Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Lydia Unsworth

is the author of two collections of poetry: Certain Manoeuvres (Knives Forks & Spoons, 2018) and Nostalgia for Bodies (Winner, 2018 Erbacce Poetry Prize). She has two pamphlets forthcoming in 2019 from above / ground press and Ghost City Press. Recent work can be found in Ambit, Litro, Tears in the Fence, Banshee, Ink Sweat and Tears, and others. Manchester / Amsterdam. Twitter@lydiowanie

The Interview

1. When and why did you start writing poetry?

I think I was always trying to. I would spend time anagramming, writing ‘lyrics’ to songs, reading, copying down sentences I liked, playing any kind of board game with words in it, watching improv comedy. Since I was a young adult, I was always more interested in the book at sentence level than the narrative as a whole. I liked novels full of tangents, and I was (still am) a big fan of underlining parts. I suppose I just didn’t know what poetry was properly, beyond the very traditional, or what it could be until much later. I think I was writing poetry on my art degree, although even at such a late stage, I still didn’t really know it was poetry. I knew I liked poetic language, poetic prose, form as concept, but actual Poetry, I think I still thought of that as quite an old, dead thing. I wasn’t around other writers in my real life, and the writers I was reading (prose writers or visual artists), when they did reference poetry, likely only confirmed that ‘old, dead’ belief. When I was 14 or so I found The Desiderata as the epigram in a series of Dean Koontz novels: I liked that. I printed it out and put it on my wall. Learnt the word ‘perennial’ from that piece.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

I drifted towards it via visual art. Though I was writing throughout my art degree in sorts, but it was probably another ten years before I realised that the writing was the crux of the matter and before I found a path in to actually reading poetry proper. My prose reading habits were getting poemier and poemier. Years passed. Then I moved to Poland and wrote to someone whose blog I found funny (Socrates Adams) and he sent me his novel-in-progress in increments. It was the first time I’d had dialogue with another writer and I started writing again there, in my chilly attic bedroom, properly, long after the visual distractions had fallen away. I was writing poetic-prose or experimental prose or something: I had a few pieces published and a novel shortlisted, then it fell away again, and again. It was always there, but I was always waiting until later, trying to accumulate knowledge (not realising how much of that knowledge was ephemeral and slips away completely unless you do something with it in the moment – which is one thing I love about writing poetry now, just slapping the fleeting, contorted-to-fit, down on a page). Anyway, after some more years passed, and I was writing on and off (by now some actual poems, although I still wasn’t reading any), I was given a sum of money that allowed me to do a Masters degree in Creative Writing, and I knew I was at risk of losing much more time unless someone ‘in the know’ actually verified me, so I did it, and they (Scott Thurston) did, and what I wrote at the end of that year became my first published collection of prose poetry. It was a ten-year voyage from the land of art to poetry on a small lump of driftwood with an intermittent internet connection and a changeable breeze.

2.1. What do you mean by “My prose reading habits were getting poemier and poemier”?

I was reading for the language, not the plot.

2.2. Why did the language become more important?

I think it always was, it just takes a while for a chain of reading to lead you to certain places. I was always looking for sentences I liked. And I guess the more I read, the more I grew tired of some of the rest: the same shapes of novels, certain cliches, techniques, wrapping-up of narratives, representations of women, predictable metaphors. It takes more to be surprised, I suppose. Or a different way of viewing something to find what is, or can be, surprising about it.

3. How aware are and were you of the dominating presence of older writers traditional and contemporary?

I think I’m more aware of the what-seems-like-class of a lot of writers than the age. I don’t mind people being older per se, they might have worked for it.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

As much as possible in any possible sliver of a gap! I often pinch lines overheard from my environment as a starting clay, or some image from something I’m reading, whether that be a book or simply a strangely worded sign, so I try and store all these fragments until I have a fifteen-minute or more gap, and then I write. I do my longer bouts of refining and building and editing in the evenings at least a few times a week, preferably when everyone else is asleep.

