Six Questions interview #8 : Chris Johnson

Chris Johnson is the Managing Editor for Arc Poetry Magazine. His recent chapbooks include Listen, Partisan! (Frog Hollow Press, 2016) and Gravenhurst (above/ground press, 2019). @ceeeejohnson

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

I came to Ottawa for the same reason that anyone comes to Ottawa. 10 years ago now, I opted to attend Carleton University for a B.A. in English. At the time of my move to Ottawa, I was in love with my high school girlfriend, who was accepted to the Vet Tech program at Algonquin. Despite moving to the same city, we had broken up by Hallowe'en. 

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

Arguably the cause of my breakup with my high school sweetheart, I fell in love with another person in my first year of university. This person and I dated on-and-off throughout our undergraduate degrees, and during the summer between first year and second year I discovered their Tumblr. They used their blog to post original poetry and other writing, and I thought I should pour my angst about the distance between us into my own Tumblr blog. There was where I found my first writing community. In the physical world, back at Carleton, I began to become aware of the In/Words writing community, mainly through a Canadian Literature course taught by Collett Tracey and TA'd by Ben Ladouceur. I remember seeing a poster on campus about a reading that Ben was giving and thought that sounded really neat. I don't know if I ended up attending that reading, but I do recall attending a series of workshops that the In/Words crew were facilitating for free on behalf of Carleton's English Literature Society. (I believe the workshops I attended were on comedic poetry led by Jeff Blackman and memoir/creative non-fiction led by Leah Mol.) From then, I began attending the In/Words reading series (the hosts when I began attending were Jordan Chevalier and jesslyn delia smith) and attending writers circles, then the Tree Reading Series, and then, and then, and then.

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

There was something captivating about In/Words when I first became aware of them. All of these talented poets and writers supporting each other, encouraging each other, publishing each other, but they all seemed to have unique styles and personalities to their writing even while so much of their output was referential to what was happening around them. This shifted my thinking about writing significantly. Where I had previously only thought of poetry as a means to express introspection in words, I began to use poetry as a means to engage with things outside of my head and my body. As I became even more involved in Ottawa's poetry scene, I've learned (from Amanda Earl, among others) that writing the body has its purposes as well, but introspection can also have external influence. Stephen Brockwell taught me more about how humour and politics can work into dream poems. Manahil Bandukwala has taught me how culture can feed a poem. Like any community, every individual played a part in my artistic development (and continue to do so).
 

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

When I first started attending literary events in Ottawa, it seemed like everyone was excited to have space to experiment. Audiences at poetry readings were always enrapt in the poems, attentive and respectful. At first I thought this was because everyone cared about the craft. Now, slightly more cynical, I think it might have been because we just wanted to soak up every poetry opportunity we got. Ottawa's not a small town, but we still can't compete with Toronto or Montreal, so I feel like we're slightly overlooked. On one hand, that means writers here are willing to play more with form, style, and sound. We aren't generally a town that shuns anyone for being too weird. On the other hand...

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? 

My chapbook with Frog Hollow Press, Listen, Partisan!, contains multiple poems that engage with the city; poems about Pretoria Bridge, Chinatown, walking up and down Bank Street for various reasons. I often wrote about people in those poems, my struggles with relationships both romantic and platonic. It's hard to say if Ottawa and the community here brought about these themes, or if I would have been writing about place wherever I was, but I can certainly say that this city and community hasn't not affected my approach to writing.

Q: What are you working on now?

I have a few ideas for projects, and a few others already on the go. I've written a number of poems recently about significant raccoons, including poems about the guy who pulled out the raccoon in the middle of a fight at the Rideau McDonalds and the Toronto dead raccoon memorial and the two fucking raccoons that some jerk saw and decided to compare to contemporary poetry. I also recently put a call out on Twitter to work on collaborative poems with other bisexual writers, which has become a project that I'm excited to be behind on.

Six Questions interview #7 : Sandra Nicholls

Sandra Nicholls is an award-winning writer who has published two books of poetry, a novel and numerous short stories. She was short listed for the K.M.Hunter Artists Award for Literature and the Pat Lowther Award, and won the Archibald Lampman award for her second book of poetry, Woman of Sticks, Woman of Stones. She has sat on numerous juries for arts grants and once had the pleasure of being Poet-in-Residence for the Peter Gzowski Golf Tournament for Literacy. As well as teaching both English and Creative Writing, Sandra has studied with Jane Urquhart, Jack Hodgins, Frances Itani, Bronwen Wallace and Mary di Michele. Sandra has also written dozens of song lyrics for a variety of artists and composers, and her latest project was writing the libretto for a chamber opera with puppets, which was performed to sold-out crowds at the Music and Beyond Festival in Ottawa during the summer of 2018 and again in 2019.

