Wednesday, February 27, 2008

12 or 20 questions: with Ray Robertson

Ray Robertson graduated from the University of Toronto with High Distinction with a B.A. in philosophy and later gained an M.F.A. in creative writing from Southwest Texas State University.

He is the author of the novels Home Movies, Heroes, Moody Food, Gently Down the Stream, and What Happened Later, as well as a collection of non-fiction, Mental Hygiene: Essays on Writers and Writing.

He is a contributing book reviewer to the Toronto Globe and Mail, appears regularly CBC’s Talking Books, and teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

The fame, the money, the women--it was all too much too soon, it almost killed me. But with the help of the Lord and Zoloft, I made it.

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

Except for the four years in the mid-90's I'm not entirely comfortable talking about without a lawyer present, I've made Toronto my home since 1985. I find that being a dead, white male limits my work, but, alas, this is the hand I've been dealt.

3 - Where does a 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?

I wait for God to speak to me directly and then simply take notes. I believe this is called the New Criticism or the Intentional Fallacy orTourette's Syndrone, I forget which.

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

Any chance to appear in public without my "handlers" is a very welcome occasion.

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

I want people to feel more alive when they read my novels. And no refunds, all sales final.

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

Editors are like the police: they're necessary, but you feel better when they're not around.

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

Semi-hard, but, then, I've had a few drinks.

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

A pear of what?

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

Eat a lot, sleep a lot, brush them like crazy. Run a lot, do a lot, never be lazy.

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

Novels are why I live; reviews are one of the ways I stay alive. Or maybe it's the other way around.

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?

Hangover, apologies, regret, delusions, lunch, work, alchohol and loud music, repeat.

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

Good prose, cheap wine, lasting music.

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

As opposed to What Happened Later, my latest novel, my previous one was called Gently Down the Stream.

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?

Sad songs, shouts in the street, non-refundable daydreams.

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

The ones who made me want to be a writer: Thomas McGuane, Barry Hannah, Kerouac, Virigina Woolf's non-fiction, anyone who can sing and dance and make me want to join in.

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

Finish answering these questions.

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?

Daycare worker.

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

Writing is the ultimate DIY art form--all you need is a pen and some paper.

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

There is only one great film, Withnail and I; as for books, if it exists, I haven't read it yet.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Heineken and pain killers.

Monday, February 25, 2008

12 or 20 questions: with Glen Sorestad

Glen Sorestad was born in Vancouver in 1937. His parents moved back to Saskatchewan in 1947 and he went to a rural school in east-central Saskatchewan near Buchanan and graduated from Sturgis Composite High School. After a year working in a bank, he spent a year as a study-supervisor in a one-roomed school near the Alberta border and the following year attended Saskatoon Teachers College. He began his teaching career in Yorkton in 1957. In 1960 he married Sonia Talpash and he taught school in Brooks, Alberta for a year. The following year he entered the University of Saskatchewan, graduating with his B.Ed(with honors) in 1963. He taught once again in Yorkton from 1963 until 1967 when he and his family moved to Saskatoon. There he taught at Alvin Buckwold School for two years before joining the English Department of Evan Hardy Collegiate in 1969. He served as English Program Co-ordinator for a number of years at Evan Hardy and established the Creative Writing program there. He was a key figure in organizing the ground-breaking Prairie Writers Conference at Evan Hardy Collegiate and during his teaching career was responsible for bringing many notable Canadian writers into Evan Hardy classrooms.

In 1981 Sorestad decided to quit teaching in order to devote more time to his writing career which had, over the years, seen him establish a national reputation as a poet, fiction writer, editor and publisher. He continues to live in Saskatoon and earn his living as a writer, editor, anthologist and public speaker. His career has taken him all over North America and to various countries of Europe. He is the author of over a dozen books of poetry, many short stories, and he is the co-editor of many well known anthologies. He has given well over three hundred public readings of his poetry in every province of Canada, in many parts of the United States, and in Europe (including at a reception held in his honour at the residence of the Canadian Ambassador in Oslo and broadcast on Norway’s public radio network). In 2001 he was one of a small number of poets invited to read at an international poetry reading in Lahti, Finland. In September of 2002 he was the only Canadian poet invited to the Vilenica Writers’ festival in Slovenia and read his poetry before the President of that country in Ljubljana Castle.

Sorestad has been an active member of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild since it was formed in 1970 and was given a Founders' Award by the Guild in 1990. He is also an active member of the Writers Union of Canada and in 1998 was honoured with Life Member status in the League of Canadian Poets.

In 1975 Sorestad and his wife, Sonia, co-founded the literary publishing house, Thistledown Press, in Saskatoon. Over the years Thistledown became known as one of the finest literary publishers in Canada. Sorestad retired as President in January 2000 after 25 years and over 200 literary titles published, many of which were translated and published in different foreign countries.

In November of 2000 Sorestad was appointed the first Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan at the Sask. Book Awards gala evening in Regina.

In November of 2001 he received the Saskatoon Book Award for his poetry book, Leaving Holds Me Here.

In February 2003 Sorestad was awarded the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Commemorative Medal at Government House in Regina.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

My first book was a chapbook of poems and I think just seeing it with my name on it was enough to convince me that this was what I wanted to do with my life, perhaps what I was intended to do with my life. I knew I was a poet and there was no escaping.

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

I've lived in Saskatoon over 40 years now, but interestingly, the urban geography does not seem as significant to my writing as the overall rural geography, and more specifically the geography of east-central Saskatchewan which was the geography of childhood for me. The landscape and geography of the Saskatchewan prairies is so much a part of who I am, of what has formed me and my view of things, that my writing must necessarily reflect this in many different ways, no doubt some of which I do not even see. I never think of race or gender in connection with my writing, but since every writer brings to that writing his/her own background and experiences, I should imagine that some of my poems will inevitably reflect aspects of my ethnicity and my gender. How can we escape who we are? And why would we want to?

