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Bookstores Canadian Chapbook Photography Vancouver

The Regional Assembly of Text

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While in Vancouver I came across this unusual little store, The Regional Assembly of Text (3934 Main Street) stocks cards, postcards, zines, artists’ books, kits to make zines and books, t-shirts, all made by the shop owners. They also have a tiny reading room full of artists’ books and zines. They hold a regular letter writing evening on the first Thursday of every month supplying the goods to write your letters. All very cool. More info at their site www.assemblyoftext.com.

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In the reading room

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The electrical plug in gives you an idea of the size of some of these books

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Zine/books for sale

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Back counter with typewriter collection

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Canadian Interview

Nicole Markotic – Interview

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LP: You have a novel coming out shortly? What can you tell us about it?

NM: OK, I’m not the greatest at speaking about my own books, but I’ll give this a whirl… Here’s what we came up with for the back blurb: Scrapbook of My Years as a Zealot is a narrative of longing for self-creation, but also for self-destruction, restlessly twisting and turning through triangular friendships, teenage delinquents, Nazi killing hospitals for the disabled, the inane ex-boyfriend, a dying father’s sudden conversion to parenting, and fantastic tales of the Mormon Angel Moroni on estrogen.

It’s called Scrapbook of My Years as a Zealot, partly because I liked the contrast between staunch zealotry and a cluttered scrapbook. But I also gave it that title to encompass the non-linear nature of the novel. The narrator goes through a childhood with European parents and indulges in her best friend’s Mormon religion as a way of feeling more North American. She ends up dating a “Jack” Mormon because, like her, he knows what it’s like to be involved with the church but also to leave it. As a grownup, she works with delinquent teenagers; and she has a complicated relationship with her mother, an atheist, and with two friends who never knew her as a Mormon but who find her a bit uptight because of her background. Now, everything I’ve said so far is just plot, though. Much of the book is about how the story doesn’t unfold from A to Z, but that scenes from different timelines appear next to each other. She tells the entire story, but still manages to present versions of what’s happening with other characters. So, for example, she longs to be closer to her mother, but only tries to get her mother to understand her; meanwhile, her mother has a tragic secret from which she wishes to shield her daughter. How characters related to each other, what they do or do not tell each other, was the focus of many of the scenes. On the one hand, I’m fascinated by religion and how believers fit themselves into the “rules” of their faith; on the other hand, I’m in love with the kind of language that accompanies wonder and obsession.

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LP: This is your second novel. What changes did you notice in writing the second as compared to the first?

NM: When I wrote Yellow Pages, I couldn’t believe how much of the “story” I had to leave out, in order to properly get that story onto the page. For this novel, I used the idea of surreptitious lives and past secrets to put pressure on the idea that you can ever tell the “entire” story. In my first novel, I was trying to “expose” Alexander Graham Bell as the antagonist of Deaf culture. At the same time, I was gripped by the language of how one can try to tell a non-verbal story. So one of the biggest changes in Scrapbook is actual dialogue tags! But even though this book wasn’t written around a historical figure, I still had to do an enormous amount of research into the 70s and 80s. I didn’t just want to drop in a Madonna song, to easily signal where (or when) readers should understand the story now is); but rather, I turned to less famous, but possibly equally relevant details. So, for example, I mention Eddie the Eagle in one chapter. Partly to remind readers about the time of the 1988 Calgary Olympics, but also because he’s a figure that really captured Canadian’s hearts when he participated in the ski jump. Not because he won (and not even, I think, because he came last), but because he took on the spirit of competition for the sake of the sport, not the result.

LP: Much of your career has been devoted to poetry. Is there a big shift for you, in terms of writing, to go from poems to a novel?

NM: More like a constant shift! I’ve been alternating poetry and fiction since I started writing (and now squeeze in essays and formal talks and even a few web write-ups). And then when I do write a book in particular genre (I’m thinking of my first novel, Yellow Pages), readers claim it’s prose poetry (or that my poetry is narrative). But I hear your question: it is, always a shift to move between the kind of writing that develops characters or sets a scene or emotion to the kind of writing that zings the senses without necessarily presenting a story. I love how poetry can work at a dozen levels at once, prick the readers’ ears and sight and intellect. But I also love how fiction can get readers caught up in the narrative push, in the dynamics between characters and conflict and the materiality of the word and story. I guess I find it hard to settle in any one genre because I’m so passionate about all genres as a reader. I’m the type of reader who has several books going at once. I’ll read a poem for a while, then turn to a short story, and then delve into a literary essay. And then, of course, dive right into a film!

LP: You grew up in Calgary, and until very recently, were teaching at the University of Calgary. You’re now at the University of Windsor. As a writer what are the differences between the two cities/regions?

NM: I’ve been in southern Ontario now for two and a half years, and I seriously am still getting used to a different way of thinking. Not worse or better, but definitely different. For one thing, Windsor is across the river from Detroit, which not only makes it a border city, it also makes it a small city that is physically linked to a large city. People hear listen to US radio stations and watch US local television shows. This may not be so unusual in other parts of the country, but Calgary – despite being represented often as a pro-US city – is pretty physically isolated. And there’s so much going on in the history of this city! Just last week, I had a great conversation with my Creative Writing students about setting their fiction in Windsor. I was dismayed to hear that none of them thought Windsor was “interesting” enough to hold the interest of readers not from here. Meanwhile, I’ve been taking notes like crazy every since I moved here, because most of what I’ve learned is so fascinating: the first stop in Canada on the underground railroad, the origin of Canadian Club, the place where Michigan teenagers go to drink two years before they’re legal in the US, the booze runs across the river during prohibition, etc. etc. This is a fairly working class town, and one that’s been reliant on the auto industry for most employment. Meanwhile, people here are unbelievably optimistic about the future. And teaching at the University here makes me more and more aware of how much students want to learn and how much their parents want them to get a “higher” education.

LP: You’ve just spent a summer in Vancouver. Was the decision to spend time there strictly personal or was there a connection to your writing?

NM: Both. I find that I really spend all my hours from September until May on my teaching, as do most of my colleagues across the country. So getting into another city is one of the ways to make a sharp divide between teaching or administrative work and the writing I’m always trying to get to. But I also love the West and love getting back to the kind of city where you can buy all your fruits and vegetables organic (and I’m not even a health nut!), where you can read in a coffee shop at every block, where you can walk around and not have to own a car. Just as I can’t settle on one-only genre, I can’t seem to settle in any one place, without longing to be where I’m not. When I’m in Windsor, I miss the prairies and the coast, and when I’m in Vancouver, I miss Victoria and Ontario and Montréal. I’m not satisfied, ever, but in what I hope is a generative way, that makes me pay attention to what I’m missing and why. Pay attention to the friends I get to see in the now, and to remember that when I’m no longer with them.

LP: You rented the house of a well-known poet who was away from Vancouver for the summer, did you discover any new favourite books in his bookshelves?

NM: Both Fred Wah and Pauline Butling have enough books to last my lifetime, though that didn’t stop me from also making a trip to the public library every week! I reread a lot of George Bowering while I was there, as well as quite a few other Vancouver writers, such as Roy Miki and Sharon Thesen, and more recently emerged writers such as Jacqueline Turner and Nikki Reimer. It’s funny, I was heavily focused on prose last summer (finishing Scrapbook and getting a draft done of my next novel), but spent most of my time reading poetry…

LP: At one point you had your own press, publishing poetry chapbooks. Are you still doing that?

