an interview with Thomas Trofimuk

CV2: Thomas, you are a poet, but your new book, The 52nd Poem is a novel. Can you talk a bit about your desire to write a novel?

TT: The novel was born inside a poem. It was a long journey. The seed poem was a 10-page monster than was rejected and rejected and finally came to rest. I realized I was probably the only one who understood what the hell it was about. Too oblique. There wasn't a clear connection point. Regardless, I believed there was something in it—down there at the heart of it. There was a story in that poem. A few years later, I ran across it and on a whim, began to burst the poetry into prose. The short story was published in NeWest Review and I thought that was probably the end. Well, I re-visited the story after a few years and thought, well, that's a pretty good little story but it's not done. My desire to write novels comes from being just naturally curious about things, and people, and situations. I love the journey. I absolutely love digressions. In fact, I cut about 30,000 words worth of digressions out of this book—digressions I put in there on purpose. I cut stuff I absolutely loved. Stuff I struggled over and researched. But it was the right choice for this story. For me, writing is the journey to discovering what I'm going to write. That's not a new idea, or approach. I wanted to write a narrative that was concise, had a poetic felicity and was extremely accessible. I wanted to play with the form to that end. So, there are small chunks of prose interspersed with breaks. It was not my initial intention but eventually, I realized I was writing a novel the same way I might write a poem. Chapters became stanzas. The chunks of prose became lines or clusters of thought, or feelings. The book itself became the 52nd poem. So, my desire to write a novel is the same as the desire to write a poem, it's a way to figure things out, a way to communicate, a way to not feel so alone in the world, and at the end of the day, an act of hope. I love that quote from Margaret Lawrence: "The very act of writing is an act of faith, or hope." And I guess to take it further you would say that the voice of despair is no voice at all—silence.