TtD supplement #281 : six questions for Larkin Maureen Higgins

Larkin Maureen Higgins is a poet/artist/professor emerita whose poetic and hybrid works can be found in Diagram, Notre Dame Review, Eleven Eleven, Chant de la Sirène Journal, Otoliths, elsewhere. Mindmade Books published her Of Traverse and Template (poems and logographic drawings). With Dusie, she has two poetry chapbooks: Of Materials, Implements and c o m b - i n g  m i n e - i n g s , plus the broadside “Soil Culture, Frankenstein—Grafted.” Additionally, her poems have been anthologized by University of Iowa Press, Tebot Bach, others. Higgins’ visual poetry is included in the Avant Writing Collection/The Ohio State University Libraries and was exhibited at Counterpath Gallery (Denver), Otis College of Art & Design, and more. Over the years, she has exhibited her artist’s books/objects while also creating text-driven performance art for venues such as Highways Performance Space, Counterpath, and BC Space.

Her poems “Open Equation” and “something approximately akin to gliding through” appear in the forty-fifth issue of Touch the Donkey.

Q: Tell me about the poems “Open Equation” and “something approximately akin to gliding through.”

A: “Open Equation” is in response to the question posed to a group of Los Angeles-based writers, “What do you say?” With some additional prompts such as “How do you begin in dedication to another?”—I understood it to be a community call for text pieces in which language could be an offering of “encouragement, inspiration, or new beginnings” following our long years of pandemic isolation & continued challenges. I found myself desiring to create a portal of uplift. And, even though my writing was created in solitude, it felt like I was part of a community unified by this global dilemma—needing to soothe our anxieties, at least for a moment, enough to move on to the next task.

The poem’s shape is the trail of a sidewalk path. I inserted some mathematics terminology, which comes naturally since I was a math major in high school. I find the language of geometry to be diagrammatic in my mind, helping me envision imagery and also to embed a kind of visual grounding logic that assists observation &/or metaphor.

In contrast, “something approximately akin to gliding through” is a poem I have been tinkering with for quite some time. It melds my actual childhood ocean experiences with my underwater dreams. The form differs from “Open Equation” by floating across the page, dipping & swaying. Seaweed anatomy terms (stipe, blades, thallus, holdfast) are woven throughout with an idea that these may have additional resonance. This poem was a way of re-living my memories of being in the ocean, with the visceral qualities of a “body” of seaweed interlacing with the human body. I have had dreams—since childhood—taking place underwater, breathing freely.

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

A: For comparison, process-wise: I had never written an entire text poem while walking a neighborhood street; intuitively prompted to take my cell phone from my pocket, pausing my feet periodically to type a line into “Notes,” until the end of my walk marked the poem’s last line—this is how “Open Equation” happened. It was composed within the framework & spirit of spontaneity, from the initial question—thanks to Andrea Quaid & Harold Abramowitz for the prompt.

And with “something approximately akin to gliding through,” I made a list of seaweed anatomy terms, then selected some to swirl a poem around the experience of being among, in the ocean. The poem is all lower case with scant punctuation, just a couple hyphenated words, slashes, apostrophes. 

Usually, by contrast, I’m sitting down, cocooning inside a room, writing phrases in longhand my mind evokes or borrowing segments from previously handwritten notes, & combining these onto gridded notebook pages. Then type, adding/rearranging/deleting whole lines &/or words, & consulting the dictionary. Often experimenting with punctuation marks & typographical symbols—placing/crafting these as architectural linkage for the poem as support for its content/meaning—choosing to only use marks/symbols found typically on a typewriter keyboard (not fancy apps). This is one of the ways I’ve been working lately on poems, especially for tributes to people who “make” things, labor skillfully. Also, & separately, I’ve been drawn to smaller forms, like haiku & hay(na)ku. Having a smaller container to fill with words is a welcomed detour—these tend to be eco-poetic in leanings.

However, the word “lately” feels abstract to me because I’m often returning to ways of working I used years or decades ago (consciously or not) with maybe an added element or updated physical or techie tools. Or perhaps a reconsideration of a poem I wrote 25 years ago or more & finally decide it has some merit to maybe send out—which actually occurred last week!

Additionally, I have intermittent text art & visual poetry projects. Yet I was creating pieces that would fit in these categories when I was in elementary & middle school, doing things like carving linoleum blocks with my own stylized lettering which of course I would have to carve in reverse so when I rolled ink over the block with a brayer & placed a sheet of paper on top, then used the smooth curved part of a metal spoon to rub&press it—finally, carefully pulled the print, & yay, the text was right-reading. I learned about the malleability of language with these kinds of visceral, physical processes at a young age. My father was a printmaker (etchings/serigraphs/monotypes) & painter for his personal creative work & a graphic designer for “a living” income. My mother was a watercolorist & creative in many ways. They were both voracious readers (& so was I, beginning in elementary school), books everywhere. I wish I could’ve taken the Print Shop class (printing press) in middle school—I would have loved that. Yet in my day, girls were not allowed to—nor take Wood Shop, only the boys. However, gladly, my first published poem was included in the literary/art magazine at middle school. In high school I was asked to design the cover for our class commencement ceremony program. With a rapidograph pen, I hand drew (no stencils/templates) my own original alphabet font, then spelled our class name “I Vincitori” + drew a stylized torch symbol, also with pen. I watched the pressman print the covers with the high school’s printing press, while I stood “safely afar” as dictated. During that same time period, what truly thrilled me was I earned an A+ on a poem in my Composition class! (We were studying e e cummings & Ferlinghetti.) Therefore, this working back & forth & sometimes simultaneously with both written words & the visual elements of type & layout-on-the-page is inherent to my creative experience since childhood. Hence why I find it difficult to think of my work fitting into a clear linear timeline when my ways of working overlap through the decades.

