12 or 20 questions: with Adeena Karasick

Adeena Karasick is an internationally acclaimed and award winning poet, media-artist and author of six books of poetry and poetic theory: The House That Hijack Built (Talonbooks, 2004), The Arugula Fugues (Zasterle Press, 2001), Dyssemia Sleaze (Talonbooks, Spring 2000), Genrecide (Talonbooks, 1996), Mêmewars (Talonbooks, 1994), and The Empress Has No Closure (Talonbooks, 1992), as well as 4 videopoems all available on YouTube. All her work is marked with an urban, Jewish, feminist aesthetic that continually challenges linguistic habits and normative modes of meaning production. Engaged with the art of combination and turbulence of thought, her work is a testament to the creative and regenerative power of language and its infinite possibilities for pushing meaning to the limits of its semantic boundaries.

For over 20 years her linguistically provocative, philosophically complex wordplay continues to excite audiences nationally, internationally and locally, and she has recently been granted the MPS Mobile Award as being the world’s first “Mobile Poet” whereby her work is being made available on mobile devices (cell phones and smart phones) throughout the world. Her writing has been described as "electricity in language" (Nicole Brossard), "plural, cascading, exuberant in its cross-fertilization of punning and knowing, theatre and theory" (Charles Bernstein) "a tour de force of linguistic doublespeak" (Globe and Mail) and "opens up the possibilities of reading" (Vancouver Courier). She is Professor of Poetry and Cultural Theory at City University of New York. Forthcoming is Amuse Bouche: Tasty Treats for the Mouth (Talonbooks 2009).

1 - How did your first book change your life?

My first book, The Empress Has No Closure came out in 1992. It changed my life only in that it enabled me to tour and perform internationally with an actual bound text. I was living and teaching at the Gütenberg Universität in Mainz at this time and when I got it, the first thing I did, was book a performance tour with bill bissett through Europe! It was all so very exciting to finally have your life work finally packaged up; all paginated and thick with multiple fonts and a firm spine. But, I have to say it was more of a personal sense of fulfillment and accomplishment than any “real’ or marked difference in the outside world.

2 - How long have you lived in New York, and how does geography, if at all, impact on your writing? Does race or gender make any impact on your work?

I’ve lived in NY for 10 years now. And it’s not so much geography but its social political climate that impacts on the work. All is poignantly rugged, marked with high energy, swelling with urban collisions, contradictory discourses and punctuated with an underlay of atrocious politics.

Besides socio-political concerns, being a Jewish woman plays a huge role in all that I do. Consciously or subconsciously, I am often importing the Kabbalistic practice of letter combination and alphabetic permutation, and using mystical source texts as base materials for say, homolinguistic translations. All of these sacred, secret semiotic procedures and practices are outlawed for women. So, engaging in this transgressive poetics all speak to pushing the parameters of what’s permissible.

3 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of shortpieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a"book" from the very beginning?

Poems usually begin on airplanes : ) Most often they begin with a verbal cluster that I can’t get outta my head combined with some psychologic/emotional philosophic or theoretic issue I am trying to work through. These days, most pieces run roughly 2-6 pages. I rate their “performability” as I am writing them, but always, in the back of my mind I know they will eventually be collected into a book. But often I don’t know until well into the collection where it will go – ie what direction the book will take. For instance, Amuse Bouche: Tasty Treats for the Mouth, (which will be out with Talonbooks, 2009), started with a commissioned piece for a NY Art Gallery that wanted a poem about food. As I was totally consumed with the discourse of war, I wrote this lengthy piece which is kind of a mash up of food and politics. The book proceeded with funny juxtapositions intersecting the discourse of war with fashion, with love, with pop culture – basically asking how we make meaning navigating through all the swirling contradictory information.

4 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?

Reading in public is a chance to bring the work out into the world in a very real physical way. It’s a chance to feel what works, what doesn’t. Often what seems brilliant and layered on the page does not always translate to the stage. And, sometimes, what works on stage, is not “weighty” enough for the page. So reading it aloud in public definitely helps give me perspective -- what to edit, cut, expand…

5 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kindsof questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

My work is usually energized by questions of “truth”, “history” “contamination” and “closure”. It foregrounds how everything is intertextually layered, full of traces and absences, sparks of light, shards, fragments of culture. But mostly it’s about the production of meaning and questioning consumerist notions of “readability”.

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

As a writer, I find I am often working in a bit of a vacuum -- so it’s great to get new perspectives, see things from a different angle. But, at bottom, it is essential that you and your editor are “on the same page”.

7 - After having published more than a couple of titles over the years, do you find the process of book-making harder or easier?

Well, you find that you always want to challenge yourself. After 6 titles, and with recent technologic advances, the concept of ‘the book” has shifted dramatically. So, I am always testing the boundaries of what “book-making” is or can be. In recent years, I have taken the work out; performed with musicians and dj’s and dancers, with slide and video projections; made videopoems (all available on You Tube) – and actually most recently, I have been granted the MPS Mobile Award as being “The World’s First Mobile Poet” – and my work is being made available on cell phones and smart phones throughout the world! But as a traditionalist, my first love is “the book” --beautifully bound, inky-stained and thick-spined. And I am always looking at ways to bring it alive. Make it more interactive – whether that’s simply with color collage infusions, inconsistent pagination, constantly changing fonts, or books (as in the case of Mêmewars) that have not one, but two front covers, so it endlessly begins (or never ends). My idea for Amuse Bouche, is to have constant insertions, infusions of otherness – scratch-and-sniff stickers, a pull-out-menu, in full color. Though probably not very cost-effective, in an ideal world, this is my dream…

8 - When was the last time you ate a pear?

Last nite. Anjou. Roasted with pecans and beets in a divine goat cheese salad.

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

Trust your own mind. Warren Tallman via Olson via Pound, repeated by Ginsberg.

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?

Nothing is typical in the house of Adeena. I write anywhere. Anytime. Usually on scraps of paper, barf bags on airplanes, on buses, trains, subways. In readings, in bathrooms. In the middle of lovemaking, or in class. Everything gets later transferred onto computer where it is heavily re-edited.

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

Ancient Jewish texts.

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

It’s more accessible. Drawing a lot on pop culture – language, food, wine, consumerism, love and war.

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?

