Monday, December 31, 2018

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Hana Shafi

Hana Shafi is a writer and artist who illustrates under the name Frizz Kid. Both her visual art and writing frequently explores themes such as feminism, body politics, racism, and pop culture with an affinity to horror. A graduate of Ryerson University's Journalism Program, she has published articles in publications such as The Walrus, Hazlitt, This Magazine, Torontoist, Huffington Post, and has been featured on Buzzfeed India, Buzzfeed Canada, CBC, Flare Magazine, Mashable, and Shameless, Known on Instagram for her weekly affirmation series, she is also the recipient of the Women Who Inspire Award, from the Canadian Council for Muslim Women. Born in Dubai, Shafi's family immigrated to Mississauga in 1996, and she currently lives and works in Toronto. It Begins With The Body is her first book.

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


It Begins with the Body is my first book and it's pretty surreal finally having this out. It's something I've dreamt of for a long time, but it's difficult actually thinking about how it'll feel when the book is done and physically in your hands. I'm soaking in this feeling as much as I can.

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

Poetry was always my go-to writing style since I was a kid. I started writing poetry in the fifth grade—terrible, cheesy, angsty poetry haha. But I think it's a very interesting genre. People have a lot of preconceived notions about what poetry is supposed to be like. We tend to picture really abstract work with high-flown language. I've always wanted to show people how diverse poetry can be. I went to journalism school, so non-fiction writing is something that I was really invested in for a long time. It made me miss poetry a lot. I still write non-fiction, but getting to write a full book of poetry just felt like a huge release.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?


I start writing pretty fast, but refining it takes a while. Some of my pieces are very close to the first draft, whereas others were dramatically revised.

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

Before It Begins with the Body, I would often just write short pieces and then want to combine them into a larger project. When I started on the book, I wanted to write pieces that were more deliberately a part of a narrative. So I think this book has definitely changed my writing process.

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


I do enjoy readings. I get nervous sometimes, but I'm a pretty performative person, so I do like being up there.

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

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?


I don't really think there's a singular answer to this question. The role of the writer changes over time, changes from person to person. For some writing is therapeutic, for others its activism, for others its to push buttons, start discussions, change public opinions. For some it's about leaving a legacy. For me it's often all of these things at once in varying degrees.

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

Vivek Shraya was my editor and I found her insights to be essential to my work. She was very much a mentor to me in that role; a much more experienced writer from similar cultural backgrounds who could really understand why this work was important to me, and how I wanted to tell this story. It's important to have an editor that's willing to critique your work, but who also comes to it with a cultural competence that allows them to understand your work so that they're not changing it in ways that remove your original intentions.

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

Probably from Vivek, during her Toronto launch of her book I'm Afraid of Men. She said to the audience that no one knows you as well as you know yourself and explained that people may try to make other definitions or interpretations of you, but only you know your true self and to hold onto that.

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

For me moving between those genres has been easy because each of them have had a different purpose, and each of those genres is able to inform the other I think. I see a lot of my journalistic background spilling into my poetry and artwork, and I like that I don't necessarily have the same conventional background of going to art school and always being immersed in that. Having done other types of writing helps me see poetry in a different way. Having been in a very research-oriented genre like journalism has helped me approach visual art differently.

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?

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


If I'm getting stalled, I try to just write something crap. Nobody has to see it, or no about it, but you kind of need to purge yourself of all the crappy writing before you can really get back to that project you really care about.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?


Agarbathi and bukhoor!

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?

People watching. People watching is a huge thing that influences my work. I get a lot of work done alone at bars and cafes because I like to observe people, movement, white noise, chaos. A lot of people may find these things boring, but if you really tune into people watching, you learn a lot.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
 
Sex Magick by Ian Young is a hugely important book to me. I also really love The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. On a totally different end of the spectrum, I love a lot of Alan Moore's work; naturally, graphic novels appeal to me a lot as both a writer and visual artist. And since I'm a big fan of non-fiction narrative, and dabble in that a lot myself, I really enjoy Roxane Gay's work. I learned a ton from her book Bad Feminist.