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

A poem for me may begin with a single word, a sound or combination of sounds, an image, a line that forms in the subconscious, an overheard fragment of story, a photo, someone else's poem, an e-mail, a memory, a dream. Sometimes I quite frankly have no idea where the poem has come from. It just emerges from somewhere in the inner consciousness and wants out. Mostly I work on individual poems, each poem being its own whole or unit. But sometimes, one poem leads naturally to another and a sequence like the poems of Language of Horse, an online chapbook, or The Grass at Batoche, may emerge over a relatively short period of time during which little else is written. Occasionally, as with Some Things of Your Father, a manuscript I'm still working on, I knew from the outset that it would be a book in and of itself. I began writing with that expectation. Many books of poems of mine are "gatherings". But I have learned that even "gatherings" can take their own shape and become organic wholes.

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

Yes, even if I know that reading is a performance act and that it involvesanother part of my creative psyche - being in front of people and trying to communicate with an audience - I still think of the actual reading as an opportunity to test new work on listeners to gauge the poem's impact as much as I can assess it. I often discover, in public reading, revisions that need to be done - unnecessary words, flabby expressions, discordant sound combinations - and in that sense, the resultant rewriting is part of my creative process. However, some poems don't lend themselves at all to being read aloud, so public readings can only be part of my own ongoing creative process for those poems I choose to read in public.

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

Essentially I leave the theoretical concerns about poetry to the poetry theorists and academics. I try to keep the aforementioned Adrian Mitchell's view in mind as I write and rewrite. I would hope that what all of my poetry is concerned with is what it is like to be a Canadian born towards the latter part of the 20th century's Great Depression, living through the last half of the century and into the new millennium, responding to his chaotic and teetering world as intelligently as he can.

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

I enjoy working with editors - at least so far - and every editor I've had has made positive contributions to my writing. A few very good editors have even provided me with insights into my own work and I've learned by working with every editor. Every book of mine that has had an editor is the better for it.

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

I usually don't think "book" until some point in the writing or the gathering that a book concept begins to form. For me, the hardest part of the process seems to be the switch from writing individual poems to the mode of thinking in terms of book. I love the process of just writing individual poems and for me, that is where my primary satisfaction as a writer comes. I can't really say that book-making has become harder with the accumulation of books published, but I can't say that it has become any easier. I can say that I don't spend much time worrying about it and I don't lose any sleep over it. My natural optimism governs my writing life by assuring me that eventually a book will emerge.

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

Last Thursday I poached several Bosc pears in a lovely Okanagan white wine and served the poached pear pieces on a banana nut loaf slices, drizzled with a hot chocolate sauce and topped with some whipped cream. It was a sensory cornucopia, decadent and sensuous as all hell.

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

I don't know where the saying originated, maybe in China, but "Life is a journey, not a destination" has always appealed to me as a life theme worth hanging one's hat on; and Adrian Mitchell's words about poetry have always appealed to me: "Most people ignore poetry because most poetry ignores most people."

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

I began writing short fiction and then became attracted to poetry, but over the years I have felt the need at various times to move between poetry and prose forms like fiction, familiar essay and memoir/essay. Some stories, some ideas, need a different shape and voice than poetry can give them.

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've always been a morning person, so my working day typically begins with coffee, breakfast, a brisk 30 to 40 minute walk, then getting cleaned up and ready for work. I write (poetry, prose, correspondence) from 8:30 or 9:00 until sometime in the early afternoon usually.

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

I've been fortunate in never having had to endure extended periods of writers' block, so I can only sympathize with those who have to deal with it as a regular affliction. I tend to be a "streak" writer, like a streak hitter in baseball. When I'm "seeing the ball really good", I write a great deal in a relatively short period of time. Then I may go for a period of time when I am not writing much new work at all, but instead am rewriting and reworking my accumulated writing, shaping manuscripts, reading, corresponding, rooting through my journals for ideas and the like.

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

My last two published works were chapbooks, one traditional print and the other online. Halo of Morning came out of the immediacy of my regular morning walks in the neighbourhood where I live; on the other hand, Language of Horse is more reflective and concerns childhood memories. Both chapbooks feel like extended poem sequences.

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?

My writing is influenced by whatever form I may be particularly taken with at any period of my life, but music and art have always informed my work, quite regularly and at various stages of my writing life. However, the natural world has been a constant in my writing life from my first book to my most recent. If there is one dominant shaping influence for my life's work, then the natural world would be it. I may have written more bird poems than Don McKay or Allan Safarik.

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

Frost and Sandburg among early American poets were important at the outset. Then Canadian poets like Nowlan and Newlove and Purdy, all for different reasons. William Stafford became a mentor, friend and important influence. Contemporary Norwegian poet Arne Ruste has been a friend and mentor.

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

The whole notion of writing a novel just scares hell out of me; yet that same notion, much as I attempt to stifle it in its infancy, is still there somewhere in the back of my consciousness and unless I find a way to kill it for good, I may be forced to take it on. If it just sweeps me away for the ride, I'll go with the flow and see where it takes 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 think I would have liked, at some time earlier in my life, to have studied to become a wine maker. If I had not ended up a writer, I may very well have ended up a "burn-out case" in the high school system. I walked away from teaching before it could do me irreparable harm.

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

It may have been the desire, or perhaps the need, or both, to tell a story. All I knew is that I had to do it and that I would not be satisfied until I had unburdened myself of the stories. I believe this still drives me. From the time I was in grade twelve in high school and through my university years I had various people tell me I should consider creative writing. It took me quite a long time to accept this counsel.

