Too True

Glossolalia has been out in the world for almost a year now and has garnered a modest bit of attention. I keep planning on posting all the reviews and interviews I've received and given in support of my wives, not so much for bragging rights, but mostly so that I have them all together. Soon, I hope.

One of my favourite things I've done since Glossolalia was published is a reading and panel discussion with some of my favourite poets: Jennica Harper, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Amber Dawn, and moderated by Gillian Jerome. Gillian did a great job asking difficult questions, and I think the ensuing discussion was provocative.

It's about an hour and a half long, so make sure you have a pot of tea and a hearty snack beside you if you plan on watching it all in one sitting. If you do watch it all, let me know what you think. I'd love to keep the discussion going.

dear weekend, please don't ever end

This weekend has been busy, filled with the best kind of busy, celebrations and milestones, punctuated with warm weather and cherry blossoms. My eldest turned seven on Thursday and that night we had a family birthday celebration, with the next day his friend party with six friends from school. The next day was my sister's wedding, and the next was Easter and my youngest's first egg hunt. My middle child discovered his first loose tooth on Thursday evening, too. I also made from scratch for the first time Angel Food cake, creme anglaise, and a pavlova. There was tide-pool exploring, kite-flying, and playground visiting crammed into this glorious weekend, too. Oh, and that radio interview happened, too.

Today, my husband wanted to listen to it and I found it for him then hid in the bathroom when I heard my voice. Eventually, I returned to the living room and listened to the rest of the interview with my family. I didn't come across as awkward as I had felt, my nervous laughter wasn't grating, and my tick of starting every sentence with "Umm..." wasn't nearly as pronounced as I had feared.

If you're curious, you can listen here. There is a long musical interlude at the start, so if you want to get right to it, skip to the 2:00 mark.

Initiation Trilogy: Gay Vancouver

Last week I did an email interview with Mark from Gay Vancouver. Here's a snippet:

How did you land on the three pieces that are part of the show?

As soon as I realized that I wanted to adapt three works of poetry, I knew immediately it would be Glossolalia, What it Feels Like for a Girl, and God of Missed Connections.

As a book, What it Feels Like for a Girl is very dramatic—there is dialogue, there is narrative, there is a climax. It’s a piece that lends itself very well to the stage.

God of Missed Connections is very dramatic in a completely different way. Although it has unifying themes, it’s definitely more of a collection of poetry rather than a narrative. That said, I knew this book quite well and like Glossolalia, many of the poems felt like monologues. I knew I could craft something exciting from it as the book itself is so compelling.

You can read the whole piece here.

Also, I'd like apologize in advance--these next two weeks are going to be very Initiation Trilogy heavy. What can I say, I'm excited!

In Conversation with Carrie Snyder

For the past few weeks, I've been having an email conversation with Carrie Snyder, author of The Juliet Stories. Carrie Snyder was born in Hamilton and grew up in Ohio, Nicaragua, and Ayr, Ontario. Her first book, Hair Hat, was nominated for the Danuta Gleed Award for Short Fiction. She lives in Waterloo with her husband and four children.

If you haven't read The Juliet Stories yet, please search it out. I loved this book and I think you will, too. Now, grab yourself a hot tea and perhaps a little snack.

Marita: Thanks for agreeing to chat with me about The Juliet Stories. I really enjoyed the book and I want to talk about it without giving too much away as it goes some interesting and unexpected places. In your acknowledgements, you wrote that you went to Nicaragua to research a different book, but came away with a vision for this one. Can you talk about how that trip and where you were in your writing life at that time?

Carrie: Before we took that research trip, I was unprepared and unwilling to consider writing about material that had an obvious autobiographical connection -- and yet it was an obvious autobiographical connection that had me interested in the country in the first place. But it wasn't until we were in Nicaragua again, and until I had a long conversation with a woman who had worked with my parents back in the 1980s, and had stayed and made Nicaragua her home, that I realized the story I wanted to tell was much closer to my own. The idea came to me on the flight home, and I turned to my husband and said, I think I have to write a completely different book. I needed permission, I think. I needed someone to remind me that our family had taken part in that moment in time, that we were a piece of another country's history. Just a fragment, just a thread, but yes. We were there. It was okay to want to go back and tell that story. It wasn't disrespectful to the people of Nicaragua. I wasn't stealing someone else's story. I think I had/have a horror of colonizing someone else's story.

In my writing life at that time, I was weary. I'd published Hair Hat, I'd given birth to my third child, I was attempting a volume of poetry, and I'd abandoned a long and rewritten-many-times-over black romantic comedy. The Nicaragua book was pitched as a Heart of Darkness-type journey into the jungle, and it earned a Canada Council grant, and so we got to travel to Nicaragua. And thank God. Because along came Juliet (eventually...even after the aha moment it was slow going).

Marita: Oh, I know slow going! Having a brood of my own now, I am amazed that you have been able to write fiction with young ones, slow going or not. I just can't get in the right head space to work on the novel I've been trying to work on for the last five years. Poetry I can fit into the small clips of time I get. How were you able to maintain the head space needed to write fiction while in the baby trenches? And I'm curious about the choice of the structure of a 'novel-in-stories' and when that came up during the creative process.

Carrie: What a question. I want the answer myself, right now, as I feel so distracted by the publicity demands in the immediate aftermath of releasing the book. But I did have a few strategies that worked. Time is the obvious obstacle when you're home with young children. But you don't just need time to physically sit at a desk and work, you need mental time to work out ideas too. And when you're getting just a few hours a day, or a few hours a week, you're trying to cram that mental time in with the physical time, and it can feel just ... overwhelming. The task is so enormous. Writing a book requires keeping all these balls in the air, the overarching machinery, the individual storylines and relationships. And you've two hours to hack out a scene that works. It takes the first hour to get up to speed, to go over the work done the previous time, especially when there are long breaks in between writing time; and then you're rolling; and then time's up again. The frustration of this cycle is almost unbearable.

So I realized I needed writing weeks. (In fact, I need to schedule a few for this year, come to think of it.) With a full week (and I like to include the weekends on either end, if possible), there is time to do the thinking and the writing, to take those reflective pauses without panicking. All the consecutive hours build on each other. It's also a really fabulous way to flirt with insanity. The first writing span we tried, we managed two weeks. I almost lost my mind. But I got a full MS out of the exercise. Unfortunately, it was the black romantic comedy that never got off the ground. Still, I'd discovered how to get the work done.

In practical terms, my husband takes over the meal planning and organizing, the to-and-froing, we hire extra babysitting, friends pick up a lot of the slack, and that's how a writing week works. It's a lot of pressure, but the pressure doesn't seem to bother me. It's motivating.

That said, I do think the novel-in-stories form made the book more manageable to write. I did write the material as a novel in its earliest drafts. Basically all of that material was ultimately scrapped, very little remains. I remember when I finally wrote a story rather than a chapter -- and it was from Juliet's perspective. Actually, it was "Rat," the first story in the book. I really resisted doing it. I didn't want to write a second book of linked stories. What if this is where I get stuck? But when I let myself do it, it just made sense. I didn't write the stories chronologically, not at all. I filled in gaps and made discoveries as I went. Characters shifted, and then I would go back and alter earlier stories in order for everything to make sense. I wonder whether the same strategy could work for novel-writing. Hm. You've got me thinking, Marita. It definitely made the prospect of creating a whole book feel less overwhelming, writing it almost on an as-needed basis.

Marita: Hang on, you got a whole manuscript out of two weeks of writing?! That's amazing. Do you think you'll go back to the black romantic comedy, or is that one shelved indefinitely?

Carrie: Yes, I got a whole manuscript out of two weeks of intensive non-stop writing -- but the ms was already half-written before I began, and I had the storyline largely plotted out. And it was a very rough draft indeed. It's shelved forever. It's of its time, and it's already out of date, and best left behind. I kept a copy, of course. And I've read it since, and found it entertaining, if slight; not to mention it's got problematic plot issues that wouldn't be easy to resolve; and so, goodbye little book. I've had to say goodbye to several over the years. Not everything works out.

Marita: I have to admit that for the first half of the book, I didn't get the novel-in-stories label. I thought it was simply a novel, but then I started the second half and it was clear.

Carrie: I'm starting to wonder whether we should have labelled the book anything at all. (Though I suppose that's required, isn't it!) Readers have been telling me that it reads like a novel. I did write each chapter as an individual story, and I think that architecture shows itself more clearly in the second half, but perhaps by then readers are deeply into the book and have already accepted it as a novel. What is a novel anyway? A story that follows specific characters through a unifying plot? Juliet fits. And maybe it doesn't matter how the book was written, maybe it matters much more how it's read and received. If people prefer to read it as a novel, maybe we should change the label on the back of the book ...

Marita: Don't change the label! I think it fits. It doesn't have the same neat and tidy ending that many novels need and it's not a collection of stories. They are linked and novel-esque. I think it's apt.

It's interesting to know that 'Rat' was the first story you wrote for the book. I really loved that one, it was such a great introduction to the world and characters. One thing that struck me was your portrayal of Gloria. I don't know how to succinctly describe my initial reaction to her other than she seemed so real, such an accurate portrayal of a mother. Do I admit that I saw myself in her? I guess I just did. I don't see that enough in literature.

