The Line Has Shattered: Revisiting Vancouver’s Landmark 1963 Poetry Conference

Hey rob, Could you pass on this event information to all interested? I know a lot of people out there also attended the '63 Conference informally and if they have any photos or materials they could share could they contact rmctavish@hotmail.com as I am working on a documentary about the legendary event. -- Robert McTavish

The Line Has Shattered

Revisiting Vancouver’s Landmark 1963 Poetry Conference

George Bowering / Pauline Butling / Clark Coolidge / Judith Copithorne /
Maria Hindmarch / Robert Hogg / Lionel Kearns / Bernice Lever / Daphne Marlatt / Michael Palmer / Jamie Reid / Fred Wah

The 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference was actually a three-week credit summer course offered by the University of British Columbia and organized by UBC English professor Warren Tallman and poet Robert Creeley. It featured lectures, readings, panel discussions and writing workshops by Charles Olson, Creeley, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov and Margaret Avison—in Roy Miki’s words, some of “the most influential voices of the generation described as the ‘new American poets.’” The Conference marks the beginnings of a truly transnational “North American” poetic avant-garde: many of the “student” participants have gone on to have far-reaching impact on Canadian and American poetry, as they include figures such as George Bowering, Daphne Marlatt, Fred Wah, Michael Palmer, Clark Coolidge, and Phyllis Webb. Consistently referred to as “landmark,” “monumental,” and a “defining moment in the history of North American poetry,” The Line Has Shattered brings together 12 original participants 46 years later for a day of discussion and readings.

Friday August 14 2009

SFU Harbour Centre (515 West Hastings), room 1400 (Segal Centre), Vancouver BC

Panel discussion: 1-3pm

Steamworks Pub: 3-7

Readings: 7-10pm

Moderated and Hosted by Stephen Collis

Sponsored by the SFU Department of English and the Kootenay School of Writing

Free and open to the public

12 or 20 questions: with Craig Poile

Craig Poile grew up in New Brunswick. He earned degrees in journalism and English literature at Carleton University in Ottawa, where he now lives. He works as a technical writer, has been active as a playwright and theatre producer, and co-owns Collected Works Bookstore. His first book of poetry, First Crack, was shortlisted for the 1999 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.

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

My first book didn’t change my life, although I had hoped it would. So I had to find other reasons to write poetry. Now I use whatever reason is handy (which is also how I manage not to write poetry). The recent work is much more tenuous, more fearful for its existence than the poems in that collection 10 years ago.

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

I didn’t like poetry when I started my undergraduate degree, and liked it best by the time I finished. I found it did the best job of helping me figure out how to live, in a compelling and efficient way. It seemed to encompass large issues effortlessly, stealthily.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing intitially 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 work very slowly on poems, and usually not at all. Things start off quickly and then devolve into a morass of false leads and clunky phrasing. I pare away the worst of it and am left with the poem. I hope that doesn’t sound flip. I can’t be the only one who works this way.

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?

Poems for me begin with an image or experience that makes my mind teem with phrases, which I guess is a result of the emotion felt when I cradle the experience. I’m never working on a book, just individual poems, although I wouldn’t be adverse to it, if what I was writing or my goals started to take on the shape of a book.

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

I love reading my work as it allows me to make a case for the poems. Once I’ve read them, people tend to think my writing isn’t as bad as they had previously thought. This inspired the recent strategy of creating a video clip of me reading for YouTube.

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?

Mostly, I try to worry about technique and what could loosely be called “narrative.” I try not to make things too ship-shape, and to keep the language contemporary and conversational, and hope that all those larger issues will leak in. I think unless you’re totally divorced from the world, you can’t help but address questions relevant to living here and now.

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 haven’t a clue. It’s up to readers to decide what the role of the writer is.

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

I love working with an editor. For someone who works so slowly, it can speed things up considerably. It’s easier for me to react than to act. It also means at least one person has read your work, and I love knowing my work is being read, even if the person is being paid to do it.

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

Early in his career, James Merrill was asked who he was writing for, and he answered, only half-jokingly, that he was writing for the angels. And his mentor warned him, “Be careful, or only the angels will read you.”

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

I’ve given up on play writing. I was good at some aspects of it—creating dialogue, weaving larger issues into the playing out of everyday lives—but no good at things that are essential in theatre, like maintaining narrative tension and interest. The theatre folks were always going on about “stakes.” But I loved working with actors, and loved hearing them read my words. It always made the work sound ten times better. That experience has made me apply myself more creatively and consciously to reading my own poems aloud (I used to sound like I was reading by rote in Sunday School). And I still enjoy using characters in my poems at times, as opposed to an “I” persona.

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 have no writing routine. Usually, when I have exhausted any other pleasurable option, I’ll start to write a poem. If I feel I’m on to something, I just write down snatches here and there and hope I’ll get a stretch of time to visit the project.

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

I am sometimes inspired by reading other poets, but more often I find their achievement intimidating. So I read poets that I could never hope or wish to emulate in style or content, like Gerard Manley Hopkins or George Meredith, or novelists that get my mind buzzing, like Joyce Carol Oates or Martin Amis. Fiction (like music or visual art) stimulates my creative process without posing a direct threat to it.

13 - What do you really want?

To be able to sing like Rosemary Clooney. But I’d settle for Sinatra.

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’ve directly drawn on music and visual art to inspire my work in the past (see also my response to question 12).