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

Ian McEwan's Atonement is a beautifully written and mesmerizing novel and Cormac McCarthy's The Road is gruesome and shocking in its apocalyptic vision while at the same time telling a powerful emotional father/son story with such achingly beautiful prose. Both are my most memorable reads in recent years. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada surprised hell out of me as a movie because it was so under-rated, yet proved to be a powerful story told with an exquisite film touch. Tommy Lee Jones both directed and starred in Jones' directorial debut and somehow the movie was overlooked - I know not why.

20 - What are you currently working on?

True to my usual practice, I am working on four or five different manuscripts, or potential manuscripts. One is the aforementioned poem/prose Some Things of Your Father; another is a manuscript of essay/memoirs; a third is a collection of narrative poems entitled The Story Never Ends; another is a manuscript called Walleye Meditations, another prose/poetry combination.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

12 or 20 questions: with Peter Culley

[photo: Roy Arden]

Peter Culley was born in 1958. His books are Twenty-one Oolichan 198o, Fruit Dots Tsunami 1986, Natural History Cleave Editions 1987, The Climax Forest Leech Books 1995, Hammertown New Star 2003 & from New Star the forthcoming The Age of Briggs & Stratton: Hammertown Book Two. His writings on Vancouver art have appeared in numerous magazines & catalogues.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

I thought the hard part was now over, and that a shelf of books would then pretty much write & publish themselves.

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

I've been in Nanaimo--except for some spells in the 8o's--since 1972. Geography--in the broadest possible sense--has always been a central concern of my work. As a teenager I knew about Paterson & The Maximus Poems so early on in my writing I knew that writing a town was an appropriate activity for a poet. And there were numerous local examples, from Daphne Marlatt's [see her 12 or 20 here] Steveston to Brian Fawcett's Cottonwood Canyon, from George Stanley's Terrace to Gerry Gilbert's Vancouver. Robert Smithson's Monuments of Passaic New Jersey was also crucial in helping me figure out that attending to the "local" could open a lot of unexpected things up.

Perhaps race and gender as aspects of class? I certainly strive to be aware at all times of my privileged position.

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

For a long time I would try and compose in my head not writing anything down until it was almost complete. I probably lost about twenty books that way--somehow I convinced myself that I had a wonderful memory. Since I got a little wiser to myself I proceed "serially" which just means coming to some sort of outside arrangement, like standing at the bus stop waiting for Totoro to show up. You just have to be a little patient.

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

Often a reading is the first place that I can see both what I'm doing over time in real time and how the reader might be brought along--you can learn a lot. The showbiz aspects I love, coming from a long line of cockney showboats.

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

My relationship with theory is a pretty mercenary one--if it helps me to work or understand things better I'll use it, whether I've fully absorbed it or not. Spicer's "radio" makes as much sense as anything else.

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

Rolf Maurer, my editor at New Star, is remarkably free of publisher/editor vanity, so his very occasional and poetry suggestions carry great weight. In prose a good editor is essential for everyone but very hard to find and an insufficiently honored calling. The world needs patient editors much more than it needs bright new talent.

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

The past two or three years have been the first of my life where I didn't feel completely blocked all the time. I think I just outlived my own preciousness.

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

Never touch 'em, but our yard has a decently fruiting if precarious old tree which I have saved from the axe.

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

"There's no such thing as an old kitten", spoken to me in a dream by George Jones. George Stanley once told me that you never make any money as a poet, but can usually count on at least one good dinner a year.

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

It's easier now that I've let the boundaries slip a bit. And I've always liked the idea of having two mutually exclusive audiences, though that's not as true as it was.

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'm usually up very early surfing the web, keeping half an eye out for items for my weblog. I'll often start a piece of writing in our little shed in the back yard, away from the computer, stereo & TV. Lately I've taken to using green index cards

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

No one mentions liquor, coffee or drugs here, so I won't! Wallace Stevens or Sunflower Splendor can sometimes help get me "in the mood." A walk. A dictionary.

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

Unlike my other books, which were gathered over very long periods of time, The Age of Briggs & Stratton represents a continuous fairly short period of composition, and all the poems were published to my blog as I wrote them. I've been trying to make my writing simpler & cruder.

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 those things are certainly as or more important to my work as other writing.

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

OED, The Bible, Lee Ann Brown, Walter Benjamin, William Blake, Hugh MacDiarmid, Mina Loy, Clark Coolidge, Bernadette Mayer, Gerry Gilbert, John Clare, John Wieners, Susan Howe, Ted Berrigan, James Thomson, Margaret Avison, James Schuyler, William Cowper, William Hazlitt, Charlotte Mew, Edward Lear, Jack Spicer, Thomas Bewick, Emily Dickinson, Basil Bunting, Arthur Mee's Children's Enyclopedia &c. My blog "mosses from an old manse" is a pretty good index of my likes.

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

Spend a winter north of the Arctic Circle, travel around the world on freighters & trains.

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?

The all-night DJ on a 500 watt FM station. I did get to do that at Vancouver's CITR with Lary Bremner in the 8o's--one night we played Sandanista! all the way through...Night manager at a slightly rundown but respectable residential hotel.

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

I don't ever remember seriously entertaining the idea of any other kind of life. I've been very lucky.

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

Film--Killer of Sheep Charles Burnett

Book--An Irish History of Civilization Donald Akenson

20 - What are you currently working on?

Parkway, the third book of Hammertown. A big picture book on dogs.

