Damian Rogers’ Paper Radio

Cordiform

We remember what it was like

when the world unfolded like a map,

intricate as a Victorian valentine.

We also remember when the thought of the sun rising

made us feel like we were chewing aluminum foil.

We too imagined our lungs

filling with warm bathwater.

We rested in liminal spaces,

our bodies framed

by windows and doors.

We wanted to thank you

for painting our fingernails electric pink

while we lay dying in the hospital.

It was a lovely gesture.

We remember our last breath,

how we rattled like a toy as they told us we would,

and of course, what came after.

We’ve learned we can’t live

in the seed and in the grain.

We carved a star in the driveway

to give you a sign.

Follow the cracks.

I’m rather amazed at what Toronto writer Damian Rogers achieves in her poetry collection, Paper Radio (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2009), coming on the heels of a successful daily blog run as writer-in-residence at Open Book Toronto. In her first collection of poems, Rogers is writing a density with such an enviable ease, rivaling even American poet Sarah Manguso for her clear, tight wisdom and ease of thought, but in a prevailing edge and undercurrent of darkness far more wry than cut. How do such simple and complex poems come so easily through with such an amount of bare knowing?

I run along the lake that’s named for its beauty,

breathing without pain.

The world has no corners,

though everything we build in it does. (“Running Along Ontario”)

In his piece “The Trick of It: Poetry and the Plane of Immanence” as his “Contributing Editor’s Column” in Descant #146 (fall 2009), Mark Kingwell makes a compelling argument for paying attention to Rogers’ work, writing:

The sentence and the line are two grids of meaning, two frames or machines. The skillful breaks of enjambment wrest unexpected meaning from their simultaneous ripping and collision. Here’s an example from Damian Rogers, a poem called “Dream of the Last Shaker” from her 2009 collection, Paper Radio:

We stream into the meetinghouse

through two doors

like twin cords

in the same braid.

I love the men,

all of them

lined up like

God’s long finger.

The sun attends everything

equally: the wood, the bend

of her white muslin sleeve,

the outstretched arm of the apocalypse.

Take hold of my shoulder.

Shake me awake.

Here there are particularly nice breaks at ‘cords’, ‘them’, and ‘bend’. The only line in any poem that is not subject to this reverse-pressure effect is the last one, which itself bears the whole weight of the lines above. The oneiric command to be shaken awake, with its echo of the Shakers’ rapt vision-trances and ominous sense of impossibility – if the dreamer is the last Shaker who will be the shaker who shakes her into wakefulness – is the kind of last line that makes the end of poem bear all the meanings of end at once.

It is hard to say whether coming to an end or making a beginning offer the more difficult prospect. What is clear is that, at their best, philosophy and poetry are engaged in the same kind of beginnings and endings, working on the same plane, the plane of immanence.

12 or 20 questions: with Richard Truhlar

Richard Truhlar is the author of seven books: The Hollow and other fictions, The Pitch, Dynamite in the Lung, Figures in Paper Time, A Porcelain Cup Placed There, Parisian Novels and Utensile Paradise. He is a fictioneer, poet, text/sound/music composer, visual/concrete poem artist, and editor/publisher. A founding member of the sound poetry group Owen Sound and the electroacoutsic chamber music ensemble Tekst, he is presently the producer for the contemporary music label Centrediscs at the Canadian Music Centre. Visit him at http://www.richardtruhlar.com/

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first full book (as opposed to chapbook) was A Porcelain Cup Placed There (Coach House Press, 1979). Most of the books at Coach House, at that time, were seen through the press by a single editor. My first book was chosen by the editorial collective, which I believe then comprised bpNichol and Michael Ondaatje, among other well-known writers; so it gave me confidence to proceed investigating the type of writing in which I was engaged, which for lack of a better term could be called ‘experimental’. It’s difficult to compare that first book with what I’m writing now, because as a writer, I have no 'style', no 'voice'. Ever since I read Charles Olson and his essays on projectivist verse, I proceeded to explore the relationship between form and content. In my reading of Olsen, I perceived that he felt form and content should reflect one another; that content should determine form and, likewise, form should determine content in an organic way. This, to me, was a methodolgy to free me from the constraints of 'style' and 'voice'. It meant that I could write content in various forms, and create forms to house content. I was free from the 'authority' of the Author's voice, the narcissism that demands each work should 'sound' the same, be stamped in the author's 'style'. So I’ve felt free to write lyric poetry, experimental fiction, to compose sound poetry and concrete poetry, to pursue story-telling in various genres, as well as extreme avant-garde long-poems.

