Lauren Russell, What’s Hanging on the Hush

TRANSITIVE

I am always the woman in red.

I am always huddling in some round room.

Even when I am not wearing red, I am still the woman in red.

To be forever single is like wearing a flag to a funeral.

“It is always more satisfying to harbor a secret crush,” Helen

warned Paris, but neither he nor the thousand ships was listening.

Helen in Egypt’s identity crisis is attributed to the author’s:

“Did you see H.D. in Borderline? She looked like a heroin

addict before heroin was even a thing.” Opted instead

for mediums, furniture rattling, Freud.

“I hear James Franco is playing H.D. in a new bioflick

from Focus Features.” I am confusing the story of H.D.’s death

with the story of Gertrude Stein’s. Bryher a stand-in

for Alice B. Tolkas, gender expression reversed.

Q: What is the answer? A: In that case, what is the question?

I feel least black around those who are confident

of their blackness. I feel less queer when told

I can’t be a butch so I must be a femme.

I am I because I will never learn to drive.

Life structured toward a pedestrian mobility.

I take a bus. Passing under numerous bridges.

And stop outside a museum. Beside a statue of Helen.

In Egypt or Troy? (Do I wear my skin like a costume

or a uniform? Do I wear my hair like a fountain?)

The author of the chapbook Dream-Clung, Gone (Brooklyn NY: Brooklyn Arts Press, 2012), Pittsburgh poet Lauren Russell’s full-length poetry debut is What’s Hanging on the Hush (Boise ID: Ahsahta Press, 2017), a collection of smart, vibrant lyrics that engage sound, rhythm and meaning, each poem provocative and performative and incredibly rich. Rippling outward from the intimate, the poems in What’s Hanging on the Hush are nimble, managing to bounce across melancholy, lists and layers of cultural capital and resonance, as she opens the poem “HAIR,” writing: “Her huffy histrionics take no heckling, that / uppity puffed-up pastiche mishmash. / The hellion half-breed’s / hussyfooted a harvest, a windfall / ensnarled in her miscegenated sassy nappery.”

These poems strike and sing, strike out and revel in the sounds, even as she utilizes the lyric mode to unpack as much information as possible, writing and performing a series of sing-song essay-poems. As she writes to open the poem “ON LONELINESS”: “I am lonely because I could not learn to be a body. / I was born upside down and could never balance on one foot.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Diana Arterian

Diana Arterian is the author of Playing Monster :: Seiche (1913 Press, 2017), the chapbooks With Lightness & Darkness and Other Brief Pieces (Essay Press, 2017), Death Centos (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013), and co-editor of Among Margins: Critical & Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics (Ricochet, 2016). A Poetry Editor at Noemi Press, her creative work has been recognized with fellowships from the Banff Centre, Caldera, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo, and her poetry, essays, and translations have appeared in Asymptote, BOMB, Black Warrior Review, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. Born and raised in Arizona, she currently resides in Los Angeles where she is a doctoral candidate in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. 

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 book-length poetry manuscript, Playing Monster :: Seiche (just out of 1913 Press), has changed my life in that it is a kind of memoir in verse. To have a life story—or at least a childhood story and its reverberations into events from adulthood—out in the world and available to strangers to read, consider, and respond to is thrilling and a little terrifying. Thus far those responses have been with keen understanding of my intentions, and often in ways that are thought-provoking for me. Playing Monster :: Seiche has also given those close to me greater insight into my past. My first chapbook, Death Centos, came out from Ugly Duckling in 2013. It was accepted in 2011, which was right after I finished my MFA, only a few journal publication credits to my name. As someone who recognized UDP’s valuable contributions to publishing, it was immensely affirming to me at a time when I was mostly getting rejections and muddling through the beginnings of an understanding of my creative work. These two works are different in that Death Centos is entirely found-text/conceptual, and Playing Monster :: Seiche has only a handful of found-text pieces. The chapbook was a kind of peering into the unknown of death, seeing what those at its precipice might be able to tell us (whether on a death-bed or killed by a governmental power), while the full-length book is trying to hold multiple tethers through first-person poems regarding abuse and violence. 

