12 or 20 questions: with Robert Majzels

Robert Majzels is a novelist, playwright, poet and translator, born in Montreal, Canada. After a misspent youth ending up in the guerrilla zones of the Philippines, he returned to graduate from Concordia University (MA, English Literature) in 1986. He taught creative writing workshops in prose, poetry and drama there for thirteen years, before he escaped to China for a couple. He is presently back in Canada, masquerading as an Associate Professor in the English Department of the University of Calgary.

Robert is the author of three novels, a full-length play, and a number of translations. Two of his novels have been translated into French by Claire Dé.

Majzels’ work has been a continuing exploration of the forms and ethical underpinnings of writing.

About his first novel, Hellman's Scrapbook (Cormorant Press, 1992):

"... a huge, complex and extraordinarily rewarding novel." The Globe and Mail
"... daring in form, political, eclectic in setting and character and masterfully threaded with an intriguing story line." The Montreal Gazette

About City of Forgetting (Mercury Press, 1997), short-listed for the 1998 Hugh MacLennan Fiction Award:

“...a novel of Beckettian inertia combined with Joyceian allusiveness... a formidable and esoteric discourse on power, decadence and remembering.” The Globe and Mail

About his third novel, Apikoros Sleuth (Mercury Press, 2004):

“...the mysterious, murderous architecture of Majzels’ gesture, in which language is both victim and description of victimization, and in which standard narrative has been put in a compressor and squeezed into more interesting ways of thinking... The reader won’t encounter another book like this one anytime soon.” Review of Contemporary Fiction

“[Apikoros Sleuth] takes the reader back to the primal scene of the book, where reading is ritual and where eyes, of their own magical accord, unlock terrible knowledge.” The Montreal Review of Books

Robert Majzels is presently completing a book of poetry, excerpts of which have appeared in NO: A Journal of the Arts (#5, 2006), and Sleeping Fish (Summer 2006). Excerpts from his visual poetry project 85 were part of the group exhibition, Blends & Bridges in Cleveland, Ohio April, 2006.

Robert has also translated, from the French, a novel and a collection of stories by Anne Dandurand, as well as four novels by France Daigle, including Just Fine (House of Anansi, Toronto, 1999), for which he won the 2000 Governor General’s Award of Canada. With Erín Moure he translated three books of poetry by Nicole Brossard: Installations (Muses Company, 2000), Museum of Bone and Water (House of Anansi, 2002), and Notebook or Roses & Civilization (Coach House Books, 2007), for which Moure and he were nominated for a GG.
His full-length play This Night the Kapo won first prize both in the 1991 Dorothy Silver Awards (Cleveland Ohio, USA) and the 1994 Canadian Jewish Playwrighting Competition. It was produced by Teatron in Toronto at the Berkley Street Theatre (CanStage) in March 2004, and published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2005.

Photo Credit: Claire Huot

1 - How did your first book change your life?

I was introduced to the work of Naguib Mahfouz, because his were the books on all those bookstore shelves next to the spot where I had hoped to find my own.

2 - How long have you lived in Calgary, 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 Calgary for only a year and a bit now. I haven't started writing about it. I find I'm always a few years behind in writing about the places I've been. So I'm mostly still in China (in my writing imagination). Race and gender, on the other hand, impact all writers' work all the time; it's just that some don't realize or recognize it. These are two of the elements in the construction of identity, which is certainly at the heart of my writing practice.

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 always begin by thinking of how many books my publisher wants to fit into the standard sized cardboard boxes they use for distribution. That then determines the number of pages, words and so on.

No, that can't be right. I don't think of my work in terms of working within the short story form or the novel, long or short, or prose or poetry. That doesn't mean I don't think about the forms and genres in writing, about how and why they have evolved over time. I often work against those limits and delimitations. When I begin a project, it usually starts with a problem raised by the last project. The problem is always a combined formal, philosophical and political issue. For instance, now I'm thinking about the book itself, as an object, about the visual, sound and tactile elements, the material components of the book as an object imbedded in national and transnational cultural industries, and how to write within that structure at a time when my own country is deeply involved in the invasion of Afghanistan and the murder of its people (I have to get that in, it's not much, but I find it distressing that Canadian writers can intervene in public life these days, through readings, talks, interviews or accepting prizes, without addressing the fact that our country is waging war at this very moment).

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

Depends on the project. They're irrelevant mostly, except in my current project, 85, in which the visual presentation of the poems and taped readings on video are part of the work. And to an extent with my novel Apikoros, in which reading sections of it is like a performance. Unfortunately, except in the case of work specifically created for performance, readings seem to me to be mostly just an excuse for writers to rub up against a microphone, pretend they're rock stars, and sell themselves rather than the work.

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?

All my writing is concerned with the intersection of language, self and world and the possibilities of resistance to structures that are constraining or oppressive. I'm trying to explore how we are constructed by the stories, the narrative and poetic forms, even the grammar we've learned. I'm interested in contemporary philosophy and critical theory that can help me to think otherwise and to imagine alternative modes of resistance, alliances and coalitions. I also try to keep informed about the political and economic situation in the world; I'm particularly encouraged by developments in Latin America, new initiatives in grassroots social organization, health and education in Venezuela and Bolivia, for example, and in the progress of the Chinese political and economic experiment; I'm discouraged by the refusal of the USA to step down and aside, and by Canada's participation in the invasion of Afghanistan (there, I got it in again).

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

I sometimes show drafts of my work to one or two friends who have been very helpful. And I've found the proofreaders and editors at Moveable Inc. in Toronto to be the most thorough final readers; nothing gets past them. As for outside editors, I don't know if they still exist in the sense they did fifty years ago. I try to submit my work in a final draft that requires no changes.

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

It's neither harder nor easier; it's just very hard. But I think I've become accustomed to the difficulties and I don't panic as much as I used to. I even enjoy the process.

