12 or 20 (second series) questions with Rachel Lebowitz

Rachel Lebowitz (Photo credit Trevor Cole) is the author of Hannus (Pedlar Press, 2006) which was shortlisted for the 2007 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional BC Book Prize and the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction. She is also the co-author, with Zachariah Wells, of the children's picture book Anything But Hank! (Biblioasis, 2008, illustrated by Eric Orchard). She lives in Halifax.

Cottonopolis is a sequence of prose and found poems about the Industrial Revolution, in particular the links between the cotton industry in Lancashire, slavery in the Americas and the colonization of India. From the Irish slums of Manchester to the forts of the Slave Coast to the ruins of Dacca, India; from Civil War battlefields to Lancashire factory floors, from slave ship sailors to machine-breakers to child labourers, these poems tell the stories of the industrial age.

Upcoming tour dates: 
Monday, March 11: Kingston, The Grad Club (upstairs, 162 Barrie Street), 8 pm. Reading with Michael e. Casteels and Elizabeth Greene.

Tuesday, March 12: Toronto, Art Bar, Q Space, (382 College St West). 8 pm. Reading with Robert Colman and Clea Roberts.

Wednesday March 13: Toronto, Pivot Reading (The Press Club, 850 Dundas Street W), 8 pm. Reading with Dave Cameron and Cary Fagan.

Thursday, March 14: Ottawa, Raw Sugar Cafe (692 Somerset St W), 5:30 pm. Reading with Sandra Ridley.

Friday, March 15: Montreal, Argo Books (1915 rue Sainte-Catherine ouest) 8 pm (doors open at 7:30 pm). Reading with Stephanie Bolster and Sarah Burgoyne.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Did it change my life? Doing the research changed mine and my family's understanding and knowledge about my great-grandmother. Before doing the research for Hannus, no one in my family knew her maiden name or the numbers of children she'd had that had died in infancy. Also, through the publication of the book, we came into contact with relatives we didn't know existed, who live in Finland. You could also argue that if I didn't have this huge idea in my head that I didn't quite know what to do with, I might not have gone on to get my master's in creative writing at Concordia (which I mainly did so I could have the support and kick-in-the-butt to finish my thesis/first book) in which case I wouldn't have met my husband or had our kid.

Cottonopolis is quite different from Hannus, which was written in a variety of forms (prose poem, lineated poem, emails) and had lots of archival documents (death certificates, photographs, etc). Cottonopolis is written exclusively in prose poems (except for the found poems which are lineated) and is a lot less bulky (no documents). Also, it encompasses a variety of stories/characters -- it doesn't follow the trajectory of one person's life. But both books are historical, both have some dramatic monologues and both involved a great deal of research.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I didn't really. I used to write stories, though that was ages ago. And am I even a poet? Are my books poetry? Non-fiction? Or some kind of weird in between thing? I tend to be more comfortable with writing prose poems than I do with writing lineated ones -- and I read lots more fiction than I do 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?
A very long time. I'm a slow writer. Not unusual to just write a piece a year. In the case of Cottonopolis, I wrote extremely sporadically for 3 years and then changed my mind about the direction it was going in and scrapped all of it (though I recycled a couple sentences here and there) and then I slowly started again. I do lots of research and take lots of notes and that takes time (hard to muster the energy to do all that research sometimes!). That said, my first drafts are pretty much done. I edit as a I go along, tinker with the pieces for another few days, maybe, if that, and then it's done.  The writing itself comes quickly -- but the research that I need to do to get to that stage does not.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
A piece begins in some interest that I have, something historical that won't leave my brain  -- and then I delve into it more, do some research, and find some great images that I want to work with. I definitely work on a book from the very beginning. In my early 20s, I used to write short lyric poems about my life. I got bored of that. I'll take details from my life and give them to characters, but my main interest is in discovering hidden historical stories and bringing them into another genre.   

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I like doing public readings, though I don't do many of them. Are they part of the creative process? I don't think so. I'd write regardless. But it's fun and a nice boost at times and it's great to feel that I'm not writing in a vacuum.

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?
Nothing that specific. I'm interested in finding stuff out and making art -- or attempting to make art -- from it. I enjoy the challenge. I don't know what is meant by current questions. I just do what I do because it's what grabs me and I hope it grabs others. I want people to be moved by my work.

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?
To write. And to write well.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I think I'm a pretty good editor of my own work so I don't rely on someone else to make massive changes and I trust my gut. But I'm not totally pigheaded about it and other people's perspectives have often helped. 