What I learned early on is—there are endless ways to “make” a word, phrase, or sentence. This I find exciting! My continued attention & sensitivity to the layout/form/shape of a poem is ingrained due to my formative years (before grad schools) using a plethora of "typesetting" or letter&symbol “making” processes, handmade to mechanical, such as:

type-high linoleum block for linocut word printing
metal type (using composing stick) & wood type for letterpress
Letraset press-on letters (dry transfer)
Linotype machine (hot metal typecasting typesetting)
platen printing press
Compugraphic phototypesetting machine
layout/paste-up of pre-press book pages the old fashioned way, with X-acto knife & rubber cement or wax
Leroy Lettering 
mechanical inking (by hand) with electrical engineer's symbols template, etc.

The body & mind memories of these “making language” processes, most considered archaic now, are still embedded into my consciousness—still influencing me.

I tend to approach each poem as an individual entity for exploration.
Unless I’ve been given an “assignment” with a deadline to create a particular project, like a chapbook, I tend to jump from writing poem to poem. Assuming, eventually, a natural thread occurs.

Q: I find it curious the process you describe, one of assembling scraps and carving lines. How do you feel this process has evolved for you over the years? Do your materials hold together in the same way, or has something evolved in the ways in which you compose work?

A: Over the years, I’ve been lucky to be invited to create several chapbook manuscripts that gave me full independence. When a project begins with a vote of confidence by a publisher, this spurs me on to experiment. With all of my chapbooks, I began to include some source text material, which I had not done before. For example, Of Traverse and Template (Mindmade Books) contains poems related to motion, movement, & buoyancy, therefore I interjected some language from Galileo Galilei’s Discourse on Floating Bodies (1612) & other appropriate source texts involving road-making & also the book, The Young Surveyor. Extensive commuting to my college teaching job being the catalyst—over hills, highways, coastline. Intertwined with the text poems are my logographic drawings (created with a symbolic language used by traffic accident investigators) as well as visually structural uses of punctuation, as connectivity. One might say it’s setting up a dialectic between verbal/text poems and visual poems, “colliding” on a graphic and conceptual level.

As I think I alluded to previously, I tend to approach each project “anew” yet I know I have more of a “collage” brain, with the tendency to piece things together—even if my single poem or poetry project is entirely written text, which is often the case. It is the “anew” part that seems to bring in “new” components, experiments, curiosities, sources. Keeping the writing/making poetry process alive.

I still seem to focus on the construction aspects of a poem, especially how its form/shape infuses meaning & supports the text. At this moment in time, I'm being drawn to the sound or music of the poem—how it can carry you inside the words, reverberate.

Sometimes I think of a poem as sculpture, with a voice; sometimes as collage; & sometimes as lines of text with breath.

Q: Perhaps you’ve touched on bits of this already, but with a handful of chapbooks under your belt over the years, how do you feel your work has progressed? What do you see your work heading towards?

A: Of course there are endless possibilities when one approaches writing & gathering poems for a book (of any size). I’m just glad I managed to figure out what to include & when to say “finished” for those projects. For me, that is a huge accomplishment! And progress. One can keep writing singular poems forever, & that’s okay too. There is a kind of freedom in not having a specific “container” in mind while composing a poem. And other times, I find having a thematic thread becomes a catalyst for discoveries. As to where my work is headed, I hope to be surprised. I want to keep exploring the malleability of language, how meaning is made. And, hmmm, it is definitely time for me to assemble another manuscript.

Q: After a period of writing, is building manuscripts simply a matter of assembling? Has that process evolved at all over the years? What might that process look like?

A: This is such a great question because, truly, there is so much thought that goes into a manuscript. Since I’ve been a hands-on maker of books, I like to see each poem printed out on a paper page, then shuffle these around to spot possible new juxtapositions I hadn’t thought of related to sequencing. With the chapbooks, each page size being 8-1/2” x 5.5” (half letter size) made it easy for me to tape all the pages to the bathroom wall from near the ceiling to the floor! (My only blank wall space at the time :-) This way I could physically move around the ordering & get a clear overall view of how the pages worked, holistically. I could walk past this wall installation daily, noting a possible need for linkage or contrast (or edit), being sensitive to rhythms, varying poem placements on the page, their shapes self-contained or merging/extending, & how did this affect the content of the read? Numerous elements to consider yet usually this becomes an organic or intuitive reckoning, eventually, because of being able to see it in total in actual size all at once. Obviously, I know there is computer software that can simulate this way of assembling a book, but not to true size, unless one has a huge film screening room hooked up to a computer ;-) Yet I’m now positive that my hesitation for creating a larger manuscript between 60-125 pages has been because it would prevent me from using my “natural” way-of-working process. However, I’m ready now for the challenge to try an alternative method. 

Since a larger manuscript would include poems written during a longer time period, it might be a chance to revisit work from possibly the 1990s through 2025. Maybe. Time will tell. I’m still thinking a stack of poems will be shuffled, for sure, to see what unexpected linkages may arise or what poems float to the top & stay for consideration. I’ve worked within an eclectic assortment of forms, from prose poems to the more abstract. With poems published by presses that don’t exist anymore. I’m getting excited about delving into what combinations could possibly serve each other in intriguing ways.

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

A: There is such an extraordinary pool of poets I can dip into for nourishment & the gift of permission, to continue writing inspired by innovative thinking & experimental techniques. When I read Alice Notley’s “White Phosphorus” the first time, it was exactly the necessary example I needed to see/read—as fragments/phrases becoming an accretion of language, gathering layers of meaning. Since I am not a linear thinker, yet someone who jots down pieces of text to later thread together, Notley’s individually quotation-marked word-fragments spoke to me. I felt welcomed to accept my inherent way of working, & that building a poem out of multiple text fragments was intrinsic, useful, & could be dynamically effective. Alice Notley was extraordinary at this, & much more. I was also lucky to take a poetry workshop from her circa 2001 at Beyond Baroque in Venice/Los Angeles, which I am especially grateful for. Notley was/is a brilliant spirit. 

