an interview with Sina Queyras (excerpt)

Sina Queyras: I did feel pressure to perform, but that was because I was not happy with my own work.

SC: What was it about your earlier work that made you unhappy?

SQ: There was something halting about Slip for me, but it may be that I just hadn’t found my stride or my rhythm, and I feel my own hesitations. I am a fan of writing that hums—Dionne Brand, Lisa Robertson. I would love my writing to hum. I aim high, as you can see, and am therefore bound to be disappointed.

SC: Having completed your sophomore collection, Teethmarks, was it any easier to complete your third collection, Lemon Hound?

SQ: Yes! I felt completely liberated with Lemon Hound. It was so much fun. Teethmarks was complicated. I wrote much of it in the days following 9/11. At that time, I was still adjusting to being in the US, my father passed away, and I think I had lost faith, if not my footing, in poetry. Conversely, Lemon Hound was a pleasure. I wrote it in about three weeks—this after months of thinking about modernism and post-modernism, the tension there, and the tension between nature and technology, Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf, prose and poetry, and so on. I had been longing to write all year, thinking deeply, but given my teaching schedule, I had to keep putting it off. There was a lot of polishing, reworking, adding on, and rethinking over the next year, but the core of it came in a joyful fury at an artist’s residency in Vermont.

SC: Lemon Hound is a significant departure from what you have done in your earlier work. In some ways, it feels like a more political book than your first two. Was this intentional on your part?

SQ: I don’t see these poems as a departure, but rather a deeper investigation of the flux where lyric meets language and poetry meets prose that I think all my work has explored. For me, this is an inquiry that spins from the personal to the political, rural to urban, natural to technological. These long lines, the litanies of connection, are my attempt to represent a visual and sensual response to the world around me.

SC: What path did you follow to become a book-published poet? When did you start writing poetry? At what point did you start to think of yourself as a poet?

SQ: I started writing poetry very early on, but it wasn’t until I was perhaps 25 that I wrote anything that seemed remotely original, and it was only recently that I began to think of myself as a poet. I did a BFA in creative writing at UBC, and an MA in English and creative writing at Concordia, and I knew I wanted to write, and that often took the form of poetry; but as far as being a poet in the world, and, as you say, a bookpublished member of the poetry world, I was reluctant. For one thing, the poetry world is daunting. There is a tremendous amount of technical skill to master, not to mention the poetics, or the responsibility that comes with the privilege of speaking, the difficulty of saying something original. So, I wear the moniker of poet with great awe, feeling most of the time that I haven’t read enough, don’t know enough, am not earnest, or clever, or original enough, not enough into nature, or too into nature, that I’m too domestic, too confessional, too quirky, or worse, that I have nothing of value to say. In my dreams, Margaret Atwood used to berate me for this . . . On a practical level, attending the Writing Studio at Banff was an important moment: it made clear to me what I needed to do to make writing central in my life. It was a wake-up call.

SC: You mention attending an artist’s residency in Vermont and the Writing Studio at Banff. What role do you think these types of writing retreats play in the development of emerging and experienced poets? What role did such experiences as a whole play for you?

SQ: You find yourself in a world where writing matters, more particularly, your writing matters, as does your opinion of and reaction to the writing of others. This is heady stuff—at least it was for me. Residencies can also teach a young writer about discipline, the dailiness of writing, how it needs reading, thinking, engagement. There is much to learn from residencies, particularly residencies such as Banff and Vermont, which offer multiple pleasures in that they create environments where artists from various disciplines, geographies, and cultures meet. This is very important to me, mingling with other creative people. I learn a lot from visual and performing artists.

SC: Which writers have you been influenced by?

SQ: Oh, many, many—from Sappho to Larry David—but most recently and persistently Erin Mouré, Lisa Robertson—all the poets included in Open Field— Christopher Dewdney, Caroline Bergvall, Lydia Davis, Samuel Beckett, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Anne Carson, Jeanette Winterson, Margaret Atwood, and a whole host of non-fiction, film, TV, and dramatic writers. Any attempt to solidify such a list is impossible. What I can say is that I am interested in writers as whole beings, not just in their work—and my favourite writers tend to be writers who are able to be larger than they are, who are aware of themselves in the world; people who live responsible, fully literary and “human” lives. Atwood, for instance—I have enormous respect for her public presence, how she is part diplomat, part political animal, and always intriguing and courageous in her work. She’s a wonderful role model, as are Erin Mouré and Marilyn Hacker: people who realize how privileged they are to be writers, people who give back, people who are always engaged in the world and growing and responding.

SC: You have resided and written in a number of locales, including British Columbia, Ontario, and New York. Has geographic location played any part in your development as a poet? Have your travels?