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Don't eat yellow snow.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
I don't really move between genres so much as I stay in this no-man's-land of mixed genre. I am going to try to write essays for my next book. We'll see how that goes. It might fail. But that's OK. I like to push myself in different directions, to challenge myself in different ways. 

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
My kid comes into the bedroom. I say it's not 7 a.m. yet. He says it is taking a long time to be 7. I tell him to go. He goes. He comes back 5 minutes later. Etc. 

I don't have a writing routine. But my general process, for Cottonopolis, was to read lots of history books, write notes on post-it notes, eventually transcribe the notes onto a computer file, do some more research online, look through the notes, write something, tinker with it, doubt it, love it, etc.

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

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Nutmeg = Christmas

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?
Actual events -- whether contemporary or historical. Someone playing with their child. My child. Life. 

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Any writers who write well-crafted rhythmic wonderful sentences. Who have I loved recently? Willa Cather. 

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I'd like to try living in another country for a year or so. Finland and Iceland both appeal to me.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I'm also an educator -- I am trained as an elementary teacher and have worked for years in adult literacy. So there's already that. As far as art goes, if I didn't write, I'd probably be interested in some other kind of art: maybe photography -- maybe sculpture. Who knows.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Was there a choice?  

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Moominvalley in November by Tove Jansson. I can't remember the last time I watched a movie. Pretty addicted to The Wire, though. Talk about great sentences!

20 - What are you currently working on?
It's very early stages so who knows if it'll go anywhere -- and if my previous pattern is anything to go by, it may well take years. But I'm hoping to write a collection of essay-type-things about various historical events. How vague is that?

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

(another) very short story, up at Readers' Digest Canada!

Thanks to Zach Wells, I have a short short story up at Readers' Digest Canada (online only), alongside little fictions by Anne Stone, Jen Pendergast, Peter Jaeger, Rachel Lebowitz and Ashley-Elisabeth Best, as well as a ticker of twitter-feed of others' stories, hashtag #rdshorts. Thanks, Zack and RD Canada!

Grain magazine 38.4: (Truth, Lies— same difference.)

Just as this issue was getting ready to go to press, I read the deeply sad and shocking news of the death of Robert Kroetsch. I knew Kroetsch only casually, at best; I ran into him several times over the years at readings and other events and we'd say hello to each other. When I attended the Writing Studio at the Banff Centre in 1994, he was among the faculty there that year, teaching fiction whereas I was one of the poetry participants. Despite my being in the “wrong” genre, he generously read my poems and gave me encouraging responses and even some helpful suggestions. I'd earlier been feeling rather dejected about my poems because another writer at Banff dismissed them as being contrived. I mentioned this to Robert Kroetsch and he replied (gruffly, I'll add, very gruffly), “It's POETRY ...It's supposed to be contrived!” To my novice poet ears, these words were beyond wonderful...they were revelatory, and invaluable. My interpretation of Kroetsch's assertion was—still is—that you can make poetry (stone-hammer it if that's what it takes) into whatever you want it to be. For many months when I was first trying to figure out how to be a poet (I'm still trying to figure this out), I carried Kroetsch's Completed Field Notes with me everywhere—as a collection of constant reminders of what a poet can do, what a poet can make...indeed, contrive, yeah, that's the beauty of it.

TRUTH AND LIES, Grain's summer 2011 issue, is dedicated to Robert Kroetsch. I always think of Kroetsch as being the Master, The King, The Grand Poobah-Gardener if you will of the long poem. It seems fitting, then, that this issue features some astounding new writing by several poets who are working in longer forms or sequences, including Méira Cook, Sue Goyette, Susan Andrews Grace, and Kim Trainor, a poet new on the scene whose work, I have no doubt, you'll soon be reading more of. (Sylvia Legris, “Editor's Note”)

I'm disappointed that this issue of Saskatoon's Grain magazine, a quarterly published through the Saskatchewan Writers Guild, is Sylvia Legris' last as editor. I don't know why the the Guild would see fit to replace Legris, as she brought a quality, stature and visibility to the journal it had long been lacking. Subtitled “the journal of eclectic writing,” Grain has enjoyed a vibrancy it hadn't had in years, thanks to Legris, a poet best known for winning the Griffin Poetry Prize for her third trade collection, Nerve Squall (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2006). Through Legris, the journal was truly eclectic, acknowledging both the more linear narratives that have populated the journal throughout its history as well as an array of more experimental forms, by writers both established and new (it's worth noting that Chuqiao (Teresa) Yang, a young Ottawa writer I first discovered in the summer 2010 issue [see my review of such here] took first prize for her Grain piece in two categories of the 2011 Western Magazine Awards).