Coincidentally, I was fortunate to have a funded sabbatical project (2014) which enabled me to fly to & stay in New York for several weeks of special events, one of them being a reading by both Alice Notley & Rosmarie Waldrop at Poets House!

Which brings me to Rosmarie Waldrop’s Driven to Abstraction—a book I am thrilled to re-visit.  When I was a younger person writing poetry, I was told that mathematics & philosophy didn’t belong in poems. Yet these subjects interested me, so I continued to include references to geometry & various philosophical-leaning terms. When I came across Driven to Abstraction, her poetry was incredibly nourishing to me—I continue to be enamoured with Rosmarie Waldrop's use of language, her intellectually curious prose poems investigating abstraction historically, psychologically, mathematically, philosophically, seems everything—as an exceptional creative force of the mind, rhythm & sound. And her other books, too—endlessly engaging.

I add to this list Gertrude Stein, her many books, especially Tender Buttons, continue to rejuvenate. The linguistic play, “verbal cubism,” sounds & visual arrangement of words. Knowing the writer is not required to have a traditional narrative to capture the interest of a reader—in actuality, I learned from her—that inventive experimentation draws attention to language.

In addition, Harryette Mullen’s Sleeping with the Dictionary always brings me a smile. Firstly, its title, because personally I literally would fall asleep with The Random House Dictionary of the English Language: The Unabridged Edition, in my bed—a massively large, thick hardbound book (gifted by my parents). Turning my body around during sleep would cause a hip or arm to hit the book corners & leave a bruise. That’s when you know you are committed to your dictionary! In Mullen’s Sleeping with the Dictionary, I get revitalized by her elastic, inventive use of language, her humor & social commentary within serious word play. Her prose poems adventurously crafted with the use of word games: acrostic, anagram, homophone, Oulipo N+7, parody, pun. And the table of contents reads as an abecedarian. A never-ending joy to read & re-read.

This poet/writer book list is definitely not comprehensive, there could be an entire volume of names & book titles I re-visit for their energizing merits, yet I’m adding a few more names without accompanying explanations to keep this answer from being unmanageable—they are (in a random list):
Emily Dickinson, Lisa Robertson, Will Alexander, Lyn Hejinian, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Coral Bracho, Cecilia Vicuña, Myung Mi Kim, Anne Carson, & many more.

I must add, in this quest to wrestle with language, braid it into something creatively meaningful, layered, it has been invigorating having community to do this within. I’m enormously thankful for the numerous workshops & classes over the decades & into the present—the facilitators, teachers, participants, editors, publishers, & poet friends—who have propelled my writing. And for poetry readings, to hear the language!

TtD supplement #280 : seven questions for D. A. Lockhart

D.A. Lockhart is the author of multiple collections of poetry and short fiction. His work has been shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award, Indiana Author’s Awards, First Nations Communities READ Award, and has been a finalist for the Trillium Book and ReLit Awards. His work has appeared widely throughout Turtle Island including, The Malahat Review, Grain, CV2, TriQuarterly, The Fiddlehead, ARC Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, Best New Poetry from the Midwest, and Belt. Along the way his work has garnered numerous Pushcart Prize nominations, National Magazine Award nominations, and Best of the Net nominations. He is pùkuwànkoamimëns of the Moravian of the Thames First Nation. Lockhart currently resides at Waawiiyaatanong where he is the publisher at Urban Farmhouse Press.

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.  

TtD supplement #279 : seven questions for Dag T. Straumsvåg

Dag T. Straumsvåg lives in Trondheim, Norway, and is the author and translator of ten books of poetry, including Nelson (Proper Tales Press, 2017), But in the Stillness (Apt. 9 Press, 2024), and The Mountains of Kong: New & Selected Prose Poems (Assembly Press, 2025), as well as a collaboration with Kingston poet Jason Heroux, A Further Introduction to Bingo (above/ground press, 2024). He runs the small press A + D with his partner, the artist and graphic designer Angella Kassube. His work has appeared in a wide variety of journals in Norway, Canada, and the United States.

His poems “MORNING PHASE,” “ARE YOU STILL AWAKE?,” “SCREEN LIGHT,” “DRIVING AROUND TOWN AT NIGHT TO CHARGE YOUR PHONE,” “LAIDLAW TRIPTYCH: HALF A CENTO,” “BREAKFAST AT CIRCLE K” and “CATHEDRAL” appear in the forty-fifth issue of Touch the Donkey.

Q: Tell me about the poems “MORNING PHASE,” “ARE YOU STILL AWAKE?,” “SCREEN LIGHT,” “DRIVING AROUND TOWN AT NIGHT TO CHARGE YOUR PHONE,” “LAIDLAW TRIPTYCH: HALF A CENTO,” “BREAKFAST AT CIRCLE K” and “CATHEDRAL.”

A: The poems were written individually over several years, but I think they are connected in that they all deal with communication on some level. There are a few love poems which I’m very happy to have written, and a series of prose poems I call “haiku strings.” Since I fell in love with the prose poem thirty years ago, I've thought about the visual side of it, the short paragraph, the box shape and what you can do within it. I started writing traditional haiku, stringing them together, dropping all punctuation, adding extra space between each line instead, and beginning each haiku with a capital letter. There was something there, but it didn't quite work. I tried writing experimental haiku, poems with no connection, but I wasn’t happy with that either. Then I wrote a few straight prose lines, mixing them with an occasional traditional haiku, following the classic 5-7-5 syllable pattern. To my surprise, I liked it. It forces me to read the poems at a different pace, haikus bleeding into each other, words awkwardly beginning with a capital letter appearing in the middle of a prose sentence, or lines are broken up by unnatural space, all within the  prose poem box. And I like the cracks and gaps that appear visually in the poems, randomly, depending on the font and the font size, the margins, adding breaks and pauses I had not intended and which I have no control over, sometimes opening up to new readings of lines years after I wrote them. Many of the poems came about when Angella and I were talking on Skype—the time difference between Minneapolis and Trondheim (seven hours) would cause some unexpected and fun situations. I’m sure the haiku strings are not to everybody’s taste, but I enjoy writing them very much.