I'm sure many readers will assume that much of you is in Juliet which I am sure is the case, but I'd love to hear about your relationship with Gloria. How she evolved as a character. Your feelings towards her. Her representation of the maternal in The Juliet Stories and what that might mean.

Carrie: Gloria may just be my favourite character in the book. She's complex, she changes, she's got depth and talent, and she's big -- a big difficult personality. I said in another interview that I wouldn't want Gloria to be my own mother. But that said, she's got a lot of me and my mothering in her. I find it interesting that you saw yourself in her too. In what ways particularly, could you tell me? Over the years that I was writing the book, Gloria, the mother-figure, changed more than any other character from my initial conception -- once I decided she would be a musician and performer, she moved into new territory, and frankly it was territory that struck close to home. The artist/mother. I wanted to treat her fairly and honestly, and I have sympathy for the difficulty of that balancing act. I sense a ruthlessness in myself sometimes that wouldn't be seen as motherly. My kids standing at my elbow begging for attention -- and what do I do? I tell them to go away. Is it cruel to send them away -- even knowing they're in the care of another? Will my children remember this about me, and suffer from it? I don't know. It troubles me sometimes, but then I could never have written this book without being that intensely focused -- to the exclusion of everything else, including my children. That's difficult to admit.

Marita: There is so much about Gloria that I can see in myself. We're both somewhat sloppy--ready to pull out the breast at any time which is as much for comforting ourselves as it is for the child; we're messy--we'd both rather be doing something much more interesting than housekeeping; we're quick to drop the role of mother when opportunity calls--there are a few scenes in which Gloria is at a party or with other adults and happily loses track of her children, assuming others will keep an eye on them, so she can soak up the adult attention she's been craving (this may be me projecting a little, but there you have it!). She also believes that she and her family are not as important to her husband as his job and I can recognize all the frustration in what carries. (I should stress here that I only feel that way at times, when I joke that I'm a theatre-widow. Short spurts for me versus a relative lifetime for Gloria.) I feel like she feels like she doesn't have enough control over her own life, and I can definitely relate to that. So yes, I understand Gloria.

I don't think it's cruel to send them away. I think it's important for children to know that parents have lives outside of them and for them to see parents at work. It will give them great perspective for when they are older.

Carrie: I love the connections you've made to Gloria, some of which I also can claim for myself. (And it's so true, isn't it--that sometimes breastfeeding is as comforting for the mother as for the baby; there can be a real give-and-take relationship between mother and baby, and it's not really talked about much at all. Breastfeeding tends to be presented as something the mother does for her baby, kind of sacrificial, rather than being a mutually beneficial act. Sigh. I miss breastfeeding. And now we've officially strayed into serious mommy territory ...)

You mentioned being a theatre-widow, and I think in my own marriage it's the opposite--my husband has to be a writing-widower from time to time. And that's a difficult thing to ask of someone else. Though I'm not sure Bram, in the book, has any real awareness that he's asking anything special of his wife and family. Which may also be of the era. I hope the times they are a changin'.

Marita: I wanted to ask you about the photo of Gloria that is mentioned in "Photograph Never Taken". Is there a specific photo you had in mind? Reading the description, I thought that I knew that photo, but then I thought, no, that photograph is a figment of your imagination and you just did a great job in describing it.

Carrie: Ah, the photograph. You are the second interviewer to ask that exact question, which makes me rather pleased, I must admit. Because it means the photograph must seem very real. No, it's not. It's the invention of my imagination. I had some difficulty finessing the description. I wanted it to be general enough that the reader could fill in the blanks, but specific enough to be highly evocative. I'm glad it worked. To talk a little further about the photograph, I wanted to comment on what it's like to be the subject of someone else's artistic expression, and how little the end result may relate to reality. Someone pointed out that there are a number of photographs in the book; that wasn't deliberate, but I love the medium, and I love what it can do. Its dual nature seems almost magical. Transformative. And yet capable of capturing a moment, pinning down time.

Marita: That's interesting that the photograph has come up before! Congratulations on conjuring an iconic photo through prose! I was Juliet's age in 1984, so I really wasn't sure. There are images I come across as an adult that are from my youth that I don't remember seeing for the first time, but know I must have at some point. Memory can be a funny thing.

Last year, you did the 365 project. Did that impact the writing of The Juliet Stories or did the interest in writing about photography inspire you to take on the project?

Carrie: The 365 project was undertaken largely on a whim -- a friend told me about it. (I should add that the project's aim was to take an original self-portrait for 365 consecutive days.) My husband had just given me a new camera with a beautiful lens for my birthday, and I was trying to learn how to use it on a purely technical level; but I also wanted to figure out how to construct better photographs. The 365 project was immensely helpful in both regards. If you compare the early photos to the later photos there is such a difference in quality -- and even in imaginative narrative (because, as I discovered to my great pleasure, photos tell stories too). I also learned how to be a subject. The project underscored my belief in daily discipline as an educational method (it's exactly how I learned to write). I began looking at photographs differently. It opened my eyes to the art form. And I stuck with it and took 365 photos. The appeal is simple: I have a visual mind with no physical talent for artistic expression. ie. I can't draw to save my life. So I've always had to filter these vivid visuals in my brain through words instead. But I love the immediacy of a picture. My camera has freed that part of my brain.

There were several specific photographs that underpinned the writing of the book (none of which are actually described in the book, come to think of it). One is of a young contra soldier. Another is an iconic photo of a young revolutionary soldier breastfeeding her baby with an AK-47 slung over her shoulder. And another is of a revolutionary leader celebrating after the fall of the dictatorship. All Nicaraguans. I kept these photos on my desk while I worked, and they pre-date the 365 project. But the scene where Gloria is photographed arrived during the 365. I have no doubt it was a result of the 365. Portraiture was on my mind.

Marita: I'm reading Hair Hat right now and like in The Juliet Stories, your portrayal of the parent/child relationship is incredibly accurate. I don't see this done well often enough. Am I reading the wrong books or do you agree? Which writers and books would you hold up as being great explorations of this relationship? I read the brilliant We Need to Talk About Kevin last year and it was so much about relationships between parents and children and between spouses, but I'm thinking of books that are less extreme.

Carrie: About parent/child relationships in books, I'm at a loss to think of examples of inspiring explorations of the relationship in literature. There must be, and maybe I'm just reading the wrong books too! I read We Need to Talk About Kevin a number of years ago, and it did feel like an accurate portrayal of maternal love, but you're right -- that's within an extreme context. King Lear just flashed into my mind. A lot of my favourite characters are orphans, or estranged from their parents. Alice Munro has some early stories about young motherhood with moments that struck home for me. But even in these, the children are at some distance, somehow, from the mother's story; or vice versa. Not that I mind. I'm just struggling to pull up an example.

I view the relationship like any other. There is drama in the give and take. There are opportunities for both mother and child to be loving or neglectful. I approach my characters with compassion and empathy; that's my method. I open myself to them and try to understand. People are complicated and messy and contradictory and there is always more sleeping under the surface than can be guessed. The intersection between characters is an opportunity to both bring more to the surface AND to bury more too; these revelations/suppressions can occur simultaneously. And the mother/child relationship is absolutely loaded with history. It's incredibly rich material to work with, and all the richer when both parties are given voice. I strongly disliked The Descendents (the movie) because it gave the mother no opportunity to define herself; and that's such a cliche in literature. The absent mother being examined and blamed; or unexamined and exalted. Mothers are much more interesting than that.

Marita: "The absent mother being examined and blamed; or unexamined and exalted. Mothers are much more interesting than that." YES! I agree, and not just because I'm a mother, I'd like to add, but because I have a mother and the older I get, the more I realize how complex she is. Which I feel like is a stupid thing to say, of course my mother is complex--all people are complex, but I think it's just a continuation of the separation of baby and mother. How at first babies don't know that their mother is not actually part of them and I guess we spend years and years pushing away (oh, my heart broke a little writing that!) until we're fully our own person out in the world.

I disagree that the parent/child relationship is like any other. I feel like it is deeper and much more complex. There's the saying, "of course your mother knows how to push your buttons, she installed them!" It's a tricky relationship to write about because of all that history. Perhaps that's why there are so many orphans in literature.

Carrie: First I have to get into the idea of whether the parent/child relationship is like any other -- I have to because I'm finding myself very resistant to what you're saying. And usually if something bothers me, or I have a particularly visceral reaction against it, it's a clue that I need to explore further. It means I'm closing my mind to something important, something I'd rather not face -- usually. And I've thought about this overnight and my conclusion is that I dearly wish the parent/child relationship were like any other because I can't bear the thought of being that important to my children. Do you know what I mean? I think there's more, too. I've observed parent/child relationships of fairly extreme dysfunction, and I want for both the child and the parent to be able to live free from that burden, that sense of failure if their primary formative relationship is deeply estranged. Also, I do genuinely believe all relationships have the potential to be exquisitely complex; it's just that the parent/child relationship is cast that way from the very moment we're born, and there's no escaping its complexity and its history.

Marita: When The Juliet Stories ends, Juliet is a young mother herself. We only get a glimpse of her in this role. What kind of mother do you think she is? (I know this is speculative and a lot of people just rolled their eyes at me, but I can't help but feel like this is something you already know.) And why did you end at that point in her life?

