tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-319589917860132988Sat, 27 Jun 2026 07:18:48 +000012 or 20 questionsArsenal Pulp PressDaniel Allen Cox12 or 20 questionsconducted by rob mclennannoreply@blogger.com (rob mclennan)Blogger92125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-319589917860132988.post-190260034797886355Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:02:00 +00002009-06-18T10:02:01.397-07:0012 or 20 questions: with J. R. Carpenter<a href=" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5348380859340507058" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 290px" alt="" src="; border="0" />J. R. Carpenter </a>is an author of short fiction, long fiction, non-fiction and electronic literature based in Montreal. She is winner of the QWF Carte Blanche Quebec Award 2009, the CBC Quebec Short Story Competition 2003 & 2005, and the Expozine Alternative Press Award for Best English Book for her first novel, <a href=" the Dog Knows</em> (Conundrum, 2008). </a>Her electronic literature has been presented internationally. For more information please visit: <a href="; target="_blank"> /><div></div><br /><div><strong>1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>I made my first chapbook at the age of five and tried to sell it to my parents for twenty-five cents. They refused to pay, on grounds that I'd used their paper to make the the book, and argued that I ought to be paying them. What truly changed my life was the photocopier. I started producing photocopied zines in 1992 and started using the internet to create and disseminate non-linear, inter-textual narratives in 1993. Taking a low-tech, do-it-yourself approach to creation and distribution left me free to develop my own forms of writing and electronic literature, without having to ask for permission or wait for approval from anyone. My most recent works have been much larger than anything I'd produced before, and much more collaborative. After a lifetime of independent production it was a revelation to discover that depending on other people could result in a work much greater than the sum of its parts. My first novel, <em><a href=" the Dog Knows</a></em>, was published by Conundrum Press in 2008. It builds on smaller, independently produced works, linking together and expanding upon stories started in four zines, three web projects and an assortment of short texts previously published in other forms. All of these small things became one big thing thanks to the editorial insight and creative generosity of <a href=" Brown </a>and <a href=" Merrick</a>. They saw things I didn't, made connections I couldn't, set deadlines I wouldn't - they taught me how to write a novel, then published it, and now they're selling it for me! This teamwork thing is great. Asking for help in my new favorite thing to do.</div><br /><div><strong>2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>I didn't set out to be a writer at all. It didn't occur to me. I started off studying classical guitar. Then I went to art school, where I mostly wrote poetry and made chapbooks. I did some spoken word stuff, but I thought of it as performance art. When I got my first UNIX account in 1993, the internet was a totally textual world. I learned a lot about writing by positing fictional interjections to USENET newsgroups and by posing as improbable characters in MUDs and MOOs; I thought of that as performance art too. My first print publications were art reviews and catalogue essays. I wrote scripts for <a href=" Canada International </a>for a while. And then, in the late 1990s, I stumbled into a web design contract at a multi-national software company and somehow wound up managing their corporate web development team. That was definitely performance art! And/or an undercover operation of some kind. At first I was terrified that someone would figure out that I had no idea what I was doing. After a while I noticed that most of the people I worked with were also winging it, just making it up as they went along. It finally dawned on me that much of the world is, in fact, performance art - an on-going performance of live-fiction. Stories are happening all the time. People are dialogue generating machines, and all writers have to do is decide which parts to write down. I quit my high-paying corporate job in 2001 and have been writing fiction ever since.</div><br /><div><strong>3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing intitially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>I used to think that I was working really quickly making lots of small things. Then I realized that I was actually working really slowly on a few huge things made of many small parts. I often don't notice that I've started working on something new because I'm usually working on a number of different things at once, in a number of different media. Some long-finished small things suddenly resurface as the kernel of some new huge thing. Some huge things spawn small offshoots. Fiction often starts suddenly, with a sentence let's say. Then builds very slowly toward the final word count. It can take me years to write a 1200 word story. I wrote my first novel in 10 months. But that was only because I had an impossible deadline. I had to put everything else aside. Including bathing. And wearing pants.