His poems “The Living Must Breathe, The Dead Move Along” and “Piskapamùkòt Brushes the Edges of Gibson Road” appear in the forty-fifth issue of Touch the Donkey.
Q: Tell me about “The Living Must Breathe, The Dead Move Along” and “Piskapamùkòt Brushes the Edges of Gibson Road.”
A: Both of these pieces come from the upcoming Leaf Counter collection due out later this year. A collection that I wrote during the Al & Eurithe Purdy A Frame residency I did a few years back. As a whole the collection explores Al’s work through the Ojibwe concept of Aginjibagwesi or the Leaf Counter. A concept that sees the spirit manifestation of the American Goldfinch as the shepherd and guardian over the Ojibwe language and words. The critical overall aspect of the collection was to place Indigenous peoples, our histories, and our cultures into play with one of Canada’s most renowned non-academy poets, Al Purdy, and illustrate how his acts as a writer form a sort of Ars Poetica for a decolonialized Canada.
The first of the two, “The Living Must Breathe, the Dead Move Along” was written at the Purdy’s dining room table, looking out the large picture window that frames Roblin Lake. The poem opens with talk about the Lenape Skeleton Dance ceremony, in which we carried our ancestors’ remains with us during our forced removals from Lenapehoking. We would bring the bones out to dance and join us each year. The concept of this ceremony while staying and working in a dead poet’s renowned home is the sort of juxtaposition of cultural experiences that the collection aims for. The piece is full of deceased and carried items, while beyond the window the natural world moves on. And we are graced with a visitor from the west, the Lenape direction the dead travel to and from, by the end of the poem. Which speaks to the place of dead among the living and the way that leftovers of life still cling on in spite of the passage of time. The robin being a representative of those dead moving along, and returning to us as they often have.
The second piece, “Piskapamùkòt Brushes the Edges of Gibson Road” explores writer’s block and locates the physical space of the blockage. Piskapamùkòt is a Unamu Lenape term that references the darkness, the atmospheric mood of darkness, as a strong storm approaches. Gibson Road is the dirt path that the Purdy a-frame sits on, a real old school cottage road. The deluge of a storm to feed a dry earth lies just opposite the road, and the writers block remains. While the rest of world seems to move on, the trap of being stuck between words remains for the speaker. The land around the cottage is silent, empty, and waits for the rain to return. We are left only with the dark atmosphere that lurks nearby, and the sound of squirrels that we cannot see or find.
Q: How do these poems compare to some of the other work you’ve been doing lately?
A: Poetry-wise these pieces are perhaps slightly different from my current work. Focusing the poetic eye onto classic Canadian poets does have some precedents in my work. I think about Devil in the Woods and how much that work addressed non-Indigenous Canada in a very Indigenous way. That book and work were products of their time, complete with the water tower with skoden sprayed on it. You could say that those are the roots of the current work, the work that is shown here. The collection that these pieces come from, Leaf Counter, works in much the same way as the previous book. These are poems that merge the Ojibwe idea of the Leaf Counter (Goldfinch) with Al Purdy’s poetry and the development of a non-academy pillar of Canadian poetry. The idea is to manufacture a dialogue between Indian Country and the rest of Canada, but this time the idea is to do so using Canada’s more recognizable poetic figures. This collection differs in that it maybe less for primarily Indigenous readers (such as Go Down Odawa Way & North of Middle Island) and more for a shared middle ground. The use of traditional language is a lot more muted in this collection. The focus again, is on the lyric and cultural middle grounds of say James Bond, pro-wrestling, and anime.