NM: Sort of. Not the best answer, I know, but as truthful as I can be. Maintaining a chapbook press through grad school was incredibly overwhelming, and I’m happy we managed that, but once I got a permanent job, that kind of editing got constantly pushed to the side. Then, right before I left Calgary (and to commemorate Fred Wah’s retirement from UofC), I published broadside of one poem. That got me all excited about small-press publishing again, and last year I put out a card-sized poem by Chus Pato, translated by Erin Mouré. My idea now is to produce a chapbook once a year, and if I get some momentum, then maybe even increase the number to two or three a year. I adore the publishing end of writing (when it’s other people’s poetry), and miss the excitement of producing some that’s just finished. As well, it’s so hard for newer writers to get published these days, I feel that a small press offers writers (and readers) avenues that don’t need the entire publishing and marketing system behind it.

LP: Are you doing any editing these days?

NM: Besides the above newish publishing venture, and besides editing for various writers who hand me complete manuscripts, I’m doing a lot of editing of graduate students who have chosen to write a book-length manuscript for their MA thesis, and editing for the undergraduate students in my Creative Writing classes.

LP: If you were to recommend books for your students to read (aside from what’s required for their courses with you) what would they be?

NM: That’s a tricky question. Not because I don’t have an answer, but because the answer changes with every single student who asks me the question! I often give students specific books to read because of what they’re handing in, or to expand on the kind of writing they’re interested in but don’t yet have a handle on. Often students protest that they don’t want to read anything that relates to what they’re writing because they don’t want to be unduly influence! I explain to them that they’re already influenced, and what the need is a wider knowledge of their subject matter and writing impact. So: the list is infinite and specific to who’s interested in what, and why. Having said that, there are certain books I love forever, and constantly tell all sorts of people to read – such as Zsuzsi Gartner’s All the Anxious Girls on Earth, Tom King’s Green Grass, Running Water, Robert Kroetsch’s Completed Field Notes, Suzette Mayr’s Venous Hum, Rosemary Nixon’s Cock’s Egg, Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion, Aritha van Herk’s Restlessness, and Fred Wah’s Waiting for Saskatchwan.

LP: Last, the old standby, what are you reading yourself right now?

NM: That’s always the worst question because, as a Creative Writing teacher, I’m mostly reading student manuscript drafts! But the books I have on the go right now include: Sentenced to Light by Fred Wah (an amazing collection of his collaborative poetry projects), Kissing Doorknobs by Terry Hesser (a fabulous YA novel about a girl with OCD), Gerbil Mother by Dawn Bryan (an exquisitely demented “tall-tale” narrative told from the point-of-view of a nasty-spirited, foetus), a book of essays about the role of fairytales in contemporary culture, The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble, Blindsight by poet Rosemarie Waldrop, and Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, which is either a picture book or a graphic novel, depending who you talk to (I’m finding the lack of any text whatsoever deliciously troubling).

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Canadian Interview Photography Uncategorized

John W. MacDonald – Ottawa Photographer – Interview

LP: John, you’re a visual chronicler of Ottawa, do you see Ottawa as a documentary project?

JWM: I guess I see myself as photographer who happens to live in Ottawa. I don’t necessarily think of myself documenting Ottawa as a project. That would imply that I have a vision and a plan which I don’t. Not at the moment anyway. We shall see what body of work I come up within 25 years or so. Lately I find myself wanting to visit more cities and do the same thing in other places. Though I am sure the same stuff goes on there. Money and my current family duties dictate otherwise at the moment.

Gustave Morin performs a poem on the streets of Ottawa at a Book Thug poetry reading in 2006.

LP: Do you support yourself by working as a photographer or are the images supported by another career?

JWM: It started off as the latter and then I was laid off in 2006. Now, I call myself a freelance photographer instead of calling myself unemployed. Sounds better. My web blog serves as a host for my photos and people can buy prints or request a headshot session which I am very happy to do. I have shot some family reunions and have a wedding coming up. I love event photography. It’s enjoyable to see the results come up on the monitor. I want to make photography a means to make a living. That’s my goal.

HRH Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex photographed during a special public event which celebrated Queen Victoria’s decision to nominate Ottawa as the Capital of Canada 150 years ago, 2007.

LP: A lot of your images are taken at literary events in the Canadian capital, why so many images of writers?

JWM: I am a book lover and started off as a book collector. I started going to the local literary events to get my books signed by the authors. It was that simple. I started a blog and wrote about my experiences on the literary scene. Then I started taking pictures for kicks, then got a better camera and started to photograph the authors and poets I saw in a more serious way. Then it suddenly became all about just getting the photograph and forgetting about the autograph.

A candid photo of Yann Martel just before a reading in Ottawa at Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts & Humanities.

LP: What can you tell us about the literary community in Ottawa?

JWM: I think it’s very supportive. People know each other and many get out to each other’s readings and book launches. It’s very sincere I feel. It’s not just about the networking. There’s a friendly and inclusive vibe. Here I am – not even a writer per se – and I can mingle and chat with a great core group of writers and poets. That’s why I still go out to all these readings. There really is something new to experience each time out. What I love about the events are all the visiting authors and poets who come here to read. I know it takes money and time for these people to visit and market their work. Therefore I feel that supporting this, if only by posting a photo, is my way of making a contribution and awareness. I wish more people would step outside their living rooms to attend a literary festival or reading. Arts and festival funding here in Ottawa is in jeopardy it seems on an annual basis. This is not a good thing.

LP: If a traveler with a literary bent were visiting, where would you tell them to go?

JWM: I was going to say Beechwood Cemetery to see some graves of writers but that may not be one’s cup-of-tea. A visit to a used bookstore might be in order. I like the feel of Patrick McGahern Books. Similarly, I love the Canadiana stock at Argosy Books, and Book Bazaar. I would also tell someone to check out Bywords.ca and see what literary event is happening that night and get out to a reading. If you happen to be near the Rideau Canal near Dows Lake, you just might bump into 2007 Giller Prize Winner Liz Hay out for a stroll. If you’re near Preston Street step on over to Pubwells; you might see poet rob mclennan doing some writing. Hungry for some classy pub food? Check out the Manx Pub on Elgin Street and have award-winning poet David O’Meara serve you a pint or two of Guinness on tap or choose from a huge selection of their Scotch Whisky menu. The Manx too crowded? Then head just next door to the Elgin Street Diner and chat it up with author, editor John Metcalf, whose wife runs the place. It’s open 24 hours a day, you can’t go wrong.

John Metcalf launched his latest memoir Shut Up He Explained at the Manx Pub in Ottawa, 2007.

Victorious poet rob mclennan gives the nasty Nathaniel G. Moore a pummeling with a folding chair. Smack! Spencer Gordon lays motionless after a vicious unwarranted attack by Moore, now bloodied. This is Canadian poetry at its finest.
LP: Tell us about some of your favourite photographs of writers.

