Brian Dedora’s novel/memoir A SLICE OF VOICE AT THE EDGE OF HEARING was a finalist for both the Relit Award and the George Ryga Prize followed by another “audacious experiment in narrative” A FEW SHARP STICKS, followed by LOT 351, and a book of his visual work from the 70’s and 80’s entitled EYE WHERE, all books through the Mercury Press and Teksteditions. Editorial Visor in Madrid and BookThug in Toronto published his work on the Spanish poet and playwright, Federico Garcia Lorca, titled LORCATION in a bilingual edition in 2015 along with TWO AT HIGH NOON published by Vancouver’s Nomados Literary Press. BORDER BLUR and DIAGRAMS FOR A VAUDEVILLE OF POEMS published by NoiR:Z, Toronto, 2019. 2020 saw the publication of PLAGUE SPOT and RECYCLED along with PHRASE-O-MATIC in 2021 from NOiR:Z. Also in 2021, PAPER POEMS, Red Fox Press, Ireland, and in 2022 SECTION 2: Gap Riot Press, Toronto and POLAROID POEMS, Paper View Press, Portugal. Dedora lives and writes in Toronto where he hones his skills in film photography with his vintage cameras.
How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Yeah, a xerox of a xerox expands the text...Oh, I thought, I could take that unfinished poem I wrote in creative writing class where the poem received a “You need to get your geography straight.” and a shitty ‘B- ‘... The poem could be redeemed because its visual along with corrections became, as a visual, a piece by itself. So, time to roll up my sleeves and get busy: xeroxing on a xerox ten times and reversing the order so the most unreadable of the text appears first then moves to the beginning of readability I then reduced the readable to the size of a postage stamp, so the entire piece laid out coalesces to almost total clarity and then fades progressively to the reduced black shape of the poem. This became my first chapbook but also importantly my introduction to visual and concrete or “experimental”. I was not really interested in producing a book of discrete lyrical poems and producing this piece, THE DREAM, also broke a period of silence, a dry spell, of which I’ve had a few. Richard Truhlar and John Riddell of Phenomenon Press wanted THE DREAM for distribution and published my second chapbook a visual of breath diagrams, A POSTERIORI. Through them I met fellow writers also busy with experimental practices: Michael Dean, Steve Smith, bp, and the Four Horsemen. The lifelong importance of THE DREAM was to show me how I could produce in this vein which I’ve done my entire writing life. This was the way to circumvent what I saw as puny poems with a tight return. My writing from that day forward was the beginning of a long trajectory where the visual and the words became distinct pieces or distinctly separate but always undercutting and circumventing the idea of the poem as I saw it. Word work has progressed from WHAT A CITY WAS through some ten books to my latest piece THE APPLE IN THE ORCHARD all along perfecting a technique of disruption in regards prose writing. The use of incomplete sentences for the rapidity of thought, inclusion of visual material such as photographs, bits of paper, and paintings. As to my latest work, THE APPLE IN THE ORCHARD, and how it compares to previous work is that it is the apex of my prose work so far in that it is both experimental and readable, not that the previous books weren’t readable, but my technique has become so much better being built through the experiments of previous work... each book spawns another in this long extension.
How did you
come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
The
bedroom poems of my youth and the stuff I produced for my creative writing
class were junk and in the long run of no real interest. The problem was I hadn’t yet found my métier.
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?
My writing
projects, not counting the lightbulb flashes that produce visual work, are a
slow process because they never start as a named project but arise from single
written pieces in a host of notebooks.
When any piece typed out or now entered on my computer might begin a new
project as it sets off memories of other pieces resulting in a furious search
through several notebooks to find what I want and lay them beside what I’ve now
typed or entered. One of the pieces now
used in THE APPLE, was written in 1991.
Other notebooks and other pieces begin, as I remember them, in relation
to what now seems “something”, no definition yet but a locus of interest.
Time-wise the prose projects take up to five years, THE APPLE almost seven
which includes the pauses between entries.
There’s a lot of just plain thought work which goes into each project
whether book or chapbook... Oh, and the editing, the paring down.
First
drafts never look like the finished piece...never.
I don’t work from A to Z on any project it’s always a long typed out piece that after rigorous scrutiny becomes a book.
Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I enjoy readings and I’m a good performer of my work but a half hour before I go on my guts are about to drop and I’m wondering why the eff do I do this... then it’s the first breath and I’m on. The important thing to remember is you must give back. There’s nothing worse than listening to an ego driven narcissist recite “pohems”. Why are poet voices in many cases so soft, so without inflexions, so far back in the throat...you must get out there to give your audience something to hear...Sheesh!!
Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kind of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I don’t have any theoretical concerns when I begin something... it’s a contemporary fixation as so much of writing is held and written within academia...all the better to rave on about it in class and it is a class thing with an agenda. Remember PO-MO speak? What club do you belong to? Yikes, that was such a bore and a kind of mis-direction with a vocabulary to suit. You must recognize that between 1988 and 2008 I did not write or publish so the whole “theoretical” kind of passed me by. There were some interesting thoughts/theories that grabbed hold especially the questioning of the authorial absolute. I do enjoy reading theoretical essays which I forget quickly but the work is all there in some kind of punctum. I find that area of chaos or non-linearity especially fertile ground as evidenced by my three books, A SLICE OF VOICE AT THE EDGE OF HEARING, A FEW SHARP STICKS, and most recently, THE APPLE IN THE ORCHARD. These books can be read as long poems, collages, or “novels” all of them pushing against the university writing class prose read. Photography has also undergone huge shifts in its authority, meaning, and being. So, I don’t go out to shoot “theoretical”. I get an idea and then shoot it. The pandemic lockdown was really productive, I was shooting series every week. I make folders of these series some I’ve shown many I haven’t.
What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
The role of the writer in the larger culture... that depends on how you’re getting paid and whose words you’re “employing”. The channels in which writing is read seem to me fairly limited where writers of necessity not only find it difficult to get published but even get heard. The proliferation of books and voices, the whole global hum places the individual writer in solitary confinement where release is burrowing down into your own language and by whatever means getting out there to speak to someone. It’s the “getting out there” that grinds the initial impulse as so much gets in the way: the petty politics, the outright cruelty, the narcissism in front of unremarkable work, the “give them what they want” and the myriad agendas of all the demographics. Current questions...!!?? I don’t believe there is any over-arcing moment where the great question can be asked because we don’t know it, I certainly don’t. Where even, to open, to answering. There are many demographics where you may never need to step out from, all with their own set of questions and maybe their own answers. The important thing is to show and teach that everyone can be creative in whatever form makes you burn. I was listening to a Zoom recently where Erín Moure spoke about an essay by Chus Pato concerning thinking. It’s that type of essay of ideas that excite me... the thing is I could read these essays and never get to work.
Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I love working with an editor as I’ve only had two: Bev Duario and Stuart Ross.
When bpNichol and I did ABC Childhood we wrote a kind of call and response,
then bp would type it, rip the finished piece out of the typewriter and begin immediately inking out revisions where I’d be imploring, “Can we wait a minute?” The immediate revisions were a way of getting or retaining initial impulse. Work with Bev Daurio was a treat as she would come on you very quietly with hints or suggestions which were brilliant as she saw under what I’d written and then ask for a bit more. When Bev and I worked on A SLICE OF VOICE AT THE EDGE OF HEARING, she suggested taking one story/chapter and splitting it in two and placing it separately in the book. It was a brilliant move! Stuart was a very different editor as he worked for clarity without change to an original idea plus he enjoyed when I stood up for certain passages and then made suggestions of, “Can you write three more of these passages?” I did write three more, The beloved buyer, in THE APPLE IN THE ORCHARD. The point of working with these editors is we all wanted the piece to be better and so we did.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
“You’re the artist, you’re the problem solver.” Jack Kidder, Victoria, B.C., 1969. The advice I got before leaving B.C. for Toronto. I was Jack’s protégé and he taught me about food, art, music, and buying my first piece of art, now lost I’m afraid, a clown in a frilly costume trying to fly with the bird that’s flying past... one must try!
How easy has it been to move between genres (poetry to fiction to non-fiction to photography to visual art)? What do you see as the appeal?