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

I was born in Hamilton, and my parents moved to Ottawa when I was three. I have basically lived here all my life, except for stints in Antigonish, Victoria, and Montreal.

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

I always wanted to write, but it wasn't until I quit my government job in Ottawa and moved out west to work on a BFA at the University of Victoria that I started writing in earnest. I wanted to explore a failed marriage and the death of my father through poetry, and I was guided along by a formidable mentor, the late Robin Skelton. I remember he would come thundering into the classroom and if we presented our poems in tremulous, tiny voices he would bang his walking stick down on the desk and scare us out of our wits. He taught us to take what we were doing seriously, and to have the confidence to present our work with conviction.  Plus a lot of other stuff.

When I came back to Ottawa I had a poetry manuscript and lots of ideas for more writing. I began going to poetry readings and helping out with Arc magazine in the early days. I joined the League of Canadian Poets and I also found the poetry community here to be vibrant, supportive, welcoming, and inspiring: people like Nadine McInnis, Blaine Marchand, John Barton, Colin Morton, Ronnie Brown, Chris Levenson. I think you must have been around too, although I don't think we really knew each other. It was a magical time.

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

Well, to start with, it meant that you always had an audience! Seriously, I think it helped to solidify the importance of writing in my life; there was always someone to talk to about a problem with a poem, someone to listen to a work-in-progress and give you honest and helpful feedback. Writing can be a lonely business, so having such a talented and generous group of writers around made all the difference.

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

People used to think of Ottawa as a stiff, stuffy government town, but I think it's changed. Ottawa now offers multiple opportunities for artistic exploration, and this in turn feeds creative and unusual projects. For example, having the Music and Beyond Festival here made it possible to find a venue and an audience for Sleeping Rough, a chamber opera for puppets which was performed two summers in a row. I wrote the libretto and my husband, composer and guitarist Roddy Ellias, wrote the music. It was a unique project, and one that I think might not have seen the light of day elsewhere. Ottawa also offers inspiration around every corner: dance, theatre, galleries, music, festivals, parks and green spaces....

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 definitely see myself as an Ottawa writer, as so much of my artistic outlook has been shaped by the writing community here. Some of the writers I mentioned before have become lifelong friends, and even though some of them have left the city, I still feel their influence. I don't tend to write about the city per se, but I am sure that its geography and climate have influenced my writing in ways I might not even be aware of. For example, now that I think of it, winter weather figures quite prominently in the novel I am writing now. There is even an ice storm!

Q: What are you working on now?

I am working on a number of projects, starting with my third novel, The Ornamental Woman, which is about an woman who, after her husband dies, hires a man to live in the shed at the bottom of the garden after learning about the aristocratic practice of engaging hermits in Georgian England. The novel is a kind of literary psychological thriller, and explores themes such as getting older, loneliness, fear and self-doubt. I am also working on a third book of poems, Songs for Invisible Ladies, and a collection of short stories, Aisle 16.

Six Questions interview #6 : Laurie Koensgen

Laurie Koensgen lives in Ottawa where she advocates for the Arts. Her poems have appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, Literary Review of Canada, In/Words, Barren Magazine, Juniper: A Poetry Journal, Kissing Dynamite, Burning House Press, Black Bough Poetry and elsewhere. She was shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Poetry 2018, and received Honourable Mentions in Arc’s Diana Brebner Prize 2018 and The New Quarterly’s Occasional Verse Contest 2019.

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

I moved to Ottawa when I was in high school and stayed until my early twenties. I left for Toronto with now-husband John Koensgen, where I studied at U of T while he continued his acting career. In the 80s one could make a living as a professional actor in Ottawa so we moved back in 1983. We’ve remained here since, raising two sons and shepherding parents through their final years.     

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

I started writing poems when I was a child. Poetry was generally a private thing in adulthood. I was often in the company of playwrights but had no desire to write for theatre or film. Among recurring faces at poetry events I noticed Lise Rochefort. She was meeting other writers at poetry workshops, particularly Frances Boyle, and thinking about forming a writers group. With Dilys Lehman as our fourth (and soon after, Pearl Pirie) we created Ruby Tuesdays –– a collective of Ottawa poets that has been meeting weekly for fourteen years.    

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

The sense of community I feel as part of a respectful writing group can’t be overstated. I’ve moved from isolation to participation, from bursts of productivity to a more disciplined practice. Weekly meetings with like-minded writers open me to the finest professional resources: we critique each other’s poems, explore the work of other poets, and share news about publication and reading opportunities.  

