Category Archives: Interviews in 5 questions

Memoir captures residential-school trauma

Bev Sellars was separated from her family twice in her young life: in the fall of 1960, when she was five, she was sent to be treated for tuberculosis at the Coqualeetza hospital in Sardis, near Vancouver; three weeks after she was released from hospital, she was required by Canadian law to attend St. Joseph’s Mission school, south of Williams Lake.  Run by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, her experience at the  school is now part of the terrible history that marked First Nations families for the past 50 years.  Bev Sellars was at St. Joseph’s from September 1962 until June 1967. Her memoir, They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at Indian Residential School has just been released by Talon Books, a Vancouver publisher.  Recently, Chief Sellars spoke to a standing-room-only crowd of elders, students and professors at First People’s House on the University of Victoria Campus.  “I was 38 before I went to university,” she told her audience.   Afterwards, she answered Lynne Van Luven’s questions in an e-mail interview.

 

“Like a computer that cannot run at full potential if it has viruses, Aboriginal people need to eradicate the destructive viruses so we can run at our full capacity, ” you say towards the end of your book.   What would be the first “viruses” you would like to see eradicated today?

The fact that many Aboriginal people have been led to believe that they are inferior.  That is the biggest virus that needs to be eradicated.  If you don’t feel equal with others, how in the world can you fulfill your potential?   If all people are treated as equals despite cultural differences that need to be respected, then that will be a good start.

What would you say is the biggest hurdle Aboriginal youth face today?

Acquisition of the basic skills to compete in the world today.   This includes knowing who they are as Aboriginal people.  Not too many Aboriginal youth make it to the university level and many do not even finish high school.   Also, many of the ones who do make it to university feel an obligation to use their education to help fight for their human rights as Aboriginal people.   It would be nice if my grandchildren could study a discipline that they enjoy and not one with that obligation over their head.   Someone said if you are born Aboriginal, you are born into the political world.    But we are fighting for the rights that our ancestors lived and died for, the younger generation will take up the fight if need be.   That is sad that this is the way it has to be still, in 2013.

You and your peers suffered in so many ways in the residential schools, in your case, in St. Joseph’s Mission at Williams Lake.  As a white reader, I felt angry on your behalf when I read your book.  How have you managed and learned from your own anger over the years?

Before I met my husband Bill, I didn’t manage my anger.  I would either blow up at someone or I would get so angry I would just shut down — and that was not productive.  Bill showed me that talking about things and dealing with the issue was more productive.   I am still angry about the way Aboriginal people are still treated, but now I don’t just seethe and do nothing about it.  I have found my voice and make my views known.

I have heard many First Nations leaders say that “education” is the key to Aboriginal success.  If you agree, can you explain how you define that term, and how it should be achieved?

It is entirely inadequate to suggest that education is simply a matter of trying to achieve non-Aboriginal graduation rates for Aboriginal children. True reconciliation in education would mean Aboriginal people having the opportunity to define citizenship and determine how education will develop Aboriginal citizens to fulfill their nation’s goals. As with the rest of Canada, education for Aboriginal people would be about identity, citizenship, nationhood and taking their rightful place in the world. Not until this ideological foundation is in place will Aboriginal people be able to go on and meaningfully define education, its goals, and its standards of success well as equivalent graduation rates for their children and adult learners. There has to be a shift in thinking about Aboriginal people and by Aboriginal people.

Yours is the first full-length memoir to be published out of the Williams Lake community.  What would you say to others who have similar stories to tell?  

I would encourage them to write their stories even if they are not going to publish them.   I would hope that they at least would share [stories] with their younger relatives who need to know the history.  Maybe some will write it and burn it and that’s okay too.  I found that writing my story and connecting the dots between my childhood and my adult life gave me such an insight into the dysfunctional behavior I needed to change.    Mine is just one story of many that need to be told, and I hope my book encourages other to tell their stories as well.

First novel explores Down syndrome

Edmonton author Theresa Shea was born in Maryland and raised in several places in the United States. In 1977, she moved to Canada. She has published poetry, fiction, essays reviews and articles in a number of magazines and journals. Earlier this summer, Edmonton journalist Elizabeth Withey initiated a Question and Answer exchange with Shea about her first novel, The Unfinished Child (Brindle & Glass, $19.95). Here is an edited version of their conversation.

What motivated you to write this book?
I got pregnant with my first child when I was 34. I was going to be 35 when the baby was born. I didn’t understand that 35 is the marker for the medical community to put a big red risk stamp on your file, and doctors are legally bound to give you the genetic-counselling talk. I was so unprepared for that. After I gave blood, there was a message from the doctor’s office to call but it was closed. I spent the weekend convinced there was something wrong with our baby. I had a one-in-268 chance, instead of the normal. I remember being outraged: you have wrecked my pregnancy. I felt like I’d been robbed.

What did you learn from that?
What I realized is that doctors have to look for what’s wrong; that’s part of what they do. I decided to get a midwife; they tend to look for what’s right. I didn’t see doctors for [the births of] my other kids. My husband and I, we’re moral cowards. We decided, we didn’t want to have to make a decision. This is a very different decision from abortion. My children were all wanted; we planned to have these kids. This is the first time in human reproduction we have choices about the children we’re having. It’s worth a larger discussion, and we’re not really having it. Is it better to know in advance? Are we hardwired to know these things? I think we rise to the occasion when we have to; I’m not so sure we do it so well in advance. I worry about human compassion. Compassion is a muscle that needs to be exercised. If you eliminate those contact moments when you see people who are less advantaged, then compassion becomes weak. What are the ramifications of a less compassionate society?

What was that the Down syndrome community’s reaction to your book?
Really, really positive. I don’t have a child with Down syndrome . . . I’m humbled about how it’s been received. It’s a hard read. The Down syndrome population has been hugely reduced in size because of technology. So if you bring a child into the world knowing already that its number has been reduced, that’s a painful thing. Most parents are going to love that child, but the greater fear is that the culture doesn’t. People in the Down syndrome community want their stories to be told.

