Touch the Donkey supplement: new interviews with Tostevin, Tucker, Czaga, Christie, Kronovet, Abel and Poe.

Anticipating the release next week of the seventh issue of Touch the Donkey (a small poetry journal), why not check out the interviews that have appeared over the past few weeks with contributors to the sixth issue: Lola Lemire Tostevin, Aaron Tucker, Kayla Czaga, Jason Christie, Jennifer Kronovet, Jordan Abel and Deborah Poe.

Interviews with contributors to the first six issues, as well, remain online: Edward Smallfield, ryan fitzpatrick, Elizabeth Robinson, nathan dueck, Paige Taggart, Christine McNair, Stan Rogal, Jessica Smith, Nikki Sheppy, Kirsten Kaschock, Lise Downe, Lisa Jarnot, Chris Turnbull, Gary Barwin, Susan Briante, derek beaulieu, Megan Kaminski, Roland Prevost, Emily Ursuliak, j/j hastain, Catherine Wagner, Susanne Dyckman, Susan Holbrook, Julie Carr, David Peter Clark, Pearl Pirie, Eric Baus, Pattie McCarthy, Camille Martin and Gil McElroy.

The forthcoming seventh issue features new writing by: Stan Rogal, Helen Hajnoczky, Kathryn MacLeod, Shannon Maguire, Sarah Mangold, Amish Trivedi and Suzanne Zelazo. And, once the new issue appears, watch the blog over the subsequent weeks and months for interviews with a variety of the issue's contributors!

And of course, copies of the first six issues are still very much available. Why not subscribe?

We even have our own Facebook group. We are minutes away from anything.

the week we went all over Toronto;

For the sake of Christine's work, we were the entire last week in Toronto, which meant Rose and I wandering for the sake of wandering, and visiting as many people as possible, from our hotel on Jarvis, right across from Allen Gardens. We drove in on Sunday, and starting Monday, Christine would disappear every morning just before 9am. Our days usually involved leaving the hotel first thing, ending up back around noon for lunch and nap, and out again by 2pm for another few hours (which meant we were most often crashed by 5pm). We were in visiting mode: a variety of folk I had been wanting to see for some time, all of whom I would have pre-baby not gone to see for the sake of work. Work! Work! Work! It gets in the way, sometimes.

Before this trip, all I'd known of Allen Gardens before this was from Lynn Crosbie, the poem "Alphabet City" from her selected poems, Queen Rat (Anansi, 1998), that includes:

We walked to Allan Gardens, and disagreed some more. Daniel's writing

is economical and pure, I said. I thought he gave up after writing poetry,

he said. He said some other things, and I didn’t see him again. I did not tell

him that the last time I saw Daniel he told me he had spoken in his sleep.

He said: I hate lyrical poetry:

Monday, June 22, 2015: We began our day heading east on the Dundas Streetcar towards the Danforth area, visiting poet Hoa Nguyen over at the house she shares with Dale Smith and their two sons. She made us smoothies (which Rose refused to touch), and I envied their garden. Apparently they were hosting a reading on Friday night in their living room, but there was no way we could make it (Christine and I read there moons back, when we were just pregnant enough to know, but not enough to start admitting). We gossiped about more than a couple of folk (including a particularly cranky American poet we both know), and Rose tore her way through much of the house (discovering some toys in one of the upstairs bedrooms). We talked about poems, and the speed one begins to write once the distraction of children appear. Everything takes so much longer to attempt, if at all. We spoke of the workshops she's been doing lately, both in person and online (check her website for information; they are pretty cool).

In both directions, the streetcar showed us a part of the city I hadn't really known about (including a very cool train station on Dundas East converted into bicycle rental), and Rose fell asleep on the ride home (see photo of such, above).

The afternoon included some time across the street from our hotel (where I discovered both playground, and the fact that we were at Allen Gardens). Rose took some time to chase some of the pigeons before allowing herself to enjoy the small playground. Brand new, it would seem, the playground, and even labelled for children from 2 to 6; impressive! The sky was clear marble blue. From Gardens, we made our way north to visit father-in-law, way up at Yonge and Shepard, where Christine met us for dinner.

And what was that industrial building behind the swings? Intrigued; wish I'd time to better explore.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015: We spent our morning at the offices of the Literary Press Group and LitDistCo (who distribute our Chaudiere titles) visiting everyone there, who were kind enough to gift the wee lass a colouring book, a storybook and various other items. We were even able to see poet Chris Chambers in his offices right next door, as part of Magazines Canada. Did you know he finally has a new book of poetry?