Ahhh! An open-ended question. I could spend all day chewing your ear off about this. I assume you want me to talk about photos that were taken by other photographers. I think of Yousuf Karsh’s photos. Hemingway’s stark portrait comes immediately to mind. Pretty much anything done by Alfred Eisenstaedt. He is my main inspiration for the kind of photos I want to make. As for my own favourite photographs, well each one is a favourite otherwise I wouldn’t post it online. But if I were pressed I would tell you it’s always an interesting experience to have a camera at the ready when jwcurry’s around. I swear I can almost publish a book of photos just of him. He has such an amazingly comprehensive collection of bpNichol’s work, it boggles the mind. What’s more is that he is one of the most creative individuals I have ever met. People should buy more books from him just so you get the chance to talk to this guy in person.

jwcurry caught in the camera lens at a poetry reading at the University of Ottawa in 2008.

LP: Most photographers are rejected by a potential subject from time to time, any writer (or other person) you really wanted to photograph who just said no?

JWM: That’s the great thing about being a candid photographer. Your subject can never say no. Thankfully, I have very few negative experiences thus far. When rebuffed I always respect the person’s wish not to be photographed. It’s just common sense. However, I did have this one experience earlier this year where I asked for a posed photo of a visiting author who was doing a reading at a local bar. He agreed and we went outside for the brief shoot. And when I say brief shoot, it’s like, okay stand here, some chitchat then click, click, click. Done. I took three or four photos. I eventually posted one of them on my blog. It turned out rather nice I thought. Five months later he sent me an email to ask me to remove the photo. I happened to like the portrait very much and convinced him to let me to keep it online. He did – thankfully. But what is especially gratifying is when that same scenario gets played out, and I get an email from the person wanting to buy prints or have the photo used for an author photo or for promotional use. That’s a great feeling of accomplishment and a sense of approval for me as a photographer.

LP: What writer(s) do you really, really want to photograph?

JWM: I’ll keep this one simple. Someone with gobs of cash and who wants a new photo done every other month or so. Know of anyone interested? Seriously though, my wish list is very long and never ending. Chief among the tops are J.D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon, Harper Lee, and J.K. Rowling. I would have loved to photograph Morley Callaghan in his youth and the late Canadian author, Hugh Hood.

LP: Your photographs have a really finely detailed look and while it appears you light some subjects, many are shot in available light. Describe your work techniques.

JWM: I always say that if a photo is worth taking, it is worth taking well. While I realize that we live in an image-driven society and people have access to all sorts of cheap cameras and camera phones, I personally want to have a camera that can be as flexible as possible and deliver the best image in a portable format: wide-angle, telephoto, macro, etc. I am a stickler for quality. I need a camera designed to take the best possible photo in any lighting situation. The quality really comes from using the best lenses available. ‘Fast glass’ as they say. As most (literary) events are in the evening and/or in basements, the lighting is usually sub-par. Lenses that are rated f/1.4 are in order for a ‘proper’ exposure in my experience.

I have almost entirely given up on using flash because I don’t think it lends itself to the photograph I want to make. It’s also intrusive. Not just to the audience members and the subject being photographed, but into the photo. You are putting light into a situation that’s not there to begin with. In a sense, the photographer is putting their footprints or presence into the subject matter of the photo. But if it is absolutely needed I see nothing wrong with on-camera-flash. It’s a tool like anything else. Now, if they can just make my D-SLR shutter quieter, that would be amazing! At times the shutter clicks are just as, if not, more annoying at a literary reading. Oh well. Sorry!

William Gibson book launch at an event hosted by the Ottawa International Writers Festival, 2007.

LP: You photograph a quite a number of political events. Do you photograph as a dispassionate observer or are you involved in events?

JWM: Being in a government town, it’s difficult to avoid *not* photographing these types of events. I would like to say that if I am wearing my photographer’s hat I can be quite dispassionate. I don’t like wearing stickers or labels or pins, save for a poppy. Some people might think that if I post a photo of a person who happens to be affiliated with a particular government party or cause that I am endorsing it. I don’t necessarily believe that this is so. I think my photos are done in a photo-journalistic, observational style. I photograph interesting things that happen around town and that which happens to catch my attention. If I am interested and engaged in in the subject matter, I feel that someone else might share in the visual experience, too.

LP: You and your wife have a son and have just been blessed with twin girls. How is that affecting the photo life?

JWM: I thought that with the birth of my son that my time for photo outings would be over. But you just find the time. It’s what I do. I am about to turn 41 and I still can’t believe the powerful feelings a parent can have for a child. It truly is a blessing to have children in your life. I know that some people can’t have this experience for one reason or another, and I am extremely proud to be a dad. But we all know it gives one an excuse to take more pictures.

LP: What do you read for pleasure?

JWM: Books are expensive and a luxury nowadays. They seriously cut into the diaper budget. I read blogs for pleasure. Mainly photo blogs. I just counted my RSS feeds. I have 114 of them I read on a daily basis, providing they are updated, of course. About 98 of them are photo-related (the rest are mainly other writer’s blogs.) I read these photo blogs for pure visual eye-candy appeal, and to keep current on what’s going on in the photography world at large. I keep thinking I should write a newspaper column on just the subject of photo blogs. I think the market is absolutely huge for people interested in reading about photography. It’s just not enough to be taking photos but to people like to read about other people’s photographic experiences. It’s quite fascinating.

John W. MacDonald self portrait

LP: Are you available for work, and if so, where/how can clients contact you?

JWM: Yes, I am available. I am willing to fly, take the train, bus, or boat to get to you. Does that sound too desperate? You can contact me via my web site http://johnwmacdonald.com. If you’re on facebook, send me a request. I’ll add you to my awesome group of friends.

Stephen Rowntree is subjected to my bookish torture in the name of getting a cool photograph.

Dr. Maria Tippett at the podium responding to audience questions from her book THE LIFE OF YOUSUF KARSH at the Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, 2007.

Scott Griffin and his wife were in Ottawa for the International Writers Festival. Taken during a photo-op at Rockcliffe Airport 18 April 2006, he’s pictured at Ottawa’s Rockcliffe Airport in a CF-WMJ, his Cessna 180.

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Terence Byrnes – Closer to Home – Interview

Terence Byrnes

Terence Byrnes

LP: You have been taking photographs for many years, what drew you to writers?

TB: Well, I’ve also been writing. My first collection of short stories was called Wintering Over, I published an anthology called Matinees Daily, wrote for many magazines, and, during a dark and busy period of my life, ghost-wrote other people’s books. I fessed up to that last bit in an article in Maisonneuve magazine called “My Life as a Ghost.” For the record, I began publishing in the late 60s. First poetry, then reviews in the so-called counter-culture magazines of the era like Rolling Stone, then fiction. Given this background, it might have been better to have asked how I could have avoided writers.

LP: Why did you include the quotation from photographer Irving Penn (“I can say that …I found pictures trying to show people in their natural circumstances generally disappointing”) at the beginning of your book since “people in their natural circumstances” accurately describes your images?

TB: Penn’s description of “natural circumstances” is actually pretty vague since he designed a portable daylight studio and shipped it to the locations of his more remote shoots. He may have meant that the idea of “natural” is actually a highly mediated one and that it can only be approached through the artificiality of staging. That, in any event, is the meaning I took from it.

Louis Dudek

Louis Dudek

LP: Was it a challenge to find a publisher for the book? Books of photographs are expensive to produce.

