Poet, editor and writer Anita Dolman is the author of Lost
Enough: A collection of short stories (Morning Rain Publishing, 2017),
and co-editor of Motherhood in Precarious Times (Demeter
Press, 2018). Her poetry, fiction and non-fiction have appeared in numerous
journals, magazines and anthologies, including Imaginary Safe House, Another
Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology, Canadian Ginger, Arc
Poetry Magazine, On Spec, Grain, and PRISM
international. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, and is a
contributing editor for Arc Poetry Magazine.
Q: How long have you been in
Ottawa, and what first brought you here?
I came to Ottawa in 1999 on a
co-op job with the federal government, through the Writing minor I was taking
at the University of Victoria. I had been in Ottawa once before, while
traveling across the country with a friend after high school and it reminded me,
with its canal and market, of The Netherlands, where my family is from. My best
friend from childhood was finishing a BA at Carleton when I was offered the
co-op job, so I saw it as a great chance to reconnect as well as to get to know
the city better. I ended up finishing my degree with a second, editing co-op in
Ottawa. I thought I'd stick around for a bit and see what happened. Interesting
things still keep happening, so I’m still here.
Q: How did you first get
involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?
I've always written little
poems, ideas, notes, and received praise for my essays and such in high school.
But, I seriously turned to writing after dropping out of the History in Arts
program at UVic. I took a year off to figure out what I wanted my major to be,
since we'd been told there would be very few jobs for art history majors at the
time. I was casting around miserably and consoling myself over my ill-fated
attempt to solicit door-to-door on Greenpeace's behalf in an oil-rich
suburb of Calgary. Someone suggested I write an article for an environmental
magazine, which led to another article, and then freelancing with a local
newspaper.
I went back to UVic in the
writing program, which kicked off with an overview course that included several
months of poetry introduction under Patrick Lane. I wrote a poem that he
subsequently showed to the class and called "perfect." May the gods
protect us all from the praise of established older men, because from then on I
officially felt like I could say I was a poet, but I would keep searching for
that same thrill of public praise for a long time.
After I graduated and had
decided to stay in Ottawa for the time being, I went to a poetry reading, both
as an audience member and because I was reviewing the bar it was in as part of
a freelance gig I had picked up. You, Ian Ferrier and Clare Latremouille were
the readers. It was a gorgeous, warm, sunny Sunday afternoon, probably the last
one of the fall. Which meant I was the only audience member who showed up to
spend it in a dark, second-floor bar. When the doorperson gave up and left, you
all decided you would read to me anyway. And you did. Afterwards, you told me
about a writer's group you hosted, and you invited me to join. I thought you
were frighteningly extroverted but strange, which was definitely a point in
your favour. So I went to some of the events you suggested, and joined your
writer's group (where, incidentally, I promptly met my future spouse).
Q: How did being in such a
community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?
I think for a long time, it
overwhelmed me. It felt like everyone talking was a classically educated, older
white man, usually older than me, and that their font of esoteric knowledge
about all the "great" poets who had come before in Canlit was
endless. I had a degree in anthropology, and read widely rather than just in
one genre or just in poetry, and now I felt completely knowledgeless. Everyone
wanted to "teach" me. Everyone wanted to tell me who to read, and
they were, with the exception of icons like Gwendolyn McEwan and Pat Lowther,
etc., all old, white, Canadian men plus George Elliot Clarke.
It took me a long time to find
my way out of this labyrinth of patriarchal, Canadian
poet-deification. I felt I could never be good enough because I could never be
like them (either the poets doing the discussing or the ones being discussed,
unless, to achieve the latter, I was willing to be murdered or commit suicide).
And all the people who had the power to decide whether I was "good
enough" kept measuring against this singular concept of the approved
Canlit canon. What was someone who never wants to be the female Al or Earl or
Louis to do? I remember saying at a pub full of such writers that my favourites
were the American confessional poets and being laughed at like a foolish little
girl. I spent a lot of time wanting to be part of the Ottawa writing community,
and a lot of time very angry about those elements of it. Women would come and
go in the community, giving up or just not wanting to be part of the mix if all
they could be was a doting acolyte. But the men, they usually stayed.
Meanwhile, many of the people I
saw putting in the most hours to build and promote Ottawa's literary scene and
individual writers were queer, female or ill, while actual publishers were,
again, old, white men. It was extremely frustrating, especially when many of
those publishers (across Canada, not just in Canlit) would actively try to
dissuade anyone from starting new presses or getting into the business because,
they said, it was just so hard and times had changed. But for a long time I
fell for the idea that all of that was just how it was and it wouldn't change,
so I just had to be tough about it and deal if I was going to stick with
writing.
