Six Questions interview #75 : Susan McMaster

Ottawa poet Susan McMaster’s work is published in some 40 poetry books, anthologies, publications, translations, and recordings with First Draft, SugarBeat, Geode Music & Poetry, and Solstice. She’s the founding editor of Branching Out, the first national feminist/arts magazine, and of Vernissage, the magazine of the National Gallery of Canada. McMaster is a former president of the League of Canadian Poets.

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

– I came to Ottawa as a 5-year-old in 1956 with my parents and 3 brothers and sisters (the 4th and 5th were born here). We were a Quakers – pacifists – and my parents wanted to join another family from Toronto to increase the size of the very small Meeting here, and to establish a "peace lobby" to talk to Parliament. My husband Ian and I spent four years in Edmonton in our twenties for his graduate school, and then we returned to Ottawa. All in all, I've lived here for more than six decades.

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

– Some early Tree readings, hosted by Chris Levenson (also a sometime Quaker) in 1980, were held in the Quaker Meeting House on Fourth Avenue. I'd taken poetry courses in Edmonton with David Schleich at Free University North,  and with Doug Barbour and W.O. Mitchell at the University of Alberta, so I was delighted to be part of Tree from the beginning. I also took Chris's course at Carleton, and joined his poetry group, meeting such poets as Jane Jordan, Blaine Marchand, Ronnie Brown, Stephen Brockwell, Diana Brebner, Colin Morton (whom I first saw read at Tree), Karen Massey, David McFadden, Heather Spears, Michael Dennis, Stephanie Bolster, Steven Heighton, John Barton, and too many more to mention (forgive me, friends). Marty Flomen and Markus Jokinen started Tree and then Orion, and Colin and Mary Lee Bragg published my first book, Dark Galaxies, with their press Ouroboros. After a few years, the community of writers began to expand, including rob mclennan, who came, if I remember correctly, around 1988 [ed. note: in fact, September 1989].

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

– Well, for one thing, we workshopped, a continuing process that added and still adds greatly to my knowledge and craft. And we talked, how we talked! Some started to come to the weekly meetings of the intermedia group First Draft, with Andrew McClure and me: Colin, David Parsons, Nan Cormier, Peter Thomas, and many others, along with musicians, artists, and even a dancer. Based on Andrew's new notation for multiple spoken voice, we developed a performance poetry form dubbed wordmusic. We then performed these group works all through the 1980s, around Ottawa, in Toronto and Elora and Kingston among other spots, and across Canada on a CC tour; broadcast and recorded; and published two score/poetry books with Underwhich Editions and a multimedia book with Ouroboros. Good times! I've been a enthusiastic collaborator with artists of all kinds ever since.

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

– What's remarkable about Ottawa is that it's big enough to have a wide variety of poets – all ages all backgrounds all styles all motivations -- and an equally varied set of audiences, series and publishers. At the same time, it's not so big that poets tend to conglomerate into separate smaller groups that don't have much to do with each other, and sometimes have issues with each other. In Ottawa, I feel that every poet, novice or ancient, paper or electronic, is part of the same community. Movers and shakers, publishers and organizers like rob and Claudia Radmore (and many others!) make this happen. We work together, respect each other, taste each other's work in a wide range of reading series, publications, and events. It's a very active and accepting place for poets and poetry.

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 think I would have been swept off the platform in a bigger city by all the famous poetry stars. Like so many of us, I suffered a lot from lack of confidence and anxiety about my poetry as a young writer. It was because there weren't that many of us, and most without a published book, that I felt I could take the risk of started to try to publish and read. Also, the whole Ottawa community was very supportive. The few senior poets, like George Johnson and Carol Shields, mentored us and offered a warm environment in which to work and learn. The media at the universities and CBC paid attention to our work. It was because there not much was happening that we had space to do things and try things. Some of this appears in my 2007 book The Gargoyle's Left Ear: Writing in Ottawa.

Q: What are you working on now?

– I never could do crosswords -- I don't know enough words! – so one day I tried a Sudoku, and enjoyed seeing all the numbers fall into place. I've always liked math: there's something simple and elegant about it, like poetry. First hit in my Sudoku addiction! But 9 numbers aren’t very expressive. One day I wondered what would happen if the squares were filled not with numbers, but with words. So that's what I'm working on now -- Sudoku poems.