Post-nap, our afternoon took us west to the home of Sharon Harris and Stephen Cain. I can't believe it has actually been five years since I helped move them into that house. Rose laughed and laughed, and Sharon presented her with a full plate of blueberries (I'm surprised Rose left any for them).

I asked Sharon about the two manuscripts she's been working on, and found out that Cain has a new book forthcoming with BookThug. Cain also mentioned that Allen Gardens houses (somewhere) a plaque for Milton Acorn, which we couldn't quite find (I should have attempted to look it up, but never managed to remember). After her first few minutes of hesitation, Rose began pulling on Cain to walk through the house, the back yard and a variety of other places, over and over and over. Hand, she says, reaching up.

On the way back, Rose and I caught some buskers in the Yonge/Bloor subway playing a variety of music (she responds very much to music), including an accordian player who noticed her watching, and switched to performing some kids songs. Lovely!

In the hotel, Rose doing laps around the room even as late as 10pm. Our lack of usual routine on this trip has certainly worked to her advantage (if not ours). But oh, how she slept...

Wednesday, June 24, 2015: Our morning began, once again, at the playground at Allan Gardens before heading west once more for the sake of some book-purchase, and a lunch over at Future Bistro (the former Future Bakery) on Bloor West, right by Brunswick Avenue (see a post I wrote on such in 2010; and a poem composed there a year or so later). Impressively, she ate far more of the fruit than the home-fries. I've been going to Futures for twenty years now, as my usual go-to spot to spend a couple of Toronto hours writing and what-not. I might not have been able to get any work done, but Rose did sign a birthday card for her Gran'pa McLennan, and a variety of postcards for others.

Oh, how I miss Book City on Bloor West.

Later in the day, finding out an Ottawa friend of mine was, at the same time, right across the street having a lunch meeting at the old By The Way Cafe. How random is that?

She was asleep, of course, before we returned to our hotel.

Our post-nap visit went a bit north, over to where the incredibly patient Lola Lemire Tostevin lives, spending some time visiting with her and her husband, who generously presented Rose with some animal masks and a big book of stories, along with some paper to colour on. I was able to hand over her contributor copies of Touch the Donkey #6 weeks before it releases (mid-July), as well as a mound of other items I've been working on lately.

I think Rose was more worked-up than normal, and even I was beginning to wear down from her tearing around, and guiding her husband out to the garden multiple times (much the way she led Stephen Cain around), and into their front room. Rose only calmed once she and Lola began colouring.

We spoke of writing and publishing, and the madness of industry. Literary publishing, I've decided, is like a bumblebee; it just shouldn't fly, and yet does. She has a collection of essays forthcoming with Teksteditions this fall, which everyone should keep an eye out for.

On the way back to the hotel, a brass band performing at the corner of College and Yonge Street. I was thinking that Rose must think Toronto is magical, given all the buskers and live music she's been aware of. We never wander into the places such is played back at home.

Thursday, June 25, 2015: We began, once more, by heading west, but this time along Queen Street by streetcar, for the sake of Type Books. We were a bit early, only to discover a park and playground just by, at Trinity Bellwoods. Unlike the one near our house, this park was packed full of kids and parents and running around. She ran up the structures and ran across, but turned around (as per usual) at the top of the slide, for the sake of climbing back down the steps (she hates slides, for some reason).

Afterwards, we stopped briefly at the Japanese paper place that Christine likes, and made it finally into Type, where we saw that Derek McCormack was working. Did you know he has a book out this fall with Semiotext(e)? Extremely cool. Rose admired the books and the typewriters and the multiple ramps throughout the store. I picked up a book for her (after she had pulled down about a dozen or so from the shelves). Best I didn't get anything for myself, really. Not that she gave me much chance to look.

We had lunch at College Square with a Tim Hortons card Christine had passed along. Since they hadn't highchairs there, I sat her in a chair like a big girl. Later, a woman with her teenaged daughter in tow complimented us on our comfort with her in a big chair, given how small she is. She was fine. Much muffins were eaten (she won't eat the sandwiches).