I am influenced by the contemporary music scene, dj culture, the downtown NY art world, deconstructionist and feminist theory.

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

13th century Jewish mystics like Abraham Abulafia, the soaring transcendence of both the concrete and sound work of bill bissett and the politics and aesthetics of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writers, Charles Bernstein, Bruce Andrews, and both Hélène Cixous and Rachel Blau Duplessis, writing out of the feminist avant garde.

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

Jump out of an airplane and be surrounded by fiery letters falling from the sky.

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 think I would have made a great copy writer (writing copy for advertising).

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

It chose me. There was no choice. There’s nothing else I would rather do.

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

Last great book: Djuna Barnes, Nightwood. Last great film: the re-release of Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander.

19 - What are you currently working on?

Final touches on Amuse Bouche. A book called, That’s Sooooo Cliché which tracks through the anecdotal history of common and overused phrases. Papers and presentations for upcoming conferences on performance and videopoem-making, and In the Psalm of My Hand – a kind of homolinguistic translation of the Song of Songs.

12 or 20 questions archive

12 or 20 questions: with RM Vaughan

RM Vaughan is a Toronto-based writer and video artist originally from New Brunswick. He is the author of seven books and a contributor to many anthologies. His short videos play in festivals and galleries across Canada and around the world.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

I think I'm supposed to be very cool and detached about having my first book published, way back in the early 90s, supposed to say something about how getting published is not a validation but that the validation must come from within ... but the truth is, it was fucking great and I loved it and I immediately knew I wanted more. I was not happy with a career limited to chapbooks and poems published in obscure lit mags (not that getting a poetry book out made me any less obscure, but, you know, baby steps, baby steps). Why write if you don't want to be published? I've never understood that attitude. And I kinda don't believe people when they adopt it.

2 - How long have you lived in Toronto, and how does geography, if at all, impact on your writing? Does race or gender make any impact on your work?

I've been here for about 15 years, maybe more. I didn't land here and stay, I kept going back and forth between here and NB. I'm fairly certain that had I continued to live in NB, my interests would be different. I am most comfortable in congested urban spaces, because I need the distractions, and I think all that noise has, conversely, made my writing a bit quieter, less showy.

The gender (by which I assume you also to some extent mean sexuality?) issue is so big, I don't know where to begin. Some days I feel like a "gay writer", some days I feel like a "writer who is gay", some days both. It's all context. I do know that being queer and growing up in a remote, non-urban place definitely gives me an outsider perspective, which is good and bad. I never, never feel like I belong anywhere, even when an event or space is constructed around me. I wonder if that feeling will ever go away? Part of that also comes from being an adopted child, but that's a whole other deal. But, back to the gay/gender question: in practical terms, I can say without a doubt that there is a "lavender ceiling" for writers in Canada, and being an out queer writer myself, I've had my nose pressed against it more than once. Gays in Canada are not supposed to be serious writers, unless we stay closeted or semi-closeted, we're supposed to host decorating shows.

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

Both. Things start usually when a series of connections presents itself to me, or, more likely, when I finally wake the fuck up and notice the connections, and then off I go. But there is no system with me, no pattern. Projects arrive and leave randomly, and I pursue them, or don't, for a variety of reasons. I'm not very good at being strategic.

4 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?

I used to tell myself that I would not publish a poem until I had read it publicly once, but that's a hard rule to keep. I have gone back and changed poems and fiction after hearing myself read it, or actually changed it onstage, in the moment, because it suddenly strikes me how to word it.

5 - 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?

Theoretical? Well, I studied all that stuff when I was an MA student, butI'm sure that all that I learned is now out of fashion - nevertheless, core questions about the trustworthyness of language are always in the back of my head, plus I'm a chronic second guesser.

I'm not trying to answer questions so much as convince myself to stop asking them.

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

Aren't all editors outsiders? Essential, of course - because I don't always know what's best, nor would I want to. And because I write newspaper articles for money, I have learned how to accept editorial imput and not think every comma change is the end of the world.

7 - After having published more than a couple of titles over the years, do you find the process of book-making harder or easier?

It's about the same. And every new book needs a new making/selling/promoting scheme.

8 - When was the last time you ate a pear?

About a week ago. A "Chinese white pear", according to the label. It was very bitter, for a pear, and the skin was oddly sharp. I think it was calleda Ya pear.

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

Sky Gilbert, on why nobody was coming to one of my plays: "Honey, if you're going to write a poetic, non-linear play about a 19th century novelist nobody reads anymore, don't expect the tour bus to show up."

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

It's not easy at all, but it's the only way I'm happy. Some subjects are better as plays, some as poems, etc - or at least I think so. I've probably been wrong every time about this. For instance, my next book, Troubled, is a memoir written in poems. If I had any smarts I would have written it as non-fiction and gotten some real money (see comment about absence of strategic thought above).

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 routine at all. A typical day begins with letting the damned, beloved cat out, sipping coffee, considering and rejecting the healthy breakfast idea, and reading newspapers on line. It takes me forever to get started. And, I can't work at night. Just can't. So, when the days are short, not much gets done.

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

Anonymous sex. Works every time.

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

It feels more blunt, less evasive and "clever" than my previous books. This likely means it is a career-ender.

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?

Visual art, constantly. Movies, bad art, newspaper articles, porn, friends.. but nature, almost never. I grew up about 100 yards from the Bay of Fundy, where, at least when I was a kid, every 3 months somebody drowned, usually a fisherman (and they were all men back then). Nature was dangerous, cold, wet and unfriendly, not inspiring. And the rotting fish smell coming off that bay at times would stop a clock. Nature is cute, at best, but overrated as an inspiration.

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

Anything by Henry James, because it's such a chore to read, and I like that. I read a lot of so-called "trash" too. Anything with vampires works. I also read as much as I can about ancient cultures, because I find it comforting to know that people have always been stupid and easily distracted.

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

Lose weight. But that would involve getting away from this desk. It's a conundrum.

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'd love to get in on the Cash-For-Life program at the CBC, where you just pick your feet all day and once a week file a story about whatever is going on in New York. Had I not been a writer, I would have been a painter, at which I sucked.

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

Failing to be good at painting.

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

Book - Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy (skip the film, it sucks). Film - Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, purely by accident (somebody suggested it) - full of operatic fury and really cute guys with full beards.

20 - What are you currently working on?