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

I think, like so many, I started penning some unsteady verse as an angst-ridden teenager. The page was a place to set my feelings. And poetry to me, more than other genres at that time, was a space to explore the messiest of feelings without the strictures of narrative or greater meaning beyond teenage solipsism. It also doesn’t involve the consistency of journaling, or garner the attention of a prying sibling’s eye. My siblings and I read each other’s diaries all-too-often in my house when we were growing up—we’re all experienced heart-shaped lock pickers by now. I have since deeply embraced nonfiction, particularly autotheory, too. Fiction and plays continue to elude me, but you can’t have everything.

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?

This largely depends on what is happening in my personal life, and the path of the work. If I am enjoying some quietude—which feels rare these days—I can indeed return to my desk daily and pen work. This can come like a torrent, if I’m lucky. More often than not those torrents come with the daily practice, reminding your mind and body that this is the time to write. Right now things feel particularly hectic, so my writing involves me scribbling on any paper I can find, throwing it in a drawer, and hoping I will be able to stitch it together later. Another manuscript-in-progress, which I’ll address farther down, has involved an incredible amount of notes and research. I have written out chronologies and family trees, filled notebooks. It’s a lot. The poems in Playing Monster :: Seiche did indeed come quickly, as they were two prongs of the same life story, and written with a spare quality that is simultaneously difficult and quick. Once you get in the rhythm of that mode, your diction becomes exacting, and it flows out. 

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’m always working on a manuscript from the get-go. Years ago, I tried to buck the book-length poem. It is difficult to place one or two poems in a journal when they are a small fragment of a larger picture. This used to feel more important to me than it does today. Despite my best efforts, I fell back into the long poem. I find myself in remarkably happy company of so many poets (more and more, it seems) who are writing book-length work, work where the poems are making something greater through accretion. This is not to denigrate the power or importance of poems that operate as discrete pieces, but I have found I am not often that kind of poet.

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

Having the ability to proclaim, This is my art, and I hope it is for you, is roughly how I feel when I read. I have done readings before a group of strangers, and it is amazing when some of those strangers have suddenly shifted out of strangers into those connected to you. I have only read from Playing Monster :: Seiche at my book launch so far, so I’m curious how it will land elsewhere. Writing can feel like a lonely life, so that public engagement is often vitally important to me. I’m also a curator of a reading series, and organizing readings is an immense joy—particularly when so many people (readers and audience members alike) respond with gratitude for the labor of assembling performers for the community. 

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?

Generally theories of trauma and witness circle me, and I’m trying to learn to get used to those ghosts rather than shoo them away. As far as I can tell, they will continue to define my writing—at least for the next few manuscripts on the horizon. The concern that dogs Playing Monster :: Seiche, and made me consider abandoning any attempts at publication for a while, is the idea that it is a painful story. Why publish something as difficult as the reality of profound child abuse and, later, stalking? The cycle that so many of us artists remain within seems to be that pain/trauma leads to artistic production. While I hope to quit that circuit, somehow, though the means to do so haven’t revealed themselves to me—yet. 

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? 

Writers, no matter the form, are attempting to shine a light on what is important to them, what has inspired creative production (rage, alienation, joy, etc.). That is an incredibly urgent role, as it gives us insight into the events in people’s lives, even if only obliquely. It gives us an understanding of those different than us, those similar us. It is a means for connection, as well as a reflection of our current moment. 

One of the greatest benefits of being a poet in the United States is you have relatively free reign in your form with little impact on your income. This is largely because only a small percentage make serious money on our craft. We are also a small subculture and generally considered weird (in a good way, to me). Not being deeply entwined within the capitalist system gives us a lot of freedom—though of course financial restriction is no small constraint. But the lack of concern about not getting a big book deal or saying something that will alienate a huge fan base gives us a lot of liberty. Many of us lean into that. That said, I give deep bows to the writers who, when they are given the attention that reaches outside the literary community, use it to inform people about the issues most important to them and of which many may be ignorant. Perhaps one of the most famous is when last year Lin-Manuel Miranda (who I consider to be a writer) made a plea to Congress regarding Puerto Rico’s financial struggles. More recently I’ve seen Viet Thanh Nguyen and Robin Coste Lewis (among many others) use their fame as means to raise awareness about the danger of travel bans or nuances of brain injury.