Moving between genres is a matter of keeping myself busy especially after I’ve finished a word event from WHAT A CITY WAS, 1983, to THE APPLE IN THE ORCHARD, 2024. It’s the space when I am wordless and in between a word piece where I need to be busy, so I turn to visual work, whether collage, PLAGUE SPOT, THE PAPER POEMS, and THE POLAROID POEMS or photography. The analogue photography with its mechanical cameras ( I like the ‘feel’ of it working) is the same space that needs to be busy and filled but in my camera work I shoot sequences mostly based on flash ideas: Eight photos of scrap paper found on Huron Street where I lived and when developed I wrote out on the white scraps in the photos what I had done ending with “beginning at my doorstep”, titled SCRAP NARRATIVE. You can, if you wish, go to YouTube, look up my name and READ THIS FOTO to see a recent exhibition from the 70s until now.
The appeal... it’s fun but also a degree of fear as I set out to shoot an idea, a tension that makes the work better. Box Set and Bloonz, published by Viktlösheten Press are prime examples of a flash idea which I shot and made a chapbook out of the results and sent it out where Viktlösheten agreed to publish it.
What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I have no writing routine until all the bits I’ve randomly written come together as one something, then it’s a more regular routine with lots of space to think about what more may be included i.e. new writing or a search through the notebooks. I have wordless periods especially after a large project. By large I mean a word event that is coalescing and becoming and when “done” I am kind of vacant.
When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
When the writing gets stalled, I turn to my heap of notebooks and read to find something. Read other writers both poetry and prose and essays especially Lisa Robertson or Erín Moure or anything I might stumble upon or be told about.
Be easy on myself. One day I need to type out these notebooks.
What fragrance reminds you of home?
Fresh baked bread and flowers in the house.
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?
Fred Wah also said books beget the next book not merely sequence but an impulse or the next technical or maturing step. Ideas do come from various sources, mostly visual but also, importantly, light bulb moments that are the quick writes that later form a whole or the flash bulbs for a photography idea.
What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
What other
writers or writings that are important...??!!
Have you got time? I use other
writers long after I’ve read them through some form of osmosis where I “hear”
their voices and certain passages I write seem to have their voice: Faulkner,
Burroughs, Goytisolo, Joyce, Modernists all but I’m still looking for a
contemporary prose that really turns me on.
For Canadian prose: Sheila Watson, John Riddell, Aaron Tucker. For Canadian poetry: bp, Steve McCaffery, Lola Tostevin, Kate Siklosi, Sonja Greckol, Dale Smith, Phil Hall, Erín Moure, Ralph Kolewe, Lisa Robertson, Kirby... How can I possibly name them all whether
deep-dive or for singular events... near impossible.
I
must include my work on Federico Garcia Lorca as his life and writing were the
informatives to my book on Lorca titled, Lorcation, a tri-part book
composed of poems, an essay, and a reflective finale grounded in and on the
land where Lorca was raised.
What would you like to do that you haven’t done yet?
Write something completely straight.... nah! Some poetry, maybe...
Perhaps complete a work that I’ve abandoned a few times and give it a kick in the butt.
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 has you not been a writer?
I have had a life with two “careers” .... I became a master gilder under the tutelage of the artist William Kurelek at the Isaacs Gallery and went into my own business to become one of the premier gilding picture framers in the country. Alongside this I have followed my own creative lightbulb moments whether written or visual including a twenty-year dry spell...when I concentrated on building an art collection and writing about it. I am not making a financial life by writing, there is no imperative for me to do so. This privilege is a space I worked my ass off to achieve: the time to follow those creative impulses to make... yeah, that’s it... to make.
What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film.
The last “informative” books were Erín Moure’s, Theophylline, neck and neck with Lisa Robertson’s, Boat, I just love being inside these books.
The last great film setting me out to a full-blown bawl: ALL OF US STRANGERS,
six nominations at the BAFTA Awards and no win for a film whose narrative is not linear
and, therefore, very upsetting for Fred and Mabel in Mississauga... fuck me...
It ends with Frankie Goes to Hollywood, THE POWER OF LOVE, tears dripping off my chin and full-blown bawling.
The books: after all the edits and with THE APPLE IN THE ORCHARD gone to press... six Rex Stout, Nero Wolfe mysteries .... yup!
What are you currently working on?
Current project is a resurrection of an older work that needs the ‘truth’ to get out of the way for the introduction of the chaos it needs: THOSE LOW HANGIN’ FRUITS... to be continued...as I saw it one morning and how wide this piece could encompass and how I might get there... I saw it whole, exciting and scary.
