Tag Archives: interview

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.

Partners in crime . . . writing

Victoria residents Kay Stewart and Chris Bullock are partners in life and crime-writing. Their third mystery in the Danutia Dranchuck series was published this spring. The series features a female RCMP constable who grows more complex with each new book. The authors will be in Vancouver April 18 at 7:30 p.m. in the Peter Kaye Room, Lower Level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia, for the Aurthur Ellis Shortlist event.  Stewart and Bullock recently answered Lynne Van Luven’s questions about the context for and development of  their new mystery, which they’ll launch in Nanaimo at The Coffee Vault (499 Wallace Street) on April 22 at 6:30 pm.

The two of you have logged a total of 50 years as professors of English at the university level. How difficult was the switch from that sort of intellectual work to the challenge of writing crime novels?

KAY: During most of my university years, I was a sessional lecturer, teaching writing and introductory literature courses. So I didn’t have the same stake in academic research and publication as Chris did. Before we began our first crime novel, I had published short stories as well as personal essays and writing textbooks. The stretch for me was moving from short fiction to the novel–no more sketching a character or setting in a few sentences.

CHRIS: In contrast, the switch from intellectual work to writing crime novels was very difficult for me. I discovered that knowing about the theory of fiction–about kinds of characterization and various ways of structuring plots–was little help in writing fiction. So the first drafts of chapters I wrote for our first novel, Deadly Little List, were hopelessly expository, full of reflection and very little action. The turning point for me was taking a writing class with Marilyn Bowering and learning to write in scenes. I also discovered that I needed to notice the life around me rather simply reflect on it, so writing fiction has involved an expansion of perception for me.

You both have lived in Alberta and taught in Edmonton, where there is a sizeable Ukrainian community. Did that influence the creation of your protagonist, who is named Danutia Dranchuk?

 KAY: Definitely. It was important to me that the book reflect something of the Canadian mosaic. I’d had Ukrainian students and neighbours, and I’d recently been fascinated by Myrna Kostash’s revisionist history of Ukrainians in Canada, All of Baba’s Children (reissued 1992). However, I didn’t want my protagonist’s ethnicity to be her defining trait. So I created Danutia Dranchuk, of mixed heritage like many of us. I expect that at some point she will be called upon to re-examine her cultural roots.

Unholy Rites takes Danutia and her “sidekick” Arthur Fairweather to England. Why did you move the action from Victoria, BC, to the wider world stage?

CHRIS:  We hadn’t intended to move Unholy Rites outside Canada, but were drawn by a particular area of England. The landscape and customs of that area seemed to ask us to set our novel there.

KAY: Changing the setting was also a device for keeping our interest as well as the interest of readers. We both enjoy exploring new places and trying to capture the flavour of their inhabitants. By moving into the wider world, we set new challenges for ourselves as well as for our protagonists.

Your acknowledgements thank the “well-dressing community of Derbyshire” for sharing their craft, but I am wondering when you knew this was going to be an integral part of Unholy Rites–before you started the novel, or part-way through?

CHRIS:  Initially, we went to the Peak District in Derbyshire to sell our first novel (A Deadly Little List) at a Gilbert and Sullivan festival.  While at the festival, we toured around a bit and became fascinated at seeing ancient hill forts and stone circles, and witnessing originally pagan customs like well dressing. Our original idea was to set our novel around a stone circle called the Nine Ladies. After mapping out this idea, we discovered that a local crime novelist had already written a book with exactly this setting. So we switched from monuments to customs, and started our second joint writing project with well dressing as a focus. As it turned out, our research into well dressing also led us to some other strange places and areas of interest.

Unholy Rites leaves the reader wondering about Danutia’s future as a RCMP constable. Without giving away any of the suspense, can you talk a bit about your plans for the novel series?

KAY: Like most young women of the last half century, Danutia is faced with questions about “work-life balance,” or, more accurately, “work-life imbalance.” These questions arise in the first book, A Deadly Little List, and intensify in Unholy Rites. The issue may–or may not!–come to a head in book four, which I’m working on now. I don’t know how it will turn out. If her life is like that of most women I know, her world will shift again just when she thinks she’s found some balance.