</div><br /><div><strong>4 - Where does a piece of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>The best way to never write a book is to walk around telling people you're writing a book. Everyday I work on whatever it is possible for me to work on that day and try to put off thinking, for as long as possible, about what the end form of the work will be. This could be called a bottom up approach. I like to think of it as trying to sneak up on myself. My favorite thing in the world is to stumble upon an unfamiliar file in my computer, open it, and discover the underpinnings of a story I have no recollection of starting. This happens alarmingly often.<br /></div><br /><div><strong>5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>I love doing readings. I always learn a lot from them. The first time I did a reading, for example, an audience member came up to me after and told me that I should be a comedian. Until that moment I hadn't had even the slightest inkling that there was even the remotest possibility that one day in the future I might aspire to be funny. On purpose, I mean. </div><br /><div><strong>6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>In theory, I am concerned about many things. I do a fair amount of critical and academic writing on various subjects in which theory plays a major role, but when writing fiction or electronic literature I try to save the theorizing until long after I'm done. For me, theory is a means to understand what exist already, not a mode of creation. Occasionally I write essays exploring the theoretical concerns behind my own writing, but only after the fact. Most recently, in April 2009, I presented an academic paper on my work at a conference at MIT. "A Book-ish Novel: Transmediation in <em>Words the Dog Knows</em>" explored the migration of certain texts across multiple media and argued that the novel is a highly elastic form that ought to be considered as one form in a continuum of forms. Now I'm working on a hypertext version of an essay on <a href=" web-based work <em>Entre Ville</em></a>, in which the form of the essay takes on the form of the piece.<br /></div><br /><div><strong>7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div><a href=" Havel </a>once wrote that the thing that writers and politicians have in common is the ability to encapsulate in a few words what the majority of people are thinking. I try to articulate things that I think many of us have a hard time articulating, and bring to light small yet salient details that might otherwise be overlooked. I value courage over all else and try, in writing and in life, to do as <a href=" Paley </a>and others have commanded: Speak truth to power.</div><br /><div><strong>8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>A good editor is a rare and beautiful thing. <a href="2007/09/12-or-20-questions-with-andy-brown.html">Andy Brown </a>is a brilliant editor and I'd work with him again in a heartbeat.</div><br /><div><strong>9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>When I first started writing fiction I was a bad-advice magnet. People kept telling me that my short stories weren't technically short stories. Apparently there are rules about this sort of thing. I did a residency at the <a href=" Studio Center in 2003</a>. <a href=" Hempel </a>was there. She read four of the stories that everyone said weren't stories and said: You tell them what's a story. I've never worried about what is or isn't a story again.</div><br /><div><strong>10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>I wake up at eight. I think until nine. I work at my computer from nine until between four (if I have errands or reading to do) and six. Then it's time walk the dog, cook, eat and maybe talk on the phone for a while. Then either there's an event to go to or I do some more reading. I do this every day. Especially on weekends. As my friend the brilliant <a href=" artist jake moore </a>said to me recently, "The luxury of our labour is that we love it." </div><br /><div><strong>11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>Online Scrabble.</div><br /><div><strong>12 - If there was a fire, what's the first thing you'd grab?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>Laptop and dog. And now that you've put this horrible question into my head, I believe I will set about training my dog to fetch my laptop in case of fire..</div><br /><div><strong>13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>I read pretty much constantly, but I don't buy that "books come from books" argument. It disavows orality, for one thing. Most of my stories start with something I've heard, or overheard, or miss-heard - a sentence, play on words, a conversation. <a href=" Stein </a>once wrote, "Writing may be made between the ear and the eye and the ear will be well and the eye will be well." The interconnected yet discontinuous processes of speaking, listening, understanding and translating work together to transform transient exchanges of conversation into a writing that <a href="; describes as already separated from life and community, a writing “displaced on the broken line between lost and promised speech.” That displacement is where books come from. I love this bit from <a href="; and <a href="; indispensable writing on the book as rhizome: “there is no difference between what a book talks about and how it is made.” <em>Words the Dog Knows</em> talks about small details and is made from an assemblage of small pieces, fragments; previously discreet stories interlinked to form a whole. </div><br /><div><strong>14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div><a href=";, <a href=";, <a href=" Babel</a>, <a href=" Calvino</a>, <a href=";, <a href=";, <a href=" Stein</a>, <a href=" Woolf</a>, <a href=" Bishop</a>, <a href=" Hempel</a>, <a href=" Davis</a>.