TB: Indeed they are. Other publishers have been enthusiastic about the project but have suddenly vanished from my In-box when they costed the project. However, Simon Dardick of Véhicule Press pursued the project with more enthusiasm, commitment, and greater skill than the others. We applied to the Canada Council and received support from both the Visual Arts section and the Writing and Publishing section. This was particularly pleasing because so much art that combines two normally distinct areas—like writing and image-making—isn’t very interesting in either area. The Canada Council’s support of both areas was a validation of the idea and of the work itself, as well as a financial necessity.

LP: Your comments on the difference between photographing men and women were interesting, essentially that women are more sensitive about photographs of themselves. Care to comment on that further?

Susan Gillis

Susan Gillis

TB: Sure, but the word “sensitive” isolates women in a way that makes me a little uncomfortable. I’ll turn the tables for a moment and say that society finds endless ways to valorize men despite the way(s) they look. Male slackers, nerds, slobs, sexual indiscriminates, bikers, and outlaws can all find a place on the ladder of sexual status that Hollywood and society in general deliver to us. The range for women is much narrower and so often refers to their sexual availability (or not). Consequently, women have to be more “sensitive” because they’re judged by a different, and less flexible, standard.

LP: You gave each writer the instructions that your photographs would be made “where they lived, worked, or played.” Why did make this request?

TB: First, pragmatism. When I was co-editing Matrix magazine, we were, like all literary magazines, broke. So I did the editorial photography when we interviewed or profiled an author. Often, that was at the writer’s home or favourite hangout. So the work developed from there. However, there was a proscriptive side to the shoots as well as a prescriptive one. Author photography operates in what I’ll call the “everyman” mode or the “frontispiece” modes. The everyman mode takes the easy, egalitarian road: a snapshot. The frontispiece mode starts to circle the author’s pate with the literary garlands of classical art. Historically, these “garlands” were a limited set of poses, many of which were derived from classical sculpture, and a familiar set of visual references that included busts of Shakespeare or Homer, staffs, literal garlands, open books, pens, and other devices. Now, we still use many of these signs of literary and social authority, but we’re also fond of bricks (the urban, the cool), books (unchanged for the last couple of thousand years) and computer screens (savvy). So, I also told each writer that we would avoid those clichés.

LP: The writers are all English speaking and you explain why. You like to talk with your subjects and your weak French would have interfered with that. It seems though that any decision to exclude one language or another in Quebec makes it a political or ethnic issue. Do you think so?

TB: Sure it is, but if we choose to look at it that way, our feet quickly become tangled in the terminology. For instance, Anglophones are, by definition, an ethnic group within Quebec, just as, let’s say, Filipinos or Moroccan are. Who would have been bothered by a book about Filipinos or Moroccans? However, I’ll stop myself from wading any further into that swamp. Closer to Home is not about Anglo writers in Quebec, and it’s not another dusty warehouse/museum/telephone book of candid author snaps, like People magazine with a lesser degree of celebrity and titillation. It’s about the representation of writers in a more general sense, and I’m most familiar with English-language traditions of representation. Also—and this is critically important—a strong sense of common ground and trust has to be created to make a shoot successful. Remember, I’m working very hard while talking. Accomplishing all this while speaking French would have been beyond my talents.

LP: The photographs in the book are all from Montreal, have you been photographing writers from other places as well?

TB: In a limited way, yes. However, if someone comes from Dublin or Chicago, stays in a hotel, reads in a public hall, and sits in a classroom, the opportunities for establishing anything but a documentary relationship between the figure and the setting are terribly limited.

LP: What do you find is the greatest challenge to a photographer creating portraits? Is it technical, is it personality, location or a combination of everything?

TB: May I just say “a combination of everything” and be let off the hook? If not, I’ll put the availability of useable light at the top of the list. Then comes personality. For instance, if the subject insists on being seen in front of a bookcase with fingertips grazing the temples in the Arcadian mode of calm repose, I’m sunk. There is, however, another element in the photographs that’s hiding in plain sight. I’m also a printmaker, and that part of me paints with light—to borrow a phrase from Ansel Adams—on the computer. The camera does not see as the eye does; that re-creation must be accomplished by the printmaker.
Anne Carson

Anne Carson


LP: Do you crop your images when making prints or do you print them full frame (i.e., everything that was on the original negative or digital capture).

TB: Except for tiny bits of trimming around the edges, the vast majority are full frame. There are a few exceptions—Rawi Hage and Norm Sibum, for example. The whole full-frame thing is interesting, though, because it links to a naïve notion about the authenticity of the “documentary” image. That is, cropping is associated with lying. It’s nonsense, though. One of the first principles of all art is that of selection, and a full frame is as much of a selection as a partial frame.

LP: Montreal has a great tradition of documentary photographers. Were/are any of these photographers and their work influences on you?

TB: I wonder who you have in mind. Sam Tata? Gabor Szilasi? Louise Abbott? Serge Clément? Of course, with Serge, we’re drifting quite far past the borders of the “documentary,” but if I had to make a link, it would be with his work. He’s a very fine artist.

LP: Scanning other books on the market that showcase writer portraits reveals that they are all black and white images. You photographed originally with black and white film but now shoot digital images so have files in colour but choose to print everything black and white. What is it about black and white photographs and images of writers?

TB: There are playful and speculative answers that might nevertheless have some weight. I could say that pre-20th century frontispiece portraits are black on white, or that we see Eliot or Faulkner, or Stein primarily in black and white, and that current representation wishes to borrow from that historical authority. That has some truth in it. Also true is the fact that the colour in an uncontrolled environment can be very distracting. Colour can also make it more difficult to design a coherent frame.

LP: What makes you include or exclude details from a photograph? Your photograph of Sheila Fischman has space (walls) around her but that space is filled by photographs and mirrors while in your photo of Trevor Ferguson almost half the space is taken up by a blank wall?

TB: Trevor’s wall isn’t blank! It’s filled with patterned wallpaper that works with the patterned couch he’s sitting on. The figure is then isolated by a ground of pattern. That’s one of those designed frames I was talking about. The image of Sheila is intended to speak directly to the written text, which is about memory, loss, and reflection.
Trevor Ferguson

Trevor Ferguson

Sheila Fischman

Sheila Fischman


LP: You include a short description of your visit and photo session with each writer. Was it difficult to keep each piece so short? I assume that with at least some of the writers you could have written several pages about the session.

TB: The short descriptions were intended to function in ways that paralleled the function of the photographs. Like the photographs, they describe a point (or points) in time. They are suggestive of personality (of the writer-photographer as well as of the subject), and they may at times contradict the implications of the image. The idea is that neither mode communicates anything like an essential truth about character, that both are representations, that the writer being portrayed is the object of different kinds of gaze. The book, as an idea, at least, is a function of both text and image.

LP: Are your personal favourite photographs based on the image or the session/relationship with the writer?

TB: On the image entirely. I left each shoot (there were over a hundred) cursing myself for opportunities missed and technical things done poorly. I cursed myself again when I saw the failures of the negatives or the digital captures. There were only a few times when I looked into the viewfinder, immediately knew I had something good, and got it. Those were the times when I knew there was something more than chance at work in this enterprise of making photographs.

Stephanie Bolster

Stephanie Bolster

LP: Will we be able to see any of the photographs in an exhibition soon?

