Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here?
On and off I've been living in or around Ottawa far longer than either I or the city expected me to. I initially moved here for work. Northern Ontario has been being emptied of people for the last thirty years because of it, or the lack of it. When I moved here, the Gilmour was still going. My first time in Ottawa was the first time I saw someone getting mugged.
Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?
I didn't really 'get involved' I was so struggling to find what I wanted to say, the way I wanted to say it. that mostly I stayed away from other writers. Although I do recall attending a reading at Tree of which you I think were just taking the reins, I think Pearl Pirie was there too, memory becomes a Trickster.
Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?
I think some writers have a media induced image of ourselves as either living in communities of bohemian bliss or wretchedly alone in the mountains caves of Greece neither of these scenarios are vaguely true. Writers know talking to other writers is pretty boring.
Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?
What is happening for me, here in Ottawa is that some old ideas I've had about self-publishing have been reignited. The freedom of letting go of expectation. Publishing or what I call the business side of poetry is becoming less and less appealing to me. I find it less distracting and the art probably has a better chance of breathing.
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've done some work here in the city such as grant and award juries and the like. Mostly my work is in some form of modest isolation when it comes to an actual community. I don't come out of my cave too often, especially these days.
Q: What are you working on now?
These days I'm editing a poetry manuscript, but mostly I'm working on a shorter piece called, Under the Black Sun, it's about disturbing issue of male suicide, its prevalence and more disturbing fact that we as a society mostly ignore. It is a challenge to write about. I have also found a character that disappeared 25 years ago, she's back and wants to do a monologue from a sidewalk in Montreal, so there's that.
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