Carrie: I think Juliet is an excellent mother in many ways, and a terrified mother in others. She's protective of her babies, but she's afraid to let them go, too. She cannot imagine living the life her own parents chose. And I think that grieves her; she admires their courage and regrets her own caution. She's been adrift and children have rooted her to something. I've actually refrained from imagining Juliet past this stage in her life. Her life could go so many different directions. Her children will grow, that's a given. How will she cope? Will she feel herself becoming unrooted, again, as they mature and push her away? Or will she walk across the street and open herself to the many lives and calls around her, as in the story Disruption?

My own children are now 10, 9, 6, and 4, and I've seen my mothering friends, those who are a few steps ahead of me, pass through this time and come out the other side with amazing new conviction and determination. If I were imagining anything for Juliet, it would be that. My friends don't necessarily choose to continue with the careers they'd started before having children -- many have switched direction, even quite drastically. They've gone back to school, retrained, or simply re-imagined themselves. Having children has given me a sense of urgency, of time passing -- not in a bad way or a scary way, but in a seize-the-day way. Juliet's passion is waiting for her. I hope. I feel in the last story that she's stepping away from the things in her past that have been burdens, that she's seeing them for what they are -- the beautiful remains of her life. Hers.

For a long while the book ended on a different last line, one that came after the one that stands there now. It went like this: "Tell me, for I need to know, what remains?" And I think that question will propel Juliet forward rather than back. It's a question we're all asking. The first section of the newspaper that I turn to is the obituaries -- not necessarily the big reporter-written obits, but the small ones published by family members. If we could choose, what of our being do we want left behind? What memories? What remains?

Marita: Are you done with Juliet, or do you think we'll get stories of her middle aged and elderly in the future?

Carrie: I can't imagine writing more Juliet stories. I felt like the last story in the book was my goodbye to Juliet. What do you think? Do you imagine more Juliet? Do you wish she would return? Literary fiction doesn't tend toward sequels, but even so, the thought really never crossed my mind. That said, I would never say never.

Marita: I don't think I'd want a sequel, but when I finished The Juliet Stories, I was sad that I had to say good-bye. I'm that kind of reader, the type who will cry at the end of a book, not because it's sad, but because it is over and even if I reread the book, I won't have that same experience again.

I've been thinking about Juliet a lot since reading your book and I realized that she might be the only protagonist that I've read that is exactly my age (except for another character in Hat Hair). No wonder I'm so attached to her! Even if she had a very different childhood than mine, in some ways, she is me. I want to know how it all works out for her. What's she like when she's deep into middle age? Or has adult children herself? How she faces retirement? Being elderly? I don't necessarily want to read all those stories, but that won't stop me from imagining her getting older as I do.

All that said, I do hope that perhaps she'll show up as a secondary character somewhere later in your writing career, maybe in a book you write twenty years from now. Someone's mother-in-law, or a neighbour, or a patient in palliative care. A reward for the devoted reader.

I want to ask you probably at least a dozen more questions, but this feels like a good place to end. Before we wrap it up completely, can you talk about your next project and how that relates to The Juliet Stories?

Carrie: Ah, my next project. I've been so overwhelmed with launching Juliet that I'm just beginning to think in practical terms about the next project. In the interim, to tide myself over between blog posts and Juliet-related writing gigs, I've been working on a book for children, a silly fun-to-write bit of text. And I've been sketching new ideas, plots, characters, but none are fleshed out very thoroughly; that will take time. It's daunting to imagine committing to a new character and plot, and I don't mind confessing that.

When I think about my next book, I reflect on how it will build on my previous work. Will I be forever a writer of linked stories? That is not my current plan. What is a "Carrie Snyder" book? What overall mood do I wish to evoke? What kind of story do I want to tell? Right now, I'm thinking about Ann Patchett's work as I shape this next book out in my mind -- specifically the fluidity with which she compresses and stretches time in her telling. I'm also thinking about generosity and love and compassion. It sounds hokey, but I want to write books that make readers more open to the possibilities around them -- in their own lives, and in the lives of others.

I want what I write to bring some small good into the world. I want it to express a strong, loving, forgiving moral core.

I'm too superstitious to talk specifically about the character and plot I've chosen to focus on, but I will say that I'm starting with research because the book will be set in the past (before Juliet was born, so she can't make a cameo appearance this time, though I like the idea of her turning up again many years on). My husband and I have booked one writing week per month for the next three months, which will give me a chance to play more deeply with my ideas. I hope I'm brave enough, honestly. I know how much gets thrown out in the process of writing a book, and it can be tough to begin knowing that. I have to remind myself that no effort goes to waste, that it is all toward the larger cause, and that discovery happens because one is willing to explore. I'm inspired by stories of scientists and inventors who set off on utterly hopeless causes and whose work may have been for naught, or who failed to receive credit for their discoveries, but who persevered nevertheless. (Bill Bryson writes wonderfully on the subject, if you're interested: A Short History of Nearly Everything, and At Home.)

Here is the other thing I've been thinking about lately, as I approach the next project. I've been thinking about how so much of Juliet felt like a gift. When people say, "I don't know how you do it!" (meaning write and publish a book while mothering four children, etc., etc.) I've been thinking that the answer really is that the credit isn't mine -- I did none of it alone. (And I'm not just talking about the huge amount of practical help I received from friends and family and especially my husband; I'm talking about something more mysterious.) Writing The Juliet Stories was an act of faith. I opened myself up to the possibility of Juliet, and I was there to receive the words when they were given. Now I'm sounding beyond hokey. I'm not belittling my own effort and work, but I believe there is something other in the writing process. Something beyond me. Something I can't decide to grab. I have to recognize it when it comes, and accept it, and place it, and polish it, and cherish it. And give it away again.

So, how do I prepare myself for that level of effort and focus all over again? I'm wrestling with that. Is my spirit open enough right now? Can I approach the work with real hope and belief that something beautiful is waiting to be discovered -- and by me? Can I approach it with lightness too? This is what I hope, Marita.

In Conversation: Jenna Butler

Time to make another pot of tea, dear readers. I had an email conversation with friend and poet, Jenna Butler, after she so kindly recorded "Inter-Tribal" from Aphelion for me. It was one of those conversations that I didn't want to end. Please take a listen and enjoy!

Jenna Butler was born in Norwich, England in 1980. An educator, book reviewer, editor and poet, Butler has edited more than twenty-five collections of poetry in Canada and England. She is the author of four short collections, Forcing Bloom, weather, Winter Ballast, and Nyctogram: The Lewis Carroll Poems, in addition to a recently-released full-length collection from NeWest Press, Aphelion. A fifth short collection, Lepidopterists, is forthcoming in 2011. She teaches Creative Writing at MacEwan University in Edmonton during the school year; in the summer, she lives with her husband, three resident moose, and a den of coyotes on a small organic farm in the north country.



Jenna, thank-you for reading “Inter-Tribal”. It is such a rich poem and I have so much I want to ask you, but can you start by talking about why you chose this poem to read? Does it represent something of aphelion or do you simply like to read it?

I chose "Inter-Tribal" because it encapsulates, I think, what Aphelion is about: the notion of trying to find home amongst so many places, cultures, and people. That sense of walking between cultures is one I have been deeply aware of all my life, not just in my own history, but in the histories of many other friends here in Canada. The inter-tribal dance at the Songhees Pow-wow I wrote about invoked a number of things for me: my mother's lost history in Tanzania as a child, my father's home in rural England that he left behind when he came to Canada with my mother, and my own background split between Canada, rural England, and a history in Tanzania that I never knew. Through my father's work in Alberta and many First Nations friends through the years, I grew up around a number of First Nations stories and traditions, and those really resonate with me. So when the inter-tribal dance was called at that pow-wow, I found myself dancing all that varied history and all my senses of home, from the landscapes that draw me to the people who anchor my heart. Walking those margins between cultures, hearing so many different people's stories, is a place I am very honoured to be. It's a generative place.


You say it so clearly in the second to last stanza "we dance......what hold us/sustains us......sends us on". As the daughter of two immigrants who came from very different backgrounds, this really resonated with me.

But I want to go back to the beginning of the poem. “Inter-Tribal” starts and ends with ravens. What do they mean to you?

Raven is the trickster figure; for me, it is also the mediator between worlds, between cultures. The raven that danced over the pow-wow circle is the same one that dances over my north country organic farm. It is the one that appears, also, throughout Norse and Celtic legend. It connects all my homes. The raven embodies for me the liminal space of the bridge between cultures and ways of life.

It's interesting that you use the word 'liminal'. When I was at the Writing Studio in Banff, a fellow poet was working on a manuscript that explored the theme of liminal spaces and one poem of hers that I still remember focused on the magpie, another corvid, as a liminal creature. This reminds me of someone on FB asking a few months ago if we all have a corvid poem in us. I know that Ted Hughes did Crow, but do you think there is something inherently Canadian about corvids? Are we a liminal country? And what else is "part of the deeper dark," in the last stanza of your poem?