Friday, February 22, 2008

12 or 20 questions: with Elise Levine

Elise Levine’s novel Requests and Dedications was published in 2003 by McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, ON). Also in 2003, McClelland & Stewart reissued her story collection Driving Men Mad (named one of the “Best Books of the Year, 1995” by Quill & Quire magazine). In addition to her books, Levine’s fiction, poems, personal essays, and critical reviews have appeared in numerous publications including Best Canadian Stories, The Journey Prize Anthology, The National Post, the Toronto Star, Books in Canada, Malahat Review, Gargoyle, and Prairie Schooner, and have been translated and published in Italy. She has been awarded a Canadian National Magazine Award, Honorable Mention for Fiction; a host of awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Council for the Arts; and residency fellowships at Yaddo (where she was an Eli Cantor Fellow) and the MacDowell Colony, to name but two. Her fiction has been aired nationally on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (the CBC), and in 2003 she was highlighted by Margaret Atwood as one of Canada’s most important women writers. Originally from Toronto, Levine currently lives in Baltimore, MD, where she teaches at the University of Baltimore.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

I began to see myself as a real writer. Getting reviewed, seeing the book in bookstores made me feel that I’d been heading in the right direction. I vowed from that point on to do whatever I could to keep on going and not look back.

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

I lived in Chicago for eleven years. Last summer I moved to Baltimore. During the time I was in Chicago, most though not all of the fiction I was writing took place in the Toronto area, where I’m originally from. Now I’m starting to set some of my writing in the States – Chicago, parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Florida – as well as Toronto. Not that I’m interested in specific locale per se. I think I’ve always written about various characters’ sense of place – especially the sense of mis-placement, exile – as part of my interest in the psychology of those who see themselves as marginalized, estranged, self-estranged.

While not often explicit, race and gender (and class) are intrinsic to my writing, which is character-driven, concerned with the mutable ways in which we think of ourselves.

3 - Where does a 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?

A piece of fiction usually begins for me with lines, language – sometimes not very much, but loaded, charged with a compressed sense of character and situation, the possibility of what it all might mean. Definitely with a novel I ‘start large’, knowing that that’s what I’m in for. But even with a collection of short fiction, by the time I have maybe three stories I’m thinking ‘book’.

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

Readings sharpen my writing, especially if the work isn’t yet published as a book. In which case preparing for the reading means revising, revising. If I have to stand up there in front of people, the last thing I want to see is that I’m boring them.

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

I view identity as a construct, so I’m probably more poststructuralist than anything else, cautiously attracted to the meta side of fiction. Because I’m instinctively a character-driven writer, I tend to find identity theory of interest. But mostly I spend my writing time trying to pretty much figure out the nuts and bolts of things like pacing, structure, nailing the nature of the characters’ relationships.

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

Writing is difficult -- solitary, crazy-making, painstaking. A good editor gets right inside there with you, and enlarges that imaginative space.

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

Two books only so far (alas). I write at a snail’s pace, which is why getting both out felt so hard. Currently I’m close to finishing what I hope will be a third, a new novel. Also I’m four stories into what could be a new story collection, and I’ve begun collecting lines and ideas for yet another novel. Overall, that’s a fat-load of ideas. Problem is, takes me forever to really get at them, develop and shape them. I guess certain aspects of fiction writing seem easier, the elements of craft and technique. But each piece – a story, a novel -- feels so different, and uncovering what each is truly about and how best to express that truth seems to take forever. I’m not naturally a patient person so I tend to chafe under the yoke.

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

Please don’t remind me, I’m trying to forget. I’m pear-averse. The flesh is gritty. Bumpy. Like tiny teeth in the throat.

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

Be sure to strut your stuff.” Editor-Provocateur John Metcalf said this to me once. And I was like, Thank you!

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?

First thing in the morning -- the earlier the better – double espresso then write. Sometimes I can go all day, with breaks, if I’m revising and am pretty far along with the novel.

11 - Where is your favourite place to write?

I have a home office. Bliss.

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

Other fiction writers’ work, or poetry.

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

This new novel is in third-person-close point of view, which I’ve never sustained for so long in previous work. It also makes a number of leaps in time and place, which I want to come across as pieces of a puzzle, or cogs in a neatly ticking wheel. I’ve always paid a lot of attention to structure, but this feels like a further step, handling a significantly greater number of parts than I have before. As well, this novel necessarily has to convey a fair amount of technical information to explain the world of the characters to the reader – a huge challenge to not let the exposition burden the narrative.

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?

Music, certainly. Opera, especially Baroque opera, which can seem so postmodern these days. Something about the self-consciously performative, the focus on voice, staging, display. I listen to a lot of what’s called ‘new music’ – contemporary/experimental art music, for example Gyorgy Ligeti, Toru Takemitsu, Kaija Sariaaho – fascinated by the combination of rigor, discipline, innovation, expressive capacity. Also I like Trip Hop, Massive Attack in particular. And Alt country -- Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch. PJ Harvey I simply place in the Genius category.

Visual art really excites me too, as a corollary to the written. Louise Bourgeois, Anselm Kiefer (his dresses! his lead books! not to mention all his other gorgeous works), Bill Viola are some faves. When I see something that really strikes me, I try to think, what would be the equivalent of this in fiction? A work by Joyce Wieland Cooling Room II, in the permanent collection of the National Gallery in Ottawa – kind of got me going on my new novel.

The strongest influence on my writing – what goes most directly into the fiction as material – is the experience of being in various environments. Their textures, all the sensory stuff but also the ideas or ideals, the thought-contexts, that inform our thinking about such environments. What people say, how they present themselves, what they reveal and seem to want to conceal. I love driving, walking, flying (I used to spend a lot of time underwater, scuba diving, so swimming would count as well) – I love the sense of transport, movement. Probably because I spend so much time alone, in my little room, at my desk.

