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Showing posts with label Brick Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brick Books. Show all posts
Thursday, November 28, 2024
three VERSeFest interviews: Alice Burdick, Manahil Bandukwala + Armand Garnet Ruffo,
Monday, November 25, 2024
Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part two: Stuart Ross, Claire Sherwood + Jeff Blackman,
Cobourg ON/Montreal QC: I hadn’t been aware of this wee title by award-winning Cobourg, Ontario poet, fiction writer, editor and publisher Stuart Ross [see my review of his latest poetry collection here; my piece on his recent short story collection here], his a very little street (Montreal QC: Turret House Press, 2023). This is a curious structure, two numbered sequences that suggest a far larger, more expansive work-in-progress, with the eleven-part opening, “1. The Highway,” and seven-part “2. The Doughnut.” There is something in this sequence, this pair of sequences set as part of (possibly) something longer, reminiscent of bpNichol’s novel Still (Vancouver BC: Pulp Press, 1983), the manuscript of which won the 5th International 3-Day Novel Writing Contest. Across that small book, Nichol described the room he was in with enormous detail; in a very little street, Ross describes a moment across a particular unnamed street, moving out across recollection and points across an expansive lyric map, as the chapbook opens: “One hundred and seven kilometres / of highway. Clouds roar through the sky. // Running shoes dangle from telephone wires. / Clouds of gnats. The smouldering ruins. // And my history: a red-brick barbecue / my father built in nineteen seventy-four. // The backyard patio’s pink and green / ceramic tiles.” Utilizing the highway, the sequence, as a kind of prompt, Ross weaves and meanders across a meditative assemblage of accumulated couplets, driving for as long as he can, just to see where he goes. He writes a highway into a street, and a street into a recollection, allowing the structure as a kind of catch-all for memory, a variation on the book-length poem Vancouver poet Michael Turner wrote on another rather lengthy street, Kingsway (Vancouver BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1995). As Ross writes across his sequence-thread, as part of the second section:
through our streets every
day. We saw him
beaming every day. He clutched
the handle
and bellowed a song in
Hebrew, manoeuvred
the rattling cart. The giant
ant mass undulated,
animated. The wheels of
Arnie’s shopping
cart screeched against the
sidewalk. He wore
baggy jeans and a faded blue
T-shirt
that said Hey Hey We’re
the Monkees. His shoulders
quaked with the vibrations.
The crooked wheels
faced every direction. A
hand of lightning
snatched the bag my hand
grasped,
tore it from my grip. A
doughnut. A doughnut
rose from the paper bag,
dangled from
the claws of three white
doves. It ascended
Manahil Bandukwala (Brick Books), wishing to recreate the 'grumpy poet' sequence of photos from the prior post,
Montreal QC: The opening reader of our pre-fair event at Anina’s Café (a wonderful new café in Ottawa’s Vanier neighbourhood, I should
add) was “Montreal writer, visual poet, and oral storyteller” Claire Sherwood,
reading from her chapbook sequence, Eat your words (Montreal QC: Turret
House Press, 2024). As she writes at the offset:
This poem is an interrogation of memory, a fluid autobiography. Swirling with intergenerational flavours and aromas. Stirring, blending, beating, scraping the sides of the bowl to find the right words. Struggling with separation, painful endings. Searching for home.
This is a poem struggling to be a poem. Words are impossible to control. Nothing is static. Memory continually reorders and reframes archived slices of the past. Loops and lines write the story. Is it leftovers? Am I home?
Across Sherwood’s twenty-eight page/part sequence, she writes through an accumulation of memory centred around her mother’s cookbook, threading what seem like childhood recollections and precise questions, open secrets and gestures. There’s a lot of information packed in here, and her poems read like lists, offering layers of nuance between lines, one set atop of the other. “Is it dragging your feet,” she writes, early on in the collection. “Is it a leg up / Is it the hand of friendship / Is it losing old friends [.]”
