I was tagged to take part in The Next Big Thing, a literary blog interview. In The Next Big Thing writers answer ten questions about their work-in-progress, then tag five of their writer friends to do the same.
Gillian Wallace tagged me and also links to Sandra Nicholls and Ben Stephenson.
So far, two responses from here: Ariel Gordon and rob mclennan.
For my part,
What is the working title of your book?
Lost in a Very Small Maze
Where did the idea come from for the book?
The poems started to gel into a unit once there was that phrase pop up in conversation and I thought that as a title would fit the spirit of a number of poems.
What genre does your book fall under?
It’s poetry, largely. Some flash fiction might crash the party. Some surreal, some I’m calling “Squirrels and Other Anecdotes” (also a working section title). They are more narrative than what I’m known for with romance, grief and humour to counter those. They are softer poems in the sense of not being anti-semantic in the same way as some previously.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
They pieces span the late 90s to present so it’s something of an accumulation cherry picking what chimes together. The oldest poems are reaching back 17 years. The newest poems will probably be 2 years old by the time it sees paper. Some have already been published or won contests but I can see now ways to do them tighter and better. The poems have good bones but could use a few workouts of editing.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
How shall I flatter myself. Let me count the ways. I’d hope elements would be as odd and delightful as Venright’s Floors of Enduring Beauty or Heroux’ Emergency Hallelujah or Memoirs of an Alias. It won’t be.
Some of it falls more towards Anne le Dressay, Michele Desbarats or Barry Dempster’s anecdotes or Monty Reid’s pithy and simple.
Who or What inspired you to write this book?
I write. The realization that Snare might disappear and my newest book might vaporize put a fire under my butt, but in the 11th hour, Snare was taken up as an imprint of Invisible Publishing. The effect remains tho.
It was also provoked by wanting to prove I could write things that lean more towards story and formalism without being baggy or “not my voice” as the charges levelled often go. It is a good break from the main work of this more language-centred project that eats my time and leaves poem dirt as a thanks. Frustrated? A change is as good as a solution.
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Since the probability of a movie version is about the same odds as getting these actors, how about a duet of Seth Godin and Robert Donner reading the more surreal poems, Sylvia Plath for the voice of a poem Orchards in the Mind, a piece about past wars. Monty Reid reading with his measured deep fabulous voice the section of poems of grief. Lorine Niedecker raised from the dead can read whatever she wants. The phone book if she likes. Heck, if she comes for a reading, I’ll add a phone book to the manuscript. For a village to keep printing costs down.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I expect to be taking it to a publisher since a group has the infrastructure to distribute and postage rates and travel costs are high. It makes sense to work together.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Motifs of grief and the absurdities of life, a critical compassionate look at a Canada in the day and the personal in the night.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
I think the book’s flavour is somewhere between this:

and this:

And now, five writers I have asked to participate in return.
I’m tagging
Ariel Gordon
rob mclennan
Jonathan Ball
with a couple others (probably Shawna Lemay and Alice Burdick) coming along in time.
Message for tagged authors: Rules of the Next Big Thing
***Use this format for your post
***Answer the ten questions about your current WIP (work in progress)
***Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them.
Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing:

1. What is the working title of your book?
2. Where did the idea for the book come from?
3. What genre does your book fall under?
4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?
10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Include the link of who tagged you and this explanation for the people you have tagged.
Be sure to line up five people in advance.
I got a nod from Rosemary Nissen-Wade asked me as well but I was too slow on the draw. (That variation reduced down to 6 somewhat different questions).
So, optional bonus question:
In what ways do you think ‘writer you’ differs from or has similarities to the everyday you?
Well, I’m told both have an odd and large vocabulary. Hubby once said that if I had a stroke and could only access the unusual words, even tho I’d be speaking English, he’d need a thesaurus for us to talk.
Poetry-I and civilian-I, if we could separate the two without the death of both, move in parallel. As my brain untangles and speaks in less of an omnidirectional brain-dump, my poetry moves more comfortably within the idea of a set up and payoff sort of narrative, speaking to make a point.
Writer-I spends more time on politics than is likely to happen in common conversations. Writer-I gets more airtime for the Id and for play. The censor paces around the conversational civilian-I more sternly.
The meme started in fiction, with the likes of Ayelet Tsabari. Gary Barwin did it while back. Jennifer Lovegrove has done it as an open call if you want to opt yourself in.