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

My experience with literary communities outside of Ottawa is limited so I can’t compare. I love how Versefest responds to this community of poets with inclusivity and respect, and how its bilingual nature distinguishes us. The Ottawa International Writers Festival also embraces our resident writers and includes local literary events in its programming. This matters in a capital city renowned for its national institutions, where local artists are vastly under-represented and patrons are generally oblivious of that imbalance.

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?

In 2018 and again last year I was part of The Republic of Childhood, a Writers Festival outreach that connects authors and classrooms. I taught poetry workshops to middle school students, encouraging them to write and perform their own chapbook-published poems. Mentoring is validating work and I think it has enhanced my craft. It required me to clarify in my mind what I feel is essential in poetry and share those fundamentals in engaging ways. I had to be in the moment with those young writers, connecting with their themes. 

Q: What are you working on now?

I’ve been encouraged by a number of acceptances and contest placements in the last few years. I think it’s time to pull together a manuscript.

Six Questions interview #5 : Anita Dolman

Poet, editor and writer Anita Dolman is the author of Lost Enough: A collection of short stories (Morning Rain Publishing, 2017), and co-editor of Motherhood in Precarious Times (Demeter Press, 2018). Her poetry, fiction and non-fiction have appeared in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies, including Imaginary Safe House, Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology, Canadian Ginger, Arc Poetry Magazine, On Spec, Grain, and PRISM international. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, and is a contributing editor for Arc Poetry Magazine.

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

I came to Ottawa in 1999 on a co-op job with the federal government, through the Writing minor I was taking at the University of Victoria. I had been in Ottawa once before, while traveling across the country with a friend after high school and it reminded me, with its canal and market, of The Netherlands, where my family is from. My best friend from childhood was finishing a BA at Carleton when I was offered the co-op job, so I saw it as a great chance to reconnect as well as to get to know the city better. I ended up finishing my degree with a second, editing co-op in Ottawa. I thought I'd stick around for a bit and see what happened. Interesting things still keep happening, so I’m still here.

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

I've always written little poems, ideas, notes, and received praise for my essays and such in high school. But, I seriously turned to writing after dropping out of the History in Arts program at UVic. I took a year off to figure out what I wanted my major to be, since we'd been told there would be very few jobs for art history majors at the time. I was casting around miserably and consoling myself over my ill-fated attempt to solicit door-to-door on Greenpeace's behalf in an oil-rich suburb of Calgary. Someone suggested I write an article for an environmental magazine, which led to another article, and then freelancing with a local newspaper. 

I went back to UVic in the writing program, which kicked off with an overview course that included several months of poetry introduction under Patrick Lane. I wrote a poem that he subsequently showed to the class and called "perfect." May the gods protect us all from the praise of established older men, because from then on I officially felt like I could say I was a poet, but I would keep searching for that same thrill of public praise for a long time.

After I graduated and had decided to stay in Ottawa for the time being, I went to a poetry reading, both as an audience member and because I was reviewing the bar it was in as part of a freelance gig I had picked up. You, Ian Ferrier and Clare Latremouille were the readers. It was a gorgeous, warm, sunny Sunday afternoon, probably the last one of the fall. Which meant I was the only audience member who showed up to spend it in a dark, second-floor bar. When the doorperson gave up and left, you all decided you would read to me anyway. And you did. Afterwards, you told me about a writer's group you hosted, and you invited me to join. I thought you were frighteningly extroverted but strange, which was definitely a point in your favour. So I went to some of the events you suggested, and joined your writer's group (where, incidentally, I promptly met my future spouse).

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

I think for a long time, it overwhelmed me. It felt like everyone talking was a classically educated, older white man, usually older than me, and that their font of esoteric knowledge about all the "great" poets who had come before in Canlit was endless. I had a degree in anthropology, and read widely rather than just in one genre or just in poetry, and now I felt completely knowledgeless. Everyone wanted to "teach" me. Everyone wanted to tell me who to read, and they were, with the exception of icons like Gwendolyn McEwan and Pat Lowther, etc., all old, white, Canadian men plus George Elliot Clarke.

It took me a long time to find my way out of this labyrinth of patriarchal, Canadian poet-deification. I felt I could never be good enough because I could never be like them (either the poets doing the discussing or the ones being discussed, unless, to achieve the latter, I was willing to be murdered or commit suicide). And all the people who had the power to decide whether I was "good enough" kept measuring against this singular concept of the approved Canlit canon. What was someone who never wants to be the female Al or Earl or Louis to do? I remember saying at a pub full of such writers that my favourites were the American confessional poets and being laughed at like a foolish little girl. I spent a lot of time wanting to be part of the Ottawa writing community, and a lot of time very angry about those elements of it. Women would come and go in the community, giving up or just not wanting to be part of the mix if all they could be was a doting acolyte. But the men, they usually stayed.