An article for The Walrus, an article for Canadian Art, last wrap-up stuff on Troubled, a new video about my obsession with Sterling Hayden.

12 or 20 questions archive

12 or 20 questions: with Susan M. Schultz

Susan M. Schultz is a poet, critic, and publisher who lives in Kane`ohe, Hawai`i on the island of O`ahu. She is author of Aleatory Allegories (Salt, 2000), Memory Cards and Adoption Papers (Potes & Poets, 2001), And Then Something Happened (Salt, 2004), and the forthcoming book, Dementia Blog (Singing Horse, 2008). She edited The Tribe of John: Ashbery and Contemporary Poetry (Alabama, 1995), and wrote A Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (Alabama, 2005). She edits Tinfish Press and teaches at the University of Hawai`i-Manoa.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

I'm not sure that my first book changed anything for me, but I was able to keep my job because of it.

2 - How long have you lived in Hawai`i, and how does geography, if at all, impact on your writing? Does race or gender make any impact on your work?

I've lived in Hawai`i since 1990. Hawai`i has changed me in numerous ways, not so much because I write about it (I do, but not exclusively) but because it has forced me to rethink everything I once thought I knew. It does that on a daily basis. What do you mean by everything? you ask. Gender, race, the role of the writer, language, you name it--all of these are in play here.

3 - 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?

Where I used to sit down every day and write out of whatever was going on in my mind or in front of me, then weave together collections of poems, I now work on book-length projects. My collection of essays, A Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry, worked a bit differently. I began with a coherent project, watched as it broke apart over the course of many years, and then realized that the pieces fit back together into a stuttered narrative. More recently, my project on dementia (my mother's and the nation's) began accidently, as part of a blog I was writing for family and friends, but quickly assumed a form and a shape that sustained itself over months. Either way, each project has an obsessive core out of which come poems or essays that talk to each other through time and then space.

4 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?

Public readings are important, although not all writing works out loud, and not all on the page. Since I began reading in public, I think my work has gotten more voice-oriented. And living in Hawai`i, where so much writing is reverse transcription (voices born on the page but coming out of a culture that is off of it) has made a difference, as well.

5 - 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?

Questions! How do public and private concerns intersect, and how can they be addressed without aggrandizing the personal or diminishing the public? As something of a synthesizer, I also want to bring together avant-garde concerns with more rear-guard ones; how can we create meaning inside poems that stands a chance of living outside of them? Some of my concerns are spiritual, though usually driven through the matrix of “meaning” rather than a higher power. Other of my concerns are politics and family, never separately.

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

Working with an outside editor seems to be more important in my critical than in my creative work. I notice that as an editor, too, I tend to intervene more in prose criticism and less in creative work. On the creative side, though, it seems to be important to me to circulate the poems/prose I'm writing; the mere fact of audience is crucial in ways that are hard to explain. Perhaps that has to do with the farflungness of my literary community more than anything. That said, I just spoke yesterday to Lisa Howe, who is editing and publishing my forthcoming chapbook with Bill Howe, and our discussion was really productive. So I may have overstated the case in sentence #1 of answer #6.

7 - After having published more than a couple of titles over the years, do you find the process of book-making harder or easier?

I think I know better when there is a book coming, but it's not much easier to write them, no.

8 - When was the last time you ate a pear?

Funny, I just ate a pear. Maybe it's because I read these questions yesterday, or maybe it's because there was a pear on the counter.

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

Advice? I don't know. These days, I mostly dole it out! One of the best questions I remember hearing someone asked was: “what have you learned from a poet whose work you don't like?” That strikes me as a good opening, and I repeat the question often to my students. As for whether that's advice or not, I leave it to you.

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

At some point in the late 1990s, I moved from poetry to prose poetry and now poetic prose. I'm not sure why it happened, though it may have had something to do with starting to compose on the computer rather than on paper. It may have had something to do with getting older and more focused on particularity, detail, kids, job, and so on. Whatever the reason, I have a hard time now thinking of myself writing poetry with lines. I still write essays, which I like because they are the work of explication--how does this work, how does it not work? That kind of prose is the under the hood kind. Grease is good. So the appeal would be in the altering of frames, that some writing needs to be in the moment and some needs to be at odds with it.

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?

It's gotten harder and harder to keep a writing routine. I'm at my computer constantly, but unfortunately a lot of my writing is email, a lot of my reading political blogs and journalism. I no longer write for the sake of writing, which I did in my late 20s and early to mid-30s. When I have a project going, though, I write often. And sometimes I write blindly toward a project, as I did when I composed a travel blog for friends and family that turned into my dementia blog that turned into a book.

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

These days, when the writing gets stalled, I allow it to happen. I'm more at peace with the necessity of not writing than I was when I was younger. The introduction to my book of essays is about the significance of the silences, and the first prose poem in my Memory Cards & Adoption Papers book is about making the block into the muse. So, while I'm obsessed with writer's block and feel hostile toward it(!), I also think it has real purpose. Time to breathe, be. Also worth considering for its political implications; why am I as a writer feeling silenced now, and how I can write about such silencing? This is another concern Hawai`i has sensitized me too, as many (older) writers here have had a primal scene of being silenced by a teacher for using “bad English” or not writing marketable prose.

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

My forthcoming book Dementia Blog (Singing Horse Press, 2008) feels most like Memory Cards & Adoption Papers (2001), in that it's in poetic prose and concerns the day to day (in this case, the course of my mother's--and the country's--dementia). But it's less jumpy from sentence to sentence. While there are lots of bits of it (strophes or paragraphs, whatever), within each section there is often a sustained meditation. MC & AP was deliberately discontinuous from sentence to sentence. At that time, I was trying to get away from the tendency of my poetry to bring everything together into a wide metaphorical net, to allow the pieces to remain pieces. Once I realized that the pieces qua pieces still floated in the same system, I was able to bring that back into my writing on the level of syntax, use one sentence to lead to the next. And then a break of paragraph!