Post-nap, we met up with Mark Goldstein right by our hotel (apparently he lives two blocks away, with bill bissett between us). We were nearly running late, so had to slip Rose into the ring sling while she still slept (after a two-hour nap). She woke in the hallway of our hotel, and wrote postcards at the coffeeshop while we waited. Given she was wiggly once he arrived, we return to Allen Gardens, where, of course, she immediately made friends with some kids on the bouncy-see-saw thing (of course). They were bouncing and laughing and letting go occasionally (wasn't sure what I thought of that). And the kids didn't mind; it actually gave Mark and I a chance to talk about various things, including poems, screenwriting and birth-mother stuff (he's been instrumental in talking me through some of my experiences over the past year or so). Did you know he's another book forthcoming with BookThug? Very nice. He is such good people (even though he's cat-allergic and can't come over to our house).

Friday, June 26, 2015: We checked out of the hotel, and Christine went for her last morning of work, and I headed off to see Jay and Hazel MillAr, en route to father-in-law's house. Given we haven't a clue where our GPS disappeared to, I was amazed I managed to drive over without getting lost (there are parts of Toronto I know a bit, but mostly I've no idea), wandering the further-west of St Clair and Runnymede. Hazel made muffins and Rose was barely contained, managing to run and run and eat and run. And they were kind enough to pass along a BookThug totebag! We spoke of poems and pianos, and children and baking.

After, we drove up to father-in-law's house, where she slept and she slept, and waited for Christine to return. We were a night there, before heading off to Woodstock, Ontario for some further adventures...

Lola Lemire Tostevin, Singed Wings

My short review of Lola Lemire Tostevin's Singed Wings (Talonbooks, 2013) is now online at Arc poetry magazine.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Lola Lemire Tostevin

Lola Lemire Tostevin has published three novels, a collection of critical essays and eight collections of poetry including Singed Wings (Talonbooks, 2013). Several of her books have been translated into French and Italian. She has taught creative writing at York University, Toronto, and served as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Western Ontario in London Ontario. She is currently working on a second collection of critical essays and a book of short fictions. She 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?
The main change, I think, was putting me in touch with other writers.  I had met a few writers before, but I  felt like an outsider.  Writing and having my first book published confirmed that it was possible for me to write and publish, something I thought was reserved solely for others.

How does my most recent work compare to my previous?  Well, given that I have been writing for many years and published thirteen or so books, I hope the work has improved.  Given the subject matter of my latest poetry book, Singed Wings, the writing seems more mature.  Of course, I would never have written about aging and everything that goes with it  thirty-some years ago.  Writing changes much as life changes.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
The writers I was most interested in at the time were mainly poets.  I sought in poetry themes that were more relevant to me than fiction.  I like fiction—good fiction—but poetry served a more relevant purpose for some reason, so it was natural to veer towards writing poetry.

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?
Starting a project comes easily, it’s the process of seeing it through that is arduous.  I end up with many drafts and those early ones look very different from the last ones.  I don’t make notes, I just make drafts upon drafts which I never show anyone until I send the ms to a publisher.  Then I may do more revisions depending on the feedback I get.

4 - Where does a poem or work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I was unaware that I worked on a “book” when I first began to write.  I was startled with my first books to discover that each one carried a very specific theme throughout.  I hadn’t planned it that way, and a few people referred to those books as  long poems.  It took a few collections of poetry to realize that I do start off with a theme and, more or less, carry that theme through.  With later books, I intentionally shaped them that way.  Especially my latest one.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I don’t think they are part or counter to my creative process.  Readings are just something you have to do so the publisher will sell books.  You owe the publisher that much.   I  no longer do readings in bars or restaurants, I hate those.  I like readings when there’s an exchange with an audience such as universities where the students have read my work and have questions, sometimes surprising ones.  I always come away from those having learned something--about the readers, the book in question, and myself.

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?
Every writer has theoretical concerns behind her/his writing, even writers who claim to have no theoretical concerns whatsoever...  Trying to make writing as transparent as possible to convey “reality” is, in itself, a theory.  There’s an entire gamut of theories from the simplest ones to the more convoluted ones we’ve been subjected to for the last few decades.  I don’t go out of my way to incorporate any of these in  my writing although I’m sure some theories have informed my work.   Nor do I try to answer “questions” in my work.  The creative process doesn’t necessarily have answers other than  it wants to be creative.  That’s its job.

As for “current questions,”  I guess that depends on each writer.  I’d hate to think that writers are a monolith who dictates which questions are “current” and which ones are “passé.”  I think it was important for certain groups to address certain issues at certain times, for example, women finding their own voices or people of colour finding their own places within the literary canon.  But it has to be, in the end, each writer’s own voice.  No one should write according to a group’s expectations or issues that are deemed “current.”   Unless you are a commercial writer looking to make lots of money.  But I don’t think this is what we are talking about here.    