Have you had any negative feedback?
Many readers are mad at me for a decision that one of the character makes. People are very upset. I think that’s wonderful. That tells me something. I think the human ability to love and care is vast. Vast. The function of art is finding moments that make us want to become a better person, that make us think: I’m a shallow person, I need to be better. We deprive ourselves of those moments when we can become better people. This isn’t only about Down syndrome. It’s about any condition, any abnormality.

What was your goal with The Unfinished Child?
What I wanted to do [was] create likeable characters and put them in difficult situations. The book loosely gives the history of automatic institutionalization, then this nice integration period and now, the phase of termination. The storyline juxtaposes the different choices and the emotional fallout, no matter what decision you make. I remember someone once said, “What’s better: to be stabbed or shot?” It hurts, no matter what. Ultimately, with the book I wanted to start a conversation. Life is risky; bringing children into the world is risky. Technology . . . allows us to have more say, to have more control. Is this positive? Is this negative? It concerns me. Are we engineering children in the right way?”
This isn’t a “have a baby at any costs” book. My book is about love, the power of love. People can read my book and know they’re not alone. If I’d had a baby with Down syndrome, I know I’d have loved that baby. If I have an agenda at all, it’s to infuse a more human element into the prenatal testing arena. When you move from the general (people) to the specific (a character), then the full ramifications of people’s decisions become more poignant. . . . I still cry when I read from [the book]. I think, oh for God’s sake, I know how it ends! The doctors weren’t evil people, the parents weren’t evil people. It’s just so moving.”

Alec Dempster explores roots via images and words

Ontario artist Alec Dempster was born in Mexico but moved to Canada with his family when he was five years old. He recently came out with a unique two-fold expression of his heritage with the book Lotería Jarocha: Linoleum Prints, published by The Porcupine’s Quill, and with the CD, Nuevos Caminos A Santiago (New Roads to Santiago), produced by Anona Music. Lynne Van Luven talked to Dempster via email, after listening obsessively to the CD and reading his book.

Alec, I’m a bit confused about the “birth order” here: which did you do first, the book or the CD, and how did one give rise to each other?

First, in 1999-2000, I did the prints which appear in the book. Then Kali and I released our first CD in 2006. We released our second CD, Nuevos Caminos a Santiago, in May 2012. Around that time, I had already started writing the texts for the book. Composing, arranging and recording was very absorbing. I wasn’t able to think about anything else. The same occurred with the writing of the texts. I didn’t stop playing, but I was not creating much new music–although we were working on eight new compositions in the same period with support from a Popular Music Grant from the Ontario Arts Council. We were a bit late submitting our grant report because I was so involved with the book project and then promoting the launch.

I have been to Vera Cruz, Mexico, and to Xalapa as well, so I did know a little bit about “son jarocho,” but I was totally ignorant about the role Lotería plays in Mexican and Latin American social life. Can you explain it a bit more for this gringa? It seems to have a vital cultural importance.

I was attracted to lotería because the graphics are so engrained in Mexican popular culture, even though most of the images aren’t very “Mexican.” The loterías I have created have more Mexican iconography than the traditional lotería. It does raise the question of what and who is Mexican. I am like that in a sense: born in Mexico but not brought up with lotería by parents who are not Mexican. However, I was exposed to a broad range of Latin American and Spanish culture, mostly through my father’s friends. The cultural importance of lotería has to do with the fact that most people in Mexico played lotería with their parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters and cousins. I have seen people really enjoy the playing of the lotería but I think the pleasure lies as much in the fact that the family is doing it together as in the playing of the game itself. I have also seen it in more public social events such as church fundraisers in outdoor venues. There are certainly places where more importance is given to the lotería as a past-time like Cosamalopan in Southern Veracruz. I have heard that Campeche has a unique version of the lotería. I am not sure about Northern Mexico. In order to do my loterías, I  did not do a lot of research into the game itself. I did some but my focus was on the themes I had chosen for my loterías.

As you just mentioned, you have a fascinating background: you were born in Mexico City, came to Canada as a young boy, and then were raised in Toronto. How old were you when you returned to Mexico to live, how long were you there, and what were you looking for?

I must have been about 20 when I returned to Mexico for the first time, and my Spanish was quite basic. I went to see the film Danzón which takes place in Veracruz, and enjoyed it but didn’t understand much of the dialogue. I knew enough to get around and stay out of trouble — it seems I was there on two occasions for a month each. The second time I think my grandfather had given me some money to take driving lessons but I spent it on a plane ticket, and I still don’t know how to drive.  The first trip I had no expectations but planned to visit a small town in the hills called Quetzalan, because I had a vague recollection of the place . . . there where some striking photographs my parents took when we went there and I must have been about three. Other than that, I spent time in Mexico City visiting museums, markets and also Tepoztlán, where I eventually lived for a year. Although I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, I was extremely happy being in Mexico. It helped that my hosts where my padrino and his wife, two of the most generous people you could imagine and extremely connected with diverse aspects of Mexican culture. Good cooks as well. I ended up very taken by Mexican artists such as the muralists, and Tamayo as well as Toledo but Mexico City is also a place where you are likely to see exhibitions of contemporary art of all kinds from all over the world.

The linocuts in Loteria Jarocha are beautiful, and the descriptions you have created of them teach a reader a great deal about this aspect of Mexican culture. Are these stories and images in danger of being lost as the great wheel of Americanismo grinds away at your birth-country’s traditions?

