Six Questions interview #109 : Mary F. Hawkins

Mary F. Hawkins: I am a Writer/Author and a photographer, but as for most writers and creative artists, I earned my living through teaching (Professor of Communications and English Writing Strategies at three post-secondary schools since 1993), and editorial assignments along the way.  My first passion is writing, and photography, however.  I also dabble with acrylic painting on canvas.  Once this pandemic is behind us, hopefully soon, I can return to not only creating, but also my other passion which is sharing my work with the public through public speaking.

Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here? 

I was born in Ottawa at the then Grace Hospital along with my twin brother.  We moved within the city about three times.  Once I ventured out into the world, I began to travel developing a love of other horizons and what it is I could learn from new environments and people.  I did move to Calgary in 1986, but only remained there for five months returning to Ottawa as my home base to the international globe of travel.  I also returned to work for several years with the media, first as a photojournalist, then moved over to working behind the scenes in radio, television, online and print writing.  I ultimately went onto teach for 25 years at the post-secondary level in the field of Communications studies.  This allowed me to continue to work on my creative works.

Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here? 

Writing for me just came naturally. I work alone, and I just do it.  However, my late mother noticed my desire to write, and so encouraged me. She proof-read my works in progress, as well she read my completed work to offer feedback.  I miss that part of our relationship.  Why did I want to write in the first place?  I have always wanted to write partly because I needed and wanted to express my vivid imagination, and ideas.  It’s innate, I feel.  It started at a very young age.  In fact, I do remember at the age of twelve years gathering pieces of drift wood with the goal to build myself a ‘Writer’s Shack’, in my parent’s backyard.  One day a neighbour called over the fence and asked me what I was doing. Hammer and nails in hand I said, “I’m building a writer’s shack.”  I think they were amused by my determination to do so.  I never did finish building it, but I went onto write five books that did become published by Canadian publishers. Four of these books are nonfiction, and one a children’s book.  My dream though has been to write fiction.  Over the years, and in-between earning a living, I chipped away at doing exactly this.  So, that is my next goal to have my two completed fiction novels published, sooner than later. We are in 2021 now.  Hoping for a book deal in 2022.  I would say, developing my creative work is my raison d’étre.  It is my place of bliss, and contemplation.

My involvement with the writer’s community is mostly online or listening to what they have to say in interviews, events, and seeing their own successes. I also dialogue with other writers one-on-one and with other artists over coffee or at social events, rather than belonging to one writer’s group.   

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?  

I guess in some ways, I am a loner even though I love to socialize. As I said earlier, I prefer one-on-one interaction with other creative mongers.  I do have readers review my work though.  Feedback is an inspiration too, critical or complementary.  For example, a few years ago I submitted the first 10 pages of one of my novels to a Toronto library writing contest.  I was accepted and met with the writer in residence who said to me after reading my submission, quote, ‘You don’t need to be seeing me for feedback. This is great.’  I was dumbstruck, but thrilled, and this was from an author with three novels published, so I was on cloud nine.  

Even though I am not part of a formal writing group, I am thrilled about the writing community in Ottawa, in part from those I have met. I recognize that Ottawa has a number of creative people and some are published authors.  Most have to work full time and write in between their daily routine.  Now to me, that is passion! 

Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow? 

Really, I think most cities have activities to allow writers to showcase or share their works.  I love that each year Ottawa has the Writer’s festival.  I find this a great inspiration to writers and readers, too. I enjoy seeing local and international writers take part in this festival.  Hearing about their process in writing and their own inspirations is uplifting to most writers, I would think.

Ottawa does provide a cozy spot for writers to work, interact, and share their work. But I’d like to see more designated places, such as a coffee shop, where writers could hang out sharing ideas or information about their work or anything they want but amongst other writers?  Emerging writers might also like a place like this idea to gather to share information about who and where to send their works. Call it, ‘The Writer’s Retreat Café or ‘The Writer’s Co-op,’ perhaps.  Maybe this exists, but I am not sure where?   Perhaps, more of this will take place after this pandemic.

Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements here?  How have the city and its community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work?

I am not sure of the questions, but my engagements for me have been in presenting my work to small groups at schools of all educational levels, and book signings.  Local and national interviews have also brought me into the living room of radio or television interviews.  This helps the response of others to my work, I think?  I hope!  The key though is to keep writing and creating because it’s part of a spiritual drive, if stirring, that must be nurtured.

