Six Questions interview #100 : rob mclennan

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent poetry titles include A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019), Life sentence, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019) and the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022), a title now available to pre-order. An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics and Touch the Donkey. He is editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. In spring 2020, he won ‘best pandemic beard’ from Coach House Books via Twitter, of which he is extremely proud (and mentions constantly). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here?

I was born at the Ottawa Grace (two blocks away from where I run The Factory Reading Series), so I suppose here is where I emerged, although not necessarily where I began. Adopted through Cornwall Children’s Aid at ten months of age, I was raised on a dairy farm near Maxville, less than an hour’s drive from where I was born, and from where I am now. After high school, I ended up in Ottawa after I couldn’t get into Concordia University for the Creative Writing Program back in 1989; I was accepted by Henry Beissel into the program, but I was missing an OAC credit, so the university wouldn’t let me in. I told my parents I was coming here to attend Carleton University, but I was really taking the opportunity to follow my girlfriend. My experience with Carleton barely lasted a few weeks. A little more than a year later, our daughter Kate was born.

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

I’m not entirely sure. I had been interested in “making,” whether painting, drawing, short stories and poems from a younger age, spending the bulk of my teenaged years engaged with all sorts of forms of creation. Around grade ten, I entered a social group of folk interested in some of the same things, which helped solidify some of my directions. Within a year, our English teacher, Bob MacLeod, had even helped us start a ‘zine to showcase some of our flailing attempts at poetry and short fiction, and he later mentored many of us through the informally-held Writer’s Craft OAC (grade thirteen) course. We never actually had to meet for classes, but instead, hand in thirty pages of material by the end of the term (I think I handed in one hundred and thirty pages of material). My eventual ex-wife was reading, almost exclusively, Canadian literature at that point, so she introduced me to multiple books by Michael Ondaatje, George Bowering, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Lawrence, Alice Munro, Timothy Findley, Robertson Davies, etcetera. If you want to write, she told me, you have to read. So I read.

I remember my first interactions with Ottawa writers and writing circa 1990 came through Lowertown Ottawa’s Orion Reading Series and The TREE Reading Series, back when the latter was still held at the Glebe Community Centre. I remember meeting Karen Massey, and being very aware that we seemed the only two in attendance below forty, although who is to know if that was actually the case. I remember interacting with Ottawa poets Mark Frutkin, Juan O’Neill and Christopher Levenson and even catching a Steven Heighton feature, as well as attending some of the informal workshops O’Neill was hosting. I remember attending some of John Metcalf’s readings in Hintonburg through Magnum Books: I saw both John Newlove and Irving Layton read there in 1993. I remember thinking it funny that Layton read there, accidentally, on “International Women’s Day,” a fact that seemed not entirely appropriate, given his considerations of women. Newlove was launching his selected poems with The Porcupines’ Quill, which I asked him to autograph. I handed him an envelope of chapbooks, naturally (he responded a few weeks later with a thank-you postcard—“If I didn’t thank you for the books, I do”—and a hardcover copy of The Cave).

I was still hoping to find a creative writing class of some sort. I wasn’t interested in taking a literature degree at Carleton for the sake of a writing class, which I was told I couldn’t attend until I was in third year (this reinforced my decision to leave Carleton). In basically what would have been my third year in Ottawa, I did take the creative writing class offered by Mark Frutkin (replacing Seymour Mayne during a sabbatical year) at the University of Ottawa; a class that also included Joseph Dandurand, Rhonda Douglas and Anne Ecco. The class didn’t necessarily help my writing improve per se, but it did prompt me to write more, and more often. I was already spending a good amount of time buried in the on-campus Canadian poetry shelves in the library.

I had started producing chapbooks in 1992, and had begun above/ground press by July, 1993. At the first above/ground press launch on July 9^th, I was approached by the outgoing editor of The Carleton Arts Review to take over the journal, and I ended up co-editing that for the next two years (first with Warren Dean Fulton, and then with Kira Vermond). By June 1994, I was co-organizing The TREE Reading Series alongside Catherine Jenkins and James Spyker, with my first event hosting Christopher Dewdney, who informed us that Vancouver critic Warren Tallman had died the day prior.