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

This is another question about theory. I like pears and eat them often. By the time you, rob, read this reply, I will have probably eaten another pear, so what is the last time to me now as I write this will no longer be the last time I ate a pear when you read this. And by the time readers of your blog read my reply, I will probably have eaten yet another pear... Unless by "last time" you are referring to a time after which I will never eat another pear. Every time I eat a pear, I hope it will not be my last one. And yet, the state of the environment being what it is, I imagine the day will come when someone will be eating the last pear. This is a political problem: what we are doing to save the pear (not to mention the other fruit and fauna) from extinction. As for mortal me, there will certainly come a time when I will eat what will be for me my last pear, though I will most probably not know it is my last pear at that moment. This is the problem of writing, the relationship between the author, the text and the reader.

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

Don't let school interfere with your education.

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

The division into prose and poetry, translation and original creation is a problem that needs to be explored. These divisions are historical, of course, and in flux. I think, in particular, the opposition between prose and poetry is no longer as simple or useful as it might once have been. In any case, I think of my work as writing. I like to unsettle those divisions. So I'm trying to move within and between, beyond and before genres as I write.

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 I like to get up around 6AM, walk the dog, grab some breakfast, and work until noon. Then, a nap after lunch, and back to work, either writing or catching up on admin stuff. Of course, there are periods in my life when, to stave off starvation, I have to stick some wage labour in there. That screws up the routine.

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

I don't really get stalled. I think people who get writer's block should give up writing. Writer's block is really that voice inside the sufferer's head telling him or her that their work is not very interesting or worthwhile. But if we're talking about getting stuck on a problem in the writing, then I read, usually philosophy or whatever text I'm working with/on in the project I'm stuck on: the Talmud in Apikoros Sleuth, Tang dynasty poets, Paul Celan or Bada Shanren in 85.

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

My most recent book is a murder mystery in a form that looks deceptively conventional. It differs from all my previous books, as each of them differs from the others, and from what I'm working on now, which is a kind of visual poetry.

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?

Books come from trees, unless they're made from recycled pulped books. Music and visual arts, a great deal. My 85 series is very engaged with visual art. And I'm working on a project involving European Baroque countertenor and Peking Opera.

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

This question tempts one to either show off, or promote friends. But I guess the best response may be to mention some authors the reader may not have encountered. So... Abraham Abulafia (13th century poststructuralist philosopher), Elias Canetti, Michel Gauvreau, Kurt Schwitters, Djuna Barnes, Bada Shanren, Cao Xue Qin. And, of course, many contemporary writers in Canada and abroad engaged in experimenting with language and the world, most of whom you already know. On the anglo-www, I like to browse some sites from time to time: Ubu.com, PennSound, Emily Carr Institute's site in Vancouver, Slought, John Trantor's site.

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

I'd like to 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?

I would have liked to be a cat burglar, so that I get my money directly from the taxpayers without having to go through the troublesome process of applying for grants.

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

I tried a number of other things and failed. As a writer in Canada, there's no pressure to succeed; everyone expects you to fail.

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

See Question 8.

20 - What are you currently working on?

These 20 questions. But I'm done now.

12 or 20 questions archive

*Talk and Poetry Reading by Ricardo Sternberg *

Wednesday, December 12, 12:00 noon, HC L-3, University of Alberta *

Born in Brazil, Ricardo Sternberg teaches at University of Toronto. He was trained at University of California, Riverside and Los Angeles and was also a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard. In 1974, he was awarded first place in The Nation Poetry Prize and, in 1978, he won a Pushcart Prize. Among his recent publications are Bamboo Church, McGill Queens University Press, 2003 (Republished 2006); Map of Dreams, Montreal: Vehicule, 1996; The Invention of Honey, Montreal: Vehicule Press, 1990 (Republished 1996, 2006).

More information on the poet at http://ricardosternberg.com/

12 or 20 questions: with Sheri Benning

Sheri Benning grew up on a small farm in central Saskatchewan. Her second book of poetry, Thin Moon Psalm, Brick Books, 2007, recently won two Saskatchewan Book Awards -- The Poetry Award and The City of Saskatoon Award. In 2004 Thin Moon Psalm was the recipient of the Alfred G. Bailey Manuscript Award. Her first book of poetry, Earth After Rain, Thistledown Press, 2001, also won two Saskatchewan Book Awards. Sheri is the recipient of the Earle Birney Poetry Prize, the second place recipient of the Bliss Carmen Poetry Award and in 2004 she was awarded the Saskatchewan Lieutenenant Governor's Award for Achievement in the Arts. Her poetry has been published in numerous Canadian literary journals and anthologies including Breathing Fire 2; Fast Forward: New Saskatchewan Poets and Third Floor Lounge. She's currently a doctoral student at the University of Alberta.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

My first book gave me a momentary feeling of legitimacy as a writer, but then you have to put that book aside and get back to reading and writing. It’s always wonderful to run into people who are kind enough to mention that they’ve read your work, isn’t it? It feels good to know you’ve communicated something.

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 for a year and a bit. Though I’m a doctoral student at the U of A, I moved out here from Edmonton, in part, to teach at St. Peter's College. I previously lived in Saskatoon for a couple of years while I was an undergrad at the U of S. Place bears a huge impact on my writing; my thinking often returns to rural Saskatchewan where I grew up. Race and gender impact my work in the way that they impact all I do, I suppose.

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?

An individual poem starts with an image or gesture – a certain slant of light, to borrow a phrase. Larger projects start with an unrelenting question.

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

Readings used to make me quite nervous. They still do, but Don McKay said something to me once that really helped. He suggested that I think of the audience as a tuning-fork which might help me to better hear my own work. You hear your work differently if you’re trying to communicate it to an audience.