How has the city and its community changed my approach?   I can’t really answer this question either because it doesn’t really apply to my writing process.  I think what inspires me most in Ottawa though is seeing other writer’s present their work to small or larger audiences, through broadcast media, as well as  succeeding as internationally read authors.  It inspires me to see them bringing their work and personality forward to their audiences. I do think that Ottawa people enjoy being an audience to these writers.  It’s a great community support.  

Q: What are you working on now? 

I recently completed edits on two novels I wrote at different stages in my life.  I am now in the process of sending submissions to literary agents in the USA mostly, Canada, and the UK.  No bites yet but I am optimistic.  One of these novels has a sequel in the works.  Both novels are set primarily in foreign lands.  As I said earlier in this interview, hoping for a new book deal in 2022.  I will end with; patience is a virtue when it comes to hearing back from agents or publishers.

 

Six Questions interview #108 : Waubgeshig Rice

Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist from Wasauksing First Nation. He has written three fiction titles, and his short stories and essays have been published in numerous anthologies. His most recent novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, was published in 2018 and became a national bestseller. He graduated from the journalism program at the university formerly known as Ryerson in 2002, and spent most of his journalism career with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a video journalist and radio host. He left CBC in 2020 to focus on his literary career. He lives in Sudbury, Ontario with his wife and two sons.

Q: How long were you in Ottawa, and what first brought you here? What took you away?

I was in Ottawa for seven years altogether. I moved there in 2010 to work as a video journalist at CBC Ottawa, after CBC stints in Toronto and Winnipeg. I had a lot of family living in Ottawa at the time, so it seemed like a great place to relocate. I eventually met my wife there, and our first son was born at the Civic in 2016. We moved to Sudbury in 2017 to raise our kids closer to our home communities. My wife has roots in Garden River First Nation and Bruce Mines, both near Sault Ste. Marie, and I’m from Wasauksing First Nation near Parry Sound. Sudbury seemed like a good spot to settle between the two, and fortunately an opportunity came up for me at CBC Sudbury at the right time. But I’ve since left CBC to write fiction full-time.

Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here? 

In elementary school on the rez one of my first teachers (who also happened to be my aunt Elaine) really encouraged me to express myself through writing. She had me enter writing contests and empowered me to use my words and stories as creative outlets. That foundation held me up all the way through high school and university, and I always wrote fiction in my spare time, even when I started working full time as a journalist. I connected with the writing community in Ottawa in a couple of different meaningful ways. My first book, Midnight Sweatlodge, was published shortly after I moved there, so I was invited to read at events like the A B Series and others through Octopus Books. I’ve also been fairly active in The Writers’ Union of Canada, so I attended some local meetings while I lived there.

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all? Have there been subsequent shifts due to where you have lived since? 

Sharing my writing in a group setting really shifted how I approached fiction writing and how exactly I wanted to present it to the world. I think it’s essential to read your writing aloud, not just for feedback from others, but to vocalize the story that began in your head and ended up on the page. My first real experience with that process was while I lived in Winnipeg in the late 2000s. I joined what eventually came to be known as the Indigenous Writers Collective, and at regular meetings I read my work along with some tremendous storytellers, many of whom have gone on to win major national literary awards. It really empowered me to harness the oral fundamentals of Anishinaabe storytelling in literature, a practice I continue to hone today. In the communities I’ve lived since, like Ottawa and Sudbury, I’ve sought out other like-minded writers to share my writing in that way.

Q: What did you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What did Ottawa provide, or allow? 

What I loved about Ottawa was how some key people in the writing community worked hard to highlight the works of Black and Indigenous writers. I recall fondly some of the events at Octopus Books that were really revolutionary and transformative. There’s a much-needed focus today on BIPOC writers in mainstream literature, but when I was getting started as a published author in Ottawa a decade ago, there was already a strong movement underway. And I think overall, the independent literary infrastructure in Ottawa makes great space for that. Places like Octopus, Perfect Books, Chaudiere Books and more have long prioritized essential voices and provided some great opportunities.  

Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements here? How had the city and its community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work? 

I pretty much conceptualized my last novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, while walking to and from work on Bank Street for a few years. My wife and I lived on Gilmour Street in Centretown, and our apartment was about a 15 minute walk from the CBC newsroom on Queen Street. Every day on my walking commute I imagined the details of the plot, characters, and setting, and when I stopped at the lights, I’d take out my phone and write down notes. So when I reflect on that story and how it came together, I’ll always remember walking on Bank Street. It was pretty cool to read from it at the Ottawa Writers Festival when it came out in 2018, because it felt like a homecoming of sorts for the story, even though it’s set in far northern Ontario.