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

I fear it’s unimaginative, but, statistically speaking, I most often return to the poetry of Wallace Stevens, W.H. Auden, James Merrill and John Ashbery. In terms of fiction, statistically again, the writers I read the most are George Eliot, Joyce Carol Oates and Martin Amis. But I try to sample lots of different authors. Right now, I’m reading Kenneth J. Harvey’s Blackstrap Hawco. He’s a stunning stylish and fearless storyteller.

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

I’d like to write a book-length series of related poems, if I could write one that was any good. Beyond that, I’ve always wanted to visit St. Petersburg, if anyone would like to take me (and find a sitter for my kids while I’m there).

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 a friend who I’ve known since junior high, and while he was going through medical school, I sent him my reading lists from my English Lit classes. In some genres and eras, his reading of the Greats and Very Goods actually went farther and wider than mine, and he even attempted a novel at one point. Similarly, hearing about his life, I was at times sorely tempted to try to become a doctor.

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

I think I was ready to write myself once I realized that just about anybody can do it. It’s also a pretty convenient and independent way to create. Lori Lansens told me she switched to writing novels from screenwriting because she got to be the writer, director, set designer—everything. And the budget allowed her to do anything. She said she’d never adapt one of her novels because she knows she’d immediately have to cut characters and scenes.

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

I’ll just going to mention what comes to mind: Fire to Fire by Mark Doty (selected poems—is that fair game?) and Magnificent Obsession by Douglas Sirk (which just got its DVD release).

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a few new poems, trying to make sure they don’t turn out too much like the last batch of poems. So often I write a poem and feel I’ve written it before. Every poem I’ve written has fallen short of the potential I’ve envisioned for it, but that feeling of potential comes back afresh with every poem I set out to write. It’s some kind of neurosis, or miracle.

12 or 20 questions archive (second series);

Martha Baillie’s The Incident Report

I find myself bored by most Canadian fiction these days. What is it I’m missing? Why are so many authors seemingly uninterested in the flow of how a line or a paragraph moves across the page apart from the sheer push of plot? Fortunately, I recently picked up a copy of Martha Baillie’s The Incident Report (Pedlar Press, 2009), an author as interested in language itself and how it moves as in what the story is telling.

I’ve been reading Toronto author Martha Baillie’s fiction since the publication of her first novel, My Sister Esther (Turnstone Press), following that little book up with Madame Balashovskaya's Apartment (Turnstone Press) and The Shape I Gave You (Knopf, 2006), before this newest novel, The Incident Report, out with Toronto’s Pedlar Press. What’s been going on with Knopf, that Baillie is part of a small list of authors who move from small presses up, publish one novel with Knopf, and then move back again? Maggie Helwig recently did the same, with her own post-Knopf novel published by Coach House Books. Is this simply the industry shifting around again? In her fourth novel, Baillie writes out the story of a librarian in the Toronto Public Library system, filling out reports after specific occurrences. As Baillie begins, “Many incidents occur in public libraries, and when one does the librarian in charge is required to fill out the necessary forms, including a Suspect Identification Chart.” The book starts out simply enough, working individual report after individual report, but they start to collect, pool, and even form images, stories and characters. After the repetition of reports, the accumulation begins to trace out a particular story.

Incident Report 7

At 2:20 this afternoon, the unusually pale female patron who suggested a few days ago, that I deserved to be placed in a cage, walked briskly into the library. She was clothed in blue jogging shorts and a white tennis skirt, which she wore as if it were a Roman toga, the waistband slung confidently over her right shoulder. The crisp white pleats released themselves in a fan across her chest. We did not speak. She found what she wanted without my assistance. She left, almost skipping with delight. Sunlight fell through the windows in broad swaths. A man looked up from his book and smiled.

Baillie’s use of “incident reports” reminds slightly of the structural concerns with Michael Turner’s American Whiskey Bar, or even the more recent Aaron Peck novel from Baillie’s same publisher, The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis (2008), and come together, coalesce, in the most wonderful, lovely, and even heartbreaking way. Memory is like a deck of cards, Kristjana Gunnars once wrote, each card reacting to the one that came before, and so does Baillie’s novel, working and winding its own way through the reader. Why can’t more people put books together like Martha Baillie?

Incident Report 78

The time was 11:35 PM. Janko’s full weight descended upon me, burying my belly, and my breathing slipped inside his. In the spreading sweetness my name fell from his mouth.

12 or 20 questions: with Johanna Skibsrud

Johanna Skibsrud’s first book of poetry, Late Nights with Wild Cowboys, published by Gaspereau Press in 2008, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award. A novel, The Sentimentalists, is forthcoming in fall, 2009, and a second book of poetry in Spring 2010. Originally from Meadowville, Nova Scotia, Johanna currently lives in Montreal.

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

I like to share my work, and after the book came out I started being able to do so more widely – I really enjoyed being invited to different reading series and poetry events in the months following publication. There’s definitely a lot going on in Canadian poetry, and it’s a tremendously supportive environment. I was really pleased to find that to be the case.

My next book, which comes out in fall 2009, is a novel, and so of course there is a big difference between the two projects. With the poetry book I could feel good about the work as a whole without feeling that each poem was perfect in itself – but because the novel needs to hold together as a single entity, I think I have felt a lot more anxiety about each different section of it.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I don’t think that I did, but it’s hard to say. I started writing both fiction and poetry as soon as I could read, and continued to do both all through my childhood. I took poetry and fiction workshops whenever I could during my years as an undergraduate and when I went on to do my Master’s at Concordia University in Creative Writing I worked on fiction for my thesis but continued to work on my poetry as well. They each offer me something completely different. Sometimes, if an idea for a poem is just not working I will realize that it’s not really a poem at all. Instead, maybe it’s just a fragment of a short story, or of a longer piece of fiction – like maybe just something a character in a story thinks about, or says. It also happens the other way. I’ll get going on something in piece of fiction that I realize I need to cut and completely re-work as a poem.