Commonwealth is the more lyric of my two books out this year. This new collection with Kegedonce is decolonial romp through the old Lenape territories occupied today by the American Midwest. Less a focus on the craft of writing, this book merges the Indigenous history of the lands it touches with the idea of the road poem. Which is definitely a big extension of my previous work. I would say that Commonwealth is the book that revisits material space through a fresh lens. The book is a follow-up to this City at the Crossroads, but looks at a lot of same spaces but with a more community-driven aspect. And perhaps that’s the interesting intersection point for Commonwealth and Leaf Counter. The idea that the poet isn’t there to claim a space or its stories. The idea is that one is passing through with these works. And in that passage there is the whole slew of glimmers of history, of beauty, of what could lie ahead, and of the mythologies we build.
I’ve been poking a lot at some very different work than this year’s poetry. I mean there are still other collections in various states of completion. But I’ve working on wrapping up a new short fiction manuscript of interconnected stories as well as an Indigenous SciFi novel. You could say that they are the sort of escapes one might find after putting out two poetry collections within a calendar year. Changes of ritual and scenery help the work overall.
Q: You suggest that a change of ritual and scenery helps change the work. I immediately think of routine when I hear the word ritual, but don’t want to presume this your meaning. How important is ritual and scenery for composing work, and what prompts these changes?
A: There is a difference between ritual and routine. A routine is more nerve-twitch level, albeit an often programmed one. The time you get up, when you eat, where and when you go shopping. While ritual also does those sorts of things, it does so on a more focused, intentional level. Athletes do this often. And there is a way in which clapping the powder, tapping the goal posts, or throwing up a full-gestured prayer is a focusing factor, to practitioners of either craft. So, there is a way that one has both routine and ritual: Ritual as a way of cleansing the routine. Routine as the way of cleansing the ritual.
In that ritual helps the focus, the scenery is absolutely the end goal of that focus. And there is internal and external scenery at work. Often as I writer, I am immersed in this internal scenery. Scenery that, for lack of better wording or deeper-level philosophies, one recreates from experience and from interactions with other medium of arts. Media which most definitely includes reading. And for poets, I would argue there is a sonic scenery that needs attention. We must grow and carry with us a very necessary understanding of the sounds of the world around us. For me that means a fair amount of jazz, soul, and hip-hop. And the change between these sceneries is akin to an observed emotional or seasonal pattern. If ritual allows us to focus on the physical aspects of our surroundings, then it also helps us to follow these changes. Work for me has the necessity of following change. Because change is inherent in existence and poetry and writing are reflections of our existence, the ritual and “scenery” are fundamental to my work as words themselves.
Q: With a handful of published books under your belt, both poetry and fiction, how do you feel your work has developed? Where do you see your work headed?
A: There is most definitely a shift underway in my work. I think we are always changing and this is good thing. I’d say that I would tie it to what I’ve been reading, or rereading, and enjoying. This means a lot of Ginsberg and Harrison and Carruth. So, the poetic work is definitely shifting towards lyricism, maybe leaving behind the stronger narrative sense of my earlier work. Or I would like to think so. And this might account for the fiction and prose work that has been going on behind all the poetry stuff. The prose stuff takes longer for me. And I’m finding that it’s been where all the narrative stuff has been heading. And that has kind of left me in this space of composing poems that are more concerned with say sound, rhythm, and other performative aspects. I’m not sure where that’s heading specifically at the moment for the poetic work. The whole thing is more voyage than destination in its nature.
And then I’ve got this whole mythology/epistemology and language decolonization process going on. My immediate urban Indigenous community has pulled me very strongly towards the storytelling and narrative aspect of my work in recent years. Often through talks or the likes and I find that this knowledge sharing is drawing more and more towards those prose forms. In the short term this means a novel or two are nearing completion and an essay collection. You could say where and when those pieces land might determine that future work for me. Not to say that I’m giving up on poetry. Far from it. But there is this whole other fork of the river opening up and I’m far from hesitant to follow it.
Q: What prompted, do you think, this shift towards lyricism? You mention “Ginsberg and Harrison and Carruth,” but which came first, the reading and rereading of these particular authors, or the shift in your work?