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'm about to teach a course I call “Reading Like a Poet,” where we'll read Susan Howe's Dickinson, Stephen Collis's [see his 12 or 20 questions here] Howe, Baraka's blues, and so on, and then students will perform their own creative critique of another writer. So yes, I believe writing feeds off of writing. One aspect of my Dementia Blog that surprised me as I wrote it was the strong presence (nay, intrusion!) of Wallace Stevens. Here I was trying my damnest to be faithful to what I saw happening in front of me, to note it down, and it was the poet of the imagination who was talking back. So I made that a conscious part of the writing, started talking back to him. I like that process of writing as a way to correspond with (or refuse to correspond with) one's traditions. As for other forms, I listen to a lot of music, and my husband is always talking about science, history and sports are obsessions, and I do go to museums. But I'm mostly a word person, for better and for worse.

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

Other writers? Depends on what's engaging me when. I've gone through cycles of reading everything I can about adoption, for example, or about dementia, or about Cambodia. So a lot of the reading is prose, and none too lyrical at that. But I also read a lot of poetry; it's my job.

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

I would like to do something else for a year or two, and then return to life as it is, which ain't bad.
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 would have liked to have coached the St. Louis Cardinals. Actually, I did twice--once my son's team of 4 year olds, and then his team of 7 year olds. But really, coaching or writing about sports. If I hadn't been a writer, I might also have been a lawyer or historian. Well, that's a writer too . . .

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

Who knows. Writing seems to be a biological process more than anything.

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

The last great book? The last book of prose that moved me was Barack Obama's Memories of My Father. It's about growing up in Hawai`i as someone who doesn't fit (hardly anyone does, come to think of it). His search for his father strongly resembles many adoption narratives I've read. The rhetoric is sometimes close to overblown, almost 18th century, but I really love that about the book. Kind of like Pam Lu's autobiography. The last great film (I confess I don't see many films, and most of them are decidedly not great) was the Battle of Algiers.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I am currently working on an essay about Hawai`i's literature since 1959 and on syllabi for next semester. Also editing Dementia Blog for publication by Singing Horse later in the year. Oh and there's an AWP talk that needs doing . . .

12 or 20 questions archive

12 or 20 questions: with Natalie Simpson

Natalie Simpson was born in London, England and left at the age of six weeks. She lived in Holland until she was about two years old, and then moved to Calgary, Alberta. She’s half French Canadian, and half proficient in French. She has a BA in English (minor in Latin) and an MA in English, both from the University of Calgary. Her MA thesis dealt with sentences and their centrality in Gertrude Stein’s writing. She was poetry editor and then managing editor for filling Station magazine, between 1999 and 2004. She moved to Vancouver in 2004, completed her law degree at UBC, and then moved back to Calgary, where she worked most recently at a non-profit doing human rights research. Her poetry has been published in West Coast Line, The Capilano Review, Queen Street Quarterly, dANDelion, as well as the anthologies Shift & Switch and Post-Prairie. Her first book, accrete or crumble, was published by LINEbooks in 2006, and her chapbook Dirty Work is being re-issued by above/ground press ALBERTA SERIES.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

It made me realize that publishing a book doesn’t change anything. I think I’ve relaxed a bit since then. I stopped writing for a while, and now I’m starting to realize that Creeley was right when he said only write if you find writing fun.

2 - How long have you lived in Calgary, and how does geography, if at all, impact on your writing? Does race or gender make any impact on your work?

I’ve lived in Calgary the majority of my life, except for three years I spent in Vancouver. I don’t think place really had much impact on my writing, until recently – being in Vancouver made me really notice details of place. Like the difference between the Alberta side of the Rockies and the mountains in BC. Or how as much as I love the ocean, the prairies have a grip on my psyche. So does the big sky. I’m not sure how those things affect my writing, but I’m sure they do.

Similarly, I think gender is starting to have more impact on my writing than it used to. I’ve noticed that more and more of the writers I admire are women, and I want to write poetry that the women I read would respect.

3 - 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?

All my writing begins with the blank page and resolving to fill it. It’s pretty much a crap shoot whether I write something I can shape into a poem or not. I’m definitely an author of short pieces, which don’t necessarily combine into a larger project. I’m most comfortable with poems or poem series of five to ten pages, and I have a hard time sustaining cohesion in anything longer than that. I’m pretty angsty about it, too – I’ve always admired writers who can pull off really tight, thematically centred books. Like Karen Mac Cormack’s Quirks and Quillets, Harryette Mullen’s S*PeRM **k*t, Lisa Robertson’s The Weather. I wish I could do that.

4 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?

Reading in public is a huge part of my creative process. First, readings provide deadlines that force me to whip whatever I’m working on into decent enough shape to read. Second, my poetry is all about sound, so the words on the page start to fulfill their potential when I get the chance to read them out loud. And third, I like the sense of performance, of trying to captivate listeners, and the energy I get from the audience when I know they’re really into it.

5 - 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?

Oh, theory.

The questions I work with are: What makes a perfect sentence perfect? How much should I try to mean or not to mean? Is this pretentious? Who cares?

I think some of the current (perennial) questions have to do with who is reading and why. Also who is writing, and why.

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

I haven’t dealt with an outside editor in any substantive sense. I’ve always thought I would like to work with an editor, to get a really thorough perspective from someone else.

7 - After having published a couple of titles over the past few years, do you find the process of book-making harder or easier?

The process varies, depending on who’s involved. Overall, I think the book-making is generally easier than the book-writing.

8 - When was the last time you ate a pear?

A couple of months ago, probably. I bought some pears this morning, but they’re not ripe enough to eat yet.

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

Don’t be so hard on yourself.

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 fall into writing routines occasionally, but as soon as I congratulate myself on writing regularly, I tend to stop.

Days for me begin begrudgingly, I have a really hard time getting out of bed. I have to approach important tasks slowly, lots of meandering on the internet and fussing over coffee before I can work.

The days when I have a lot of time to devote to writing, and I’m excited about writing, and I’m optimistic enough not to be discouraged by flaws, or futility, or the perfectionistic tendencies in my approach to writing, are very good days.

11 - Where is your favourite place to write?

At home, with laptop, in bed or on the couch. I was writing in coffee shops in a notebook for a while last summer, but I was way too conscious of being a cliché, I couldn’t lose myself enough to write well.

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

Hard to say. It’s not something I can really force. But going to readings definitely helps.

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

My most recent book is my previous work. I’d been shopping some of the poems in accrete or crumble around for several years. It was a huge relief to publish that book, because I wonder about the currency of poetry, whether certain poems have expiry dates.

My more recent writing is sometimes funnier, more self-deprecating, less deliberately obscure.