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 comeout of copious notes?

At first I write quickly. Then I agonize about every single line, for months or years. What ends up as the “final shape” is usually very different from where a project began, and, because there has often been such a long editing process, I very rarely feel completely “finished” about anything. I think I could work on a single poem forever, but a bigger part of me wants – eventually – to move on.

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

When working on poetry, it is for me very much a process of working on shorter pieces that then combine into a larger project. I don’t usually have a plan for a poem at all when I sit down to write it other than a particular feeling that I had that I want to explore, or a particular line in my head that seemed to come from nowhere. Poetry for me is precisely that – that not-knowing. Seeing where, and how far, you can get with it.

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

Usually I enjoy readings immensely, but I wouldn’t say they are part of my creative process in that I only read things that I feel are as finished as they are going to be, or pretty near. I think readings are very important, though – first of all, they are a great way to meet other writers and hear what they are working on. It is also a great way to be tangibly reminded of the fact that the work is meant for, and is (hopefully) going out to, an audience of readers and listeners; that writing is ultimately about communication.

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?

The big question for me always seems to have to do with that great gap between what I want to express and what I am able to. What is the distance between the brain, the heart, and the page? How can that distance be traversed? And to what purpose?

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?

A writer, I think, is that person who is able to keep these – very general – questions in mind. I think that we live in a world with less and less space for that sort of reflection – of thinking about and questioning things. There can be, and is, of course, so many different kinds of writing, and as many different books as there are experiences – as there are thoughts in your head in a lifetime... And that’s the beauty of it, I think. I hate the idea that some people seem to have that there are or could be “too many books,” or “more writers than people who read” etc. I don’t think there are nearly enough books! There is so much more, obviously, that we need to explore – that we need to expand, and celebrate, and criticize – and there is more of it every day.

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

I have been incredibly lucky to have been able to work with Gaspereau Press on both my book of poetry as well as my forthcoming novel – the editing process on both books was extremely enjoyable, and an essential part to the completion of both projects. I think that an outside editor allows the project a bit of necessary breathing room. A writer will have been living so close up against something they’ve been working on for so long that they will have – in all likelihood – lost perspective on some aspects of it. A good editor can identify these blind spots.

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

One time, my father and I were listening to this NPR interview with Ray Bradbury and he was talking about a time, when he was a child, when he went to meet the electric-man at the travelling circus. The electric-man apparently put his hand on Ray Bradbury’s head and said, “Live forever!” That is the best piece of advice I have ever heard.

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

I tend to work on one major project at a time, but during that time I often save up ideas for other projects, and that makes it easier to feel okay about finishing a project. Switching between genres is also refreshing for me.

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

I try to write in the mornings. I get up, get my coffee, and turn on the computer. Then just try to stay put until noon. I don’t ever give myself any specific project or task. If something isn’t working on a particular day, I will work on something else.

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

I have a lot of notes and stored up ideas that I have saved in little notebooks from various times in my life, so once in awhile I will go back to look at these books and get an idea from there. Mostly, though, I have resigned myself to the idea that the majority of those little notes that I thought at one time were so important, and perhaps the beginning of something great, will never actually get dealt with. There’s just too much.

13 - What fairy tale character do you resonate with most?

I’m not sure I understand the question. I’d like to be the rooster from the Bremen Town Musicians. I’m terrified of being the wife from The Fisherman and his Wife, but I don’t think I will be now. I think that – as I get older – I get more easily satisfied with things.

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 think probably visual art and nature are the biggest influences on my work. Finding ways to incorporate many different ways of experiencing and understanding the world into literature is important, of course, I think, and for me, the visual always seems to offer an interesting angle – it allows me to access a world which is, of course, my own, but is at the same time not my own.

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

I am reading a lot of American poetry right now. I went back to school last fall and am currently studying toward my PhD in English Literature at the Université de Montréal, so I am lucky that my work right now is to read. My comprehensive exams, which I will sit for next spring, are on American Literature from 1900 to the present day, and I have included a fair amount of poetry on that list. Wallace Stevens, George Oppen, and Jorie Graham are the three poets that I hope to work on for my dissertation – their poetry just continually astounds to me.

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

There are too many things. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Also my ideas change frequently, or I learn about new things that I didn’t even know existed and then I want to do that. I feel okay about it. I don’t feel panicked or anything, or like I have to do it all. But there is – there’s an awful lot I’d like to do.

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 this is a fairly loose, in-your-dreams sort of question, I would probably end up choosing country music star – it would be hard to let the circus dream die, though. Otherwise, I have never seriously considered a profession other than writing.

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

I was extremely lucky in the fact that even as a young child I was encouraged to pursue my writing. My mother is an English teacher and a great lover of books, and so she was very pleased to have me take an interest in literature as well. I was always given the sense, from her, that I could succeed at whatever I chose to do, and I have never really doubted it – I am continually grateful to my mother for that.

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

I just read Don DeLillo’s White Noise again, and was blown away again by how he is able to be both amazingly funny and devastatingly serious at the same time. As for a movie: Waltz with Bashir, Ari Folman’s animated documentary, which I saw earlier this winter, is extraordinary, I think.

20 - What are you currently working on?

A second collection of poetry, forthcoming with Gaspereau in Spring 2010, as well as a collection of short stories.