The word “Americanismo” has a different connotation for me. I  know you mean USA which is definitely imposing itself on Mexico as it does all over. Canada also is exploiting Mexico’s mineral resources. A Canadian project to do open air silver mining close to the Port of Veracruz has been put on hold due to grass-roots resistance. Stories are always in danger of disappearing without the pervasive influence of foreign cultural domination. However, stories and traditions also have the ability to resist, as well as absorb new elements. Good things have also come from the US, such as the remarkable interest in son jarocho from people living in California to name just one state. The result has been culural exchange, economic growth for instrument makers, and musicians who are constantly travelling to the USA. to teach and perform. This year, three different groups that use son jarocho as an important part of their music were nominated for awards. That said,  there are languages disappearing, ceremonies being forgotten and many stories  are no longer passed on from one generation to the next.

You sing with your wife, Kali Nino, on Nuevos Caminos a Santiago. Is your musical group Café Con Pan something new, and how does it tie in with your artistic self?

Our musical collaboration goes back quite a few years, but Café Con Pan became something quite different and more ambitious since we moved to Toronto in 2009. We had performed here before that but it is only recently that we have made such an effort to forge our own identity within the framework of son jarocho. We continue to play the traditional repertoire but are also playing our own songs which we want to be recognized for. I feel like two different people, the musician and the visual artist, but they complement each other because my visual art often adorns our CDs, posters and even clothes that we wear on stage. I fell fortunate to be able to jump from one art form to another while I also realize that sometimes one discipline will require complete attention. It is not always possible to juggle the two.

Journalist launches debut novel

Journalist Cathi Bond divides her time between the streets of Toronto and the fields of rural Ontario.  With her lively focus on contemporary culture and the Internet, Bond was a columnist on Definitely Not The Opera (DNTO) with Nora Young, and is a regular contributor to Spark, both on CBC Radio. She also does movie podcasts for Rabble and, with Nora Young, has created The Sniffer, a podcast on “New Directions in Trends and Tech.” Bond’s latest project is her first novel, Night Town, published by Iguana Press. The unstoppable Bond is now writing its sequel.  She recently answered questions from Lynne Van Luven.

Cathi, most listeners and viewers know you as a journalist, from TV and especially from CBC Radio. What precipitated your move from cultural reporting into novel writing?

I haven’t completely moved from cultural writing or broadcasting. As you’d know, the number of print jobs in Canada has diminished significantly in the last decade. And landing a steady gig as a cultural columnist at any of the big papers is nearly a miracle. In fact, many columnists who had that security have lost it and now have to get in the pit and compete for every column they write. I’m extremely fortunate to be able to work part time at Spark and have the privilege to write about shifts in technology that truly excite me.

In part, this new employment reality steered me towards taking a shot at fiction, but Night Town was a story that had been percolating inside of me for years. So I saved some cash, decided to live relatively poor and took the time to write it. I guess you could say that Night Town was always close to number one on my bucket list, and now it’s completed and I’m very happy with the result.

Night Town has been optioned by Back Alley Films. Do you think being a media personality helped the process at all?

Absolutely. It’s really unfair, but I think it’s true. Having any kind of name recognition, any kind of brand makes you instantly more attractive. It makes the project easier to sell to the funding bodies that hand out the money.

That said, having a feature film credit makes you worth more. That credit proves that you can do the work. I was very lucky that Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik, the story editor behind Back Alley’s award winning series Durham County, edited my novel. Yet another brand, or seal of approval, attached to the project.

Maddy Barnes is a captivating and credible character. I know this is a work of fiction, but I cannot help feeling there is a little spark of personal experience at the heart of this novel. True?

Good instincts. I think most writers, whether they admit it or not, do create from personal experience. Especially on a first novel. When I was very young, an absolutely horrible thing happened to me and my family. It was “the moment” that defined my life. So I took that moment and fictionalized it. I don’t think I’m letting the cat out of the bag if I tell your readers that the novel takes place, in large part, at the corner of Yonge and Dundas on the mean streets of Toronto during the early 1970s.

I wanted to write about that period in Toronto’s history. Toronto is one of the biggest cities in the world and, other than in  Ondattje’s “The Skin of the Lion” and by Atwood (a wee bit in her early work), it has never been mythologized in any significant way. I tried to change that by making Toronto a character. In fact, Night Town is the first in a trilogy of novels that follows Toronto and a single family from the dawn of the Great Depression, through to the arrival of the new millennium.

People call you a “podcast pioneer” and now you have a blog, so I wonder if it’s not a bit “retrograde” for you to become a novelist who’s now working on a sequel to her first book. What about all those “books-are-dead” prognostications?

I thought about this a lot, but I refuse to believe that reading is dead. The telling of stories is built into our DNA. It’s how we carry our history; it’s how we instruct; it’s how we delight. But is the book as we know it dead? I think we’re right in the middle of a big technological/business transition as to how our stories will be told. Personally, I think that eReaders are still clunky and not where they need to be, but they’re getting closer.  [Given] the speed at which technology is moving, I think the next device is right around the corner. That’s why I took the chance and went with a digital house. I wanted Night Town to be ready.

Can you talk a little bit about The Sniffer, the audio podcast you and Nora Young started? 

Nora and I started  The Sniffer in the summer of 2005, the summer when the word “podcast” had just appeared on computer screens . . . We do it primarily for fun, and as a way to sniff out sometimes wacky and really interesting new trends in technology. We’re both wool-gathering geeks and most folks don’t get all revved up talking about the stuff we do. But early subscribers heard about trends like Facebook, Second Life and YouTube first. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s something we do for ourselves and for you.

Mormon wives “speak” through poems

Poet Marita Dachsel is the author of the new collection Glossolalia, and of the previous collection All Things Said & Done. Glossolalia is a re-imagining of the lives and voices of the 34 wives of Mormon founder Joseph Smith. Julian Gunn interviewed Daschel at the end of April for the Coastal Spectator. See the poet’s blog at maritadachsel.blogspot.ca.

Glossolalia is a long-term project. What was its genesis?