Wow, is that a gorgeous cover or what? It’s by Chris Patchel, with Frogpond under the new editorship of Francine Banwarth.
I haven’t dove in yet but look forward to it. Here’s a senryu that popped by Patty Hardin

afraid of her
own shadow
afraid of her

Isn’t that exactly how repetition isn’t redundant. I like the ambiguity in reading it if the turn is after line 2, or after L1’s “of”. Is it that fear is contagious and someone who is afraid of everything causes other people to shy away, afraid of catching that. Does even her own shadow quake at her temper? I like the psychology look, the empathy. Is someone fierce someone who externalizes fear to gain control and power so her anger is actually fear?
I’m behind in my reading stack with this being newest in on top of:

• Emergency Hallelujah (2008, Mansfield) surreal and beautiful elegant poems by Jason Heroux which on finishing I immediately set out on re-reading.
• Parapagus by Roland Prevost (2012, above/ground) on a paper stock with layout that brings it all up a professional notch. The poem series shift in a coherent bundle along different subjects than past chapbooks
• Cutting Room by Sarah Pinder (2012, Coach House),
• The Politics of Knives by Jonathan Ball (2012, Coach House)
• The Lease by Mathew Henderson (2012 Coach House) [all 3 of which were door prizes passed along at the AB Series Christmas Party]
• Memorie by Elelyn H.C. Johnson (2009, Chiefswood) of the sister of Pauline Johnson
• Words on a Page by Doris Hedges (1949, Ryerson) [via the Black Squirrel Bookstore]
• The Veiled Doorway by Steve Dalachinsky (2012, unarmed)
• Unarmed, issue #65
• A Web of Holes by Shannon Maguire (2012, above/ground) also a lovely design. the chapbook will launch this Saturday with Parapagus.
• Parlor by Sarah Mangold (2012, above/ground)
• Poem Beginning with a line by Pinder by rob mclennan (2012, above/ground)

Dear friends:
Collected Works is up for sale – but only until Christmas Eve. The price: $1.00. The catch: the new owner will need to assume all the store’s current liabilities. If a buyer does not come forward by December 24, we will have no choice but to close our doors.
We took a gamble two and half years ago expanding the store to twice its original size to accommodate a wider range of events and diversify our inventory. It’s a gamble that has not paid off. Rent and other overhead costs have more than doubled, but our sales have remained flat.
In good times, we might have been able to weather the situation, but major shifts are occurring in the book world (online retailing, big box stores, exchange rates, the rise of digital devices and content). Add to that our constantly rising rent and the current economic environment, and we have been left with no wiggle room.
Even sizable personal and community investments have not helped. Collected Works is currently struggling to meet even its most basic obligations.
Collected Works needs a new owner with deep pockets and an action plan to make the bookstore viable. Professional advisors have suggested moving the store to a less expensive space, finding a complimentary business to share the space and rent, or merging with an existing business. Craig and I have already exhausted our personal resources and are unable to pursue any of these options.
We are now hoping that a little media attention might get the word out and kick-start an 11th hour rescue of the store, but we are also preparing for the more likely outcome.
Effectively immediately we are offering everything we sell at discounts ranging from 25-50% in the hopes of generating sufficient cash flow to meet at least some of our obligations. Please visit us in store for details.
Many thanks to all of you for your loyalty and support over the last fifteen years,
Christopher and Craig.

Hey slammers and slam-lovers,
The final Qualifying Round for VERSeOttawa’s Women’s Slam is coming up this Saturday December 8th. If you are hoping to qualify for the Championship Round (happening in January 2013), this is your LAST CHANCE to do it.
We already have eight women lined up for the Championship, but we’ve got four slots left to fill, and one of them could be yours.
Qualifying Round Three will take place on Saturday, December 8th at the Mercury Lounge. Doors and sign-up are at 6:30pm, with the slam starting at 7pm.
Everybody slams twice, so if you’re competing, come prepared with two pieces to perform.
Twelve Poets
Two Rounds
Who will move on to the finals?
The Fine Print:
Women who have already earned a spot in the championship round are welcome to sign up BUT slammers who have yet to place get priority on the stage.
If you place twice, you still only get one competition slot at the finals.