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

I didn’t. I began writing both fiction and poetry at the age of eleven.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing intitially 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?

It varies, depending on the writing project. I’m always writing; in the sense that throughout every day I’m thinking; and a thought inevitably leads to another thought; and these thoughts swirl around in my imagination, taking form in scenarios and language in my mind. It’s a type of osmosis that builds within me until I feel ‘full’; then I sit down to inscribe what’s already there, and it flows out effortlessly, fully-formed, with very little editing needed. At other times, when I want to base my writing in perhaps an historical perspective, I’ll do preliminary research and make notes; but then the notes themselves will enter into that process of osmotic development I just mentioned, because they’re just anchors to ‘reality’, while it’s my imagination that creates the work.

4 - Where does 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?

Most of the time my writing develops out of an idea or an intuition. Given the scope of these ideas and intuitions, they necessitate a more comprehensive development; such that most of what I write, whether short or long, is interrelated; so that I’m usually writing in larger macro-structures. Even though I might compose a number of shorter pieces, for instance, they are created out of an imaginative impulse to explore a larger terrain. An example would be my book of short fictions entitled The Pitch (The Mercury Press, 1992), which was a series of pieces that I wrote exploring the schizoid nature of human perception in an assumed reality which as H.P. Lovecraft says is “a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings.”

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

Public readings have nothing to do with the art of writing. Writing and reading are antithetical. Writing is a private activity done in the silence of the Self. A public reading of a text is a performance that has little to do with writing, but more to do with the promotion of the Author.

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?

All of the concerns in my writing are on the face of my writing, are representative of my experience of reality, whether immanent or imaginative. If I explore in my writing, for instance, the nature of human perception in relation to language, it’s not theoretical, it’s based on my own perceptions and experiences.

I’m more interested in asking questions, since I believe the possible answers are implied n the questions one posits. My current question is: will my writing continue to grow each year like the perennial gardens I have planted in the yards around my home and which I tend carefully and knowledgeably.

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?

rob – what do you mean by “larger culture”? Do you mean populist or popular culture, or mainstream media-recognized culture. However, in response, I don’t believe in a “larger culture” because since the beginning of the 20^th century, and if, in fact, you mean “art” instead of “culture”, creative expression in the arts has continued to fragment, until at this point we find ourselves in a situation of many niches. From literature to music, there is such a unique proliferation of creative expression (and given the means to explore and availability of these expressions through the internet) that “larger culture” has become untenable if not impossible. If by “larger culture”, you mean all those readers who await the next pronouncement of Margaret Atwood – that’s just marketing and iconography.

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

Neither – a good editor will teach me what I’ve missed in revising my own manuscripts. A good editor, when you’re at my level of writing, is sensitive to the work and doesn’t want to change it; rather gives good advice regarding grammatical subtleties or linguistic expression.

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

“We have only moments to live.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn

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 don’t believe in routine. See my answer to Question 3.

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

My own personal history is quite unusual in this regard. Every time I’ve been “stalled” or “blocked” in my writing have been occasions of illness, usually a severe flu. The illness has allowed me to break through the “block”, as if I needed the vulnerability of being ill to be free of constraints.

12 - If there was a fire, what's the first thing you'd grab?

My family and cats.

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?

Music has influenced my writing greatly; to the extent that some of the minimalist procedures of say Philip Glass and Steve Reich I have used as methodologies in composing texts.

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

There is nothing that is important “for” my work. If you are implying or mean what writers have or writing has influenced my work or that I greatly respect, I would say: Claude Simon, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Gertrude Stein, Franz Kafka, J.G. Ballard, Richard Matheson, et. al.

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

Publish another book.

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?

Paleontology.

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

Since most writers in Canada cannot sustain themselves financially through their writing. So I’ve always pursued my livelihood through other means. For the last 20 years I’ve worked for the Canadian Music Centre as the producer of their sound recording label Centrediscs and the Manager of their Distribution Service for independent labels. I love contemporary concert music that has evolved out of a rich classical tradition.

