How did you begin
writing, and what keeps you going?
My
writing has always been a product of my reading, and beginning at an early age,
I was addicted to books. Some of my earliest memories are trips to the local
library where my parents would turn me loose in the stacks. I’d come home with
an armful, reading until I fell asleep in my bed with the light on (something I
still do regularly). I didn’t have any dreams of being a writer, then. I just
loved stories.
But
at 16 I started working at the same public library I had spent so much time in
as a kid, and one of my tasks was shelf-reading, where I went over a section of
books one-by-one to make sure they were in order. I discovered so many
different writers, so many different forms of writing, which I didn’t know
existed. At the same time as stealing novels assigned to my older sister for
her university classes, I found Kingsway
by Michael Turner while shelf-reading, and the rest, as they say, was history.
Well
not quite. I wrote for a few years, took some classes, published a little, won
a contest, and then promptly quit writing in 2003 to play guitar in a band. I
didn’t write again for a decade. I got married. My daughter was born. I got
divorced. Quit music and went back to school. I was worried I wouldn’t know
what to do anymore, but as I should have expected, once I started reading the
words came too.
Every
writer has doubts and feels like a failure sometimes, at least all the writers
I know. We’re only as confident as our last finished piece, if that, so
commiserating does help. Thankfully I can also fall back on books for
motivation. There’s just nothing that excites me more about writing than
reading, about the feeling I get when I read something that makes me feel less
alone in the world, as if the words on the page were, as Flaubert wrote, “some
vague idea you once had, some blurred image from deep down that spells out your
finest feelings.”
What poets have
influenced the ways in which you write?
Influence
is a strange word. To be honest, I don’t give it a ton of thought. I’ve been
asked a few times and I stumble through my answers, listing off the first
writers I can think of. I will attempt to do better here.
I
suppose at the formative place, where I began to love poetry, is Michael
Ondaatje. His sensuous attention to language and his keen use of allusion both
made me realize the poem is not limited to what I know, it can also spur me to
other discoveries. Vancouver poetry of the 1960s, the TISH poets and the
Downtown poets and the small press culture, they were very important too, but
that poetry motivated me to create my own literary reality rather than waiting
and hoping for something to happen. bpNichol is my beacon, my light. Whenever I
am unsure, Nichol has something to offer me. His daring, his love, his
weirdness, and his forms—they loom large for me in all the writing I do. More
recently while working on a suite about the end of my marriage, I’ve been
reading Lynn Crosbie and Sharon Olds. Both have unique ways to approach the
confessional. I especially love Crosbie’s Liar,
a book length serial that reinvents what the love poem can be.
Have you noticed a
difference in the ways in which you approach the individual poem, now that
you’ve had some experience putting together chapbook-length manuscripts?
I
think what has changed most for me over the years is my attention to each part
of the poem or the sequence. I have gotten better at keeping all my important
concerns in check. I’m a writer who is comfortable in letting the writing
dictate the form, so I listen to the work I am doing and let it tell me what it
needs to be. I’m thinking here of Dennis Lee and his notion of “cadence.” Ideas
can be expressed in different ways. I don’t create with any exacting or
specific method. I try things. I make mistakes. I throw stuff out. Usually a
form best suited for the content will present itself. Only after I listen to
the work, sometimes I must train my ear, will a form show itself. I’m not just
talking about stanzas, line breaks, and rhyme schemes, but about the line,
page, and book level considerations of how an idea is manifest, about the poem
as physical object and conceptual space.
Putting
together a manuscript is fraught with considerations and sometimes it can be
difficult for me to get enough perspective. I can obsess a little and get
attached to structures as they develop. Thankfully I’ve had great editors who
have helped me develop arcs for my sequences I had not considered. Editors really
are the heroes of literature.
How important has
mentorship been to your work? Is there anyone who specifically assisted your
development as a writer?
Mentorship
has been vital to my development. Without a doubt I would not be where I am
without the help of many people. I am very fortunate to have studied with some
fine poets in the past few years: Don Domanski at the Banff Centre, and Jen
Currin, Rachel Rose, Billeh Nickerson and Aislinn Hunter at Kwantlen
Polytechnic University. Billeh actively encouraged me after I started writing
again and his words of support gave me the confidence to pursue my path as a
writer. But it was Aislinn who became my mentor over the years I completed my
university degree.
I
met Hunter in 2012 when I enrolled in a creative non-fiction class she was
teaching, and connected with her deep well of academic and literary reference
as well as her penchant for hilarious self-deprecating anecdotes. She taught me
so much about how to approach big themes, how to use philosophy and art history
in my poetry, and encouraged me to think in a granular way in which sequences
accrue for the reader.
She
was my hardest editor, calling me out when I didn’t put in enough effort,
letting me know it was unacceptable to waste time with bad work. She was also
my biggest champion, encouraging me to apply for residencies when I didn’t
think I deserved them, and editing work for me in her office hours that had
nothing to do with my classes.
Pearl
Pirie wrote that a mentor is “Someone who shows you that doors exist.” I’m
eternally grateful for the doors Aislinn showed me.
You are currently
on the editorial board of Arc Poetry
Magazine. Why was this important, and have you been learning through the
process of working on a journal?
My
work with Arc and other literary
journals has made me appreciate all the people working in literary publishing
much more because anyone who is in this racket is in it because of love. That’s
a good feeling to be around and it infuses everything I do in my life. The sense
of community I feel from participating in the literary culture is important to
me.
For
me, the whole thing of reading for a literary journal is like crate digging at
a record store. It’s about the search for some unknown gem buried in the mix.
Finding beauty in a batch of submissions is the same as finding it any other
time: delightful.
Your author
biography mentions that you’re working on a collection of short fiction. What
is the difference between working on poems to working on short stories? Are you
able to work on both poetry and fiction concurrently?
Fiction
is an entirely different process and I really need to separate it. Poetry is so
idiosyncratic for me, and I expect the reader to participate, collaborate in
making meaning. But when I write fiction, I think much more about readers and
about what the story is trying to say to them. It also just takes more physical
time to develop a story from beginning to end, from idea to completion. More
words, more drafts, more frustration when I toss out something that isn’t
working.
Prose
writing in general is more structured and doesn’t usually reward leaps of
tangential fancy. I don’t malign the restrictions. I enjoy the opportunity to
create within them. Like my approach with listening to form, I listen to the
story and let it determine how and in what voice it wants to be told.
Can you name a poet
you think should be receiving more attention?
Matea
Kulić.