Is it too many cooks
Is it the wrong pan
Is it returned to the
oven
Is it a complete shambles
Is it terminal
Is it treatable
Is it roaring back to life
Is it mightier than the
sword
Is it easier said than
done
Is it one horse and one
cow sharing a meadow
Is it ever easy to find
the right words
Pearl Pirie, phafours
Kingston/Ottawa ON: I was intrigued to see that
Kingston editor/publisher Michael e. Casteels had produced, through his Puddles
of Sky Press, a small chapbook item (sixty copies hand printed, hand sewn,
within an envelope) by Ottawa poet and publisher Jeff Blackman, his IN THE
BRINY (November 2024). Anyone who has seen a Puddles of Sky item knows
there is a detailed and graceful ease to these publications, and there is a
spare element to these poems I appreciate, one that allows moments of density, hesitation,
spark and flourish in contained and compact spaces, such as the poem “In It,”
that begins: “Honestly / I want less to do / with my body // but the body / has
a poem / I want [.]” There is such an intriguing slow and careful attention
here, a perfect blend of text and production. Or the second half of the poem “HR,”
that reads:
how
this
poem ends
but not yet, friend.
Look,
your ride’s here.
Saturday, January 06, 2024
A ‘best of’ list of 2023 Canadian poetry books
It does feel as though I’ve done far fewer reviews this year than across the prior few, overloaded with a couple of large non-fiction projects and various other book deadlines, etcetera. There were plenty of books I simply didn’t manage to get to yet; or are there simply more books? There is still a handful of titles from this year I have yet to get to, certainly (including the new Judith Copithorne, which looks brilliant), but unless I do a count, I haven’t a clue how many reviews I’ve actually managed. The fact that I’ve “only” thirty-eight on this list (compared to other years) suggests to me that I haven’t reviewed nearly as much this year as I’ve done prior (which I’ve suspected throughout the year, simply busy with other things; and there are certain Canadian publishers that simply haven’t been sending books along, frustratingly), although my count shows I’ve posted some one hundred and forty book reviews across 2023, which is quite a lot. I’m pleased I managed to get a mound of chapbook reviews posted, as well as some journal reviews (something I hadn’t been doing nearly as much across the year or two prior), composing reviews of The Capilano Review : 50th Anniversary Issue(s) : 3:46-3:48 [see my review here], SOME : sixth issue [see my review here], filling Station #81 : Some Kind of Dopamine Hit [see my review here] and SOME: seventh issue [see my review here]. There’s also been a plethora of worthy non-fiction prose reviews I’ve posted, with stellar works including INDIGIQUEERNESS: Joshua Whitehead In Dialogue with Angie Abdou (Athabasca University Press, 2023) [see my review of such here], Gail Scott, Furniture Music: A Northern in Manhattan: Poets/Politics [2008-2012] (Wave Books, 2023) [see my review of such here] and Jim Johnstone, Write Print Fold and Staple: On Poetry and Micropress in Canada (Gaspereau Press, 2023) [see my review of such here].
Barry McKinnon died this past year, so that was a bit of a hit [see my obituary for him here].
I wonder, occasionally, if I should be working similar
‘best of’ lists for chapbooks, or American full-length collections, or fiction,
or a geographically-unspecified list of full-length collections, but then I remember
that this list takes a full day to compile and post, so there you go. And you
know this list always includes a few stragglers from the year prior, yes? I mean,
I can only do so much during a calendar year. Beyond that, I always mean for
these lists to be shorter, but I couldn’t think of a list without including
every book on this list. Is there simply too much exciting work being produced
right now?
This year’s list includes full-length poetry titles by Dale Tracy, Khashayar Mohammadi/Saeed Tavanaee Marvi, Manahil Bandukwala, David Dowker, Erin Robinsong, natalie hanna, Jason Purcell, ryan fitzpatrick, Milton Acorn and bill bissett, George Bowering, Dennis Cooley, Jen Currin, Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, Kate Siklosi, Gary Barwin and Lillian Nećakov, Camille Martin, Matthew Hollett, Laila Malik, Emily Osborne, Meghan Kemp-Gee, Weyman Chan, Alycia Pirmohamed, Amy Ching-Yan Lam, Kate Cayley, Jake Byrne, Natalie Rice, Tom Cull, David Martin, Erín Moure, Adam Beardsworth, Jim Johnstone, Amanda Earl, Shane Book, Sandra Ridley, andrea bennett, Nikki Reimer, Ben Meyerson and Matthew Gwathmey.
See this year's full list here.
Monday, October 09, 2023
12 or 20 (second series) questions with Amy Ching-Yan Lam
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
This book, which is my first, both came out of major changes in my life and also changed my life in major ways. I began writing it during a period of transformation, in my work and in my relationships, and I couldn’t have anticipated how much the act of writing would also help that transformation along. This was my first time writing poetry, and there’s something about figuring out how to work in the form of poems that changed my brain and my capacity for feeling. It made me more sensitive.