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

A: The haiku string format aside, I think some of these poems contain more autobiographical elements, more narrative fragments, while others may be a little darker. Not consciously, but because you want to address whatever comes your way, you want to find a fitting language, and if possible, a fresh language. Fresh to yourself, at least. Also, I think the inspiration from the classic Chinese and Japanese poets is more visible. Maybe the biggest difference comes from the inspiration I get from Angella. She is a graphic designer and artist, and I find her approach to poems and to reading poems utterly fresh and new. She is the best reader I 've ever met.

I have a new book coming out this spring, The Mountains of Kong: New & Selected Prose Poems (Assembly Press, April 1, 2025), which includes prose poems from the last twenty-five years. As I was finishing it, and as I had just finished a collaboration with Jason Heroux, called A Further Introduction to Bingo (above/ground press, December 2024), it felt like a good time to try my hand at different stuff too. The New & Selected is the result of an almost twenty-five year long collaboration with the brilliant translator Robert Hedin (he is a brilliant poet and editor, too), and the bingo book is the result of a collaboration with the equally brilliant poet/writer Jason Heroux. I have learned a lot from both of them, from their writing and from our email discussions, from our friendships. Some of their stuff has clearly gotten into my poems, and it has made them better. I have been lucky to get to know several great poets, and lucky to call them my friends. The late greats Nelson Ball, Michael Dennis, Louis Jenkins, Clemens Starck, and among the living: Charles Goodrich, Per Helge, Tom Hennen, John Levy, Stuart Ross, Hugh Thomas, Connie Wanek, and Robert and Jason, of course, to mention a few. They all got into my heart and into my writing. But back to your question: I don't think the poems included in Touch the Donkey are very different from other things I have written, but it’s difficult for me to be sure. I guess such things are easier for others to see.

Q: What prompted your collaborative work with Jason Heroux? You say it is difficult to see what might be different, but was there a difference in how you approached your own work due to the collaboration?

A: The collaboration with Jason just sort of happened. We were emailing each other and at some point, Jason said, “Hey, that’s a chapter in a micro novel about bingo!” In the past I had always said no to collaborations—I thought I couldn't do it. A bit like some musicians can’t do improv sessions. The fact that we were writing about the bingo hall I had shared a backyard with for decades, made it easier. If I got stuck I could just look out the window and describe what I saw, and I had at least something. Plus, I loved what Jason was writing so much that I just got caught up in it all, and before we knew it we had both written ten-fifteen texts.

I haven’t consciously changed my way of writing or how I approach a new text, but as a result of the collaboration with Jason, and how fun that was, I believe I approach a new text more relaxed now, with less thought. I trust the process of writing more, trust that the new text will need less guidance and managing from its writer.

Q: How difficult do you find the process of working within, or even between, two languages? Does your writing shift depending on the language you are using? Are there places your writing goes in one that it is unable to go in the other?

A: It's challenging in the sense that I think and dream and feel in Norwegian, and my Norwegian vocabulary is much better than my English. On the other hand, I learned English from listening to folk and rock music, from TV and movies, from reading poetry. So the English is deeply connected with the singers and poets and movies that took me to my “dream places” which I would escape to when I was a kid. Still do, I suppose. So it’s more an advantage, really, writing in two languages. On a good day I can take the best from both.

My Nynorsk writing is different from my English writing. No doubt. Most of the prose poems in The Mountains of Kong I wrote in Nynorsk, and most of the poems in Nelson, But in the Stillness and in A further Introduction to Bingo (with Jason Heroux), I wrote in English. The haiku strings in the new issue of Touch the Donkey were easier to write in English, because English has more one and two syllable words than the Norwegian languages, making the 5-7-5 syllable pattern easier to achieve. But I’ve had great help with my English versions from Angella, Robert Hedin, Stuart Ross, Jason Heroux, and the late great Louis Jenkins.

I think my Nynorsk is more multi-layered and nuanced than my English, but thanks to the great help from the ones mentioned above, the difference is less visible than it would have been if it was just me all the time. Actually, my English without their help, would be rubbish. Mostly, it's great fun and a great privilege to be able to work in two languages. I’ve learned a lot from working on translating my prose poems with Robert Hedin. He is brilliant with nuance, rhythm, and sound—just read his stellar translations of Olav H. Hauge and Harry Martinson. And translating Michael Dennis (Spøkjelse i japanske drosjar/Ghosts in Japanese Taxis) and Tom Hennen (Finn eit stille regn/Find a Quiet Rain) from English and publishing them in bilingual editions on A + D, the micro press Angella and I run, has been a joy and very helpful to get a deeper understanding of the English language.

If I write about something that is emotionally difficult, the Nynorsk provides the nuances and accuracy and history I need to go deep, the English, on the other hand, provides the distance that makes me able to write about such things in the first place. So my poems are often a huge mess during the writing process—a mix of Nynorsk and English lines scattered all over the page (and the house). Then, at some point, it either clears up and becomes a poem in one of the languages, or I give up and go to a nearby park at midnight and bury every sentence under a big oak tree there.

Q: With ten books and chapbooks under your belt, how do you feel your work has developed? Where do you see your work headed?

A: I think my work has developed fairly well in the sense that I haven’t willed it in any particular direction. I try not to interfere with the texts and surprisingly often they find their own way and form. As I grow older I get slower and less ambitious, though. In the past I wanted to sail around the world, climb the highest mountains. Now I am happy if I have a good night‘s sleep or make a good cup of coffee in the morning. But I hope to write a science based prose poem about coffee mugs one day.

I’ve learned to trust what I write about more than I used to do, that everything has its own value and mystery. It doesn't have to be about the big questions, the big dramas. It used to be the hardest thing, trusting that what I had was enough. That I didn’t have to paint the old chair in bright colors, or to make the new chair look old. They have their own stories and mysteries. If I pay close attention, it's all there: tragedy, comedy, strangeness, wildness, beauty. And more. If I have one ambition left, it must be that I want to show how beautifully strange things are in themselves instead of making anything up. To get better at observing and describing.