</div><br /><div><strong>15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>Oh hundreds of things. Most that come to mind are small things - books I have yet to read, tricks I have yet to teach the dog. There have been some near misses involving far-away places and/or expensive food items that I'd like to rectify. I've been inside <a href=" Scala</a>, but have yet to see an opera there. I've eaten truffles in <a href=";, but have yet to personally hunt them down with a sniffer pig or dog or however it is that it's done these days. I wish we could still take steamer ships to Europe. I'd like to write a play one day. Possibly set on a steamer ship. I should probably read some plays. And learn the other half of French. Stuff like that.</div><br /><div><strong>16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>I've gone through quite a few of the other occupations already. I've worked as a baby sitter, a runway model, a calligrapher, a cashier, a receptionist, a librarian, a teacher, a set designer, a web designer, a web programmer, a programming coordinator... I've worked on fishing boats and on haying crews. I've picked fruit and piled hundreds of cords of firewood. I worked as a sandblaster for a year and a half. And I've done all sorts of odd jobs in wood shops. My name is Carpenter after all. I grew up on a farm and I studied sculpture. Pretty much everything in my history predisposes me to manual labour. If the writing career doesn't pan out at least I'll always have my degree in studio art to fall back on.</div><br /><div><strong>17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>It took me a long time to realize that not everybody can write, that I can, that some things need to be written, that someone has to do that writing, and that, in some cases, if I don't do that writing it won't get done, at least not in the way I would like it to get done. Of all the things I do, writing is the thing that feels the most imperative. </div><br /><div><strong>18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>I finally got around to reading <a href=" Quixote</em> </a>in January. It totally lived up to the hype. Other books that have blown my mind lately include <a href=" Z. Danielewski, <em>House of Leaves</em></a>; <a href=" Lutz, <em>Stories in the Worst Way</em></a>. I am addicted to <a href=" new NFB site</a>. Amazing archive. Current favorite short: <a href=" Lipsett</a>, <a href="; target="_blank"><em>Very Nice Very Nice</em></a> (1961).<br /></div><br /><div><strong>19 - What are you currently working on?</strong></div><br /><div></div><div>Short Stories.</div><br /><div></div><div><a href=" or 20 questions archive (second series);</em></a></div>2009/06/12-or-20-questions-with-j-r-carpenter.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (rob mclennan)12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-319589917860132988.post-1321966444794742849Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:02:00 +00002009-06-17T12:55:14.401-07:0012 or 20 questionsArsenal Pulp PressDaniel Allen Cox12 or 20 questions: with Daniel Allen Cox<a href=" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5348069971896933794" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 230px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="(credit_Dallas_Curow).jpg" border="0" />Daniel Allen Cox </a>is an ex-Jehovah’s Witness turned pornstar, and <a href="; of the hit novel <a href=" </em>(Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008), </a>which was shortlisted for the <a href=" Lambda Literary Award </a>for Gay Debut Fiction. His novella <a href=" This Madness In</em> (Dusty Owl Press, 2006) </a>was shortlisted for a 2007 Expozine Alternative Press Award. In the 2009 <em>Montreal Mirror</em> readers poll, Daniel was voted one of the top 10 best local authors.<br /><div></div><br /><div>Daniel has performed widely, including at the Ottawa International Writers' Festival, the Lammy Finalist Reading Series in New York City, the San Francisco Sex Worker Arts Festival, and on Canada's national radio network,CBC Radio One. His work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies and he writes the column Fingerprinted for <em>Capital Xtra! </em>Daniel lives in Montreal.</div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?