5. What motivates you to write?

A desire to communicate everything that is interior and, by the very nature of its interiority, alone. It’s a reaching toward. And it’s the same thing that motivates my reading: knowing the strangenesses and possibilities of ‘the other’. That, and the ability to sculpt a piece of language-music from the environment you find yourself in, whether that be internally /externally /in real time /via memory.

6. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

They altered my outlook on life and have given me the foundations for my ongoing philosophy. It’s unshakable really. I think of Kafka and Beckett in particular, and I do still look for that melodrama and highfalutin despair everywhere in art, and when I find it, that very specific kind of comedy, then I do feel so terribly comforted. I’m reading The Milkman by Anna Burns in between questions here, and she’s also doing it in a way – it’s very funny, but serious-funny, bleak-funny. Like Catch 22 or Stewart Lee, just make the joke (or, following the same rule, take the emotion) and keep making it. I like that. The joy of repetition.

And I guess the writers you read at a certain age sort of raise you. So it’s good to stay fond of them. Helps you understand yourself.

7. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

Anyone writing in a void, without a support system, or in scraps of stolen time, who manages to tread water long enough to burst through the surface. Anyone who doesn’t give up.

8. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

Write. Write without thinking. Write until your body hurts. Change position. Do it again. Keep writing until you end up some place that surprises you. Edit.

9. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

I’m working on a full collection, which seems to be spilling over into two collections. I have a pamphlet I’m trying to make ready, based on a bunch of poems I wrote as part of the Tupelo Press 30/30 project back in June. And I am nearly finished preparing another pamphlet (‘I Have Not Led a Serious Life’) that will be coming out with above / ground press later in the year. I’m mainly trying to keep momentum up around work and child-raising and physical exercise; it’s easy enough to write a poem, but harder to see which ones belong where without spreading out a hundred pieces of paper on the floor of a large empty room. I am grateful for my writing friends and our ad-hoc collaborative editing relays.

Thank you for these questions, Paul. It’s been a pleasure!

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

My Robot

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

David Groulx

was raised in Northern Ontario. He is proud of his Aboriginal roots – Ojibwe Indian and French Canadian. After receiving his BA from Lakehead University, where he won the Munro Poetry Prize, David studied creative writing at the En’owkin Centre in Penticton, B.C., where he won the Simon J Lucas Jr. Memorial Award for poetry. He has also studied at the University of Victoria Creative Writing Program. David has had eleven poetry books published – Night in the Exude(Tyro Publications: Sault Ste Marie, 1997); The Long Dance (Kegedonce Press, Neyaashiinigmiing, 2000);  Under God’s Pale Bones (Kegedonce Press, Neyaashiinigmiing, 2010); A Difficult Beauty (Wolsak & Wynn: Hamilton, ON 2011); Rising With A Distant Dawn (BookLand Press: Toronto, ON 2011); Imagine Mercy (BookLand Press: Toronto, ON 2013); These Threads Become A Thinner Light (Theytus Books, Penticton, BC 2014); and In The Silhouette Of Your Silences (N.O.N Publishing, Vancouver, BC 2014). Wabigoon River Poems (Kegedonce Press, Neyaashiinigmiing, 2015), The Windigo Chronicles (Bookland Press, 2016), From Turtle Island To Gaza (AU press, 2019)

David won the 3rd annual Poetry NOW Battle of the Bards in 2011, and was a featured reader at the IFOA in Toronto & Barrie (2011), as well as Ottawa Writer’s Festival (2012). David has appeared on The Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and was the Writer-In-Residence for Open Book Toronto for November 2012.David’s poetry has been translated into Spanish & German. Rising With A Distant Dawn was translated into French; under the title, Le lever à l’aube lointaine, 2013.Red River Review nominated David’s poems for Pushcart Prizes in 2012, and David’s poetry has appeared in over a 160 publications in 16 countries. He lives in Ottawa, Canada.