Gosh, that's a can of worms -- Canada as a liminal country. I'm going to respond to your questions backward:

I guess my response would be yes, I think there's definitely a sense of heightened awareness of borders in Canada (between cultures). We're not unique in being aware of that liminality, but I do believe we're in a more privileged state to acknowledge it and constructively learn from it. And it is so very necessary. If I can share a story with you, my parents chose to come to Canada because they thought it would be a safe place in which to raise the children of a multicultural marriage. I think it was a relief for them to live in a place where most people around them were also "from away," relative newcomers, trying to retain their own cultures while also trying to find some sort of community. We're always engaging with the touch-and-go nature of borders in this country. Some are more fluid; some kick back. There are times when we succeed in navigating those borders between cultures respectfully; there are times when we fail.

I suspect that there's an element of the go-between to corvids; they do appear in so many cultures already. I don't want to generalize and say that Canadian writers inherently reach for crows, magpies, & so forth because there's a "shiftiness" to them, a bridging nature. I can only speak for myself here -- I reach for ravens because they're go-betweens, but they have that underlying darkness, too. It's the "deeper dark" you picked out of the ending of "Inter-Tribal" -- that blackness outside the brightly lit dancing circle. For me, that dark is the danger of not knowing your stories, where you come from. Not having that very elemental grounding.

There are some lines in Inter-tribal that really struck me, particularly "the trucks racket in/like wagons", "bitter lengths of coffee farms", and "a gleaming rind of moon". Can you talk about how one or all of these lines came to be--careful crafting, happy accident, divine intervention?

Glad you liked them!

I'm really attuned to sound when I write. When I draft lines, everything is about playing an image off the sound it makes, the sounds it incorporates. I cut and cut and cut if the line isn't exact in the ear.

For example, the hard ts in "trucks racket" cause the sounds to jolt off one another like the trucks jouncing over rough ground. The double ts and fs of "bitter lengths of coffee farms" extend the line visually on the page, mimicking the stands of plants reaching off into the distance. And in "gleaming rind of moon," the sounds of the rounded gs play off the full os in "moon" -- I'm reaching for something full-bellied here, replete and glinting, implied by the sickle curve of the crescent moon. I get really focused on line breaks, too -- where to cut the sound, how to play with the resonances present within/between images. I have synaesthesia, so I'm hypersensitive to sound/colour anyway; I'm sure that has something to do with the aural quality of the lines being so important.

I didn't know you had synaesthesia! Fascinating. I was going to comment on all the colours in the poem, too, how very present they are--black, red, bronze, blue are all named, but even more are alluded, too. It's very visual. You mentioned the importance of getting the aural qualities right in the lines; I'm curious how synaesthesia plays into the crafting of your work, both in a general sense and specifically “Inter-Tribal”.

I think it underwrites all my poetry. I'm constantly reading word combinations and lines aloud as I write, trying to get the cadence right, probably because sound is such a focus in this type of synaesthesia. I see different volumes as shades of a colour; for instance, a bolded word on the page, read louder, evokes a more saturated hue than a word in regular type. I perceive music in the same way, with volumes and pitches at different hues.

Because there's this constant focus on colour, I think the various names of tones make their way into my writing, as you pointed out. I'm always striving to capture the exact sense of a hue. For instance, in Aphelion, there's a poem, "Wild Indigo," where the colour of the plant in the dry midsummer garden is described as being "dusty blue/like sky or midwinter stars." I find myself grasping at colours, sometimes flailing when the right words don't come. It's not just a blue -- it's a smoke blue or a wild flax blue or a delphinium blue. In the poem "Petroglyph Trail," the sunlight's not just amber, it's citrine. How best to describe it without overloading -- that's the catch. I'm writing the same colours into the poems that I'm seeing in my mind's eye as I go through the day, listening. I can get really hung up on colour -- probably because I walk around with it in my head all the time!

In "Inter-Tribal" specifically, I use a lot of os throughout. Aurally, I find them expansive, and the poem's trying to evoke the sense of a lighted place pinned against a vast, dark backdrop. There's the sound element. To reinforce, I use several colour tones -- "blue air/rigged with smoke" -- in the wording of the poem; the visual element.

This probably sounds really "out there," sorry -- I haven't explained synaesthesia in my writing to anyone before! It's a strange internalized process I go through.

In Conversation: Ariel Gordon

Welcome to the inaugural of what I hope to be a long-running series of conversations with poets about single poems of theirs. If you have any thoughts on what or who you'd like to see in the series, please let me know. And I hope some of you will be inspired to continue the conversation in the comments.

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer whose first book of poetry, Hump, was published in spring 2010 by Palimpsest Press. How to Prepare for Flooding, a collaboration with designer Julia Michaud, is forthcoming from JackPine Press in 2011. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.

Now, grab a fresh cup of tea and listen to Ariel read "Toddle" which appears in Hump, a mash-up of pregnancy-and-mothering poems and urban / nature / love poems that functions as an anti-sentiment manifesto of sorts.



Thank you for reading “Toddle” from Hump and agreeing to chat about it with me. Can you tell me a bit about the inception for this poem?

Strangely, though I remember the moments the poem records, I don't remember much about the crafting of the poem. Which is strange on two counts. Because I usually have a mental inventory of the changes a poem goes through or at least a computerized version of said inventory.

But, as the mother of a four-year-old, I apparently have too many random daycare documents and poems/letters with the word 'toddler' in them to be able to find the first drafts of this poem.

So I'm forced to rely on my memory. And all I remember about the crafting of this poem is that it's conjoined, a Siamese twin of a poem. Which means that it's composed of several short bits that didn't work alone but seemed to work when placed in close proximity. To hum, like finished poems do.

I don't usually write this way. Usually poems come relatively fully formed. Then it's just a matter of pruning, with the ones that work, or discarding, if they don't.

What I can tell you is that, since the girl appears to be approximately a year and a half to two years old in the poem, it was written in bits and pieces sometime between early 2008 and...December 2009, when I submitted the manuscript to Palimpsest. Heh.

One of my favourite parts of the poem is the end, the honey, honey, honey. I loved hearing you read it too, because I was so curious to how you would. It was different from how I read it to myself. Repetition can be hard to pull off well, but so effective when it does. What does repetition of honey in "Toddle" signify to you?

It is one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me and, also, seemed to be the perfect way to end the poem.

I'm curious. How did you read it to yourself?

That's hard to convey in print, but I'll try. I read them softer than the rest of the poem, and much closer together than you did, in a wistful, soothing tone, if that makes any sense.

Hm. I hadn't thought of that. I read them the way I read them, with pauses between each of them, because I want the audience to come away with at least one honey. Since I usually read “Toddle” last if at all, and since the honeys come at the very very end, I pause.

You said that “Toddle” is composed of many short bits that work together, and that this is not how you normally write poems. I'm wondering how you made them work together. Did you work on sounds, images, and rhythm after choosing the pieces, or did you choose the pieces because of certain aspects that worked together? And if so, what stood out to you?

Looking over the poem now, it feels very 'buggy' to me. And not dreamy-dragonfly-pastoral buggy but live-with-us-urban buggy. Also, the first part of the poem - with its syllables battering against the rearview - makes it seem as though there's a swarm in the car and not a distressed kid. My kid.

That's all after-the-fact guessing. Because I didn't make any of those linkages when I was writing all the bits or when I was grafting them together.

The best I can do is that they all seemed to sing in the same key. Now, of course, I regret how parts two and three end on the same note - "your hair / lifts" is too similar to "Your hair & skin / gleaming in the sun / a small sting."

Sometimes, when I'm being careful on time, I cut out part three. Plus, three's hard to read. Especially the first line. And I never know how to read the middle stanza, with its parenthetical aside. It works fine on the page, I think, but I stumble when reading it.

I like how you describe the first section as a swarm. When I read it, it feels dense and I think it's because of the heavy "b" sounds. It works well, and I know how it is being stuck in a car with a toddler who needs desperately to fall asleep and fights it with as much noise as possible. The denseness of sound that fills the car.

I love "your face goes china, goes bone". Can you talk about that line at all?

Also, you mention that you sometimes skip the third section when you read it. I feel sorry for your audience! It feels vital to the flow of the poem. But I understand how some poems just are too difficult to be read aloud, although I don't think this is the case with Toddle. How do you choose your poems for a reading? What's the process? And why do you often end with "Toddle"?

I hafta admit that I love that line. It's a darling I didn't have to kill.

The most mysterious thing about babies is that they turn into waxworks when they fall asleep, as opposed to adults, who sigh and fart and snore and look like they've been stepped on. Anna is very pale and so she'd go very nearly translucent, like bone china or marble.

And this line was the closest I could get to the feeling of watching her in the rearview, all hopped up but also fascinated.

I pick poems for all kinds of reasons. How long I have. Who will be in the audience. How nervous I am. How bored I am with reading the poems I read when I'm nervous.

I like ending with “Toddle” in particular because it's very recent and feels like the best I can do at this moment in time.

It's also a good representation, I think, of who I am as a writer and what I like to talk about: the city, nature, my breasts.

talking about talking about

Over the last month I've been in an email conversation with the lovely Kerry Clare of Pickle Me This fame about talking about talking about motherhood. She asked some difficult questions and I wrote and wrote my way through trying to sound intelligent in my answers. I wish we could have been able to have this conversation over tea and scones, but unfortunately we live provinces apart and consequently we wouldn't have been able to share it with you.

While participating in this email exchange, I realized that there are some topics a person can talk about forever, and for me this is one of them. Here's is the start of our conversation. If you'd like to read the rest, you can find it here.

