Ottawa
poet Colin Morton has published over a dozen books and chapbooks ranging
from visual and sound poetry to historical narratives. His other work includes
stories and reviews, a novel (Oceans Apart) and an animated film (Primiti
Too Taa). www.colinmorton.net.
Q:
How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here?
A:
I lived in Ottawa briefly after graduation, in 1973-74, but landed here for
good at the end of 1981.
I
had recently finished a novel for my M.A. thesis in Edmonton, and followed my
wife, Mary Lee Bragg, as the federal civil service moved her from Edmonton to
Vancouver and finally to Ottawa. I was writing another novel and kept at it
until offered a job as editor at the Department of Labour. After substitute
teaching in Vancouver high schools, this looked like un bon boss pi un job steady, so I
stayed in it for a decade, till 1993. I offered to work from home, but they
weren’t ready for that yet, so I quit and went freelance.
Q:
How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing
community here?
How
I first got involved in writing is a long story for another time.
Writing post-apocalyptic novels was a popular summer vacation pastime when I
was in my teens, as I’m sure it is today. After a virtual encounter with a
Yorkville hippie in 1965, I was converted to poetry.
When
I arrived in Ottawa in 1981, I had finished a long apprenticeship and just
published my first book of poetry, In Transit, with Thistledown Press.
As I had done when I moved to Vancouver (at Mona Fertig’s Literary Storefront),
I went out to poetry readings and introduced myself to the local writers. An
early opportunity was a Tree reading where the featured reader was Christopher
Levenson, whose first collection had been also been called In Transit.
Chris invited me to join his monthly critique group, where I met many of the
writers who have become my lifelong friends. Among them were Blaine Marchand
(who also worked at Place du Portage, where we shared ambulatory lunches for
years) and Susan McMaster (who when in Edmonton had founded the magazine my
wife Mary Lee worked on, Branching Out). Soon, Susan invited me to
collaborate in some of the word/music projects of the multi-media group First
Draft, projects that led to musical and theatrical performances across the
country.
Q:
How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing,
if at all?
I
was young. Everything influenced my thinking about writing. The Ottawa writing
community was welcoming, and it provided me opportunities to realize ideas I
had been having about sound and visual poetry. I first began creating concrete
poems in Ottawa back in 1973, and a chapbook of them, Printed Matter, was
published by Monty Reid (then still in Alberta) in 1982. But only when I began
working with First Draft did I get to explore the possibilities for performance
and collaborative creation. Performance art was catching on in Ottawa in the
80s (with Dennis Tourbin and Paul Cuillard, among others), and First Draft’s
work fit in well at venues like SAW Gallery and Gallery 101. It was through
First Draft, via the CBC, that I got to collaborate with Ed Ackerman on the
animated film Primiti Too Taa, which is still showing at festivals 30 years
later.
Q:
What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does
Ottawa provide, or allow?
As
I’ve said, Ottawa was a welcoming community when I arrived, and I think that is
still true for poets moving here now. Cliques and rivalries aren’t as prevalent
here as in larger centres where, perhaps, the stakes seem higher. Yet there’s a
lot of activity, compared to other small cities, distinct groups with their own
aesthetic directions. Maybe this isn’t unique to Ottawa – how could it be? But
with people (in normal times) moving here from all over, at a moment in their
lives when they are ready to start anew, try new things, poetry is bound to
result. There’s a community of young poets in Ottawa. I’m not close to it, but
I sense, and hope, that they are encouraging each other to take risks and
aesthetic leaps in their work. That’s the way it was for me.
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?
I
was impressed with many of the young poets I met in the 80s – John Barton,
Nadine McInnis, Sandra Nicholls – many of them, like me, newcomers to Ottawa. I
probably should have known, when my micropress Ouroboros published them in the
anthology Capital Poets, that I’d be stepping on a few toes and hurting
feelings. The book is still a good read, but it elicited angry letters to the
editor and complaints, some valid, from those left out. I simply wanted to
publish poems I liked and didn’t think I had a responsibility to make my
anthology a comprehensive roundup of Ottawa’s poets. To their credit, my
critics responded vigorously by publishing their own Ottawa anthologies. The
best of these, Symbiosis, edited by Luciano Diaz, along with its sequel Symbiosis
in Prose, showcased the diversity of Ottawa’s writing scene.
Q:
What are you working on now?
I’m
writing short poems, sometimes gnomic or ironic, sometimes vernacular and
loose. I keep reminding myself to “relax into it.” I don’t have a project,
don’t put expectations on myself. Often I begin with a phrase or a line and see
where the next line or phrase takes me. I’m led by sound and syntax as much as
meaning. I’m told it’s my voice and it’s recognizable. I’m writing sentences.
Sentences and lines. Together and in counterpoint.
I
do have a manuscript of new poems, and I’m trying to imagine a Selected.
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