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

Maybe make a comic? I made a mini one in a class I took recently and I would love to make something bigger out of that.

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?
If I hadn't ended up being a writer or an artist, I probably would've just been miserable. I'm not good at anything else, hahaha. But if I could pick another occupation, I would really love to work with animals. I have zero credentials to do so and sucked at science in school. But I love animals so much, and I love seeing the work of dedicated folks who work to protect endangered species.

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

Writing came as an instinct. Maybe I chose to write and draw because it's just survival to me.

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

The last great book I read was a graphic novel called Redlands. And the last great film? I've actually been watching a ton of horror movies I've already seen before in the last few weeks, because I'm obsessed with Halloween. In terms of new stuff, I just finished watching The Haunting of Hill House series.

20 - What are you currently working on?

What I'm hoping will turn into my next book...

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Sunday, December 30, 2018

Stephanie Anderson, If You Love Error So Love Zero



It is a facsimile. It is facial angle:

European woman. It is stomach

simple, similar to a box. It is on

either side of inside. It is grapple.

It is extracted from lignite and peat.

It is worn by women. It is whether

with gloves, a moveable roof.

It is concerned with whalebone.

It is a writing material made of strips

of parachute. It is myth, cat,

machine. It is a cloth conclusion, of

silt formerly. It is this, thin, azure. (“To Yield a Body”)

American poet, editor and publisher (currently studying in Beijing) Stephanie Anderson’s latest is the full-length If You Love Error So Love Zero (New Orleans LA: Trembling Pillow, 2018), a collection of short poem sequence-sections that accumulate into a book-length exploration on form, procedures, syntax and meaning. The author of In the Key of Those Who Can No Longer Organize Their Environments (2013) and Land of Yield (2017)—both from Horse Less Press—as well as a small handful of chapbooks, Anderson’s If You Love Error So Love Zero streaks and strikes through subjectivity, as she writes to open the poem “Ratiocination”:

Sometimes I bitch out the eldest streak.
I tell it: you are not representative.
Sometimes glass in hand. I tell her:

here’s where you can put that bird-
seed. She is the daintiest thing under

The collection opens with “To Yield a Body” to a cluster of poems—“Flight Path,” “Points of Vulnerability,” “Ratiocination,” “Flight Path” and “Mist Nets”—to “LIGHTBOX: a mobile memoir of atmospheres” to a further cluster of poems—“Flight Path,” “Storm, Secondary,” “Flight Path,” “Remembering in Third Person,” “Flight Path” and “Coda with Cranes.” Her multiple “Flight Path” poems are composed with curious frameworks, as she writes in her “Notes” at the end of the collection:

In the fourth “Flight Path,” the phrases in grey are taken from the list of 1,000 “Fry Words,” the most common words in the English language ranked by frequency of use. Each phrase’s words (provided the phrase is unbroken by punctuation) appear in the order in which the words occur in the list.

The effects of her poems really do feel as though she is pulling apart and reassembling language, allowing the collisions and the accumulations to do something far larger than the mere collection of assorted words and phrases. Her poems extend to incredible lengths, pulling threads upon threads to see where they might end. To create the world, one might say, you must first completely dismantle it, and Anderson has, working entirely down to zero for the sake of starting once again, and starting fresh. As she writes as part of the second “Flight Path”: “So what if we produce we can’t consume: / we made the ship to turn about. Now we / calibrate the day. Love, always stand // before me. Both my cheeks are stained. / When you dance, it still dizzies me. / The sun tempers its locks.”

Choose a narrative: the sky had come
overdark. I had come craven and crag.

                                    Find west, where dust
                                    billows to meet bread.

I’m here for the Code R, hoping
not to have use of the stuffed animal.
Soil separated, littered with fastened rocks.

I’m from the agency, I announce
to the rocks. I don’t remember.