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

Don DeLillo, J.M. Coetzee, Mavis Gallant, Lisa Moore. Conrad, Woolf. Some specific books: Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, Ian McEwen’s Amsterdam and The Comfort of Strangers, Jennifer Egan’s The Keep, Susan Choi’s American Woman, Peter Carey’s Theft.

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

Travel more. Also I’d like to find the time to do more critical writing.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I’d be a poet. Or a literary critic. I worked as an editor for several years -- I was miserable doing it, but I could well have gotten stuck there. Otherwise I might have become an alcoholic/drug-addict lawyer.

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

No idea. I just know that many of my earliest, most acute memories are of being attracted to words, language, of having the desire to describe, to invent. Lots of things fascinate me, for a time, but then I’ll drop them completely. Writing’s the one activity to which I’ve always remained obsessively, passionately attached.

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

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road scared the wits out of me. What a combo of stark moral vision and mastery over words and form. I recognize, I think, a similar austerity and artistry in Austrian Michael Haneke’s disturbing film Cache.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Like I said, I’m almost finished a new novel. I have some new stories toward a new story collection. Squirreling away lines and ideas for yet another novel. Plus teaching English lit. at the University of Baltimore. I love the teaching thing. It’s so intense. A pure joy to wave around a dry-erase pen as if it’s a magic wand and say hey, let’s see how this story works.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

12 or 20 questions: with Jennifer Bartlett

Jennifer Bartlett was born in Northern California and grew up in New Mexico. In 2005, she was a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow. She was editor of Saint Elizabeth Street for five years. Her first collection, Derivative of the Moving Image, was published in 2007 by UNM Press. She currently resides in Greenpoint, Brooklyn with the writer Jim Stewart and their son, Jeffrey.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

Derivative changed my life pretty significantly. I was writing poetry for 18 years before the book came out. The oldest poem was written when I was twenty; I am now 38. ‘Birthing’ the book was an enormous lesson in patience and persistence. It didn’t go into production until four years after it was accepted by UNM Press, and, as with any book, the production process was grueling despite the fact that I worked with genius editors and designers.

The day I received the book, I thought I would be full of anxiety and unmet expectations. Just the opposite, I felt completely at peace. It was as if my life had been missing something for a long time and it was finally complete. Ideally, shouldn’t work this way, but the book also made me feel like I’d finally gained validity as an artist. People are beginning to take my work seriously.

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

I have lived in New York for eight years. This geography does not have much impact on my work. My work is largely internal. The external environs of my new work have to do with the natural world – specifically ‘other homes,’ Oregon and New Mexico. Even when New York is a backdrop for the work, it’s about what’s under the urban system. I have written poems that reflect Central Park and the American Museum of Natural History. But, my work is largely about humanity and how people do and do not fit together. I guess this does describe my city on some level!

I don’t write about race. I’m a boring white girl. Gender has come into my new work as I am writing (in an oblique way) about motherhood and all the difficulties and contradictions that come with that. My new work isn’t about the stereotypical idea of the child as the ‘perfect fulfillment.’ It’s more about the messiness and grotesqueness that comes with motherhood. The splitting of the consciousness that derives from having a child; what Alice Notley referred to as a Doubling.

I also am exploring the idea of alternate movement and the body, as I have cerebral palsy. How the world perceives one’s identity -- or body - - versus our true identity.

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

This has changed. I used to write long poems. Derivative definitely has themes, but it’s pretty much just organization of these separate works. (a) lullaby without any music, for whatever reason, was written as a complete ‘book.’ It just came to me this way. Most of the pieces are very short, and might be awkward standing alone. For the future, who knows? At this point, I just hope I CAN write another poem!

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

Public readings are the first time that I hear my work aloud. That helps me in tweaking it or locating typos. I work for weeks/months on poems and usually do not read ‘fresh’ work at a reading.

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

I don’t think of questions as theoretical, but urgent. How do I deal with my different body and people’s ridiculous reactions to it? How do I deal with the constraints of domesticity? How do I keep myself psychologically and spiritually afloat? Also, how do poets deal with the terrible state of the world? These questions are too serious to take in an academic way. That is why I want people outside of academia to read my work – and every poet’s work!

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

I prefer to have my work ‘done’ before anyone, including my husband, sees it. I went to undergraduate school for poetry. I got an MFA. I spent years bouncing work off my friends and working in groups. I finally feel like I’m in a space where I need to be self-sufficient.

As far as magazines, I actually don’t believe in editing poems. I say this as an editor and a poet. I think a poem is a fine-tuned thing, and an editor should be prepared to take a poem ‘as is’ or not at all. The problem with workshops, editing, and all this is that poets, teachers, and students have a hard time seeing the work on its own terms. Ultimately, poet/teacher/editor organically may want to ‘fix’ the poem in the way they would write it. This makes teaching and editing complicated.

Books are more complicated. Of course, a good editor can make suggestions of poem order and such. But, I still think person has to be deeply invested and intimate with a poet in order to make good changes to her poems. My best editor is my father. As scary as it sounds, he can get inside my head. He can change a word or a comma, and I think, “Yes! That is what I meant!”

7 - Where is your favourite place to write?

The same as my favorite places in life: bed and museums.

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

I don’t like pears.

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

Don’t try to fit in, wait for the crowd to come to you.

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

I can’t write fiction to save my life, but I do write prose pretty cohesively. I love writing essays, and I worked for a while a writer. This confidence has made it comfortable and enjoyable for me to teach my composition classes.