12 or 20 questions archive (second series);

12 or 20 questions: with Kevin Killian

[photo credit: William E. Jones] Kevin Killian has written two novels, Shy (1989) and Arctic Summer (1997), a book of memoirs, Bedrooms Have Windows (1990), two books of stories, Little Men (1996) and I Cry Like a Baby (2001) and two books of poetry, Argento Series (2001), and Action Kylie (2008). With Lew Ellingham, Killian has written often on the life and work of the American poet Jack Spicer [1925-65] and with Peter Gizzi has edited My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (2008) for Wesleyan University Press. For the San Francisco Poets Theater Killian has written thirty plays, including Stone Marmalade (1996, with Leslie Scalapino), The American Objectivists (2001, with Brian Kim Stefans), and Often (also 2001, with Barbara Guest). New projects include Screen Tests, an edition of Killian's film writing, and Impossible Princess, a new fiction collection forthcoming from City Lights Books in 2009. A new novel Spreadeagle will appear in the spring.

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 was called “Desiree,” and when it appeared in the estimable e.g series edited by David Highsmith, I felt well and truly part of the so-called New Narrative movement then underway in San Francisco. To be a part of something is a condition to which I have always aspired --bourgeois upbringing? My more recent work has been more conceptual in nature--how that feels different--mmm, not sure, but it is less personal for sure.

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

I came to fiction first, but by the time I got out of high school I thought of myself as a poet. Then in grad school it was back to writing novels. Endless series of novels like Robertson Davies, only mine were basically all about how I had suffered growing up on Long Island, a well-to-do suburb of NYC.

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

It took me 18 years to finish my first novel, SHY. My third novel, SPREAD EAGLE, was begun in 1990 and is not finished yet. On the other hand I have written hundreds of smaller pieces pretty much on a first draft, and yet they’re nearly all of them awful. But good and bad are terms I pretty much grew out of once I moved to San Francisco, the birthplace of the provisional and the contingent.

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 done both, though for ARGENTO SERIES and ACTION KYLIE I knew from the beginning of each project that they would be booklength. Each took 8 years to write. Now I begin work on another long serial poem, this one based on Bruce Benderson’s writing on filmmaker James Bidgood, the man who made Pink Narcissus.

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

Public readings are just my meat. I wonder if I hadn’t overcome a crippling shyness, through the aid of alcohol. if I’d ever have written a thing? I hear myself acting out everything I right. A doctor friend told me that was the mark of the narcissist.

[photo credit: towel designed by Kylie Minogue, and photographed by Job Piston] 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?

Last summer, I presented at the KSW (Vancouver) “Positions colloquium,” and found myself responding spontaneously to the questions organizers posed to the panelists: “How is poetry a political field of action? What can poetry un/do? What do 'limits' mean for poetry? What are the crucial issues in taking a social (ideological) position with in a poetics today? What relationships arise between cultural production and broader social projects?”

In Fred Wah’s “adjacentcy” I find an encouraging analogue for my own policies of composition. Despite its social construction, the poem is always facing down insinuations that it lacks political efficacy, and maybe the friction I borrow from Wah can be brought to bear, like scouts rubbing sticks together, into a small fire of sorts. My own interest in the low frequency between life and death, and our continuous battle with disease, ignites as the latest “gay plague” makes mincemeat out of gay men here in the USA, a virulent strain known as MRSA producing superantigen exotoxins. For the gay men largely involved in the struggle against MRSA, what has made matters worse is the accompanying media sensationalism that has scared many of those infected from seeking treatments since, in a vicious Catch 22, gay treatment clinics are precisely the place where the bacteria strikes. And since time is of the essence in seeking treatment, even an hour’s worth of fear-derived hesitation has geometrically dangerous potential.

I work from a New Narrative poetics of shame, loss, shifting borders, humiliation and resistance—the monstrous in fact. Today figure and ground lose definition, as the diagnosis becomes the body, the body the sentence. My books Action Kylie (in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni, 2008) and Argento Series (Krupskaya, 2001), both examine the fantasies of a mass public projected across the suffering and subaltern body, and the friction that results calls up both direct political action and a strange poetic miasma, like the protoplasm you can glimpse in low-lying cemeteries on certain wintry nights by moonlight. However, poetics is a collaborative project and I look forward to finding out what you think, rob. In a weird turnabout I realize I don’t even know if you’re gay or straight or whatever.

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 think it was 1991 when I realized that the writer has no role in the larger culture. Succeeding developments have only hardened this condition, but it is still something of a surprise, rather like the man who can’t remember he has now only one hand. I keep getting that shock all over again. That said, the role the writer used to play was probably socially retardataire, best left to the sweepings of history. Through accident or fate, some writers change the world, for good or ill I can’t say. Ultimately we are less harmful than movie stars.

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

Neither really, is that a naif thing to say? I enjoy working with editors and can be remarkably submissive all things considered, but on the other hand have done fine without an editor also. No wait, I do need an editor when I‘m writing about art.

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

This one is really dumb, but it was to the effect of learn how to masturbate with either hand because you never know what’s going to happen.

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

I understand the appeal of genre, but I have never been able to keep coloring within the lines. I am sloppy, messy, and slapdash. Eileen Myles said once that they only reason they invented genre is for marketing purposes. I could never write a detective novel for example. I lack discipline and yet, I don’t believe in it much.

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?

Well, I have a regular 9 to 5 job, so I get up early and hack about before leaving for the office. Somehow I manage to get a fair amount of something done everyday, even if it is just answering one e-mail, I don’t give up. Working people have so many more distractions than the idle, but as to who gets more work done, I couldn’t say and it’s a question that’s tormented me for 25 years.

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

To Kylie Minogue.

13 - If there was a fire, what's the first thing you'd grab?