                                    It must be mirage. There is scarcely
                                    any light to draw any more. (“Flight Path”)



Saturday, December 29, 2018

A ‘best of’ list of 2018 Canadian poetry books

Here I go again. And who am I to go against tradition? Well, the good traditions, anyway. Here is my annual list of the seemingly-arbitrary “worth repeating” (given ‘best’ is such an inconclusive designation), constructed from the list of Canadian poetry titles I’ve managed to review throughout the past year. This is my eighth annual list [see also: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011] since dusie-maven Susana Gardner originally suggested various dusie-esque poets write up their own versions of same, and I thank her both for the ongoing opportunity, and the prompting that started me off in the first place.

I’ve been far less active as a reviewer this past year than I may have wished, given I’m home with our two young ladies (Rose turned 5 in November, and Aoife turns 3 this coming April). Two reviews a week is still a pretty hefty goal, and there are multiple books that I haven’t been able to get into (yet, he says, rather optimistically). Although my mounds of not-yet-reviewed are beginning to overwhelm my home office. I’ve books by my desk I haven’t had nearly a chance to get to, including Laurie Fuhr’s Night Flying (Frontenac House Poetry), Gwen Benaway’s Holy Wild (Book*hug), and most likely multiple other titles I just can’t see at the moment. I haven’t even seen a copy yet of Deportment: The Poetry of Alice Burdick, edited by Alessandro Porco (WLU Press), or Flow: Poems Collected and New by Roy Miki, edited by Michael Barnholden, beholden, by Fred Wah and Rita Wong or Treaty 6 Deixis, by Christine Stewart (Talonbooks). Perhaps, given how long this list actually is, you might be okay with the fact that I didn’t get to as much as I might have liked (otherwise you might be here all day). You can’t even imagine how long it takes me to compile and post these things as it is (but there you go).

And, even though they aren’t poetry, there were a couple of non-fiction titles I caught this year that were quite remarkable, including Vancouver poet, editor, critic and troublemaker Stephen Collis’ Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten (Talonbooks) [see my review of such here] and Vancouver writer and editor Chelene Knight’s Dear Current Occupant: A Memoir (Book*hug) [see my review of such here]. Both books are totally wow (that’s my completely accurate and official descriptor, by the by, for those titles [patent pending]).

Either way, what a year. We lost more than a few this year, including David W. McFadden (we miss you, uncle dave) and Priscila Uppal (that one was tough) and David Helwig. And American poet Marthe Reed. And Stan Lee, of course.

You can see the full list here, over at the Dusie blog, in which I discuss books by Nikki Sheppy, Jack Davis, angela rawlings, Emma Healey, Mikko Harvey, George Bowering/George Stanley, Cameron Anstee, Suzanne Zelazo, Emilia Nielsen, Annick MacAskill, Robin Richardson, Eve Joseph, Eric Schmaltz, Caroline Szpak, Paul Vermeersch, Julie Bruck, David Bromige, Mark Truscott, Michael Turner, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Allison Chisholm,  Elee Kraljii Gardiner and Julie McIsaac.

 

Friday, December 28, 2018

new from above/ground press: Hyland, Swensen, Mangold, Etherin, Reid + a summer poetry workshop collection,

PLANE FLY AT NIGHT
(Tuscaloosa Notebook Poems)        
MC Hyland
$5
 

See link here for more information

Seventeen Summers
Cole Swensen
$5
 

See link here for more information

Cupcake Royale
second edition
Sarah Mangold
$5
 

See link here for more information

Danse Macabre
Anthony Etherin
$5
 

See link here for more information

Seam
Monty Reid
$4
 

See link here for more information

bodies and breath
a summer poetry workshop chapbook
edited by rob mclennan
$4
featuring new writing by: Marie-Andree Auclair, allison calvern, Allie Duff, Laurence Gillieson, Janna Klostermann, Leah MacLean-Evans, Sneha Madhavan-Reese and Billie Moss
 

See link here for more information

keep an eye on the above/ground press blog for author interviews, new writing, reviews, upcoming readings and tons of other material;

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November-December 2018
closing out the press' 25th anniversary year
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy of each

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button (above). Scroll down here to see various backlist titles (many, many things are still in print).