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?

I think the community at the time I began attempting to engage was one that was in a bit of a publishing lull. I didn’t know it at the time, but there had been numerous journals and publishers throughout the 1980s, some of which had only shut down five minutes before I landed (some just-prior-to-me might have included The Rideau Review, Ouroboros, Anthos Books, etcetera). When I wandered the stacks of the University of Ottawa library, I saw multiple chapbooks and books and journals, but didn’t see much at all around me publishing-wise. That could easily have just been my lack of awareness as much as anything else; it would be another year or two before I was aware of hole magazine or The Carleton Arts Review. I mean, Bywords was around, but it wasn’t doing much I was really interested in. Being aware of that lack prompted me to seek beyond the city’s borders for reading material and opportunities, as well as prompting me to start publishing on my own, which triggered the first above/ground press publications. By fall 1993, I was co-coordinating editor of The Carleton Arts Review at Carleton University (where I remained for two years), and by the following June, I was co-director of The TREE Reading Series (a position I held until January 1, 1999). James Spyker and I co-founded the ottawa small press book fair in fall 1994; I also started writing a book column for the weekly Ottawa X-Press that same spring, which I did for another four and a half years.

Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?

It’s a good question, one I’m still wrapping my head around. Ottawa still has a small-town mindset, and we don’t necessarily fall into the traps of battling literary factions that other cities do. With the loss of literary trade publishers Chaudiere Books, BuschekBooks and Oberon Press (the third of which didn’t really exist “on the ground” for Ottawa writers, honestly), we’re a city without a trade publisher for English-language poetry (unless there’s something out there I’m unaware of), and exist within the only province without a provincial writer’s guild. I’ve heard that Algonquin College and the University of Ottawa have been developing creative writing programs, which is good to hear, but for the longest time, we hadn’t much of anything save for the occasional class, which left the bulk of the structural considerations of building a literary community to those of us on the ground. I think this perceived lack of external structures has allowed Ottawa writers a stronger sense of communal, and even ongoing, activity, strengthened by groupings around events and publications including Arc Poetry Magazine, the ottawa small press book fair, The TREE Reading Series, VERSeFest, Canthius, In/Words magazine and press, The Peter F. Yacht Club and The Ottawa International Writers Festival. There has long been a sense in Ottawa that we’re part of a community of writers, and the support is tangible.

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?

My frustration at a perceived lack pushed me to both look further afield for prompts, as well as dig deeper into Ottawa literature. I discovered William Hawkins and Elizabeth Smart; I read those early collections by Seymour Mayne. I reveled in those first three volumes by Elizabeth Hay. I began to engage with Rob Manery, Louis Cabri and Max Middle. I met Ken Babstock and David O’Meara (the latter of whom wouldn’t relocate here until the end of the 1990s) during their reading at The Manx Pub in 1994. I spent time with Diana Brebner and Michael Dennis, and even kept an occasional correspondence with John Newlove. There was writing around that was sparking my interest, but the bulk of my interactions were with local writers who didn’t entirely know what I was attempting, but encouraged me to keep going. It wasn’t long before I was looking further afield, and corresponding with poets Joe Blades, Stan Rogal, Judith Fitzgerald, George Bowering, Ken Norris and others. I wanted to see what was out there.

Q: What are you working on now?

I’m working on numerous projects, including cleaning up my pandemic-era suite of lyric essays, “essays in the face of uncertainties” (thanks to the editorial heft of Stuart Ross), as well as thinking about my post-mother non-fiction project, “The Last Good Year,” which is slowly being worked over by a different editor. Most of last fall and winter were engaged with writing short stories, but for the bulk of 2021 I’ve been working on poems for “the book of sentences,” a collection that might just round out a trilogy of continued projects, from the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, April 2022) through “Book of Magazine Verse” (unpublished). I have been attempting to focus on the lyric sentence, and have simultaneously shifted, I think, into a poetics of things, thinking and being. Given the shift of conversation over the past decade or so, I’ve been increasingly uncomfortable with occasionally being referred to as a “poet of place,” an idea not only a bit outdated in my own work, but one that reeks of a particular kind of colonial privilege: I was only allowed that through a history of removing another from being allowed the same consideration, upon a land we had no business on.