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?

How our identity is a precipitate of the place-worlds we inhabit; how to make sense of the alienation of displacement; how to articulate a landscape that is heavily manipulated by human intention such as that of rural Saskatchewan; how to move beyond nostalgia for lost places to forge an ethics that might keep pace with socio-environmental conflict.

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

Essential. I have two friends, Sarah Tsiang and Tim McIntyre, with whom I share all my work. Tsiang is wonderful poet and McIntyre a PhD student at Queen’s. They’re rigorous and honest first readers. Don McKay edited Thin Moon Psalm. Don could understand what I was trying to say and then provided sensitive suggestions regarding how I might say it better. Working with him was invaluable. Tim Lilburn was the first person ever who I showed my poetry to. His conversation is crucial to me.

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

When writing, I’m never thinking about book-making exactly. I’m thinking about seeing my way through the poem, or the series of poems, or the essay at hand. I’m thinking about how to answer that unrelenting question.

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

This morning.

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

My dad is a fantastic storyteller. Once, in the context of a story that involved a fight at the Burr bar, he said something like this: “Skinny guys like us have to get the jump on people; we have to do it hard and do it first.” A friend of mine pointed out that, if you unhinge it from its context, that statement can be pretty good advice for a lot of things.

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

Genre distinctions can be distracting. I didn’t really set out to move between genres. I think it was Ezra Pound who said that form bears the content of meaning. So certain questions, sentiments, experiences, etc. require different forms to be best articulated.

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 prefer to write in the early mornings before the tasks of the day take over. I like the quiet of a still sleeping world.

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

I read. I met Annie Dillard several years ago and her advice was to read unlikely – books that might only tangentially inform the project at hand, books that’ll make you stretch. Also, it’s sometimes good to pull yourself out, to go for a walk around the block, as Bob Dylan would say.

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

Earth After Rain came out in 2001. In the interim I read a lot, traveled, etc. So the books are fueled by fairly distinct preoccupations. At the same time, I guess both books are overwhelmingly focused by my engagement with the places I’ve inhabited.

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 sister, Heather Benning, is a visual artist; she creates site-specific, sculptural installations. Lately she’s been compelled by how we relate to abandoned places. Her work and our conversations inspire me.

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

Here are but several writers whose work I consistently return to: Anna Ahkmatova, John Burnside, Dostoevsky, Paul Celan, Jack Gilbert, Louise Glück, Sean Johnston, Margaret Laurence (especially The Diviners), Tim Lilburn, Osip Mandel’stam, Don McKay, John Newlove, Rilke, Charles Simic, Karen Solie, Anne Szumigalski, Tomas Tranströmer, Charles Wright, and Jan Zwicky.

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

I wish I could really know another language; I wish I could speak another language without hesitancy or shame.

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 don’t know. My mom has a photograph from when my siblings and I were preschoolers. In the photo we’re playing dress-up. My costume is hilarious to me – I’ve got my grandmother’s old eyeglasses perched on the end of my nose and I’m pretending to pore over an encyclopedia. I guess I’ve always wanted to read, write and teach.

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

Again, I don’t know. Writing’s just always been the mode through which I make sense of the world. I can say this--the fact that I write has been helped along by my supportive, immediate family.

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

Eating Stone: Imagination and Loss of the Wild by Ellen Meloy.

I don’t think I’ll ever get the film The Wind that Shakes the Barley out of my head.

20 - What are you currently working on?

New poems that might articulate the changes in land-use in rural Saskatchewan and essays that are focused by my sister’s sculptural installations.

12 or 20 questions archive

12 or 20 questions: with Shawna Lemay

Shawna Lemay is the author of All the God-Sized Fruit, Against Paradise, Still, and Blue Feast. Her MA thesis (poetry) is Red Velvet Forest. She recently finished a book of essays about living with still life titled, Calm Things. Inspired by rob mclennan and a few other bloggers, she has started her very own blog called, Capacious Hold-All. She lives in Edmonton with her husband, Rob Lemay (a visual artist) and their daughter, Chloe.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

I was pregnant when the book (All the God-Sized Fruit) was in the editing stage. The goal was to have it done before the baby came – but she came a week early. When the book came out the next spring everything had changed. Because of these two birthings, I felt like I had begun to ‘make something mythical of my life,’ which is a line from the title poem.

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

Indeed, I’ve lived in Edmonton my entire life. When I was a kid my family also had a weekend/summer cabin out near Lake Isle which is deeply embedded in my consciousness. I spent half my childhood walking in the trees, hanging out at the barn with the horses, just moseying around looking at nature, and collecting odd little bits of it, pieces of bark, berries, interesting rocks, feathers, birds’ nests, moss. A favourite pastime was lighting fires in the burning barrel by the barn so the horses could have a smudge to keep the mosquitoes away. So that’s all there somewhere. Writing poetry has something to do with lighting fires, I’ve found. As for gender, yes, it’s been a constant question, whether I’m writing about women and creativity or motherhood. My goal is to further explore what obstacles women face by interviewing women poets of my generation on my new blog with hope they might be collected into a book at some point.

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?

I’m definitely thinking ‘book’ from the beginning. What I’ve found interesting is how one book flows into the next. Themes recur, images, obsessions. At the end of a book, you think you’re all written out, you’ve said all you can about those themes which have obsessed you. I like then, what Margeurite Duras says, “To be without the slightest subject for a book, the slightest idea for a book, is to find yourself, once again, before a book. A vast emptiness. A possible book. Before nothing.”