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

Working with someone who is generous enough to provide me editorial notes is a joy. This is often not only faculty, but those I have the honor of calling my friends. It feels thoroughly essential most of the time. I am a flexible writer and eager to see another’s responses to my work. I’m also an editor at Noemi Press, so as a person with some practice in the editorial process and methods I find it telling that the work I need to do to finish a manuscript still eludes me. Smart, objective eyes can make a work.

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

I have a phrase I return to a lot: Honor your limits. I’m not sure if it was given to me or my mind proffered it up. I think, as someone who is a serial over-worker, it is hard advice to heed. Also, in terms of creative and life work: Follow the heat. Don’t let that which feels exciting grow cold! Pursue it at breakneck speed, if you can. These can read as opposing prompts, but you can do both, I think.

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

Moving between genres is indeed one that feels uncomplicated, and my best mornings involve a little of each. I think the appeal is that, while they all seem to turn on the same curiosity within me, they do so differently. When I begin to feel sapped with my poetry, say, I can pull out pages from my critical work. It’s a means of letting my brain remain engaged without becoming exhausted. Beyond this, each provides an alternative method of grappling with the issues I want to write about—they can operate so differently, and thus provide similarly different tools to turn those concerns over and over.

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?

Usually my weekdays start early with some exercise and a few other things before I prepare a cup of tea and sit at my desk. Once there, I work for as many hours as I can until snacks aren’t enough to sustain me, my brain is tired, and I’m ready for a break. This usually lasts about four hours, give or take. 

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

My bookshelf. I have so many new books to read, and this often helps. If those works throw me deeper into despair (which happens now and then), I return to the books that have inspired me time and again. Also discussions with those friends who are incredible writers and thinkers—often if I chat with one or two of them for an afternoon I’m all lit up again. 

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

They say your olfactory senses are the most deeply connected to memory, but this feels a little hard to pin down—usually it’s clear only when some random scent wafts my way. Pine needles in the sun certainly remind me of Arizona, as we had a pine tree in our yard. Overall, it’s probably any number of laundry detergents I have used/have been used on my clothing from childhood. 

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?

My creative endeavors do certainly come from other literature, but current events and social interaction feed a lot of it, too. The other forms are valuable in ways that are perhaps less clear to me in terms of art production, but I interact with them a lot (particularly nature, music, and visual art).

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

Maggie Nelson was my mentor during my MFA, which was a total gift of fate. Her patience, thoughtfulness, and overall approach to editing my work has been undeniably important. Her writing, and her ability to move between scholarship and hybrid writing is of course something so many of us aspire to emulate. Alice Notley’s work, particularly The Descent of Alette, made me completely rethink how poetry can operate on a grand scale, and it remains one of my desert island books. Gwendolyn Brooks’ writing, which only relatively recently found its way to me, has similarly given me paradigm-shifting insight into the power of form, the line, and diction. I want to avoid giving all the names of those within my expanding tribe of poet friends, so many of whom have ascended in remarkable and deserving ways. But our conversations, their work, and the work we do for each other is essential.

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

Complete my dissertation and my doctorate! That may feel a bit too much of a goal based in reality (and likely). Otherwise to fully learn a second language. I am (shamefully) a monoglot, with only a smattering of abilities in a couple languages to get by when I travel. 

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?

Certainly a librarian or someone who does archival work—what includes books and history. Trying to preserve in order to open up access to knowledge and information. I sometimes pine for this line of work, still. 

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

I began my college career as a classical violinist, only to soon suffer from severe repetitive motion injuries. I had to leave music school, and picked up random classes at the university that appealed to me for one reason or another—including an introduction to poetry class. I got the bug.