</strong></div><br /><div>My novella <em>Tattoo This Madness In</em> (Dusty Owl Press, 2006) taught me about how writing connects me to the communities I’m a part of, and to those I orbit. It gave me confidence in my voice as a writer, and taught me how to sharpen my writing with potency. This book deals with my upbringing in the Jehovah’s Witness cult/religion—a belief system founded on literature published by a relatively clandestine society of leaders in Brooklyn, New York. The literature can’t be questioned, because it is “inspired of God.” Writing <em>Tattoo</em>, you can say, was my way of deconstructing the authority of literature: to prove that I can do it too, without a ‘green light’ from above. </div><br /><div>I got to explore different terrain with my novel <em><a href="; (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008), this time using desperation as a motivator. I needed to capture my memories of pre-millenial New York City before I forgot too much of it; I haven’t owned a camera in 15 years. I recognize many of the same themes as in my first book, namely, young outcasts using sexuality to discover more about themselves and to achieve their notions of freedom. <em><a href=";, unlike <em><a href=";, is a novel of place, and New York City is very likely the main character. It mourns a city that where sexual outlaws have slowly lost many of their institutions over the past two decades. <em>Tattoo</em>, on the other hand, celebrates loss, the shucking of religion. Est-ce que c’est clair? </div><br /><div></div><div><strong>2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?</strong></div><br /><div>When I first started writing, I thought that to write non-fiction, you had to know shit about shit, which I knew nothing about. I eventually discovered that no matter what format you use, writing pours out most deliciously when you frame it as personal truth. </div><br /><div></div><div><strong>3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing intitially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?</strong></div><br /><div>My writing projects have a gestation period, during which I take notes in a Moleskine notebook. That can last for days or months, depending on the size and scope of the project. In general, I edit all drafts about 10 times before I’m satisfied with them. Of course, after 5 drafts the story says more or less what I want it to say, but it takes another 5 to shape the words into objects the reader can use in their own lives. I enjoy editing as much as I do writing. </div><br /><div></div><div><strong>4 - Where does a piece of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?</strong></div><br /><div>As they often say in Poland, “It depends.” <em>Shuck </em>was written in snippets, and then assembled using giant poster boards, hundreds of snippets of paper, and Scotch tape. With my novella <em>Tattoo</em>, it began as a 300-page work, and I trimmed it down to 100. I keep on breaking all of my habits. Is that a good thing? </div><br /><div></div><div><strong>5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?</strong></div><br /><div>Until recently, I have always been afraid of readings, because I stutter. My stuttering is heightened when I read, because there are words on the page that I can’t substitute if they are rife with consonants that give me trouble (if you’ve spoken to me or heard me speak, then you know what they are.) And so, I have organized performances where I do everything except read: retell scenes improv-style, hold game-show quizzes, give author talks, and have other people read for me. This has all been great, giving my events an interactive spin. It was a treat to hear my work come alive in <a href=" Zytveld’s </a>brassy baritone, and in <a href=" Palanca’s </a>sauciness. </div><br /><div>I finally decided, though, to try reading in public, after much urging—and encouraging—from friends. I picked one of my favourite passages from <em>Shuck</em>, rehearsed it, and realized that it was no different than the last stage of my editing process, where I mouth the words in a final read-through. I guess I found my physical voice in the confidence of my literary voice. It was quite a moment, and then I replicated that success at Hard Cover: A Book Club for Men into Men, in Ottawa. My stutter is not an enemy. It’s a friend. Coming to a reading near you! </div><br /><div></div><div><strong>6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?</strong></div><br /><div>What things go unsaid? Why are people afraid of sex, and how can we reverse that? What can we do to empower young queers in a homophobic world? What can I do to link the disparate parts of my life together, and how desperate am I to find those threads? </div><br /><div></div><div><strong>7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?</strong></div><br /><div>To ask questions, and to motivate readers to take personal risks. </div><br /><div></div><div><strong>8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?</strong></div><br /><div>I have always prized the relationships I’ve had with my editors. The key to doing that is to understand what they bring to your writing that you can’t, and to beat down your ego with a crowbar, if necessary. Your editor may have different reading influences than you do, and can bring such richness to a text with the most minor suggestion. Because I enjoy editing so much, this shared refining is key to my writing process. It’s great when you can achieve a symbiosis; you know you’ve learned something when you can predict what language your editor will flag. </div><br /><div></div><div><strong>9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?