An interview with Erin Bedford

Erin Bedford's work is published in William Patterson University's Map Literary, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Temz Review, and Train: a poetry journal. She attended and won a Certificate of Distinction for her novel Fathom Lines from the Humber School for Writers. Currently, she is acting as shill for her newly-completed second novel, Illumining, and a manuscript of poetry.

Follow her to find out more @ErinLBedford

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

I began writing because of an idea that wouldn’t settle down in my head. During my fourth year university historiography seminar, we were talking about memory and truth, bias and perception, and what this all meant for what we can actually know, about the past of course, but also about what’s happening right in front of our eyes, and about the people we love, whom we think we understand so well.

I think most of the other people in class just packed up their books that day and went to their next class. I walked around mulling that idea over for a year and then began writing my first novel, Fathom Lines, because for me there was so much to explore, so much under the surface.

Ideas like that are what keep me writing, of course, and curiosity.

Your author biography mentions that you are in the midst of a second novel. Are you able to work on poetry at all during the composition of a novel? How are you able to keep the two separate?

I don’t know the answer to this question yet. The second novel is done and I am looking for a publisher. About two months after I finished the novel, I began to write poetry with more intention than ever before. I was able to edit the novel and write enough poetry to put together a full manuscript, but I am not sure if I would be able to do the focused daily writing work that a novel requires and also be able to access the same intense emotion that I draw on for my poems. When I write a novel, it’s all about the routines. The window of time I have is regulated, and the coffee and meal breaks are scheduled interruptions. When I write poetry, it’s very different. I feel a bit like a mad scientist. Everything but the page becomes a terribly unwanted distraction. I often won’t get up to eat or drink, I will stay up late into the night or decline social activities because I don’t want to leave that place of emotion I’m writing from.

What poets have influenced the ways in which you write?

There are certain collections of poetry or even single poems that continue to influence how and what I write about, not necessarily because of any specific style, or beloved artistic kindred, but more because I was ready for a particular work at that moment in my life. Alastair Reid’s translation of Neruda’s Al pie desde su niño (To the foot from it’s child) is a polestar poem for me, and Oliver’s The Forest.

So many by Heaney.  I read Atwood’s You fit into me when I was about fourteen and realized poetry didn’t have to be endlessly symbolic, contrary to what I was learning in high school. It could just crack like a whip. I think that’s what I want my poetry to be—a combination as life is, a kiss that turns into a bite, or vice versa.

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

It is incredibly important to me. I am fairly private about my work until I feel it’s ready. I have never had desire to work with a writing group for this reason. But to have one person who spends dedicated time on my work and cares about it, but who is more detached from it, and from me, that’s when the big leaps in my writing skill have happened.

Most recently, I worked with Betsy Warland on my manuscript of poetry. She was so direct and insightful. Every consultation felt like a master class. I always left with new ideas and concrete ways to improve my work.

What are you currently working on?

I have two complete manuscripts— one fiction, one poetry—that need to find the right publisher. I have a terrible habit of orphaning my finished work and so I am being very careful about choosing my next projects. But there is a short story about a housebroken raccoon, a sort of meditation on the end of wildness, and a personal essay about receiving a massage from my ex-husband’s girlfriend. Of course, there are always new poems to write. I have an idea for a novel, the kind of idea that won’t settle down, so I imagine I’ll begin that once my other works are adopted.

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

Rachel Rose. Marry & Burn is such a poignant and powerful elegy; a perfect encapsulation of the emotional tumult that one undergoes as a relationship dies. Poems of slow brooding on resentment and grief, uplifted with such tender imagery.

There are no horses here

Erin Bedford

Where did you run

after I smoothed your flank
and whispered in your velvet ear
Gwan’go
 
Wait
Hang on
 
If you’re a steed in this one
I shouldn’t leave out that other lovely
that pretty palomino
or the saddle laid over the fence
and me at the gate
 
Alright
that didn’t happen
There are no horses here
only
 
this memory-gallop
whipped on by the report from Pompeii about a discovery
under layers of hardened ash
a mare’s skeleton 
a harness
inside the outline of a horse
 
How do you hold the shape of longgone beauty?
 
With an injection of plaster
But also
with stories about that last night in the stable
 
Maybe that’s what I’m doing too
plumping a husk with poems so it won’t collapse
because there are no horses here
only this empty space
only bones
and a harness
 
They were getting her ready to run
 
 
Erin Bedford’s work is published in William Patterson University's Map Literary, Flash Fiction Magazine and The Temz Review. She attended and won a Certificate of Distinction for her novel Fathom Lines from the Humber School for Writers. Currently, she is acting as shill for her second novel, Illumining, and has just completed a manuscript of poetry. Follow her to find out more @ErinLBedford

Train : a journal of investigation

Issue #2 : Michael Aird Chris Banks Erin Bedford Shannon Bramer Aidan Chafe Allison Chisholm Daniel Cowper Catherine Graham James Lindsay Dominik Parisien Constance Schultz Isabella Wang

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 the ottawa small press book fair, November 24, 2018 (Ottawa ON).

includes shipping

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

Michael Aird lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. He recently completed his first full-length manuscript, Something to Eat and Drink on Every Page.