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

Book: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. Film: (an oldie) Once Upon a Time in the West – Henry Fonda plays one of the greatest villains of all cinema history (imho).

19 - What are you currently working on?

Two projects: a collection of speculative fiction ( inspired by the likes of H.G. Wells, Philip K. Dick, et. al.), and a long lyric poem in Cantos entitled Floating World.

12 or 20 questions (second series);

12 or 20 questions: with Natalie Zina Walschots

Natalie Zina Walschots' first book of poetry, Thumbscrews, was published by Snare Books in the Fall of 2007. Her newest manuscript, Supervillains, is nearly complete. Her work has recently appeared in Rampike, A4, Open Letter, Misunderstandings Magazine, Last Supper and ditch. She has served as the Managing Editor of both filling Station and dANDelion magazines. She also co-curated the Flywheel reading series from 2005 to 2008. Natalie currently serves as a board member for Toronto's Draft reading series. She is also a part of the collective behind Small Print, a workshop and reading series for young writers. Natalie completed her MA in English/Creative Writing at the University of Calgary. Her current base of operations is located in Toronto. She lives in a menagerie with several humans, two cats, and a dog.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first chapbook was a self-published, hand-stapled, ugly little thing that I assembled when I was seventeen. That experience wasn't particularly life-changing, but it was certainly the product a light-bulb moment. I'd recently picked up my very 'zine on campus at the University of Windsor, and promptly took it apart. I was pleasantly surprised by how simply constructed it was. That was the first moment I realized that publication was not some distant and barely attainable goal, but something I could to myself. Popping my publication cherry early and ingloriously really alleviated a lot of the mystery and anxiety, and helped me get my work out in the world early and frequently.

Getting my first book published, having the object out in the world was great, but the really life-altering experience came in the form of the month-long tour I went on in the weeks following the launch of the publication. A couple of months before Thumbscrews came out, my publisher at Snare Books told me that there really was no travel budget to speak of, so if I could do a local gig and maybe come to Montreal for a launch there, that would be swell. Instead, two other writers (Ryan Fitzpatrick, whose book Fake Math was also published by Snare in the fall of 2007, and William Neil Scott, author of Wonderfull) and I put up our own money and spent four weeks travelling from Montreal to Victoria, performing in 11 cities (often more than one reading per city). That experience was absolutely incredible.

I was obsessed with poetic constraint while writing my first book, experimenting with all the dreadful things I could do to language, how tightly I could tie it up and still get some kind of a performance out of it. The resulting work is sexy and playful, but also dense and difficult. I've tied the knots a little less tightly in my recent work, allowed for a little more wiggle room, while still keeping things torqued and strange.

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

When I write, poetry falls out. Poetry is the natural byproduct of my picking up a pen or sitting in front of a computer.

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?

For my most recent manuscript-in-progress, Supervillains, I was invited to contribute a piece to Matrix magazine's Fan Friction issue, and wrote “3 Love Poems for Dr. Doom.” Over the next few weeks, I kept writing weird little erotic love poems for supervillains, and when I had about a dozen pieces I started thinking in terms of a book instead of another poem.

While I'll often jot down notes or lines or phrases in a notebook, when I sit down to write I compose full poems at a time. I will edit those pieces extensively, and sometimes cut them all together, but the poems tend to emerge roughly complete. The first draft and final product are at least recognizable.

Writing the first draft is always the longest part of any project. Once I have that draft, I can go through massive edits relatively quickly, but the initial composition is always the slowest.

4 - Where does a poem 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?

The basic unit that I tend to work with is a book. I don't write individual pieces that I then try to organize along thematic or structural lines to form a book. Instead, I start with an idea and an aesthetic, and then begin writing the pieces. I definitely ascribe to the “concept album” style of book building.

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

I love to do readings. I absolutely thrive on performance. I also find that reading a piece to an audience not only helps me develop a relationship to that piece but also helps considerably with the editing process. The first thing I want to do when I get off stage is hide with my stack of papers and make editorial notes.

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?