My autograph books, my pictures by Raymond Pettibon, the back up drive to hard drive. and then things precious to my wife like her cats.

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 am very drawn to visual art, to pop music and opera, to office protocols.

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

This is a great question. I’m lucky to have been nourished by several different communities, right from the beginning. I live in San Francisco where poetry always seems to matter; and also a site where large numbers of queer writers gather together as a culture; the “New Narrative” writers of the 70s and 80s—and the later such writers of the 90s and 00’s--remain my closest colleagues.

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

Make a million dollars, or whatever the currency will be this time next year.

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’m actually a secretary who writes as a hobby. And yet, if I had to start over again, I think I would have become an academic. If I didn’t know how to read or write, I would have tried becoming a psychic healer and trance medium.

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

I did do something else, but writing was always going to be the solution to the age-old reading problem of, there’s a gap in one’s shelf of books, and you just can’t find the missing link, you must write it yourself.

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

The last great book, Ugly Man by Dennis Cooper. The last great film, By Love Possessed (John Sturges, 1960) with Lana Turner, Jason Robards Junior and Efrem Zimbalist Junior. We call it, War of the Juniors. People who ooh and aah about Douglas Sirk don’t really have it together, they have ignored the absolute perfection of BLP.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Today I am writing a bit more in SPREAD EAGLE, also working on a new full-length play THE SMITH FAMILY, and writing a bit of the introduction for the forthcoming anthology of US poets theater work (1945-1985) that David Brazil and I are doing for Kenning Editions (Chicago). It’s going to be astounding, wait and see, rob!

12 or 20 questions archive (second series);

Ongoing notes: some journals

Saskatoon SK: It’s been a while since I’ve gone through an issue of Grain magazine, but the new issue (volume 36, no. 3/spring 2009), subtitled “melt,” heralds the first under new management, with editor Sylvia Legris, along with poetry editor Mari-Lou Rowley and fiction editor Terry Jordan. Speaking of such, when do we get to see another book of fiction from Jordan, pray tell? I’m intrigued at how this issue is structured, under three subheadings—doused against gravity, dissent balloons and stories from the ground. Where is it Grain is taking us? As Legris writes in her “Editor’s Note”: “With future issues, instead of a Poetry Editor we are going to move to having one revolving/evolving editorial position or consultant, a change that will make Grain a more dynamic publication, that will allow us to be more adventurous, to infuse the magazine with electric sensibilities.” Over the past few years, what few issues have come my way have certainly been more than worth it, and the editorial by incoming editor Legris promises that there is certainly more to come. Does anyone remember when the journal used to include non-fiction pieces, including short histories of various prairie publishers?

I’ve started looking forward to new poetry by east coast poet Tonja Gunvaldsen Klassen, after discovering her third collection, Lean-to [see my review of such here], so able to read seven new pages, her poem “Sidhe of the city,” is a delight. If only the spacing didn’t make it so difficult to replicate online. Another highlight came from Jim Johnstone, author of the recent The Velocity of Escape (Guernica Editions, 2008), through his “Abattoir Ghazals”:

Matted fur and spoiled blueberries—a black
bear circles our camp, hounds the dusk.

Gripped fist, his nose can tell where our hands
have been. The lake ruined, clear.

Knives out, your lungs are dissident balloons,
winter gloves inflated with fingers.

Drunk again. The blush of warm lips behind
the subway’s false front, weak knees.

Underground, rain diffuses on rail, burrows
into sheets of limestone and clay.

Your stop is a synapse, the gradient between
olive and azure. A bare nerve.

Good to see some more worthy ghazals out in the world; there’s been a plethora of them lately, and they haven’t always been worthwhile, with some notable exceptions being Rob Winger, for example, and even Mari-Lou Rowley.

Las Vegas NV: I try to keep away from talking about journals that I’m actually included in, but I can’t help but mention this new double issue of Interim (Volume 27, No. 1 +2), with a rather large and impressive Canadian poets feature edited by Vancouver poet Jen Currin, including one of the last interviews with Vancouver poet Robin Blaser before he died (the issue was going to press as news of his death emerged). I’m hoping that, after some time, there might even be some other interviews perhaps emerge, or this one be made more available to those of us up north?

Defend the Zero

I don’t know
if they’re worth the money
quieter than forever

that’s the “new” style
we have doctors
in tears, right

but you’re the client
as far as you’re concerned
you’re a best buy

a handy brand
promptly, promontorily
burning up, toast. (Fred Wah)

Before Currin sent out her original call, I hadn’t actually heard of this journal before, and now, after seeing the broad range of authors and work included inside, I’m wondering just what rock I might have been hiding under, with familiar names including translations of the work of Erik Lindner (who read at the ottawa international writers festival a number of years ago) and Hoa Nguyen, as well as a whole slew of unfamiliar names, attached to some interesting bits of poetry and fiction.

Fieldguide

is it red one it is
desert paintbrush it is skyrocked
is it a pink a purple
shooting star is it a wild rose
primrose a morning glory
is it growing on top of a cactus
so prickly pear is it cold
out still glacier lily
can you blow the petals poppy, orange
desert dandelion blown while
it is a weed nonnative pull it
it is this or it is that one
I saw a purple bell upside down
and the width of two fingers
I’ve never seen anything
like that way out here (Kathryn Cowles)

What I like about Currin’s selection is the range of authors, and the fact that she’s not working through “best” or “emerging” or anything like that, but a grouping of authors from, in or previously lived in this northern clime, some thirty-four poets an average American poetry audience might be completely unaware of, including Christian Bök, Jason Christie, Erin Moure, Christine Leclerc, Nicole Brossard, Stuart Ross, Rita Wong, Richard Van Camp, Sina Queyras, Ken Babstock, Kim Minkus, Jeff Derksen, Lisa Robertson, Eve Joseph and Alexandra Wilder. As Currin writes in her intro to the section:

Saying yes brought me to this next issue: What is a “Canadian”? I mean, was I supposed to ask each contributor to send a copy of their passport along with their poems? What about poets who live in Canada, but are citizens of other countries? What about Canadians who live in Brooklyn, Paris, Arizona? And, as Rita Wong notes in “alpha bets,” aren’t most of us living on land “stolen through lies, deceit, conceit” anyway? I finally decided that, for the purposes of this section, “Canadian” meant Canadian citizens as well as people who have lived here for several years and plan to stay.

