An interview with Rebecca Rustin

Rebecca Rustin is a freelance copywriter and translator in Montreal, Quebec.

How did you begin writing, and what keeps you going?

Maybe it was, and still is, an effort to participate in and understand the world. It’s hard to keep going sometimes, like if there’s too much work or emotional overwhelm going on.

Has your work as a translator influenced the ways in which you approach your own work? How do you keep the two separate, or do you?

I do commercial translation for work. I did literary translations at school and tried to make an effort in that direction after but it’s hard to do your own work and translate at the same time. So far it hasn’t happened and the two activities remain quite separate.

What poets have influenced the ways in which you write?

In truth it isn’t only poems that come to bear on how I write, there are plenty of novelists, short story writers, meme writers, tweeters, philosophers and rappers… And it isn’t only writers; it isn’t only language. Henri Meschonnic has written on language as a function of ethics, of human behaviour toward self and other. For a poem to work it has to arrive at language through an ethical process that somehow creates unity of purpose, meaning and form. I can’t be the only one surprised at how language seems to do that sometimes, almost on its own. But it takes looking past the supremacy of the sign to initiate the real work. (Sorry, my first answer had a list of like 25 poets.)

How important has mentorship been to your work? Is there anyone who specifically assisted your development as a writer?

Mentorship is important because it forces you to come up with something. There are some gifted teachers out there. My poetry workshops: Barbara Barg and Larry Sawyer at Chicago School of Poetics, Hoa Nguyen online as often as possible, and one with Ariana Reines at SLS. I did a fiction workshop with Jami Attenberg at SLS. I also really count on friends who read my work and who offer feedback and support. Also my mom, she lets me read stuff over the phone. My British-born dad with his pithy economy of style.

What are you currently working on?

There’s a chapbook MS I abandoned last year from which I’m fishing out little things to rewrite. I have a sonnet about love and death. I just moved to a new apartment and don’t really know how to write here yet. I’m still trying to get used to the weird new sounds. The local McDonald’s has wifi, so I should probably go work there since all the sounds and smells are predictable.
  
Can you name a poet you think should be receiving more attention?

John Murillo. I love his book Up Jump the Boogie. If you grew up around more concrete than trees check him out.

There was a poem this week (August 6, 2018) in the Luther X. Hughes newsletter that blew my mind: “Mountain, Stone” by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha. It’s on Poetry Foundation.