If there is a primary concern that comes up in my writing again and again it is feminine desire. Whether I am writing about sadomasochism, food, or comic books, it always comes back to the language and landscape of desire. One shock that never seems to dull for me in the overwhelming belief that female desire is either alien and unknowable or completely non-existent. In response, I consider it a solemn duty to explore the landscape of my own desire as fully as I am able.

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 am not sure about the role of “the writer,” but I definitely see my role as a writer as synonymous with shit-disturber. I see my work as being antithetical to everything safe and easy.

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

I enjoy working with an editor, though I suffer immense anxiety because of it. As soon as the editorial process actually begins, I love it. But actually handing over writing that I know needs to be improved to be read by another human being for the first time is enough to give me a panic attack. Once the writing changes hands, however, I am thrilled to receive any feedback and have no problem experimenting with just about any suggestion to see if it will improve the work. I also really dig writing workshops.

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

Probably that in poetry, form = content. Once I stopped looking at the structure and substance of my writing as separate constructs, my process opened up. Thanks, Prof. X.

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

While poetry is my primary genre, I am a big fan of work that operates within multiple generic constraints. My second manuscript, Tonsil Hockey, was actually a piece of poetic criticism. Like anything else, it can be easy to start using divisions like genre or sub-genre to draw party lines, and soon the poets aren't sitting with the fiction writers at parties (if they even go to the same parties at all). I think that's silly. I like shades of grey.

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 am not at all a morning person. However, one of the few things that I can happily do before noon is write. Late mornings are one of the few times of day that I have exclusively to myself right now, and so it tends to be the best time to hunker down with a pot of tea and get some work done. My late morning writing tends to be of the editing persuasion, however, since my creative brain seems to sleep longer than my revision brain. My prime time for first drafts is after 10pm.

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

Wherever I was first inspired to start the book. For Thumbscrews, I would often interview members of the S&M community in whatever city I was living in at the time, or even just go to a S&M club and watch a show. Now that I am working on Supervillains, I can turn to comic books when I need to be jostled out of the place I've gotten stuck. When I am working on Gastroporn, my infant manuscript on food media and pornography, I cook something. Really, I choose the projects I do because they allow me to indulge my vices and call it research.

13 - Betty or Veronica or Archie or Reggie? Drive or fly (or sail)? Laptop or desktop?

Betty (us blondes need to stick together). Fly (I don't drive). Laptop (gotta stay portable).

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?

Food, sex, video games, comic books, medical literature, teratology, body modification, conceptual art, and heavy metal.

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

Too many to name! I feel boundlessly grateful to be so surrounded by so many fearless, indefatigable writers in the Canadian literary community. My peers are a constant source of support and inspiration.

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

How much time do you have? There's a great deal of travelling I've yet to do; the next five books are laid out in my head, with several more in the embryonic stage; and there are an awful lot of roller coasters to experience. I also plan to earn my PhD.

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 was absolutely convinced for a number of years that I was going to be a surgeon. I am still passionately interested in medicine and know that I'm going to mine that interest for at least one book. In another version of my life, I may have also become a performer of musical theatre.

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

Whatever other ambitions or aspirations I've entertained, the thing that I always come back to is writing.

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

I am currently absolutely in love with Susan Holbrook' Joy Is So Exhausting. I think the best movie I've seen this year is still Star Trek.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I am nearly done a full draft of Supervillains. This particular exploration of desire reaches towards narratives that reject the image of the hero as ideal partner and instead embrace the villain. The poems in Supervillains are “love” poems that re-appropriate the variously overwrought, hyper-scientific, and threatening language used by supervillains to create sexual vignettes that are at once arousing and disturbing. Evan Munday, mastermind behind Quarter-Life Crisis and illustrator of Jon Paul Fiorentino's Stripmalling, is going to illustrate the book.

12 or 20 questions (second series);

the ottawa book awards, 2009

12 or 20 questions: with Karen Connelly

Karen Connelly is the author of nine books of best-selling nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, the most recent being Burmese Lessons, a love story, a memoir about her experiences in Burma and on the Thai-Burma border. She has won the Pat Lowther Award for her poetry, the Governor General’s Award for her non-fiction, and Britain’s Orange Broadband Prize for New Fiction for her first novel The Lizard Cage. Published in 2005, The Lizard Cage was compared in the New York Times Book Review to the works of Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, and Mandela, and hailed in the Globe and Mail as “one of the best modern Canadian novels.”