Oh, and I’ve been collaborating with Denver poet Julie Carr for nearly a year now, engaged in a co-prompt, each of us taking turns writing poems responding to the others’ most recent. We’re at ten poems each, finally. I think we’re talking soon via Zoom about what might come next.

Six Questions interview #99 : Kathleen Klassen

Kathleen Klassen is an emerging writer who discovered poetry as a source of healing after injury. Her poetry has been published with Bywords, Rise Up Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, ottawater, Dissident Voice, geez magazine, Gyroscope Review, Alternative Field, Paper Dragon, In/Words Magazine and Press, Coven Editions and Cathexis Northwest Press.

Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here? 

I came to Ottawa as a university co-op student in the early 90s.  After finishing my B Ed, I taught at a local high school for a year and then moved to India for further studies.  Upon my return to Canada, I moved back to Ottawa and have lived here since that time. 

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

I taught high school drama and coached improvisation for over 20 years; to some extent, I have been involved in storytelling for as long as I can remember.  Though I worked with students collaboratively on scene creation and script writing, I had little personal interest in writing.  In 2014, I sustained a head injury; everything familiar to me disappeared.  The only way for me to get through some excruciating nights, was to turn on the lights and write out my brain.  I had to get thoughts out of my head so they could live somewhere else.  Writing was just another strategy in a small arsenal I was discovering in order to survive.  There were many nights like this.  Nights with the lights on and a pen.

Another reason for writing was to track my healing progress (or lack thereof).  Not seeing any improvement from one day to the next, one week to the next, I thought it might help to observe my symptoms and level of functioning over a longer period of time.  The only clarity I had at the time, was an awareness that to make any sense of this experience, I’d eventually have to turn those difficult moments into some kind of creative art.  It was in this place that poetry emerged. 

I have been pretty isolated since I started writing so haven’t been particularly involved in the writing community.  I have attended a few workshops and a small poetry group when I am able but ongoing symptoms make this kind of engagement difficult.  I suspect it’s not an easy community to infiltrate when one is living in a cave (unless one has a bat-suit, mask and cape).  Until I find such attire, I’ll keep dressing in the shadows of pixels and ether.

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?

Participating in workshops has made me aware of how little I know and how difficult it is to write poetry.  You might think you’ve come up with something moderately insightful, only to realize on second read that it is fabulously crappy.  Also, who wants to read a list of horrible symptoms?  Not even me, as it turns out. 

The teachers I have met have been amazing – gentle in their guidance, even when it was clear that I had no idea what I was doing.  (The generous Francis Boyle comes to mind.)  The same is true of other poets/participants – always warm and welcoming.  My memory of workshop #1:

Teacher: (kindly) Is there a reason your work is center-justified?

Kathleen:  Yes…Yes! A very good reason! I had to fit it on this glass art that I am also creating to avoid the pits of hell!  The straight line of a margin was impossible to replicate by hand and made my brain explode!   (Crying – not due to the politics of margins generally, but because her emotional-brain-command-center had been quite hijacked – she shows her glass art – the justification for her fabulously centered words. Participants smile and nod.)

Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow? 

I can’t comment on the writing scene elsewhere as I am still learning the landscape, but I have found the local opportunities to be encouraging.  Workshops at the Ottawa Public Library and publishers like Bywords, In/Words Magazine & Press and ottawater have inspired me to keep writing.  I appreciated working with Arc’s Poet-in-Residence program – much gratitude to David O’Meara.  I will be reading at The Ottawa Writers Festival and this interview is an example of the many ways in which seasoned writers are giving voice to newcomers.  Thank you for this opportunity!

