Occupational Hazards

This blog, much like my writing life, has fallen by the wayside as of late. The absence of postings speaks to the realities of writing and mothering, however, which is ironically what I’m trying to do here. Absence isn’t, however, a sign of impending doom (cue Homer Simpson chasing the flying barbeque pig as it sails over Springfield: “it’s still good, it’s still good”).

On that note, I’m pleased to announce that I attended my first postpartum poetry reading last Monday night and took in some delicious food and writing (Jim Johnstone, Brendan Mcleod, and Adam Sol). Having a baby is full of milestones, which are typically recorded in the baby book. But what about a recording instrument for the mother? I should have kept a diary of the first time I shaved my legs, ate a meal with two hands, and retained a page of something I’d read. So, I’ll start here and now: first poetry reading. Check.

Coinciding with my milestone was what seems to be a significant development for my daughter: the first time she woke up at 4 a.m. Don’t get me wrong, she did that lots when she was little – newborn little – but she’s slept like a champion for most of her life. We’re talking ten to twelve hours, usually (fellow moms, please don’t hate me – we’ve had other challenges). When she started crying, I went to retrieve her from her crib, bring her to bed and give her some milk and cuddles – our usual routine, which typically begins around 7 a.m. But the room was darker than usual and I felt extra tired – an effect exacerbated by the not one but two beers I’d consumed over the course of the evening. (Party animal territory, I know. I had been feeling celebratory and had finished breastfeeding for the day, so why not?) After she’d finished nursing, my baby started kicking, clawing, and punching my stomach, then offering up some babble wisdom and raising her tiny fists to the light in the window, which was glowing blue like a screening of Poltergeist.

What had happened to my daughter? I chalked her sleeplessness up to a change in bedtime routine (my husband had put her down for the night) and assumed she’d sort herself out the next night.

Thing is, she hasn’t. She’s done the same thing every night since the reading. Oh gods, what does this mean?

Well, for starters, she’s been taking morning naps – a first – and pretty much the only reason I’m able to sit down at the keyboard and write this posting. It’s not all bad. Now perhaps I can start writing when the baby sleeps (something Stephanie Bolster recommends in the aforementioned Double Lives).

So here I am and here we are, I suppose. Here’s the Simpsons reference. I’m off to make a pork sandwich.

E: Congratulations on the launch of Night Gears (Wolsak and Wynn, 2010)! The book is just beautiful and the poems are acute and stunning – I find them tugging at me constantly as I go about my day-to-day life. Can you comment on the overall metamorphoses of turning a collection of poems into a book?

B: A collection of poetry is both a mystery and a task you work diligently at. Listening for poems, being available to transcribe them is part of that mystery. Revising the poems and arranging them into sections that speak to each other is hard work. For a collection of poems to turn into a book it requires both elements.

The poems in Night Gears were all written during a three-year period that revolved around my master’s degree. In that sense, they shared the same concerns and had a certain cohesiveness that made putting the collection together easier in some ways. Though not all the poems I wrote during that time made it into the book. I was continually shuffling new poems in and old poems out. This process could have continued indefinitely, but having a thesis deadline acted as a catalyst for completion.

E: Night Gears began as your MFA thesis. How did your thesis change into a manuscript?

B: After completing my thesis, I quickly sent it out. I was impatient to get on with the process. After ten years of writing seriously, I wanted a first book. Luckily, my publisher saw the book inside the thesis and I was able to work with my editor to elevate it to the next level.

On the surface, the book has the same four part structure as my thesis. Many of the poems inside those sections are the same, though altered. The second section about my experience working in a fire lookout shifted form, as two long poems merged into one to better capture the public and private sides of that experience.

After a year and a half of not looking at my thesis, I was able to enter into those revisions with a greater perspective. I pushed each poem as far as it could go. I no longer played favorites. If a line or a stanza or a poem wasn’t working, I cut it.

E: What was it like to work with an editor? Can you compare the process to working with a thesis advisor? What’s different?

B: Without the encouragement and rigor of my thesis advisor, Rhea Tregebov, there would be no book. Her support throughout the writing of the manuscript was key. She oversaw numerous revisions and raised the overall caliber of each poem. Working with an editor was different, in that my editor, Alayna Munce, was coming to the work with fresh eyes. She didn’t see how far it had come, but how far it could still go. Together, we looked at the manuscript as a whole and debated the order of poems and sections.