Her other books include Grace and Poison, One Room in a Castle, This Brighter Prison, The Disorder of Love, and The Small Words in My Body. Married with a young child, she divides her time between a home in rural Greece and a home in Toronto.

1 - How did your first book change your life? it proved to me (and to a number of others!) that I was a writer.

How does your most recent work compare to your previous? it is part of my last book. it is actually “the making of The Lizard Cage” How does it feel different? The Lizard Cage was an act of bravery, going down into the dark and staying there until I made it mine, and found a way out of it, or a way to live in it, that darkness of what it is to be human, and trapped, and violent, and suffering, and in need of love. It was a duty, and a kind of exoneration. Burmese Lessons is more peaceful; the end of something. It is a love story, too; and real love, no matter how long it lasts, is always a kind of celebration.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction? When I was eleven, I found a collection of poetry called The Five Nations, by Rudyard Kipling, in my great grandfather's books. Though I was already a keen reader, this was the book that wakened me to the power and strangeness of language itself, and especially to metaphor; to the idea that words I knew, magically arranged, referred to a world I didn't know, but could imagine, could experience through language. It was profound. The poems were for adults, of course, and many of them were about war, or about early British colonists. But they were the first works of literature that I loved, and I still know a number of them off by heart. And they made me want to write poetry.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? the next one is beginning as the other one ends; or they actually develop concurrently, one in process and the other in my mind, fermenting. Does your writing intitially 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? fiction is tons of notes, thrashing, getting it wrong, getting it wronger, fucking up, wandering around, eventually figuring out what the hell I am doing. but non-fiction is much easier, more linear and clear—partly because I work so directly from my own life. poetry is just magic. who knows where it comes from, how it writes itself? I’m finally working on a new book of poetry and it is pure heaven, despite the hellish material I’m working from.

4 - Where does a poem or piece of fiction usually begin for you? from the passions: anger, lust, violence, fear, desires of various sorts. 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 work on books from the start.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings? love them; it’s part of the work, giving the words to the reader directly

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? how do we place the body—the human, animal, earth body—in language? what responsibility does my language owe the body? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are? what is the nature of human violence and evil? is redemption possible? are we committing collective planetary suicide? if so, why? is it stoppable? what is power? what is betrayal?

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 think North American writers—like other citizens—should be more political. I don’t even necessarily mean with their work; but with their voices, their lives. I find Canadian writers in particular surprisingly apathetic when it comes to political engagement.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)? Not at all difficult. A good editor is a brilliant necessity.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)? The great Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer gave me the best piece of writerly advice I’ve ever had, partly because it was succinct but addressed so much of the struggle of creative life:

“Be daring.”

And Katherine Anne Porter wrote about the necessity of courage in the writing life. I’ve always remembered that.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to creative non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal? Very easy. The appeal is that they do different things, make different sounds, like a variety of musical instruments. Or they are in fact different THEATRES that amplify and throw out the sounds in different ways. Literally, prose and poetry must engage different parts of the brain.

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? Childcare in the morning, and some email, then writing in the afternoon, from about 2-6. something like that, pretty regular too.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration? I don’t get stalled, I just get lazy and procrastinate. A good stern talking-to (to myself) after a lot of tiresome whining usually gets me going again.

13 - Have you have a lucky charm? Various rocks from various countries.

A plastic rhino on my desk—the Sumatran rhino, in fact, which is very close to extinct. All of them will probably be gone by the end of our lives. Another whole species.

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? All of the above. I am fascinated by writing because it comes from everything, not just books. It comes from life. It is the conversation that can talk about anything, anyone, any time. I love the breadth of writers minds.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work? Seferis, Neruda, Ritsos, Gabriela Mistral, Susan Griffin, Robert Bringhurt, that great book The Gift by Lewis Hyde, Lydia Millet, various Buddhist texts, Edna O’Brien, Muriel Spark. and lately, Tim Lilburn, whose work is really prayer. I have read the poem Contemplation is Mourning over and over, and it just stuns me every time. He is an extraordinary poet.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done? live in Mexico or Chile, or both, speak Arabic and maybe Chinese, visit Africa for an extended period of time, adopt a child, be a better citizen—like volunteer in a food bank or work w/ underprivileged children, stuff like that, I don’t know, this is an endless list, I have a big appetite.