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?

Good question. I don’t think so. I’m influenced by more pedestrian things, the way people speak, turns of phrase, intonations. Rhythms of language everywhere, especially bad translations, wrong grammar, awkwardness. I’ve carried bits of things I hear people say in my head for months until they come out in poems.

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

Juliana Spahr, Harryette Mullen, Robert Kroetsch, Lisa Robertson, Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes, Gertrude Stein, Wilfred Owen, Julian Barnes, Jeannette Winterson, Ali Smith, Ivan E. Coyote, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Sina Queyras, Rachel Zolf, Jill Hartman, ryan fitzpatrick, Julia Williams, Jason Christie, angela rawlings, Fred Wah, Jordan Scott, Nicole Markotic, Louis Cabri, the hundreds and thousands I’m not remembering…

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

Accept things as they are. Understand that my life has started, it’s not waiting for me somewhere.

Also travel more.

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?

Well, I’m currently attempting law, which is a form of writing. I’ve worked as an editor. I started to be an academic once. I don’t think I’ll ever get away from text, sadly.

If I could carry a tune, I’d be a singer. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a dancer, and I’ve always admired yoga instructors – maybe I’d try to stop camping out in my head and move into the rest of my body.

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

I don’t think writing is opposed to anything else. If all I did was write, I’d go insane. Or I’d be profoundly depressed. I try to let everything else I do (jobs, school) feed into my writing. Writing is my ulterior motive.

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

Dennis Lee’s yesno.

I saw Juno recently – not quite great, but definitely good. I watched Midnight Cowboy on Christmas Day, it was a great mood enhancer.

20 - What are you currently working on?

A short series of poems with the working title of Chump Redux. A slightly longer series about living on the West Coast. Some found poetry that comes from law sources. Thinking a lot about paper and design, plotting chapbooks that may or may not materialize.

12 or 20 questions archive

12 or 20 questions: with Mari-Lou Rowley

Mari-Lou Rowley has published six collections of poetry, most recently CosmoSonnets (JackPine 2007) and Viral Suite (Anvil Press 2004), and her work has appeared in journals anthologies in Canada and the US. Rowley has performed her poetry across the continent, from Harbourfront to Hornby Island. She also appeared at Bumbershoot, Seattle’s annual arts extravaganza with musician and sound designer Roderick Shoolbraid, where they released the CD Cellular Logic. A science geek and avid star gazer, her favourite constellation is Orion. Her favourite cosmological phenomena are binary pulsars. In 2006 she moved to Saskatoon from Vancouver to be closer to the sky.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

I felt like a real poet after all, and the wait was worth it. But it was more than personal validation, it was a confirmation of the way poets see/feel/hear/ the world and that it is somehow essential to the human experience, and yet what we convey is much more than experiential.

2 - How long have you lived in Saskatoon, and how does geography, if at all, impact on your writing? Does race or gender make any impact on your work?

I moved back to Saskatoon just over two years ago, after 13 years in Vancouver, ten in Toronto and seven in Edmonton. I grew up in Saskatoon, so I was apprehensive about moving back at first, but I think it is easier to return to one’s roots when you’re doing what you want to do. For me, moving back here has been one of the most positive experiences in my life. I have always loved the prairie landscape, the space, sky, light. It is where I am most productive as a writer. Both of my last two books were drafted at writers/artists colonies in Saskatchewan. The writing community is very active, inclusive and generous. I do miss the rush of the city, cultural events, activities, green grocers, anonymity. To live in the prairies does mean a compromise. But it’s one I’m comfortable making at this time in my life. I have a house with a yard and garden only three minutes away from the wild rambling river valley of the South Saskatchewan. I never imagined that I would own my own home (notice the rhyme, repetition and assonance in that statement). I’ve never owned anything more expensive than a computer. Still don’t have a car. On my river walks I see eagles, otter, coyotes, deer, pelicans. There have been cougar sightings along the river. I've even seen bear scat, though no bear. I love living in a place where the weather is still a main topic of conversation because here there is a direct connection between weather, livelihoods and life. And the weather, insects, wild animals, and isolation can kill you if you’re not careful. "Nature" is still relevant, a phenomenon not an idea, not just something you watch on television. And here, on average, nature is more dangerous than humans. For me this is a comforting thought. It also necessitates a sense of community in the larger sense. All of these things nurture the muse for me. I suppose I’m a phenomenologist at heart. Maybe even a pantheist.

So far race and gender, although they are issues that have entered my work in subtle ways, have not been major themes in my work.

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

I’ve become a serial poet. And idea or concept grabs me and won’t let go until the creative impulse is spent. It can be from four poems to a book-length work. I still write the occasional one-off poem, but I generally don’t find them as interesting, or as inspired.

4 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?

Yes. Love them. What is the point of writing books and putting them on the shelf? I believe readings should be performative. They are where the poems are put to the test. Do they connect? Do they sing? Do they resonate?

5 - 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?

Right. I think the best way to answer this is to excerpt an abstract of a paper on Ecopoetics as Enactivist poetics that I presented recently in Toronto and will be presenting, in a mutated form, in Brussels this spring. Is the muse affected by climate change? Does poetry have any function in the current political—environmental debate? I really believe that a poet’s world and work is shaped by observation, physical experience, memory, and the environment (in) which she/he creates. Poets are by nature interdisciplinary. It is the poet’s job to make associations and juxtapositions—often disparate and provocative. I'm interested in the poet’s role as interpreter, witness and communicator, and the challenge for ecopoets to bridge the chasms between art, science, philosophy, and politics in order to help catalyze change. I’m not interested in writing in a vacuum.

So that's a major concern, bringing poetry back into the public/political arena. The other one is bridging the language–lyric chasm that has fractured the poetic community in Canada. I want the best of both, the cerebral challenge of language poetry and the visceral impact of lyric. Again, I think Alice Fulton's fabulous essay "Fractal Poetics" in her book Feeling as a Foreign Language is a must-read for all creative writing students and aspiring poets. As is Faking It: Poetics & Hybridity by Fred Wah.

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

For me it is essential, and enlightening. I owe a debt of thanks to Paul Dutton, David Lee, Fred Wah, Michael Barnholden, Don MacKay, Di Brandt and others who have provided valuable feedback and insights into my work. I don’t always make all the changes suggested—an author's prerogative, I guess—but I consider every suggestion very seriously. That's how we grow as writers.