</strong></div><br /><div>“Don’t be afraid to read in public. People will love to hear your voice, because it’s you.” <a href=" Ibañez-Carrasco</a>, on the steps of his East Vancouver home. </div><br /><div></div><div><strong>10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to more performative works)? What do you see as the appeal?</strong></div><br /><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?</strong></div><br /><div>There are two periods of the day when I’m a firecracker. I’m at peak “creative mode” between 9 pm and midnight, and at peak “execution” mode between 8 and 11 am. I try to get most of my writing work done in those slots, even though much of it is bound to happen on the subway, against my will. </div><br /><div><strong>12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?</strong></div><br /><div>This may sound silly, but I turn to the shower for inspiration. There’s something about the hot water hitting my cerebral cortex that gets my brain’s sleepy neurons jiggling again. Maybe the smell of Irish Spring soap plays a part, too. </div><br /><div></div><div><strong>13 - If there was a fire, what's the first thing you'd grab?</strong></div><br /><div>Funny you should ask. My apartment building burned down on November 2, 2007, while my lover was asleep in it (he escaped, holding our wriggling cat). After the firefighters had extinguished the flames, they gave us 10 minutes to collect essential items. Our home was a soot-covered battle zone—the firefighters trashed it when they chopped the walls, floors and ceilings to see if the fire had spread, breaking whatever furniture was in the way. They have a tough job, so I’m not complaining. </div><br /><div>What do you pick up when you have 10 minutes, not sure if you’ll ever be allowed back in again? Our loving friends turned out en masse to help in this 600-second rescue. I directed them to hunt for my photos, and then my passport. This intrigues me, because prior to that, I hadn’t cared enough about photos to even own a camera. And I recently let my passport expire, not renewing it until days before a trip to New York City. It seems that fire brings out priorities in me that otherwise lay quite dormant. </div><br /><div><strong>14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?</strong></div><br /><div>A loamy, summer wind will always tint whatever piece of writing I’m working on. Low-quality Youtube videos—the ones that look how vinyl sounds—have the same effect. </div><br /><div></div><div><strong>15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?</strong></div><br /><div>There are dozens of authors—many of them friends of mine—who have taught me much about writing. I’ve had a few intense author crushes in the past, though they abated when I learned how to pull off some of their literary tricks. </div><br /><div><a href="; by Gordon Lish </a>has had a lasting hold over me. It is a novel told in the form of a vaudeville routine between showprincesses Smith and Dale. It’s not until the last few pages that you realize this joke-book is about the holocaust, and then you’re mortified that you’ve been laughing all along. I lost that book and I miss it. I would kiss profusely anyone who sends me a copy. </div><br /><div><strong>16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?</strong></div><br /><div>Meet <a href=" Nasser Miran</a>, the guy who’s been living in Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris for the past nineteen years. </div><br /><div></div><div><strong>17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?</strong></div><br /><div>I would love to be baseball player or a baseball announcer, to either steal bases or to announce the thefts. It would be amazing to coin a new phrase for a home run, like “that ball just flew standby”, or something of the kind. Know what I mean? </div><br /><div></div><div><strong>18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?<br /></strong></div><br /><div>My stutter made me take up writing. I’ve never been quite satisfied with my verbal articulation (for those of you who have never heard me, my speech is peppered with hesitations, prolonged sibilants, and compensatory clicks). It used to be more severe when I was younger, and I think I learned quickly that if I wanted to communicate what I was thinking with the best clarity, I had better write it down, rather than subject it to a speech rollercoaster where who knows what would come out on the other side.<br /></div><div><strong>19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?<br /></strong></div><br /><div><a href=" Bohemia</em> by Sarah Schulman </a>is the only book I have ever read in a single sitting. The last great film is <em><a href=" States</a></em>, a documentary about the work of <a href=" Spencer Tunick</a>, famous for his public nudes. I’ll never forget how he brought a volunteer model to the streetcorner where she had been raped, and then asked her to undress for the camera. She later said “Doing the shoot with Spencer was 90% of my self-therapy. It was like I am free to be me, and I like that a lot.” </div><br /><div><strong>20 - What are you currently working on? </strong></div><div><strong></div></strong><div>I’m working on a new novel. More details to follow. </div><br /><div></div><div><a href=" or 20 questions archive (second series);</em></a></div>2009/06/12-or-20-questions-with-daniel-allen.