I’ve always been interested in fringe religions, and in 2006 the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints in Bountiful was in the news again. BC has long been home to strange sects and cults, and for the most part they are left alone. I thought that if the FLDS would just give up polygamy, then they could live in peace. I wondered why they practised it, and soon learned that it was a vital part of their faith that had been introduced by Joseph Smith back in the 1840s.

Did you always see Glossolalia as a book about all of Smith’s wives? (Or some version of all, since you mention that the exact count is unknown.)

I could understand why modern women born into Mormon Fundamentalism would choose polygamy—it’s their culture, it’s all they know—but I wondered about those women who agreed, who started it all. I read biographies on Joseph’s wives and began to write poems inspired by their lives. It was perfect timing, as I had finished my first collection, All Things Said & Done, and wasn’t sure what I’d do next with my poetry. I soon knew that I wanted to a whole book on them. At the time, I had no idea it would take six years, but I quickly fell into the rabbit hole of research and obsession.

Often, you have only one poem with which to evoke some aspect of each woman. How did you know what would do justice to each one?

Some were definitely easier [to capture] than others. Some came immediately. I’d “hear” their voice in my head and I knew what they’d disclose. Others took a long time of trial and error—the voice, the form, the story all had to click. “Emma Hale Smith,” for example, was the very first poem I wrote for this series, but it wasn’t right. It was really important to me to do her justice and consequently, it took six years of writing her to finally get her poem work the way I wanted it to.

Despite all the research that I did on the women and early Mormonism, not all the poems are based on biography. In the early years of the project, I was a little too tied to the truth, but learned to let that go. I’m not a historian; I’m a poet. My main goal was to write engaging poetry. Sometimes that meant skimming from the women’s lives; sometimes it meant making things up completely.

You use many different formal techniques in the collection. Was there a process by which you decided what techniques you would use, or was it done by intuition and experimentation?

My process was pretty loose. I’d start by reading about the woman, noting ideas or phrases as I went. I’d write a rough draft or two to see if I could get her voice right. If could, great! Then I’d work on the content and form—one usually informing the other. If I couldn’t get her voice right, then I’d either read some more about her, or move on to another wife. Repeat as necessary.

Like “Emma,” “Lucy Walker” is another [voice] that took a lot of trial and error. A few wives had told their own stories during their lives and I was particularly struck with hers—so full of heartache, confusion, and manipulation. I tried to capture it, but the poem always fell flat. Finally, I realized that I didn’t have to do what she already had done, that I could use her words. I played with her text a lot, but nothing was satisfying. Then I came across Jen Bervin’s amazing Nets and it was like a revelation to me. (She ‘erased’ many of Shakespeare’s sonnets into beautifully spare poems.) What I loved about her take on erasure was that we could still see the original poems, just in lighter text. For Lucy, I wanted her real story to still be available to the reader, but I liked the idea of it being deliberately crossed out, as if she were editing her own story. The private truth versus the public record.

How do you find blogging as a medium, as compared to poetry and conventional essays?

I really enjoy reading other people’s blogs, but I’m a terrible blogger. I don’t make the time to do it properly, so lately my blog has become not much more than a place for shameless self-promotion. A few years ago, I did an interview series with writing mothers that I really enjoyed and it still brings the most readers to the blog. I think that when I find time, I’ll revisit that form—return to interviews and discussions. When done well, blogging is an immediate conversation. It’s topical, yet focused. It creates community. I think I write too slowly and have too many interruptions to do the form justice right now, but I am so thankful that others do.

Author’s essays alert to nuance

Vancouver resident Jane Silcott has made the leap from publishing her essays in such literary magazines as Room, Maisonneuve, Geist and 18 Bridges, to her first book, Everything Rustles, published by Anvil Press. She obtained her MFA in Creative Writing from UBC in 2002, following a BA in English and Creative Writing at the University of Victoria. Silcott has had a varied career, including being a founding director of the BC Association of Magazine Publishers. Silcott answered Lynne Van Luven’s questions just after she had attended the Creative NonFiction Collective’s annual conference in Banff, Alberta.

Jane, I notice that you also write and publish fiction and poetry. Can you talk about how your personal and public selves intersect in those two genres and whether that relationship differs in creative nonfiction?

Thank you, Lynne. I like that idea of personal and public selves. It gives me a momentary sense that I’m in control—instead of the usual feeling that my various selves are running off on their own and then crashing into one another in great, public messes. That’s a joke, I hope. In truth, I think we shift moment to moment from public to personal—from an awareness of the exterior back to the interior. I believe that awareness follows a similar path in all of the genres. And for me it always starts in the personal, some question or conundrum that I want to explore. I choose the genre depending on my need for privacy. Fiction offers the most. I can cloak my personal self in imagined characters and situations, knowing I’m protected somewhat by that scaffold or scrim of invention and also by people’s expectations of the genre. When I write CNF, the impetus is the same, the personal at the core, but because I can’t make things up, and I’m using the personal to illustrate it, I have to create that distance or scaffold in a different way. I do that by carefully choosing which experiences to use and also by research. If something feels too revealing, too close, I go out into the world and find other people’s voices to say what I want to say. Poetry, which I don’t write as much, is for me, a condensed form of CNF. There, the personal is . . . so condensed, so deep inside an experience or feeling, it feels distanced, and therefore public again. I’m not really sure why but there’s something that happens in the very effort of locating the words, the crafting of lines that makes it public. It’s as if we take this lump of personal clay or wood and then we chip away at it with words, and that work of crafting takes us outside of it, no matter what the genre. I think that’s really the answer, that craft, no matter the form, is where public and personal intersect and the relationship is different only slightly because the feeling at the core is the same—intense vulnerability. The strategies on how to manage that vulnerability may differ slightly—one is invention, the other selection, and the third is something else again—a deep re-imagining—a visit down to the bones where language and ephemera intersect.

Does anything stand out about your own beginnings as a writer when you think back to your early days as a student at the University of Victoria?