I keep a pretty comprehensive blog. In the tradition of Amy King [see her 12 or 20 questions here], Ron Silliman, and the Poetry Foundation blogs, I try to stick to short essays. I find prose writing a way to release thoughts – about disability, teaching, and the world – that I can’t quite make concrete in my poetry. In poetry, language, image, music, and sound have to be primary. This limits me. The excess flows into the prose. I have more room to bitch and moan about perceived -- or real – injustices. I can’t bring myself to say something like 75% of people with disabilities are unfairly unemployed or I want to kill myself because none of my college students know who Jack Keroauc is in a poem. It needs to be said, but poetry is not the place. Thank God for ‘the blog.’

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 do not have a writing routine. I struggled with this when I was young. I believed that one should write for x number of hours at x time. One should ‘go to work’ as if going to the factory. I still idealize this method and envy people who can do it. I can’t. I just soak the world in and wait and wait. When it comes, I have no choice but to write it. It becomes urgent.

To tell a secret, I am flooded with anxiety when I wake up. I’m not a ‘morning person.’ My husband leaves very early, and getting my kid to school is always a struggle. After that, I fall into my routine. I teach two days a week and work at home the others.

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

When I am stalled, I write prose or don’t write. I don’t push it.

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

The two books are actually very different. Derivative is about coping with not getting what you want. (a) lullaby is about coping with getting what you want. (a) lullaby is a much more mature book. I’ve been told that my lyricism has deepened in a real way.

Derivative was written when I was a baby. Now, I’m an old lady!

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I love this question. I am very interested in film. photography, and painting. All of these played an extensive part in my first book, Derivative of the Moving Image. I worked in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and dated a filmmaker during the years when many of the poems were written. Visual art is the framework for most of the poems. Some influences are Diane Arbus, Joseph Cornell, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Robert Frank, Helen Levitt, Francesco Clemente, Lucian Freud, and Andy Warhol. In film, I love Fellini and Olivier Assayas, and Woody Allen, but it’s more of the technical process of a film – of a story told through light – that finds its way into the first book.

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

This list might be endless, but I would say, mainly poetry: Michael Palmer, Nathaniel Tarn, Brenda Hillman, Rachel Zucher [see her 12 or 20 questions here], Muriel Rukeyser, Denise Levertov, Jorie Graham, Lisa Jarnot [see her 12 or 20 questions here], Maryrose Larkin, Lorine Niedecker, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, Fanny Howe, Robert Hass, Anna Akhmatova, and on and on.

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

I’m pretty proactive person, so I’ve accomplished most of what I need. Last year was huge because I realized three big goals: my book, learning how to ride a bicycle, and getting an adjunct position. But, a list of undones might include living in Oregon, visiting St. Petersburg, donating more money, learning how to swim, and having dinner at Per Se. A large, unreachable goal is to make a film of Another Country by James Baldwin with a soundtrack by Rufus Wainwright.

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 never wanted to be anything but a poet and a teacher. One day, I would like to teach poetry, but it’s not a primary goal.

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

My father, Lee Bartlett, is a well-known writer and critic. William Everson was my sister’s godfather. It’s in the blood.

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

I recently read The Awakening and Howl because I’m teaching them. I also was reading To the Lighthouse, but there is a transition in the second part where the book becomes very, very sad, so I put it aside. I think Woolf is the best prose writer to ever live. I told my husband that she killed herself because she was too talented to live in society.

Strangely, the last ‘great film’ I saw was Short Bus. I really resisted seeing it, but relented for my husband. I haven’t seen anything in such a long time that exposed and studied the human condition in such a true, poetic way. AND it featured the Hungary Marching Band. What more could you ask for?

20 - What are you currently working on?

I have been trying to be a good mother to Derivative, doing readings and such. Meanwhile, I did a guest editorial for How2 on poetry and mentorship, which should be published in March 2008. My second manuscript, (a) lullaby without any music, is being considered by a significant poetry press.

I am working on a collection of essays, I’m with the DJ, about disability, poetics, and teaching. I’m also considering including the interviews I did for Saint Elizabeth Street with Andrea Baker, Kate Greenstreet, Bruce Covey, and others. I’m trying also to be a good daughter/friend/citizen/wife/professor/mother/poet and find a house to live in for summer in Oregon and do the family taxes. I’m a busy woman!

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

12 or 20 questions: with Lisa Jarnot

Lisa Jarnot's fourth collection of poems, Night Scenes, will be available from Flood Editions this spring. She is the owner and operator of Catskill Organics Farm.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

I wouldn't say that it changed my life. It more simply entered into the trajectory of the work that I do as a poet. I'm not really fond of the idea of publishing as a gauge of what one does as a writer— when I teach in MFA programs I have a lot of students who come to me with the burning question "Where should I send my manuscript?" I think the real question should be "What is my relation to my craft?"

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

I've lived in New York for 14 years and yes, New York is in the poems, but more importantly the influence of the New York School is in my poems. I came to New York to be close to two of my favorite writers, Bernadette Mayer and Allen Ginsberg. There are other writers of the Lower East Side who are masters as well: I think John Godfrey is one of the great American poets. People maybe don't know his work as much as they should/could. And David Henderson who started out as an editor of Umbra magazine and part of the Black Arts Movement. So I do feel very lucky to have spent time with some of these folks. As for race and gender, that feels like a question that needs to be answered by a critic rather than a poet. I think of poetry in Robert Creeley's terms, that it's an expression of the Human Condition plain and simple. When I hear words like race and gender I feel like I'm in a classroom.

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

The poem usually begins with a musical phrase. I don't think in terms of books.

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

Part of. The articulation of the language is part of the creative work for me, though I don't think it has to be for everyone. (I think of Emily Dickinson who never gave a poetry reading. She didn't suffer for it.)