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

I think “great” is a hard term to wrap my head around in some ways (perhaps because it holds so many meanings). The most recent book of poetry I’ve read that floored me is CAConrad’s While Standing in Line for Death—like Conrad’s other works it is immensely exposing and miraculous and invites you to challenge yourself as a poet and art creator. I think it may be my favorite work of his, second only to Book of Frank. I wrote my responses to your questions while on a plane, so I finally had the time to sit and watch Birdman, which has been on my list a long while. I love Iñárritu’s films. They’re gorgeous and horrible—an unflinching eye on who we are when we’re alone and when we’re with others, with a flash of the phantasmagorical only once you’ve forgotten it exists in the worlds he creates.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Currently my poems are a manuscript about the Roman historical figure Agrippina the Younger. She was empress for a time, and used her son Nero as a prosthetic to allow her total control of the empire when he was later the Emperor. She did a lot of manipulating and (some argue) murdering and fucking to get herself to that position of power. While Agrippina was undoubtedly an important person in the history of Rome, there isn’t much about her life in the Ancient Roman historical documents, and often those historians were biased against her. I am trying to consider the events of her life, known and unknown, as well as my own experiences trying to research someone as elusive as herself. There is a lot of play in Agrippina’s biographical gaps, and the first-person pieces are hybrid bits about me moving around in Rome trying to locate different places and objects to see her more clearly.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

 

Jack Davis, Faunics

Listening

This animal

air

made to

make

some sense

from sound

the pre-linguistic

muscle

of words

held still

by this splint

of attention.

Occasionally a book of poetry appears, seemingly out of nowhere, that is openly discussed between poets as a ‘must read’ well before any reviews or notices have appeared, as is the case with poet Jack Davis’ remarkable debut, Faunics (St. John’s, NL: Pedlar Press, 2017). Faunics owes a debt to Nelson Ball and Mark Truscott, both of whom are acknowledged, both as notes at the end of the collection as well as individual dedications, for their influences upon his work. Because of this, Davis’ poems aren’t merely short or short-lined, but poems that fully comprehend the lessons of what Ball and Truscott (and others, including jwcurry, Cameron Anstee, Michael e. Casteels) and others have been working on for years (it might be worth pointing out that Anstee, also, has a debut collection set to appear very soon), writing an incredibly precise lyric of sustained attention.

Patterns

of replacement

a seed’s

genius passed

through birds

by pitch

filch & gut

assaying

their

selves.

Davis engages in what has been referred to as “quietude,” an incredibly detailed attention to smallness, silence and lines as short as a single word. Nearly one hundred and forty pages thick, Davis’ Faunics is smallness multiplied and magnified, composed of short, intricate and dense lyric poems that weave their ways through language, space and multiple species of birds, animals and fauna. He writes of listening, sparrows, asides, winter and counterweights, attending to his most immediate and intimate in ways both startlingly familiar and completely refreshing. As he writes to open the poem “Curtail”: “All beautiful / of pieces // every flesh / desired // found breath / our bodies // the broken-into warmth / of animals [.]” There is such a deep and abiding respect and attentiveness in these pages, in which he attends far more to his Northern Ontario surroundings than to the facts, or even the distractions of, his own presence. As he writes to open the poem “Edible Forests and Potable Waterways of Northern Ontario”: “Music / pushed through / flax & pigment / played into / other woods [.]”

Set in four sections – “Living Daylights,” “Animal Light,” “The Pre-Linguistic Heights” and “Voir Dire” – Faunics exists as a sketchbook of poems on nature, a distant cousin to the 19^th century botanical book, as done by such as Virginia Woolf and Catherine Parr Trail, but one composed out of language, a fauna of sound and meaning in the sharpest detail, and the smallest possible space. This is easily one of the finest and most understated collections I’ve read in a long time.

new from above/ground press: Gurton-Wachter, eckhoff, Cantrell + Touch the Donkey #16,

MOTHER OF ALL
Anna Gurton-Wachter
$5
See link here for more information

faux foe
kevin martins mcpherson eckhoff
$4
See link here for more information

Phantom Equator
Andrew Cantrell
$5
See link here for more information

Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] #16
with new poems by Sue Landers, Kyle Flemmer, Donato Mancini, Anthony Etherin, Catriona Strang, A.M. O’Malley, Claire Lacey, Sacha Archer and Julia Polyck-O’Neill.
$7
See link here for more information


keep an eye on the above/ground press blog for author interviews, new writing, reviews, upcoming readings and tons of other material;

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2018
celebrating twenty-five years of above/ground press
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy of each

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal (above). Scroll down here to see various backlist titles (many, many things are still in print).