E: How did you find the process of revision? I couldn’t help but notice the title poem “Night Gears” has changed significantly since it was first published in Prairie Fire – and I have to say that as much as I loved the first version, I find the final version achieves a layer of resonance I wasn’t picking up before – through the omission of “Moose!” the poem takes on a whole new layer of semantic meaning.

B: Sometimes the revision process was invigorating. What needed to be done was clear and the changes came easily. Other times it was excruciating, trying to get to the gut of it, to say what I really meant. I think there is a lot of pressure when it comes to revising your first book. The stakes are higher. Once it goes out in the world, you can’t take it back.

E: Because this blog is called Occupational Hazards, I have to ask the following question: Can you comment on managing thematic obsessions within manuscripts? Some of my favorite poems — “Office Work,” “Road Work,” “Red Light,” and the section “Weather Observation Record” — all deal with employment, but in very different ways. While employment may be the uniting motif, the subject (and consequently, meaning) of each poem is completely different.  Were you aware of thematic obsessions and were they something you had to consider in the context of the book? (Perhaps I’m revealing my own obsession with obsessions!)

B: For me, the best obsessions in poetry, the most genuine, are the ones I’m not fully aware of.  I just keep writing about something from different angles until I’m no longer drawn to it. In retrospect, an overall theme emerges. With the work poems, I wrote a handful of them, but choose only to include the ones that captured it best.

E: I’m interested in the process of producing the book itself. How much of a hand did you have in the layout, cover art, and other design aspects?

B: My publisher, Wolsak and Wynn, stayed true to my initial manuscript layout. They were incredibly obliging when I asked them to change the spacing or add a blank page here. I had a great experience working with them. I got to chose the cover art, a piece called “Return” by Nikki McClure. I still remember getting up the nerve to ask her and how thrilled I was when she said yes!

E: Here’s my final question: How do you find post-MFA life?

B: Getting back to your earlier comment on obsessions, I think work is still something I’m grappling with. Working full-time, I’m always elbowing out a space for writing and reading. I miss having the dedicated time that you have during an MFA program. Working, though, has its advantages besides a pay cheque. It exposes us to a wider range of experiences, which can generate poems. I’m currently working on a series about my job as a park interpreter.

A few other important things I’ve learned about post-MFA life are to set myself deadlines and goals, to have a group of writers to share my work with, and to fit in writing whenever I can. Twenty minutes while the rice is cooking? I’ll take it.

Bren Simmers lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, where she works as a park interpreter. She has a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Winner of the Arc Poem of the Year Award and a finalist for the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award and the Malahat Long Poem Prize, her work has been published in journals across Canada. Night Gears, her first poetry collection was published by Wolsak and Wynn in fall 2010.

The good folks at PRISM international recently interviewed me and the subject of post-MFA life came up. There’s a great deal of discussion out there regarding MFAs, but what happens afterward? As someone who graduated in August, I have to confess that I have no clue.

I’ve decided to catch up with some post-MFAers and find out. Stay tuned.

Calling all poets: In response to Enbridge’s environmentally devastating proposal, activist and writer Christine Leclerc has put out a call for submissions to the Enpipe Line, a 1173 km line of collaborative poetry.

So far, poets have co-engineered over 18 km of pipeline and the project is just beginning. Engineer-writers include Trevor Battye, Rob Budde, Steve Collis, Jen Currin, Krissy Darch, Cortney K Dawkin, c grillo, Ray Hsu, Wiesia Kujawa, Peter Macdonald, Michael Nardone, Rita Wong and Elaine Woo, with many more to come.

Want to contribute? Have questions? Check out my interview with Christine below.

ER: What was the inspiration for the Enpipe Line?

CL: The inspiration for Enpipe Line came out of a desire to see the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines proposal withdrawn. The proposal would see twin pipelines move tar sands oil from just outside of Edmonton to Kitimat and condensate (a petrochemical) to the tar sands from the coast. The pipelines would cross 1,000 rivers and streams, including ones that feed into the Skeena and Fraser rivers – both important when it comes to salmon. These pipelines would also bring tanker traffic to some of BC’s most treacherous waters, something 80% of British Columbians oppose.

