12 or 20 Questions – with author rob mclennan
From September 2007 to June 2008, to correspond with my time in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, I asked some two hundred writers from North America and beyond a series of similar questions, to see what their answers might be.
Being that I an engaged with a number of writers in Ottawa, I tried to interview as many of them as possible, and as many in Alberta as well, working to learn the community around me in Edmonton, during my tenure west. Much to my surprise, some of the first series of interviews have been taught in University courses, and a couple were even reprinted in a recent issue of Montreal’s Matrix magazine, thanks to editors Andy Brown and Jon Paul Fiorentino. Some have suggested there should be a book version of the series, but why, I wonder, when they’re all already online? And who would want to publish a collection of literary interviews that could run into the hundreds of pages?
This second series, created to correspond with an upcoming period of Toronto activity, is an altered version of those same questions. The goal is the same, to see the range of answers from poets, fiction and non-fiction writers, aiming for a completely different set of authors from the original series, as well as a variety of new questions to replace the original “non-sequitor” question thirteen, provided by Lainna Lane El Jabi.
The original question thirteen was lifted from Ellen Degeneres, speaking to David Letterman on his Late Show in late August 2007 about being a talk-show host, and not necessarily caring about their new movie, new television program, new project; sometimes you just want to ask them, she told him, when’s the last time you ate a pear? To replace this question, Lainna has provided a series of about a dozen new questions, which will change randomly from author to author.
Newly published: Slide. Check it out at http://www.signature-editions.com/xbslide.htm
Since the late 1990s, Barbara Myers has published widely in journals and anthologies, and has won literary prizes including Other Voices (first place, 2000) as well as Arc’s Poem of the Year (HM, in 2006). For six years, she worked as an associate editor at Arc, Canada’s Poetry Magazine, to which she continues to contribute reviews and essays. She has published a number of chapbooks, both her own and collections compiled from the work of students in a poetry group she facilitates.
A community activist, she lives in Ottawa.
1 – How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
This is my first full published collection. It’s a triumph over procrastination – and a kind of rite of passage.
2 – How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or
non-fiction?
Although I wrote poems sporadically all through my life, poetry fully claimed me about ten or so years ago. Why? its music, its scope for imagining, its compression and depth, the constant challenge to dig deeper, the fact it can never be mastered. It not only felt like a step up from the kind of prose I’d written to make a living, but also held more meaning for me than my tentative attempts at fiction.
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?
Slow, slow, slow, like seeds germinating, sprouting, maturing – then being shaped into bonsai. On the occasion that a poem comes more quickly, it still gets knocked around quite a bit before being let out of the house.
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?
Usually the inspiration is for a series or even a book, but the outcome, more often, is a single poem or a short sequence. I admire other poets who can sustain longer pieces.
5 – Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are
you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
It depends. I love to hear other poets read and I do enjoy reading myself if the stars are aligned and the audience responsive. No matter how much poems may be written for the page, they can never disown their oral heritage.
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?
Mostly it’s wonder and pondering – on what we all wonder and ponder about – what are we doing here? Sometimes it’s the “here” that I wonder about, other times the “doing” – as in heating up the planet. I try not to find it intractable because that only leads to a sense of helplessness, and as Sina Queyras said last week, “we must imagine our way through this mess.”
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 only role the writer has is to speak.
8 – Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or
essential (or both)?
Good question – and it’s both, of course. Difficult in the sense of letting in someone else’s sensibility and weighing their responses and recommendations without muttering, they just don’t get it! Beneficial (perhaps not essential) because there’s always something you haven’t thought of, some unintentional ambiguity, or blooper, or infelicity, that another person can feed back to you. Show the same piece to ten editors and you’ll get eight different takes on it – which makes you think harder about the work, not a bad outcome.
9 – What is the best piece of advice you’ve heard (not necessarily given
to you directly)?
“Fool,” said my muse to me. “Look in thy heart and write.”
— Philip Sidney
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?
Irregular, spasmodic, but filled with good intentions. Deadlines of any kind are helpful.
11 – When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for
lack of a better word) inspiration?
First, to poems – old, new, formalist, experimental. Canadian, American, all nationalities (in translation). Second to poetry criticism – Helen Vendler, Stephen Dobyns, Terry Eagleton, Jane Hirshfield, Robert Pinsky, etc etc.
12 – What do you really want?
Trusting we are in a irony-free zone, the answer is I just want to say my piece as well as I can. Otherwise, as Kathleen Jamie writes, to be “The Queen of Sheba”.
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?
Books do come from books but even more they come from the world, as we perceive it. Also from the news, space, dreams and childhood…
14 – What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply
your life outside of your work?
Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer, Americans Wallace Stevens and Charles Wright, Canadian/American Anne Carson, 6th century B.C. poet Sappho, and many Canadians writing today, more and more as time goes on. For relaxation I like police procedurals (e.g. Peter Robinson) and cozy mysteries (The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, for example).
15 – What would you like to do that you haven’t yet done?
Perhaps write a whole book on one theme; also more travel – Turkey and Eastern Europe especially.
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?
It would be grand to be a musician – perhaps in another life.
17 – What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
No choice, really, it was always there in one form or another. Unless I had had musical training (see above) I’d have felt I wasn’t doing the right thing if I had not been writing.
18 – What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Sorry, these are unanswerable questions for me. I don’t say “great” anymore, I say “good.” There’s such a discourse around us in our own day and age and, through books, from times past, we hear now one voice and then another coming through, and many are valid and often troubling. But FYI, the Canadian novel I read most recently is Exit Lines by Joan Barfoot; the last film I saw (on DVD borrowed from the library) was Red Road, a British psychological thriller set in Glasgow
19 – What are you currently working on?
A book about the exotic and the alien – and fear.
This is part of Ottawa writer rob mclennan’s 12 or 20 questions series, up at http://robmclennansindex.blogspot.com/2009/06/12-or-20-questions-second-series.html
Tags: 12 or 20 questions, Barbara Myers, Literature, rob mclennan