Review copies of any title (while supplies last) also available, upon request.

watch for forthcoming chapbooks by Melissa Eleftherion, Uxío Novoneyra (trans. Erín Moure), Travis Sharp, Dani Spinosa, Andrew Wessels, Stuart Kinmond / Phil Hall, Natalee Caple, Jon Boisvert, Lise Downe, Dennis Cooley, Edward Smallfield, Sean Braune, Kate Siklosi, Michael Martin Shea, Jennifer Stella, Miguel E. Ortiz Rodríguez, Amish Trivedi, Stan Rogal, Eleni Zisimatos, Adrienne Gruber and Rachel Mindell, among others, as well as the 26th issue of The Peter F. Yacht Club, just in time for VERSeFest 2018! And there’s totally still time to subscribe for the press' twenty-fifth year, by the way (backdating to January 1st, obviously).

my (small press) writing day : new essays + a submission call,

I’ve been curious for some time about The Guardian’s occasional feature “My Writing Day,” and thought it might be interesting to do a blog of the same, “for those of us who might never make it into The Guardian.”

[note: this isn’t a dig at The Guardian; I just thought it might be fun to play with the format]

So, like a fool, I’ve started a new blog: my (small press) writing day.

The list of current and forthcoming essays include pieces by Amish Trivedi, Colin Morton, rob mclennan, Sonia Saikaley, Amanda Earl, Jean Van Loon, Karl E. Jirgens, Lisa Pasold, Robert Martin Evans, Jennifer Pederson, Carla Hartsfield, Jason Christie, Eleni Zisimatos, Christian McPherson, Chris Johnson, Eileen R. Tabios, Joshua Corey, Claudia Radmore, Oscar Martens, Sacha Archer, Larkin Higgins, Kristina Drake, Kate Siklosi, Jared Schickling, Karen Smythe, Yanara Friedland, Paul Carlucci, Catherine Owen, j/j hastain, Gil McElroy, Adele Graf, Angela Lopes, Adam Thomlison, Brenda Schmidt, Michael Blouin, Jeanette Lynes, Keegan Lester, Jeremy Stewart, Zoë Landale, Jacqueline Valencia, Michael Dennis, Emily Sanford, Jennifer Baker, Aaron Tucker, Chris Galvin, K.I. Press, Nathaniel G. Moore, April Ford, Lily Gontard, Paola Ferrante, Alan Sondheim, Bänoo Zan, Emily Saso, Annick MacAskill, Ian LeTourneau, Jessica Hiemstra, Jessica Sequeira, Teri Vlassopoulos, Matt Jones, Sofia Mostaghimi, Joshua Weiner, Anita Dolman, Alex Manley, Joseph Cassidy-Skof, Ronna Bloom, Doris Fiszer, Maia Elgin, Cora Siré, Ken Sparling, Heather Sweeney, Sarah Crookall, Manahil Bandukwala, Dale Smith, Sara Renee Marshall, Sarah Burgoyne, Suzanna Derewicz, Jenna Jarvis, Missy Marston, Anna Maxymiw, Nicole McCarthy, Tim Mook Sang, Richard Harrison, Barbara Tomash, Nisa Malli and Steven Ross Smith. And submissions are very welcome...

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Margo LaPierre

Margo LaPierre is a Canadian poet and visual artist. Her first collection of poetry, Washing Off the Raccoon Eyes, was published by Guernica Editions in 2017. She completed her B.A. in Philosophy at Ryerson University and is currently pursuing a Publishing certificate, also at Ryerson. Her poems have been published in CAROUSEL, The Feathertale Review, filling Station, Bywords Literary Quarterly, Petal Journal, Echolocation, and EAT IT: A Literary Cookbook of Food, Sex and Women’s Writing, amongst others. Her poem “Bear Skin Rug” won the Silver award for Poetry at the Alberta Magazine Publishers Awards. She currently lives in Toronto.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Well, this is my first book. Things have certainly changed, starting from the time it was first accepted for publication in 2014. I became more focussed on connecting with others in the literary community. Having a book published means I was able to apply for my first literary creation grant this year. No idea how likely I am to actually get it. Also, it led me to my relationship with my publisher Guernica Editions, and they’ve taken me on as their publicity intern. It’s my first internship and aside from Ryerson’s Publishing certificate, my first foray into the publishing world. It’s like a heavy door has been opened. Guernica has done so much for me. I’m very grateful.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
In grade school, I’d write simple rhyming poems as journal entries. As a teenager, I kept a nightly diary. My parents kept reading it. I ran away after one of those episodes. Eventually I decided to not be so literal and to write my end-of-the-day thoughts as poetry. Crab-walking my way to independence. 