But I was also inspired by projects like Spirit of the Skeena Swim 2009, STANDUP4GREATBEAR, The Pipedreams Project, Tar Sands Art, and A Day for the Bay. In each of these projects people did what they loved to raise awareness about the threats posed by harmful developments. Each of these projects is also a creative expression of resistance, which I admire.

ER: Do you see yourself as facilitator, participant, or both?

CL: I see myself as a co-facilitator and participant on the Enpipe Line project. I say co-facilitator, because the participants I’ve worked with so far have been full of assistance and suggestions. Some suggestions that have already been incorporated are a scrolling version of the Enpipe Line across the top of the site and a resistance gallery, which also supplies background images for the site (so much better than the plain grey background of last week). Other suggestions that are in the process of being made real are workshops and a scroll of the Enpipe Line to date for an upcoming photo shoot.

ER: What sort of work are you looking for? Do the poems writers submit have to explore an environmental theme?

CL: The poems don’t have to have a specific theme. There are so many issues that converge around environmental destruction, including: poverty, health, human rights abuses, extinction, cultural genocide, corrupt government, state violence, etc. So I’m interested in casting the net wide. I’m curious about which overlaps, interplays, and resonances (or disjunctions) might emerge. The main thing is for the writer(s) to go “dream(s) vs. dream” – whatever that means to them. Submissions could look like poems of resistance, letters to representatives, Facebook status updates, displays of utopic or revolutionary vision, contemplation, etc., in any combination of form and approach.

ER: Does geography matter? Who are you looking for submissions from?

CL: Poets of Antarctica, are you reading? I want work from all over. So yes, geography does matter. It matters that there be poems from Michigan, and the Gulf of Mexico, and Afghanistan, and the Carteret Islands, and Tuvalu, and Hungary, and Nigeria, and China, and up north and down under – you get the picture.

ER: The concept behind this collaborative poem reminds me of Japanese renga poetry (minus of course the form). There’s a similarity in the epistemology behind it – in the engagement with nature and also human nature, which in this case are paradoxically aligned. It seems that writers are increasingly engaging with the dystopian, or anti-Romantic, when they write about nature. Do you think the pipeline will have a similar effect, or are you waiting to see what happens?

CL: I like what you’re saying about renga. Folks I hang out with talk a lot about renga lately. I really hope the line will foster interaction among poets. I also find what you’re saying about writers being increasingly dystopic or anti-Romantic in their approach to writing about nature interesting. I think dystopia takes on a different quality when you’re writing about the past and/or present, instead of the future, which several of the poems that have come in so far do. They operate more in the realm of documentary poetics. I wonder what other folks think about nature, dystopia and the anti-Romantic though. And as far as trends go though, I think it’s still too soon to say. So, yes, I guess, we’re still waiting to see what we can do here.

ER: I’m interested in the rhetorical effect of this project. You said on your website that the poems you’ve received are beginning to “interact” with one another. Can you elaborate on the activity so far, or do you think that would that guide the submissions too much?

CL: The interactions so far have been within writing groups or among participants who have mentioned that a poem on the site has fed into the piece they’re working on. It’s more of an as-the-spirit-moves-you kind of thing, than something to consider while composing, I’d say.

ER: If a writer would like to contribute to the Enpipe Line and doesn’t have a poem ready for sharing, do you have any advice as to how they might write one? Prompts or otherwise?

CL: Yes, my suggestion is: write If in need of something to work from, browse through the contributions to date at: http://christineleclerc.com/category/enpipe-line. Or, if you like writing with others, why not set up a workshop in your community and make poems? We’re going to get some sessions going here in Vancouver soon.

ER: What’s the project deadline? What else should writers know?

CL: It’s hard to say how long the project will take to complete, but the space to participate will likely remain well into 2011. However, writers should note that the deadline is always today. So send poems today. It’s so much better than sending them tomorrow

In addition to Christine’s website, you can also find the Enpipe Line on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Enpipe-Line-1173-kilometers-of-collaborative-poetry/107609049310002. Send submissions to: info@christineleclerc.com.

Christine Leclerc is a Vancouver-based author and activist. She is the author of Counterfeit (Capilano University Editions) and teaches Writing for New Media at UBC.

