Lisa Alletson grew up in South Africa and England, and now lives in Canada. Most of her writing is done on the Big Rideau Lake, near Perth. Her debut chapbook, Good Mother Lizard, won the Headlight Review 2022 poetry prize, and is on the 'Books of the Year’ (Lonely Crowd) list. Lisa’s writing is nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Best of the Net. Her words have been published most recently in New Ohio Review, Crab Creek Review, Pithead Chapel, Gone Lawn, Identity Theory, Bending Genres, Milk Candy Review, Typehouse Magazine, Emerge Journal, The Globe and Mail, among others. She’s on Twitter at @LotusTongue. You can read more of her published work
at www.lisaalletson.com.
Q: How long have you been in and around the Ottawa area, and what first brought you here?
Twenty-five years ago I started coming up to my husband’s family cottage on the shore of the Big Rideau Lake, near Perth. My father-in-law and his friend, both accountants raising young families in Ottawa, bought the island together fifty years ago. My husband took his first baby steps here, as did our daughter thirty years later. We were married in Portland and boated across our guests for the outdoor reception at the cottage. It was a high wind day in late August, and the guests in their fancy outfits, who came in from all over the world, were thoroughly soaked by the time they arrived. They found it nearly as amusing as we did.
Through oral storytelling we know the property–– an island with a causeway, was owned by a group of young New York Times journalists in the 1940s. They became legendary for their boys’ trips – drinking all day, running around naked, sliding down the water tower into the lake. That’s one theory about why the island is named Little Boy Camp.
Now, we spend a lot of time at the cottage in every season, although winter can be tricky to get in. It’s the place where I’m most inspired to write.
Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?
I grew up in apartheid South Africa, during a time when the governing National Party used censorship to control what the media published. I studied journalism at Rhodes University with the intention of becoming part of the journalistic community fighting apartheid. I loved writing and it seemed a fascinating and meaningful career. Our university was political. The ANC was a banned organization, and held illegal gatherings in our Great Hall. As a 17-year-old, being part of those gatherings and protests made for heady days. The government watched journalists and students closely. Books, poets, and a few rebel teachers taught me the reality of apartheid as opposed to the narrative we were fed through school.
I emigrated to Canada, finished university, got a job in corporate communications, and didn’t write creatively for many years. In 2019, visiting my father, I brought my 15-year old daughter, who has autism. Dad was in the last few months of Alzheimer’s. I was anxious about how it would go. They normally had a great relationship, but he had changed so much. I was wrong to worry. I wrote a non-fiction piece about their interaction that day, which was published in the Globe and Mail’s First Person column. After that piece ran, I felt encouraged to start writing again, and submitting my work for publication.
Because my writing got going around COVID, my community was a global, online one. Now, I’m longing to find writers I can spend time with in person. There’s a great writing and artist community in Perth, Portland and surrounding areas that I intend to explore next summer.
Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?
It shifted in many ways.
Writing in a diverse, global community through Twitter made me realize how insulated I was in both my writing style and reading choices.
The access and exposure to fresh literature, through journals and presses, is outstanding. Experienced writers and editors are typically friendly and helpful to newbies. I could spend every day reading flash fiction, CNF and poetry in literary journals, and never tire of it. Reading is how I progress my own writing.
The support and encouragement is phenomenal. I count online writers as some of my dearest friends, though I’ve only met a few in real life. They edit my writing. They celebrate prizes and publications.
Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What might the area provide, or allow?
We are immersed in nature in this part of the province. It inspires me constantly.
I’ve heard great things about the artistic community in Perth, Smith’s Falls, Portland. With the world more open these days, I plan to get involved.
Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements here? How have the region and its community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work?
Staying up at the lake gives me the near-solitude I need to write. My first poems written here were about finding peace in a chaotic life. The stunning features of Eastern Ontario often creep into my writing as imagery; The Canadian Shield, the lakes, the Rideau Locks, the deer, the pines, the raccoons, even the ticks. The tornado that licked the forest on the far shoreline when I first came to the island. One of my poems features Archie’s Rock – a tiny island with two pines. We swim out to the rock and watch the loons. It’s also a resting place for long distance kayakers.
This island is rich with potential stories. Finding fossils with my children. The “Pale Mommy” ghost seen in the upper cabin at the island. The day the two mothers were convinced they had found gold in on the property and took it to Ottawa for testing.
The way my father-in-law, in his late-80s, seems to take strength from the land and trees and works relentlessly all day maintaining the property.
On one side of the island, near the Slingshot Tree, a large iron hook is buried in the rock. The construction barges that built the Rideau Canal in the 18th century would dock there.
My oldest daughter, having autism, relishes being away from societal expectations. She loves being able to relax where people are not questioning her behaviour or reactions. I’ve written about her being in this more authentic state in nature, when she doesn’t feel like she needs to fit in.
Q: What are you working on now?
My first poetry chapbook was recently published by The Headlight Review in Atlanta. Now I’m working on flash fiction and non-fiction, as well as prose-poems. I’ve started a series of stories about growing up in South Africa. And I plan to write the stories of the lake in a series of flash CNF.
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