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 blame the river.  Or credit the river.  There is some kind of creative magic that emanates from natural spaces and for me, that place has been the Ottawa River.  If a poem is a mystical jigsaw puzzle, I think the river contains its pieces.  Throwing thoughts my way, it’s as if the river hands over a few edge pieces and says “now run along and fill in the rest.”  I keep telling her that I could use a mentor for the filling in part, but alas…

As for the city, I have always been impressed by the creativity, spark and wisdom of my former high school students.  They have been integral in shaping who I have become.  Even though teaching feels like a lifetime ago, there is more to explore in the creative thread that connects me back to teaching. 

Q: What are you working on now? 

I am working on two chapbooks but struggle with concentration and organization (not to mention computer screens, decision-making, submission requirements).  It is much easier for me to focus quietly on just one poem. This is one of the reasons that poetry has been good for me – I can check in and out in small increments.

I want to learn more – maybe take some courses.  Am considering Gerunds and How They’re Killing Poetry or perhaps The Oft-Maligned: Bringing Cliché Back! (taught, of course, by JT – the more apologetic one.)  I could definitely use Poetry 101: Left-Justification and Other Quick Fixes!  

I am also looking for a Bat-Cape.  And a mentor.  Or maybe just a butler. 

 

Six Questions interview #98 : Lana Crossman

Lana Crossman is an Ottawa-based poet who grew up in rural New Brunswick. Her poetry has been published in G U E S T, Bywards, Apt613, FEED, FERAL, and The Light Ekphrastic. She won Carleton University’s Lilian I. Found Award for Poetry (2020), and was on the shortlist for the John Newlove Poetry Award (2018).

Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here?

I grew up in a tiny rural community in New Brunswick, called Turtle Creek. I moved to Ottawa over 25 years ago to study journalism at Carleton University. I didn’t initially plan to stay, but the city won me over -- along with job opportunities and the close group of friends and family that I formed.  

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

I’ve always written professionally, currently as a speechwriter, but I’ve only found my creative voice and community in the past 4-5 years.

I was playing (flailing) around with poetry on my own, but I needed feedback and accountability. I found a writing circle online and started taking some short low-stakes workshops. From there I began to find community and get more intentional about my writing.

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all? 

Initially, it helped give myself permission to identify as a poet - imposter syndrome is a real thing for me! Now, my interactions with other writers inspire me to keep working on my craft and to push myself to try new things.

Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?

The Ottawa poetry community is very inclusive and encouraging. I’ve had the opportunity to take workshops with excellent poets like Deanna Young, Pearl Pirie and David Stymeist. They’ve stayed in touch with me and continue to show an interest in my work.

Ottawa has great public cultural institutions and festivals. I think this has created a more popular involvement in the arts. You don’t have to be from a certain background to think of yourself as an artist -- or maybe just that’s my privilege talking?

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 can’t think of a specific project, but I do credit any progress I’ve made to the many opportunities that the city has given me.

Early on, Bywords gave me a huge boost by publishing a few of my poems, and selecting me as a runner-up for the John Newlove Award. The Tree Reading Series has always made me feel welcome in its workshops and open mike readings. VerseFest and the Ottawa International Writers Festival have introduced me to poets from across the country.

Q: What are you working on now?

Over the summer, I worked on a chapbook and am starting to send it out to publishers. This fall, I’ll be doing a workshop with George Murray, a poet based in Newfoundland. Also, in October, I’ll be collaborating with an East Coast craftsperson, writing a poem based on their work which will be included in an Atlantic Canada travelling craft and poetry exhibition.

Six Questions interview #97 : Pamela Mosher

Pamela Mosher was born and raised in rural Nova Scotia and now calls Ottawa home. She works as a technical writer, and lives in the west end with her wife and young children. Pamela’s poetry was recently shortlisted for The Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Poetry Contest, and appears in Best Canadian Poetry 2021 (Biblioasis).

Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here? 