TB: The work has been exhibited a number of times already but the show has not travelled widely. Art exhibitions face the same problems as art book publication: they’re expensive. If the book had been conceived and marketed as the kind of collection that I dismissed earlier as a “warehouse,” there would probably be more interest in another show. Viewers and funding agencies like work that claims to speak of a locale or a people. My only claim for the photographs and written portraits in Closer to Home is that they speak of representation itself.

LP: Is this an ongoing project or does the book signal the end of this group of photographs?

TB: It’s an end.

Terence Byrnes book of writer portraits Closer To Home is published by Véhicule Press

Terence Byrnes’ work can bee seen at this website: www.springfieldfolio.terencebyrnes.com

Categories
Book Bookstores Canadian Interview Reading

Patrick Blennerhassett – Monument – Interview

LP: Monument’s characters are heavy drinking, drug abusing, amoral, racist, violent, misogynist young men yet somehow the reader remains interested rather than simply repelled by the characters. Was this a challenge when writing the book?

PB: Definitely, I wanted people to be torn about cheering for Seth in particular. I wanted him to be an antihero, as my buddies and I always say, ‘a lovable asshole’. These guys are young, confused, stupid, immature, just like I was, and am still am a bit, it’s part of being young. But I think there’s hope for these guys, even though they seem like lost causes. They really didn’t go looking for trouble, like Seth, they just had the cards stacked against them from Day 1, and so life has made them frustrated and rebellious, and this is how they lash out back against that, by being assholes.

However I’m sure many people will read it and just straight up hate these guys and burn the book and curse me as a writer. To each his own I guess, I just hope people see past all the shocking elements and realize these guys are far from perfect, they’re human.

LP: The book ends somewhat ambiguously with the main character’s secret possibly to be revealed to another. Did you want readers to be left wondering or do you think they’ll write their own ending?

PB: I hope they write their own, but they don’t hate me for leaving it open. I think the book ends at one of the elbows in Seth’s life, and now he’s got another chance to make a choice, another chance at redemption. What happens after the final pages, I think, the reader must decide – me personally, I have my own future for him, but that’s the beauty of it, everyone will have a separate future for him, be it good or bad.

I like books that make you think past the final pages, and that also tie things together a bit in the end. I can’t stand a lot of books for that reason, they just kind of end, and you’re like ‘OK what was all that for? You did a great job at describing the characters and the setting, and then I get this for an ending.’ I always feel cheated so I wanted to avoid that.

LP: Hockey plays a big part in the book. The one commitment Seth lives up to is showing up for games, no matter what. Why that commitment to a game?

PB: Honestly hockey is one of the main reasons I’m still around today. I’ve been through some rough patches in my life, and you can always go out for a few hours a night and totally forget about all your problems on the ice, it’s total escapism. Seth is good at hockey, it’s really the only thing he’s good at, so he just naturally gravitates towards that as a bit of a bouy in turbulent waters. It’s the one place – the rink – where’s he’s in charge, where’s he good at something and feels respected.

LP: How much did you rely on personal past experiences in the book?

PB: Too much. Way too much. Pretty much every character including the main character is based directly on people I know personally. I don’t know if I will ever write a book this personal again, I didn’t expect a lot of the reactions I got from people, both positive and negative albeit. Every story, everything that happens throughout the book is taken directly from personal experience, or from a friend’s personal experience.

LP: This is your first novel. How long did it take to write it?

PB: Just over a year for the bulk of it, the majority of it was written during 10 months of sobriety, I decided to quite drinking for a year, although I only lasted 10 months, and I realized I couldn’t go out to the bar and hang out with my friends, it was impossible. So I was home alone a lot of nights and just kept writing, collecting stories along the same vein and then I just checked the word count one night and though ‘man I’ve got enough for a book here if I keep going’. So I kept going.

LP: The book’s main characters are all young. Do any of your friends who have read the book identify with any of them?

PB: All the guys in the book are based directly on friends of mine and guys I know. Some of them are simply composites, Cancer being a blend of my buddy Ryan mentally and another friend physically, and Caleb a blend of two other buddies. Some of the more minor hockey guys are basically real guys I know, with the names changed in most occurrences.

But yeah a few of my close friends have read it and they got it, they totally understood some of the themes I was trying to get across. For me that was the biggest compliment.

LP: The book is divided into chapters/books with individual titles. Why did you do this, what is the significance of the titles?

PB: It’s mostly to break it up, kind of like breathers for the reader. But each one was carefully picked, such as the car accident chapter, ‘Mercaptan’ is the additive they put in gasoline that gives it that distinct smell that Seth is comforted by right after the accident. Some are much more cryptic, not sure people will totally understand all of them, they’re also there to set a tone too for the forthcoming chapter.

LP: I found it interesting that you used brand names for many things rather than generic terms (ie instead of just noodles you use the full brand name, or a very specific brand of cigar rather than just a cigar). Why?

PB: I was drawing a lot from my own life, I have a penchant for Blackstone Cherry cigars, and so just to say ‘tipped cigar’ doesn’t really give the reader that definitive look. A lot of the references give the reader a bit of a sense of time, like the video game Cancer is obsessed with, GoldenEye, it lets the reader know we’re in the days of Nintendo 64, which I thought was a bit cooler than saying pre 9/11 or 1999-2000. It’s also not bowing down to corporate advertisements, but I hope I don’t get sued. Mind you that might be fun for me, not my publisher.

LP: This is a very much a BC book with events taking part in Vancouver and Kamloops. Is location important or could this book been set elsewhere?

PB: It’s definitely a B.C. book because that’s all I really know. I’m not good enough of writer to have set it in Manitoba or Detroit or just made up all the settings. Honestly when I first starting writing this I had no intention of publication, so for me it was just natural to blatantly place the characters in places like Kamloops and Vancouver because I was really just kind of reciting stories verbatim.

LP: The only books that any character in the novel go near are philosophy books that the main character studies, for school and in a bookstore. Do you think your novel would appeal to the type of characters who populate the novel?

PB: I hope so, other than myself, I really wrote it as a book my buddies might want to pick up and get something from, draw some parallels from. But yeah I honestly don’t care what critics or other writers say about it, I’m sure they’ll take their shots because it’s not a literary novel, the language is simple and it’s not a huge existential, flowery look into Canadiana, and I didn’t want it to be that at all. I just wanted it to be a good story. But my buddies, or regular guys who have lived this life, if they can pick it up and go ‘yeah, that’s all bang-on’ then that’s all I’m worried about.

LP: You work full time as a journalist. How does that writing affect your fiction writing?

PB: Too much maybe. It’s made me a simpler, more straightforward writer, but it also hampers creativity at times. I don’t think I could do both types of writing for a long time, I’d like to do the journalism on the side, rather than the fiction writing on the side, but fiction writing doesn’t pay the bills, so I can’t really do that. Mind you journalism doesn’t really pay the bills that well either, maybe I should just go into PR and call it a day.

LP: The book has been published by a very small press Now Or Never Publishing who gave you quite a bit of control/input over the book design. Did you enjoy that process or was it a distraction?

PB: I’d like to say it was enjoyable but it was a bit of a distraction too. I think in an ideal world a writer just wants to write, and leave the rest to everyone else. But I learned a lot about the business and am still learning. I learned the fiction game is a terrible bitch, excuse my language.