When I look back, what I remember first are the several bad stories that I wrote and the painful typing of them onto carbon paper and the sharp, slightly sweet smell of the alcohol in the spirit duplicator that we used to make our purple-printed copies. But one event does stand out for me. I was in a fiction workshop with Bill Valgardson. Bill had given us a minimum word count we were to reach by the end of the year, and I was at least 9,000 words short. I was sitting in class feeling desperate, certain I would fail when he told us about his first rock climb. Bill’s description was so vivid, and he was so excited about his first experience of climbing, that it made me think of the climbing I’d done. I decided to write a story about it, hoping that the topic would distract him from my paltry word count. But what began in calculation ended in discovery. Knowing that Bill was excited about climbing gave me confidence, so I focused on every word, doing my best to replicate that experience on the page. It was my first piece of Creative Nonfiction. I’ve been grateful to Bill ever since. And, luckily, he liked the story, so even though I still ended the year far short of the required word count, I passed the course.

When you started writing, you took your grandmother’s name, Silcott, instead of using your own name, Hamilton. Why did you feel the need for, as it were, a protective pseudonym and would you make the same choice again?

I actually chose it, not to hide myself, but to distinguish myself from two other Jane Hamiltons who write–the American author of The Book of Ruth and Mapping the World and Jane Eaton Hamilton, a wonderful writer who happens to live near me, and who has, also like me, struggled with how to distinguish herself. Jane, whose initial is also “A,” called herself “Jena Hamilton” for a while and then “J.A. Hamilton” before adopting her grandmother’s name “Eaton.” I initially tried “A. Jane Hamilton,” but decided for a wholesale change after a local bookseller approached me at a reading some years ago. He was carrying a stack of books and journals, all containing work by one Jane Hamilton or another (including me), and he said, “Which one are you?” That was the final push. I chose “Silcott” from my father’s side of the family partly because that history is not as well known, and also because I like the sound of it. I believe if I were to choose again, I’d do the same, even though I miss my Hamilton name and feel a little odd without it, I also feel an invigorating sense of newness and possibility—this Silcott person—who is she?

The title of your book comes from Sophocles: “To him who is in fear everything rustles.” And yet, in reading your essays, I don’t really pick up actual fear, except perhaps in the final essay. Rather, I see ruefulness, occasional trepidation, huge curiosity, a sense of humanity’s innate frailty . . . What did you set out to encapsulate in the collection?

That’s interesting that you don’t pick up on fear. People tell me that quite often—that I don’t seem afraid, and yet I feel afraid almost all of the time, especially when writing, so in that sense the full quote is apt. And yet, I agree with you that the book isn’t all about fear. There are other shadings, and I’m happy that one of the cover images is so joyful (the blue dress, the bare feet running through leaves). For me, the rustling speaks to that state of hyper-awareness inside of fear when time seems to stop and we see and hear everything around us in sharp relief. That’s the state of awareness I’m after and curious about—in all kinds of emotions and situations—those moments that shimmer and rustle around us.

You have been active as both a writer and an organizer/administrator for many years. And now you teach writing. What does your membership in the Creative Nonfiction Collective bring to you personally and professionally?

The CNFC is a wonderful group—historians, poets, memoirists, essayists— writers who aren’t afraid to look themselves in the eye. I admire them all, and I love the sense of fellowship and camaraderie in the group. At the conference, we explore questions of craft and ethics and talk about the hard things about writing from life—like when is it okay to be stopped by concerns about others’ feelings, and when is it your story alone? These are unanswerable questions, at least at a broad level or a collective level. They’re questions we all have to answer for ourselves, but without the conversations, it would be a lonely and difficult debate. One writer said at the conference that she felt in the CNFC that she had found her people. I think that’s a lovely thought—and true, if finding your people means finding the people who are engaged in the same quest as you are. I find the collective a marvelous way to engage with the world. I’ve just volunteered to be on the board, something I realized I’d missed. Teaching and writing can both be lonely jobs. Meetings. Could I really say I missed meetings? Ask me again in another year. I may have a different answer. But yes, I missed meetings.

Afghanistan service captured in poems

Kanina Dawson was a master corporal in the Canadian military when she spent 10 months, 2005 through 2006,  serving  in Afghanistan. Her first book of poetry, Masham Means Evening, published by Coteau Books in Regina, Saskatchewan, explores the vivid images and stark experiences of that time. Dawson entered the armed forces right out of high school, she says, because she “wanted to do something that counted.” Now 37, living in Ottawa with her family, Dawson runs her own small business, The Blue-Eyed Bunny, which distributes environmentally sound pet supplies. Forever affected by her experiences in Kabul and Kandahar, Dawson recently linked her business with a foundation that helps women in Pakistan, www.acidsurvivorspakistan.org, to support themselves by making and selling scarves and blankets. “It’s a small thing,” says Dawson, “but the women are paid per scarf, and it’s their livelihood.” Dawson spoke recently with Lynne Van Luven about her writing and her life post-Afghanistan.

Kanina, why did you decide to use poetry, not prose, to explore your deployment with Canada’s military in  Afghanistan?

I think largely because the time in which those moments occurred was so very short, sometimes a matter of minutes. I viewed those experiences as heartbeat moments that, while connected to each other, existed for a split second in isolation. For me that doesn’t translate into prose. I didn’t want those moments getting lost in lost in the longer thread of a narrative. I wanted–needed–each of them to stand out on their own. Protected in a sense, from the peripheral noise of a longer story–and yet unprotected in that they stand alone. In fact, that may be an accurate comparison to the way in which conflict is experienced.

Were there poems you could not write, ideas you could not explore, due to issues of national or military security?

Not so much, no. Obviously, there are things we’d all be hesitant to discuss–like the way in which troops might conduct a patrol or what sorts of drills they might do–anything that might negatively affect the outcome of their situation. As we say, “that’s just common dog,” and most soldiers instinctively abide by that code. But for me, those kinds of mechanics were largely irrelevant to what I wanted to convey–what the sky looked like in the minutes after we lost someone. What evening smelled like–or heat–or Kandahar airfield in November. How grief can taste like a weedy-bottomed lake. Those were the more crucial truths for me.