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

My writing is simply what it is. The concerns are actual rather than theoretical-- I think of poetry as part of the process of living. Again, I'll leave the theoretical for the critics.

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

I've never worked with an outside editor.

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

Each book is different. I've never thought of them in terms of level of difficulty.

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

I write in whatever form the work takes naturally. Again, I wouldn't say it's a question of level of difficulty. Some things need to be expressed as essay, others as poems, others as letters to the editor, etc.

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 have a writing routine. Occasionally an opening line of a poem will come into my head and I'll write it down. If I'm lucky I have ten or twelve new poems a year. But most of my time is spent doing other things: reading, running, cooking, knitting, gardening. I start the day with coffee and a jog and I read the UK Guardian online. I'm always a poet, but I'm not always thinking about writing poems.

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

I don't try to force writing, so I don't seek inspiration. I simply write poems when they are present to be written. Other times I do other things. Those other things (see above) may create sparks of inspiration, and the breaks/stalls/blocks/gathering periods may be necessary. I think that looking for the poem is a bad way to go about it.

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

My work is all really part of a continuum. I think of writing as a process, so each book is part of a bigger constellation of what I do as a writer. Each book feeds off the last. Again, I'd be very happy to let other people hash out comparisons of my books.

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?

Everything. I don't think that books necessarily come from books— or rather that seems like a very limiting way to think about book-writing. I think the spoons and forks in the silverware drawer can be just as interesting as War and Peace.

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

Really everything I read is important to my work and to my life. I'm a horticulturalist, so there is a lot of green reading material in my life. Paleoanthropology, astronomy, biology, filmmaking, rock and roll, radical politics, liberal politics (the new york times), etc. It's all there.

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

Everything I haven't done yet. Really.

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 am now entering into work as a horticulturist and organic farmer. If I have time I'd also like to become a classics scholar, psychoanalyst, karate black belt, architect, doctor, and geologist.

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

I was good at it.

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

This is pretty impossible to answer. The greatest great book I've read (and re-read) is Finnegans Wake, but Ulysses is up there too.

20 - What are you currently working on?


Monday, February 18, 2008

12 or 20 questions: with Michael Blouin

Mike Blouin has published in many Canadian literary magazines including Descant, Arc, Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review, Event, The New Quarterly, Grain, Queen's Quarterly, In/Words, Variations, Ottawater and has a collected poetry I’m not going to lie to you out with Toronto's Pedlar Press as well as a novel Chase and Haven with Coach House Books in Fall 2008. He has been the recipient of Arc Magazine’s Diana Brebner Prize for Poetry as well as the Lillian I. Found prize for Poetry from Carleton University. He can be contacted at luckyus@sympatico.ca as well as on facebook and at http://minor-poet.blogspot.com/

1 - How did your first book change your life?

I think that in a very real way it legitimized things for me as a writer. There was always a certain part of the process for me that was about producing books as opposed to shorter pieces in magazines. For me it was twenty seven years between picking up the pencil and the first book launch so that’s a lot of late nights to be spending if you’re not at some point achieving the goal you’ve set for yourself. I wanted to be able to hold something in my hands and have it represent my writing. It was also the point at which people I’d never met started to approach me and acknowledge what I do. That’s a nice pay off for twenty seven years of lost sleep. The time a woman said to me that her uncle thought I was a great writer and I didn’t know either of them personally. Or when people start quoting your work back to you. When people you’ve never met take the money they’ve worked to earn and use it to buy your work. My first book completed a long process and started another.

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

There’s the impact of all three to varying degrees. We’ve been at several houses in this area for seven or eight years and both of my novels ( one due with Coach House Books in Fall of 2008 tentatively titled “Haven and Chase” ) take place here in the early 1970’s. I’m not a writer who can research a place they haven’t been and then produce it in fiction. Of course any physical location in fiction is an amalgamation of the actual place, the place in the writer’s mind and the place in the reader’s mind. These three locations join together to make the setting but for me I like to be able to touch the place that this hypothetical location has sprung from. I daily walk and drive the locations in my books which allows me to live in them physically as well as emotionally and intellectually. That’s important to me. Race and gender are inescapable. They are very much a part of my voice as a poet since my voice as a poet is an only slightly modified version of my own. Often not modified at all. As a novelist I write from several character voices at a time. I love the task of assembling a story from a variety of viewpoints and seeing how they come together to produce the narrative arc. Many of these voices of mine are adolescent and fully half of them are female so it is easy for me to move around gender lines and, I think, do it convincingly. I don’t think I would presume to write from the voice of a race other than my own. That would feel presumptuous to me. At least I don’t see how I could assure myself that I was getting it right.

3 - 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?

Aside from my first poetry collection everything else is part of a book project. Poems start from lines, individual lines which attach themselves usually to real life events and combine with other lines which seem unrelated at the time they arrive but eventually they find their ways together into one piece. It is quite seldom that I see the end of a poem from its beginning. I’ve just completed a poetry manuscript that traces the lives of Canadian poet Alden Nowlan and American singer Johnny Cash. That was a book from the get go. All the poetry is targeted now towards larger projects.

My novels all begin with a single image that appears and then has some staying power in my head and manages to stay put and return even though it faces strong competition. For my first novel this image was a young girl standing in a nightdress in the middle of a lawn covered with hundreds of dead and dying frogs. I had no idea at the time who the girl was or what was happening but the image would not go away and eventually it was two hundred pages. The novel I’m finishing now started with two boys carrying a cardboard box across a field. In many ways the writing of that story had to do with figuring out what they had in that box and where they were going with it. I didn’t know the answer to that until fully a third of the way through the book. Turns out it’s pretty interesting what they’ve got in there the buggers.