Review copies of any title (while supplies last) also available, upon request.

Forthcoming 2019 chapbooks by John Newlove, Claudia Coutu Radmore, Franco Cortese, Dale Smith, Heather Sweeney, Ralph Kolewe, Ben Meyerson, Isabel Sobral Campos, Mary Kasimor, Andrew K Peterson, Virginia Konchan, Evan Gray, Joshua Collis, Dennis Cooley and Jennifer Stella, the 20th issue of Touch the Donkey, further issues of G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] (with forthcoming issues guest-edited by Stuart Ross, Brenda Iijima, Anthony Etherin + others), as well as the 27th issue of The Peter F. Yacht Club, just in time for VERSeFest 2019!

Also: have you seen the 25th anniversary essays by multiple above/ground press authors? There might even be more appearing (who knows!)

And there’s totally still time to subscribe for 2019, by the by. Can you believe the press turns twenty-six in 2019?


Thursday, December 27, 2018

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Andrew Wilmot

Andrew Wilmot is a writer and editor based out of Toronto, Ontario. He has won awards for screenwriting and short fiction, with credits including Found Press, The Singularity, Glittership, Turn to Ash, Augur, and the anthologies Those Who Makes Us: Canadian Creature, Myth, and Monster Stories and Restless: An Anthology of Ghost Stories, Dark Fantasy, and Creepy Tales. As an editor, he’s worked with Drawn & Quarterly, ChiZine Publications, Broken River Books, ARP Books, Wolsak & Wynn, and is the former Marketing and Production Coordinator for NeWest Press. He is also Co-Publisher and Co-EIC, alongside editors Michael Matheson and Chinelo Onwualu, of the online magazine Anathema: Spec from the Margins. Books he’s worked on have themselves taken home multiple awards from the Sunburst Awards, the Eisner Awards, and most recently the Shirley Jackson Awards. His first novel, The Death Scene Artist, was released in Fall 2018 by Buckrider Books, an imprint of Wolsak & Wynn. Find him online at: andrewwilmot.ca, anathemaspec.tumblr.com, and on Twitter, hating everything about Twitter, @AGAWilmot.

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

Honestly, in some ways it's too early to tell—the book has only been out in the world now for two or three weeks. So in terms of finances and impact (ie, increasing awareness, drawing attention to who I am and what I do), it hasn't yet changed my life. However, it has given my confidence a huge shot in the arm. If ever I doubted what I'm doing with my life, those concerns are now (mostly) gone. I have no idea if this book or any I write will be a success, but I love what I do and know that I need to keep doing it. Being able to hold a finished book in my hands only solidifies that feeling.

The Death Scene Artist compares to previous work I've done in subject matter and tone more than structure. It's sarcastic and self-effacing, and deals prominently with matters of body dysmorphia and identity. Put more broadly, I write a lot (without intending for this to be the case) about wanting or being able to escape one's body/skin. Often my work straddles the line between surrealism and horror (this book fits both, I think), but sometimes slips into science fiction as well.

It differs most in terms of structure. I don't write epistolary tales all that often, and actually write more short fiction than novel-length works—though I am writing/have written other long-form works that simply aren't ready for public consumption. I also don't write a lot of love stories, and The Death Scene Artist is very much a love story, albeit a highly dysfunctional one. Also, I haven't before or since mixed writing styles like I do in this book, going between prose and screenplay formatting.

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


Very simply, it's where my imagination takes me. I love using fiction as a means for reflecting/distorting the world around us. In terms of reading/watching/general entertainment, fiction is and always has been my first and most prominent love. It wasn't so much a decision to write fiction as it was a necessity of who I am and how my brain works—I'm always wanting to play with reality. I might one day write non-fiction—I certainly enjoy it enough on a semi-regular basis—but can't see myself going in that direction any time soon. That said, poetry... I like poetry, and I admire it and those who write it, but it's never been for me, at least not creatively (ie: I enjoy reading it, but have no desire to write it). I just don't think like a poet, and short of a really terrible limerick I wrote for one long-abandoned project that I hope to god will never see the light of day, I don't know that I ever will.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