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (rob mclennan)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-319589917860132988.post-2308531472264724276Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:31:00 +00002008-06-05T09:33:39.885-07:0012 or 20 questions: with Pete Smith<a href=" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5208423382699432258" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="; border="0" /></a>English grammar-school dropout in the 60s. Attuned to poetry when the hormones started running. Blessed with a teacher who went outside the curriculum & continued his self-education through magazines: <em>Agenda</em>, <em>Stand</em>, <em>Grosseteste Review</em>. Strives to maintain catholic taste (not RC). Trained as a Psych Nurse “for something to fall back on”: failed to fall & retired in 2007. Emigrated to BC in 1974. Two marriages (one current): two kids, 4 grandkids (1 in Van, 3 in Calgary). Hobbies include breathing, hiking, kayaking. Reads obsessively. Life-long small press fan – <a href="; & <a href=" Thug </a>among current favourites in Canada.<br /><br /><div>Has written reviews &/or essays (from micro to a forthcoming book chapter) on <a href=". Snodgrass </a>(<em>Agenda,</em> UK); <a href=" MacLeod </a>[<a href="2008/01/12-or-20-questions-with-kathryn-macleod.html">see her 12 or 20 questions here</a>], <a href=" Notley</a>, <a href=" van den Beukel</a>, <a href=" Waldrop </a>[<a href=" her 12 or 20 questions here</a>], <a href=" Longmire </a>& <a href=" Williamson</a>, <a href=" Sutherland</a>, <a href=" Wolsak</a>, <a href=" Robertson</a>, <a href=" Shaw </a>& <a href=" Strang </a>(all in <em>The Gig</em>, Toronto); <a href=" Moxley </a>(<a href="; #9, on-line</a>); <a href=" MacSweeney </a>(<em>The Paper</em>, UK); forthcoming - <a href=" Joyce </a>(<em>Crayon </em>#5, USA); ****** ****** (<em>TCR</em>, Spring ’08); <a href="(poet)">John James </a>(<em>The Salt Companion to John James</em>, UK). </div><br /><div>Chapbooks: <a href=" Vision</em> </a>and <em>cross of green hollow</em> (Wild Honey, Eire); <em>John’s Book of Alleged Dances</em> (Kamloops); <em>Harm’s Length</em> (<a href=" Histories, Cambridge</a>); <a href=" of Unseen</em> (above/ground, Canada). </a><br /></div><br /><div>Did the first interview with <a href=" Wolsak </a>in <em>Six Poets: Views & Interviews</em>, <em>The Gig</em> Documents Series, #2. Nate Dorward interviewed me and featured <a href=" Pete Smith Sampler in <em>The Fly on the Page</em>, <em>Gig</em> Docs #3</a>. And poems in anthologies: <em>100 Days</em>, Barque Press, Cambridge/April Eye: Poems for Peter Riley, <em>infernal methods</em>, <em>Cambridge/<a href=" Meeting for Douglas Oliver</a></em>, infernal methods, Street Editions & Poetical Histories, Cambridge.</div><br /><div></div><div>Long sequences: CLIV (<em><a href=" Poetry Assemblage</a></em>); <a href=" Horace </a>and Evacuation Procedures (<em>Great Works</em>); Mother Tongue: Father Silence (<em><a href=";); Out-takes From the Deanna Ferguson Show (<a href=";, The Gig</a>).<br /></div><br /><div>A ms <em>Bindings With Discords</em> seeks a Canadian home.<br /><br /><strong>1 - How did your first chapbook change your life?</strong><br />It brought me into a community – not just the “being published” but some good feedback (especially publisher <a href=" Healy’s </a>note telling me he had to pry it out of the hands of the girl at the printer’s). It opened the door to <a href=" reading at ksw </a>in 1999 (I don’t think they’d read a word of mine, but knew I was to be published by <a href=" Honey </a>who’d published <a href=" Scully </a>who’d just come out with <a href=" Street </a>who had published <a href=" Robertson </a>who they KNEW was damned good).<br /><br /><strong>2 - How long have you lived in Kamloops, and how does geography, if at all, impact on your writing? Does race or gender make any impact on your work?</strong><br />In K since 1974. I have only now begun to write the place out of somewhere inside me – before that I was a tourist who’d forgotten to go home. I am very conscious of not truly belonging & of being an uninvited guest on Interior <a href=" land</a>. Nevertheless, there are a few places I go to recharge my spirit & that chime with places I carry from my earliest years – rivershores, small spinneys, fields in one direction, town the other. Race & gender: again very conscious of the presumed dominance within which I was raised – English (the language, the history, the warmongering self-hymnic traditions), male (a few inches of pipe & a bag of seed make you leader of whose gang?). Others must judge that consciousness’s impact on my work.<br /><br /><strong>3 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?</strong><br />There isn’t a usual where; there has been a when for a number of years, though, & that is May. But a trigger can be sound, overheard talk, a rhythm, another work of art, music or visual generally, that somehow announces itself as my next project. Of double necessity – having ADHD & only small chunks of time within which to work – I’ve written sequences or worked out of existing texts. I guess a book has been the general idea, but rarely actually getting round to submit it anywhere, well the next current piece is always more engrossing (Motto at our house: Salience Rules).