7 - After having published more than a couple of titles over the years, do you find the process of book-making harder or easier?

Easier, in a way. I have more confidence in my own poetic voice and I'm more inclined to try new things, although I’m always afraid of saying the same thing twice, or running out of things to say.

8 - When was the last time you ate a pear?

I dislike pears. But I had wonderful pear-fennel soup at Paul Dutton’s place last October.

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

I had a dream just after bp Nichol died. I had my first ms. out with Underwhich Editions and hadn't heard back from them. In the dream bp said "it's good but it needs polishing before it will shine." So I guess the best advice is spit and polish. Also Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke, and "Projective Verse" by Olson were really important for me as a developing writer.

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

I don’t as a rule. I have no interest in writing fiction, at least not yet, although I have been writing more essays lately. But that is a very different experience. Since a lot of my time is spent writing freelance science and technical material for a living, writing poetry is a euphoric experience for me. When I have time to spend on creative work, I want to it to be the buzz of poetry.

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?

It depends upon what freelance work is on my plate, and how much energy and time I have left over at the end of the day. So I tend to write in concentrated spurts, often at retreats. Once I am working on a project, it seems that the poems are already half written by the time they appear on the page. Not to say I don't research or revise, but for me the first draft of a poem comes relatively quickly. Prior to that I need lots of time for quiet and contemplation, for the poem to percolate.

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

I read—classics, obscure texts, philosophy, non-fiction on science and ecology, other poets, literary/cultural theory—in that order. If I'm on a retreat, I'll turn to dictionaries, lists, old notebooks to jog something. But the poems come when they come and I usually don't worry about it too much. I'm more interested in quality than quantity. Force-fed poems end up fatty and pale. I want lean, taught poetry that you need a knife, not a fork, to cut into.

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

In the past year I've been working on a manuscript called "Suicide Notes," which will be published by Anvil Press in Fall 2008. Unlike the poems in my last book, Viral Suite, which were inspired by concepts from my science writing, there is nothing premeditated about these poems. No concepts, no quotes, no interwoven texts to draw from. Just a kind of primal memory. They were written out of a sense of immediacy—rather like panic mixed with euphoria. And in relation to my last book, Suicide Notes is more visceral scream than intellectual interplay. Although I strive for a balance between the cerebral and visceral in my work, these poems are mostly entrails, drawn out with quick precision. This is the way the poems want to emerge. As if they were indeed written in haste, or delirium, before tightening the noose or firing the pistol or jumping off of the ledge.

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?

Yes, yes, yes, and especially yes. I lived with visual artist Robert McNealy for eight years, and we recently collaborated on another book, CosmoSonnets, published by JackPine Press in Saskatoon. He was and still is one of the most important influences on my creative work.

Again, science has informed much of my work, as I've mentioned. It's difficult not to be inspired when you interview some of the top scientists in the country, or world for that matter, and write in depth about their work. I realized that their process and mine are very similar—the contemplation, research and serendipity that leads to discovery or art or poetry.

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

Whew, that would be a truly unmanageable list. Perhaps I will just acknowledge who first inspired me and who is most inspiring me now. My early mentors were Anne Szumigalski, Christopher Dewdney, Paul Dutton, Anne Michaels, Steve McCaffery to name a few...

What I find inspiring right now is the work of Maturana and Varella, Robert Bringhurst's new book of essays The Tree of Meaning, anything by Tolstoy, Baudrillard, Plato's Timaeus, Stephen Hawking's God Created the Integers (what I can grasp of it), and anything by Cormac McCarthy. Poets I’m reading now include Nicole Brossard, Sheri Benning [see her 12 or 20 questions here], Christian Bök, Ilya Kaminsky. Poets I read regularly are Don McKay, Lisa Robertson, Ken Babstock, T.S. Eliot, Marina Tsvetayeva (Feinstein translations)… etc..

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

See Machu Picchu. I had a recurring dream about the place before I actually saw a photograph. The dreams were amazing. The times I reached the top felt like I had reached Nirvana. I still have the dream, but now the place is commercialized, with tourist info and handicraft stalls along the path to the top. Hmm.

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?

Mathematician or theoretical physicist. I would love to take remedial math classes and then attempt some university math courses. Math, trig and geometry were my best subjects in high school. When I was at Banff I met a young mathematician, Matt Baker, who was also a poet—a very good one at that—and he said he just didn’t write much poetry because of the demands of his profession. Perhaps it was just as well that I ended up a poet and not a scientist, I’m not sure I have the stamina or could stomach the politics, but I love the language of mathematics and the concepts of physics. I recently wrote a poem in the form of a mathematical formula. Of course now there are websites devoted to poetry and code. I love that.

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

You should really ask: What other occupations have you had in order to feed your writing habit? Cocktail waitress (what they called us in the 70s), cook’s helper on oil rigs, advertising and marketing executive, court reporter, arts administrator, temp. Whatever…

Actually, to answer your question, what inspired me to become a poet was Leonard Cohen’s Flowers for Hitler, which I stole from my high school library. It is still on my book shelf, and I still pick it up occasionally.

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

No Country for Old Men. Ditto. Talk about banality of evil.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m finishing my manuscript Suicide Notes for Anvil, and also working on another manuscript loosely themed around cosmology.

12 or 20 questions archive

12 or 20 questions: with Steve McOrmond

Steve McOrmond was born in Nova Scotia, grew up on Prince Edward Island, and now makes his home in Toronto. His first book of poetry, Lean Days (Wolsak and Wynn 2004), was shortlisted for the 2005 Gerald Lampert Award. His second collection, Primer on the Hereafter, also published by Wolsak and Wynn, was awarded the 2007 Atlantic Poetry Prize. While studying creative writing at UNB, he worked on the editorial board of The Fiddlehead and co-founded the literary journal Qwerty. His work also appears in the anthology Breathing Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

For a number of years prior to my first book, it seemed terribly important to get published. An analogy might be the anxiety one feels at a certain age about losing one’s virginity. Perhaps the change, having experienced the gone-in-sixty-seconds anticlimax of first publication, is that I no longer feel that kind of intense, paralyzing anxiety, or not nearly so often anyway. When I do feel it now, there’s a line by Glenn Gould that I try to keep in mind: “The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.”