Chris Banks is the author of four previous collections of poems. His first full-length collection, Bonfires, was awarded the Jack Chalmers Award for poetry by the Canadian Authors’ Association in 2004. Bonfires was also a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry in Canada.  His poetry has appeared in The New Quarterly, Arc Magazine, The Antigonish Review, Event, The Malahat Review, Prism International, among other publications. He lives and writes in Waterloo, Ontario.

Erin Bedford’s work is published in William Patterson University's Map Literary, Flash Fiction Magazine and The Temz Review. She attended and won a Certificate of Distinction for her novel Fathom Lines from the Humber School for Writers. Currently, she is acting as shill for her second novel, Illumining, and has just completed a manuscript of poetry. Follow her to find out more @ErinLBedford

Shannon Bramer is the author of four books of poetry, most recently, Precious Energy, with Book*hug. Her plays The Hungriest Woman in the World, The Collectors and Monarita were all produced thanks to the dramaturgy and support of the Women’s Work Festival in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Shannon has a children’s book forthcoming from Groundwood in March 2019.

Aidan Chafe is a writer and public school teacher. His debut collection of poems Short Histories of Light was published with McGill-Queen’s University Press (2018). His work has appeared in literary journals including CV2, Event, PRISM international and The Maynard. He lives on the unceded territory of the Qayqayt First Nation (Burnaby, BC).

Allison Chisholm is an award-winning pie baker. She lives and writes in Kingston, Ontario. She played glockenspiel in the Hawaiian-Dream-Pop band SCUB. Her poetry has appeared in The Northern Testicle Review (Proper Tales Press) and The Dollhouse (Puddles of Sky Press). Her chapbook, On the Count of One, was published in 2017 (Proper Tales Press). Her forthcoming book of poetry, On the Count of None, will be released this fall through Anvil Press. She is the curator of The Museum of Tiny Objects.

Daniel Cowper’s first book of poetry is forthcoming from McGill-Queen’s University Press. His chapbook, The God of Doors, was published by Frog Hollow Press as co-winner of its chapbook contest. Daniel and his wife serve as the poetry editors for Pulp Literature, and live mostly in a small cabin on Bowen Island, BC.

Catherine Graham is a Toronto-based writer of poetry and fiction. Among her six poetry collections The Celery Forest was named a CBC Books Top 10 Canadian Poetry Collection of 2017 and appears on their Ultimate Canadian Poetry List. Michael Longley praised it as “a work of great fortitude and invention, full of jewel-like moments and dark gnomic utterance.” Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award and CAA Award for Poetry and her debut novel Quarry won an Independent Publisher Book Awards gold medal for fiction. She received an Excellence in Teaching Award at the University of Toronto and was also winner of IFOA’s Poetry NOW. Her work is anthologized internationally and she has appeared on CBC Radio One’s The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers. Visit her at www.catherinegraham.com. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @catgrahampoet.

James Lindsay is the author of the poetry collection Our Inland Sea (Wolsak and Wynn) and the chapbook Ekphrasis! Ekphrasis! (Anstruther Press). He has a regular column for Open Book where he interviews poets about their work. He is also the owner of Pleasence Records, a Toronto-based record label. 

Dominik Parisien’s work can be found in The Fiddlehead, Wordgathering, Plenitude, Exile: The Literary Quarterly, as well as other magazines and anthologies. His poetry chapbook, We, Old Young Ones, is forthcoming from Frog Hollow Press. He is also the co-editor, with Navah Wolfe, of The Starlit Wood, which won the Shirley Jackson Award, and Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction with Elsa Sjunneson-Henry. Dominik is a disabled, bisexual, French Canadian. He lives in Toronto.

Constance Schultz has often been stopped by trains although now she doesn't see them much.  She has writing in various journals and literary magazines including Figroot Press, The Seattle Star, Empty Mirror, Stonecoast Review and some are forthcoming in Them Dam Writers.

Isabella Wang: I am an emerging Chinese-Canadian writer living in Vancouver B.C. My poetry and prose have appeared previously in The New Quarterly and Looseleaf Magazine. At 17, I am the youngest writer to be shortlisted for The New Quarterly’s 2017 Edna Staebler Essay Contest. I will be studying English at SFU in the fall of 2018, while serving as an intern for Room Magazine.