TtD supplement #283 : seven questions for Lisa Pasold

Lisa Pasold grew up in Tio'tia:ke/Montréal. She is a storyteller and poet. She has published 6 books, mostly of poetry; a chapbook, Kindnesses, is upcoming later this year with Cactus Press. Her work has appeared in magazines such as The Los Angeles Review, The Georgia Review, Fence and New American Writing. She takes pictures of flowers @lisapasold, and her favorite cocktail is the French75.

Her poems “Pretty pretty” and “Laboratory” appear in the forty-sixth issue of Touch the Donkey.

Q: Tell me about “Pretty pretty” and “Laboratory.”

A: These two come from my daily poem project. I’ve been writing a poem of some kind every day for twenty years. Not necessarily a good poem, but a poem. I write all the daily poems longhand, roughly, on bits of paper or in notebooks or in agendas, whatever’s to hand, and then I type them up. Inspired by Harry Mathews’ 20 Lines a Day (who was in turn inspired by Stendhal’s “Vingt lignes part jour, génie ou pas.”*) the dailies have provided most of the material for all my books. Occasionally a stand-alone appears, like "Pretty pretty". The poem came out just about exactly as you see it, during the Great Insomnia of Winter 2024 (where for various reasons I didn’t really sleep at all.) In February ‘24, in Montreal, I stumbled into the Café Olympico with its late night/early morning working types, freaky insomniacs, and cops, all of us jostling in from the cold alongside exhausted baby people with disgruntled infants and tangled dog leashes. We were all pretty—pretty much alive, pretty cold, pretty much occupied with all our individual momentary problems. "Laboratory" is also part of my daily poem project, but in this case, part of it comes from a coffeeshop in September 2023 in New Orleans, and part of it is a poem from a different day, listening to a friend riff on his day, last Spring in New Orleans, and the result is part of the current book-in-progress. Now you have ‘em. Thanks for asking!

* Mathews says he was inspired by a Stendhal quote “Vingt lignes par jour, génie ou pas” but that quote doesn’t seem to exist. Which is kind of tenuously perfect for daily inspiration, genius or not, existing or not. 

Q: How do these poems compare to some of the other work you’ve been doing lately?

A: All my work comes from the daily writing, one way or another. For each new project, specific language develops. On the simplest level, that’s repeating words, for instance, the word “Pretty”. Now, I’ve burned out “pretty”, having reveled in it for three years or so. Clearly, it’ll have to be on my “search and destroy” list for future manuscripts. My just-finished poetic narrative, The Good City, is currently out looking for a home, hat in hand—it’s about the so-called founder of New Orleans, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. Born in Montréal and tattooed from neck to knee with snakes, Bienville was a gambler, soldier, colonizer, and con man who spoke five languages. He’s—well, let’s just keep it simple: he isn’t pretty. But the word “pretty” comes up often in New Orleans parade culture; that’s where my interest in the word came from. Having closed my Bienville writings, now my current project is “Walking the Perimeter”—walking the perimeter of the Island of Montréal / Tio'tia:ke. I am gradually mapping this new project & its language isn’t clear to me as yet.

Q: I remember you mentioning The Good City when I saw you last. What is it about the story of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville that prompted you to write about him? And what made you choose to write him out via poetic narrative, as opposed to anything more straightforward, through prose? 

A: I’m still appalled that Bienville’s murderous brother, Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, has a flattering statue in pride of place in Ottawa. Whereas Bienville is the kid brother who wants to chat you up, see if he can win some money off you, cheat you out of some land—clearly, disturbingly, relevant to our current situation. Bienville is neither bras de fer nor homme de plume; he’s more like an iron stomach and a willing forked tongue, lying his way through five languages. The beauty of his speech is the only thing everyone agrees on. The biographies about Bienville tend to be colonial hagiographies, whereas I wanted to conjure his ghost and demand some answers.

Q: I’m curious: what prompted you to begin your process of daily writing, and the subsequent reworking of that writing into poems? I think of those long years of Elizabeth Smart composing journals, including the first drafts of what became By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945), for example.

A: Elizabeth Smart! How exciting to have her amazing work as a reference here. Personally, I started writing a poem every day while I was in Kenya, probably because I was overwhelmed with new information and I wanted to process the experiences in as many ways as possible—I was writing as a journalist, taking photographs, keeping notes, interviewing people, all in a professional way, and I wanted to think more laterally, creatively, alongside the daily work. By 2007, my process had become centered on writing the daily poems and then subsequently reworking them; it’s been an organic decision since then, in that I’ve just kept doing it.

Q: Have you any particular models for the kinds of work you’ve been attempting lately? Are there any particular poets or works at the back of your head as you write?

A: Four books are in my head right now: Roo Borson’s Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida, Max Porter’s Grief is the Thing with Feathers, Ariana Reines’ The Rose, and Diane Seuss’ Modern Poetry.  I want lyric poetry that isn’t confessionally accurate, the poem as confessional essay, and the poem as a daily moment; Frank O'Hara, obviously. But I'm not sure where I’m going with that. (Do I ever know where I'm going.)

Q: With six books and a chapbook under your belt, as well as your current works-in-progress, how do you feel your work has developed? Where do you see your work headed?

A: Oh, rob, I wish I had a clear answer for you. I go into all my projects with an obsession—usually historic. I start out with a clear sense of direction, but once I get going, the work develops below the surface and I am invariably surprised by where I end up. My work evolution is like, hmm, kelp, maybe? I know where the roots are anchored, but after that, not really sure how the stalks are going to grow. There’s a lot of interesting drift.

Q: Finally, who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?

A: My favourite question! Agha Shahid Ali’s Call Me Ishmael Tonight; Nicole Brossard’s Cahiers de roses et de civilisation; John Donne’s Collected; Daphne Marlatt’s Intertidal; Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. Outside of poetry, anything by Jan Morris—mostly her histories, but really she wrote with such interest in the world; she shores up my energy against the great “why bother”.