The Interview

1. When and why did you start writing poetry?

Expression is the first word that comes to kind, I believe that it is as important as air, food or water. Life is nothing until it evinced by the word.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

There didn’t seem to be much poetry around when I was a kid. We had lots of books because my parents believed reading was important. I suppose the poetry I heard was in the way people spoke. My mother has an aboriginal accent, my father a heavy French accent. And then there were lots of immigrants, Portuguese, Italians, Polish and all these people spoke English differently. Like all kids brought up in a colony I was introduced to the English Romantics and a few Canadian poets. There was nothing to speak to me as a Half-breed living in Canada so I decided to create my own.

3. How aware are and were you of the dominating presence of older poets traditional and contemporary?

I really don’t know how aware I was of the presence of older poets. I only knew that there were voices that went unheard in a dominant society. It said that this was poetry and this isn’t. I could not fit in, I could not be a part of no matter how hard I tried. I turned to poets from Africa, the middle east. Anywhere in the third world.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

I don’t have a ‘daily’ writing routine, because I work a regular job. During the week I try to write some notes down to use later. I do all of my writing on the weekends. Which is getting up before dawn, a pot of coffee, a pack of smokes, a computer and a small pot-bellied dog snoring somewhere behind me. I guess writing is something I’m always doing; either taking notes, writing, thinking about writing or reading.

5. What motivates you to write?

It is who I am, it is what I am. Without it my life would be meaningless to me. at some desolate times in my life, I believe it has even kept me alive.

6. What is your work ethic?

I go to a mindless job every day to keep the wolves from the door, I write because some day that knocking at the door may be opportunity. I see it like this, if you are not writing, you are not a writer. I sometimes think that if I am ever satisfied with my writing I’ll quit, which means I’ll be doing this until the day I die, whish I hope is a long time from now. I think death is a good motivation for almost anything.

7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

I remember reading America & other poems by Jeff Bien and Tiffany Midge’s Outlaws, Renegades and Saints : Diary of a Mixed-Up Halfbreed and thinking to myself I want to write like this. For most of the poetry I’ve heard or read I remember thing I don’t want to sound like that. It has always been a exploration of my own voice. I did one year at the University of Victoria’ creative writing program and I quit because what I heard was mostly upper white middle class stuff; writing about their trips overseas. It was uninteresting and boring. I think life will influence my poetry more than other people’s poems about it.

8. Whom of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

I’ve been reading Aim Cesare lately. He speaks of the colonizer and the colonized, this type of relationship is what governs our society, especially y here in Canada. It is something about his expression of that relationship.

9. Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

I can’t sing a note.

10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

If someone asked me how do you become a writer, I would tell them. ‘ You first must have a deep love of disappointment’ and then you write.

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

A long time ago I spent some time in jail. When I was young I’ve always had an involvement with law enforcement, seems I couldn’t keep my hands to myself. It’s called In the Days I was Known to My Brother as Papillon. Most of the manuscript has been sitting around the house for a couple of years now and now I’ve decided to finish it, its something I’m doing for myself, if it gets published or not, I haven’t decided yet.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Blake Wallin

is the author of the two full-length poetry collections No Sign on the Island (Bottlecap Press) and Occipital Love (Ghost City Press), as well as the chapbook Otherwise Jesus (Ghost City) and the microchap The Lucidity of Giving Up (Ghost City’s 2016 Microchap Series), several plays, and a novel. Last summer, he attended the 2018 Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive (led by Gary Garrison) and a 2018 Virginia Quarterly Review Summer Workshop taught by Mary Szybist. Much of his work (poetry and fiction) can also be found on Maudlin House.
No Sign on the Island, by Blake Wallin
https://ghostcitypress.com/books/occipital-love
https://ghostcitypress.com/chapbooks/otherwise-jesus
https://ghostcitypress.com/2016-summer-microchap-series/the-lucidity-of-giving-up
https://maudlinhouse.net/author/blake-wallin/

The Interview

1. What inspired you to write poetry?

The need for a different form, a form that would contain the emotional revelations I was  going through while still staying true to the journey my writing was taking me on constantly.