This has all been changing
lately, something that makes me beyond happy. I selfishly wish true inclusivity
had come much earlier, but I honestly believe it's coming now and I have to
believe it will continue—in the community, in writing itself, in representation
at events, and in publishing.
Q: What do you see happening
here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?
Because the arts scene here is
smaller than in Toronto or Vancouver, for example, there has often been more
overlap within the arts sector. We interact more across types of readings,
styles of writing, genres, etc. than I think we see elsewhere. I hope this only
continues to happen more and more because it makes for both richer community
and richer writing and thinking.
This town is built on
institutions and hierarchy, with two universities, the seat of federal power,
vast bureaucracies, NGO headquarters, and carefully tended festivals and
organizations behind its activities. The people who remain in charge at the
municipal and NCC level are obsessed with structure, from tidying away the
homeless to paving everything in sight, to requiring forms for almost anything
a person could think to do, particularly anything creative. I think that's
soothing for some people, and we have, among the more creative history here,
also seen a lot of wait-until-I-retire art and very safe writing about farm
fences and tea kettles as a result.
I think, though, veering into
what it allows, that all of this gives us a great opportunity for counterpoint,
to bring and keep creativity alive, to welcome boundary-breaking thinkers to
our capital, to smash the walls built around this unceded valley through
centuries of complacency and tidy oppression, and overthrow the systems that
keep all but the one percent struggling at the same time that we destroy our
own futures and the futures of the planet in a feedback loop of bureaucracy,
capitalism and short-term-survival mentalities. Hah. How's that for potential?
A girl can dream, right?
If what I'm seeing from poets
coming up now, like Natalie Hanna, Sneha Madhavan-Reese, Marilyn Irwin, Manahil
Bandukwala, Barȃa Arar, nina jane drystek, Ian Martin, and writers like Jay Odjick, Cait
Gordon, Nathan Burgoine, James K. Moran (full disclosure: my spouse), and Amal
El-Mohtar, and from who and what I'm hearing when I go to open mics, the city
is full of brilliant and diverse writers ready to turn things on their head.
The key will be finding ways to keep this brilliance here so we can build and
sustain that momentum. Thankfully, we're seeing more diverse, open presses,
like Renaissance Press, and reading series, like Shery Alexander Heinis's In
Our Tongues, that could help with that. I hope this is all a sign of things to
come, because it would be a great turning point for Ottawa if we started to
give our trans, queer, BIPOC, disabled, etc. writers and readers reasons to
truly believe it's possible and worthwhile to make a go of it here, that this
is a place that can feed artistic growth instead of put a fence around it,
label it and let it whither. (Yeesh, I am very into the fences and walls motif
in this interview, aren’t I?)
Q: Have any of your projects
responded directly to your engagements here? How have the city and its
community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work?
Absolutely. Sometimes
negatively, in the ways outlined above. But also positively. Many of my first
publications and writing projects were through local presses like above/ground
press and One Cent, and I've been lucky to receive grants from the City of
Ottawa, and to read at various local reading series over the years. I've been
in local anthologies and taken part in broader anthologies and projects that I
only came to know about through the local writing community. I've collaborated
with, not to mentioned learned a lot about poetry from, various local writers,
professors, reading organizers, etc. I'm about to work on a collaborative piece
with a fellow local, bi author, for example. I feel that every event I've
engaged with in Ottawa has fed into my own understanding, and thereby my writing,
in one way or another.
I think for a long time, again
for the reasons mentioned, much of my engagement with the community's old
guard, and its visiting professorial male poets from Montreal, etc., made me
wary about my own knowledge and skills, so also more tentative in my work.
Through the gift of timing, I am getting older (and caring less what any old
guard thinks) at the same time that I am seeing more opportunities, potential
and openness towards diverse voices in Ottawa and more widely. I'm excited
about the conversations I have here nowadays, and the projects I'm asked to
participate in (from sound poetry performance to publishing with new local
presses).
Q: What are you working on now?
I'm finishing the latest draft
of my novel, and have been writing short stories, as well as the rare poem. I
find myself publishing more creative nonfiction lately, which is perhaps a bit
of a full circle or some sort of return, at least, to my more journalistic
roots. I’ve been putting more effort into non-arts organizing, as well,
focusing mostly on LGBTQ2IA+ rights and, in particular, bi/pan rights and
visibility, as well as mental health issues and awareness.
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