I got a lot of rejection letters before NON took the book, that’s one of the reasons I’m hesitant to write again, I don’t have enough confidence in my writing to go through that lovely rejection process and self-promotional aspect of it, it’s very draining when you’re a young writer without a lot of backing. You get told ‘no’ a million different ways, I’m still recovering from that.

LP: What’s next? Do you have another novel underway?

PB: No, no novel in me for awhile, this one was draining, and unless I stop drinking again I don’t think I’ll get that amount of time again. I have more than a few ideas for a book, but that’s way down the road in the future when I’m in the right head-space.

I have however finished a book of poetry and a movie script, but I’m hesitant to shop them around, I’ve had my fill of rejection for awhile. But I’m hoping maybe the book might open one or two doors down that road, but you never know. I’m playing it all by ear for now.

Patrick Blennerhassett’s first novel ‘Monument’ has just been published by Now Or Never Publishing.

Categories
Biography Book Canadian Interview Reading

Brian Brennan – The Good Steward – Interview

Bob Blakey Photo

LP: Your latest book ‘The Good Steward: The Ernest C. Manning Story’ published by Fifth House (Fitzhenry & Whiteside) is just out. Can you summarize your subject?

BB: The book is about a Saskatchewan farmer’s son who came to Calgary as a teenager in the 1920s to become a Bible preacher and ended up combining his calling as a radio evangelist with a successful political career that saw him become Alberta’s longest-serving premier.

LP: Writing about provincial characters can be frustrating at times as it can be tricky attracting readers from other parts of the country. Why should the rest of Canada care about Manning?

BB: He did have a national profile as director of the Back to the Bible program, which ran on radio stations from coast to cost for more than 50 years. He also served in the Senate for thirteen years after leaving provincial politics, so that gave him a national profile as well. But beyond these appearances on the national stage, Manning as Alberta’s Social Credit premier was a key figure in promoting the first commercial development in the Athabasca oilsands. Because of the international attention now focussed on the oilsands — with environmentalists accusing the companies of producing “dirty oil” — I think readers might be interested in finding out how the development all got started. They might also be interested in learning how the energy policies developed by the Manning administration in the 1940s and 1950s helped transform Alberta from a have-not province into an economic powerhouse. And, during this current period of economic turmoil, I imagine readers would be interested in knowing how Manning restructured Alberta’s post-Depression provincial debt at a time when this province had zero credibility in the North American investment community.

LP: Is Manning a sympathetic character?

BB: Easier to admire and to respect than to like, I would say. That’s not to suggest, however, that Manning was unlikeable. It’s just that for many people he was essentially unknowable. Even his son Preston characterizes the relationship as “distant but harmonious.” Manning was a very private individual who allowed few outsiders to get close to him.

LP: What was the biggest surprise for you when researching Manning’s life?

BB: That, unworried about the possible environmental consequences, he once seriously toyed with the idea of detonating a nuclear bomb in the oilsands. Happily for those concerned about the potential danger of nuclear fallout, this bizarre plan never came to fruition. With countries around the world imposing bans on underground nuclear testing, Prime Minister Diefenbaker intervened in 1959 and unilaterally cancelled the oilsands experiment. But Manning still thought it was a great idea.

LP: Ernest Manning is the father of Preston Manning, founder of the Reform Party. What influence did the father have on the son?

BB: All of Preston’s ideas about Senate reform (the so-called Triple-E initiative) came from his father, who decided after a short time in the Red Chamber that the institution either needed to be changed or abolished. Preston’s ideas for tempering conservative principles with the social conscience of prairie populism also came from his father.

LP: The Calgary offices of your publisher Fifth House were recently closed and operations moved to the offices of the parent company Fitzhenry & Whiteside. Did this move have any effect on you?

BB: Only to the extent that I am now working with a publicist in Toronto rather than one in Calgary because Fitzhenry & Whiteside has centralized that part of its operations. I’m still in regular touch with Charlene Dobmeier, who steps down as Fifth House publisher in November but will continue to work in Calgary for Fitz & Whit as acquisitions editor and project manager for the Fifth House imprint. Whenever I have a book idea to pitch in the future, I’ll be talking to Charlene first.

LP: You’ve got an autobiography, or at least part of an autobiography out now as well, as one of the contributors to ‘The Story That Brought Me Here: To Alberta From Everywhere’ published by Brindle and Glass. What differences are there for a writer writing biography as opposed to autobiography, aside from the obvious such as personal memories?

BB: As an autobiographer, you’re constantly asking yourself how much you should reveal. If you give away too much, will your words end up hurting those you love? That’s rarely an issue for me as a biographer, because most of what I write is taken from public records, on-the-record interviews, and so on. Telling tales about one’s family and friends, though, is a different matter. It could, potentially, border on invasion of privacy.

LP: You’re from Ireland originally and have written a biography of Irish poet Mary O’Leary. Who was O’Leary and why did you want to write about her?

BB: She was my maternal grandmother’s great-grandmother, so in the first instance I did the book as an exercise in family history. I was intrigued by the fact that we had this famous 19th century Gaelic-speaking folk poet in the family, and I wanted to bring her achievements to the attention of an English-speaking readership.

LP: Do you follow contemporary Irish writing at all?

BB: To a very limited extent. I tend to be drawn more toward subject matter than to the fact that the book has been written by a particular author. If the subject interests me (I have a bias toward memoir and biography, as you’ve probably noticed), I usually make a point of ordering the book.

LP: Any favourite Irish writers?

BB: Nuala O’Faolain, Roddy Doyle, Frank McCourt, Edna O’Brien, Peter Sheridan, Clare Boylan, Patrick McCabe. I was also impressed by the audacity of a young unknown named Jamie O’Neill when he came out in 2001 with a blockbuster novel, At Swim, Two Boys, inspired by the comic writing of the late great Flann O’Brien. But O’Neill turned out to be just a one-hit wonder, so he’s no longer on my reading list.

LP: You’re a musician, a pianist. How does one career (writing/playing music) influence the other? Any plans to write about music/musicians or are the two arts separate for you?

BB: The words have to come together in a certain way, according to a certain rhythm, before they seem right for me on the page. That’s how the music influences my writing. Paradoxically, when it comes to playing songs, I am more interested in chord structures and melody than in lyrics. Then I care more about the sound of the music than about what the words are saying. I have written biographical profiles of musicians in some of my books, but haven’t given the full-length treatment to one yet. Perhaps in the future. I like writing about musicians because I have a feeling for what they do.

LP: All of your books have been non-fiction. Any desire to write fiction?

BB: I did take a stab at writing a semi-autobiographical novel a couple of years ago, but it wasn’t very good. I sent the manuscript off to a couple of publishers, who did the right thing by rejecting it. I wasn’t offended by this. I realized that after working as a journalist for more than 30 years, I can do non-fiction better than I will ever be able to do fiction. So, a full-length non-fiction autobiography is now taking the place of the fictional one.

LP: Will you continue to write about people from Alberta’s past or are you looking elsewhere for future material?

BB: Aside from the current autobiographical project, I likely will continue to write about Albertans as long as I live in Calgary, for the simple, practical reason that I can do the research without having to spend long periods away from home. If I ever move to Halifax — not that I have any plans to do so — I guess I’ll start writing about Nova Scotians.

