An interview with Amy LeBlanc

Amy LeBlanc is a writer and editor from Calgary, Alberta. She is currently non-fiction editor at filling Station magazine and is the author of two chapbooks, most recently Ladybird, Ladybird published with Anstruther Press (August 2018). Amy's debut book-length poetry collection, I know something you don’t know, is forthcoming with Gordon Hill Press (Spring 2020). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Room, Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, Geez, and EVENT among others and she was recently long-listed for Room Magazine’s 2018 Short Forms Contest. She will begin her MA in English Literature and creative writing at the University of Calgary in fall 2019.

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

I’ve wanted to be a writer my whole life. My mother often reminds me that I had planned a series of animal murder mysteries as a child (finches stabbed with tooth picks and the like) and she has early drafts of novels and stories I’d written that are rife with spelling errors and illogical conclusions. I always wrote for fun, but I began taking writing seriously toward the end of high school when I knew that I would be completing and English degree with a concentration in creative writing. I began publishing fiction and poetry in my third year and I started volunteering in the literary community around the same time. I think that my writing community is what keeps me going. As a past Editor-in-Chief of NōD Magazine, I got to see firsthand the way that writing communities tie us together. I wouldn’t be able to write without the support of my communities in Calgary and I’m so excited to become part of the grad student community at U of C.

With two poetry chapbooks to date, do you feel your process of putting together a manuscript has evolved? How do you decide on the shape and size of a manuscript?

My process has evolved so much through these two chapbooks. When I first began grouping poems together, I tried my best to be intentional, but I hadn’t yet read enough really good poetry collections to have any idea what I was doing. Everything is much more intentional now, but the jump from chapbook to book-length manusript was still huge. I put together my first book length collection in fall 2018 and I laid out all of the pieces on the floor. I tried to look for framing devices, varying poem length, musicality, poems that build on each other, and poems that contrast each other. I think I tried fifteen different orders until I finalized it and I’m sure the order will go through further revisions before the book is released in 2020.

Have you noticed a difference in how you approach individual poems since you’ve published chapbooks?

I have. I find that in a lot of ways I think bigger; instead of writing one poem about a topic I love, I start thinking about how I could expand the poem into a suite or a chapbook or a manuscript that could do the topic justice. Even when I try to write a poem as a standalone, I find it difficult to stop myself from taking on another big project because I get too excited about the creative possibilities.

What poets have influenced the ways in which you write?

There are so many poets that have influenced the ways that I write. I’m always drawn back to Sylvia Plath and Ann Carson, but I’ve been inspired lately by poems that friends of mine like Alycia Piromohammad and Conyer Clayton are writing. I’ve also fallen in love with poetry from Erin Knight, Cornelia Hoogland, and Canisia Lubrin in the past few weeks.        

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

I’ve had the privilege of working with Aritha van Herk and Larissa Lai through the university and with Elizabeth Philips through the Emerging Writers’ Intensive at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity. All of these women have been instrumental in my development as a writer because they have pushed me to write in new ways and they have read clumsy drafts and works in progress to help me pick out the line or phrase that could stay for the next draft.

What are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on a novella that is set in small town Alberta. This piece has been in varying stages of completion for the last three years, but I am almost done my second full rewrite. The book has a lot to do with grief, female friendship, and community ties. I have a bit of a love hate relationship with the manuscript because I keep coming back to it. Even when I want to write something (anything) else, this is the project I’m most tied to.

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

I think that Lauren DeGaine should be recieving more attention. She is an up and coming Canadian poet whose first chapbook was recently released from The Blasted Tree Press and her second chapbook is in the works. Her writing is beautiful and visceral. All in all she is just a lovely human and definitely a writer to keep an eye on.

Train : a journal of prose poems

Issue #3 : Simon Brown Carlie Blume Conyer Clayton Ariel Dawn Kate Feld Mike Ferguson M.W. Jaeggle Aaron Kreuter Amy LeBlanc John Luna Ian Martin rob mclennan Pearl Pirie Adam Strauss Erin Emily Ann Vance

A limited amount of copies will be available for free at the following locations:
Open Books: A Poem Emporium (Seattle WA), Berl's Brooklyn Poetry Shop (Brooklyn NY), knife| fork | book (Toronto ON) and Passages Bookshop (Portland OR).

Includes shipping

Canadian $4.00 CAD American $6.00 CAD International $8.00 CAD

Four-issue subscriptions are also available:

Includes shipping

Canadian $15.00 CAD American $21.00 CAD International $30.00 CAD

Simon Brown (1979) is a self-taught poet and interdisciplinary artist from the traditional territory of the Passamaquoddy nation (southwestern New Brunswick) currently based in rural Québec. His French and English texts have been presented in collaborative artworks, performances, collections and artist books, and in magazines such as Lemon Hound, Estuaire, Vallum, Poetry Is Dead, Watts, and The Blasted Tree. As a translator, he has adapted texts by Erin Robinsong, Angela Carr, Danielle LaFrance and Jacob Wren, among others. Recent collections include Grande poussière (with Maude Pilon, squint press, Montréal, 2017) and Outre-flaques (Vanloo, Marseille, 2018).

Carlie Blume is an emerging writer of fiction and poetry.  Her writing centres around deconstructing myths about sexuality, motherhood, and mental health. Her work has been featured in The Maynard, Loose Lips and Pulp Mag. She lives in Surrey and is currently working on her first collection of poetry, as well as a novel.