Q: What are you working on now?

Right now I’m working on the sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow, entitled Moon of the Turning Leaves. It’ll be published in spring 2023 through Penguin Random House Canada. My editor, Rick Meier, and I are deep into revisions, and I’m pretty happy with how it’s coming together. I hope readers of the first book enjoy it!

Six Questions interview #107 : Sonia Saikaley

Sonia Saikaley was born and raised in Ottawa, Canada to a big Lebanese family. The daughter of a shopkeeper, she had access to all the treats she wanted. Her first book, The Lebanese Dishwasher, co-won the 2012 Ken Klonsky Novella Contest. She has two poetry collections Turkish Delight, Montreal Winter and A Samurai’s Pink House. Her novel The Allspice Bath was the 2020 IPPY Gold Medal winner and the 2020 International Book Awards winner for Multicultural Fiction and a finalist in the 2020 Ottawa Book Awards. She is a graduate of the University of Ottawa and the Humber School for Writers. Her first children’s picture book Samantha’s Sandwich Stand was published by Renaissance Press in 2021. Many years ago she belly-danced her way across Northern Japan and taught English there too.

Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here?

I have lived in Ottawa my whole life with a one year sabbatical in Shiogama, Japan. I was born at the Grace Hospital and I am the youngest of four daughters. My entire family is here, so Ottawa is my home no matter where life may take me in the future. I grew up in a big Lebanese family and my dad owned a corner store in centretown for over 30 years. Since we didn’t have a backyard, we were the family who would hold barbecues out front and feed any neighbour who passed by, wanting a bite to eat. I love the city for its many beautiful pathways and other things.

Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?

When I was a child, I loved drawing and painting but I wasn’t very good at it. Instead, I turned my attention to writing and started writing poetry when I was in Grade 6. I wrote mostly funny and rhyming poems for my friends. It was only after I graduated from university that I took my writing seriously. I mostly wrote short stories and managed to get a few published but many were rejected. I wish I had been part of the writing community in my twenties but I had only become more involved with the writing community when my first book The Lebanese Dishwasher was published in 2012. I was forty at the time and a little nervous about doing readings and joining the writing community but then I forced myself to get out of my comfort zone. I reached out to the wonderful rob mclennan to take part in the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair and he kindly invited me to do one of my first readings at The Factory Reading Series. He made it a fun event. I met a lot of kind writers at the reading and the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair. I am a bit of a loner so I don’t have a writing group but I am always open to chatting one-on-one with other writers or meeting new people at literary events taking place in the city. I have had the honour to be a juror with the City of Ottawa Arts Funding Program so that is a lovely way to be part of the writing community though it is tough to choose among the great submissions. We have an excellent group of writers in this city.  

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all? 

Since I’m a person who occasionally joins the writing community in Ottawa, I don’t find being part of such a community has shifted my way of thinking about writing. I don’t brainstorm about a work-in-progress with my fellow writers. I usually work with an editor for that. I might sometimes ask for advice about promoting a book but when it comes to the act of writing, I am pretty much alone in that regard. However, I am always willing to support other writers by promoting their works on social media, providing encouragement and celebrating those joyous occasions when a book gets published.

Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow?

I think there is a great poetry community in Ottawa and I love the fact that we have the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair, Tree Reading Series, VERSeFest, the Ottawa International Writers Festival and other venues where writers can share their ideas and stories with an audience, an audience that is often warm and supportive. We also have amazing independent bookstores like Perfect Books and Octopus Books to name a few that are so welcoming in promoting local authors, including providing venues for book launches and book signings.

Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements here? How have the city and its community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work?

My novel The Allspice Bath is set in Ottawa, Toronto and Lebanon and it was wonderful including some of my favourite parts of Ottawa like the Rideau Canal, the Golden Triangle with its heritage homes and the large Lebanese community here.  Lately, though, my work is set in other parts of the world. Of course, I find much inspiration for my writing when I take my long walks around Ottawa.

Q: What are you working on now?

I am currently working on the sequel to my novel The Allspice Bath. It has the main character Adele and the man she had met when she was in Lebanon. Adele and Elias are both older in this story. It also includes Adele’s husband and Elias’s girlfriend who is an ER doctor. Elias always wanted to be a professor of Arabic Literature in France so the work-in-progress is set in Paris and will touch upon post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

I am also thinking about doing another children’s picture book with Samantha and her friends (my latest book is “Samantha’s Sandwich Stand” and it features a diverse group of friends helping Samantha sell her Lebanese cream cheese and cucumber pita sandwiches).