Brian Brennan website

Categories
Canadian Festival

Canadian Writers’ Festivals

Fall is the season for the big Canadian Writers’ Festivals so here’s a list of what’s coming up. Today’s the last day for the Winnipeg Festival so you’ll have to start making plans for next year but there’s a lot more upcoming in October. Vancouver hosts the Writers & Readers event October 21-26 at the lovely Granville Island site. Calgary and Banff, as always, co-host Wordfest from October 14 – 19. Take a quick trip north from Calgary to Edmonton and take in the International Literary Festival there October 16-19.  In Ottawa from October 18-27 you can take in literary events at their International Writers Festival. Toronto puts on their event at Harbourfront where you can attend the International Festival of Authors October 22 – November 1. Lesser known events are the Surrey International Writers Conference October 23-26. Surrey is located just outside Vancouver so you can take in two festivals in the same area at the same time. For all you adventure types, armchair and otherwise, don’t forget the Banff Mountain Book Festival November 1-9, held in conjunction with a film festival. If that’s not enough start marking your calendar for next spring and the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival April 22-26, 2009.

Categories
Canadian In The Newspapers

Atwood, Doyle And Stephen Harper

Margaret Atwood has a powerful essay in the Globe and Mail on the arts in Canada and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s attitude towards art and artists. The end is especially chilling. A must read, especially with an election looming.

And now check out out John Doyle as well.

Categories
British Columbia Canadian Interview Writer

Tim Bowling – Interview

LP: Your childhood, salmon fishing and a certain part of the lower mainland where you grew up play an integral role in most of your writing. Can you fill us in on that background?

TB: Re; my background: I was born in Vancouver and immediately taken under the Fraser (via the Deas Tunnel) to Ladner – a salmon-like little journey appropriate for someone who’d grow up to be so involved with that magical species. I had an idyllic childhood at the mouth of North America’s wildest river, a Huck Finn childhood of raftings and roamings, except, unlike Huck, I had loving and supportive parents! What can I say? I was very fortunate; children weren’t then supervised every second of the day, my family worked in the salmon fishery, and so I spent a lot of time on my own in the
outdoors. Everything I write comes out of the sense of awe I drank in daily
as a boy.

LP: When you finished high school you went away to university, got your degree, and then came back to the fishing industry for a fair number of years. Where and when did the urge to write begin?

TB: Re: the urge to write: It was always there. In grade one, I remember answering that infamous question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” with “A writer.” Why? Who knows?

LP: Did you leave fishing simply because it was a dying industry or did the writing take over as your primary focus?

TB: As much as I appreciated the work of salmon fishing, I was never entirely at ease in the culture. In fact, I was only an appendage to it, as my older brother, Rick, rented the boats and made the decisions. I got my hands wet and bloody, right enough, but the stresses were mostly his. All through the 80s, I was focussed on the apprentice work of the poet and novelist (ie, reading a lot and writing a lot, most of the latter material being bad, of course)

LP: You now live in Edmonton. How did you end up there?

TB: Long story. To be brief, I moved to be with the woman who is now my wife. Funny thing is, I have very deep roots in Edmonton – my great-grandparents moved here from Ontario in 1905 and my father was born here in 1923. I’m only now beginning to explore these roots in my work.

LP: Is it a challenge to maintain your ties, creatively, to the west coast while living on the prairies?

TB: No challenge at all. But perhaps that’s because I visit the coast at least twice a year (for several weeks at a time) to see my family. In any case, Edmonton, like my hometown, has a river running through it. That helps.

LP: You have written poems and a novel set in Alberta but, if anything your Alberta focus seems more on the Badlands area rather than Edmonton. Why, what appeals about an area that is so different from your west coast home?

TB: The badlands reminded me very much of the west coast circa 1970 because of all the darkness and silence (the title of my poetry collection that contains several badlands poems). I’d sit on the porch at night in the Red Deer River Valley and feel that I was standing on the deck of a Fraser River gillnetter – the same sense of mystery and awe, the same exhilarating closeness to the source of things. But I should point out that Edmonton is becoming more of a focus. I’m currently writing a full-length collection of prose and poetry that investigates my family’s pioneering role as Edmonton
beekeepers.

LP: Even when you do write about Edmonton, and I’m thinking here of the poem A Cup Of Coffee In Solitude which starts with the line –January in Edmonton – later you write -A car passes on the muffled road, spawning salmon slow. Do you think that earlier life will always infuse your work?

TB: Yes. as Flannery O’Connor said, “Who ever’s been through childhood has enough material for several lifetimes.”

LP: Your last book, the memoir The Lost Coast talks about growing up in Ladner on the Fraser River, your family and fishing. Your two novels Downriver Drift and The Paperboy’s Winter are set in that area and deal with the land/riverscape, families and fishing. Most novelists do mine their own lives but are careful to point out that the stories are fiction, only loosely based on real life. You sort of undermine that in the memoir by telling the real life stories that parts of the novels are based on. Any thoughts on that?

TB: Hmm, I wasn’t aware that most writers are careful to make the point re: fiction vs autobiography. It’s an odd thing to worry about. Good writing is good writing. Besides, as anyone who’s ever written a memoir will tell you, memory plays a lot of tricks with reality. Even when I’m writing straight out of my own life, I’m fictionalizing much of the time. The key point, of course, is that the writer must transmute lived experience into meaningful art.

LP. In the acknowledgments for your novel Downriver Drift one of the people you thank is writer Jack Hodgins. Hodgins is noted for the depiction of Vancouver Island life, or at least a certain Vancouver Island life, in his novels. Did you ever talk about the details and the sense of place in writing?

TB: Jack Hodgins actually edited Downriver Drift. And what a gift that was for a beginning novelist! Jack is a superb editor, sensitive to every little nuance of prose style and critical in the most encouraging way. I don’t recall that we talked much about the sense of place, likely because it’s not something either of us would really consider – we just write out
of the worlds we came from, without doubt, without apology. Most of our editing discussions were more technical.

LP: You have two new books of poetry out this fall. Nightwood Editions is publishing The Book Collector and Other Poems. What can you tell us about this book?

TB: Many of the poems in The Book Collector were written when I lived in Gibsons from 2004-2006, so there’s a Sunshine Coast flavour to many of the poems. Briefly, the book contains nearly 40 poems touching on a wide range of subjects, from books and art to soccer and salmon. I hope the metaphors are memorable; I put a lot of faith in them.

LP; Your other book of poetry coming out is from Gaspereau Press, the magnificently titled Refrain For Rental Boat #4. It is a 12 page , limited edition book priced at $160. Gaspereau is noted for their beautiful regular editions so I’m assuming this will be something quite special. What’s the story behind this book?

TB: Refrain for Rental Boat #4 was removed from my 2006 book, FATHOM, because the editor and I didn’t think that it fit tonally with the other poems. Then I read the poem after publication, at one of Gaspereau’s annual parties in Kentville, NS, and Andrew Steeves, who liked it a lot, wondered why it hadn’t been included in FATHOM. After I told him, he said he’d like to do the poem as a limited edition. There’s only been four copies finished to this point, three of which I have. 45 copies will be made in total, and I believe the cost is $100.

LP: Earlier this year you were one of the winners of the Guggenheim Prize, the only Canadian winner. It’s certainly an honour to win and the prize money attached would be welcome too. This was your first attempt at the Guggenheim, did you have any expectations of being chosen for the award?