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? many other things, I suppose: a doctor ( I admire doctors) a massage therapist, a dancer, a more serious traveller/adventurer, or someone who works doing something truly useful in the Third World.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else? There was never any other viable choice. I was a writer from the time I learned to write, literally.

19 - What was the last great book you read? Annabel Lyon’s The Golden Mean: brilliant. And Lydia Millet’s Oh Pure and Radiant Heart. What was the last great film? Hmm. Michael Clayton, maybe. Children of Men.

20 - What are you currently working on? a collection of poetry called oh canada crack my heart about crack addiction, my family, the women murdered by Robert Pickton (and how an entire police force, and a whole city, colluded in those murders). more light stuff. but, as I said, it is so wonderful to be writing poetry again.

12 or 20 questions (second series);

12 or 20 questions: with Sarah de Leeuw

Sarah de Leeuw, a cultural-historical geographer and creative writer, is an assistant professor with the Northern Medical Program at UNBC, the Faculty of Medicine at UBC. Her work, both as a geographer in a faculty of medicine and as a creative writer, engages questions of power, place and landscape, social justice and marginalization. She is the author of Unmarked: Landscapes Along Highway 16 (2004) and her most recent book, The Geographies of a Lover, is a collection of poetry forthcoming (2012) with NeWest Press. In 2009 she was awarded 1st Prize in the CBC Literary Awards for her creative non-fiction essay “Columbus Burning”. Her poetry has appeared in a number of Canadian literary journals, including Fiddlehead, Wascana, and The Claremont Review. Her academic writing, which is broadly concerned with (post)colonial geographies, Indigenous peoples, and the social determinants of health, appears in venues ranging from The Canadian Family Physician and Children’s Geographies, to The Journal of Native Education and The Canadian Geographer. In 2007/2008, prior to moving back to northern British Columbia, she was a Fulbright Fellow with the University of Arizona.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Before I published my first book, I didn’t think it was actually possible to publish a book. Although books surrounded me, and although I have loved books for as long as I can remember, I couldn’t quite grasp that it was possible that I might one day write, and publish, one. That I might one day see a book I wrote on a shelf in a bookstore. The idea of publishing my work was more an abstraction than a reality. So Unmarked made the idea of a book real. My most recent book, which is a collection of poetry as opposed to a work of creative non-fiction, is hard to compare with Unmarked. In the case of both books, though, geography remains the defining theme upon which all the text moves and turns.

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

Despite my upcoming book (The Geographies of a Lover) being a collection of poetry, creative non-fiction remains my favorite literary genre. As much as I am a skeptic about ideas of ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ (and by this I mean that I deeply believe every known thing is filtered through our imaginations, our expectations, our circumstances), I find it easier, and more satisfying, to contemplate topics that I think have social import, or might contribute to a broad goal of expanding social justice, through a genre that is anchored in events or places that readers are unable to dismiss as ‘mere fiction.’

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing intitially 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?

I write all the time. I usually have half a dozen writing projects on the go at any time…and I consider everything a writing project, from writing emails to people I love through to writing grants for research about the colonial history of British Columbia. The initial ideas for many of these projects begin as I am walking, running, hiking or swimming. I find that if I can exhaust myself, if I can simply empty my brain of worries (and this often comes with physical exertion) then the ideas for writing projects will flood in quite quickly. I must admit that I am rarely without an idea about something to write. I do tend to work through a number of drafts (typically 3 to 5) before I feel as though a piece is approaching completion. Most of my work, after initial conceptualization, does start with notes scribbled in various notebooks.

4 - Where does a poem or piece of non-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?

I tend to organize my writing projects around themes. Once I have a theme, I have a basic idea of where my writing will go. I rarely think about the final, final, outcome of my writing. I do not want to feel as though I am writing to an end. Things seem to end where and when they are supposed to end and I usually can’t envision that when I embark. So, for instance, Unmarked began with the desire to map in writing the places that I know as home. From there, it was just a matter of “filling in the map” as a wonderful BC geographer (Cole Harris) once wrote. After a certain amount of time, a certain number of essays, I realized I had completed about as much of the map as I could. And so I just wrapped it up and offered it out to the world. I was more humbled than anything else when my “map” appeared as the book Unmarked.