Thank you so much, rob, for all your support and for always helping others get their name out there!

 

Six Questions interview #106 : Allana Stuart

Allana Stuart is a writer of poetry and fiction, who previously worked as an award-winning CBC Radio journalist. A child of the boreal forest, she was born and raised in northwestern Ontario and spent several years in Northern BC before settling in her current home of Ottawa. Her poem “The End of the Line,” about her grandfather and his legacy as a trapper was longlisted for the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize. Her poetry has been published in Goat’s Milk Magazine, Orangepeel Literary Magazine, deathcap magazine, and Minnow Literary Magazine. Allana is also the producer of the podcast Rx Advocacy.

Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here? 

I first moved to Ottawa in 1998 to study journalism at Carleton University. After I graduated in 2002, I moved to Northern British Columbia to work as a producer for CBC Radio. I left my journalism career after the birth of my first child, and my husband’s work brought us back to Ottawa in 2012.

Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here? 

I have been writing since I was really small. I don’t actually remember when I first started, it’s just something I have always done. After I realized that my first career aspiration of “mermaid” wasn’t going to work out, I decided to focus on becoming a writer. I applied to study journalism at Carleton University, thinking that being a newspaper reporter would be a good way to make a living as a writer. I ended up falling in love with radio production, which (against expectations) actually involves a fair bit of writing. Throughout my studies and my subsequent career as a producer at the CBC, I continued to write poetry and prose. But I had less and less time and energy for it as the years passed, and once I left journalism to become a full-time stay at home mom my writing fell almost completely by the wayside.

It’s only been in the last few years, and especially during the pandemic, that have I really started to write creatively again. In January of 2021, I started a fourth-year creative writing workshop at Carleton. I wanted to commit to making writing a priority again, and I felt that having an external source to hold me accountable would push me in the right direction. My instructor, Ottawa poet David Stymeist, was a great source of support and encouragement for me. The other writers in the class were also all extremely talented and insightful, and while none of us have met in person because of the pandemic, we stay in touch and continue to help one another virtually. I also have some long-time writer and non-writer friends both in Ottawa and elsewhere who are an essential part of my support system. My husband also has a background in writing and journalism and is a huge cheerleader and thoughtful critic, although I can be stingy about sharing early versions of my work with him.

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?  

Having a community of writers surrounding me, if only virtually, has helped me come out of my shell as a writer. Although I have been writing for almost all of my life, I used to find it very difficult to my put my personal and creative work “out there” for others to see. Having other poets and authors look at my writing and say “hey, this is good, here are some suggestions on how you could make it great,” has helped my confidence grow immensely. It’s also really inspiring to see what other writers are working on and what their process is. There are some amazingly talented people in this city (and this whole country) and it’s wonderful when we can learn from each other.

Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Ottawa provide, or allow? 

I know Ottawa has always had a thriving literary scene. When I first lived here during my university days I would often attend poetry readings and other writing events, although I was too shy to ever share my own work. I know that scene has only grown over time, and will continue through and after the pandemic is over. I look forward to being able to take in some more in-person events in the future, and maybe this time I will be brave enough to participate.

Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements here? How have the city and its community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work? 

I recently had the immense honour of having my poem “The End of the Line” longlisted for the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize. While the poem is rooted in my family history in northwestern Ontario, and specifically in audio recordings of my conversations with my Grandad, I wrote and workshopped the poem while taking David Stymeist’s writing workshop at Carleton. The commentary, critique and compliments from both David and the other writers in the workshop helped me take the poem to a level beyond what I had initially envisioned, so I’m extremely thankful for that.

Also, I find a lot of inspiration in nature and Ottawa has plenty of it. While the forests here are in some ways different from those where I grew up in northwestern Ontario, the similarities are strong enough that being in the woods here reminds me of home. Some of the lines in “The End of the Line” were inspired by a snow-shoeing trek in the Greenbelt that brought to mind stories my Grandad had told me about his own wilderness experiences. 

Q: What are you working on now? 

I recently applied for the optional residency program of the University of BC’s M.F.A. in Creative Writing, after talking about doing it for years, so I am doing a lot of nail-biting while waiting to hear back about that. I’m writing a new short story, and working on finding homes for a few poems I’ve composed over the last couple of months. And I’m always scribbling down little bits of poetry, in the hopes that they’ll turn into something bigger.