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

I’m quite terrified of public readings. In the car on the way to a reading I begin swearing, uncontrollably, like a sailor. It’s ugly. When my essay ‘Shy’ was published in Prairie Fire, and then was nominated and became a finalist for the personal journalism category at the National Magazine Awards, I was insanely, ridiculously nervous. If I won would they want me to go and read it at the ceremony? (I didn’t win). The essay was about, of course, being shy and what that means, and there’s a description in it of a particular reading. (The launch of Against Paradise along with 3 other excellent books by Sonnet L’Abbe, George Murray and Lorna Goodison). This was one of the most terrifying moments of my life, reading with these poised, gifted people. For me it was a huge accomplishment that I didn’t faint. I do understand how ridiculous I am, and mainly I try to forget about the business that happens after a book comes out, while I’m writing.
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?

Here, for me, is the main question, cribbed from the desert fathers: why not be totally changed into fire?

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

I’ve been beyond blessed with editors. Nathalie Cooke was my editor for All the God-Sized Fruit and that was simply an incredible experience. Tim Lilburn edited Against Paradise. Brilliant, kind. And Doug Barbour was my editor for Blue Feast and it was so great working with someone I knew quite well. I knew what to expect with Doug as I’d had him as a poetry instructor in my undergrad. Sharp-eyed, passionate about the craft of poetry, and extremely supportive of the book.

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

It’s difficult, always difficult. But there’s joy too. Writing is what makes the world magic. ( I think I’m stealing all that from Duras…)

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

We forget to eat the pears very often in this house. We’re too busy watching the drama of the pear – the way it turns from green, to yellow and then into a pale speckled ghost pear. There is the way the brown spots appear, the bruises., the gashes and in the summer flies will alight. We watch and watch, mesmerized, until it’s inedible. Rob, my husband, is a still life painter who has painted numerous pears.

I blame him entirely for my lack of pear eating.

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

Give. I’ve learned this from a few sources. During the editing of ATGSF, Nathalie Cooke recommended a book to me by Lewis Hyde called The Gift. But she also taught this by example. It’s also in Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life: “the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give feely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”

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

It’s been a natural move to non-fiction. I can’t really say why, but I’ve lost heart for poetry. I hope it comes back. Perhaps I’m foolish to expect it to. There’s consolation in Roo Borson’s Upriver to Oishida. She talks about having ‘given up’ poetry twice, and then poetry replies: “Throw it Away, / it comes back. // Throw it away harder, / it still comes back.” So, I’ll see if it returns. It’s been quite a long while now…

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 had a writing routine and I’m always strict about it. The routine has changed so many times since we had our daughter 9 years ago. And then we got her a puppy (black lab) in June so that’s forced yet another change. A good one though. I walk the dog in the morning in Terwillegar park – which is very similar to my childhood forest. Every day, it’s a different forest. The light is different, the leaves change colour, drift to the forest floor, slowly, over weeks. And now the beginning of the winter forest which has its own beauty. I look and look, drinking in every tree branch. Then home to write until it’s time to collect my daughter from school.

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

I turn to books – always to The Stream of Life by Clarice Lispector. To the work of Kristjana Gunnars, Annie Dillard, Helene Cixous, Margeurite Duras, Hannah Green, Susan Griffin. And then to many poets, Dahlia Ravikovitch, Anne Marie Macari, Eavan Boland, Denise Levertov, Marina Tsvetaeva, Phyllis Webb and more of course.

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’m most influenced by visual art, especially since I live with a still life artist. We’re obsessed with objects, with still life, but we both love pouring over art books, all kinds of art. On the floor of my study right now I have books on Vermeer, Cy Twombly, Leonor Fini, and a couple of colour theory books. Also Reading Women – images of women reading, from Simone Martini’s Annunciation, to Eve Arnold’s photograph of Marilyn Munroe Reading Ulysses.

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

(I think I sort of answered this in number 12?…)

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

The most important thing to do will be to drink more champagne. I don’t want to have regrets, as John Maynard Keynes did. (“My only regret in life is that I did not drink more champagne”)

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 would attempt to become a visual artist – though I’m not nearly talented enough to succeed. If I’d not become a writer I would have ended up as a librarian type – answering reference questions, digging and delving. Trying to find that next perfect book for someone.

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

I’ll quote Duras: “No matter what I say, I will never discover why one writes and how one doesn’t write.”

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

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson.

We watch a lot of cartoons in this house, sadly. But The Cat Returns was excellent.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a long piece about the possibility of a woman art forger. I’m attempting to push the boundaries of creative non-fiction (who isn’t these days?). I’ve really just begun so I’m at that fearful, elated, wild and somewhat incomprehensible stage when it comes to explaining anything about it.

12 or 20 questions archive

rob mclennan (and Lainna) at the West Edmonton Mall

After my two post referencing the West Edmonton Mall [here and here], a photo (courtesy of Lainna El Jabi) during our adventures there, Saturday, November 3, 2007. Me in my new leather standing in the centre of all the roller-coasters.

rob mclennan at Catherine Owen's Troubadour

12 or 20 questions: with Alice Major

Alice Major has published seven collections of poetry and one novel. She has won the Malahat Review’s long poem contest and been short-listed for the Pat Lowther Award, the City of Edmonton Book Prize (twice) and the Stephan G. Stephanson Award, Writers Guild of Alberta (three times the bridesmaid, never the bride.)

She has been president of the Writers Guild of Alberta and of the League of Canadian Poets, and chair of the Edmonton Arts Council. In 2005, she was named the first poet laureate of the City of Edmonton – a city she has made her home since 1981. She grew up in Toronto, took a degree in English at the U of T’s Trinity College, and first came west to work as a newspaper reporter in the central Cariboo region of B.C.

Her most recent collection was The Occupied World, from the University of Alberta Press (2006). Her eighth book of poetry will also be published by UAP in spring, 2008.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

Do you mean writing it or having it published? Realizing that I could write a whole book was life-changing, but publishing it was like watching the silt settle over one more trilobite on its way to fossilization.

