Q: How long were you in Ottawa, and what first brought you here? What took you away?
I was born in Ottawa and lived there until 18, when I left for university in Montreal (where I’ve been ever since!). While I lived all over the city, my favourite spot was a little apartment in Hintonburg I shared with my mom in my last year of high school. In the winter pigeons would nest on our balcony and in the spring there would be babies.
Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?
I was lucky enough to attend Canterbury High School, where I met an amazing community of creatives. I didn’t think of myself as a poet, but was friends with many poets, and I think unconsciously they influenced the beginning of my own writing practice. There was a website at the time called Hello Poetry (maybe it still exists?) where I would post all of my drafts under a pseudonym. On my 16th birthday my very sweet friend Emma compiled everything I had posted into a little book for me, and I think it was then that I realised poetry wasn’t just a hobby.
Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all? Have there been subsequent shifts due to where you have lived since?
I feel very fortunate that as a teenager I was surrounded by other teenagers who really cared about art. I feel like I got to learn about curation very young. Music played a big role in my community and my writing. My friends would often create mix CDs for each other, and that music would play when I wrote in the evenings. Tumblr was also very influential (lol). When I look back on those poems, I am often just writing about my friends and crushes, and crushes on friends. Those poems don’t feel like they would have been possible without my community.
Of course my work has shifted significantly since my time in Ottawa, but it’s hard to know if it’s a result of leaving my community here, or simply growing older. I do often wonder what my point of reference would be had I not spent my teenage years here. I’ve never felt like Montreal has played into my work the way my hometown has, but maybe that’s partially because of how elevated everything feels when you’re 18. My surroundings stuck with me in a way that felt very permanent.
Q: What did you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What did Ottawa provide, or allow?
I see so many amazing projects and artists working out of Ottawa. I did an internship with the incredible team at Canthius, which is partially based here, and it’s impossible to think of the writing scene in Ottawa without thinking of all the work you do, rob. Above all I think what I see here that really impresses me is a deep pride in the Ottawa literary community. So many initiatives, like this interview series, to highlight and appreciate living writers with a connection to this city. That is very cool to me.
In terms of what Ottawa allows, the first thing which came to mind is space. I visited recently and was struck by how unobstructed the sky is. I remember when I moved being so jarred that I could not always see the sun set. Perhaps Ottawa is a “sleepy” city but to me the calm was a sorting of charging energy rather than dormancy.
Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements here? How had the city and its community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work?
I feel like I can’t write a poem without talking about the transitway between Dominion and Lincoln Fields, when the bus passes by the water. I also write often about the faded green roofs, and of course about Hintonburg. I often return to Ottawa when I’m grieving or sick, to be with my mom and to rest, so in recent history many a break-up or illness poem have been set here. There is a “style” of Ottawa poetics that I feel like I inherited in some way, though I don’t know if I can say for sure what marks that style.
Q: What are you working on now?
My Master’s thesis, which right now is exploring spatial poetics and domesticity as it relates to trauma and recovery. I’m also working on a very exciting collaborative chapbook with seven other poets I love and admire. We’ve been meeting in the park on nice days with coffee and writing the collection, which has made me endlessly happy. Very excited for that to (hopefully) make its way into the world :-).
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