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I would not impose any role on any writer or the creative  imagination, other than being creative.   Of course, once a work is out there it can take on a life of its own, depending on readers, depending on how it is perceived and received.   Unfortunately, the “larger culture,” as you call it, doesn’t seem to have much interest in literature that pushes boundaries.  It is more interested in reinforcing what it already knows.  Otherwise it feels threatened.  People are threatened by the unfamiliar.         

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I don’t submit my work to an editor until it has been accepted by a publisher and I then work with the house’s substantive editor.   I tend to  make it clear from the beginning that if I don’t  like certain suggestions I won’t make changes, and  it has never been an issue.  On the whole I’ve been very fortunate with poetry editors, starting with bpNichol who edited my first book, Color of her Speech for Coach House Press.  How lucky was that?   My last latest book, Singed Wings was edited by Garry Thomas Morse at Talonbooks.  He is a very interesting writer himself and a most astute editor.  He made some very good suggestions, several that I was happy to accept.  I think I’ve run into more problems with copy editors who don’t always get what I’m doing and want to “correct” things that aren’t “wrong.”   Copy editing is a totally different mindset.   Speaking of editors, I went to Richard Truhlar’s funeral this week.  People kept referring to Richard’s enthusiasm and I remembered seeing Richard at different readings over the years where he would often silently mouth the word “Wow” after someone had read a poem or performed a piece he liked.  On two occasions when Richard asked me to contribute to his short fiction anthologies—The Closets of Time (Mercury Press) and The Sound of Smoke (Teksteditions) I knew that I would have to give my pieces that little extra, push beyond what I was used to, because I would have to “wow” Richard.  A writer should always be fortunate enough to have an editor with that “Wow Factor.”  Richard will be sorely missed.   

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I remember reading, several years ago, Yann Andréas’s book, M.D., on Marguerite Duras--he was the young man who lived with her during the last years of her life.  He wrote that she could not not write.  I love that double negative that turns everything into a positive.  I’ve used it many times in different circumstances and it works.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
I approach any project-- poetry, fiction or critical essay—with enthusiasm and optimism.  I don’t find moving between genres difficult, although I am aware that the results are not always as successful from one genre to the next.  It may help to be naive.

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 almost never wrote when my children were growing up, and only sporadically when we were moving from city to city or from country to country,  or even when I was teaching or serving as a Writer-in-Residence.  But those moves, especially living in Paris France, informed my writing later on, because of the extensive reading I was doing.   Now that my days are mostly free, I’m usually  at my computer by mid-morning and try to write most week days.  Week-ends are reserved for family events, outings, socialising, etc...   If I’m not writing, I’m usually reading something that relates to my writing.  I may be a little obsessed actually.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Other people’s creativity regardless of art form.  My tastes are eclectic.  Often I will trip on a word, a line, a gesture, a work of art, and I will play with it for hours and the first thing I know I’m no longer stalled.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Being French Canadian with a long history and emphasis on French food, definitely the aroma of food cooking.

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?
Definitely.  The first thing I do when I hit a city is check out museums for retrospectives, especially of contemporary artists.  I also love films, specific film directors, and contemporary choreography like the work of the late Pina Bausch and the inventive Marie Chouinard.  I love Robert Lepage’s theatre.   Visual artists, film directors, choreographers, philosophers, etc... are the springboards for Singed Wings.  Louise Bourgeois, whose art influences some of the poems in my book once wrote on a pink postcard:  “Art is the Guarantee of Sanity.”

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I don’t want to narrow it down to a few names.  It would leave too many out.  I have several friends who are artists or writers who are also favorite dinner guests. They are very important to my life and I too am “wowed” by their creativity.  I need them in and outside my own work.  

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would love to publish an entire poetry book in French instead of scattering a few French poems amongst my English ones.  I used to think that I would love to free-fall/parachute out of an airplane...  Stupid idea since I’m afraid of heights.  I’ll stick to an entire French poetry book someday.