It differs from project to project. Like with paintings, I'm one to plan out as much as I can and spend the bulk of my time there, while the actual writing is done rather quickly, in long spurts. The first draft of The Death Scene Artist, for example, was written in just under a month. And recently I completed work on another project that I'd stopped and started over a period of five years, but again, once I sat down and just committed myself to finishing it, it was maybe a month, month and a half to the end of the first draft. That said, I also have a science fiction manuscript that is considerably larger than anything else I've done, and that took me a good five years to complete. Generally, though, the ideas and characters come quickly. I try not to treat my plans as concrete, though, to afford my characters the room to grow and take me unexpected places. Because character and plot should never be treated as separate entities: character IS plot.

All that said, while first drafts come relatively quickly, I do spend a fair bit of time on subsequent drafts. My day job for the past dozen or so years has been as a book and magazine editor, so I'm actually a fan of that second stage: editing and redrafting. My preference is to get the first draft done as quickly as possible, no matter how much of a mess it is, so that I can start playing with it/shaping it into what it needs to be. I'm more precious about the ideas than the words, so once I have the ideas out on paper, in front of me, it's time to play. It's easier for me to get into something and really figure it out/mess around with it when I know the full shape of things, if that makes sense.

4 - Where does prose 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?


Almost everything I've done, regardless of length, started out as a short story, likely based on a single image. I subscribe to the "spiral" method: when a story is growing into a novel, it happens almost non-linearly; I'll just be working away when it will jsut start to spiral out of control, and before I know it I've written a 10,000-word "short" and have more than a sense about the world surrounding the story and all the places it will or could go... and then I just follow the characters. That sounds a lot more ethereal than intended, but I don't really know how else to describe it. In fact, my next project is just that: a novel or novella based on an already-written short that I now intend to use as backstory for the larger project.

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

If by "enjoys" you mean "makes it through while slowly turning into an anxious puddle while onstage," then yes, I enjoy doing readings. In all seriousness, at this point I've only done four—two for anthologies I was in, and two for The Death Scene Artist—and was varying degrees of anxious/petrified throughout. What I enjoy from readings is getting the chance to interact with others, and to see my work out there, in the real world. Until I'm off that stage, though, my heart's racing as if its being chased by a knife-wielding murderer. So no, readings aren't so much part of my creative process as they are a part of life as a writer. That said, I'll continue to do them at every chance I get, because that's just one more way to get the word out. And since I'd ideally love to do this as my sole career (a pipe dream, I know, but let me have this), it's something I want to get used to.

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

I didn't set out to make this my life's work by any stretch, but naturally my work has gravitated toward a few key areas: body image/dysmorphia/eating disorders; mental health; gender, sexuality, and queerness. All of these are issues/areas in which I have a personal stake, and the more personal I get with my work the more these elements find their way into my stories in one way or another.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?


The role of the writer, and the artist in general has never been more important than it is right now, as we're staring down the barrel of a worldwide pendulum swing toward all-out fascism. Our role is to not sit back and just accept the status quo like only the most cowardly among us are currently doing. Our role is to challenge things, to put all our rage and dissatisfaction and unwillingness to accept shit as it is at this moment in time on paper in whatever medium we choose. Because all art is political—because everything is political, and those who would claim otherwise are a) naive, b) oblivious, c) blinded by their own privilege, or d) do not on any level understand the function of art and of artists.

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

Essential and delightful. But, again, I'm an editor by trade and know how this all works. I also know two key things about the process: how not to be a difficult asshole, and that editing is and always should be a conversation. Yes, there are things that are either right or wrong (grammar, spelling, etc.) but by and large everything else is up for debate. And no editor worth their salt is ever there to work against the author—no one would sink so much time and passion into a project just to spite an author unless they had an agenda all their own. In my case, my editor (Jen Sookfong Lee) and I got along wonderfully. She worked her ass off for my book, and helped me see it in a totally new light, which sometimes resulted in unexpected personal revelations... and subsequent appointments with my therapist.