Kerry: Marita, I think I’m beginning to change my mind. You see, I’ve been fascinated by narratives about motherhood since before I was a mother, and as I prepared to become one, I devoured the modern “ambivalent motherhood canon”.

But I’ve been reluctant to pursue such narratives myself. When I interview writers, I insist that their work is what’s important, and I avoid questions about writing and motherhood that would probably fascinate me as much. I worry that such questions would undermine the writers’ works, would undermine the individuals as artists, would undermine me as an interviewer and a reader. But I can’t shake a suspicion that these questions are important, that perhaps we just have to carve out a time and space for them. Or not. I’m not sure.

Did you feel any similar qualms as you embarked upon your Motherhood and Writing interviews?

Marita: When I first conceived of the Motherhood and Writing interviews, I had no qualms at all. I think that may have been because I really wasn’t aware of all the books written about motherhood and writing. I’m sure if I had dug a bit, I would have discovered them and not felt the need to start the interview series.

The interviews came from purely selfish place. I wanted content for my blog, but more importantly, I really needed to know how other writing mothers did it. My boys are twenty-two and a half months apart. When my second child was born, I panicked. I remember clearly breast feeding him while reading a biography of Margaret Laurence and having the terrifying flash that I would never write again. I knew I wasn’t as driven as Laurence was and couldn’t make the choices she had. My nascent career was over.

After my husband helped talk me down, I realized that of course my career wasn’t over. There were many, many writing mothers out there who were kind, loving, stable mothers. I wanted to talk to them simply to know how they did it. How does a mother balance all those things mothers do and make time to write. And I wanted to talk to women who were in various stages in their careers–from award winning to not yet published.

The project was supposed to be just for a year, but I’ve managed to draw it out longer, partly out of laziness and partly whenever I think it’s time to shut it down, I’ll get an email or a comment on the blog from some writing mother out there to thank me. It’s important, especially in those early difficult years, for those in the trenches to be reminded that they are not alone, that there are other women out there who are struggling, too. And, of course, that it will get better.

That said, recently I’ve begun to have qualms. Maybe it’s because I’m no longer in the trenches, or maybe because I’ve become sensitive that I might be contributing to the creation of a “motherhood ghetto”.

We would never ask a man how he manages to write while being a father, so why do we feel it’s relevant to ask a mother? Is it because there is an assumption that the woman is at home with the babies and that the man is not? And that if she isn’t, she should be? It’s insulting to both mothers and fathers. But I don’t know what I’d rather see–interviewers asking fathers what they ask mothers, or stop asking mothers what they don’t ask fathers.

So, yes, I am now quite conflicted. I hope that in the context of my interview series, the questions I ask aren’t insulting because that is the point of the interview. But I don’t think if I was interviewing a writer in another context, I would feel comfortable about asking about their relationship between writing and motherhood, unless the writer brought it up or it was clearly related to the writing.

Interview: Annabel Lyon

Your back of the book bio:

Annabel Lyon is the author of Oxygen (stories), The Best Thing For You (novellas), All-Season Edie (juvenile novel), and The Golden Mean (novel). She teaches fiction writing on-line through UBC's creative writing department.

Your playground bio:

Mother of Sophie, four, and Caleb, two. Sophie says Daddy is the king, she is the queen, Caleb is the prince, and Mummy is the cleaner.

Do you identify yourself as first a writer and then a mother, the other way around, or something else? Why do you think this is?

Mother. My kids are worth more to me than my work.

Did you always want to be a writer? A mother? How does the reality differ from the fantasy?

Both, I think. Both are harder than I ever thought they'd be.

What are your measurements of success as a mother? As a writer? Have these evolved and, if so, can you talk about in what way and why do you think this is?

I really, really want the kids to turn out happy and kind. That hasn't changed since before I got pregnant; what I didn't realize was how hard it would be for me to stay happy and kind as a mother. That was a hugely distressing realization. I want each book to be a bit better than the last, and I don't want to repeat myself. I don't think that's changed.

What's your writing schedule like? What was its journey to get to where it is now?

My writing schedule is still pretty haphazard; I'm hoping it will settle down as the kids get older and start school. I write in the afternoons once my partner is up (he works nights), an hour or two, until he leaves for work. I usually have one day a week that's a bit longer than that. Into that time I also have to fit e-mail, showering, cooking, etc., so it's not a lot of creative time. I used to work completely alone, in absolute silence, six to eight hours a day. It's been an adjustment.

Has becoming a mother changed how you write? What your write? If so, in what ways?

I think my teaching has changed as a result of becoming a mother, more than my writing has. I've become much more patient and generous with my students.

How aware are your children of your writing?

Not very; they're little, still. Sophie knows mummy works on the computer and writes books, but not the kind of books she likes, so her interest is pretty limited. She doesn't like it when my work takes me out of the house without her.

Virginia Woolf famously wrote, "…a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write…." She never had children. Is a room to yourself enough for a writing-mama? What do you need?

I need to know the kids are happy and settled and not needing me. I need enough sleep. I need tea.

If you could go back, what would you tell your pre-children self?

It'll be okay.

What do you think your pre-children self would tell you?

You need to start running again.

In terms of this topic (motherhood and writing), do you have any regrets? Guilt? Envy?

I yell too much, especially when work is frustrating me. Big, big guilt there. I hate myself for that.

The early years of motherhood have been described by various writers as a haze or as an incredibly creative time. How would you describe it? Are you still in it? When did you leave?

It was both, especially after my son was born, when I went through a pretty bad post-partum depression. Having the novel to turn to helped me through it; so did having fantastic family around me. Sleep deprivation was a major contributing factor, I think; there's a reason why it's used as a torture technique. It really does turn your brain to pudding. I think I'm just coming out of that time: novel finished, kids sleeping through the night, the sun breaking through most days.

Birthing a book is like birthing a baby. Way off or right on?

Way off. There's just no coherent parallel for me.

I wanted to do this project because I found so few satisfying examples of the writing-mother. It was either the mythology of Alice Munro writing while her children played at her feet, the writer who resented and neglected her children because she was so consumed with her art, or someone like Sylvia Plath who ended up with her head in the oven. Which writing-mothers do you admire and why?

All the ones I know: Anne Michaels,Caroline Adderson, Zsuzsi Gartner, Marina Endicott, Anakana Schofield, Laisha Rosnau, Sara O'Leary, Anne Fleming, Linda Svendsen, yourself.... It's so tough to do both, and so hard to talk about why it's so tough. Both writing and motherhood come with the built-in potential for anxiety and depression, so when you do both it's a double-whammy, isn't it? I have the greatest respect and admiration for all writing mothers, published or unpublished. They're all hugely brave.

Interview: Marina Endicott

Your back of the book bio:

Started writing while working in theatre as an actor, director and dramaturge. Was Associate Dramaturge at the Banff Centre Playwrights Colony for five years in the 90s, ran the Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre for many years. The usual progression of stories in journals, a couple of small awards, shortlisted for the Journey Prize; first novel Open Arms published by D&M in 2001, shortlisted for Amazon/Books In Canada First Novel award. Second novel, Good to a Fault in the first season of Freehand Books, finalist for the Giller Prize and won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, Canada & the Caribbean. GTAF will be published in the US, UK and Australia in 2010. Next book, about a sister-trio-harmony vaudeville act touring the prairies in 1911, due out in 2011.

Your playground bio:

Mother of Will, now 15, and Rachel, now 13, both born while we were on Peter’s first posting with the RCMP in Mayerthorpe, Alberta. When Will was one I worked as editor of the Mayerthorpe newspaper for six months, because a perfect grandmotherly babysitter offered to look after him, but I soon gave up on working outside—too much strain on everyone. Because Peter worked shifts (and it seemed like mostly nights) and needed a quiet house during the day, conventional babysitting didn’t work for us. And maybe because we were both quite old to be starting on this, after believing we wouldn’t be able to, we wanted to be with our children ourselves.

So I have stayed at home with them all this time, but have always worked more than full time on a variety of freelance editing and design jobs. Thank god for the interwebs.

Do you identify yourself as first a writer and then a mother, the other way around, or something else? Why do you think this is?

Depends on where I am. At school, definitely first a mother, possibly later as a writer (but remaining very wary of volunteer positions on the school newsletter).

Everywhere else, as a writer and possibly later as a mother, after sussing out the situation. I try not to talk about Will and Rachel, or their father Peter Ormshaw, partly because I try to keep their privacy intact, mostly because the danger is that I will talk about nothing else.

Did you always want to be a writer? A mother? How does the reality differ from the fantasy?

Always wanted to be writer, yes—although I spent many years as an actor, director and dramaturge in theatre. A mother, NO. I was the eldest of five and had enough of children when I was a child; I didn’t particularly want to have the chaos and worry, and didn’t think I’d be a very good mother. It wasn’t until I met Peter that I wanted to have children, because I thought our children would be interesting.

What are your measurements of success as a mother? As a writer? Have these evolved and, if so, can you talk about in what way and why do you think this is?

Ouch. After a long year of book tours, I’ve been given a solid 3.2 from the Russian judge, aka Peter. As a mother: my children are happy, almost all the time, and pretty stable. They are not worried about money or food or social clumsiness; so we’ve averted my own childhood worries. I’m sure they have plenty of new worries all their own, but they are not in bad shape. Sometimes they are very smart, sometimes remarkably totty-headed. They are kind to each other and to us. People invite them to stay. They don’t eat like pigs; they are good at the things that matter most to them; I like them and love them, in fact I am besotted. I guess those are my measurements.