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

Very much a part of my creative process. I think public readings are essential and that it is an author’s responsibility to undertake them. It is a way of sharing, a way of telling the world that it’s ok to be a writer, to write about the world. I can’t say I love (or even really enjoy) doing them, but I think orating and sharing the written word, which is too often privately produced and privately consumed, makes it come alive. I think it is an author’s responsibility to make the written word sing, to make people want to connect with it. Readings keep us from being too obtuse, I think. And I think it makes writing accessible to audiences who, as an author, you might not otherwise be engaging.

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

I do think that writing – and art and creative expressions more broadly – perform a kind of ‘social work.’ I want my writing to move people, to make them think about or (even better) to care about that which is in my estimation too often overlooked. All the ordinary ‘stuff’ that so often is passed over, so often dismissed as the detritus of the everyday. I think there persists terrible social injustices that are worthy of our attention and I try to turn my attention these in my writing.

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 believe that the work produced by writers, and other artists, is culture. Of course there are others who form and produce ‘culture,’ but I think it is the job of writers and artists to produce representations that make the world discernible, legible. We/they produce the expressions and representations by which society understands itself, by which we understand each other and ourselves. And we should not be flippant about this.

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

Essential.

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

With reference to writing, I think the best thing I ever heard was…in order to produced anything good at all, you first have to produce all sorts of shit. The production of everything that makes you cringe is essential to producing that one, single, small, solitary thing that you are sort-of-kind-of pleased with.

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

I like to move between and amongst genres, although creative non-fiction and poetry (in addition to more academically focused writing) are the two I favour. I think there’s always an appeal to expressing and representing in various genres because some topics seem to lend themselves to one kind voice as opposed to another.

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 don’t really have a routine per se. I just write. Whenever I have the time and space. I like to write earlier in the day as opposed to later. I am not a night owl and I tend to write in private as opposed to in cafes or bookstores (public spaces). I’m kind of a routinized person. I like to wake up early, sometimes go running, always have coffee, try sometimes to make lists of the things I am going to do, and then spend time checking things off my lists. I often include a note on my lists, every day, to write on whatever project I’m currently working on.

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

I don’t ever really get stalled. Sometimes I lack the time to execute all my ideas, but the world is a never ending source of inspiration. No matter where I turn, there seems to me to be fodder for writing. Having said this, and despite my great love of spending time alone, I think I take great inspiration from the company of people. I do find laughing and talking and eating with wonderful people a constant source of inspiration. I have to say that environments with less (as opposed to more) human alteration are those to which I return – for solace, for motivation. So…if I had to choose a hike up to alpine versus an afternoon in a big-city coffee shop, I’d choose the former. But, having said that, I also turn and return to all the things that abound in cities: museums of contemporary art, great bookstores, the hustle and bustle of streets thronging with people, really great restaurants.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Cottenwood sap. Rotting salmon on wet sand. Fall mushrooms in moss.

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?

In general, my measure of a ‘good’ or ‘successful’ creative expression (be that dance, a painting, a piece of pottery or even a fabulous meal) is something that, when I leave it, has made me see the world in a slightly different light. It is to these things I return for influence. Anything that makes me see things in a fresh way. I am always on the hunt for this, so I find it in many, many, different forms.

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

I am a rather undiscerning reader. Put something in front of me and I’ll likely read it. Certainly there are things that I like more than others (I have a preference for paired down muscular language and an aversion to anything that focuses on romance in a fluffy confessional way) but I read widely because I want to explore all the beautiful genres and voices that are out there.

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

To be honest, I haven’t really ever given it much thought. On the main, I’m doing what I want to be doing and I’m confident that things will present themselves and I will enjoy whatever comes my way.

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 always thought if I didn’t write, or if I wasn’t employed in academia, I’d like to be a chef. I love to cook. And the people I love most in the world are those who like to cook and who like to be cooked for.

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

I don’t suppose anything ‘made’ me write. It just always seemed like the thing to do. Of course the world is full of so many other things, but the neat thing about writing is that – for me at least – I get to do these things AND write about them.