I’d written fiction in high school, and in college experimented briefly with playwriting (both of which I have recently resuscitated in my writing life), but poetry was and will always be my first true writing love, the one that enabled me to say what I needed to say at a time when to not say those things would have been detrimental to my health and wellbeing.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

Like almost everybody in America (even the poets) I was introduced to poetry before I knew what it was or could do. I had enthusiastic teachers in high school who taught poetry but I either couldn’t listen or they portrayed its effect wrongly. Either way, the person who really introduced me to poetry was a professor at Wheaton College, the late Brett Foster, a Christian poet concerned with beauty but not at the expense of being real or actual. While I’m not a Christian, I am still concerned with Christianity, and while I don’t ascribe to the theory of beauty Christianity sometimes entails, I am still very much concerned with the possibility of beauty.

3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

None whatsoever. If I had been overly concerned with the dominating presence of older poets, I’m almost positive I would not be writing now, or would be writing to a lesser degree. I was just over in my own world, trying to heal from the real-life non-poetry world by reading Rimbaud and Ashbery. In a poetry world so dependent on mentorship and favouritism, it seems wrong to ask that question, but, even though I have benefited from older poets’ throughout my brief poetry career, it’s a necessary question in that it should 100% not matter what older poets have to tell you at first. That’s for later.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

I don’t have a routine. It sounds bad, but I’m writing in three different genres (poetry,fiction, and playwriting), so I just constantly write and switch genres when one begins to bore the shit out of me. Honestly part of the reason I’m so spread out genre-wise is to avoid writer’s block haha.

5. What motivates you to write?

Some weird mixture of boredom and necessity.

6. What is your work ethic?

Somehow both severe and lackadaisical.

7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

I read a bunch but have a handful of writers I return to most often: J.R.R. Tolkien, Arthur Rimbaud, Roberto Bolaño, John Ashbery, Annie Baker, Martin McDonagh, Chaim Potok.
These are the authors I hold close to my chest, and I’m fine with being able to count them on two hands – how else would I be able to hold them close to my chest?

8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

I’m going to assume you mean one writer; otherwise the list would be impossibly long.

Hmmm. For fiction, Colm Toibin. Looking at his career, you could accuse him of finding a niche, but it would be so far from the truth as to be laughable. He’s an established writer and novelist who reinvents his form and style with each book while still being praised as an inventive and consistent prose stylist. Also, he’s very nice (I met him at a book signing a few years back), and has a charitable streak a mile wide and a mile deep. This means he has an edge on many of the writers whose writing I severely admire but whose politics or actions I despise (i.e. Michel Houellebecq or Jonathan Franzen). For poetry, probably Anne Carson.

9. Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

I feel like it’s almost wrong to not do something other than writing in addition to writing.

People have this romantic association with writing that hasn’t existed forever; the job vs. writing dichotomy bores me. Not because it’s untenable in the modern world and economy, etc. – it’s more that it’s untenable for me personally. I would get so fucking restless it wouldn’t be worth it: it would be like living in an abandoned abbey as a monk that doesn’t believe in god. What would the point be then? Just to worship,the act of worship itself? It doesn’t make sense to me.

Which is not to say writing is a hobby for me; it’s more a personal mandate some part of my intuition has given me that I guess I could choose to ignore but only at the expense of my wellbeing. I could choose to play tennis instead, but my mind would start mapping a story out of it, and I’d botch the match, which would be no fun.

10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

I wouldn’t say anything, I would just hand them a pen and paper (or ask them to get out their phone) and ask them to write out that question, answer it themselves, read me the result, and then I would just nod and say that writing is doing that over and over consistently. Either that or I just wouldn’t answer them and walk away; it would depend on their tone when asking the question.