The second question is difficult to answer. Or rather, it’s a question I don’t want to know the answer to! It would be nice if my work is headed somewhere that will surprise me. That's the most difficult thing in a writer's life. To surprise yourself.

Q: I’ve long felt that writing can best be considered a collaboration between the writer and the work itself, two sides finding that perfect balance towards something new. How do you see the process?

A: That's interesting! I don’t know if this answers your question, but sometimes, when I get into a conversation with the work, or characters in the work, I’m having the best time. There may be a back-and-forth conversation going on for hours, days or weeks—in the case of “Cathedral” it went on for years—I started so many different versions of it, and the text said, “Nope. That’s not right.” And I put the poem away. For months and years. But it would always return to me. Then I tried making it into one of those haiku strings, and it finally felt right.

Sometimes I freeze an image or a scene and just walk around it, looking for the best angle. Most of the time the collaboration/conversation with the text is unconscious, though, which I think is vital. Not overthink or plan too much. I love it when the text “comes alive” during the writing, becomes an active part of the writing of itself. Of course, the next morning I may realize that the text is crap, but the process was still great fun.

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

A: I always go back to the poems of Stephen Crane, Olav H. Hauge, Jean Follain, Tomas Tranströmer, Bashō, Issa, Santōka, Tom Hennen, Russell Edson, Daniil Kharms, Harry Martinson, Louis Jenkins. I love Quarrels by Eve Joseph, Shadow of a Cloud but No Cloud by Killarney Clary. I always go back to Joseph Cornell’s shadow boxes, the films by Aki Kaurismäki and Roy Andersson. And my poet friends mentioned earlier in the interview—we got to know each other and became friends much because of the brilliance of their work. It is a huge privilege to become friends with your favorite poets. I will always return to their work, too.

TtD supplement #278 : seven questions for brandy ryan

brandy ryan is a queer poet who likes to slip between genre and form. she has published four chapbooks – full slip (Baseline Press, 2013), once/was (Empty Sink Publishing, 2014), After Pulse (with Kerry Manders, kfb, 2019), in the third person reluctant (Gap Riot Press, 2024). other pieces appear in lockbox, long con magazine, CV2, Windsor Review, and MediaTropes, among others. brandy has become obsessed with collage over the last few years, leaving tiny bits of paper and sticky surfaces in her wake. two collage series appear in Contemporary Collage Magazine 31 and Beautiful Trash Vol. 3. in August 2024, her “strange creatures” collages were part of a group show alongside Gap Riot’s Kate Siklosi and poets Brian Dedora and Kate Sutherland.

An excerpt from her “other ways to hide” appears in the forty-fifth issue of Touch the Donkey.

Q: Tell me about the work-in-progress “other ways to hide.”

A: “other ways to hide” is a long poem in fragments. i’ve called it a “queer-coming-of-femme,” but it’s also a series of goings-back, an excavation of memory. some of its fragments step into the past – what we never, as Bronwen Wallace would say, “get over” but learn to carry as gently as possible. anger and sadness, mixed in the same soil. other fragments poke around in pockets, those spaces between: queer and straight, bi and lesbian, who i am in the world and how i perform those selves.

the current MS also includes some collage work as another medium in which to show and hide simultaneously, taking up the poem’s threads and weaving them anew.

Q: How does this work compare to some of the other work you’ve been doing lately?

A: hmmm. i want to say that the work i’ve been doing lately is a step away from language and into the visual, which is true ... and – it feels like a different kind of language to me. images instead of words; scissors (or knives) and glue instead of screen and keyboard/pen and page. the concept of “paper” remains the same in both the MS and my most recent work. trying to express something, trying to create shapes that others might recognize. some delightful, others (hopefully) discomfiting. but work that matters, in some way.

Q: What has prompted this shift, as you say, away from language and into the visual?

A: two things. first – i had a crisis of faith early in 2020. i was leaving a full-time agency job that i had taken with the (mistaken) idea that it would support writing poetry. the money was decent, but i was so wrung out from that kind of work that i had nothing left for my creative life. i hadn’t published anything since After Pulse in 2019, and i was getting rejection after rejection after rejection. i know it’s part of this life ... and i’m still trying to learn how to navigate it. i reached out to some of my creative kin and asked for their help. what do they do when they lose confidence in their work? the answers were beautiful and supportive and inspiring. and they led me to this.

second – i needed to get off screens. with the pandemic and my paying job, i am sitting, onscreen, most of my working days. i wanted something handsy, something tangible, to take up. and something beside language, maybe just outside it. that led me to erasure poetry, to which i began to add some collage (what i call “erasage”), after which i set language aside for a bit and have spent time mostly in the visual world. (the launch video for my chapbook explains a lot of this in a show-and-tell, with the bonus of some cute cat pics https://www.gapriotpress.com/season-ten-launch-party). i fell pretty hard. i don't think anything i've made has given me such uncomplicated joy as making collage has.

Q: I’m curious to know if you’ve seen a difference in the work since this push to return. Does it feel different? Do you?

A: that’s such a great question. yes, absolutely. when i first started to write poetry, i was really interested in the play of language, in exploring the page, in pushing words and meanings as far as they seemed to go. that was me coming out of academia, in love with the OED, shedding my 19th century poetry skin, and encountering this wild, fantastic world of experimental poetry. but i had to put it aside in order to afford to live in this city. when i came back ... my sense of language had changed. the communications world i work in doesn't really go for word play and experimentation. things need to be concise, clear, accessible. my poems have necessarily shifted that way also. since i’ve been so deep in the visual work, i’ve had some close friends ask if i’m coming back to poetry. always and of course, because language is my first love. maybe the visual is my way to play and experiment again, while letting the way i am in language be what it is now, rather than mourning what it used to be.