Meanwhile, many of the people I saw putting in the most hours to build and promote Ottawa's literary scene and individual writers were queer, female or ill, while actual publishers were, again, old, white men. It was extremely frustrating, especially when many of those publishers (across Canada, not just in Canlit) would actively try to dissuade anyone from starting new presses or getting into the business because, they said, it was just so hard and times had changed. But for a long time I fell for the idea that all of that was just how it was and it wouldn't change, so I just had to be tough about it and deal if I was going to stick with writing.

This has all been changing lately, something that makes me beyond happy. I selfishly wish true inclusivity had come much earlier, but I honestly believe it's coming now and I have to believe it will continue—in the community, in writing itself, in representation at events, and in publishing.

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

Because the arts scene here is smaller than in Toronto or Vancouver, for example, there has often been more overlap within the arts sector. We interact more across types of readings, styles of writing, genres, etc. than I think we see elsewhere. I hope this only continues to happen more and more because it makes for both richer community and richer writing and thinking.

This town is built on institutions and hierarchy, with two universities, the seat of federal power, vast bureaucracies, NGO headquarters, and carefully tended festivals and organizations behind its activities. The people who remain in charge at the municipal and NCC level are obsessed with structure, from tidying away the homeless to paving everything in sight, to requiring forms for almost anything a person could think to do, particularly anything creative. I think that's soothing for some people, and we have, among the more creative history here, also seen a lot of wait-until-I-retire art and very safe writing about farm fences and tea kettles as a result. 

I think, though, veering into what it allows, that all of this gives us a great opportunity for counterpoint, to bring and keep creativity alive, to welcome boundary-breaking thinkers to our capital, to smash the walls built around this unceded valley through centuries of complacency and tidy oppression, and overthrow the systems that keep all but the one percent struggling at the same time that we destroy our own futures and the futures of the planet in a feedback loop of bureaucracy, capitalism and short-term-survival mentalities. Hah. How's that for potential? A girl can dream, right? 

If what I'm seeing from poets coming up now, like Natalie Hanna, Sneha Madhavan-Reese, Marilyn Irwin, Manahil Bandukwala, Barȃa Arar, nina jane drystek, Ian Martin, and writers like Jay Odjick, Cait Gordon, Nathan Burgoine, James K. Moran (full disclosure: my spouse), and Amal El-Mohtar, and from who and what I'm hearing when I go to open mics, the city is full of brilliant and diverse writers ready to turn things on their head. The key will be finding ways to keep this brilliance here so we can build and sustain that momentum. Thankfully, we're seeing more diverse, open presses, like Renaissance Press, and reading series, like Shery Alexander Heinis's In Our Tongues, that could help with that. I hope this is all a sign of things to come, because it would be a great turning point for Ottawa if we started to give our trans, queer, BIPOC, disabled, etc. writers and readers reasons to truly believe it's possible and worthwhile to make a go of it here, that this is a place that can feed artistic growth instead of put a fence around it, label it and let it whither. (Yeesh, I am very into the fences and walls motif in this interview, aren’t I?)

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?

Absolutely. Sometimes negatively, in the ways outlined above. But also positively. Many of my first publications and writing projects were through local presses like above/ground press and One Cent, and I've been lucky to receive grants from the City of Ottawa, and to read at various local reading series over the years. I've been in local anthologies and taken part in broader anthologies and projects that I only came to know about through the local writing community. I've collaborated with, not to mentioned learned a lot about poetry from, various local writers, professors, reading organizers, etc. I'm about to work on a collaborative piece with a fellow local, bi author, for example. I feel that every event I've engaged with in Ottawa has fed into my own understanding, and thereby my writing, in one way or another.

I think for a long time, again for the reasons mentioned, much of my engagement with the community's old guard, and its visiting professorial male poets from Montreal, etc., made me wary about my own knowledge and skills, so also more tentative in my work. Through the gift of timing, I am getting older (and caring less what any old guard thinks) at the same time that I am seeing more opportunities, potential and openness towards diverse voices in Ottawa and more widely. I'm excited about the conversations I have here nowadays, and the projects I'm asked to participate in (from sound poetry performance to publishing with new local presses).

Q: What are you working on now?

I'm finishing the latest draft of my novel, and have been writing short stories, as well as the rare poem. I find myself publishing more creative nonfiction lately, which is perhaps a bit of a full circle or some sort of return, at least, to my more journalistic roots. I’ve been putting more effort into non-arts organizing, as well, focusing mostly on LGBTQ2IA+ rights and, in particular, bi/pan rights and visibility, as well as mental health issues and awareness.