D.S. Stymeist’s debut collection, The Bone Weir, was published by Frontenac in 2016 and was a finalist
for the Canadian Author’s Association Award for Poetry. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines, some of which you might
have heard of. Alongside fending off Crohn’s disease, he teaches creative writing, Renaissance drama, crime
fiction at Carleton University. He’s the editor of the micro-press, Textualis,
and the (former) president
of VERSe Ottawa, which runs VERSeFest, Ottawa’s annual international poetry
festival.
Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought
you here?
I moved to Ottawa in 2009, over ten years ago. My partner
found a job at Carleton University. Love demands sacrifice. Thus, I traded a tenure-track
academic job near the majestic Rockies for poorly paid and low status contract
work here in Ottawa. Make no mistake, this move has been entirely worth it. I get
to live with my honey and help raise our daughter together in this lovely city.
Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and
subsequently, the writing community here?
I’ve been involved in academic writing for some time,
having written a series of articles for juried scholarly journals. While I love
analytical writing, I have to admit it allows for limited creativity. Over the
years I’ve had to quell creative writerly impulses. Ideas for stories or poems
would pop into my head, and I’d have to violently quash them because of the
ceaseless demands of the academic gods.
What broke these bindings and strictures, strangely enough,
was the physical act of putting my daughter to bed in the evening. As an
infant, she would refuse to fall asleep unless she was resting on my chest. Often,
I was stuck under her for hours until she fell into deep sleep. Finding myself bodily
constrained, I started playing with verse lines and rhythms inside my head.
Later in the evening, I’d jot down anything that had come to me. During the
day, I began to play with what I’d written until a poem fell out.
I first got involved in the writing community here in
Ottawa through the venerable Tree Reading
Series. They have an open mic before the featured writers perform. The open
mic was a great opportunity to get to share work with fellow writers and hone
oral performance. Rod Pederson was running Tree at the time and badgered me to
share my work. Hearing established poets from across Canada read at Tree (and
the Ottawa Writer’s Festival) gave
me a greater sense of the kind of work was being done in CanLit—what was hip,
what wasn’t.
When it came time to launch my debut book, The Bone Weir, it was
important for me to go back to Tree if possible. When Tree set up a joint
reading with Calgary poet, Richard Harrison for my book launch, it was a real
honour.
Late in 2014, I was asked to join the Verse Ottawa board, which organizes VERSeFest, Ottawa’s
international poetry festival. I welcomed the opportunity to be able to serve
the arts community more fully. While there’s great pleasure in writing and
publishing, these are acts tied to the individual ego. For me, it is just as rewarding
to enable and support others in their artistic work. I gradually took on more organizational
responsibility, first becoming VP (with Yves Turbide as president) and then served
as president (unpaid) for a number of years. This past January, due to my poor
health, I’ve had to step down. While often demanding, it has been very gratifying
to have played a small part in bringing some 320+ poets to Ottawa over six
festivals. Over this span of time, I’ve witnessed the festival and the
organization grow and become more inclusive and diverse. As well, I’m proud to
have helped play a role in establishing and supporting the City of Ottawa Poet
Laureate program, which Verse Ottawa administrates. These activities have made
me much more intimately tied to Ottawa and its arts scene.
Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your
thinking about writing, if at all?
Certainly it is inspiring to be actively involved in a rich
community of local writers, which includes but is certainly not limited to
poets such as David O’Meara, Monty Reid, Deanna Young, rob mclennan, Sandra
Ridley, Pearl Pirie, Amanda Earl, Christine McNair, Frances Boyle, Stephen
Brockwell, Ben Ladouceur, and Armand Garnet Ruffo.
They all have had an influence on me, one way or another.
Deanna Young in particular advised
me not to simply acquiesce to spousal and familial responsibilities but to
carve out time to write. This was hugely pivotal. It probably sounds ridiculous
to those that see me as immanently self-possessed but taking myself and my art seriously
remains very difficult. rob mclennan also showed me what full dedication to
life as an artist looks like. Few writers are so uncompromising.
My good friend and Ojibwe writer, Armand
Garnet Ruffo showed me the ways in which poetry can pay witness to the complex
collision of indigenous and settler cultures. Also, his use of narrative, as an
outgrowth of oral story telling traditions, certainly has an influence on my
own narrative techniques. Oral narrative can provide a good alternative/alternation
to the more personal (and potentially narcissistic) tendencies of lyricism.