 

The authors will also appear in Victoria at Chronicles of Crime bookstore (1048 Fort Street) Thursday, May 23, 7 pm in At The Mike, a “conversations with crime writers” event. 

On May 25 from 9:30 to 1 p.m., they will be part of “Making Crime Pay: A National Crime-Writing Month Mini-Conference” at the Greater Victoria  Public Library, Central Branch and will be part of the afternoon “Speed-Dating” event as well.

Tunnels, Treehouses and Trainsmoke!

Coastal Spectator reviewer Noah Cebuliak, himself a musician living in Montreal, recently interviewed travelling-man Jeff Andrew about his new music and his forth-coming CD.  Andrew grew up in Ontario, has a degree from the University of Victoria, and has criss-crossed Canada many times in his near-indestructible 1988 Toyota 4Runner. He calls the vehicle CCRider, and says he has logged 430,000 kilometres in the vehicle.

Jeff, tell me about your inspiration to record in tunnels and other underground spaces. Why are you drawn there and not to other locations, like churches or actual studios? Have you recorded anything in other semi-obscure places, like grain silos or caves or the like?

I’ve always been drawn to the underground. Secret places in general, like tunnels, crawlspaces, secret passages in old houses, sub-basements . . . probably from growing up on mysteries and horror stories. Same reason I love old buildings–they’re full of ghosts. I get a lot of inspiration thinking about the lives that have been lived there, what might have happened in those spaces.

They also tend to have really interesting acoustics. One of my favourite records is by a BC fiddler named Oliver Schroer (who passed away about 5 years ago). He did an album called Camino where he walked the El Camino De Santiago trail in Spain and recorded himself playing in all the old cathedrals. The sound of that album breaks my heart. I listen to it almost every day.

I’ve never done any grain silos or caves but maybe one day! Studios tend to be expensive, and I don’t like the idea of recording in a hermetically sealed chamber, cut off from the outside world. One of the things I love about old folk and blues records that were recorded in people’s houses, hotel rooms, front porches is that you can hear things like old cars in the background, dogs barking, trains rolling by in the distance . . .  they are like a time machine.

What are the songs you’re going to record about? What inspires you to write? Are the songs linked to the subterranean theme at all?

Let’s see, there are a couple of travel songs, a set of fiddle tunes written to sound like a freight train taking off, a murder ballad set in the Carnival era, a lighthearted novelty song about police brutality . . . also an apocalyptic love song and a true story song about a girl named Nyki Kish, who’s serving a life sentence in Ontario for a murder she didn’t commit. I can’t see how she did it, at least, and I’ve read through the judge’s verdict from the trial and dozens of newspaper articles about it. Seems like another case of wrong place, wrong time and the cops desperate to pin it on somebody, so they picked the easiest target. Lots more about her at www.freenyki.org.

There’s also a song called “The Graveyard Downtown,” loosely based on Victoria’s secret history. I learned there used to be a graveyard at Douglas and Johnson, back when that was the edge of the city . . . It’s about what used to be there before the modern city was built. And all the history the city (and Canada as a whole) doesn’t like to talk about. The Chinese head tax, the internment camps, residential schools, the whole reservation system, plus all the Asian people who died building the railroads and the tremendous labour battles that were fought in the 1910s and 20s. Our country was built on a lot of racism, abuse and exploitation. We pay lip service to some of it, but most of the physical legacy is being torn down and replaced with condos. All the old buildings, bridges, alleyways, shipyards, train yards, even the grain elevators–the places where the people who built Canada lived, worked and died–are disappearing. Part of that is an attempt to erase the past, the living history you can see and touch. Reduce it to footnotes in a textbook and it stops being real.

You say in your Indiegogo campaign video that you’ve got a whole collection of obscure string instruments. What draws you toward these fringe instruments?