It seems pretty reasonable to me.

REMOTE SILOS

I wear a gas mask
and crouch in my basement.
A lady makes sponge cake
up in the kitchen.
The lights all go out,
because of the lightning.
The plastic castle
has plastic guards
and a plastic moat.
I can’t remember if
I’m a man with a wife
and three kids or
if I’m a kid. Lately,
I think of bombs.
I run towards me
in slow motion.
Someone asks
if I’m a commercial. (Stuart Ross)

12 or 20 questions: with Jake Kennedy

Jake Kennedy lives in Kelowna, B.C. with his partner Marlo Edwards and daughter Rae. Jake teaches at Okanagan College. His chapbook, entitled Hazard, won the bpnichol chapbook award in 2007.

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

Human: When will Jake get his first trade book published?
ALICE: Soon, I think.
Human: When that book is published, how will it change Jake's life?
ALICE: The past is history, the future a mystery. Today is a gift, that's why it is called "the present".
Human: Then you are suggesting that he should title this future collection 'Cliché'?
ALICE: Good reasoning. If you were him would you do that?

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

To me, poetry sounds like this: “The ever-hooded sea.” Kapow. Whereas fiction too often sounds like: “The Marquis went out at five o’clock.” Zzzzz. That is, poetry seems marvelous because its logic is so far away from logic.

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?

More and more I love the drafting process. It’s very exciting to me to have that text there on the page and then to get a chance to reshape it. I love finding the bad notes and then trying to replay that section or idea. It’s taken me quite a while to come to terms with the question ‘why does this matter?’ But that kind of demand—applicable, I think, to conceptual or lyrical poetry—can really wake you up.

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 tend to start with short pieces (and I’m still working on building them into something larger) and these poems begin more as an appetite. The writing of the poems, for me, seems like a physical process at first: a part of the stomach and a part of the mouth, too. When I write it feels like I’m eating!

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

I love the idea of the poetry reading being a gathering point for public culture. However, I associate most public readings with desk-drool and the sound of flat-lining. So, in the reading series that I help co-ordinate (LIT@ALT), I try to go for a more collaborative, sharing model. For example, I try to pair up a writer with a visual artist. The focus on this kind of reading, then, is on the process of “making” and on communicating that process to a (often non-specialist) community. My colleague and friend Jason Dewinetz does this in his Vertigo Voices reading series, too. Otherwise, I would like to use the poetry reading as an excuse to gather for a party. kevin mcpherson eckhoff and I recently put on an event called Word Ruckus that was an all-day/all-night poetry shindig: we interviewed kids about poetry/words; we baked poetry cakes; we listened to ten or more writers read their work; we showed poetry films; we drank the beer. I think it was fun! In terms of whether I personally like to read my work in public, I do. I like to pretend, when I am before the mic, that I am one-part Leonard Cohen and one-part Jim Morrison. In truth, I am just all-parts bald.

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?

This is a great question. I like to think that I am interested in and even committed to social justice/critiques of power and yet I recognize that my own art is hardly subversive or radical in terms of direct political action. So for a while I have been worrying, or worried, that the work I was doing needed to sharpen its critique. However, what I’ve come to realize is that as much as I admire Critical Art Ensemble, for instance, I am not primarily built to do that kind of creative action. I take some other guidance then from folks like Erica Hunt: “Poetry makes a path out of ordinary language, contesting the ordinary claims about the ‘real.’” So what I want to do in my poetry is to just keep convincing myself that ‘extraordinary connections’ is the condition of reality—therefore, everyone and everything matters. And what I want to do in my life is act on this evidence.

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 will say that my position is that the writer should have many, perhaps often contradictory, roles in culture. I think it’s great to have Geoffrey Hills and Anne Waldmans, you know? That is, I think it is healthy for our world to have examples of both “poet as purist” and “poet as agitator.” However, I do think the role of the writer should have something to do with using the imagination in the service of widening hope or wonder. That sounds inflated, maybe, or vague but I believe the writer’s job has to be connected with potentiality, with offering glimpses of openness where one thought everything was otherwise foreclosed.

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

Human: When Jake works with an outside editor will it be helpful?
ALICE: The past and future are one.

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

I think the thing that I see in all the writers that I admire is a pretty impressive work ethic and a seriousness about the “labour” of writing. And I think this “seriousness” transcends literary camps. So Kenneth Goldsmith’s discipline in writing Day, say, and Donald Hall’s ten-years-in-the-drawer philosophy are equally as inspiring to me. I like the idea of dedicating oneself so wholly to a project. In terms of specific advice, I had the great luck to study under Don Coles for a few years at York University. What Don modelled was a Cyril Connolly-type stance that you should always be trying to make your art great. I take this to be not a self-inflating pose but rather a reminder to be respectful to the deep wonders and potentiality of the art.