That first book was a novel and therefore something of an aberration. I haven’t published fiction since, so in retrospect it seems like an evolutionary blind alley.

2 - How long have you lived in Edmonton, 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 Edmonton since 1981. Geography absolutely affects my writing, though it took me a while to notice the plains landscape that now surrounded me. It’s a subtler kind of beauty than the coast or the mountains, and for a while I only noticed what wasn’t here. But poetry is based on the art of attentiveness, so in some ways a plains landscape is excellent training for that faculty.

As for gender and race – I’m aware of writing from the point of view of a woman, and the issues of roles and expectations are important. (One of my collections, Some Bones and a Story, is a collection of dramatic monologues in the voices of different female saints.) However, having grown up in a blue-collar family, I think that economic class tends to trump gender as a formative experience. That’s what really shapes my ideas about what poetry is and does.

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?

Oh, a poem always has to begin as sound, an ‘ear-worm.’ I typically like to work on big projects, sequences and so on. But however lofty and well-formed the overall idea might be, nothing’s going anywhere until some combination of sound and rhythm clicks.

I find it interesting that it the process is so opposite from fiction. To create fiction, I have to see something –to visualize where the action is going on, who’s going to move into the scene, what they’re going to do. The words to encode that can come afterwards. For poetry, though, some words have to come first.

And it feels as though they literally come from different parts of my brain. Fiction seems to start at the back of my head, poetry at the side.

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

They are part of the polishing process. That’s how you find out what lines work, how people respond to a piece overall.

I like reading. Not as much as I like writing – it’s a thrill when you feel you’ve landed an audience, but it doesn’t last anywhere near as long as the rush of feeling something new click in your brain.

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 think a great deal about poetic theory, because it concerns the relationship between my work and a reader. I don’t think we’ve adequately incorporated the new discoveries of cognitive science and neuropsychology into critical theory. By and large, I find that Damasio, Dennett and Oliver Sachs are more valuable in shaping my own ideas of what I do when I write than people like Derrida or Hélène Cixous.

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

I’ve never had the luxury of working with an editor intensively on a manuscript, except for the copy-editing process. I am profoundly grateful for good copy-editing, though I suspect I might become a bit ornery with substantive editing. I do enjoy workshopping with my poetry group.

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

I’d say that, on balance, it gets harder – though that may be an illusion fostered by our inability to really remember previous pain. Certain technical things come more easily, but the challenge of finding something new to do with the tools you’ve mastered becomes greater. You don’t want to go on writing the same poems that you did when you were thirty.

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

I’m the kind of woman who constantly buys pears, leaves them on the window sill to ripen, then forgets them. I can’t remember one that didn’t go brown and gooey into the garbage pail.

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

“Poets take on enormous challenges of technique, first of all in fun.” It’s from Derek Walcott’s book, What the Twilight Says.

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?

If I have the enormous good fortune to be able to get up and stare out the window in my bathrobe for a couple of hours, that’s wonderfully productive – but rare. I really don’t have a routine. I just write when I can.

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

Oh, the usual writer’s tricks – trawl through a thesaurus for interesting words, make up silly metaphors (cat is to book as air is to ….? ), scribble in my journal.

But the main thing I’ve learned is to depend not on external inspiration, but to trust the inner space. If I’m quiet enough, the connections come.

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

It’s longer :-)

This newest book The office tower tales will be coming out in spring, 2008 from the University of Alberta Press. I’ve been working on the darn thing for ten years. It has a frame narrative based on the lives of a group of office workers over the millennial year, and one of the characters (Sheherazad, the girl from public relations) tells a series of stories that illuminate issues of power, beauty, love and fear that they are facing.

I’ve always had an interest in tale-telling and the creation of mythologies, which comes out in this work. It continues my love of narrative poetry. It adds more rhyme – I developed a stanza form for the frame narrative that includes a variable end-rhyme pattern to swing the material firmly over the prose-poetry divide.

I hope it has a feeling of lightness for readers. Its tone is meant to be comic in the large sense. I like entertaining people – in the original sense of ‘entretenir,’ to hold together.

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?

Science, absolutely. Physics, mathematics, chemistry – they are full of wonderful metaphors to work with. Cognitive science fascinates me.

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

Gawd, even in blogspace it would be too long to print. Chaucer, Browning (both of them), Donne – more recent poets like Brodsky, Carol Ann Duffy, Albert Goldbarth. Derek Walcott is absolutely one of my favourites. (Another quote of his: “To be told you are not yet a city or a culture requires this response. I am not your city or your culture.” It allows me to feel it’s all right to live in a place that is not considered the centre.)

But probably the biggest influence is Robert Burns. Not fashionable to admit, I suppose. But I can’t avoid it – I was born in Scotland; my father wrote poems that were modeled on Burns’ work (including a reply to the poet by the mouse), and I can’t help putting a dimeter at the end of stanzas. It took me years to figure out where that tic came from.

I feel a great liking for Burns – his ideals, his wry compromises, his interest in preserving popular folk song, his belief in a decent humanity, the way he can switch between Lallans and the high-falutin’ poetic diction of his day, and his wonderful, wonderful command of rhythm and sound.

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

Write a decent haiku. I can’t do short.

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?

I was going to toss off a flippant answer like “depressed.” But then I thought it over.

I have taken a circuitously single-minded path to being a poet. I’ve had quite a few occupations in my life: bank teller, bookkeeper, newspaper reporter, technical writer, arts administrator, teacher. I could have gone on progressing in the corporate world because I was rather good at that. All that time, it has been very difficult to give myself permission to be a poet – an occupation that does not look spectacularly useful and, deep inside me, seems self-indulgent. But poetry is what I always returned to.