A lot of readings have people present new work. Dusty Owl occasionally and Tree’s Schroedinger poet spot, have the chance for people to read what poems they like that are not by the rader.

rob hosted and MCed a third set of Factory reading series, talking poetics, on Nov 15th. It was a fundraiser for VerseFest held at Mercury Lounge.
This series can go deeper into the how and why of what makes poetry. The talks have essay components that go to the annual online magazine of poetics, 17 seconds. As I mentioned previous to the talks, issue 5 with the essay from Barry McKinnon – When “I” left the stage: A realm of Attention/Intention is up now.
In this instalment Cameron Anstee talked about the life, times, works and influence of Raymond Souster. (The 2011 Purdyfest was a tribute to Souster with a series of papers presented on him, which unfortunately I missed.)
Cameron talked about what CanLit was in the 40s-60s. Souster was known as a poet of content but he started crystalline structures that are still growing in our literary solutions.
He started magazines and Contact reading series at a time when there wasn’t much infrastructure. He was a first publisher of Nolan, Purdy, Newlove, Wah, Buckle (now Marlatt). Contact lost money on everything they made but if they didn’t continue regardless, where would we be? He brought to town (to Toronto) out-of-towners, like Olsen and Zukofski as well as French writers, to cross-pollinate and interconnect those interested. French writers read in French and he made handouts of translations of the poems for the event. This sort of dual-language is like what Max Middle is trying to facilitate thru A B Series.
Contact inspired other people to come together. As a group when there is some rallying point, more people can explore and speak. After Souster other presses sprung up including Coach House and Fireweed.
Instead of buying into the dismissal of that day and this that there is no one writing and there are no readers, Souster made events “to prove poet and audience exist”.

Brian took a photo of me as I spoke. I was talking about creativity, publishing and the lizard brain, about perceived risk vs. actual risk. One point I raised that a few people mentioned had struck them was around this:
For optimization we need risk and safety in proper ratios. For self-preservation we migrate to ideal conditions and we make ideal conditions. Poetry is terra-forming.
Poetry is something of a mechanism for survival, for physical and mental health, not in the sense of therapy (necessarily). In order to find tribe, in order to find like-minds that will protect and who make sense to you and who you make sense to, you create safety and well-being. Once you have some time within tribe, you don’t have to be the lone meercat who is vigilant constantly.
I think by moments I went somewhat sermonic. Here’s another bit

Betsy Lerner wrote in Forest for the Trees that as soon as she opens a manuscript, and I paraphrase, she can tell uh-oh, this is writing by a good girl who is well-trained and will probably not push any boundaries. She will be more rutted than rooted and branching out to grow.
If you’re writing to yourself, if it was just for yourself, you can keep it in your diary to reinforce your image of self. you wouldn’t need to line the walls of your house with 200 or 2000 copies of it in print form. to publish is to risk not being heard, or to risk being heard. it’s to throw at the wall and see if the wall resists it or if it sticks

The essay will go to 17 seconds early next year.

Stephen Brockwell spoke on topics of poetry as a network, and as exploration, “poetry as a perpetual unknown”. People sometime consider poets as being nomadic among ideas but to be a nomad you travel land charted for generations. Migrants are more accurately explorers. A migrant in words does not know what’s coming. Poets seek to surprise themselves.
He mentioned “sounding” had as its original sense boats who didn’t cross open water. They traced along the shore with a metal ball dragging on a hemp rope. The sound of scraping kept them safely close to shore. How far from shore are we getting with our sounds, images, words and ideas?
How information travels is a mark of an era. Initially information went long distance by voice and as distances of possibility got larger, by water, then by rail, then air, now by light via digital fibre optics. However we are connected, by ears, feet or fingers, we are connected by language.
The idea that we write a personal story, a singular definitive arrangement of a text, is irrelevant. We create in the act of sharing past towards the future. Language and ideas can not exist in a solitary brain. Language can only exist in a network of brains. When we make poetry we are trying to make a node brighter, to activate more strongly a node in the collective neural network.
The Q&A that followed was lively with half a dozen or so questions.
Overall it was a fascinating night with good energy in the room. I look forward to each of the next ones.