2 - How long have you lived in Toronto, and how does geography, if at all, impact on your writing? Does race or gender make any impact on your work?

I’ve lived in Toronto for ten years now, though I still feel a bit like a tourist in the city. Often I just stand and gawk, overwhelmed by how exhilarating, alien, terrible and sublime this place is. Writing, like accounting, is often historical. I’m still working through stuff from my childhood and early adulthood in the Maritimes, and still writing out of that landscape a good deal of the time. So, while the city and its geography and social fabric have definitely influenced my work on a number of levels (subject matter, style, structure), it may be too soon to gauge the full impact.

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

I write poems, not books of poems. My approach is piecemeal. Any kind of organization comes only once a fair number of poems have been written. It’s usually only a later stage that I begin to see certain connections between poems and realize that I may have a larger project on my hands. As to where the poems originate, I might say that, while some poets write out of ideas, I often seem to be more concerned with people and places. My work is peopled by many different voices or characters, some real, some imagined, whom I’ve felt compelled to evoke and memorialize. Likewise, it’s important to me to capture a specific time and place as best I can. Already, some of the places I’ve written about have ceased to exist (been bulldozed and redeveloped etc.) so there’s an elegiac or archival impulse: to look back, to record, to remember.
4 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?

I enjoy public readings both as reader and listener, though I do wonder whether readings haven’t taken on an exaggerated importance in our culture. I’m wary of how easy it is to judge a writer based on their ability to perform when this has little or no bearing on the quality of their work. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve purchased a book at a reading, after having been struck by the personal charisma of the writer at the mic, only to be disappointed by their work. Likewise, there are superb writers who are just terrible readers, and sometimes terrible human beings as well. In an interview in Jacket, C.D. Wright says, “I no sooner decide I am forever committed to someone’s work than I see them in the flesh in a setting I can’t erase and which forever galls my reading.” Because I’ve had similar experiences with writers whom I admire, I prefer to encounter them on the page where my experience of their work is unmediated by their public face.

5 - 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?

Ecological thought informs some of my poems. The current question might be the one posed by Tim Lilburn and the Thinking and Singing Poets: “How to live in the world as if it were home” or more simply, “How to be here.” I’m very interested in notions of place and how place shapes one’s identify and vice versa – Milton Acorn’s figure in the landscape making the landscape. This preoccupation with place is something you find in a great many Maritime writers. Sometimes it manifests itself as pastoral: a looking back and a longing to return to the garden. It’s interesting to read John Thompson’s Stilt Jack and David Hickey’s In The Lights of a Midnight Plow with an ear for how these poets veer toward and away from the pastoral tradition.

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

More essential than difficult. I’m of the era where workshopping one’s writing is pretty much the norm, so wrestling with an editor holds little apprehension. I’ve always had a small group a peers and mentors with whom I’ve shared my writing either through workshops and correspondence. These fellow writers have been among the most thorough readers, toughest editors and fiercest critics of my work. With friends like these…. Sometimes I do daydream about what it might be like to work with an outside editor in the truest sense, an editor whose aesthetic lies well outside my comfort zone. How might my poetry benefit if Erin Moure, for instance, were to pop the hood and start tinkering with the engine? (Erin, if you’re listening…)

7 - After having published a couple of titles over the years, do you find the process of book-making harder or easier?

Harder, because your ambitions for what you hope to achieve in your work become more grandiose. It’s no longer sufficient simply to make a poem (in itself, no small feat), but you want to push your work in new directions and make the great poem.

8 - When was the last time you ate a pear?

A couple of months back. Sliced pears drizzled in maple wine from Nova Scotia’s Gaspereau Vineyards for dessert. God, my mouth is watering.

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

“Instead of advancing, we too ought to try and rise.”
– Serge Fauchereau

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 like to work in the mornings. I try to get up early – around 7 a.m. – and write until about one in the afternoon or so, though sometimes I’ll get caught up in something and will still be at the keyboard when my wife gets home at 5 or 6 p.m.

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

I’ve written very little over the past year, so I wish I knew where to turn or return. The old stimulants – reading John Ashbery and Wallace Stevens, listening to Glenn Gould, getting out and walking around – seem to have lost some of their potency.

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

I suppose the rhetoric is a little more assured in Primer on the Hereafter than in my first collection, or so I’ve been told. I am more conscious of wanting my recent unpublished work to be different from what’s come before. My work naturally tends towards the lyric-narrative and I’ve been trying to push against this tendency a bit.

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?

All of the above. Whatever gets caught in the sweep-net of my consciousness makes its way into the poetry eventually: Scientific American, Nick Cave, Peter Mansbridge, snatches of conversation overheard on the subway. You name it.

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

Ted Hughes, John Ashbery, Alden Nowlan, John Thompson, Don McKay, Stephen Dobyns, Louise Glück, Margaret Avison, Robert Hass, Mary Oliver, James Wright, John Berrryman and Tomas Tranströmer have all been tremendously important to me at different times in my life, and I return to these writers over and over again. In a sense, they are survey markers that help define the circumference of my poetic practice. More recently, I’ve been obsessing over Ron Silliman, Rae Armantrout, Michael Palmer, James Schuyler, Jack Gilbert and C.D. Wright. It feels important to my craft to try and figure out what makes these poets tick.

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

Travel to Scotland to see where my mother and her family came from.

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?

Graphic designer.

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

No idea. If I did know, would I still be attempting it?

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

The last great film is easy: The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men. I’m a huge Cormac McCarthy fan and this adaptation of his novel is haunting and sublime. As for books, you’ll have to settle for a shortlist:

Jim Crace, Being Dead.
Jim Harrison, The Shape of the Journey.
Ron Silliman, The Age of Huts (compleat).
John Smith, Fireflies in the Magnolia Grove.
C.D. Wright, Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil.

Ok, let’s move on before I change my mind.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I’m knee-deep in a collection of poems about the end of the world called The Good News About Armageddon. I hope I have time to finish it before the subject overtakes its scribe. The title poem, which alludes to a Seventh Day Adventist pamphlet hand-delivered to the door, is a long sequence of poems loosely informed by the North American ghazal tradition. The voice of this poem is mercurial—by turns bitter, querulous, self-reflexive, dejected, ecstatic, profane, prophetic, aphoristic, hectoring. The collection also includes a number of dramatic monologues.