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

I am a great fan of everything that Cormac MaCarthy writes and I have to say that The Road just tore me up. Really, really, good. For some reason Gaton Soussey’s Vaudeville has stuck with me and I just finished Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road which I also thought was impressive. Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson, who is one of my all time favorite authors, was terrific. Alice Oswald – a British poet – was recently recommended to me and her book Dart is just perfect. I have to confess that I haven’t seen many movies in the last year or so. I plan on rectifying this soon!

20 - What are you currently working on?

In addition to some papers and book chapters, the two big projects in the hoper right now are another collection of creative non-fiction essays about loss (I am already in dept to Sid Marty for his assistance with this evolving manuscript) and a collection of essays, which will be accompanied by photos, about people who provide various types of health care in northern B.C.

12 or 20 questions (second series);

12 or 20 questions: with Norma Cole

[photo credit: Clay Banes] Norma Cole is a poet, painter and translator. Among her books are Collective Memory, Do the Monkey, and Spinoza in Her Youth. Just out are Natural Light from Libellum Press and Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988—2008 from City Lights. Cole’s essays and talks, To Be At Music, will appear in June 2010 from Omnidawn Press. Translation work includes Danielle Collobert’s Journals, Fouad Gabriel Naffah’s The Spirit God and the Properties of Nitrogen and Crosscut Universe: Writing on Writing from France. Cole has been the recipient of a Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Award, Gertrude Stein Awards, the Fund for Poetry, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. A Canadian from Toronto, Cole migrated via France to San Francisco where she has lived since 1977. She teaches at the University of San Francisco.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Aha! You use Garamond. I just chose it for the body of my forthcoming book of essays, TO BE AT MUSIC (Omnidawn June 2010). Experience, including “first book,” changes one’s life. But every book begins in the nowhere.

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

As soon as I could use a pencil, I began drawing & writing, little fragments, descriptions, bits of poems before I knew them as poems. Narrative – I begin, but don’t have the fortitude for that arc. I am very interested in making up the sound of story.

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?


More slowly than quickly. Note-taking, reading, dreaming…. Listening. Finding a rhythm. The spiral nebula.

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?

Depends. I’ve put books together in many ways. 


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

The first time I read (in a group reading for Acts, the journal edited by David Levi Strauss in the 1980s) it gave me the “other piece”—that other component I couldn’t, hadn’t known about.

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?


The poem asks the questions.

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 think Zukofsky says it well when he says poetry is for the interested.

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

The editor inside is the essential one. I’ve not had any difficulties working with an outside editor.

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

“Ideology is crap.” Jorge Amado

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

I think of it all as a poetics: reading, writing, translation.

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?

When I can get outside of the box of “the day,” writing/reading can begin.


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

Read, translate. My great friend, the poet Laura Moriarty, says forget inspiration, just write.

13 - If there was a fire, what's the first thing you'd grab?

My cane.

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?

All of the above & philosophy, history, overhearing people talking.

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

Life and other writers going back 4,000 years. Dante. Caroline Bergvall’s Via. Beckett’s version of Rimbaud’s “Drunken Boat.” Kamau Brathwaite’s History of the Voice.

Robert Smithson. Mahmoud Darwish’s Memory for Forgetfulness. Keats, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva. Franck André Jamme’s Tantra. Paul Celan, who said “Poets are pirates.” Barbara Guest, Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer. Poets writing right now.

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

The writing that I don’t know, haven’t seen yet.

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 was a teacher before I published any poetry, and still teach.

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

Writing is something I always was doing anyway. In spite of, or at the same time, or in between doing something else.

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

Poetry, Raùl Zurita, INRI. Novel, Peter Weiss, The Aesthetics of Resistance.
 Non-fiction, Homage to Barcelona, Colm Tóibín. Film, The Lives of Others, Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck. And I’m a sucker for all of Godard, film-as-essay-as-film.

20 - What are you currently working on?

More facts. I have a chapbook coming out soon called 14,000 Facts. But I found that I hadn’t finished with these facts. I am still writing tiny poems that read as single poems but then also they are kind of hinged and fractured but, hmm, possibly a kind of narrativity runs through them.

Also, translations from contemporary French poetry: Marie-louise Chapelle, mettre. and Catherine Weinzaepflen, Berlin 2007.

12 or 20 questions (second series);