As a writer the measure of success is all internal, and they don’t give badges for that. A short-list or a win makes you feel okay about the work for fifteen or twenty minutes; digging down into it and working harder and trying to make it better is more lasting—maybe a whole half hour. Sigh.

What's your writing schedule like? What was its journey to get to where it is now?

Now, I write early in the morning until I have to get W & R up and off to school, about 7 a.m.; back to my desk by about 9. (After that break I find it hard to get back to work, and can end up answering email all day if I don’t watch out.) When they come home from school I talk to them for as long as they’ll listen, and then clean the kitchen and start supper, then go back to work until Peter comes home. After supper I bully someone into cleaning up, and go back to work until my eyes cross. And of course I write all weekend. During term time, I teach two days a week and they’re kind of luxurious social days where I don’t expect to get any writing done.

In the old days, I worked at four or five jobs: one big contract that took all my time for four or five months a year, and was dribs and drabs the rest of the year, plus teaching and editing jobs as they came along. I fitted writing in around the edges and in the early mornings, up till 2 or up at 5 a.m., wherever I could.

When the children were little I had an office (well, it was an unfinished concrete basement storage room) right beside their playroom, and I made myself a Dutch door by sawing the ordinary door in half. Then I could have the bottom of the door shut, so people knew I was working, but I could see and hear them in case there was trouble or need. I got used to listening with a tiny portion of my brain to the tone of their discourse rather than the words, and I worked better that way because I wasn’t wondering what was going on.

Has becoming a mother changed how you write? What you write? If so, in what ways?

I suppose it has awakened me to the permanence of writing; to thinking about what they will think of my work when they are old enough; to not wanting to write something they’d be ashamed of. It’s made me cautious of how I exploit them. When they were very small I found Sharon Olds’s work disturbing and wondered how she could do it; now I applaud her bravery in writing that deeply private part of life. But I still wonder what her kids think of those poems about their penises etc.

I hope it has not changed what I write very much, even given all that. I certainly write faster and more disciplinedly now than I did before I had children. (I brush my teeth faster and more disciplinedly than before I had children.)

How aware are your children of your writing?

Much the same way that I was aware of, and disliked, my mother’s obsessive sewing when I was a child, I think. It is the thing that distracts me and makes me hard to reach. They assume that I’ll do well and are unsurprised if anyone likes the books; they are unimpressed by my efforts as far as I can see. Probably because they can’t help thinking I might keep the kitchen a bit tidier and make more regular meals and not work them so hard if I wasn’t writing.

They don’t read my books, even though their friends do. My son kindly says he’ll listen to the audiobook when it comes out. But they are proud of me anyway, I think. They’re more interested in my theatre career, as ancient history, and in their own future writing careers.

Do they both want to be writers? How do you feel about this?

Delighted. It seems to me like the only sane thing to do. And I’d much rather they were writers than actors, which my daughter is also thinking about.

Virginia Woolf famously wrote, "…a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write…." She never had children. Is a room to yourself enough for a writing-mama? What do you need?

You need a good partner who doesn’t see the house and kinder as your solo field. You need a partner who is a writer, or who understands writing, and who is patient and funny and believes that you are good at what you do. You could manage without this uber-human if you were a writer without children, but if you’re going to be a mama, I think you’d better find a good partner.

If you could go back, what would you tell your pre-children self?

Work faster. Don’t be sad, just work hard, and later on you’ll have wonderful children.

What do you think your pre-child(ren) self would tell you?

Shut up, you don’t know how awful it is being me.

In terms of this topic (motherhood and writing), do you have any regrets? Guilt? Envy?

Guilt yes, ferocious—but not too much for mothering, only for the home-schooling thing. Home-schooling while being a writer is tricky because you kind of think you’re always doing it and then it turns out nobody has done a page of math for three months.

Envy—only of people who have full time housekeepers. Honestly, it’s not the children/writing I find complicated and tough, it’s the housekeeping/writing that’s so miserable. And the housekeeping/children, too. I fervently hope to one day be successful enough to have a cleaner every day.

The early years of motherhood have been described by various writers as a haze or as an incredibly creative time. How would you describe it? Are you still in it? When did you leave?

It was a long dark tunnel for me. The tunnel lightened about the time my daughter turned three—when they were both talking and walking safely and we could begin a serious conversation—but I only crunched off the cinders and emerged from it entirely when they were about 7 and 5. If I had found myself pregnant again then I would have been seriously depressed, even though third children are so often delightful, because it softened or dampened my brain for so long. Couldn’t keep a consecutive thought in my head for years.

On the other hand, the physical pleasure of those early years is profound. I was glad to write about it in Good to a Fault, about what it’s like to love a baby. I don’t anticipate grandchildren for many, many, many years but I wonder if that’s why people seem to like being grandparents, that tender physical response to the beauty of the child.

Birthing a book is like birthing a baby. Way off or right on?

A book is much easier at the end. I think it’s mostly men who make that comparison—but certain men, mostly politicians, are always saying that something or other is like birthing a baby. Nothing else is remotely like birthing a baby.

But it is possible that if I hadn’t birthed two babies I’d have two more novels done by now.

I wanted to do this project because I found so few satisfying examples of the writing-mother. It was either the mythology of Alice Munro writing while her children played at her feet, the writer who resented and neglected her children because she was so consumed with her art, or someone like Sylvia Plath who ended up with her head in the oven. Which writing-mothers do you admire and why?

I admire Sylvia Plath for waiting as long as she did; despise her for leaving her children.

I worry that I’m like Mrs. Jellyby in Bleak House with her long curling lists and ink-stained fingers, forgetting her children.

I loved Laurie Colwin’s novels and stories but particularly her wonderful cookbooks (Home Cooking and More Home Cooking) which she wrote with her daughter in mind and in the room.

There’s a writing mother (who might be a portrait of Meg’s own novelist mother) in Meg Wolitzer’s The Ten-Year Nap—I was on a panel with her at the Vancouver VIWF and she read a hilarious passage about daughters in the hall outside their writing-mother’s door debating whether this is a big enough emergency to knock: the youngest girl has just got her first period. ‘Does this count as life or death?’ ‘You could exsanguinate. It’s happened before.’

One of my favourite writing mothers is Mrs Morland in Angela Thirkell’s long series of novels set in pre- and post-war England, widowed and left penniless with four young boys, who keeps them at Eton and Oxford by writing fashion/romance potboilers about an adventurous coutourier. Since Thirkell was writing books that might have been considered light entertainment, I’ve always assumed it was a self-portrait. I love Mrs Morland’s hair full of pencils and her modest estimation of her own work and her friendships with serious writers, and most of all her attitude to her sons, who she loves and despises and cares for diligently, especially her youngest son. One of the novels I’m still searching for is called The Demon in the House; that’s the youngest son, who cannot stop talking and asking questions and demanding her attention to his railway obsession while she’s trying to work. Reminds me of certain children I have known.

More than any fictional mothers, I admire my friends, like Annabel Lyon and Sara O’Leary, who wrote wrote wrote, doing such good work, while their children were small.

Interview: Sara O'Leary

Playing Hide and Seek With the Children (photo credit: EDGO)

Your back of the book bio:

Sara O’Leary is a children's writer, playwright, fiction writer, and sometime literary journalist.

Your playground bio:

In the spirit of my mothering style I have decided to only answer every other question. (This is akin to my technique of playing entire games of Snakes and Ladders by just repeating the phrase “Could you roll for me?” And don’t even ask me about hide-and-seek.)

Do you identify yourself as first a writer and then a mother, the other way around, or something else? Why do you think this is?

I identify myself first as a teacher--mainly as a way of staving off further questions. Sadly my subject area is “Creative Writing” --a term which I’ve always found unbearably fey. Sometimes I pretend to be a potter.

Did you always want to be a writer? A mother? How does the reality differ from the fantasy?

Never wanted to be a mother. Boy was I wrong. Always wanted to be a writer. (Not going to say it).

What are your measurements of success as a mother? As a writer? Have these evolved and, if so, can you talk about in what way and why do you think this is?

Will gladly disclose my age but flinch at measurements.

What's your writing schedule like? What was its journey to get to where it is now?

I like to write really bloody fast and get it over with.

Has becoming a mother changed how you write? What your write? If so, in what ways?

Time management is one of those mothering skills that spills over into all aspects of your life. For example, I can now fill out a questionnaire at breakneck speed.

How aware are your children of your writing?

One writes with me … we’re doing a YA novel together. One writes both much faster than I do, and much more than I do. They both are conscious of my children’s books but just last year my eight-year-old found my book of short stories in a shop and came up clutching it with a look of utter betrayal. “You never told me about this!” he said. He’s the same darling boy who asked when I was writing a weekly newspaper column: “Why is your picture in the paper every week when you’re not even famous?”

Virginia Woolf famously wrote, "…a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write…." She never had children. Is a room to yourself enough for a writing-mama? What do you need?

Well, let’s not put Virginia in the corner – she was told she should not have children because of her condition. Anyway, these days I’m sure what she would wish for is a laptop of her own. Mine crashed this year because my film-making son had so loaded the hard drive with his projects.