The new album called “Tunnels,” which you can pre-order and donate to, is going to have to some unusual string instruments on it. I don’t have as big a collection as I’d like, but I do have a baritone violin, a 5-string violin and a Stroh violin. The 5-string has an extra low string on the bottom and the baritone violin has heavy strings on it so I can tune it an octave lower than normal. It’s basically down in cello range. The Stroh violin (which you can see in my profile shot on the Indiegogo page) has a resonator and a big phonograph horn instead of a body. I’ve also got a steel-bodied resonator guitar on a couple of tracks.

I love these early attempts at amplifying strings. They date back to the turn of the 20th century when recordings were done into a giant cone with a needle at the end of it scratching the sound into a wax cylinder. You had to be really loud and forceful to get your playing in through that cone – also to cut through the sound of a horn section on stage. Simple answer: add a horn to the violin!

Are you going to record with a band, live, or will you be multi-tracking and building a bigger sound?

The Stroh violin is somewhere between a fiddle and a trumpet. Plus I can use the baritone violin to build my own string section. So yes, multi-tracking. We actually did most of the recording already in Vancouver–me on guitar, fiddle and vocals, plus Ryan Boeur from Fish & Bird on lead guitar and Kenan Sungur from High Society (who also played drums on my last album), laying down percussion and upright bass. He’s a one-man rhythm section! And Ryan is one of the best accompanists out there right now. And we had Corwin Fox to record it, who’s done two albums for me already and is a brilliant engineer and producer. We’ve all been playing together for a long time, so it went down pretty easy. The tunnel stuff I’m going to do on my own with a handheld recorder later this week.

How is the campaign going? Are you planning a big release and tour for the album after its completed? What are your career expectations for this record?

I told someone recently I want my career to be like that little shack at the edge of town, where the river bends and the tracks have broken down . . . it’s out there waiting for me, in disrepair right now but one day I’ll be able to live in it.

The campaign’s doing well so far, really encouraging. The better it does, the more I’ll be have to pay everyone involved and put into the packaging and promoting of it. So please keep the shares and contributions coming! It means a lot to an independent artist, to get this kind of support.

I’m planning a zine to go with it, a hand-drawn songbook (by Victoria’ s Fraea the Banshee) of all the chords and lyrics. I’m aiming to release it at the end of summer with a couple of big shows in Victoria and Vancouver, followed by a cross-Canada tour (in sections this time, I’m through with doing the whole thing at once. The country’s too damn big!)

After that, we’ll see. I took the last year off from touring and promotion, so I could write and get better at fiddle. I spent this winter in Halifax learning east coast fiddle tunes and playing with an orchestra, trying to get my head around classical music, which I fell totally in love with over  the past couple  of years. I needed a break from the music business, to let the tanks fill up again. Now they’re full, and I’m ready to jump back in the game. I have most of another album written and ready to go; that’ll be a much bigger project with electric guitars and some kind of string section. And plans for a musical after that — or it might turn out to be a novel with an album to go with it.

In other words, yeah. I’m taking this as far as it can go. Stay tuned!

 

Learn more about Tunnels, Treehouses & Trainsmoke here:

 

People still passionate about books, says writer-teacher

Buffy Cram now teaches part time at the Vancouver Island School of Art and lives part of the year in Berlin, a city of great creative stimulation. A graduate of writing programs at both the University of Victoria and the University of BC, Cram is now working on her second book of fiction. Her first short story collection, Radio Belly, was published in 2012 by Douglas and McIntyre and was one of the publications caught in the company’s later bankruptcy. Cram talked recently with Lynne Van Luven about her new novel and her hopes for the future of publishing.

Buffy, it’s probably still painful to talk about, but how did your publisher’s bankruptcy–and its subsequent re-organization earlier this year–affect your energy for the writing life?

I won’t lie; the bankruptcy news did put me into a bit of an end-of-the-world, books-are-dead funk. I wasn’t worried about my career or myself as much as I was worried about the future of books in Canada. We’ve lost so many of our independent publishing houses in recent years and every time that happens it means fewer Canadian writers making it to print and less diversity for readers.

