206 Princess Street. Might we see you there?

the ottawa small press book fair, autumn 2023 (29th anniversary!) edition: November 18, 2023

 span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

    the ottawa
    small press
    book fair

autumn 2023
will be held on Saturday, November 18, 2023 at Tom Brown Arena, 141 Bayview Station Road (NOTE NEW LOCATION).

“once upon a time, way way back in October 1994, rob mclennan and James Spyker invented a two-day event called the ottawa small press book fair, and held the first one at the National Archives of Canada...” Spyker moved to Toronto soon after our original event, but the fair continues, thanks in part to the help of generous volunteers, various writers and publishers, and the public for coming out to participate with alla their love and their dollars.

General info:
the ottawa small press book fair
noon to 5pm (opens at 11:00 for exhibitors)

admission free to the public.
$25 for exhibitors, full tables
$12.50 for half-tables
(payable to rob mclennan, c/o 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9; paypal options also available

Note: for the sake of increased demand, we are now offering half tables.
To be included in the exhibitor catalog: please include name of press, address, email, web address, contact person, type of publications, list of publications (with price), if submissions are being considered and any other pertinent info, including upcoming ottawa-area events (if any). Be sure to send by November 9th if you would like to appear in the exhibitor catalogue.

And hopefully we can still do the pre-fair reading as well! details TBA

BE AWARE: given that the spring 2013 was the first to reach capacity (forcing me to say no to at least half a dozen exhibitors), the fair can’t (unfortunately) fit everyone who wishes to participate. The fair is roughly first-come, first-served, although preference will be given to small publishers over self-published authors (being a “small press fair,” after all).

The fair usually contains exhibitors with poetry books, novels, cookbooks, posters, t-shirts, graphic novels, comic books, magazines, scraps of paper, gum-ball machines with poems, 2x4s with text, etc, including regular appearances by publishers including above/ground press, Bywords.ca, Room 302 Books, Textualis Press, Arc Poetry Magazine, Canthius, The Ottawa Arts Review, The Grunge Papers, Apt. 9, Desert Pets Press, In/Words magazine & press, knife | fork | book, Ottawa Press Gang, Proper Tales Press, 40-Watt Spotlight, Puddles of Sky Press, Invisible Publishing, shreeking violet press, Touch the Donkey, Phafours Press, etc etc etc.

The ottawa small press fair is held twice a year (apart from these pandemic silences), and was founded in 1994 by rob mclennan and James Spyker. Organized/hosted since by rob mclennan.

Come on by and see some of the best of the small press from Ottawa and beyond!

Free things can be mailed for fair distribution to the same address. Unfortunately, we are unable to sell things for publishers who aren’t able to make the event.

Also: please let me know if you are able/willing to poster, move tables or distribute fliers for the event. The more people we all tell, the better the fair!

Contact: rob mclennan at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com for questions, or to sign up for a table

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Myronn Hardy

Myronn Hardy is the author of several books of poems.  Aurora Americana is forthcoming, October 2023 (Princeton University Press).  His poems have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, POETRY, The Georgia Review, The Baffler, and elsewhere. His books have garnered the PEN/Oakland Josephine Award among others.  He is an assistant professor of English at Bates College.

1 - How did your first book change your life? The first book truly gave me confidence.  It confirmed that it was possible to do this thing I thought impossible which was to write and publish a book of poems.  How does your most recent work compare to your previous? Aurora Americana and my previous book, Radioactive Starlings, are both thinking through the notion of place.  They are doing this in different ways but the notion of place is the link by which they connect.  How does it feel different?  Aurora Americana is a dawn book.  Most of the poems take place during or close to dawn.  I’ve never centered time in this way.      

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?  I think I initially found the shapes of poems curious.  When I started learning more about what they do, how concentrated language can create feeling, make music, I knew I wanted to attempt to make poems.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? I’ve written poems that have taken years, a couple took a decade to write.  I need time to figure out what poems need and how I can give them what they need.  Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Slow.  Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes? Rarely do poems resemble first drafts.  Attempting to make and know a poem take a lot of time.  I spend a long-time compiling images, lines, phrases, sentences.  I write several versions before the version is set.  Often, during a reading, I’ll even change a word or phrase.     

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 write poem after poem.  I never know if single poems will compile into a book.  After several years, I’ll look back to see what I’ve been writing, of what I’ve been fixated.  Sometimes that looking back tells me that a book might be emerging.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?  I like doing public readings because they allow me to see and hear reactions to the work. As someone who attends poetry readings, I know that hearing poems read by the poet reinform one’s experience and knowledge of the work.   

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 very interested in how we connect and disconnect.  How do we live, thrive despite everything?  How does place inform? How do we sustain our humanity?    

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?  The role of the writer is to see what they see and write what they write.  To always go there and get to the truth despite the pull to be untrue.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)? My experience with editors has been good.  A good editor asks questions as opposed to saying, “This is wrong. Do it this way.”  And this, for me, has always been helpful.   

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?  Be free.  Your work, your writing (your poetry) is perhaps the only place where you can be free and dangerous.  You are in control of that danger.    

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?  I write every day.  I wake up very early, before sunrise.  I like to have that new day’s sunlight fall over the page as I write.  I usually write for four hours in the morning.  I end the morning writing session with a run.  I dedicate the evenings to revision. 

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?  When the writing is stalled, I read; sometimes I’ll listening to music, I’ll force myself to get lost within it. 

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home? Pine. 

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?  The natural world is my most profound influence.  It’s an inexhaustible resource.   

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?  Fernando Pessoa.  Bob Kaufman.  Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Lucille Clifton.  Mahmoud Darwish. Elizabeth Bishop.   

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?  I would like to visit Oman. 

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?  If I hadn’t become a writer, I think I would have liked to have become either an architect or astronomer. 

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?  Writing is a necessity for me.  It selected me.  And I said, yes. And despite that selection, I didn’t believe it was possible.  But here I am and here it is.  And I’m grateful. 

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film? Book: MPH and Other Poems by Ed Roberson; Film:  Death for Sale

19 - What are you currently working on?  I’m writing poem after poem.  And I have novel manuscript.  We’ll see what happens. 

12 or 20 (second series) questions;