I moved to Ottawa just over 10 years ago, on Canada Day, with my now-wife. We rented a U-haul and put everything we owned in it; including our cats. We didn’t really have a good reason for choosing Ottawa, other than that we’d visited once for a long weekend, and really liked the vibe here. We’d been living in Halifax and I wanted a change – I wanted to try living outside of the Maritimes, and Ottawa was just big enough to feel exciting, but still manageable. We also liked the idea of being close enough to Montreal and to Toronto (where my in-laws live) to travel there for weekends if we wanted to.

So we chose Ottawa first, found an apartment in Mechanicsville, and then my wife found a job and I found a school program. We haven’t thought about leaving since! It’s been an awesome town to spend the last of our 20s in, and it’s also been great for being our 30s and starting a family, too.

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

So I’ve always been interested in poetry, as far back as I can remember. I used to sit alone in my bedroom as a child and work on creative pieces, before I even knew what poetry was. I studied literature for my undergrad, and went to a few events and readings in Halifax, and had a few poems published in online journals and a local print publication, before I moved to Ottawa.

But then the summer we moved here, I remember being very excited to be in a town that produced its own print literary journal. I think we’d been here about a month, and on a blistering hot summer day, I took the bus downtown so that I could go to The Manx for the launch of a combined issue, with a science theme, put together by Arc and by The New Quarterly. It just seemed so amazing to me that there were people at that event, and published in that journal, that I’d been reading work by for years…. It was almost surreal to me, when I was fresh from the east coast.

I also used to go to Collected Works for readings there, and that was phenomenal. I sought out workshops, and went to events at VerseFest and the Ottawa International Writers Festival.

I don’t know that I’d describe myself as ‘involved’ in the writing community in Ottawa, but I know a handful of other writers and always find someone to talk to at events. I can be somewhat shy, and often feel nervous about attending events on my own, but I have tried to get out to all the different reading series this city offers/offered – Tree, Sawdust, Voices of Venus, etc. Though that slowed down a little once I had babies, and then of course with COVID, it stopped for everyone. 

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?  

I think the effect was two-fold. Initially, and when I was younger, it made me feel inspired and excited… to see “real” writers out in the real world, and to get to meet them, but it also made me feel intimidated – it was overwhelming to see these other successful writers, and to admit I wanted a slice of what they had. It should have been encouraging, but it made me feel vulnerable to admit my own interest in poetry, as a nobody.

Now I think my response to it is a little more positive/productive – I love knowing there are others out there, working on their own writing, with something to say and to contribute. Even though I don’t have a regular writing group, or feel especially involved in the community (again – babies and then COVID), I do appreciate knowing how many writers are here in Ottawa, committed to their craft and eager to build a writing community.

Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow? 

Oh man, my finger isn’t on the pulse at all, so I don’t know that I can comment on what’s happening here in Ottawa… hopefully once we get through the pandemic phase of COVID, I’ll be back out at readings and events, and engaging a little more.

But it does seem that there are a lot of small presses locally. A lot of encouragement for younger/newer writers, and there are many chapbooks and similar mini pubs produced here. I used to love going to the small press book fair every year (or maybe it was twice a year?).

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? 

It’s too hard to say if Ottawa specifically has had much of an impact on my writing! It’s tough to separate place from all the other considerations in my life … if I’d stayed in Halifax, would I still be writing about the same things? I think so. I think the bigger factors impacting my writing are how I live my life. And taking on a 9-5 office job, starting a career, getting married, having babies… those are the bigger influences on my writing, at least for now.

Though I will say that I sometimes worry that my writing is boring, and I think that concern stems from the feelings of pushback I have when I think about Ottawa’s reputation as a dull place to live. It’s just so infuriating – Ottawa is great! I’ve been to some excellent parties here! I’ve made life-long friends. I love the restaurants, the live music, the festivals, the green space and bike paths, the local breweries, and of course all the literary events.

Q: What are you working on now? 

Right now I have about a dozen new-ish poems in various states of completion that I’m revising, and two pieces of short fiction I’m working on. I don’t have any big central piece of work on the go, though I’d like to put together a poetry collection at some point.