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 used to love acting.  I met my husband at an audition for William Inge’s  Bus Stop.  We then did Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie together and  also Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel.  A director, Richard Howard, married to the actress Lila Kedrova of  Zorba the Greek fame, asked me to do several plays as part of summer stock one year,  but by then I was married and pregnant, and had to abandon what I thought was my “dream.”  I still have reviews of those plays stuck under the glass on my desk.  I never keep reviews of my books but I kept those.  Significant? Maybe, but  no regrets.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Interest and circumstances, I suppose.   I started to write when I was a boarder at a convent from the age of ten until my last year of high school.  It was kind of a refuge, especially when I could spend time in the library.  The nuns would sometimes read my compositions to the class unaware that I used to copy entire definitions from various dictionaries and encyclopaedias to give  my compositions more heft.   I don’t know where my interest in reading comes from since, except for a set of French encyclopaedias, we didn’t have many books in my childhood home.  Although my mother did buy me a set of The Junior Classics: The Young Folks’ Shelf of Books when I was about eight years old.   I did get through those and the French encyclopaedias so perhaps they did influence me.  Later on, writing was something I could do while moving from place to place because of my husband’s work, even if it was sporadic.  Another writer asked me once why we persisted since the rewards were so fleeting and I said “Because it’s there, like Everest.”

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I keep going over Anne Carson’s Nox.  It’s the perfect blend of the personal and the literary--an indelible life event converted into art.  There’s a line in my latest book about Bourgeois not recreating the way she once lived, but living the way she created.  Nox does that.  I love the idea, the concept, of making one’s life a work of art.   As for a recent film,  I’m a huge fan of Hannah Arendt’s and  I loved Margarethe von Trotta’s recent film, Hannah.  I admire both Arendt’s and von Trotta’s work because of the thread of resistance that runs throughout their books or films..  Resistance is important to the creative process.   An element of resistance runs through all original thought, resistance to what is expected, resistance to what is imposed.   

20 - What are you currently working on?
I am working on a second collection of critical essays and a collection of short fictions.  I’ve just finished a longish poem that my translator in Italy, Annalisa Goldoni, requested for a literary magazine she edits.  It started me thinking about more poems, but first I have to finish the books of essays and short fictions.   I think.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Open Letter: Beyond Stasis: Poetics and Feminism Today

This is less a statement of feminist poetics than a statement of anxiety about feminism and poetics.

First, I wonder: what is a feminist poetics?

Writing difference, asserting versions, multiplicity, complication?

What’s a useful question to answer here? How do I, as a writer, experience writing, as a woman? The question is so qualified.

The question is about writing but after writing.

The question is how is the writing received? (Natalie Simpson, “Never quite arriving, or: a poetics of anxiety”)One of the most impressive issues of the critical journal Open Letter that I’ve seen in some time has to be “Beyond Stasis: Poetics and Feminism Today” (Thirteenth Series, Number 9, Summer 2009), guest-edited by Kate Eichhorn and Barbara Godard. This issue covers more than two hundred pages on and by some of the most provocative of Canadian women innovative writers over the past twenty years, including Rachel Zolf, Natalie Simpson, Oana Avasilichioaei, Rita Wong, Trish Salah, A. Rawlings, Angela Carr, Suzanne Zelazo, Sylvia Legris, Sina Queyras, Margaret Christakos, Nathalie Stephens, Joanne Arnott and Lola Lemire Tostevin. Produced out of the result of a conference that never got off the ground, I almost wish there were fewer conferences in the world, just so more issues like this could come to fruition; most conferences that actually happen don’t have half the energy and verve of what’s happening here. As Eichhorn writes in her introduction:

This issue’s title, “Beyond Stasis,” is both a statement of fact and a call to action. It also references the intentionally sardonic title of a conference on feminist poetics that four of the issue’s contributors attempted but ironically failed to realize five years ago. As Elena Basile explains, our failure to move “beyond stasis” at the time, however, may hold valuable insights into why a younger generation (or two) of Canadian women writers and critics have struggled to establish and sustain dialogues on poetics, politics, feminism and (post)nationalism since the mid 1990s: “A few insistent questions kept haunting our meetings, which today I am tempted to read as symptomatic both of a deep-seated anxiety for cultural/political recognition, and of an ambivalent desire to engage with the legacy of second wave innovative poetics in ways capable of addressing present issues and concerns without falling prey to
generational nostalgia or generational resentment.”