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

I enjoy them. It’s an alternate way of getting the stuff out to the audience and I have received some very useful feedback from doing readings. Reading to large audiences is tremendous because you can feel the response in the room and it becomes like playing an instrument ( or what I imagine that must be like ) and having the audience respond in a visceral way. Plus it is a huge ego rush of course and there’s not a lot of that when you’re alone with the light of a laptop at two in the morning so it’s a nice change of pace.

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

My current questions are:

How do you write so that each word absolutely has to be there – the book would suffer from the loss of just one?

How do you write a book that makes the life of the reader in some way more tolerable?

How do you write a novel that is post modern, experimental and innovative and still have it rip the emotional heart out of the reader and leave it lying there on the floor?

What is the book that is a collaborative process between author and reader and where can I get my hands on that version of my work? That’s what I’d like to read.

Just how perverse is the process we call memory?

I think a big and ongoing question is the validity of the novel. I think the answer is yes. But I’d like to see more evidence of that on shelves and I don’t usually.

( though that thing White was pretty good)

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

I’ve had the great good fortune of working with extremely fine editors both in magazine work and on my bigger projects ( Alana Wilcox at Coach House, Beth Follett and Emily Schultz at Pedlar Press, Mary Newberry from Descant with help on everything…). Maybe it stems from my work as a teacher but I’m very excited about collaborating on my work with someone who’s very good at doing that. To work with someone you trust and be able to see this thing you’ve worked for so long through someone else’s eyes and see it get better – that’s just really exciting.

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

Harder.

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

I’d prefer to answer as to the last time I didn’t eat a pear. That was just today in fact. In fact I don’t eat pears. Now that I’m with a big time publisher I have the services of an excellent publicist. I’d prefer to refer any further pear questions his way.

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

It goes something like: the best ending to a story is a half open door you can only see part way out of

That was Michael Ondaatje, not personally to me, but very true.

The other ( you asked for two didn’t you? ) was:

Keep writing it and mailing it out. That was Timothy Findley personally to me I’m happy to say and I have it on paper stored away. It was great advice because it kept me writing through ten years of zero publication.

Also don’t mix your alcohol and be respectful to your elders. Those are good ones.

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

Canvas size. I’ve always written both. My first published piece was a short story about a guy writing a poem. It was the first good fiction I’d written and the poem was the first poem good or otherwise ( it wasn’t very ). It was the first thing I ever mailed out and it got picked up by Queen’s Quarterly. That wrecked me for a while.

The appeal of the poem is you can get it done pretty quickly. The appeal of the novel is you can spend a long time with it. Although I’ve almost died or been killed seven times now so I’m always worried that I won’t get time to finish the novel.

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?

A typical day begins at 5:00 a.m. in a house with a wife, three teenaged kids a dog and a cat. So writing happens somewhere down the line. I write where, when and whenever I can. For the last several years I write every time I sit down at the keyboard. I’m really very grateful for that. I like to write to music. Most of the time it’s Miles Davis. Sometimes it’s Matt Good. Usually it’s the same song over and over and over. I used to dream of having a place to write. I never have had one though. So I just go ahead where I am. And of course I get a lot done by avoiding writing.

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

It doesn’t get stalled. But I don’t talk about that for fear that it will. In fact I’d better just say that it does. I eat a lot of pears.

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

My most recent book is a novel I’m completing which plays with ideas of structuring a narrative but in slightly different ways that my first. Also it’s predominantly in a male voice where the first was predominantly female so in many ways it seems a lot easier. Plus there’s a gunfight and an explosion and a really bad guy so it’s kind of fun to write. And it’s not as dark as my first book. Only half dark.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I certainly agree that books come from books but certainly jazz influences my work as well. I get tired easily of most music but Miles Davis, Matthew Good and Buck 65 I could hear over and over from now ‘till I’m a mall walker. Miles more than any one musician in the choices that he makes. He plays the way that I like to think that I write. John Ford westerns. That’s rhythm and pacing. Old war movies where the boys are pinned down and there’s no way out. Most things in Modern Painters magazine.

People ( the people, not the magazine ).

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

Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter and Billy The Kid. Should be required reading for anyone who wants to write. Or read. Or breathe. Tintin comics. Joyce. Kin Platt. Lolita.

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

Eat a pear.

Live in peace.

Right now.

Also when I signed a contract with Coach House I realized I had to come up with a new Big Picture game plan. That one went on for 27 years. Haven’t quite formulated the new one yet.

I’d like to see my kids become fulfilled adults. That would be very nice.

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 teach high school. Aside from writing, my marriage and my children it’s the best thing that I do. I teach at a great school with great kids and I get up every morning and look forward to doing it. I’m very lucky that way.

I also would have liked to have an office around an area like the Market say. A modern office in an old building with a nice big window and a really nice desk with just a few things on it. And I’d have a few art objects and maybe some obscure cartoon figurines. But I have no idea what I’d actually do there. Go out for coffee I suppose.

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

I was never presented with the option of not writing. I worked in film production for a while and found there was too much of the extraneous about it. I worked in visual arts a bit. But I wasn’t any good at it so there you go. When I’m writing I’m often achieving exactly what I want.

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

Well this is a well timed question since I happen to be reading Ulysses for the third time and the Bible for the fourth. Two books that really stand the test of time for me.

I just saw the French film Angela. Very good. And Juno. I liked that just like everyone else. And I just saw Babel. Apparently I’m only watching films with one word titles.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m almost finished my second novel. I have finished the poetry manuscript about Cash and Nowlan that I mentioned and I’m quite hopeful that someone might publish it. I’m also working with Coach House on the edits for that novel as well as cover designs etc. I’m really working hard on appreciating my blessings. That’s a good project.