Q: Do you have any models for the kinds of work you’ve been attempting, whether text or visual (or both)?

A: my poetic model, the one i always aim for and fail to achieve, is Nathanaël. i fell so hard for their poetry that i kept a collection, Touch to Affliction, out of the library for a year (accruing U of T library fines the whole time). i didn’t want to let the book out of my reach – but their poetry absolutely is. that's what i’m trying to fail at.

also: Margaret Christakos, who is always exploring different ways to be in/around language. Sachiko Murakami, who writes so beautifully and hauntingly about raw things. Annick MacAskill, who pushes language to its undoing and back again. for poetry that invites me in and keeps me there, poets like Tom Cull, River Halen, Jim Johnstone, Julie Joosten. and when i think of memory, both cultural and individual, and the work poets do archaeologically – Billy Ray Belcourt. Saeed Jones. Liz Howard. Canisia Lubrin.

on the visual side, Tom Phillips’ A Humament was a book i didn’t know i was working in the vein of, until Stuart Ross recommended it. (his erasure poetry is on an artistic level that i don’t have the training for, so another reach i cannot grasp.) Kate Siklosi winds her way between the visual and poetic in murky waters, careful stitches, inky designs. Kate Sutherland and Jennifer Lovegrove, both poets who have found their way into paper and knife and glue. there are a ton of collage artists on Instagram that i could also shout-out, artists who lean into the minimal and discomfitting. That’s a place i like to be.

Q: With four chapbooks under your belt, as well as your current works-in-progress, how do you feel your work had developed? Where do you see your work headed?

A: i’d love to have a full-length published, like this WiP – but am otherwise happy to keep collecting chapbooks, as publishers and presses might be interested in them. there’s something about my attention span and chapbook length that makes sense for me. so, more of that. in process: a death chap, a scent chap, a Burrow chap. more collaborations (including with my partner, Kerry Manders). i’d also love to work harder at bringing these two loves of mine in closer proximity. could i do my own ekphrasis, in both directions? to work with another poet or visual artist on ekphrasis would also be dreamy.

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

A: when i need to re-energize my own work, i go to readings. i haven’t been great at this, since the pandemic started, but it is one of the best ways for me to be in poetry. partly for the poets/poetry i know; partly for the poets/poetry i don’t know. i bring a notebook and pen and am always catching lines that resonate – often for epigraphs and quotes in my own work.

work i return to, Nathanael’s Touch to Affliction and Somewhere Running (their ekphrasis is unlike anything else). Anne Carson’s translation of Sappho (If Not, Winter) and her Autobiography of Red (also “Essay on What I Think About Most” from Men in the Off Hours). Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky With Exit Wounds. Saeed Jones’s Prelude to Bruise. and finally, this opening piece from Lise Downe’s The Soft Signature: “All of these words have appeared elsewhere. Only their order has been changed, to maintain their innocence.”

TtD supplement #277 : seven questions for Dominic Dulin

Dominic Dulin is a poet and musician out of Cleveland, Ohio. They have had poetry published by Iterant, Yum! Lit, Surreal Poetics, among others.

Their poems “E_nve_loped” and “Note on the Type” appear in the forty-fifth issue of Touch the Donkey.

Q: Tell me about “E_nve_loped” and “Note on the Type.”

A: Both of these poems come from the final section of my poetry book manuscript Double Time. I wrote the book during my MFA at Cleveland State University for my final thesis project. A million thanks to Caryl Pagel for being my advisor and being an irreplaceable mentor — if anyone reading this hasn’t read her work, you should.

Thematically, Double Time deals with doubling, repetition, and challenging/investigating binaries, among other themes. These poems also share those qualities with having near miss puns or direct puns in them. I also had a fairly strict line rule in the book where the poems doubled sequentially (and at a certain point in the opposite way), i.e. the first poem is in couplets, the second is in quatrains, third is in octets, and fourth is in sixteenths (which has its own fancy poetry word that is currently escaping me).

A good amount of the poems in the manuscript have glimmers of the work I was doing at the time. I had a dispatching job for hospital security and police for multiple hospitals, and while it helped me pay the bills for my fiancée and I, it eventually wore on my mental health and I became extremely burnt out. My dad is a cop and I never expected to do anything near the realm of law enforcement, and while I’m glad I know maybe a bit more than the average person about how things work in that (flawed) system, I will never do anything like it again.

For “Note on the Type”, I wanted to make a sort of anti-note poem. The Shona in the poem comes from me leafing through a dictionary and slowly attempting to learn my fiancé’s native language. A few other poems in the manuscript feature Shona and Japanese (both which I am still learning in my free time at various paces). My rule for — for lack of a better term — foreign languages, is that I tend to only want to use languages which I know or at least am attempting to learn, rather than plugging in a word from a language that I don’t know or don’t have some connection with. I love Joyce, but it seems that he may have done that at times in Finnegans Wake: plugging in words or phrases from other languages without fully inventing himself in them.

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

A: Lately, I’ve been working on poems which are taking the form of sliced/fractured prose blocks. The first poet I read that had poems in that style is Franny Choi, who is a wonderful poet, but I’ve lately wondered whether another poet had crafted poems in the style first. I imagine the fractured prose block (as I’m calling it) has a long(er) history I’m unaware of. It seems a bit distinct from erasure poetry, which l’d imagine has an older lineage. There’s probably a Language Poet that ‘did it first’ I’m guessing. But I’m also currently interested in using forward slashes to break lines, even though the lines in the block aren’t actually broken, not unlike how a short group of poetic lines are quoted in an essay. If I remember correctly, Choi used colons, not slashes, to break up her lines.

Before that, I was working on a chapbook I’m tentatively calling “Face Notes: speak” which uses found language in a similar method I used with these poems. For both DT and FNs, I drew from line lists I either pre-wrote and let ferment, or had on hand. The main difference for the “Face Notes: speak” poems is that majority of the language comes from a text-to-speech app I was using while I was unable to talk after jaw surgery.