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


"Don't let the bastards win." —something my father has always said, about anything and everything. In terms of writing advice, I'm honestly not sure. "Kill your darlings" is old and cliched but still very good. That, and something I said above: character is plot—the two are never separate, not if you actually want your characters to feel three dimensional.

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


I don't move between genres as you mention (fiction to essays to journalism) but in terms of style and aesthetic (ie: horror, sci-fi, surrealism, straight-up lit). And in that sense, it's never been too difficult—I go where the story needs me to go, though I do hang out more in horror than any other genre. When I'm editing, then I jump around genres as you describe them, though I spend the majority of my time going back and forth between non-fiction, academic work (PhD dissertations mostly), and a speculative fiction magazine that I co-publish and co-edit with two other friends and editors (titled Anathema: Spec from the Margins—a tri-annual spec-fic publication solely for queer non-white writers). In this regard, the appeal is that it keeps me sharp and satisfied (I'm an learning junkie), and also prevents me from burning out on just fiction all the time.

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?

With caffeine. Lots. I'm the sort of person who, no matter how much sleep I get, is slow out of the gate. And I do suffer anxiety and depression, so I try to start my days as offline and quiet as possible, and just focus on doing some reading, catching up on emails, etc. I'm a freelancer, so when I've got editorial contracts they're usually tight turnarounds and I will focus on those first and foremost. When I'm between contracts, I will try to fit in as much writing as possible. In those periods, it's a seasonal thing: often mornings and early afternoon during the fall and winter, and whenever I can in the spring and summer as I will often take my work with me and just wander around until I find a place to settle down, grab a coffee, and do some work. I also frequently work late at night, as I love it when the world just shuts up and goes quiet. Really, though, I'm not one of those authors who has a set daily routine, and sometimes I go weeks or months without working on something, just making notes of ideas and character sketches. And then I'll carve out a month or a few weeks of time to write and I will just power through, day and night. Possibly not the healthiest approach, but it's whatever works, right? The idea that you have to do the thing every day or you simply won't succeed is, I think, terrible advice. It works if writing is all you do, sure, but for those with outside concerns (other jobs, mental/physical health concerns, family/life responsibilities) it just isn't always feasible.

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

Podcasts. Music. Non-fiction. Film. Re-reading old loves. Honestly, there's no one or even a handful of predictable sources for me. My brain will grip a single offhand comment from pretty much anywhere and spiral it into something at least interesting to toss around for a bit, even if nothing comes from it. Downside to an overactive brain, though, is that sleep is a luxury.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?


My grandmother's chocolate chip cookies, which my sister still makes every year at Christmas, and gingerbread.

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?


Definitely music, though more often that inspires my painting (I'm partially synaesthetic, and paint visual responses to music). When it comes to my writing, it's as I mentioned above—it tends to be more random than anything. I do find, however, that I'm more frequently inspired by mediums other than books, because when I'm reading I'm thinking more critically than creatively. It's hard to shut off that editorial brain (even harder when you also have a history as a reviewer).

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

This feels like a clever way of asking me to list my favourite books. :) My passions tend to be all over the place, but the books and authors that have stuck with me the most, for one reason or another are:

Hygiene and the Assassin, by Amélie Nothomb

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel

The City and the City/The Last Days of New Paris, by China Mieville

The Shining Girls/Broken Monsters, by Lauren Beukes

Monoceros, by Suzette Mayr

Sub Rosa, by Amber Dawn

The Illumination, by Kevin Brockmeier

The Inheritance Trilogy/The Broken Earth Trilogy, by N.K. Jemisin

The Book of Dahlia, by Elisa Albert

A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu

Daytripper, by Moon and Ba

Also love most works from Haruki Murakami, Roxane Gay, and James Ellroy, but can't really pick out any one or two things I want to highlight.

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


I'd love to write/edit for video games. They've been a life-long love/stress release, and as an industry there's a lot of untapped storytelling potential. I'd jump at the chance to dip my toes in that world to some extent. Also, perhaps, comic 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?