SQ: When I move to a new location, I like to touch all the corners, upturn things, tunnel under, sniff out, historically, geographically, economically—I want to know where I am, who has been there before, how it relates to where I come from. This is great fun. However, the downside is I will find the positive wherever I am. I will find a way to love wherever I am—even if it isn’t right for me. This often makes leaving difficult, and then when I leave, I pine, which means I have to keep going back, so my network gets larger and more complex. On the other hand, some landscapes and people are more deeply inscribed. Western Canada, for instance—I think it was Fred Wah who said the West never leaves you; that’s true, I am always trying to write my way back home, and despite everything, the West is home. And though I was born in Manitoba, I mean primarily British Columbia when I say West.

SC: You currently reside in the United States. In your opinion, how does the writing scene in the US differ from that of Canada?

SQ: Well, there are more people here, which means more opportunity, which means more developed layers and schools of poetry, if you will. On the other hand, I have had to come to terms with the world of professional poetry. In Canada, I came to poetry knowing that I would always have to do something else—it never occurred to me that I would have a career, let alone teach creative writing. At best, I thought I might be able to publish something, and that seemed an amazing enough feat.

SC: As a Canadian writing in the US, do you feel you have more or less opportunity for growth in your craft?

SQ: I was never one of those people obsessed with New York and “the best of New York,” but yes, it has given me great opportunities. My world has enlarged, as have my perspective and confidence. Everything is here: you have access to so many different levels of the art and literary world, and generally, people have been very open, very welcoming. It has allowed me freedom to explore, for sure, but I remain very tied to Canada and Canadian poetry, so my position may be a little strange.

SC: So, would you say you feel you have more opportunity for growth in your craft because you currently reside in New York? Do you think you would also have more opportunity in other US locales than you would in Canada?

SQ: This is a difficult question. I have had many, many opportunities to develop my craft in Canada—amazing opportunities, such as attending UBC and the Writing Studio at Banff, having plays workshopped, being part of writing groups, grants from the Canada Council. I’ve learned much from direct contact with writers such as Linda Svendsen, Don McKay, Tim Lilburn, Daphne Marlatt, and many, many others. I also spent much of my 20s in the rainforests of British Columbia staring into fir trees, walking in the forest, taking a variety of jobs, interacting with people, learning to listen and see. It was a very vital time, and certainly an integral part of my development not only in terms of craft but my being. Canada is rich in opportunity, but at this point in my life, New York works for me. New York offered opportunities that I was ready for at this moment. I’ve met writers who have come here from Saltspring, or Portland, and they’ve been miserable. I had the occasional desire to come to New York earlier and didn’t. I went to places like Toronto and Montreal instead—probably, that was a good thing. I think that there are different needs for different times. The real skill is figuring out where one should be at a given point.
Having said that, New York really is unlike any other place. Yes, there are great opportunities elsewhere in the US—Colorado has Naropa; Chicago has many universities, residencies, a thriving literary scene, as do Philadelphia, Buffalo, Berkley, Boston . . . But none—save Chicago, perhaps—packs the cultural punch of New York. When I go to Chelsea—and I go often—I can see a dozen galleries in an afternoon, and in those galleries, I might see Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Rachel Whiteread, Damien Hirst, all in the span of a latte, and mixed in with that, some brilliant and not-so-brilliant artists I have heard or not heard of. I can see the latest Carol Churchill play; I can hear Anne Carson in a small bar in the East Village; I can go to the Poetry Project, the Bowery Poetry Club, Poet’s House, The Met; I can sit in on master classes at the Julliard; and on and on. People come to New York with desire . . . all of this feeds you. It makes you grow.
On the other hand, being at the Stegner House in Saskatchewan also fed me and it also made me grow. So, to try to answer your question regarding the growth of craft—yes, I have had many opportunities to hone my craft since coming to New York. But do I think New York is the centre of the world? No. Do I think it’s an essential experience? I’m not sure. Do I think the US has more or better opportunities? Difficult to say, certainly they are different. What I can say is that my sense of poetry has grown tremendously since moving to New York.
The development of a writer is not predictable. This is what makes advising writers so difficult. There is no one path. Most of them require risk. You can’t compact creative development into a single program, location, or method. There’s no patent, no sure thing.

SC: You recently edited a compilation of Canadian poetry titled Open Field (Persea Books, 2005), which you have mentioned earlier in this interview. It is said to be geared towards American readers. How did that project come into being? Did you intentionally set out to make this collection accessible to Americans?

SQ: The project came to me quite unexpectedly, and, to be honest, I didn’t want to do it. I had never edited anything before and was already overwhelmed with projects as it was. I also had my doubts about taking on the impossible role of anthologist. But I was frustrated with people not having access to Canadian poetry, and this book would be available everywhere: I could just say, buy this, start here.
If I had an agenda, it was to represent contemporary Canadian poetry with an open mind, accurately and engagingly. So many anthologies just don’t make for very good reads. I wanted this one to be difficult to put down. I wanted people to be as excited about Canadian poetry as I am. I wanted them to go order Canadian poetry [books]. Also, I wanted to break down the often-entrenched ideas of formal versus experimental or innovative poetry that seem unproductive to me. This is something Canada has to offer—a healthy perspective on this split.

SC: Do you feel you succeeded?