I have often felt at a disadvantage because of this diffident approach. Had I been a ‘career poet’ sooner, had I made the connections in university, then perhaps I’d have been able to give my poetry a sturdier shove out from the shore of anonymity. Instead, I was forty before I published my first collection and the rowboat may never get past the sandbar.

Still, I think that to be a poet (as opposed to being other sorts of writer), it helps when you do other kinds of work too. Poets should be in the world of humanity. Maybe fiction writers need to sit at their desks to churn out twenty pages a day, but I need to find out something about the world that I can compress into a few lines. I couldn’t have written my latest book, for instance, without years of working in office towers.

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

I like doing it more than I like doing anything else.

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

Film remains pure escapism for me, so I tend to miss new films and to watch old black-and-white movies from the ‘30s and ‘40s. So ‘great’ would have to refer to Fred Astaire in Top Hat or something like that.

The most recent ‘great’ book that I read has been Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale – an absolutely wonderful book on evolution.

19 - What are you currently working on?

Elegy. Life takes you there sooner or later.

12 or 20 questions archive

12 or 20 questions: with Jill Hartman

Calgary poet Jill Hartman writes disjunctive narrative poetry about pachyderms, pirates, belly dancing, Ouija, Scrabble, and The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth. She’s presented and performed her poetry across Canada and as far afield as Scotland, and her writing’s appeared in Queen Street Quarterly, filling Station, and DIAGRAM, in the anthologies Post-Prairie (Talonbooks) and Shift & Switch (Mercury), and in chapbooks from MODL Press, Olive Press, and her own chapbook series semi-precious press. Her first book of poetry, A Painted Elephant, (Coach House 2003) was shortlisted for both the Stephansson and Lampert Awards, and was featured on the program “Heart of a Poet,” which you can see on BOOK TV and BRAVO. Her second book of poetry, Booty: Hurricane Jane and Typhoon Mary, was co-written with Brea Burton and comes out November 2007 form the Mercury Press.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

When I got an offer of publication for A Painted Elephant, it made me feel that living in a shack in the woods was a charming interlude in a life of letters, rather than the first act of a spiral of eccentricities that would see me disappear into the interior of BC in a converted school bus, never to see the prairies again. Hard to say if that is a good thing, really. I think I need publication to stave off the eccentricity, or at least keep it at a good level. I’m very easily discouraged, but luckily, easily encouraged as well.

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

This so counts as two questions, rob!

I grew up in Calgary, I’ve lived here most of my life so far. My family’s been in Alberta for a century or so, farming, coal mining. My parents both moved to Calgary when they were teenagers, and I like to think about the move from rural to urban over generations. So the city I grew up in is often what I write about—certainly it was a major part of my first book—and the landscape of the city and of what’s outside is a big deal to me. I write a lot about alienation from and reclamation of place and space.

Race and gender—well of course! More on the gender end of that, seeing as I’m not as confronted with “difference” in this culture/place in terms of my race as some writers are—but race and gender share that thing, that power thing. Who’s got it, how is it being used, how complicit am I in its misuse? The book I co-wrote with Brea Burton coming out this fall, Booty, treats sexualized and violent slang, cultural attitudes. It’s about power, sexuality, language. I prefer it when the power that gender confers is given up or equalized. Or at least recognized. Booty tries to take that power through irony and challenge. It’s a laugh riot!

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?

I usually have an idea for a book from the get-go. I have tried writing without an aim, but I much prefer having a title, a structure—I’ll start with a title like St. Ampede, I will imagine how it’ll be organized or what the form will be, say the book will have sections that are about each of the areas at the Calgary Stampede, then I can start colouring it in. “The Big Four Building” section title leads me to

tip holy cows
bulldoze Victoria Park
bull-in-a-china one-stop-shop for all your lottery, casino, junk food needs

Big Four building
bigger than the Famous Five
more than famous the biggest rodeo around
The Greatest Outdoor Show greater than
ten thousand dancing girls kicking cans
vaudeville baudeville Red-Mile-wide smiles

I’ll tell you the tale of the west
as the tale of the rest of us
what it’s like to love a cowboy before brokeback
when I was still ashamed to be a hick

Sort of macro-to-micro. Of course the title and structure usually change, after I’ve generated some material, but that’s how I start. If I know I am working on a book, rather than noodling around, it really helps me to be motivated.

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

Readings are part of the creative process, although not in a huge way. It helps to read stuff that is in progress to get a sense of how it is or isn’t working in terms of sound and rhythm, readability even, for choosing which work is meant to be performed, or how. It can help me realize if something is really oblique, and gives me an opportunity to think about accessibility. I want people to enjoy my work, at least on some level, maybe even on the level of frustrating them if that’s going somewhere. But readings don’t usually get me generating new work. Unless it is someone else’s reading of course.

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?

A question about questions. So theoretical! And what are THE current questions! As if we should all be asking the same ones!!! Well, my big thing for the last couple of years has been thinking about writing as play. The serious game. And I meant “writing” there as a noun, but of course it’s also a verb in the sense that I am playful while writing. So I’ve been addressing that directly with my project about Scrabble and Ouija. And also that project is about where creativity comes from, where language comes from, why language. Communication. Accessibility and inaccessibility. And that leads me to wonder about what art is. Is it entertainment? Does it have to justify itself? What does it look like when a difficult idea is trying to be entertaining?

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

Both.

7 - After having published more than a couple of titles over the past few years (both chapbooks and books), do you find the process of book-making harder or easier?

The process of book-making. Hmm. I love it. I love making chapbooks, except that it’s pretty daunting to me now. Now that I really understand the amount of time I will need to make a chapbook that I am happy with—the sheer physical labour! The last chapbook I completed was a “Poetic License”—a card I printed on a letterpress. So daunting to imagine anything more ambitious. And there are a few unfinished chapbooks in various stages in various boxes and drawers. How can I start a new one?