2 - How did you come to visual art first, as opposed to, say, fiction, poetry or non-fiction?
Actually, I always wanted to be a writer, throughout my childhood. So when I went to university I studied literature and writing. But I was so disappointed and repelled by my graduate program in creative writing (at Concordia, FYI) that I sought escape from it and wanted to find other outlets. So I stumbled into the visual arts through the world of zines and DIY publishing and performance, and at the time, I found it so much more free than what I was encountering at grad school. I put aside writing and literature for basically a decade, to do performance and film and visual arts projects, and then finally came back to it in 2018.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I think I’m a slow writer in the sense that I need lots of time to receive and gather ideas and images, and then fast in the sense that composing the drafts can happen pretty quickly. But then I need a lot of time again, to let the drafts sit and come back to them later to edit, and then time to repeat this editing phase with multiple poems in relation to each other for as many times as possible.
4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
For poems, I collect notes, and I start from there.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I think there’s something important about speaking the poems out loud, and having people listen to them. The speaking and listening creates a special space. I don’t want to take that for granted.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Writing seems like one of the few tools that makes sharing or expressing an interior world possible. It’s a way of representing lived reality. And lived reality—actual lives—are so repressed all the time.
I also think that any use of language is at least a little bit magical, in the sense of the speech act, like the act of naming, or the act of promising. It’s a way to make spells.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I’d like to be humble and not have an exaggerated sense of my importance. I also can’t stand writers who claim not to have political positions. So I guess I am of two minds: I don’t think writers have roles, but I also think that some writers are very bad at their roles.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I always need other people to read my work and help me figure out what’s going on. I really value having other artist friends read my work and sharing the process with them. As a triple Virgo, I love a good critical eye.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I once heard John Giorno respond to the question of “How to make it as an artist” with the answer “You have to ruin your life,” and it comes to mind often. I think it’s true in the sense that your life will no longer make sense to most people (ie. ruined) but it will also be a lot better (ie. ruined in the romantic sense, of having a more full relationship to the forces of change).
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to visual art)? What do you see as the appeal?
Sometimes I wonder why I work in so many different genres and if it would be simpler and maybe more financially intelligent just to do one thing, but I enjoy the solitary work of writing as well as the collaboration inherent in other art forms.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
No comment.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I find inspiration in other artists’ work and lives. And I also like to read about history, because I always find it so strange and interesting how people have lived and how transformation happens.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Carpet.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Bob Flanagan, Donald Rodney… so many other artists who have wholeheartedly expressed their lives and struggles through their work, and the work of my friends.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Go on a really long hike.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Unfortunately, I think I could enjoy being a lawyer.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I just watched The World is Family, a beautiful documentary by Anand Patwardhan about his parents and their lives and colonial rule and nationalism in India, and it made me cry all the way out of the theatre.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m working on a book called Property Journal, where I kept a diary for a year writing down every time the topics of real estate or housing came up in conversation or in my life. It’s being published by Book Works in 2024.
Thursday, June 29, 2023
12 or 20 (second series) questions with Matthew Hollett
Matthew Hollett is a writer and photographer in St. John’s, Newfoundland (Ktaqmkuk). His work explores landscape and memory through photography, writing and walking. Optic Nerve, a collection of poems about photography and visual perception, was published by Brick Books in 2023. Album Rock (2018) is a work of creative nonfiction and poetry investigating a curious photograph taken in Newfoundland in the 1850s. Matthew won the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize, and has previously been awarded the NLCU Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers, The Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Prize for Best Poem, and VANL-CARFAC’s Critical Eye Award for art writing. He is a graduate of the MFA program at NSCAD University.
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book, Album Rock, is a mix of creative nonfiction, poetry and archival material investigating a strange photo taken in Newfoundland in the 1850s by Paul-Émile Miot. The project began as a blog post, then expanded over several years to a research grant, an exploratory road trip, and eventually a published book. You learn so many things over the course of a long-term project like that (publishing contracts, working with editors and designers, image permissions). It’s not lightning-bolt life-changing, but more cumulative. It snowballs.