<br /><br /><strong>4 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?</strong><br />Part of. I enjoy popping down to Grinders Coffee House on open mic night & reading at a bunch of punk, goth type folk who are there to hear their friend sing a <a href=" Cobain </a>song or whatever & actually registering a silence that indicates listening (testimonial: Hannah , daughter, was at the back of the room one time & heard a kid say “No idea what he’s on about, but I fuckin like it” ). In a more rarified setting (<a href=" Rouge, Cambridge</a>, 1999) I interrupted my reading to say “that poem should have ended 4 lines earlier” because it had suddenly become clear that was the case.<br /><strong>5 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?<br /></strong>I am interested in theories that stretch our understanding of what it means to be/ human; how to live in community out of compassion & respect, justly; how to confront our demons without projecting them onto others; how to behave on this planet, among these diverse fellows & creatures; where the moral impulse comes from & what its dangers & limitations are… In pursuit of which I perform midnight raids on many disciplines: neuroscience, psychology, sociology, physics, theology, literary theory, philosophy, anthropology, botany. Amen. Hanging out with brain-injured & disabled folk keeps me almost-honest. The current Qs still seem to hover around the nature of self, concepts of mind, etc. (The navel has never seemed so fascinating: see <a href=" Fodor </a>for some respite.) A task of the poet is surely to question received opinion – all of it. This is, I take it, where theories attract poets.<br /><br /><strong>6 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?</strong><br />For poems: editors haven’t asked for much to be changed – (“the life so short, the craft so long to learn”) but I did for many years insist on many, many drafts. Now, I tend to just get it down or toss it out. <a href=" Dorward </a>has been a tremendous help in editing book reviews, both grammatically & in challenging the reading if weak or unclear. Lyn, my wife, is a marvellous first reader, very partial to elegance.<br /><br /><strong>7 - After having published more than a couple of titles over the years, do you find the process of book-making harder or easier?</strong><br />Easier insofar as I used to write stand-alone lyric poems, but now write mostly long pieces, sequences – from songs to concerti. I literally made a book a while back & that was a wonderful process. It’s hard to definitively place some poems/sequences though: sort of <a href=" </a>problem.<br /><br /><strong>8 - When was the last time you ate a pear?<br /></strong>December 07 – that’s how long the ones we stored for winter lasted. Best eaten outdoors with a good cheese (in case the pear’s a bit flat) on a windy day.<br /><br /><strong>9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?</strong><br />“… a little more to the left…”<br /><br /><strong>10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to criticism)? What do you see as the appeal?<br /></strong>Apparently quite easy, if you call what I do criticism, I guess I call it “reading”. <a href=" Dorward </a>pointed out that much of my poetry was literary criticism in disguise (or some such term). I’ve gone through some of my earlier works & might well collect them under the title (sub-title, more like) “Literary Industry”. Wow, ain’t that exciting? </div><br /><div>The appeal has been, in some of the longer pieces, to spend a long time with one writer (otherwise I flip through this, read that, return to another poem in the mag that came last week, month…) & learn some of another imagination’s workings, & another person’s way of being in the world. Yes, meeting someone at some depth, I guess.<br /><br /><strong>11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?<br /></strong>None apparent. I learned how to compose in my head as a much younger man & still do sometimes. Now I grab some books in a bag, head out the door to town, hope there will be lulls in the day when I can read a bit or even write (we’ve embarked on some amazingly time-consuming projects lately & this is a temporary pattern). There was a typical day once but I forget how it went.<br /><br /><strong>12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?</strong><br />Stalled is no worry – there are enough words, poems, chapbooks etc out there already. And isn’t the “rest” in music an integral part of the structure? Stalled is part of life’s rhythm. Stale is a worry: to be midwife & mother, if you will, to this thing & then discover it’s stillborn. Sad. To recharge: go to some old standbys (16th Century English, earlier British, post WW2 alternative scene, or try to abandon books altogether, take a long walk, play some ugly, angular improvised music).<br /><br /><strong>13 - How does your most recent book compare to your previous work? How does it feel different?