But book books—well, I guess it’s easier? It’s definitely easier knowing what I am in for. But it’s harder because of course that means I must push myself farther, whether it means that the project is more intellectually rigorous, or I am pickier about my publisher, or I feel I must promote myself and the work better than I did with the last book. I liked being emerging. It felt like I couldn’t make a mistake. I remember joking with Julia Williams that neither of us managed to be a child prodigy. With my first book, I could imagine that I had a chance at that kind of status again. But now I am in the ugly teen-age of it all.

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

I had a bite of a wild pear in early September. Or I suppose it was a feral pear. Paul picked it and brought it back to the cabin where we were having our “summer” vacation. It was tough-skinned and under-ripe. It made me sad. I love the fall, it makes me a little melancholy in a good way. In a “boy it sure smells good” way.

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

Probably Fred Wah’s “so what.” It’s both a challenge and really zen at once, depending how encouraged or discouraged you are. It helps me keep the writing going somewhere for some reason.

Me:
“I wrote an 8-page poem that uses every letter in the Scrabble game and the score adds up to exactly the year that the game was invented!”
My Inner Fred:
“so what?”
Me:
“yeah, you’re right, it’s complete bullshit. It was fun to do it at least. Maybe there’s a phrase or two in there I can use.”

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 have a routine. I write when I write. If I am unlucky I write when I have an appointment or something that stops me. I hate it when that happens. I feel like writing is something that happens to me, not something I do. So I try to be flexible with plans. And I never answer the phone.

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

I usually forget this, because I don’t think very well when I am frustrated, but I find reading is very inspirational. Also watching films. I usually feel like writing after reading something—books, newspapers, signs. Rereading what I have written in a project can help too—I often just start adding/changing when I do that.

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

As the author of A Painted Elephant, I called myself a disjunctive narrative poet. I meant that my writing was disjunctive narrative poetry, not that I myself was disjunctive and narrative (because I was a child prodigy, I could get away with ambiguous language and people thought it was on purpose! Oh, to be emerging again.) But Booty: Hurricane Jane (my half of the co-written book) isn’t really narrative or disjunctive. It’s serial and iterative. So as the author of A Painted Elephant and Booty, I haven’t decided what to call myself. I’m glad that the two books are quite different. It shows range. It feels really really good. I think it is an excellent book. I can say that with no hesitation or false modesty because it is co-written with Brea Burton, whom I admire so much. I suspect we’ll be unappreciated in our time, but I only say that because I am a sullen teenager now. But seriously now. I am very proud of Booty—working with Brea (and with Cara Hedley in the project’s early days) has been one of the most rewarding creative endeavors I’ve tried out so far. I would love to write collaboratively more. Jason Christie and I keep threatening to co-write a fantasy novel.

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?

Well, culture. So all of those things excluding nature. But also nature. And of course books!

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

Julia Williams, Brea Burton, Cara Hedley, angela rawlings, Jason Christie, Natalie Simpson, Jordan Scott, Fred Wah, Robert Kroetsch, Nicole Brossard. And beginning a list is sometimes the worst thing in the world to do—talk about a form dictating the content! Talk about rejection of closure! I can’t leave the list at that but I have to! Ok, if I was on a deserted island, who would I want with me…

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

I would like to go to New Zealand and Spain.

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?

I like to fantasize about vineyards. Hot air balloons. Arboriculture. Soup entrepreneurship. Stichomancy. And I like to sew.

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

It’s what I did when I was happy and when I was traumatized and when I was bored and when I was excited, so I thought it would be a good bet.

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

Yesno by Dennis Lee, and we watched The Shining again the other night, what a great movie!

19 - What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a novel. It’s a ghost story.

12 or 20 questions archive

12 or 20 questions: with Jason Christie

Jason Christie is the author of Canada Post (Snare 2006) and i-ROBOT poetry by Jason Christie (Edge 2006). He edited Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Mercury 2005) with Angela Rawlings and derek beaulieu.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

I keep getting emails from some Teen Beat magazine reporter called Dash A. Budmeadow... I feel like my first book helped me to let go of a few anxieties I was feeling about writing. It was like finally getting a gold coin and then learning it was chocolate with a foil wrapper, but eating the chocolate and loving it anyway. Now I just wear foil wrappers on my head to insulate my thoughts.

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

I lived in Calgary for 6 years and I recently moved to Vancouver. Geography is important to my writing. Writing about a particular place, at a particular time, is a way to put memories into a safety deposit box. You can move on from that place, once you have written it, and once written about, you can return to it. And it shouldn't even be obvious in most cases, rather the text should be doing something else while you are lining it with memories. Canada Post is full of places and people that are important to me, but I made the references oblique because they are really only important to me. The poems go off and do all kinds of other things, but I'll always be able to read one of the poems and get the references, and that makes me happy. In a time when place is less and less of a necessary marker, I'd say that place is important to my writing in another way as well. Place acts as a sort of nonlocation in Canada Post, where references to geographical places don't mesh into a narrative place. In i-ROBOT I tried to interrogate how people negotiate alterity, and how that negotiation impacts personal relationships or national relationships. Without talking directly about race, gender or class, I feel that in that book I was able to engage with them.

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?

Poems usually begin with a startling thought that gets into my head and snaps me out of whatever I was doing, or a strange sentence will occur to me and keep occurring until I write it down. Sometimes all it takes is a word, and I'm off writing. The robot poems, for example, often started with me thinking of something funny that related to robots and then I'd sit down to write, or grab a pen and random piece of paper and I'd write a first draft of the poem in one sitting. That's not always the way it goes, I do have files on my computer, and loads of scrap notes lying around that I'm hoping to return to, or add to something I'm working on, but for the robot book it was kind of magical. I would say I'm an author of short pieces that combine into a book and an author that forms a book from the beginning. I've had both experiences. Canada Post is a book that features several poems that I realized were all responding to similar issues about identity and nationality, and it made sense to bring them together. Strangely enough the robot poems got their start as Canada Post poems. I realized that they weren't right for the book and set them aside. I kept writing them like crazy until it dawned on me that they were becoming a book of their own. My new project is one that I conceived right off the start. It is a series of narrative poems, and I knew where they were going before I even wrote the first one. So this new book is definitely one that was conceived as a book first then the poems came later.