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 try to write every day. I tend to work in the mornings—before my daughter wakes up! But I also try to steal an hour or so during the day. I often have several smaller pieces on the go and so most of my writing time is spent redrafting rather than composing anew.

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

If a tour through my bookshelf doesn’t help then I often get jumpstarts from the visual arts.

12 - If there was a fire, what's the first thing you'd grab?

The family is outside, safe on the lawn, right? If so, my College-issued T60 laptop—because nowadays I often type directly into the computer. I know it’s sexier to use a Moleskine but I have been told by real punks that it’s even sexier to use a 4-year-old PC with a questionable processor and 20-year-old hard-drive technology.

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?

As I mention above, I am pretty fascinated by painting and sculpture and performance art. I love music, too, but it very rarely sends me to the page.

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

For me, so far, the way has been shown by writers like Herr Rilke, Osip Mandelstam, Andre Breton, Francis Ponge, Wallace Stevens, Rosmarie Waldrop, Susan Howe, Harryette Mullen, Erica Hunt, Christian Bök, Lisa Robertson, Jena Osman. All of these writers, it seems to me, are (or were) committed to extending the possibilities of language/speech. Also, despite what I would call the drive to innovate that each of these writers embody they—it seems to me—still produce deeply human work. Also, at Okanagan College here, I am very lucky to be surrounded by some wonderful writers. Besides mr. mcpherson eckhoff, I regularly talk or share writing with Jason Dewinetz and Sean Johnston. These are my people!

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

kevin mcpherson eckhoff and I would like to get a space in downtown Kelowna called the Okanagan Poetry Centre. We would like to fill it with 20 thousand books of free poetry. We would like to have free food and free music. We would like to have a stage in there. We would like it to be open for 24 hrs, seven days a week.

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

I would like to be an engaged Zen priest, rob. I would also like to be a right-winger on the Toronto Maple Leafs if the NHL was actually called the APHLoN (Anarchist Pacifist Hockey League of Niceness).

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

I like this line from Mr. Stevens: “I had a feeling about the world that created a need that nothing satisfied except poetry.”

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

I am working through Pierre Joris’s and Jerome Rothenberg’s Poems for the Millennium anthologies. How did they build such amazing volumes? It’s pretty humbling reading these astonishing international poets. The last great film I saw was Wolverine. This is a feminist satire of the X-Men character—in this version, instead of boasting incandescent rage and fists that produce phallic blades, the protagonist is even-tempered and just knits a lot (needles in lieu of Adamantium claws). It’s fucking awesome!

19 - What are you currently working on?

I am working on a collection of poems entitled Book of Things. Most of the pieces are “studies” that try to use objects/things as starting points for wider (I hope!) meditations on the stuff of our world. It’s my canuck attempt to do Francis Ponge. I am also working with kevin mcpherson eckhoff on Death Valley: A Collaborative Community Western Novel. kevin and I are soliciting a single, western-themed line from folks in and around our Okanagan community. Our job, after collecting a couple of thousand lines, will be to arrange those single lines into a so-called coherent narrative. This “novel” interests me because it shifts some of the codes/mechanics of poetry (compression; chance; assemblage; disjuncture) into the realm of narrative fiction.

12 or 20 questions archive (second series);

lainna, ottawa, etcetera;

Rebecca Wolff, The King: poems

It’s enough to make one envious, to see poets with hardcover poetry collections. For her third poetry collection, The King (New York NY: W.W. Norton, 2009), New York poet and editor Rebecca Wolff works through “a lyrical map of the maternal mind” through seven sections of indirect directness, writing straight ahead lines that go occasionally twisty, writing mothering, motherhood and all else that comes.

Content is King

I queen it

over emptiness.

I invent it, a surplus,
a bombast of nervous

encryption so the process
of blanking becomes

isometric—Pilates.
I think of how clueless

and relentless-
ly depthless

my mother, nonetheless
she birthed and hers

is the aspect
and prospect

the matter
and subject

and

gangway.
I find something to say.

The king is content.

There are so many books of poetry about being a new parent, or being in a new relationship, that it becomes hard to make such interesting and/or unique. How is it so many of these fall apart in the writing, holding so tight to the sentiment that all else is squeezed out? Wolff, against type, manages to write with a serious lightness that makes the language sing, and the world come alive through her own wonderings, her own queries and the way she moves through contemplating just how she got where she managed to be, with partner and child. There are parts of this collection that remind of the poetry of New York poet Rachel Zucker as well, through Wolff’s direct line, Wolff’s direct statement questioning, whether partner, child, and all else that becomes.

There are Certain Relationships That I
Don’t Understand

to this house
(I own it)

to this boy
(I made him, his whole body)

What is my relationship to the man’s sleeping head
I don’t know him

And the mother
(regarded, regretted, enabled, held the door)

12 or 20 questions: with Lisa Robertson

Lisa Robertson was born in Toronto and lived for many years in Vancouver, before moving to France, and then California. Her first book, XEclogue, was published in 1993 by Tsunami Editions; Debbie: An Epic, and The Weather followed, from New Star (co-published by Reality Street in the UK); then The Men (Bookthug, 2006) and Lisa Robertson’s Magenta Soul Whip (Coach House 2009). A book of essays, Occasional Works and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture, was published by Clearcut (USA, 2003) and Coach House. R’s Boat will be out with University of California Press in 2010. She has been the recipient of the Relit Award and the bp Nichol Chapbook Award, and has taught and held residencies at the Kootenay School of Writing, California College of the Arts, University of Cambridge, Capilano College, University of California Berkeley, University of California San Diego, American University of Paris and the Naropa Institute. She is currently working collaboratively on sound and video-based projects.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life?