TB: No serious expectations, but I never apply for things if I don’t think I have a chance. And the Guggenheim is an award whose criteria seemed a good fit for me, in that the Foundation wants to fund those with a solid publishing record who seem likely to continue publishing.

LP: You are a prolific writer, have published books of poetry, novels, a memoir and edited a book of interviews with poets. You won a number of awards for that writing as well and yet you seem to fly under the radar as far as the press goes. It’s difficult to find interviews with you or even articles about you. It was surprising that even for the Guggenheim, it appears only the National Post did a stand alone interview with you. Is that a deliberate strategy on your part? Do you avoid media coverage? If not why do you think you get overlooked.

TB: I don’t exactly avoid the media, but I certainly don’t seek them out either. Newspapers, TV, magazines (even, gasp, websites) rarely pay for a writer’s time, and, given my busy domestic and writing schedule, I can’t afford to work for nothing. Usually, though, I’ll do interviews when I have a new book out. All things considered, I’m a pretty amenable type.

LP: In The Lost Coast you make the point that you don’t live in the past, that you type on a computer, communicate with your editors over the internet but a certain yearning for the past and maybe even some anger at losing that past seems to be part of your writing. Do you think so?

TB: Absolutely. But I’m not stupid about the past either. Of course there’s no Golden Age. On the other hand, there’s almost no fishing industry anymore, the growth of the farmed fish business moves along in happy tandem with the growth of neo-conservative conformity, and every year moves me closer towards death – yearning and anger seem reasonable enough.

LP. What’s your next project?

TB: I’ve just finished a new non-fiction ms. which is entirely different from THE LOST COAST. In fact, the whole story takes place in Edmonton, mostly in a library, and deals with my interest in a little-known American poet named Weldon Kees who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge in 1955. I’m also doing preliminary research for a new novel set on the Fraser River and in the American South in the mid and late nineteenth century.

LP: When you were working as a fisherman, you were also writing poetry, correct? Was your writing something that ever came up with other fishermen and if so, what was the reaction?

TB: No, my writing never came up, mostly because I never brought it up. But then, I wouldn’t want to talk about poetry with most graduate students in English Literature either! In fact, my salmon fishing poems, all my poems set on the Fraser, have gone over very well with Ladner folks.

LP: In our memoir you indicate your dissatisfaction with the school system so I’m assuming your kids are home schooled? How does that affect your writing, what special allowances do you have to make to your writing schedule?

TB: Yes, my kids are home schooled. Not only do I think school is one of the great brainwashers into North American culture and capitalism (a culture not entirely repellent, of course, but one that could be resisted a bit more seriously), I just don’t want not to see my children for six hours a day, five days a week. I mean, I really enjoy them. I’m selfish that way. On average, I suppose I write two hours a day and parent the rest. This is a tricky schedule when I get deep into a book, but hell, children are more important than books.

Categories
Canadian Interview

Interview: Ken McGoogan – Race To The Polar Sea

LP: You have a new book coming out any day now called Race to the Polar Sea: The Heroic Adventures and Romantic Obsessions of Elisha Kent Kane. What can you tell us about this book?

KM: Race to the Polar Sea tells the story of Elisha Kent Kane, a nineteenth-century explorer who sailed north in search of an Open Polar Sea, hoping to rescue survivors from the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin. After surviving two horrific winters in the Arctic, discovering the so-called American Route to the North Pole, and forging a unique alliance with the Inuit, Kane led his men in the most dramatic escape in northern exploration history, man-hauling sledges and sailing hundreds of kilometres in small open boats. Kane was the most literate and artistic of all northern explorers, and he left a vivid portrait of the Arctic that speaks to the contemporary debate about global warming. Once celebrated, Kane has been largely forgotten. In my book, I trace this to his relationship with Maggie Fox – a “spirit rapper” from Ontario whose tragic death has been wrongly blamed on Kane. Race to the Polar Sea also draws on a long-lost journal I found in the possession of a Calgary antiquarian. There’s more at www.kenmcgoogan.com.

LP: This will be your fourth book dealing with early Arctic exploration. These books have been extremely popular. What’s next, do you have plans for more books looking at the same eras? Do you have any plans for a contemporary Arctic book?

KM: Race to the Polar Sea is the fourth and final stand-alone volume in what I consider an Arctic Discovery Quartet. These works augment and resonate with each other, and can be read in any order. I see the four as speaking to contemporary concerns, and for the moment, at least, they represent all I have to say about the Arctic.

LP: What aspect of the Arctic region appeals to you personally?

KM: I seem to be obsessed with exploration history: so many dangerous voyages and disastrous expeditions, so many complex and revealing encounters with native peoples, so many heroic figures and damn-fool idiots, so much hubris, so much cheating and lying, so many mistakes, so many tragic deaths. Arctic exploration is Canada’s answer to the American Civil War: we can’t get enough of it. Certainly, I can’t.

LP: With the Arctic seeming to suddenly emerge as an important environmental and news story do you find yourself in demand now as an Arctic expert?

KM: I have experienced an increase in requests, yes. Some people say I’ve never seen a microphone I don’t love.

LP: You’ve been visiting the Arctic on a fairly regular basis over the past decade, what changes are you noticing?

KM: Because I have spent ten years immersed in the history of Arctic exploration, I carry in my head a vivid picture of the Arctic of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a result, when I look around today, I see the changes that have happened since then – both among the Inuit, but also in the landscape. Last year, while sailing in the Northwest Passage, where once Elisha Kane struggled through upraised tables of ice fourteen feet thick, I looked out and saw nothing but open water. That contrast shocked me. Obviously, it speaks to global warming.

LP: What do you see transpiring in the Arctic over the next couple of decades?

KM: More melting of the ice cap, less sea ice, worsening conditions for polar bears, more ships arriving from around the world, more chest-thumping from polar nations, more disputes about who controls the Northwest Passage, more searches for Franklin, more argument and contention, more ships carrying diamonds, more tankers carrying oil, and maybe an environmental disaster or two.

LP: Other books you have written have used Jack Kerouac and the Beats as a subject, any plans to return to that theme?

KM: Jack Kerouac was the first explorer I went chasing. Not long ago, I published a final revision of my first novel, called Visions of Kerouac: Satori Magic Edition. It’s available online and at www.WillowAvenueBooks.com. I had fun with it, and like to think it stands up.

LP: You spent many years as a working journalist and books editor. Do you miss that world at all?

KM: These days, while I put most of my energy into books, I do write some journalism – articles for The Beaver and The Globe and Mail, a books column for Active magazine. Of course, that’s different from daily newspapering. I don’t miss the stress or the office politics, but for sure I interacting with so many interesting people. Also the soapbox and the regular pay cheque – they were big positives.

LP: You grew up in Quebec, spent many years in Calgary and now live in Toronto. As a writer what are the differences?

KM: For someone who writes in English, no matter how well you speak French, living in Montreal means dealing with the French-English dichotomy, one way or another. You can’t get away from it. A writer in Calgary is up against it locally. Slowly but surely, neo-conservatives have decimated a once-thriving book publishing industry. Toronto still has a viable book-trade infrastructure. The barbarians are at the gates, but writers at all levels can still find places to publish.

LP: What are you reading now?

KM: We recently returned from five weeks in Scotland, my wife and I, and I’m reading a whack of books about Scots in Canada.