My most recent book, Optic Nerve, is a collection of poems about photography and visual perception. It took shape over many years, too, and had its own complicated flight path. Both books gesture towards some of the same ideas and preoccupations – ekphrasis, photography and complicity, a sense of place – but they’re very different. Album Rock is a macro lens, Optic Nerve more fish-eyed. I like that one is published by Boulder and one by Brick. A good solidity there.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I came to poetry through My Body Was Eaten by Dogs by David McFadden – it caught my eye one day in my high school library, and I read it cover to cover and almost immediately started writing poems. Terrible poems. Shortly afterwards I became fascinated by E.E. Cummings, and filled notebooks with floaty visual cloud-poetry.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
My projects always begin as a nebulous collection of small things which gradually cohere into a larger thing. I am always generating small things: journal entries, field notes from walks, poem fragments, quotes from books, photographs. Every project is rooted in these archives. So beginning something new is usually a matter of sifting through bits and pieces, finding unexpected connections.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
A single poem usually begins either as a firsthand observation, or as an exploration of language (sometimes I think of the poems as either “outdoorsy” or “indoorsy”). Bookwise, Optic Nerve is themed around photography and seeing, and I’m working on a new collection of poems about walking.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love reading aloud. During solo writing residencies I’ve often read entire books aloud to an empty house, which is a fantastic way to feel immersed in the writing’s texture and soundscape. I write my own poems with the idea that they will be read aloud, and enjoy public readings.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I like looking at things. The current question depends on what I’m looking at. The bigger question, of course, is what to look at.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I’ve always liked Kurt Vonnegut’s take on this: “I sometimes wondered what the use of any of the arts was. The best thing I could come up with was what I call the canary in the coal mine theory of the arts. This theory says that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are super-sensitive. They keel over like canaries in poison coal mines long before more robust types realize that there is any danger whatsoever.”
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Working with an editor is difficult in the best kind of way, where you feel discomfort, which is the sensation of being challenged and learning and changing. I find it essential, but never easy.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
From Guy Debord’s autobiography: “My method will be very simple. I will tell what I have loved; and, in this light, everything else will become evident and make itself well enough understood.”
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to photography)? What do you see as the appeal?
It doesn’t feel like moving between genres – both poetry and photography are the work of seeing things in new ways. I’m fascinated by the way that poems and photos can complement each other. They both feel like quieter, more intimate ways of making, creating meaning by stringing a series of small observations together.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
My only routine is to read for about 45 minutes as I eat breakfast. I realize it’s a luxury to structure my mornings this way, and I cling to it desperately. I don’t have a regular writing routine, but I make writing time during evenings or days off, or once in while through grants, residencies or creative writing classes.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Going for a long walk works miracles. I can sometimes also unblock my brain by switching from my computer to writing on paper.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Ocean wind – not so much the fragrance but the force of it. There’s nothing like the breath-burgling, voice-snuffing, brain-numbing winds out on the headlands near St. John’s.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
I went to art school, and I really enjoy writing in response to images – paintings, photographs, films. Anything visual. I’m especially interested in the way that documentary films can be lyrical and poetic (I love Agnès Varda’s work, and Werner Herzog’s), and the way that they can weave real-life observations together to create meaning. There are lessons there for poetry, I think.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Teju Cole is an incredible writer and photographer and I enjoy his books immensely. I just finished reading Robert Macfarlane’s Underland and really loved it. Likewise Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. And one of my favourite films is Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I, a documentary about finding things, which begins in whimsy and moves almost surreptitiously to more poignant social concerns.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
A really long walk, like the Kumano Kodō or the Pennine Way or the Camino de Santiago.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Writing is an ongoing creative practice for me, but I wouldn’t call it an occupation. I do lots of things that are not writing – photography, design work, web development, arts administration.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Writing gives me a specific kind of joy that I don’t experience elsewhere. I love language – its sound, its mouthfeel, the deep deep history of words – and I get enormous pleasure from the process of wrangling language into something poem-shaped or book-shaped.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Teju Cole’s Black Paper is a collection of brilliant, incisive essays about art, photography and seeing. Cole traces Caravaggio’s travels in exile, considers what it means to look at photographs of suffering, and writes about writing during dark times. “The secret reason I read, the only reason I read, is precisely for those moments in which the story being told is deeply alert to the world, an alertness that sees things as they are or dreams things as they could be.”
I watch a lot of movies. The one I’ve enjoyed the most recently is Ciro Guerra’s The Wind Journeys. It’s set in Northern Colombia, and in addition to marvellous cinematography, characters, and music, it features the most captivating accordion battles ever put to film.
20 - What are you currently working on?
A collection of poems about walking.