SQ: There’s always room for improvement, and every project has its lessons, which is to say that there are things I would do differently. But yes, I think I succeeded in doing what I set out to do.

SC: Being a first-time editor and anthologist, how did you approach the selections you made? Why were some poets included while others absent?

SQ: The simple answer is, I had 25 spaces and five times as many poets who could conceivably fit in them. It is an understatement to say the selection process was painful and difficult, and finally I begged for five more spots than there were in the initial plan. This changed the shape of the book to some extent, reaching more into the present.
As for what was included, I don’t want to defend my choices here but I can talk about the range of voices and styles I felt necessary to include. There are sonnets, yes, but also linguistically innovative work from Christian Bök and Dennis Lee. Much of the poetry included in Open Field is poetry that I use in workshops, and students are excited by this work; in fact, most are blown away, and all of their work improves, even if they don’t buy it. I don’t care if they buy it, I don’t care what kind of work students end up writing—but I do care how they approach it, what they bring to it. Adventurous reading leads to adventurous writing. You can bring a certain consciousness to a sonnet that makes it fresh, that same kind of consciousness that you can bring to a concrete or lyric poem. The poets in this anthology have much to teach not only in terms of form, or word precision, or line break, but also in “attention.” They allow—no, they urge students to be innovative in their thinking and conscious of all of their choices.
But I’m not conjuring up some obscure vision of Canada in my selection. This is contemporary Canadian poetry. This is what we do. The depth of thought, the range of forms, the intensity and singularity of poets like Christian Bök, Tim Lilburn, or Christopher Dewdney; the quiet linguistic turns in Daphne Marlatt and Nicole Brossard; the wild intellectual gymnastics of Erin Mouré. This is who we are and it’s amazing. All of these poets, and the many, many more that I wanted to include but couldn’t—poets that appear in Gary Geddes’s excellent anthology, and in Sharon Thesen’s Long Poem Anthology, and in Kate Braid and Sandy Shreve’s In Fine Form, in Shift & Switch, and I imagine, though I haven’t yet seen the book, even the grandiosely titled The New Canon, just out from Véhicule—all of these poets are worth celebrating. And these anthologies are fine indicators of how diverse and exciting Canadian poetry is. Well worth celebrating. The readings in Vancouver and here in New York were so highly charged, poets were walking out just shaking their heads in wonder. Pleasant wonder. This work excites people. It’s being used in classes and book clubs. That’s great news, not surprising to me, but great news.

SC: What inspires you? What triggers the desire/need/impetus to write poetry? Is poetry the only form of writing that you explor explore? Are you currently working on any non-poetry related projects?

SQ: Seeing people walk out of a reading filled with wonder, that inspires me. Seeing my students discover the joys of language, that inspires me. But so many things inspire me. I love to look and then I love to show people what I see. Seeing inspires me. I am incorrigible that way; always pointing, always, “Look, look, look!” As for form, or genres, I love all forms of writing and like to migrate between them as a writer as well as reader. Recently, I’ve been preoccupied with the essay. I heard Anne Carson read her 51-minute essay on sleep and was blown away.

SC: What do you think the issues are facing poets and poetry today?

SQ: Professionalization.

SC: How so?

SQ: This question could take up not only a panel at AWP or MLA, but the whole conference itself! Nevertheless, I suppose it’s a pleasant problem, because it’s a problem that comes from growth and success. MFA programs are popular, so there are more of them, which means more manuscripts, which means more publications, which means more presses . . . and, hopefully, more readers!
I say “hopefully” because recently I read that Poetry Magazine, for instance, gets something like 90,000 submissions a year, yet has 10,000 subscribers. And although I heard recently that this figure has leapt to 35,000, it’s still a daunting equation. As Marjorie Perloff says, poetry seems like a lot more fun to write than to read . . . That’s a problem. I can’t imagine many people taking seriously an artist ignorant of the contemporary art scene, or a lawyer who doesn’t know current law, or a doctor who wasn’t willing to keep up with the latest medical practice. Even basketball players know all the teams, the key players, their moves, statistics, history, even shoe size . . . Yet there seems to be a whole strand of poetry that suggests this very thing.
So my question is, how will we be as professionals? What kind of discussions do we want to foster? What are the implications of such a focus on “first book”? What happens to the long-term development and support of poets and poetry if everyone is so focused on “first book”? And if one has to “win” to be published, doesn’t that turn publishing into a kind of lottery? Prizes in recognition of one’s work are wonderful, but the proliferation of prizes makes a kind of mockery of this. And if one sees poetry as a kind of community-building, a kind of conversation, what does the introduction of a“prize for publication standard” do to those communities? Are we talking about ways to win prizes, or ways to be poets?
On the other hand, people say, “Well, if not the prize system, how else will we support publishers?” Surely poetry publishers need support for their efforts, and I agree with that. In Canada, we have the luxury of the Canada Council, but in the US, there is little support for publication, so how else can smaller presses operate? Difficult questions. I don’t profess to have the answers, but I think the questions are worth
asking and thinking about. This is what I mean. The problem of professionalization and all that it entails.