Conyer Clayton is an Ottawa based artist who aims to live with compassion, gratitude, and awe. Her most recent chapbooks are: Undergrowth (bird, buried press), Mitosis (In/Words Magazine and Press), and For the Birds. For the Humans. (battleaxe press). She released a collaborative album with Nathanael Larochette, If the river stood still, in August 2018. Her work appears in ARC, Prairie Fire, The Fiddlehead, The Maynard, Puddles of Sky Press, and others. She won Arc's 2017 Diana Brebner Prize, and writes reviews for Canthius. Her debut full length collection of poetry is forthcoming.

Ariel Dawn lives in Victoria, British Columbia. She spends her time writing, reading, and studying Tarot. Recent work appears in canthius, (parenthetical), Foxhole, Room, and is forthcoming in A Furious Hope anthology.

Kate Feld writes essays, poetry, short fiction and work that sits between forms. Her writing has appeared in journals and anthologies including Hotel, The Stinging Fly and The Letters Page.

Mike Ferguson is an American permanently resident in the UK and widely published in online magazines. His most recent print collection is the sonnets chapbook Precarious Real [Maquette Press, 2016] and he edited with Rupert Loydell the music poems anthology Yesterday’s Music Today [Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2015]. A retired English teacher, he co-authored the education text Writing Workshops [Cambridge University Press, 2015].

M.W. Jaeggle is a poet from Vancouver, currently living in Montreal. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Dalhousie Review, CV2, Existere, in the anthology Refugium: Poems for the Pacific, and elsewhere. He was longlisted for the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize.

Aaron Kreuter is the author of the poetry book Arguments for Lawn Chairs (Guernica Editions, 2016), and the short story collection You and Me, Belonging (Tightrope Books, 2018). I have had my work appear in journals and magazines such as The Puritan, Grain, Arc, Poetry is Dead, The Temz Review, and other places.

Amy LeBlanc holds a BA (Hons) in English Literature and creative writing from the University of Calgary. She is currently non-fiction editor at filling Station magazine. Her work has appeared, or is scheduled to appear in Room, Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, and EVENT among others. Amy won the 2018 BrainStorm Poetry Contest for her poem 'Swell'. She is the author of two chapbooks, most recently Ladybird, Ladybird published with Anstruther Press in August 2018.

John Luna: I am a dual Canadian-American citizen born of Mexican + American expatriates. Besides writing, my practice is as a visual artist whose background includes painting, sculpture and installation, and a teacher working in the areas of art, design and art history. I currently reside on an island off of the west coast of N. America. Previous publication of written work in art criticism and poetry has appeared in Ditch, Canadian Art, Border Crossings, Canyon, Cordite, and Matrix, among others. A first collection of poems, Listing (Decoupage Publishing, 2015) was released through a small independent press with the help of a crowdfunding campaign. A second book-length manuscript was recently (2017) shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry.

Ian Martin is nobody's mom. Ian's work has appeared recently in where is the river, Bad Nudes, Plenitude Magazine, and Pretty Owl Poetry. Ian has published 4 chapbooks, most recently PLACES TO HIDE (Coven Editions, 2018) and YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO KEEP THIS UP FOREVER (AngelHousePress, 2018). When he's not writing, Ian develops small games and complains online. [http://ian-martin.net]

rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include the poetry collections How the alphabet was made (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018) and the forthcoming Household items (Salmon Poetry, 2019) and A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

Pearl Pirie writes in Quebec's countryside. She has 3 trade collections, most recently, the pet radish, shrunken from Book*hug. http://www.pearlpirie.com

Adam Strauss lives in Louisville, KY.  He is the author of one full-length collection: For Days (BlazeVox). Most recently, poems of his appear in Fence, Interim, The Tiny, and the Brooklyn Rail.

Erin Emily Ann Vance’s work is forthcoming in Coffin Bell Journal, Augur, Post Ghost Press, and Bad Nudes. She is a contributing reader and writer for Awkward Mermaid Literary Magazine. A 2017 recipient of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Young Artist Prize and a 2018 Finalist for the Alberta Magazine Awards in Fiction, she completed her MA in Creative Writing in August 2018, and will complete an MA in Folklore in 2020. Erin's debut novel, Advice for Amateur Beekeepers and Taxidermists will be published by Stonehouse Publishing in 2019.

Conduits

Amy LeBlanc


They say she lifted the calf from the bed
like a coil of rope, unspun and curling
with unsung sea salt through the sides of a boat.
He did not cry bubbles like a spool of thread.
instead, the water wept from his back,
the same shade of grey as a smoke stack in winter.

They say she held him for sixteen months,
she’d carried him over a year.
She keened underwater where no one could hear
the slaughter of her marrow or the ticking of a clock.
The cascading waves could not take him away.
to her, he weighed no more than a shell.

They say her cartilage ached from her passion play,
the labor of days spent crawling through water.
When her swollen body refused to sleep,
she packed his things and swam for weeks.



Amy LeBlanc holds a BA (Hons) in English Literature and creative writing from the University of Calgary. She is currently non-fiction editor at filling Station magazine. Her work has appeared, or is scheduled to appear in Room, Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, and EVENT among others. Amy won the 2018 BrainStorm Poetry Contest for her poem 'Swell'. She is the author of two chapbooks, most recently Ladybird, Ladybird published with Anstruther Press in August 2018.