When my first son was born, both he and our computer shared our bedroom. And yet there was room enough for all. Poor Virginia had no idea.

If you could go back, what would you tell your pre-children self?

Go ahead -- enjoy it while you can.

What do you think your pre-children self would tell you?

I’m bored. I’m lonely. I lack a sense of purpose.

In terms of this topic (motherhood and writing), do you have any regrets? Guilt? Envy?

Regrets? Only that I didn’t start having children a decade sooner and have a dozen more. Envy? One of my least favourite of the seven sins.

The early years of motherhood have been described by various writers as a haze or as an incredibly creative time. How would you describe it? Are you still in it? When did you leave?

My sons are eight and fourteen and I suppose it’s time I found someone else to blame this haze on.

Birthing a book is like birthing a baby. Way off or right on?

Bar the screaming.

I wanted to do this project because I found so few satisfying examples of the writing-mother. It was either the mythology of Alice Munro writing while her children played at her feet, the writer who resented and neglected her children because she was so consumed with her art, or someone like Sylvia Plath who ended up with her head in the oven. Which writing-mothers do you admire and why?

The ones I know. The ones with beautiful children and beautiful books. You know who you are.

Interview: Laisha Rosnau

Your back of the book bio:

Laisha Rosnau’s first novel, The Sudden Weight of Snow, was published by McClelland & Stewart in 2002 & was an Honourable Mention for the Books in Canada First Novel Award. Her first collection of poetry, Notes on Leaving (Nightwood Editions 2004), won the Acorn-Plantos People’s Poetry Award, & her second collection, Lousy Explorers will be published by Nightwood in April 2009. A former Executive Editor of Prism International, her prose & poetry have been published in Canada, the US, the UK, & Australia.

Your playground bio:

Laisha Rosnau is the proud mama of Jonah Alexander, born June 2007, & is currently gestating “Perogy,” due June 2009.

Do you identify yourself as first a writer and then a mother, the other way around, or something else? Why do you think this is?

Most of the time, it doesn’t feel very polarized. I’m thankful that I had already published two books before Jonah came along. I identified myself as a writer before I became a mother. I still identify myself as a writer as well as a mother, though a different times of the day or week, I can feel like one more than the other. Our next door neighbours have been taking care of Jonah twice a week since he turned one. On those days, in those hours, I am a writer first. Sometimes in the evenings when he’s asleep & I’m writing, I’m also a writer first. Whenever I’m with him, I’m Mama first & foremost. When walking or driving, I can be both. I can contemplate a line or a scene or character while he provides me with a running commentary of the world around us: “Truck, bird, bus, tree, truck, girl, bike, dog, truck…” (if up to him, all future work would feature trucks as central motifs.) Being a writer doesn’t stop when I’m not writing. Neither does being a mother stop when I’m not with Jonah. I’m thankful that I don’t feel like I have to make a choice of being one over the other.

Did you always want to be a writer? A mother? How does the reality differ from the fantasy?

Yes to both. I always wanted to be an artist, though not always specifically a writer. My mom saved a copy of a letter I wrote to Katherine Paterson, the author of Bridge To Terabithia, in grade 2 or 3 which I ended “P.S. What’s it like to be an author? I’d like to be one when I grow up.” At different points I have wanted to be a painter, a photographer, or a dancer. I didn’t have enough of the right kind of talent for those things--or enough interest or passion to sustain a practice--but writing has always been a constant. I can’t say there’s been anything else that has topped the list of things I wanted to do when I grew up--writer & mother.

I never went through a phase in my life when I questioned wanting to have kids. I loved babies when I was a girl, loved babysitting as a teen, & worked in childcare as a young adult. I thought I’d have kids by the time I was in my mid-twenties. Then I got accepted to grad school, broke up with my long-term boyfriend & no longer had a future father for my imaginary offspring. I lay awake in my single bed in my graduate student dorm room & thought, “Okay, I’d better write a novel now because that’s all I have left.” Nine months later, I had a draft. A year after I started, I had a book deal. My first book came out a month before I turned thirty. I met my husband at a book launch a year & a half later & our first child came out the day I turned thirty-five.

Though the first book publication was a really heady time, the reality of being a writer differs more greatly from the fantasy than the reality of being a mother does for me. People can tell you over & over again how unglamorous the writing life is but it is difficult to imagine until you experience it first-hand. Even then, writers like me are so easy to please that all it takes is a tiny travel fund & the hospitality suite at writers’ events every few years to make up for years of monotony, solitude, & crippling self-doubt on the job.

Even though I always wanted kids, I don’t think I harboured many fantasies of what it would be like. Working in childcare (as a nanny, in a daycare, etc) helped. I stopped in my mid-twenties because I was already getting burned out of other peoples’ kids & wanted to save some energy & enthusiasm for my own, knowing then I’d need every reserve I had. If anything, I expected to have a more difficult experience of early motherhood than I have so far. My son brings me more joy than I ever could have imagined possible. I credit part-time childcare with some of my capacity for joy. I would always love my son as much, regardless of whether or not I had a few hours away from him each week, but childcare – & the time it allows me to write--allows me to love motherhood even more.

What are your measurements of success as a mother? As a writer? Have these evolved and, if so, can you talk about in what way and why do you think this is?

Having a curious, engaged, happy (for the most part) child & being a curious, engaged, happy (for the most part) woman alongside him. No small task as it takes the right balance of sleep, food, exercise, fresh air, social activity, quiet time, etc. for both of us-- & every day is different. I found it challenging enough to find the right balance before Jonah came along. Now to keep both of us in mind each day? It’s not strenuous but it is constant-- & worth the daily effort. Sometimes success means simply getting from one end of the day to the other. If I can laugh about it at the end of the day, it’s been a good day. If I’m crying, maybe not so good but part of the process.

I am learning to measure success in the process of both parenting & writing. Success in motherhood cannot be measured in one final “product”-- & neither can it in writing. Feeling a measure of success in the process of writing takes just as much juggling as does parenting to find the right balance in any given day or moment. If I am curious & engaged in what I am writing, researching or editing, I consider that a huge success. Oddly (or not?), I have less of an expectation of happiness while writing as compared to while parenting. Moment to moment, parenting gives me a lot of happiness. Moment to moment, I often find writing hard--it’s fulfilling & it can be sublime at times but a lot of the time it feels hard (in a “good” way, though not necessarily a “happy” way, if that makes sense.)

There are days when living with a toddler is like living with a tiny drunk person--joyful, clumsy, clinging to me saying “dub you, Mama!” then pushing me away in protest of some perceived slight. Other days, it’s like living with a mini Dalai Lama & I get blissed-out off his joyful fumes. Living with a book in progress is similar, I think, though my manuscripts rarely tell me they love me & they seem drunk way more often.

What's your writing schedule like? What was its journey to get to where it is now?

Uh, writing schedule? It used to be the thing of daily quotas, weekly goals, monthly milestones, of hours & words a day eventually adding up to become, ta-da, manuscripts! Now I fly by the seat of my pants & try to apply said pants to chair to write when I can. Nap times, evenings, weekends – though many of those times devolve into a flurry of email/Facebook/internet-lurking procrastination. I tell myself, “I just need little break” then I wonder if I should nap. Sometimes I attempt to nap & as soon as my head hits the pillow, the wee wonder awakens--& that’s it for my “writing” for that day! Nonetheless, somehow, it gets done. I feel no less productive than before I had a child--I clearly am less productive in terms of solely writing but when I think of everything else I get done in a day and a week--& still find time to write – I feel sometimes feel like an icon of productivity. If I don’t, I tell myself I should!

I also went through a period, pre-baby of course, when I was working with daily quotas and monthly goals. How I write has changed so much that I doubt I'll ever return to that model. Do you long to return to that way of approaching your work? Is it a goal of your to do so, or have things changed so much you're on your way to another model?

Actually, I’ve found it liberating no longer be writing within the parameters of words and hours per day. Since Jonah was born, my goals have seemed more holistic somehow. Instead of thinking I should write 2000 words a day or a poem a week, I’ve thought, “Let’s see if I can gather these poems into something resembling a manuscript” then “Ohhh my, these poems need some serious editing” then “I think I’ll send some of these poems out,” etc. I’ve done what I can in the time that I’ve had and somehow a book came out of it.

I’m working toward another model but I don’t know what it is. I’m inspired by the anecdotes of other writing moms, like Carol Shields who says she started out writing one hour a day, between 11 AM and noon when her kids came home from school. More recently and closer to me, Annabel Lyon set a goal to write 200 words while her two young children napped and she has a novel coming out this summer (granted, she started it before the kids came along). Goals like that seem manageable (although I know when it comes down to it, that one hour & 200 words will seem difficult!) and I’d like to find ones that fit with my own life and family.

Has becoming a mother changed how you write? What your write? If so, in what ways?

I’m still able to think of novels & characters & scenes. I’m still able to do research “toward” a novel. I can even write notes on file cards! But to write a novel? Umm. Even with two days of childcare, I haven’t been able to find a way to sustain the kind of focus I need to write a novel. That said, I didn’t get those two days of full-time care until I was already pregnant with my second child and had just signed a contract for my upcoming book of poetry, on which I’ve been working on until a couple of weeks ago when it was sent to the printer. Perhaps I should cut myself some slack.