A: Like a lot of things that shift was a fairly gradual affair. And it generally starts only partially with the reading or rereading of the aforementioned poets and ends up residing more within the quiet, contemplative time in between words and action. Because so much of my work over the last, say ten or so months, has been geared towards revisions and editing. And those rereading of those writers was fitted in with that work. And in the end, I had time to seep in and give me space to ruminate on what they were doing and how they were doing it. The lyric sense of their work hit me, I suppose you would say, in the same way that relistening to say, Lee Fields and the Expressions, in that deep focused way that comes with an editorial mind. Lingering with the way he belts out a standard, leaves a personal mark on the work. The looking and finding that sort of beauty in any work is something that makes you want to follow a path towards that end. Or at least it does me for as an artist, as writer. My writing, no doubt, shifted as my poetic ear and mind was drawn elsewhere. Influence and effect, I guess.
Q: I’ve never actually done a residency such as the Al Purdy A-frame. What did being in such a residence provide, and what do you think it offered to your work? Were you able to be productive in isolation?
A: Without a doubt that residency played into a key aspect of my writing and research: experiential and tactile interaction with a specific physical space. For me, understanding Al’s workspace and physical environment afforded me a view of his origins, the physical spaces of many of his works, and the lyric roots of what most likely guided him. All important historical and personal stuff for someone else working in the field. What are without comparisons in the literary world? Purdy’s life and personal effects add an important narrative has to how one actually lives as a writer in this world. And then there is the whole adage about walking in the shoes of an individual to understand them. For me, a large part of that is holding the same land. And the land itself becomes a bridge between our worlds and our experiences.
What the stay at the A-Frame offered me and my work was the ability to shift from the familiar of my vantage point and begin unpacking a literary life that was not exactly known to me. Perhaps, that vantage point offered a connection point across a cultural divide that began with Devil in the Woods. That divide that has existed for generations between Indian Country and the Non-Native World. The connection point is a way to mend my relations with Canada’s literary canon and see what has become more and more obscured over the years as the unrest continues over reconciliation’s abject failures. Building those mental bridges between our often different worlds. And I found that connection. Having to admit that some of the work done at the residency was very rough isn’t something I do lightly. That’s changed, lots of revisions and revisitations and all the good poet stuff over the years cleaned that part up. I would say that was productive. Most every artist and writer needs an inflection point in the lives and work. One that challenges them and their notions of their work. The residency did that for me. And maybe that was also a key shifting point in terms of lyric style and affinity. Time will tell that all the better. But the spirit of the place, Al’s ghost if you will, is something that I will carry forward. And for that reason alone, I would say the residency has been a critical part of the arc of my literary life.
Q: Finally, who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?
A: Recently, it’s been a surprising amount of Wallace Stevens. Particular pieces, not a whole collection or anything. And it’s surprising in the sense that Stevens was that undergraduate canonical poet that I hadn’t thought about for years. Maybe he’s always been lurking back there. With poems in both Leaf Counter and North of Middle Island in the tradition of his work is definitely worth noting. But in the last year or so, his work has been back in force. Hayden Carruth played a lot in the background of Commonwealth. And that’s perhaps rather specific. We all have an ongoing poetic cannon, I suppose. And those two might not be the centre, but they are in the mix. And at the core regions of that cannon. Definitely Jim Harrison and Richard Hugo. Ginsberg is also a no doubter. Harrison’s The Theory and Practice of Rivers and Dick Hugo’s The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir might be the most important poetry collections to me in general. And if we are talking just straight collections then James Welch’s Riding the Earthboy 40 and John Stifler’s Grey Islands are in there. All of them as whole I reread over the course of any given year. I basically read them like coming back to albums. And what draws me to them is probably something about the role of ecologies and the psyche in the books. Something about learning the craft for the first time in Montana, the deep wilds of the world, most likely accounts for this. And because of that, perhaps so much of it is calling back a voice from an often wonderous, often callous natural world that dwarves a person in just about every way.