Do you stand out among your military peers as a “scribbler,” or is that quite common amongst members of the armed forces?

Am I allowed to use LOL here? Me as a “scribbler” was something I definitely hid–especially when I first joined the Canadian Forces. Otherwise, yes, I likely would have stood out. I feared it would earmark me as a loner, or perhaps as someone too “artistic” to be a good soldier. The people that know me, know better. Although, yes–I did swallow hard when I told [military friends] it was a book of poetry that was getting published. Scribbling is one thing–soldiers do that in email form all the time–but poetry? In practical, mission-focused circles, that kind of thing tends to generate a lot of preconceived ideas. I think there’s the antiquated notion that war poems need to involve rhyming couplets and heroic verse, neither of which holds any interest for me. Despite the odd, raised eyebrow, I actually find today’s environment in the Forces so much more open to creativity and diversity among its members than it has been in the past. I think Afghanistan generated quite a bit of that–unnecessary rigidity is more likely to fall away in the face of conflict.  And it’s clear from the government’s War Artist program that there is both a need and a place for artistic corporate memory.

You describe your poems as “snapshots” of lives lived in the midst of conflict. Are there specific pictures, such as those in “Disconnected,” and “A Night in Hospital,” that you wish you had never seen?

That’s a hard question to answer. I can tell you I took no enjoyment out of seeing those things. But did it make me a deeper, more focused person? Did it give me a perspective I wouldn’t otherwise have had? Absolutely it did–and that’s not something I would want to undo. But that still doesn’t stop me from wishing the same effect could have been achieved differently. I believe in the value of experience, but when I think of the far more horrible images that so many in this conflict have been left with, I can’t help but want to undo it for all of them. Since I can’t, I prefer not to be ignorant.

Your daughter was five and six when you were in the military, and she’s now 12. How will you share these poems, and your “visuals” with her when the time comes?

We actually kind of joke about that–I’ve dedicated this book to her and yet have laughingly forbidden her to read it until she’s 16. She was quite young when I left for Afghanistan. Consequently, she has sort of grown up with this idea of international conflict and my participation in that. She’s very motivated by issues of social justice and quite knowledgeable in terms of some of the problems facing the world. I use my experiences to feed that interest and to inspire her to do things she might not have thought possible, so I think she will take this [book] in stride.

I’ve let the water out of the dam slowly on this one. I think it’s likely that my language will shock her more than my experiences. Ultimately, as a parent, my job is not to shield her from everything, but to give her a safe place in which to feel.  So when she finally makes herself that cup of tea and sits down to read, I hope that’s what I’ve done. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see a swear jar appear on the kitchen counter . . .

Collaboration results in seamless poetry

Every now and then, a book turns up that is immediately intriguing. Such was the case with the beautifully produced Whisk, published by Pedlar Press. But what/who are the authors, identified jointly as Yoko’s Dogs. It was no big mystery, once Lynne Van Luven took a closer look. The collective consists of Jan Conn, Mary di Michele, Susan Gillis and Jane Munro. They live in different cities, and yet are truly collaborative. The group can explain itself, and its process–and does so below, speaking with one voice. 

I was intrigued to learn about your group of poets called Yoko’s Dogs. Can you tell me its history: how it got started, how long the pack has been together, and what you hope to achieve?

The idea for Yoko’s Dogs came about in 2006 around a small tin table in Montreal when the four of us, living in different places and time zones, decided to explore collaboration in an engagement with new forms to expand our individual practice.

In 2008, we met for a three-day writing party in “Marshland,” Ontario where we composed our first site-specific poem. At this meeting we found our name in one of our early images: “Yoko’s house is dark, her dogs/ tied in front, too cold to bark.”

Following tradition, which we happily and radically break to invent anew, the Doggies’ practice is rigorous, exacting, challenging, and exuberant.

I notice many, many animals make appearances in the poems in Whisk. So does the natural world.  Was that intentional, or do you all just happen to slant that way?

Our focus on animals and the natural world is deliberate and purposeful. Many of our verses are composed while walking outdoors. We want to think and write about the world outside ourselves, the animate world we humans are part of. Other animals sense and know the world differently from us; by observing and interacting with them, we learn about these other ways of knowing. Again and again, we’re reminded that the world carries on without us.

We tend to think of poets as writers terribly invested in personal voice, so I find it really interesting that readers may not know who wrote what poem in the collection.  What did you hope to achieve with this sort of “anonymity”?

We’ve moved towards anonymity in our public work in an effort to accurately represent our process. We sign verses as we compose, mostly so we know where we are in any given sequence. We follow a standard rotation when composing, taking turns with who starts a poem, linking and shifting in various ways as we go. The order doesn’t change, though the kinds of links and shifts we make do. Any one of us might send someone’s verse back to the drawing board if we feel it isn’t working. So even in the earliest stages, composition is collaborative. Removing signatures from our published work, as in Whisk, is a reflection of this process, and of the fact that we work on revisions together. By the time we’re done, no one “owns” any particular verse.

Japanese linked verse is traditionally composed by a group of poets. Some methods of composition put a lot at stake for individual poets within a group: to have the host or master of a cycle choose your verse, well! We didn’t compose that way with Whisk, though we have experimented recently with this kind of selection process as a discipline to sharpen our chops. In the form of kasen composition we’re now practicing, we all offer verses and only one gets chosen. Even this approach leads to collaboration in the revision and shaping; our first kasen “Yellow,” appearing soon in Room, was composed this way but prepared for publication collaboratively. We learn from and inspire one another–it’s work, but it’s also a lot of fun.

And leading from there, each of you is an established poet, with her own career and fans.  What has the response been, when you explain the project that is Whisk?