While he died before I moved to Ottawa, the presence of
John Newlove still hovers over our capital city. It is hard not to hear his voice,
especially on mornings of ice fog. His non-nonsense grit and pessimism enlivened
his tightly crafted lyrics. It is an enviable style that in my better, bitter
moments I try to engage with. “Painful man, your hurt lasts longer than a
movie;/it will not amuse a woman or the future for so long” (Newlove, “In the
Crammed World”).
Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see
anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?
Ottawa is a great city to create art in. There are mutually
supportive networks and a real sense of shared artistic community. This kind of
inter-animating root system you don’t see in larger cities where art scenes
tend to fragment over stylistic, political, and formal lines. I always get a
sense, that no matter how varied our artistic enterprises are that the
community as whole comes together to promote and sustain each other’s efforts.
In Ottawa, there are also open lines of communication with
other kinds of artists, such as painters, sculptors, digital artists, and
musicians. The opportunity for exchange and cross-fertilization enriches the
cultural landscape of the city.
Through working with VERSeFest and trying to augment and
support the presence of French in the festival, I’ve become much more aware of
and appreciative of Francophone art and artists. We live in one of the more
bilingual cities in Canada, and it is really edifying to see how Canadian
francophones are so supportive of their culture, in its widest terms. Culture
is not a hobby or something extra, it is an essential aspect of self-identity.
I think English Canada could learn a lot from Francophone Canada on this. Ottawa’s
bilingual environment has not only pushed me to improve my French skills, but
has led me to a greater appreciation of role translation plays in the
communication and proliferation of art in this nation.
I should also note, rents are much cheaper here in Ottawa than
in Toronto or Vancouver. An artist has to live, right?
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?
Ottawa has a very active chapbook publication scene. Cameron
Anstee’s Apt. 9 Press produces exquisitely
hand-crafted chapbooks. rob mclennan’s above/ground press has been
producing chapbooks for over 25 years. While above/ground publications are more
“industrial” than “craft” in their look and manufacture, their pages contain
work of startling subtlety, precision, and innovation. Many chapbook presses
come and go, but right now there are a slew of presses active in Ottawa, such
as Natalie Hanna’s Battle Axe
Press, Amanda Earl’s Angel House,
Mia Morgan’s Coven Editions, Marilyn
Irwin’s Shreeking
Violet Press, along with the chapbooks that the Carleton collective, In/Words produces. These
presses offer the opportunity for many emerging voices to get their first
publications. They also offer opportunities for established writers to
experiment more freely than trade presses might allow.
All this small press activity inspired me to create my own
chapbook press, Textualis. It
was a real pleasure to publish emerging artists like Vivian
Vavassis
and Sneha Madhavan-Reese alongside more established writers, such as Stephen
Brockwell and Armand Garnet Ruffo. Running a small press has certainly helped
me become a fuller member of the Ottawa arts scene. I’ve met and gotten to know
many local writers, artists, and readers through this process as well as
participating in the Ottawa Small
Book Press Fair. Moreover, the deep engagement with other writers’ work
that is part of editor’s job has influenced my own writing, especially in the
area of revision. Unfortunately, dealing with the effects of Crohn’s disease has
led me to put these small press projects on hold.
Q: What are you working on now?
Right now, I’m working on revisions and edits for a new collection
of poetry tentatively entitled False Mooring. The manuscript interweaves
various obsessions with personal grief, nature,
extinction, alternative histories of colonization,
and reserve and bush life in the North.
At the moment, I’m particularly happy with the long poem section, Big
Ride, which creates layered substrates out of the piled-on details of train journey. I’m not sure how
readers will react to one of the other sections, The Newes-Book of Miraculous Signs, which consists of a series of
poems that adopt and modernize the language and fervour of
prophetic-apocalyptic enthusiasm associated with 16th and 17th century news
books. Much of the work in the collection is new and experimental ground for
me. A few of the poems have already appeared in
various anthologies and magazines, such as Halibut, Freefall, and Prairie Fire.” I’ve also been working on some short stories
and a first draft of a novel.
No comments:
Post a Comment