The Calgary Renaissance: an interview with Jason Christie

Edited by derek beaulieu and rob mclennan, and designed by Chaudiere co-publisher Christine McNair, The Calgary Renaissance highlights some of the diverse and astonishing experimental poetry and fiction that has emerged out of the past two decades of Calgary writing. An essential portrait of some of the most engaged and radical of Canadian writing and writers from one of the country’s most important literary centres. You can order a copy directly, here.

For further (ongoing) interviews with contributors to The Calgary Renaissance, check out the link here.

Jason Christie is the author of Canada Post (Snare), i ROBOT (Edge/Tesseract), Unknown Actor (Insomniac), and a co-editor of Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Mercury). He has three chapbooks from above/ground press: GOVERNMENT (2013), Cursed Objects (2014), and The Charm (2015). He is currently writing poetry about (being) objects, and exaltation.

Q: How long were you in Calgary, and what first took you there?

A: I moved to Calgary in September of 2001 to pursue my MA at the University of Calgary. I lived in Calgary until July of 2007 when I moved to Vancouver so my wife could pursue her MA at Simon Fraser University. We moved back to Calgary in January of 2011 and lived there until July 2014 when we moved to Ottawa. So, that would be a grand total of approximately 9 years.

Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community in Calgary?

A: I wrote poetry when I was young, but it wasn’t until I went to university that I encountered any contemporary poetry. I ran with a pretty great group of writers at York University in Toronto when I went there for my BA, but it was in Calgary that I first truly understood the power and support of a community. It is thrilling to be surrounded by like-minded people, discussing things that feel relevant and important. Because of the community, I was able to organize readings, edit for magazines, workshop poems, discuss ideas. I first got involved by wandering around talking to people and attending events.

Q: What sort of projects were you involved in while there?

A: So many! I was on the poetry editorial collective for dANDelion and filling Station magazines. I had a micropress called yardpress that did a few wee zines, a couple of chapbooks, and a reading series that I had in my backyard. I edited a bunch of things with derek beaulieu, including an issue of Open Letter. Along with a.rawlings, derek and I edited an anthology of Canadian poetry called Shift & Switch. I worked with Fred Wah and a few other writers on an early version of the Calgary Writers’ House.

Q: I’m aware of both Fred Wah and Aritha van Herk as having a series of profound influences on the larger community of Calgary writing and writers. When you were in Calgary, what did you see of their effects? What did they each bring to the city?

A: I didn’t have much to do with Aritha van Herk, but many of the people I know worked closely with her, and spoke very highly of her. I was in Fred’s last ever class that he taught at the U of C prior to retiring. It was an amazing, emotional, experience. He definitely raised the game in Calgary by introducing us to many things we would never have encountered otherwise.

Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements there? How did the city and its community, if at all, change the way you approached your work?

A: My writing changed a lot while I was in Calgary. The seeds were planted there for my doubts about university work. I also started along the trajectory which lead me to question and evaluate assumptions I inherited from years of soaking in the pickling juices of academia. I think I’m finally at a place where I don’t need to do that anymore, and I’m much happier, which means Calgary was the birthplace for more than my son, my marriage, and many friendships!

I feel extremely connected to the location where I’m writing. The details that surround me, starting with the room I’m in, the things happening, and extending outward, are all part of the raw mix that informs my poems. I have a few chapbooks, one published by above/ground, that takes the address of the place I was living in Calgary as a basis from which to explore outward. The landscape of Calgary features in many of the poems in my books Canada Post, i-Robot, and Unknown Actor which were written in various neighbourhoods near the downtown core.

Q: What prompted your move away, and what kind of effect has that made in your work?

A: We moved away because jobs in Calgary were disappearing and we had an opportunity in Ottawa. I think being in Ottawa has bolstered my confidence to say out loud some of the things that I’ve been thinking for a long time. There is something about moving to an entirely new city where you don’t have a history that makes it easier to ditch some of the baggage you’ve accrued. Calgary is no stranger to this since the university provides a steady stream of new writers who all find themselves in that position when they arrive.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’m writing poems that are loosely about exaltation, particularly the movement from one station to another, the raising high. I am looking at how it can operate tactically in our lives. I’m itching to put together some more noise poems, but don’t have that kind of time with the new baby on the way and a toddler at home.