I wrote fiction as well, short stories and a couple novel attempts. I’d be focussed on writing The Book, the ‘big novel’, and writing poetry on the side was a constant. I was so anxious about creating something worth publishing. Poetry came through strongest and most honest because I wasn’t looking straight at it, I wasn’t putting that pressure on myself as I was writing poems.

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?
Some of the poems in Washing Off the Raccoon Eyes took years to write. ‘Amulet’ began as a ten page post-apocalyptic poem and was whittled down extensively. I wrote ‘Kinetic’ in French, long before most of the other poems, then translated it to English for this project. Generally I will have started poems for a project before I’m aware of a single cohesive project. Poem-pools swell and touch until they form a poem-lake. As I continue writing, I often cross-reference and build relationships between the poems, creating a common universe. In Washing Off the Raccoon Eyes, certain dialogue lines resurface. The colour orange signals alert across several poems. Moons alluded to. You can map out the physical space. I do write tons of notes once I’ve got enough poems to start shaping the manuscript. Every poem in the book, except, strangely, ‘Boyfriends’, which came out pretty much as-is, has been edited countless times. I’d come home every night from work, or from going out with friends (my early twenties were very social years), and edit. 

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 a few different ideas for books, both fiction and poetry. In poetry, I find it best when a project sneaks up on me, so that I’ve already started by the time the concept forms.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love listening to other poets. I’d like to become better as a reader. I’m still finding my reading voice, I think. Playing around with delivery. My writing can be pretty dense. My poems have lines with several layers of meaning, or meaning that could go two different ways, and when you read it on the page you get both senses at once, but when I’m reading aloud I feel like I have to choose. It’s a challenge. There’s a pressure to be funny (probably self-inflicted) and I’m not a very funny poet. Being active in the community inspires me because it brings this literary world to the forefront of my mental reel. I’ve been to some excellent reading series, but my favourite is Tree Reading Series in Ottawa. I’m lucky to be featuring there alongside Kirby, the owner of Knife Fork Book, in January. 

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 enjoy exploring gender constructs, how we relate to each other through the roles we perform.  As a woman, it’s interesting to me that some of the most gut-wrenching incidences that have really knotted me up inside and spurred me to write are moments that have been experienced by literally every other woman in varying iterations. This deeply personal and shared understanding of trauma is a theme I believe will continue to inspire me. One of the questions that gets asked throughout Washing Off the Raccoon Eyes: How do do we get through trauma whole? Themes of memory and identity are important to me. As a writer with bipolar disorder, my own memories and sense of identity have been disrupted to a degree, which has made me acutely aware of the instability of our personal narratives. But I think this instability holds true for everyone. We curate our histories.

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?
Art gives us an opportunity to feel things and process things that we don’t always have the distance to do in real life. The writer gives others an arena to think and to feel. She/he connects us to others in that thinking/feeling. The writer creates an engagement through critical thinking and finds the vein in us called compassion.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Absolutely necessary. If it wasn’t for Elana Wolff and Hoa Nguyen who both worked closely with me on Washing Off the Raccoon Eyes, I doubt I’d have gotten very far. I really appreciate critique and feedback. I’m a better editor than writer, I think. Maybe that’s why poetry feels so natural to me. The paring down, rearranging, the joy of the cut and slash. My original title for the manuscript was Braille Tattoo. Elana challenged me on that it, among other things, and the book is better for it.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
It’s okay to take your time. It’s not a race. Thanks Mom.