One of the questions that comes up throughout is the sheer amount of critical lack for a whole generation or two of Canadian women writers; I would suggest that the problem is even broader than that, that this isn’t simply a gender issue, or even one of generation. As Christakos writes in her piece, “Assignment of the Cleft”:

Over the past two decades, apart from the crucial support of the small literary presses who have published my work and the grants I have received through peer-juried recommendation processes, there has been very little in the way of my work being offered any critical attention, or sustained exegesis. I don’t think my experience of paltry reception is unusual though. Every innovative writer colleague of my own generation has been woefully overlooked. The question I suppose remains: who would or should do that looking, that receiving? In the 1980s one hoped for response from one’s mentor generation. In this era of antic overwork and exhaustion, most senior writers, unless they are located within academia, do not participate in the production of poetry criticism. It is almost expected now that emerging writers should ‘pay their dues’ by expending a great deal of artistic energy on writing barely remunerated or unpaid ‘reviews’ generally for any of the small-circulation Canadian journals or for online magazines, and for doing the slog work as assistant editors, interns, program coordinators and event organizers for their seniors.

It is rare to find a critical essay on any of the writers of my generation or the two next generations composed by any of the writers whose influence most powerfully
shaped my/our work.

I’ve wondered the same for many years about the same critical lack, but would cast the net far wider, from anyone beginning to write in the 1970s to the present, overshadowed, perhaps, by the long shadows of the first wave of 1960s innovators. Overshadowed, and too, caught up in the overwhelming amount of work that hasn’t been done, against those few left who seem willing to do any of it, and even fewer publishing options for critical writing. Does anyone remember the days when journals such as Contemporary Verse 2, Paragraph, Brick: A Journal of Reviews, Essays on Canadian Writing and others existed for the sake of continuing conversation through reviews, interviews and essays? And why is it that writers such as Lisa Robertson, Natalie Stephens and Anne Carson seem to get more attention and critical response in the United States than by those in their own home country? In her piece, “Nothing Simply This Way Comes,” Sina Queyras gets more specific, continuing (nearly) the same thought, writing:

In fact, Canada is in the very odd position of having some of its most innovative poets both in the mainstream spotlight and reviled by it. The more successful women such as Anne Carson, Margaret Atwood and Moure become, the more they are attacked, portrayed as terrifying creatures, and here at home, often much maligned – described as national embarrassments and worse. There is something perplexing about poetry – more specifically, feminist poetry – and its unwillingness to con/form that seems to evoke very personal, direct, and often anatomical or body-related attacks. “I have developed an allergy to Erin Moure, and so should you,” Shane Nielson suggests. What exactly is he allergic to? Is this aversion to the terms of the conversation offered by Moure, in his inability to engage in it? Should we develop an allergy to all things in a poem that tear and demand attention? Should we develop an allergy to thinking texts? Complexity? Discomfort? Innovation? Anything we don’t understand or like? Poems themselves? Language?

Another point that Rachel Zolf brings up is in the resistance that most seem to have to so called “difficult work,” including resistance by those who profess to want to engage with such, whether reviews, critics or other writers, as Zolf asks exactly what poetry can, is and should be doing. What exactly is the problem?

Leaving aside any latent (or not-so-latent) interpersonal issues underlying these responses, the exchanges bring up some important questions. Do we have to like, enjoy, feel uplifted by everything we read? What is it about a text that makes it likeable – or not? What do readers hope to ‘get’ out of texts? Should poetry enact a transparent transmission of meaning? Is its task to provide comfort and certainty in complex and different times? What can and does poetry do?

Part of what makes this issue like a conference itself is how the issue is organized into sections, beginning with “Positions” and “Dialogues” into “Histories” and “Analyses,” ending finally with Tostevin’s “Afterword,” where she begins by acknowledging the sixteen years between this current issue and the “Redrawing The Lines: The Next Generation” issue of Open Letter she edited. Where has the time gone, and what has it done? It’s compilations such as these that keep me optimistic for the future of critical inquiry and discourse through and about Canadian writing generally, and poetry specifically. As Tostevin writes in her endpiece:

So what does feminist poetics mean today? Is it, as Natalie Simpson asks, writing with a difference? is it an assertion of versions, multiplicity, complication? It is certainly all those, but does this apply exclusively to feminist writing? As Holly Dupej points out “third-wave feminists are rightfully weary of such ‘essentialist’ notions of gender and cultural categories, and the falsely universal definitions that they imply.” Doesn’t this also apply to the creative imagination, I would like to add? Or as Heather Milne asks, has the time come “to push beyond the stasis that has come to characterize our generation’s orientation to feminist poetics?”