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

My third and fourth full-length poetry collections, my fourth play in a four-play cycle, and my second novel (in a planned four-novel cycle). The new poetry collections are so far indebted to a kind of anti-lyric poetry pioneered by some Ahsahta poets (including C. Violet Eaton) and Wayne Johns. The plays are kind of a magical realist riff on Angels in America, using portals and the American South to explore the concept of being closeted and how the past affects the future and vice versa. The novels are (except for the first) all set in a post-apocalyptic future that involves talking animals (evolved animals after Mars crashes into Earth and the humans colonize the Mars portion), and will eventually feature androids as well (and just plain old humans as well).

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

J DG

Justene Dion-Glowa is a bi, emerging poet from Canada. Her work has been featured in Burning House Press and Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Art Digest. She is a contributor to the The Poetry Question and curates a quarterly literary magazine with her indie publishing house 3 Moon Independent Publishing. Her first poetry chapbook and memoir are forthcoming.

jdgwrites.wixsite.com/home

3moonpublishing.wixsite.com/home

Twitter: @gee_justy or @3moonpublishing

Instagram: @jdgwrites or @3moonpublishing

The Interview

1. What inspired you  to write poetry?

I think initially, when I was much younger, poetry was a way to address serious issues in a playful way. Now that I am older, I feel that I may have replaced the playfulness with cynicism. But I think putting out cynical work can help make day-to-day life more livable. These are dark times, and putting the darkness on paper can make it easier to see the light.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

I can’t pinpoint a specific person. I was just a voracious reader, and fell in love with darker poetry like that of Edgar Allan Poe first. Once I realized that poetry didn’t have to be all sunshine and rainbows, I think I sought out more classic poems.

3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

Very. I still read that type of work today. While I’m sure it’s not obvious, it’s the work of Poe and T.S. Eliot and even Shakespeare’s sonnets that really inspired me to keep writing poetry. There was something universal in what they were saying, but it was also so clear they were recalling some specific situation. There was a beauty in that level of communication that appealed to me, and still does.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

I can’t say I have a steady routine. My life is too hectic for that right now. I just make writing a priority. Some days I plan to write and I don’t at all. Some days I don’t plan to write and I end up with a ton of material. Making it a priority works for me. I always carry around notebooks too, just in case I’m on the go and inspiration hits. I also try to immerse myself in it. I write reviews of poetry, I constantly submit to literary magazines; I just make this the focal point in my life.

5. What motivates you to write?

I think it’s the knowledge that no one experience in your life is truly your own, and yet you’re 100% unique in how that experience shapes you. The human experience, I suppose.

6. What is your work ethic?

I have a “throw them to the wolves” ethic, in that if I don’t let it completely take over my life, it isn’t going to happen. I am deeply passionate and unless I am committed fully to something, I cannot continue to do it.

7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

I think the thing that influenced my beyond what any author could was the firm belief of every person in my life that I was not “too young” to understand or read anything. I was always assumed to be able to read whatever I wanted, no matter the subject or complexity, and that lead to me reading incredible books at a young age. That influences me today because when I think about my writing, I know I can do it and that others will value it. It’s just got to find it’s audience.8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

I honestly love YA authors right now. The material coming out of that scene is fearless, incredible, and representational. But I love how many literary magazines are out there right now. I get to read so much incredible work because of people volunteering to curate it for the public. That’s a beautiful thing.

9. Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

Writing is an exercise in processing to me. I do not process my reality the way others do, although, I can’t say definitively why. I liken it to a full plate. My body is so full of unprocessed experiences and trauma, it doesn’t seem to matter how much I take off that plate, there is always another helping coming. When my plate is empty, I guess I will stop.

10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

You have to practice. And then you have to be willing to detach yourself from your own work because you need to edit it with an eye that’s not your own. Prose and poetry can be deeply personal, but it is so important to be relentless in pursuing the real voice and message of a piece.

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

I am currently working on a personal memoir called “Chuck”. I have nearly completed my first chapbook of poetry, which is entitled “Trailer Park Shakes”.  I write reviews for The Poetry Question and I curate a literary magazine called 3 Moon Magazine and Independent Publishing. We offer small-batch independent publishing as well as editing, transcription and audio book recording services.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.