Sunday, June 18, 2023
Amy Ching-Yan Lam, Baby Book
Thursday, May 18, 2023
12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jake Byrne
Jake Byrne is a writer based in Tka:ronto, cka Toronto. Their first book of poems, Celebrate Pride with Lockheed Martin, is available now from Wolsak & Wynn's Buckrider Books imprint. DADDY is forthcoming with Brick Books in 2024. Find them at @jakebyrnewrites somewhere on the Internet.
1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first chapbook didn’t change my life very much – well, it did, but in the normal way that time changes things for you. It was nice to get a nod from the bp Nichol shortlist, but I would say my life quickly returned to what it had been previously.
Things feel a little different for this book – but I’ve felt ‘career momentum’ before that went nowhere, so I’m not going to count any chickens prior to hatching. All I will say is that it feels nice to feel so supported as I get to accomplish a dream I’ve had since childhood.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Horrific attention span. Poetry involves the types and durations of concentration I am naturally suited towards. It also is still a lot of fun. Writing prose has always felt laborious.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
It takes seconds to start any particular writing project, and just as long to abandon them. Some poems come fully-formed, quickly: those are the bolt-of-lightning poems. Then there are ones that are formed over months, years, often with little active work, just my mind slowly composting an idea or image until one day it coalesces. These are the long poems I tend to end my books with.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I have no idea of telling where one book ends and another begins, other than they tend to have different ‘feels’ to them. Many of the poems in Celebrate Pride with Lockheed Martin were written at the same time as poems from DADDY, for example, but to me, there’s no way of mistaking one for the other.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I enjoy readings, as a poet I think you must MUST be down to hang out. Novelists are the industrious introverts of the literary world – for poets, all we have are our communities.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I guess, ultimately, I am only trying to answer one theoretical question, which is the question of theodicy: why does suffering exist? If God exists, why does God permit suffering and evil?
I guess I’m just kind of culturally Catholic that way.
On the level of technique, prosody trumps all other considerations for me, 99.9% of the time.
My poetics derives from sound, not from image. All considerations such as logic, fact, or whether a word is ‘best’ or not will be overturned in favour of a syllabic pattern that sounds ‘right’ to me.
The other things I am interested in are primarily the art of artifice and its corollary, sincerity and vulnerability, or the appearance thereof, and I have some very minor concrete leanings in that I prefer to think of the whole page, including its white space, as my canvas. You may continue to expect some weird grammatical and formatting stuff from me in the future.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I think the role of a writer, or the role of any artist, is to both attempt to describe and reshape the reality you live in, and to encourage others to have the courage to do the same. It takes a great deal of courage to live honestly.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential. I consider myself a sharper editor than a writer and always have. It would be hypocritical of me to respect the process when I’m on one end of it but not the other.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
This is not a piece of advice I’ve heard, but rather one I’ve witnessed and observed: in a small industry mostly consisting of friends passing the same $500 back and forth between each other, the relationships you form are everything. Kindness and collaboration provide better returns than competition.
10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I have no fixed writing routine. My only rule is that when I hear the call, I write it down, no matter how horrible or artless it seems in the moment.
I have long fallow periods, sometimes up to eighteen months, where I barely write at all. But the urge comes back, it always does, and then I make time for my notebook.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I’ve gone through enough of these cycles that I no longer worry about this or attempt to force it.
I redirect attention to my life and try to live it, and after a few weeks or months of that the poems start flowing again.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I grew up in a fragrance-free household, for the most part.
I guess certain soaps and cleaning products, or maybe the ginger cookies my mom made for us in the fall in the nineties.
I wear a lot of scents myself now in adulthood, so I still don’t have a fixed ‘home’ aroma!
13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
I’m only a poet because I couldn’t cut it as an actor, novelist, rockstar, playwright, director, or painter.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Everything is grist for the mill, but I’ve always been someone interested in responding to the art of others, and that includes
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
The path of least resistance. Bookworm child, author adult. Oh and the fact I had a really really powerful experience of being the day I wrote my first word, which is probably the most vivid memory I have from my early life.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Great book? A Queen in Bucks County by Kay Gabriel.
Great film? I’ve been having one of my little obsessions about David Lynch’s Inland Empire, and have watched it about thirty times since November of 2022. One day I will simply grow tired of it and never watch it again.
19 - What are you currently working on?
Surviving my debut book tour. I have three to four book ideas ready to go but I think I’m going to need a period of rest and recovery before I can start thinking about those.
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