Apparently, Gordon Campbell has a soul. And, as the Globe and Mail reports, after much searching of it (a murky, sticky business, I can only imagine), he has resigned as premier because British Columbians’ hatred of him has finally interfered with his meritocratic empire – er, provincial economy – building.

Campbell purportedly has the ability to sense human emotion other than his own. Strange, since because the beginning of his reign, Campbell has systematically and unremorsefully broken down enough people — artists, public service employees, abused women, the elderly, students, unions and members of crown corporations (you name them, he’s fucked them) – that after eight years, even he can sense the seething and long-threatened west coast tsunami about to drag him out to sea.

I hope Shelley won’t mind if I dedicate Ozymandias to Campbell. Surely, both of them — in particular, Campbell — will appreciate the sentiment.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart…Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

I just want to respond to discussion over the discovery of the Ted Hughes poem. I don’t see the point, as many have said, over blaming Hughes for Plath’s suicide. I also don’t see the point in arguing over the superiority of one or the other’s work. That said, Plath’s poetry has always resonated for me – from the time I encountered “Lady Lazarus” as a seventeen year old in high school English class to when I discovered the eerie rhetoric of “Mushrooms” as a graduate student. That’s actually an understatement; I should say Plath’s work has, more often than not, thrilled and scared the shit of out of me – the same way a rollercoaster does. It’s a visceral ride, as honest and real as artifice can be, and when it’s over, I’m relieved to remove the safety belt and, depending on my gut, go get a cotton candy or puke in the bushes.

As if the poems aren’t thrilling/scary enough, there’s the discourse surrounding them. There was a time, in my early twenties when as I was starting to study and write poetry in university classes, that I was seriously worried I’d become suicidal because I liked Plath’s poetry too much and, as many of the texts/introductions to her work said, she’d killed herself. I felt like her mental illness was something I could contract because I was a woman who wrote. I came to associate women writers with confessional poetry and suicide. (It would be ages before I even learned about Lowell.) I remember one professor I had (who, I have to say in all fairness, was a wonderful teacher) making a comment about confessional poetry. This teacher said something along the lines of, “You can do it if you want” – but the implication was “Why in your right mind would you want to?” It seemed that confessional writing wasn’t healthy for the writer or for their career, if in fact they ever had a career from writing about themselves, and more specifically (I’m going to say it) the domestic sphere. And so I put away the Plath (and by extension, the Sexton and MacEwen and Olds and Wallace and Rukeyser and all the women writers I was discovering) and tried my best to ignore the part of me that made “that type” of poetry. The absolutely crazy thing is that I wasn’t concerned about catching Plath’s ability to write. I put illness before art.

I know I’m certainly not the first to say it, but the fact that Plath’s illness, and her relationship with Hughes, is discussed as much as her poetry is troublesome. What does that mean about our appraisal of her writing and in turn, our own writing and writing processes? I don’t give a shit about what’s trendy or passé re. the political artistic pendulum – decades/victims/agents – I know I’m repeating past discourse and there’s nothing wrong with that; the personal is political, which is why I’m sharing my story. And while that’s been said since for the last forty years, it hasn’t, in my opinion, been said for long enough.

I’m excited to attend my first Toronto Word on the Street tomorrow. I’ve loved it since I made my first WOTS excursion as an undergrad. That trip involved a ferry ride to the mainland, busing downtown through Stanley Park, and, in addition to the scavenger hunt and readings, consuming trays of sushi with friends on the steps of the Vancouver Public Library. It was an excessively fun day.

Also, the Brick Books tent. $5 books? Oh baby. I have a real problem. You know that aggressive woman elbowing past you to snatch up that Anne Szumigalski or David O’Meara collection? That’s me. And it’s best for all parties involved if you stay out of my way.

When not assaulting innocent poetry lovers, I’ll be (avoiding security) at the PRISM international tent. I’m stoked to represent PRISM in TO with the lovely past circulation editor Nadia Pestrak. This year’s editors andrea bennett, Jeff Stautz, Ben Rawluk, and Chris Urquhart have showcased their editorial skillz with a stellar first issue (49:1) that’s infinitely readable and buyable. There are also steals, I tell you, steals on back issues, as well as enticing subscription offers, prizes, and info on writing contests that will almost pay your rent for one month. You know you need to come by.