Nearly everyone with whom we’ve spoken–in person or electronically–about Yoko’s Dogs and Whisk has been interested and sufficiently curious to ask questions. There’s been some skepticism, of course, but even that comes with curiosity.

How difficult was it to agree upon selection for the book, and upon the style of poems?  Did you each take on a style or a certain number of selections?  

Not difficult at all, and no, the entire book is a collaboration, whole cloth. We all worked on all of it.

We work by email and Skype, normally, only meeting in real time and place about once a year, and that’s how we worked with this manuscript. For the book we decided we wouldn’t tamper with the order the verses were written in, we would only decide where to stop and start. Most of the material resolved neatly into four-stanza poems because that’s how we’d composed them, but we realized as we discussed the manuscript that some of the links carried through more than four stanzas to make engaging and resonant longer poems. Agreement on these divisions was much more easily achieved than you might think–the poems sort of divided themselves, not unlike when you dig up large plants to separate them for propagation and find the root divisions are kind of clear. And titles were just plain fun to write.

It’s hard to remember if there were things we chose to leave out; quite likely we didn’t disagree much about that. Generally if one of us has a strong urge one way or another, the others listen and consider. Learning to articulate our experiences with and responses to any given poetic move has been enormously important; so too has listening.

The thing that often happens around the table as we work through our poems stanza by stanza, the discovery we make together when we hit on the right note in an image or for a move, the aha! of a good fit–might be illustrated by this verse that closes a cycle that has travelled through several landscapes and conditions, settling finally in sub-continental India at monsoon season: “so that’s how the cow/ got in the tree!”

 

 

Woodsmen carve their mark

Despite being a fairly young band, the eclectic indie-rock collective Woodsmen has quickly made a name for itself within the tightly knit Victoria community. Even before releasing their debut EP, Woodsmen has shared the stage with such acts as Jon and Roy, Kytami, and The Zolas, and has received airplay through CBC Music. The band’s opening track “For Keeps” was nominated as the Island Song of the Year in the 2013 Vancouver Island Music Awards. Members Maryse Bernard and Sean Kennedy talked recently with Chris Ho about their successes.

Woodsmen has been described as “an accessible blend of blues, jazz and rock” with “unconventional time changes and experimental song structure.” How do you find a balance with accessibility and experimentation in your music?

MARYSE: I wouldn’t say it’s a conscious thing—that we sit down to write with the intention of creating music that surprises without distancing the audience—but it is an important balance to keep in mind. I think the best songs evoke in us both a sense of familiarity, as well as the unexpected. It’s always fun to throw in some wacky time changes, but songs still need to follow a certain structure. We aim to deliver new discoveries without pulling people out of the listening experience.

SEAN: Yeah I’d say it’s pretty spontaneous. A lot of the cooler parts of our songs come from mistakes we made while writing that we thought sounded awesome. The hard part is to  recreate them and incorporate them into our songs.

I have to say Maryse’s vocals definitely tie our songs together in terms of accessibility. They’re really emotive and draw a lot of attention, which I guess distracts from some of the strange things going on in our songs. For instance,  “Memo” changes time signatures 4 or 5 times and “Not the Same” has separate vocal and instrumental choruses, but you’re focusing more on Maryse’s melodies and lyrics throughout those songs. Essentially we all get weird behind the veil that is her voice.

Was the recording process of your debut EP just as experimental as your musical style, or was it by contrast very straightforward? What was your overall vision for the EP, as far as song selection and general soundscape goes?

MARYSE: We generally stuck to the same vocals as when we perform, but came up with the three-part harmonies for “Not The Same” in the studio. I’m a creature of habit when it comes to singing, so it was fun to add more of a spontaneous side and come up with parts right during the recording process. We carried them into our live shows, and I love now getting to jazz-geek out for that part of the song. I think Sean also got experimental with the keys for “Memo”?

SEAN: Yeah we reversed some of my key parts in “Memo,” added some reverb, then used the sound for transitions and building tension in certain parts. We also put a microphone in a refrigerator for some of the drum parts to make them sound more dirt-nasty.

MARYSE: Vision-wise, the songs go in chronological order of when we wrote them. It was our first time recording “Memo” and “Not The Same”, but we also wanted to include a revamped version of “For Keeps,” since it’s one of our favourites from our 2012 Demo. Hopefully there’s some growth that can be heard both in sound and content over the course of the EP. To me, each song brings up a distinct chapter in its theme.

What would you say are the ideal listening conditions for your self-titled EP, and why?

MARYSE: I can’t assume this for everyone, but I like to think of it as a really good driving soundtrack. When Sam Weber first sent us the rough tracks, I listened to them during a road trip to California, and that environment of looking out at the passing landscape to the music kind of stuck. Our friends recently took the EP with them on their drive to whistler. They said afterwards that whenever a Woodsmen tune came on it made everyone feel good, which is one of the best things musicians can hope for: for it to be enjoyable in a group setting, but also appreciable on a more personal level when listening to it alone. I hope that when people really pay attention to the lyrics, they can find something that rings true with them.

Would you describe your band as being unified in its musical influences and preferences, or is there quite a bit of diversity?

MARYSE: I think our influences are all pretty diverse, and that that creates one of our sound’s best qualities. I love that everyone comes from different musical backgrounds and brings their own flavor to the conception of our songs. It inspires lyrics and melodies I may never have come up with otherwise. I was trained in jazz with heavy RnB and blues influence, but also adored punk rock as a teen, so it’s awesome to create this fusion that becomes our own genre of alternative. In the studio, Sam Weber called us the “Motown Grizzly Bear.”

Oftentimes a band’s perception of their best song doesn’t line up with what others perceive as their best song. Is this the case for your track “For Keeps,” which has evidently garnered attention through its nomination in the Island Song of the Year?

