Six Questions interview #2 : Conyer Clayton

Conyer Clayton is an Ottawa based artist who aims to live with compassion, gratitude, and awe. Her most recent chapbooks are Trust Only the Beasts in the Water (above/ground press, 2019), / (post ghost press, 2019), Undergrowth (bird, buried press, 2018) and Mitosis (In/Words Magazine and Press, 2018). In 2018, she released a collaborative album with Nathanael Larochette, If the river stood still. She is the winner of Arc's 2017 Diana Brebner Prize and The Capilano Review's 2019 Robin Blaser Poetry Contest, and writes reviews for Canthius. Her debut full-length collection of poetry, We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite (Guernica Editions), is forthcoming May 2020.

Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here?

I have been in Ottawa since September 2016. I moved here after living in Halifax for 3 years, after moving there from my home-town of Louisville, KY. I moved here for personal reasons, and because I got a job at a great gym here, Ottawa Gymnastics Centre. In my non-writing and art life, I am a gymnastics coach!

Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?

I started writing in high school, mainly flash fiction and short stories, with poetry thrown in here and there. I edited our high school literary magazine, and wrote for myself. I continued through my BA and MA in English Literature and Creative Writing, and began sending things out for publication in 2012, near the end of my Masters. I did some open mics, a couple of feature readings.

After I graduated in 2013, and moved to Halifax, my life turned away from writing professionally, away from publication, reading, art in any public sense. I kept writing, but things were very hard for me in Halifax, and it was all I could do to keep my head above ground.

When I moved to Ottawa, things changed. Through the fall and winter of 2016/early 2017, I worked on compiling my some of my work into a full length MS, which was the skeleton for my full-length debut, We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite (Guernica Editions, May 2020), and into 2 chapbooks: The Marshes (& Co Collective, 2017), and For the Birds. For the Humans (battleaxe press, 2018).

I went to Versefest in March 2017, and was blown away, but also intimidated. The next month I went to In/Words Reading Series and read at the open mic, and won some chocolate! I saw, and maybe chatted briefly (?), with people I would later become good pals, band-mates, and workshopping co-conspirators with, like Manahil Bandukwala, Ian Martin, and Chris Johnson. But I think the real hinging moment of getting into the Ottawa literary scene was winning Sawdust's Poem Off contest, and thus getting to do a feature reading in April 2017. That is where I met even more of the people who I am now dear friends with today, and got introduced to this incredibly kind community.

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?

I don't know if it shifted the way I think about my writing itself, but it certainly shifted the way I think about process, community, and poetry as public engagement. I now attend regular workshops with my friends, which is not something I ever did outside of university before. I now have a more collaborative understanding of writing and editing.

I was very inspired by this community to take my art seriously. Sometime in 2017, I told my partner Nate about 2 goals I had:

1) Have a full-length book

2) Read at Versefest

Now those things are happening and it is pretty wild to me how it all manifested. I credit my friends here with so much.

Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?

I am a member of the sound poetry ensemble, Quatuor Gualuor, with Nina Jane Drystek, jw curry, and Chris Johnson, and that is not something I see happening elsewhere in any real way, at least not that I am aware of, thoughI know my scope is somewhat limited. Hell, I didn't have any clue this kind of thing existed before the day Nina asked me if I wanted to come sit in on a rehearsal. It was so weird, and I loved it, and I was sold. I also think the fact that Nina is composing/recording visual and sound poetry is so cool, and I am thrilled I get to be a part of that. The avant-garde literary scene can be a bit of a sausage fest. So I am pretty into having my foot in the door with Nina on this, and grateful to jw curry for guiding me through a world I would have otherwise never known about, and to Chris for being a pal/being someone I am comfortable making aggressively strange sounds around. I have also had the opportunity to improv sound poetry with Stuart Ross a few times, and that was a blast. Does any other city in Canada have an active sound poetry group? One that isn't all men? If there is one, please please point me to them!

Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements here? How have the city and its community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work?

I have not directly addressed Ottawa in my works, but I like to think that all the folks in my life crop up in my art. Either tangibly, through their influence on my work during work-shops and editing sessions, or in inspiration, through reading their work, or being so impressed by performances that I feel I need to step up my game!

Collaboration is also the name of the game here! Since moving here to Ottawa, I worked collaboratively on a publishing and music project for the first time. Mitosis (In/Words Magazine and Press, 2018) was a joint effort between myself and Manahil Bandukwala, who designed the cover, did illustrations, and did so much work. Writing the sister project, If the river stood still, with Nathanael Larochette, was another team-effort. It all came together in a way I could have never imagined before moving here and meeting everyone. Chris Johnson even came to my apartment and helped painstakingly bind 100 chapbooks, for no reason except being nice.

Q: What are you working on now?

I am mainly working on a full-length of prose poems, an extension of my above/ground chapbook, Trust Only the Beasts in the Water. But I am also working on a chapbook that I hope to send out in the fall of this year, based on events and poems written during my time in Halifax and immediately before. That one has been hard to edit, hard to see, and many lovely pals here in Ottawa have kindly offered feedback on it, which has been so so very helpful.

I am also branching out of writing, and more into music. A friend in Kentucky, Regan Layman, and I have remotely composing songs together, and just earlier today, in fact, we finished our first one! I am also working on some solo voice and marimba compositions, and some collaborative things with Nathanael. This is all so new and exciting to me! I feel like I have been eavesdropping from another room my entire life, dying to open the door, and I am finally, shyly, standing in the doorway now.