An interview with Canisia Lubrin

Canisia Lubrin is a writer, editor, teacher and critic. She has contributed to Vallum, Brick, Quill & Quire among others and her poetry has been widely anthologised, including forthcoming translations into Spanish. She is the author of the poetry collection Voodoo Hypothesis (Buckrider Books, 2017). Lubrin’s fiction is included in The Unpublished City: Volume I (Book*hug, 2017), finalist for the 2018 Toronto Book Award.

Photo credit: Anna Keenan

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

I'm not sure that I can offer a definitive memory. I do remember writing stories at five, maybe four. Mostly with drawings and mainly involving animals and the woods and apparitions. So very early. The joy and hard-won possibilities and discovery hoped or even promised in the act keep me writing. Writing is a great way of making sense of the world.

Have you noticed a difference in how you approach writing poems now that you’ve published a full-length collection?

Not that I can tell. No.

What poets have influenced the ways in which you write?

Dionne Brand. Folk Singers in St. Lucia. My grandmother. Derek Walcott. Kamau Brathwaite. Aimé Césaire. Many others, I'm sure, though I think confluence and even dissonance are better ways to characterize them. There's a lot of value in knowing what you don't want.

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

I've always valued guidance. I've not always had it in writing because I didn't think of myself as a capital-W-writer for a very long time. I knew I loved writing and practiced it daily--in isolation. But life as a published writer always seemed a far-off impossibility. Still, I'd been blessed with very encouraging teachers: Mrs. Marshall in grade school, and in hight school English: Ms. Anthony (sharp-edged encouragement); very supportive, positive forces in others like Ms. Cappel (Social Studies) and Mr. Dasrat (who brought such fun to English Literature). Our principal, Mr. Egbert James, drew me back to math after a catastrophic 4 years in the same. In many ways, James's artistic sensibility about math led me to the interior rhythms of writing. In university, I had greatly encouraging professors in Jennifer Duncan, Rishma Dunlop and Priscila Uppal. Michael Helm also. The most impactful force and grace in my development through both her writings and mentorship in life is Dionne Brand. She's the best. And you will give her all her things.

You are currently the poetry editor for Humber Literary Review and a consulting editor for Buckrider Books/Wolsak and Wynn. Why do you feel this work is important, and what have you learned through the process?

I imagine editing is important to every editor who appreciates how this work fits into the broader ecosystem of writing. All of the things that necessitate this process--every microcosmic and macrocosmic factor--lead variously to the eventual life of a book and that magical interplay between its author and reader. No matter how I feel about it, editing is important for the ways it stems from our being in the world. It is a special focus on improvement. It is a form of sculpting that brings the world into sharper relief. As much a technical exercise as it is an exercise in insight: one you learn, and the other, you also learn--though some things make the grasp of the latter easier and necessarily complicated at once. I hope I'm learning on par with the authors I edit.

What are you currently working on?

Fiction: long and short. Nonfiction. Poetry. Exercising more frequently. Getting more sleep. Drinking more water. Mastering the jump rope.

Can you name a poet you think should be recieving more attention?

Chimwemwe Undi. M. NourbeSe Philip. Though what is even better is a world in which the measure of poetry is greater felt in spite of its conflation with attention or reception. That a poem will always find its true home, which is its best reader.