I'm disappointed she's leaving, and baffled at the move, with turns of outright anger. I can only hope that, with her tenure of editor over, she might return to writing. With only three trade titles to her name so far, she has long been one of my favourite Canadian poets, and I would like to see what else she is capable of.

I don't know that I believe in divisions between things. Between physical objects. Between people. The separations between things are, in some ways, working fictions. Yes, there are different “zones,” but I have this notion of everything being part of this huge protoplasmic unity. From galaxies to the insides of dogs and the undersides of sweatsocks. Do we really need cell walls? Don't things morph into one another, if only eventually? The same is true of concepts and abstractions. One person's unibrow is another's mantra. Someone's pain is my pain, though the self creates reasons to keep it at a distance. I want my writing to reflect the fundamental unipanrhizomatubuiquity between/of things. (Gary Barwin, “ON BETWEEN: ON WRITING”)

Part of what makes this issue compelling is the fact that Legris has selected sections from numerous longer works-in-progress (and a couple of shorter ones as well) by Gary Barwin, Méira Cook, Sue Goyette, Rachel Lebowitz, Moez Surani, Susan Andrews Grace and Kim Trainor that all include introductory statements. Why is it so rare for Canadian journals to consider statements? Calgary's dANDelion did such a few years back, and it was magnificent, with short poetic statements by poets Jon Paul Fiorentino and Julia Williams, among others. A particularly interesting statement comes from Sue Goyette, writing her “Agatha Christie's Eleven Day Disappearance: Her Fugue,” composing a poetic sequence imagining the lost days of author Agatha Christie in her sequence “The Silent Pool.” It seems odd to note that this same period was also fictionalized in an episode a bit ago of Doctor Who. Would Goyette have known that?

AGATHA CHRISTIE'S ELEVEN DAY DISAPPEARANCE:

HER FUGUE

fie, you silent pool

What they wanted to pull out was a woman. The water let them

try. They forked and combed it. Let loose the hounds.

The setting sun licked the poisoned dusk of this mystery

and sent them letters of despair. Her car was a slump

on the landscape. Someone thought to take pictures of it

and there's her shadow in one of them, lingering.

Then she disappears. Just like that. Can't we see the body?

her country begged as if they were 13-year-olds

at the barn door. If there was a body, it would be curved

like the bell it's been, grieving. Ring once for her mother,

twice for love. The lake wasn't bottomless. It was gentle

and, given the chance, would've taken her under

in the most delightful of ways. Like a bedtime.

And then a story.

Another highlight has to be Winnipeg poet Méira Cook, a writer who manages to regularly get onto the CBC Literary Awards poetry long-and-shortlists, as well as being author of a novel and four books of poetry, including the forthcoming A Walker in the City (London ON: Brick Books, 2011). Cook's work has a preference for longer forms, extending sequences that wrap through the entirety of her works, and her work included in this issue is “BEING DEAD,” a sequence of short poems. In her “NOTE ON BEING DEAD,” she writes: “I've always found it difficult to articulate what I'm trying to achieve in my poetry, a difficulty that is no easier to express even after I've supposedly achieved it by producing a poem. In this case, the title of the poem sequence, Being Dead, gives a hint of the subject matter—I think, I hope—but not necessarily what inspired it or why I chose the form I did.”

HIS RIBCAGE

A hull rocking on some warm, dark

underground current, sliding

through summer's deep crevices.

Give me a minute and I'll count to sixty

with the broad Mississippi flowing between

seconds like milestones on the river bank.

What else to mention? The featured artwork by Ray Fenwick, including cover art, has a lot going on in it, and forces the eye to stop for a moment. There are translations: six poems by Yang Jian (trans. Fiona Sze-Lorrain) and two poems by Wang Jiaxin (trans. Diana Shi and George O'Connell). Rachel Lebowitz has some magnificent prose-poems; I look forward to seeing her project, “Cottonopolis,” achieve completion, to see what else is possible through the cadence of her lines.

JAR

This is, after all, a new world. Iron brands, bands laid across meadow, fallow field. They say cow's milk'll turn sour at the sound. They say the speed will crush your lungs. They say you could lie a sleeper line of mangled legs along this track. Wheels turn, the hare flees, rain falls in sheets. Over a hundred bales of cotton in her sides. We left Liverpool this morning. Some years back, there were signs in her windows: Silver Locks and Collars for Blacks and Dogs.

We'll reach Cottonopolis next. The train's greased with palm oil. See it shine.

The gun goes off. Scramble!! Bodies shine. Slaves run, fling themselves overboard and are seized again. And later, we'll take this palm oil, this gold in a glass, and spread it on our trains and on our bread for tea.