12 or 20 questions archive

12 or 20 questions: with William Allegrezza

[photo credit: Sarah Lang]

William Allegrezza edits the e-zine Moria and the press Cracked Slab Books. He has published four books, In the Weaver's Valley, Ladders in July, Fragile Replacements, and Covering Over; one anthology, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century ; seven chapbooks, including Sonoluminescence (co-written with Simone Muench) and Filament Sense (Ypolita Press); and many poetry reviews, articles, and poems. He curates series A, a reading series in Chicago dedicated to experimental writing. In addition, he occasionally posts his thoughts at http://allegrezza.blogspot.com.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

My first book did not change my life much, for by the time it was published, I had been editing Moria for several years. Beginning Moria had a more profound impact on my life; it pulled me into an active literary discussion/world. When my first book came out, it seemed like just another piece of that discussion. In fact, later works, like Fragile Replacements, have felt more significant to me, and they are perhaps read by more people.

2 - How long have you lived in Chicago, and how does geography, if at all, impact on your writing? Does race or gender make any impact on your work?

I recently moved from Chicago to Kalamazoo, Michigan—it’s a temporary place for me since I’ll be moving again this summer. I was in Chicago for seven years, and the city was important to my development as a writer. In Chicago I came to know many wonderful poets like Ray Bianchi, Simone Muench, Garin Cycholl, Kristy Odelius, and Chris Glomski. Reading their works and getting to know them pushed me to write and explore new ways of writing.

The geography of the city also influenced my writing. For six of the years I was in the city, I spent part of the summers crewing on racing boats. The experience of sailing on Lake Michigan has filtered into many of my collections since.

As far as race and gender, I’m sure that both impact my work, but I do not consciously focus on them.

3 - 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 don’t have any set way of beginning. I write as much as I can, and occasionally the writing seems to work. If I think it works, I keep it. That’s probably how most of the writing I’ve done gets started. Often I find that I’m concerned with several themes and theories at one time, so the writing I do will often address those ideas.

As far as working on a book, usually I do not, but I have on three major occasions. The first was the chapbook temporal nomads. In that work, I knew that I wanted to write poems for one month dealing with my reaction to the works of Deleuze and Guattari. The second time was with In the Weaver’s Valley. Again I used a time constraint to guide my writing. I wrote five poems a day for fifty days. The last instance was with the first long poem of Fragile Replacements. I wrote a poem for each section of Dante’s Vita Nuova. In that long poem, I was meditating on the loss of a relationship and how one moves past the loss.

Beyond these instances, I usually just write and see what I come up with in the process.

4 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?

They are part of the process only in that I realize I will probably do them. I’m not an especially good reader, and I often feel compelled to read the most assessable works.

I more often write with a reader in mind than an audience at a reading.

5 - 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 have many theoretical concerns behind my poetry. The critical texts of the language poets have especially influenced my work, as has Postmodern thought including writers like Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault, Benjamin, Adorno, and Virilio. The Black Mountain Poets also are very important to my writing.

Lately, I have been looking for ways to rethink the lyric. Basically, I’ve been trying to reconfigure the lyric for the contemporary mind while retaining some non-commercialized individual presence in the poem. Trying to write new thought constellations has long been important to my process.

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

Most of the time, editors do not touch my poetry, so they do not seem difficult to me. The few suggestions that I have received from editors have been very helpful. For example, Eileen Tabios (of Meritage Press) told me with Fragile Replacements that she thought it needed a long section at the end to balance the book, and she was correct. When I finished the long poem for the end of the book, it helped.

7 - After having published more than a couple of titles over the years, do you find the process of book-making harder or easier?

In most ways, easier. I know what to expect now, and I understand the pace of my writing. I also have a lot of design experience. Looking for new directions is the main hard part now. When I look back over the innovative writing of the past hundred years, I find it difficult find new avenues for exploration. I’m not suggesting that is my main goal, but if I’ve seen someone else do something well, I don’t often try to repeat it.

8 - When was the last time you ate a pear?

About two months ago. I was standing above the sink in my kitchen. The lights were off.

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

Jen Karmin told me once that she believes that writing poetry is a karmic activity, that you receive back much of the energy you expend. Considering my experience, I think she’s right. When I try to help other poets in a generous and open way, I receive help in spreading my own work.

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

I write whenever I have a spare moment, and if I do not find a spare moment during the day, I write at night. Often when I’m working on the final stages of a project, I do little else but scribble notes and play with the pieces. I become so focused that I shut out everything else to work.

11 - Where is your favorite place to write?

My desk at home in front of a large window. That said, I write anywhere I can, and some of my best poems have been written on trains or at tables at conferences.

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

Sometimes collaboration with other poets, sometimes Dante, sometime I just turn inward and try to write my way through to a new idea.

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

Fragile Replacements feels less playful to me formally. The work in it seems easy to access. My older works are more opaque and multi-referential. In this one, I was hoping to go in a new direction, but I’m not convinced I’ll write more works quite like this one.

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 came to poetry from music. Initially as a teenager, I started writing song lyrics for a band that I was in, and I eventually became more interested in the words than the music. Since then, music has remained an influence on my work.

Other arts influence my writing as well, especially painting and architecture. My list of favorite painters is probably as long as my list of favorite poets.

As far as nature, I do not consider myself a nature poet, but I love being in the open air. I have long been a hiker and backpacker, and one of the great benefits of my current residence is that my porch looks out over a nature preserve. I hike in it whenever I have time. Images of nature, thus, filter into my poetry.

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

The list of important writers for me is long and includes writers like Whitman, Neruda, Sappho, Bernstein, Ungaretti, Montale, Dante, Hejinian, Huidobro, Levertov, Eliot, Pound, H.D., Duncan, Olson, Vallejo, Porta, and Howe (this list could go on). I think of my writing as engaging in a conversation with the writing of other writers.

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

I would like to work on collaborations with other artists, especially painters and dancers.

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?

Some type of researcher or preservationist.

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

I felt and still feel compelled to write.

19 - What was the last great book you read?

I’m rereading Homer’s Odyssey currently to teach it. Besides that, Noah Eli Gordon’s [see his 12 or 20 questions here] Novel Pictorial Noise was quite good.

12 or 20 questions archive