Well, in my previous life I was an exhibiting oil painter—I actually have an undergrad degree in visual arts. Ultimately that world wasn't for me, but I do still paint and, if writing (and by extension editing) were no longer an option I could see myself diving back into that often unforgiving world.

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


A need, really. I had shit in my head that I had to get out, and writing was the method that made the most sense to me.

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

Well, I'm currently reading Esi Edugyan's Washington Black, which is so far pretty excellent. Hmm, this is a tougher than expected question, and I don't know that I can narrow it down to just one book. In terms of fiction, I really dug Craig Davidson's The Saturday Night Ghost Club. For non-fiction, it's a tie between Vivek Shraya's I'm Afraid of Men and Erin Wunker's Notes from a Feminist Killjoy. Next on the docket for me is Zadie Smith's Swing Time, which I've been meaning to get to for, oh, about a year now.

As for film, I'd love to toss a TV show in here instead: Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House. It's far, far removed from the Shirley Jackson book of the same name (the book is basically flavour text), but holy crap it's the best horror anything I've seen in years.

20 - What are you currently working on?

A few things, actually. I've got a second draft of one novella titled High Maintenance Machines, a second draft of another—a road trip revenge story called Gina and Rigby—and am currently tossing around character and story details for something I'd previously mentioned, an expansion of a previously written short story.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Laurie Anne Fuhr, Night Flying



prairie cryptic

combines in the dark
could be harvesting anything

Given she is both a former Ottawa poet and original Peter F. Yacht Club member [she reads in Ottawa on Friday as part of our annual gathering], it is gratifying to finally see a copy of Calgary poet and musician Laurie Anne Fuhr’s long-awaited debut collection, Night Flying (Calgary AB: Frontenac House, 2018). Night Flying is organized as a collection running the length and breadth of some twenty-plus years of writing, including her time in Ottawa during the 1990s, as a book of poems focusing on her multiple geographic shifts. Raised as an army brat, Fuhr includes her full posting dates in the notes at the end of the collection—Cold Lake 1981-1985; Baden-Soellingen 1985-1990; Cold Lake 1990-1994; Ottawa 1994-1998; Winnipeg 1998-2001; Cold Lake 2001-2004—noting, as well, that she has lived in Calgary since 2004. One could say that Night Flying is a book composed on the fly: Fuhr writes of a childhood defined by her father’s multiple postings, of her own long teenaged and twentysomething stretches on Greyhound buses, of situating herself in new locations and weather patterns; of constant leaving, and constant arrival, and of what is both gained and lost through those shifts, as well as what might be held. As she writes to close the poem “leaving Germany”: “we close eyes, / brace against hollowness, // our still reflections / ready to be packed.”

Fuhr’s poems are composed as short first-person scenes, sketching out notes to help situate herself, with individual sections focused on the prairies, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Cold Lake, Alberta. Through poems spanning years, Fuhr unfolds her locations and her dislocations, attempting to articulate where she is, even as she works to figure out where it is she might be heading. “[W]hoever or wherever you are,” she writes, in the poem “under pressure,” as part of the section “posting: Winnipeg (1998-2001),” “Alberta’s coming for you.” I’m impressed with how the book is structured, focused on those geographic shifts, many of which she, as the child of someone in the military, she often had no say in, before moving into her own shifts, before finding herself in the midst of Alberta, and her centreing, there, in Calgary.

melancholia

sunlight through smoke-yellow drapes
is chloroform, special occasional jewelry
little anchors to drag her down.

queen mattress frothed in bedskirt
produces undertow.

after school in Germany
we find her drowning in bed,
feed her air from a paper bag.

long red hair fanned upward like a diver’s,
panic lowers her down
without a bell,

hydrophobe dreaming front crawl
how others dream flight.

dirt fills ears like water,
fear resounds through deep earth.

a bedroom is a natural subwoofer,
its reverb chamber
drums rudiments to hell.

death hears Dad
come home early,

turns its ready ghosts away.