Writing poetry in Jonah’s first year was a God-send. I could write or edit a draft of a poem during nap-times. Unlike writing fiction for me, it seemed like the times I was away from poetry increased my focus when I returned to it. When it came down to the last few weeks of intensive editing, it was exhausting. Parenting a toddler and editing poetry are such different ways of thinking and focusing--one no less challenging or stimulating than the other but each so different. To have my brain so stretched each day was exhausting. When I think back on the intensity of editing my novel, I can’t image attempting that while parenting a baby or toddler, though there are women who do it so it is possible. I still harbour fantasies of writing scenes of a novel during nap-times with the next (in these fantasies, both children nap at the same time, for the same length of time, each day) but I realize this is wildly optimistic/unrealistic. I also realize how much I loved spending the first year of my son’s life with him full-time & how quickly it passed. My writing career isn’t going to disappear, but my children’s first months & years will.

With a new book and a new baby arriving at around the same time, do you have any goals for your next writing project--poetry or novel or? Or are you going to just try to survive the first year and then see what unfolds?

Mostly the latter. Since we’ll be moving cities within three months of the new baby’s birth, I’m really only aiming for survival and perhaps even sanity in the first six months--dare to dream. Moving with a newborn & a toddler? I’ll be lucky if I can return email.

I’ve been incubating another novel since I was pregnant with Jonah. I’ve daydreamed about it, made notes, done research, even sketched ideas (literally drawn little pictures) of what it will look like. I plan to keep doing those kinds of things and I think that novel will keep living in me until I have the time, means and focus to write it but I don’t think that will happen until the next baby is at least a year-old or more.

How aware is you child of your writing?

Jonah is still too young to have much awareness of it all. I recently thought to take my books down and show him my author photos on them. “Mama?” he said, and “book?” Yes, I said, mama writes books. I’d like to keep instilling this knowledge in him and our next child.

Virginia Woolf famously wrote, "…a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write…." She never had children. Is a room to yourself enough for a writing-mama? What do you need?

A room is nice, yes--but even more important to me is a supportive partner & part-time childcare. I’d take both of those over a room, if I had to. It’s ridiculous but sometimes I feel guilty about having p/t childcare, thinking about how other writing moms were able to navigate their way through early childhood without the “luxury” of any childcare. But then I remind myself that that plays into the whole “mother as martyr” thing, in which despite having full lives, degrees, & careers before children, we are expected to somehow embrace motherhood so completely that planning toddler activities & play-dates will fulfill us. Not so for this mama. To forgo time set aside specifically to write would also play into the whole “art as a hobby” thing, something else I want to avoid.

As it is, I only have fourteen hours a week of childcare & when I have another child in a couple of months, while I’d like eldest to go to care part-time, I’ll probably be with the youngest full-time for the first year. During Jonah’s first year, I wrote during naps & in the early morning between nursing. With a two kids, I’m not sure when the writing will happen. I may be happy to take a full year “off” (ha, ha!) or I may be bleary-eyed with lack of sleep & batsh*t with not enough writing. I really can’t tell.

It’s very important to me that my work as a writer isn’t perceived as less valid because it’s “part-time” (in practice – in spirit it’s a full-time passion) & the financial remuneration from it is sporadic at best. Thankfully, I have a partner who has never doubted how important writing is & has always supported me in finding the time & ways to write. I want to instil this kind of respect for what I do in my children as well & the way I can see how to do this is to have things like specific times to write, child-care to make that possible, & a room or a space that is reserved for my writing – things that say, “What Mommy does is important.”

If you could go back, what would you tell your pre-child self?

Get over yourself! Do you really need to go out for coffee, drinks, dancing so often? Stop staring into middle space & plot out a novel or two that you can bang off during future nap-times (ha, ha!). I wouldn’t really – I’m glad I did all that & had the time to do so.

What do you think your pre-child self would tell you?

You should go out dancing more often! Take your husband! You’ve forgotten how much you like it! Also, a closet full of clothes purchased at Superstore does not a wardrobe make.

In terms of this topic (motherhood and writing), do you have any regrets? Guilt? Envy?

When I worked from home before being a mother, not once did I wonder why I didn’t bake muffins more often (read: ever). Since being at home as a mom, thoughts like that often cross my mind. Though I spend a lot of time at home (either with Jonah, or writing, or both) & I can’t stand clutter, I’m not a super-domestic person. This didn’t bother me when I was a work-from-home writer – why should it bother me now as a work-from-home mom?

In terms of writing & motherhood, no regrets or guilt so far. I feel envious in a hypothetical way of people with more time (& more time to sleep) but when I think of what I have--a supportive partner, a beautiful son, a writing career that finds it way into whatever space & time it can--I can’t feel envious for long.

The early years of motherhood have been described by various writers as a haze or as an incredibly creative time. How would you describe it? Are you still in it? When did you leave?

I’ve found it to be both a haze & an incredibly creative time – in more ways than one: I’m about to publish my third book (end of April) & about to have my second baby (mid-June). I feel like my mind, heart, capacity for empathy, adaptability, sense of humanness & sense of humour have all been expanded gazillion-fold since having a child--& this has left me feeling more creative than ever. Yet while I feel incredibly creative, actually getting to the page requires stumbling through a haze of interrupted sleep, loads of dirty diapers and days of being a constant event planner/personal chef/chauffeur /educator/nurse/comfort for a toddler. And this is just with one child. Will I feel even more creative with two? Will the haze thicken? Will I need to wield my will-power like a machete to get any writing done? I don’t know--you tell me, Marita!

To answer you: Yes, yes, and maybe. I had to use my mad machete skills to carve time for me to write. It wasn't a matter of will power, but creating opportunities for me to write during the times of day that I could write. By the time my boys are in bed I'm so spent all I can do is drink tea and watch Mansbridge and sleep is so precious to me that I refuse to get out of bed before my children do!

Have you found that your times when you can have creative output has changed at all? I remember that you used to be an early-morning writer. Is that still the case?

I’m still a night owl who wakes up early in the morning with the urge to write – not the most practical combination! When I was pregnant with Jonah, I’d wake at 4 or 5 AM and often get up to write then nap later. With this pregnancy, I still wake around the same time but most often I stay in bed (sometimes sleeping, sometimes not) knowing my toddler will be up by 7 AM and it will be game on, Mama, game on. If I could manage to get to bed early, I might be able to use this time. However, evenings are the time I spend with my husband, friends, connect over phone and email, the time I read for an hour in the bath…and then it’s 11 PM. I feel like I hardly have enough time to sleep now with one child, I can’t imagine how it will be with two, or what writing will take place when. I may figure something out, become adept at “creating opportunities” as you put it. Some things may have to go to create those opportunities--less bloody Facebook for example (the long baths stay)--& I’ll likely be begging you for toddler-sized morsels of advice from you soon!

Birthing a book is like birthing a baby. Way off or right on?

Somewhat off? Conceiving of, writing, & editing books has taken more sustained effort over longer periods of time. The act of creating a book requires inspiration, will, persistence, motivation, discipline, research, etc. The act of creating a baby requires one lucky roll in the sack followed by nine months of accepting that your body is now out of your control. I found it very strange in my first pregnancy that I was creating something by doing very little with my mind--my body had taken over &, apparently, knew what it was doing. I joke with friends, “That book isn’t going to write itself,” but those babies--they seem to know exactly what they’re doing in there & they do seem to grow themselves.

I don’t even know when the moment of “birthing” a book would be--upon finishing a first draft? Upon publication? Both of those things are on a continuum from the first ideas that form a book to the writers’ events & promotion that follow publication--opposite ends of the spectrum & neither are like birth to me. Giving birth was the single-most profound, extreme, intense, difficult, beautiful, all-consuming thing I’ve ever done. While I am incredibly proud to have conceived of, written, & published books, it just doesn’t compare to me.

I wanted to do this project because I found so few satisfying examples of the writing-mother. It was either the mythology of Alice Munro writing while her children played at her feet, the writer who resented and neglected her children because she was so consumed with her art, or someone like Sylvia Plath who ended up with her head in the oven. Which writing-mothers do you admire and why?

Until having a child, I didn’t think much about which writers were mothers or not. At some point, I became curious about the writers I knew who had children & asked them lots of questions about how they balanced writing and parenthood (or, acknowledged that “balance” might be the wrong thing to aim for!) but it was still theoretical, of course. Now having just one child, I have to say that I admire all mothers who write & all writers who are mothers. I know, that’s not a very specific answer but I really can’t narrow it down much. Knowing how challenging both writing and parenting are, & in very different ways, & knowing how much time each takes, I think anyone who does both is worthy of admiration. I admire most the friends I know who do both-–Jill Wigmore, Betsy Trumpener, Annabel Lyon, & you, Ms Marita! There are others, of course, but I mention friends who are also in the thick of raising young children while writing.

Someone else mentioned this in their interview--I read an interview with Margaret Atwood years ago in which she said something to the effect that she thought a person could write and raise a child/children, write and teach, teach and raise children, but not all three. I took that to heart. For a few years, I focussed on writing & teaching, & I loved both & the perspective each brought to the other. Now, while I’d still like to teach for a few days a year (yes, I said a few days!), what I really want is to write & raise my children. And that seems huge to me--it seems like enough, in the fullest, most fulfilled sense of the word.