The odd thing is, I meet people every day who are passionate about Canadian books. I meet high school students who are hungry for contemporary short fiction they can relate to. So it seems there is a disconnect here. Perhaps there aren’t enough ways for readers and writers to connect. Perhaps readers don’t realize how important it is to spend their money on Canadian books. Perhaps writers don’t realize how important it is to become evangelists of books and reading in general, as opposed to just promoting their own books. This winter I tried really, really hard to convince myself I was all done with writing. I taught myself how to make music videos because it seems this is something society values far more than books. But then I would read a really amazing sentence or discover a new writer and it would all come rushing back. Reading and writing will always be the two most important acts for me, even if they aren’t as cool as music videos.

Your short stories in Radio Belly seem to be animated by skepticism about the material world, as well as about the present. Could you talk a little about what sort of fictional worlds most interest you, what sort of characters?

I’m most interested in portraying those moments in life where “magic” and “reality” blend.  Often that means writing about people who are pushed to the outer edges of their sanity. Change is a crucial part of all short fiction. But I’m most interested in characters who have been living in denial and avoiding change for just a little too long. This may be where the skepticism about the material world comes in. In my experience, the best way to support denial is to focus on my outer or material existence (i.e. the best cure for heartache is a new haircut.) I think we are living this way on a societal level. Here in North America, most of us spend a lot more time shopping or updating our Facebook pages than we do saving the planet. I guess maybe I wanted my writing to speak to this in some way. The final stage of denial, right before change, is full of emotional urgency and, to my mind, that’s interesting territory for fiction.

Like so many writers in British Columbia, you are now a teacher of writing yourself. Did that require a great transition, or did it feel like a natural shift in your own working life?

I’ve been an ESL teacher and a private tutor for years, so in many ways I was prepared for the transition into teaching writing. I knew how to break the subject down into small, digestible parts and how to be instructive and entertaining at the same time. What I didn’t expect is that my role as a creative writing teacher would primarily be about giving people permission to write and coaching them through the fear of the blank page. This seems to be far more important to my students than learning about the technicalities of writing. Over and over I find my role as a teacher is just to be the one saying, “keep going” and “bad writing is a necessary part of good writing.”

What’s the best piece of information any writing instructor could give her students in these uncertain times?

The best advice any writing instructor can give students these days is to learn how to make music videos. Secondly, they should remind their students to have fun while they write. I tell my students to put on music and sit in their favourite chair and light a candle and make a cup of tea. I challenge them to make themselves laugh or cry and to tell the story they’ve always wanted to tell. I say these are strategies to help ease the fear of writing. What I don’t say is that these rituals are so important because, in the end, writing itself is the reward. Publishing is unlikely and, in my experience, largely unrewarding. There won’t be money or fame. There might not even be readers. So, it all comes down to finding ways to enjoy the actual writing. That’s one of the reasons I started up a drop-in writing class at VISA, where writers of any level can just show up and explore their imaginations together. I don’t believe writing needs to be a lonely and torturous act. When writers get together, it can be social and inspiring and, believe it or not, fun.

Tell us what Berlin is like for a young and engaged writer these days, what keeps you going back for part of the year?

I have a restless spirit. I’ve always been happiest when I’m on the move and I’ve recently learned that splitting my time between two places is a more sustainable way to satisfy that part of myself than starting all over in a new place every year. I love Berlin because it is a city full of stories. You can walk through the streets and see bullet holes in the walls of old buildings. Or you might come across parts of the wall still standing. Or you might meet a little old lady selling communist relics at a flea market. It’s almost impossible not to be inspired by all that history. But I love Berlin for the way it barrels forward too. I live in East Berlin, a part of the city that is still reinventing itself. Every day there are changes. Someone decides to build an art gallery in an old junk yard. Or someone sets up a photography school in a ruined building. Or someone starts a café that only serves one dish and has no chairs. I can’t help but admire this kind of thing. It’s reckless reinvention or forward motion without preparedness. It’s a living reminder to celebrate imperfection.