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

Not really. I get nervous when I read.

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?

Oh, that is a big question... My writing is heavily influenced by theory. It is also heavily influenced by my life. I'm trying to understand how language and Capitalism function together. I think the most pressing question for me is: how can I be accountable for the fact that language's program toward understanding has been totally co-opted by Capitalist ideology to such a degree that even pointing it out incurs the full weight of the problem? We replicate the problems even as we try to talk about the problems... That said, I'm not interested in alienating readers in my pursuit of answers by writing myself into an obscure niche. Nor am I interested in descending into an apathetic response of simply pointing out the problem over and over again. Lately I'm interested in alterity, how people understand difference, how they respond to difference. Do they attempt to integrate it? Assimilate it into their understanding of the world? Do they respect it and leave it alone? Do they ignore it, thinking they are being respectful?

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

I have found that it can be quite rewarding. It isn't essential to me, but it is always helpful to have someone else's input.

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

I find it is getting easier. I feel a bit more sure of how I want a book to function and that makes it a little easier to put it all together. That said, I still agonize over the poems, adding in or removing poems. Once the poems are written, I can usually relax a bit and let the structure materialize.

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

A pair of what?

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

Be patient. I think that has been the best advice I've received as a writer. Oh, and: if at first you don't succeed. well, who really succeeds at writing anyway?

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

I need to be doing multiple things at any given time. Experimenting in visual poetry, or making noises with my computer, gives me an outlet other than writing words on a page to express the ideas with which I'm grappling.

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 much of a routine. I mostly write when I have time, or when some idea surprises me. I guess I've been forced into a guerrilla-style writing routine. I used to write while hiding out in the boiler room of a department store where I worked, or on the roof near the water tower. I wrote a lot of Canada Post in those environments, and much of my MA thesis. There was one giant machine for which I had a fondness. It was a water chiller/evaporator that was built by The Carrier corporation in 1968 and it had been running more or less well until it was scrapped in 2005 which was also the year I stopped working at the department store. The Carrier was mint green and about twenty feet long by ten feet high. It leaked bromide that would pool beneath it and destroy the cement. Now, I do most of my writing at home or on transit at any time of the day that I can find some time, or when the mood strikes me. My typical day begins at 7:30. I grab a coffee and head to work. I'll sometimes read if I can sit down on the bus. Most recently I read a super secret project by Steve Collis. It is very good.

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

I will usually grab another book, listen to music, have a coffee, or shower to jump start the creative process.

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

I'm diving right into narrative which is something I've avoided (as in the robot poems) or made a point of avoiding (as in Canada Post). It feels like I'm rounding out a trilogy constructed of ideas where I tackle the same issues from slightly different perspectives and using different topics.

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?

Absolutely. I'd say other art forms heavily influence what I write, or how I think about writing.

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

John Barlow. Michael deBeyer. Those are two names that come to mind immediately. As for people I've never met: Max Jacob, Paul Eluard, Francis Ponge... A whole bunch of the Early 20th Century French poets... There are really too many people who have had a profound impact on my writing life over the years for me to mention. All the people in Calgary I know and miss dearly. The friends in Toronto that I so seldom get to see.

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

I would love to go to France. I've never been able to make travelling a priority, so I haven't been out of Canada very much and I've never been off the continent. It would be amazing to travel to France, since I admire so many French poets.

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 know everone says this, but I would have loved to have been involved in researching theoretical particle physics. If I wasn't a writer, I would probably be doing exactly what I am doing now minus the writing. Or maybe I'd be rustling pandas or something.

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

It feels like the only thing I can do.

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

The last great book was The Dice Cup, by Max Jacob. I bought a banged up copy of a 1923 edition in French and the first full English translation recently because I can't get enough of his poems.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I have some new poems that I'm pretty excited about, but I don't want to say too much. I'm also putting together a wee magazine called room to move. The first issue has writing by Jordan Scott, Nikki Reimer, Joanne Arnott, Ron Silliman and many others. I'm working on a chapbook for by the skin of my teeth press called Une Violence Etrange. I just got married in June and moved to Vancouver, so I've been really busy and haven't had much time to get things sorted out. But now that we are settling in, I'm feeling that exciting rush to write again.

12 or 20 questions archive

The Writers Guild of Alberta presents:

An Evening with rob mclennan
2007/08 Writer-in-Residence, University of Alberta Department of English and Film Studies
Wednesday, October 31, 7:00 – 9:00 PM
2nd Floor Program Room, Strathcona Public Library
8331 104 Street
WGA members free; non-members $5.00

Ottawa-based writer rob mclennan has done much musing on the subject of regional writing in preparation for his move to Alberta: his essay “On (not) Being an Alberta Writer: or, anticipating UofA” appeared in the June 2007 issue of The Danforth Review. Spend an evening with rob, two months into his residency, as he shares his new-formed impressions of Alberta, his thoughts on Canada’s literary geography, and his work.

rob mclennan is an Ottawa-based writer, editor and publisher. His thirteenth poetry collection is The Ottawa City Project (Chaudiere Books), and fall 2007 sees the publication of his first novel, white (The Mercury Press), subverting the lyric: essays (ECW Press) and the non-fiction title Ottawa: The Unknown City (Arsenal Pulp Press). He regularly posts reviews, essays and other items at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com, and is currently working at www.albertawriting.blogspot.com.