Bukem Reitmayer in Conversation with Kevin Barry
Bukem Reitmayer (BR): You started writing about Limerick, Dublin, Cork city, eventually you made your own city, Bohane, and then you began to write about County Sligo – what’s next? Where do you go from here? You mentioned before that you are getting closer and closer to home – what do you mean by that? Kevin...
Fazeela Jiwa in Conversation with Rita Wong and Larissa Lai: sybil unrest
[June 9, 2014] Fazeela Jiwa (FJ): sybil unrest was originally published by LINEBooks in 2008, and was just re-released by New Star Books late last year. In your acknowledgements you state that the poem began during the “fraught moment” of the 2003 SARS crisis and the American invasion of Iraq. Is there a similar contextual impetus...
Waaseyaa’sin Christine Sy in Conversation with Janet Marie Rogers
This interview took place in March 2014 Waaseyaa’sin Christine Sy (WCS): In your latest publication, Unearthed (Leaf Press, 2011), you pay homage to the Coast Salish peoples in whose lands you are a long-time visitor to/dweller in, and acknowledge their lands as informing much of your poetry. You also hold strong to your Mohawk-ness-Tuscarora-ness, the landscapes...
Alex Porco in Conversation with Kerri Pullo
Kerri Pullo’s asemic writing exists at the boundaries of calligraphy, visual poetry, and graffiti. Her rhythmic markings, colors, and textures attempt to reproduce the mind’s energia— its transitions, leaps, interruptions, digressions, and even dissipation. Examples of her work are interspersed throughout the interview that follows below. With good humor and refreshing honesty, Pullo discusses her...
Waaseyaa’sin Christine Sy in Conversation with Vera Wabegijig
This conversation is based on an email exchange occurring between January 6 – 20, 2014. A glossary of anishinaabemowin (anishinaabe language, whose orthography does not employ capitals) is included at the end of the interview. A longer version of this interview can be found here. Waaseyaa’sin Christine Sy (WCS): Language, our language is everywhere. I...
Elvia Wilk in Conversation with J. R. Carpenter
Electronic Literature is a loaded and slippery category. It is rather dryly defined by the Electronic Literature Organization (what other art form needs a governing body?) as “works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer.” Does this mean everything or nothing? If there’s...
Jordan Abel and Renée Saklikar in Conversation: Accumulation as a Political Act
Daniel Zomparelli (DZ): I read both of your books consecutively (The Place of Scraps (Talonbooks, 2013) by Jordan Abel and children of air india (Harbour Publishing, 2013) by Renée Saklikar), and in my opinion the books had similar themes. They both take a tragedy, differing in scale obviously, and the poet interjects into these tragedies to create a...
Shane Rhodes On Beauty
Welcome back to “On Beauty,” a series of interviews with poets about their relations to beauty. For an introduction to the project, see poets on beauty. This month I invited Shane Rhodes to think about beauty. At a reading from his new poetry book, X, which interrogates documents outlining Canada’s “Indian Policy,” he mentioned that...
Geneviève Robichaud in Conversation with Benjamin Klein: “Fabrications” a Pop-Up Show
Geneviève Robichaud (GR): You’re curating a Pop-up group show with Margot Ross. What is the show’s intention? What was the curatorial frame/aim? How did you choose the work? Benjamin Klein (BK): The artists in the show titled ‘Fabrications’ are Laura Anderson, David Arseneau, Pierre Julien, Mathieu Levesque, Simone Rochon and Jonathan Schouela. The space (a warehouse...
Alex Porco in Conversation with David O’Meara
Stitched Songs (7 Sept 2013 – 6 Nov 2013) Alex Porco (AP): David, in your new book, A Pretty Sight (Coach House, 2013), the classical rhapsode is a central, recurring figure. The rhapsode is a figure of transport: he has the expressive power to move— or “possess”— his audience; at the same time, the rhapsode...
Waaseyaa’sin Christine Sy in Conversation with Marilyn Dumont
Waaseyaa’sin Christine Sy (WCS): Kinanaskomitinanan (thank-you) for considering these questions on your three poetry books, A Really Good Girl (1996), green girl dreams Mountains (2001), that tongued belonging (2007), and your latest manuscript, The Pemmican Eaters. Your poems map themselves out in terms of the landscapes and cityscapes that inform them. Can you share...
In Conversation: Catherine Leclerc & Robert Majzels
Catherine Leclerc (CL): For Sure is the fifth novel by France Daigle that you translated. For our readers, 1953: Chronicle of a Birth Foretold (1997) was the first, then you went on with Just Fine (1999), A Fine Passage (2002), Life’s Little Difficulties (2004), and now For Sure. This almost seems like a cycle, especially since Daigle’s latest novel explicitly refers to 1953 and comments on it, as can...