Find your community. Get to know the scene and living poets. Thanks Hoa Nguyen.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to visual art)? What do you see as the appeal?
I used to incorporate poetry into my paintings. I find painting to be meditative, soothing. Writing, not so much. When I write my eyebrows scrunch up and deep lines appear. It’s an intense, exhilarating, somewhat exhausting form of focus. I enjoy creating in transition, so it’s good to decompress from writing by working on a painting, and painting opens up a creative flow that helps me in my writing.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
My resolution this September was to have more routine. I have two jobs: a bartender at a fancy hotel bar and a shoe shiner in the financial district. Between them I work 40+ hours weekly, and on top of that I have the internship with Guernica. I’m also completing the Publishing post-grad certificate at Ryerson, not to mention doing as many public readings as I can, as well as working on my current writing projects. I got married this summer, and the planning process ate up all of my good habits and routines. But I have a MacBook Air which is so light that I can bring it anywhere, and I do. I write between customers at the shoe shine. I keep a Moleskine by my bed at night and in my purse by day for more flighty thoughts and ideas. Twitter’s great for throwing out bits and phrases into the atmosphere as they come to mind –– I can do this as I’m walking. I actually power-walked into a tree a month ago doing this, though, so I’m trying to be better about acknowledging my environment. This summer I took a whole week off for a personal writing retreat and set up camp at my parents’ cottage where there’s no internet or cell service. It’s in my natural rhythm to be cyclical. I write most consistently at night, but as long as I keep notes and thoughts daily, I can connect the dots when I get a chance.  

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I turn to my personal library. I’ll reread my favourite books. I’ll go to a familiar passage in one of Ann-Marie McDonald’s novels, or open one of Sina Queyras’ books of poetry at random. Or pick up whatever I’m reading at the moment. Aside from the obvious comfort, it’s a reminder that writing is a dialogue.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Frankincense and myrrh: resins and essential oils.

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 was doing my undergrad degree in Philosophy at the time of writing this book, and philosophy felt very urgent to me. It influenced me in a big way. Phenomenology via Merleau-Ponty, existentialism via Sartre and Kierkegaard, absurdism via Camus. I always listen to music while I write.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I naturally gravitate to books by Canadian women, and often Queer women. Sina Queyras came out with My Ariel and I just fall in love with every work she produces. I read Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees so many times, and the first time at such a young age (14), that I suspect it actually changed me at a deep level. Milan Kundera’s work has left a mark. Jorge Luis Borges. Patrick Dewitt’s Ablutions. God, I love that book. Entirely written in second person and it’s hilarious and true. Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be?. This year, with its troubling socio-political climate, I asked myself what I could do to help despite being very busy, and the answer that made the most sense was simply to listen. So I’ve made a point to seek out writers of Colour. At the moment I’m reading Canisia Lubrin and Roxane Gay.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Finish a novel. Get a writing career that is supported by other literary jobs (editing, teaching, or publishing) so I don’t have to feel so much like I’m being pulled in opposite directions all the time.

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?
My dream job would be an acquisitions editor, or a literary agent, or really any editorial job. Especially in publishing. I am working towards that. I’m moving to Ottawa next summer and there’s a wonderful poetry community there. Intellectual property law would be exciting work also. I was an ESL teacher in Taiwan for fifteen months, and I really enjoyed that work. Making grammar come alive and seeing students excited to create a sentence was very rewarding. 

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I wrote while doing everything else. I feel as though I’ve lived a thousand lives and writing is the the cohesive thread.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I generally prefer film to television, but I’m going to have to say Stranger Things 2, it has that cinematic quality anyway. I just finished Catherine Hernandez’ book Scarborough. It was so good, I read it all in one go. Black Flower by Young-Ha Kim was a gorgeous historical novel about a small group of Koreans emigrating to Mexico at the beginning of the twentieth century that I didn’t want to finish because I wanted to go on existing within that world. I think that’s the mark of an excellent book.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m working on a collection of poetry based on my year and half in Taiwan and return to Canada. It’s giving me an opportunity to write about the complicated meaning of home. I’m also working on a novel about two sisters, one of whom is in jail of for the vigilante killings of several rapists. The story came very urgently to me this summer, and I’m excited to be delving into emotional questions of retribution and mercy. I’ll also be hosting the new Mercury Writing & Editing Series at No One Writes to the Colonel on College Street every last Wednesday of the month at 7:30 p.m. (though it may change to every last Thursday in the new year).

12 or 20 (second series) questions;