I began to travel by airplane more often than once a decade.

How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?


My most recent work is my previous work. One can and often does occupy multiple and simultaneous points in time.

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

Through rhyme.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project?

I’m starting a project all the way through. There’s only starting and stopping; no middle. So it has taken up to 15 years to start a project.

Does your writing intitially 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?


No norm. Either can be true.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you?

In an archive.

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?


Both of these together and separately.

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

This depends very much on the sort of room I’m in and with whom.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing?

No. My theoretical concerns are in front of my writing.

What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work?

I don’t answer questions—I seek them out, then I describe and embellish them.

What do you even think the current questions are?


The current questions, as I read them here, are narrowly binaristic. Yes/No, either/or. I would like to gently inflate each binary so there’s more space, more pleasure, more infinity inside the question.

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 role of the writer being is to write. This should happen while listening. To the extent that writing and listening are happening simultaneously, there will be critique, difficult and pleasurable and getting larger.

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


Essential, difficult, euphoric.

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


Eat your vegetables.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry critical prose)?

I write sentences. They comport themselves in any genre.

What do you see as the appeal?


They’re shapely. They often make different rhythmic propositions, which keeps one alert and precise.

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?


Letting the dog out while the kettle boils, tea, armchair, book, notebook, looking at a tree.

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


Libraries. Botanicals. Music. Hot baths are good too.

13 - If there was a fire, what's the first thing you'd grab?


Not a thing, but Rosa, my dog.

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?


Rhythm and subjectivity inform my work. In terms of disciplines, I don’t experience borders.

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

Christine Stewart, Denise Riley, Stacy Doris, Matthew Stadler, Erin Moure.

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


An orchard.

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?


Before I was a writer I was a cook, then a bookseller. Either of those would have made a good continuing life.

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


Shyness and friendship.

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


Apart from teaching books—The Order of Things, and The Archaeology of Knowledge-- right now, Bouvard and Pecuchet, and the Dictionary of Received Ideas. Henri Meschonnic, La Rime et la Vie. Marcel Jousse. Emile Benveniste. Duras, Ecrire. Last winter, all of Bresson, and then Pedro Costa.

20 - What are you currently working on?

The Nature of Things.

12 or 20 questions archive (second series);

12 or 20 questions: with Beth Bachmann

Beth Bachmann’s first book, Temper, was selected by Lynn Emanuel as winner of the AWP Award Series 2008 Donald Hall Prize in Poetry. Emanuel writes, “Temper's account of a murder encompasses the polarities of flesh and spirit, love and horror. The drama of this horrifying event, however, is not what is most compelling about Temper. What is most compelling is the way Beth Bachmann presides over the drama with a courage and restraint which manifest themselves as beauty.” Bachmann holds a graduate degree from Concordia University in Montreal and teaches at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

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

Temper made me more self-aware. I’m starting to get my number: it’s a little disturbing.

The poems in Temper are short lyrics. The new work is getting longer, growing from eight to, say, fifteen lines, which, for me, is a bit traumatizing. I’m still writing about violence and power but the territory is bigger and the terms are changing.

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

The closest I’ve come to fiction is a prose poem I passed off as a short short in order to sneak into Richard Peabody’s wild anthology of Alice in Wonderland inspired stories, Alice Redux. I like white space. I don’t see myself attempting prose until I become more comfortable with the just-beyond-sonnet-size poem.
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?

Right now I’m writing in a giant 300 pg word doc where poems and notes come and go. I like white space but also fear it. I think I’m haunted by the Just Say No commercial where the kid’s on the verge of the empty pool.

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 like to go slow and amass a lot of material. The loyal bits will come back and bite me.

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

I live in quiet isolation in Tennessee. Readings feel like being let out of the cage. Sometimes it takes awhile to realize the door is open.

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?

Good question. I’m interested in lyric repetition and boundaries. In Temper I thought a lot about violence and realism and I wanted to see how far I could go, how far the reader would follow.

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?

Role-play’s a tricky one. It’s never one way.

Silence in poetry is important, but not too much.

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

I’ll take all the help I can get.

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

What do the girl/boyscouts say? Be prepared. Do your best.

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

On good days, I can write all day and forget to eat. By writing all day, I mean hungrily following 4-8 lines.

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

Listening online to Komunyakaa, Li-Young Lee and Carl Philips is a good thing to do repeatedly.

12 - What fairy tale character do you resonate with most?

Probably an animal, most likely a wolf, possibly a human animal hybrid, something wearing an inappropriate dress. It’s always inappropriate when animals wear dresses.

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?

Tennessee is so green nothing gives up life. No matter how hard you try to beat it back. For music: Kathleen Hanna, Poly Styrene, Shirley Temple. For scientists: my husband, the chemist and caver. For art: I’m currently obsessed with the artist whose work is featured on my book, Tim Yankosky.

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

Nick Flynn and Alex Lemon tell me things I want to know and help keep an eye on me.

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

I’ve never been to the ballet. I’d like to see Swan Lake.

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?

Most likely I’d be begging for my job back at Rodi’s Hot Wings.

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

I was studying photography but I couldn’t afford the paper. Sometimes I miss the winding noise.

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

I just finished Wilfred Owen’s war letters home to his own dearest mother. One begins STAND BACK FROM THE PAGE! AND DISINFECT YOURSELF. That’s pretty great. The other night I watched Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf - not my favorite Bergman but good thought as always on art, reality and the inner life. Plus Max von Sydow in heavy lipstick.

19 - What are you currently working on?

poems. (more) dark poems about power.

12 or 20 questions archive (second series);