<br /></strong>My chaos is all-consuming. I have a poor chronological sense of my work, I can be years on a sequence because I lose it, or forget I’m writing it. I think the improvisation on <a href=" Ferguson’s </a>works in <a href=";, The Gig 2008</a>, is the last thing I finished. That’s as far down a stand-up, fast-on-the-pun, wild west road as I would want to go. It’s a continuation of an anti-poetry exploration though & that will no doubt emerge in a new formless form soon. No, I think I’ve finished others since then – they’ll turn up. Around 1996 I started taking meds for ADHD & in my writing began to approach the world more obliquely, letting my life, mostly as memory, come in unbidden: things started hopping about then.<br /><br /><strong>14 - <a href=" W. McFadden </a>once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?<br /></strong>Responses to live readings, concerts, photography & other visual (generally abstract) art, conversations. Good food. <a href=" Alexander’s <em>Pattern Language</em> </a>is a source. Standing beside a tree trunk during a high wind puts wonderful sound-shapes inside a person.<br /><br /><strong>15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?</strong><br />Ahhhhhhhhhh! Books filled the house I was raised in – a row house in <a href=", England</a>, with 7.000 or more books in it. Still abiding from early years –<a href="; Beckett</a>, <a href=" Berger</a>, <a href=" Garner</a>, the <a href=" Arabian Nights</em> </a>(2 vols illustrated – it was my adolescent version of<a href="; <em>Playboy</em> </a>– “I kept it under my bed for the stories”). <a href=" Quignard’s </a>& Peter Russell’s re/inventions of classical authors – <a href="; & <a href="; It’s been such a long apprenticeship, so many phases. Needing alternatives to the personal/social misery of <a href=" Larkin </a>& the cosmic misery of <a href=";, I went to the <a href=" American Poetry</em> anthology </a>(<a href=" Mountain </a>more than <a href=" beats</a>, though <a href="; life-work continues to be compelling), to European poets through a Penguin books series & to the “deep-image” writings (<a href=" Wright </a>more than <a href="; & <a href=" Transtromer </a>more than any). If I were only to read (Your Alternative School here….) I would simply have my own narrow orthodoxy. Second Isaiah in <a href=" Rosenberg’s </a>translation is magnificent. <a href=" British Revival </a>poets: <a href=", John</a>, <a href="; & <a href=";, <a href=";, James et al. Some quiet outsiders appeal a lot – <a href=" Gilfillan </a>in the USA, <a href=" Birchard </a>in Canada. The 2 Canadians who first hit me, continue to do so whenever I return to them, <a href="; & <a href=";. Ahhhh! Too many – the plot is to have too many to form a canon, to keep ‘em alive beyond the canon’s walls. <a href=" Ferguson </a>– some lines of hers wield the sharpest scalpel I know of. The kids have got to know who else has been around.<br /><br /><strong>16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?</strong><br />Build a house. It’s coming soon to a theatre near me. Next year, Lyn says.<br /><br /><strong>17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?</strong><br />Sailor, coffee shop owner, aesthetician, chef, rock/blues/folk/alt singer, layabout.<br /><br /><strong>18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?</strong><br />There was too much blank graph paper lying around. There were too many facts to record in a work-day, behaviours to observe, speculations to suppress; in writing my own poetry I was beholden to no-one. I had to reinvent the world, because the one I worked in was too surrealistic.<br /><br /><strong>19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?</strong><br />Great? <a href=" Heller-Roazen’s <em>Echolalias: On the Forgetting of Language</em> </a>from <a href=" Books </a>keeps me calling back. I like novels that are impossible: <a href=" Erickson’s <em>Arc d’X</em> </a>is a pretty wild ride, or <a href=" Ecstatic Days</em> </a>– novels that are either brilliant or dreadful, that take the risk. Movies suffer from a “tyranny of the image”. Boycott them I say. That said: I just watched <a href=" Out in the Evening</em> </a>and it’s almost flawless.<br /><br /><strong>20 - What are you currently working on?</strong><br />Rediscovering my study. Renovating a house. Looking for several unfinished, but clearly misremembered projects – something involving words that contain SENS with the sens removed & another thing building itself around the word “rogation”. Erasing a Victorian novel with more textual & social layers than <a href=" Philips’ <em>Humument</em> </a>contained, but without his flash colours – hoping the language flashes. A planned work with a visual artist on a project in Kamloops, involving several pairings of writers & artists for next year. I want to increase my techno skills & use my I-pod & mic to create radio works out of actual sounds & talk, taking polyvocal to the polis.<br /><br /><a href=" or 20 questions archive</em></a></div>2008/06/12-or-20-questions-with-pete-smith.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (rob mclennan)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-319589917860132988.post-3712772297250470171Thu, 29 May 2008 16:23:00 +00002008-05-29T10:41:29.009-07:0012 or 20 questions: with Diane Schoemperlen<a href="