MARYSE: In my opinion, if you’re making music for the sole purpose of it being popular, the lack of substance is going to be obvious. If it doesn’t resonate with us, then it probably won’t with fans either. What’s great about “For Keeps” is that it can be taken as a lighter track—danceable and a little poppy—but also as a darker confessional when you listen to it closely. There was some heavy turmoil going on when writing the lyrics— the fear of essentially being broken when it comes to relationships. So I think it can be connected to on a number of different levels, depending on how listeners want to approach it.

Essays capture author’s past and present

Gabriola Island resident George Szanto writes fiction, including mysteries, and nonfiction. His most recent book is Bog Tender: Coming Home to Nature and Memory, a moving collection of essays about time, personal history and the natural world. Szanto was a university professor at McGill University in Montreal for many years but is also an inveterate world traveller. His most recent novel was The Tartarus House on Crab, which (full disclosure) Lynne Van Luven edited. He’s a past winner of the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and a National Magazine Award recipient. He recently answered Van Luven’s questions about Bog Tender, released in March 2013 by Brindle and Glass Publishing of Victoria.

George, you quote both Henry David Thoreau and Garson Kanin at the outset of your book. Can you comment on Kanin’s observation that “we do not remember chronologically, but in disordered flashes” and its relationship to the way you organized this new book of essays?

I’ve wanted to write about the bog on our property, and about some of the moments that have been the most consequential in my past life. They seemed like two completely different projects, until I found a structure for the bog narrative—since the bog changed so much over the year, I decided to follow its transformations for a twelve-month period. Then slowly, as I thought about each month, it became clear that many of those important past moments could be associated with specific months. Then it became relatively easy to let the months of the year give order to those past bits. On my website I cite the words of one of my favourite writers, Samuel Beckett: “To find a shape to satisfy the mess, that is the task of the artist now.” Kanin says we remember in disordered flashes, and he is correct. But to write a memoir as a series of disordered flashes would be not only uncontrolled, but deadly for the reader. So what I was looking for was a structure that rang true, a kind verisimilitude of disordered remembering, and it became the shape to satisfy my messy memories of past life.

When I finished reading Bog Tender, I thought that it represented rather elegantly the thoughts of a contented man who has lived his life well. Would you say that is accurate, or just a horribly mawkish misunderstanding?

The only misunderstanding there is that you put it in the past tense: I am still living my life well—or at least hope I am. It’s been a very good life, and continues to be. Though I had hoped to be able to write full time and make a living off it from the moment I received my BA, that was not to be. So I spent many years teaching at universities, which I often enjoyed—interaction with often very smart students—and sometimes had a harder time with— noxious administrations and toxic bureaucracies—but wished all the time that I could be writing and making a full living off it. When I retired it became clear that I didn’t need to make writing my financial livelihood, but I could write full time. And I’ve been doing that, and with great pleasure.

When I first saw the title of your book of essays, I took the word “tender” in the sense of loving something tenderly.  Now I see you mean it as in “caring for, attending to.”  Do you think attending to the natural world comes more essential to writers as they age?  If so, why?

I know a number of writers who, as they age, become less and less interested in the natural world. Far from attending, they prefer to avoid it. Personally I couldn’t do that—the natural world (and sometimes even the unnatural world) has been too important to me over my lifetime. Sometimes I find beauty and peace in nature; sometimes too, I have to add, I find squalor and corruption. But the latter two come mostly with the help of some of my fellow humans, both the aging and the young. And then nature truly needs tending.

I’m glad you ask about the title. The original title was Tending Bog, which I liked because it seemed more active. But then it was pointed out to me that if I called it Bog Tender I could bring in, with the pun, the tenderness, the gentleness and fragility of the bog. What never occurred to me, but was pointed out by the National Post reviewer, is that “tender” has a third meaning: tender is money. So I can say my wealth lies in my relation to the bog—it is my liquid tender.

George, I know you always have more than one work on the go. Tell me how many different books you are writing right now, and talk a bit about your writing methods.

For the most part, I find it uncomfortable to talk about present projects; if I talk about a book I’m working on and explain it well, then somehow I come to feel I’ve told that story and now I don’t have to write it. But I can talk about the book Sandy Duncan and I have just finished, the fourth in our Islands Investigations International series, Always Love A Villain, set on San Juan Island. We’ve dealt in the three previous novels with art forgery, transgendering and corrupt sports practices. Villain deals with plagiarism and other forms of intellectual theft. Aside from that, I’m at various stages in two novels of my own, different from what I’ve done in the past. One is an international caper story, the other a large family saga.

As to writing methods: when I’m in the midst of a project I try to write every day. I used to be able to do this for as much as eight hours a day. Now if I can do five, I’m lucky. We have on this property both our house and our guest cottage. The guest cottage is, as you know, on the other side of the bog. I head out to it between 10 and 11 in the morning—in the book I call it my daily commute—and get to work. This usually involves reading and re-writing what I’d done the day before, which also gives me the momentum to continue from there. I do a lot of re-writing, both as I’m going along and after the first draft is done. I know many writers can’t stand rewriting, but for me it’s one of the most rewarding aspects of the project. Writing is hard, facing a blank page or screen. Rewriting becomes a matter of shaping what’s already there, and that gives me great pleasure. I even enjoy (sometimes) cutting, when I can see that the elimination of what might be wonderful passages (but not part of this book) will make the story stronger.

I’ve only been on Gabriola Island a few times since I moved to the West Coast, but it seems to me that you bring your corner of it to life in a most convincing fashion. Do you, like Thoreau, now “derive more subsistence from the swamps  . . . than from the cultivated gardens in the village?”

A cultivated anything is a project that’s already done. I get pleasure in the making process, stepping into the unknown, trying something new. Swamps and bogs hide secrets, under their waters they contain mysteries, maybe dangers, much that is invisible to the human eye—often it’s the nose that begins to ferret out all that concealed material. That’s what makes the caper and the family stories intriguing for me—I’ve never tried those kinds of projects before. At least not in print.