Q: I’m curious at the ways in which you are feeling out form. Are there other poets you’ve been attempting to learn from, for the sake of structure or approach?

A: I’d definitely say that J.H. Prynne has been a big influence. While I don’t think he always employs form in a visually obvious way, with his more recent text sequences, I do think he probably thinks about form a lot. Bruce Andrews is another poet which I’ve definitely been influenced by with some of my methods. David Melnick is another poet whose work I am infatuated with and have (hopefully) learned from. I also want to mention Oulipo — as a school of poetry I’d like to learn from — but I still haven’t dove into that realm even though my friend and poet Zach Peckham often mentions them in our conversations. Susan Howe and Hoa Nguyen are two poets I am always trying to learn from. Tristan Tzara (of course) and Bob Cobbing have influenced my interest in form as well. Catherine Wing helped me see form in a different and playful light, rather than in a wholly restrictive, outdated, or stuffy one.

To better answer how I’m feeling out form without name dropping more poets, I’d say that I’m always interested in doing something that involves numbers, experiments, and chance. Employing methods that involve various levels of (non-)control of the poetic outcomes. A sort of poetic fracturing, cut-up, or remix that resists form while still being (perhaps ironically) steeped in it.

Q: Perhaps it’s too early to get a clear sense of it, but how do you feel your work has developed? Where do you see your work headed?

A: I used to approach poetry with a sort of bleeding-heart, blood-on-the-page, Hemingway-esqueness coupled with a heavily Ginsberg influenced cadence. Surrealism also had a huge influence on me around 2016/17 and I felt that since then I was always trying to write, read, and figure out what “experimental” or avant-garde poetry was.

While now, I do in some ways have a better sense of it, I do see that I have gone from a more raw, bleeding-heart poetic approach to a more controlled and language-centered one coupling vulnerability with more “objective” or humorous/ironic language (my haiku practice likely also influenced this movement). As one of my former professors, Mary Biddinger, called it, rather than “bleeding on the page, now readers are seeing blood through the gauze” with my more recent poems.

Maybe I’ll head towards a synthesis of these bleeding-heart vs. language-focused poems or maybe I’ve already stumbled into a sort of middle ground. I think my future work could go either way, or maybe in a different direction, which I am also open to.

Q: What has been the process of attempting to shape a manuscript, and what have you been discovering through that process? Are there poems that don’t fit with the shape, or are you leaning more into a kind of catch-all?

A: I think since working on these poems for Double Time, in the Summer and Fall of 2023, I’ve thought a lot more about shaping a manuscript. Perhaps it’s because the manuscript was so rule based and number dependent — on top of the line sequences, each section had a certain number of poems, and the poems all add up to an even number as well — that I’ve since been more willing to cut poems from more recent manuscripts, where I was much less inclined to before with DT. I’d assume that more recent chapbook rejections have also played a role in this.

But overall, sometimes certain poems seem really good once you write them and place them in a manuscript but after a few weeks or months break and a return to them, they don’t land as gracefully as they did before. Perhaps I’m slowly becoming a better editor for myself and my manuscripts.

Q: Are you finding a difference in how you approach attempting to shape a full-length collection vs. a chapbook-sized manuscript?

A: I am finding a difference. I would say once I realized J.H. Prynne, for example, in recent years almost solely releases chapbook-length manuscripts (at an almost intense pace), it gave me some relief and freedom. The freedom to not sit and try to think about ‘what will the next book project be’ but instead think of smaller projects that I feel like I tend to have more stamina or excitement for at the moment. This is also why I sort of gave up trying to write fiction. It isn’t that I think I have a short or ruined attention span or anything but rather that I think I’m more interested in capturing something in language in the moment, or in a short(er) span of time, rather than something in the long term. I don’t doubt that that thinking could also change for me at some point, too; but for now, I tend to be more chapbook-focused.

Q: Finally (and you might have answered an element of this prior), who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?

A: Hoa Nguyen, Louis Zukofsky, David Melnick, Lillian-Yvonne Betram, jos charles, Kobayashi Issa, J.H. Prynne — in no particular order. I can’t help but return to Hoa Nguyen’s Violet Energy Ingots, Melnick’s Pcoet, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s Travesty Generator, J.H. Prynne’s Orchard, and Zukofsky’s 80 Flowers. I’ve been meaning to return to charles’ feeld because it really floored me and caused things to click in me on multiple poetic and emotional levels the last time I read it but I think I’ve only read it once or twice.

TtD supplement #276 : seven questions for Misha Solomon

Misha Solomon is a homosexual poet in and of Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. He is the author of two chapbooks, FLORALS (above/ground press, 2020) and Full Sentences (Turret House Press, 2022), and his work has recently appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2024, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Fiddlehead, Grain, The Malahat Review, and Riddle Fence. His debut full-length collection, My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet, is forthcoming with Brick Books in 2026.

His poems “(Help Me Choose a Photo of) My Engagement Ring (to Post on Instagram),” “I Didn’t Call My Mother” and “Duplex Duplex” appear in the forty-fifth issue of Touch the Donkey.

Q: Tell me about “(Help Me Choose a Photo of) My Engagement Ring (to Post on Instagram),” “I Didn’t Call My Mother” and “Duplex Duplex.”

A: These three poems have disparate origins, but they’re all explorations of a kind of “queer mundanity” and a discomfort with “growing up” in homonormative ways.

I wrote "(Help Me Choose a Photo of) My Engagement Ring (to Post on Instagram)” for a Hybrid Forms workshop with Sina Queyras during my recent MA at Concordia — we were asked to bring in work to introduce ourselves, and this poem captured a lot of what I was writing and thinking about at the time. It will next appear in my debut full-length, coming from Brick Books in 2026. I wrote “I Didn’t Call My Mother” as part of a writing activity with my fiancé Guillaume Denault. And I wrote “Duplex Duplex,” which owes a debt of gratitude to the form’s creator Jericho Brown, as part of some sort of form-per-day challenge that Carlos Pittella shared with me — I don’t think either of us got past day two or three.

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

A: These poems are a bit “lighter” than the work I’ve been doing lately. And they’re more grounded in the real and immediate domestic sphere. Lately I’ve been writing weirder, wilder stuff about (non-)reproduction that brings in a lot of animal facts I’ve had rattling around in my brain since I was a child.

Q: What prompted this shift towards a lighter approach, and how do those shifts reveal themselves?

A: For better or for worse (probably for worse), I almost always go into a poem with a “topic” in mind, and the topics of these poems couldn’t be taken too seriously. Maybe “light” is the wrong word. Maybe “seriously” is the wrong word. I guess I just wanted or needed the poems to be a little funny, to poke some fun at their domestic trappings, possibly to allow for some of the underlying emotion to exist within them.

Q: Do you consider this a shift in your writing generally, or more of an expansion?

A: Honestly, I hardly consider it a shift. More of a… modulation. I think humour/darkness/weirdness are each always bubbling under the surface of each of my poems, and I sometimes let one or more of them… come to a boil? Humour is particularly difficult for me to modulate. I’ve been told I use it to undercut emotion. I’m not how much of that is conscious.

Q: Do you have any models for the types of work you’ve been attempting? Any particular writers or works at the back of your head as you write?

A: Frank O’Hara, always. Danez Smith has been in my head a lot lately, especially after having had the pleasure of working with them at Banff earlier this year. And lately I’ve been thinking a lot about Nate Lippens’s writing, after devouring his two short novels My Dead Book and Ripcord.

Q: With two published chapbooks and a full-length debut forthcoming, as well as your current works-in-progress, how do you feel your work has developed? Where do you see your work heading?

A: I feel that I’ve moved away from try to engineer or engender a certain reaction (usually shock) in a reader. I try to give in to mystery and open-endedness, and to bring in more and more research-creation. I see my work, or at least I hope I see my work, heading to a place that is at once formless and accessible, that doesn’t fit neatly into any categories but can be relatively widely read and enjoyed.

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

A: Sorry for the delay on this last answer, I had to go to my spin class. (Do NOT edit this out. Your readers need to know that I am newly very into spinning.)

Because of my ongoing desire to “complete tasks” due to an obsessive, productivity-pilled mind, I rarely return to works. Am I allowed to admit that? I think Grease and The Wizard of Oz are the only movies I have seen multiple times.  Anyway — to reenergize my work, I read a poem from The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara and use some element of the poem as a prompt. Also, I take workshops and studios to reenergize my work — I always love Sarah Burgoyne’s poetry studios, which have been immensely inspiring and productive for me. Recently, I took a great workshop with Susan Gillis hosted by the QWF, and I’ll be taking one with Jay Ritchie this spring. I also have a generative poetry group (with André Babyn and Sasha Manoli) and a workshop/reading group (with Madelaine Caritas Longman, Patrick O’Reilly, Carlos Pittella, Melanie Power, and Sarah Wolfson) and the work of all those incredible poets is always reenergizing. I also read non-poetic work to power my work — lately that’s been stuff like Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, edited by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson.

TtD supplement #275 : eight questions for Jordan Davis

Jordan Davis’s books include Shell Game (2017), Noise (2023) and Yeah, No (2023); he has edited several publications including The Poetry Project Newsletter, The Hat, Teachers & Writers, The Collected Fiction of Kenneth Koch, The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch, the Apple iOS journal Ladowich, CCCP Chapbooks, several titles for Subpress Collective, and most recently a monthly publishing poetry on “Jewish-ish themes,” The Nu Review. He is also a former poetry editor of The Nation.

An excerpt from his “the book of how’s that going to work” appears in the forty-fifth issue of Touch the Donkey.

Q: Tell me about the work-in-progress “the book of how’s that going to work.”

A: I’ve had this notebook since the early 90s, absurdly thick cover, banana paper with threads and dirt-like imperfections in the surface, the absolute opposite of something too nice to write in, but not junk either, and I’ve carried it to five or six different homes thinking “someday I’ll know what to do with this.” That didn’t happen, so I wrote every wrong thing I could think of.

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

A: These poems exist, which is a significant difference.

Q: Is utilizing the notebook the usual way your poems, and your projects, begin? How do poems move from notebook to completed?

A: It is. I get to the end of the notebook, and then I see what’s there.

Q: Do you see a difference in how poems emerge through working the notebook, versus any other process? And what other processes might you use to compose work?

A: Every notebook does act on my brain like a specific kind of container, and what I find congenial at one time may turn out later to be too confining or too expansive. Time is the real constraint — I use what I can find when the time emerges. Index cards… let’s talk about that another time.

Q: Did the shapes of your notebook pages inform the shapes of your poems? I’m thinking of those long, thin poems by William Carlos Williams, as he composed first drafts on his prescription pads.

A: These poems, yes. I want the work to be shapely but it’s the shape of the mental object I care about — the pathway of the experience of the poem. Other poems, the notebook acts more as a collecting plate, a radio telescope.

Q: With a handful of published books and chapbooks under your belt, how do you feel your work has developed? Where do you see your work headed?

A: I go where the thing I have to say is, but I haven’t liked to go where the things I dislike are. I’ll probably have to wade into what I dislike now. And there’s so much to dislike.

Q: I’m curious as to what some of that “wading into what you dislike” might look like, and what the process and results might be. Should I even ask?

A: I see a lot of a willed kind of poetry — self-seeking, self-mythologizing… often pretty but in a way you see coming. It clearly serves a need, but at the expense of deeper needs, in my opinion.

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

A: Poetry, if it’s any good at all, is for rereading. I’ve been rereading Kenneth Koch; it was just his centenary (February 27). I find something new every time I read him. For me, editing books and chapbooks by other poets is a form of rereading that helps me see what I want better. What renews my love of poetry, or rather, what gives me the feeling I enjoy most, is to find new poets I want to reread.