Six Questions interview #105 : Jérôme Melançon

Jérôme Melançon now makes noises when he gets up off a couch. He tries to pass them off as sound poetry but his two children know better and say so, and his two cats give him dirty looks. His wife shrugs lovingly. He thinks. He often tries to ignore emails from the University of Regina in order to live in different headspaces. He recently turned into a chair. Over time people have thought it would be a good idea to place his name on four packages of sheets where the lines of ink don’t reach the right margins, which can be traced back to above/ground press, Éditions des Plaines, and Prise de parole. He is grateful to those people. The best parts of these packages of sheets are doubtlessly their top sheet: his first concrete poem (which he didn’t recognize as such then), the photographs by Gérôme Truc (@socioeye), and the artwork by Isabelle Gagné (@misspixels). He also hires yet other people to kill trees or their descendents so that full lines of ink can live without ever seeing the light of day in the B section of university libraries and behind exorbitantly priced paywalls. He has very little clout on social media accounts registered under @lethejerome but what else do you expect from a piece of furniture?

How long were you in Ottawa, and what first brought you here? What took you away?

I suppose beginning in 1994 – my family moved there after a couple of years close to Barrie, Ontario. Ottawa was my father’s last posting in the military. I finished high school in Gatineau, went to Cégep in Hull, then started as an undergrad in economics at Ottawa U. I switched quickly to philosophy when I realized economics was all math and entirely made up – might as well do metaphysics. I got a job at the National Arts Centre parking lot thanks to a friend, directing an orderly flow of traffic and patrolling in a golf cart and running cash. Lots of time to read, lots of music in my walkman on that hour long bus ride back and forth from Gatineau. Then I worked at the Librairie du Soleil for a while, before it was all about research assistant work while I did my master’s degree. I moved out to Hull, a couple blocks from the Galeries, the same neighbourhood where I had spent a lot of time back when I played in a basement band - we did maybe two shows but wow did we ever rehearse. I actually moved in with this great girl whom I ended up marrying and who took me out West. Until then I spent a lot of time in the market, waiting for the bus by the Rideau Centre. I’ve got fond memories of Record Runner. When we both finished our master’s degrees in 2004 we moved to France so I could do my PhD there. We stayed there for a year while I completed my courses, then we moved to Saskatoon. Because why not.

So family brought me there. And as a child my family would often drive through Ottawa to see my grand-parents in the Témiscamingue region. We’d stop at my uncle and aunt’s place in Gloo-cess-t-heure, sometimes we’d even visit the attractions, I have early-ish memories of Parliament Hill and the National Gallery and this clown poster I hated in my cousin’s bedroom. Many of my relatives and extended family ended up in the Outaouais region, at least for a while, some for good. It’s like a magnet for that whole region. My father had even studied at Ottawa U, and was extremely proud of taking me for registration day, when we had to fill out forms by hand based on printed schedules and hard copies of the course catalogue.

How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?

In my first French class in Cégep we read Baudelaire from our textbook. I barely read at the time – played bass, some video games, lots of time posting on newsgroups and chatting on IRC. I was wasting time at the Cégep co-op bookstore and they had a few copies of Les Fleurs du mal so I thought meh, why not. I don’t know what possessed me to buy it; this was likely the first book I bought on impulse and the beginning of, well, everything. I have this clear image of a small stack of them, with this one copy standing up on top, the really cheap “Le livre de poche” édition with the yellow paper (which has since been replaced, sadly). I read it every night, thought Baudelaire could say things I didn’t know were possible. Some of my first poems were sonnets, but I really didn’t get them. I left a couple of my professor’s desk, he told me no one wrote sonnets anymore but why don’t you submit them to this province-wide contest. That was also a beginning, of submitting to poetry contests and never hearing back. But I thought I could do it, and that was something.

By university I was reading a lot, working at the bookstore we were encouraged to take books home (carefully) overnight to read them so we’d know more about our stock. At Ottawa U there was a group of philosophy students who hung out together quite a bit, mostly at the French bar (which was not the Fulcrum, I forget its name now, but it also closed while I was still there – the one on the second floor). We talked about writing a lot, thought we were really High Culture, and snobby too. I remember being at a bar on the Promenade du Portage one night, and there just happened to be a poetry reading and we were being loud and obnoxious. This one writer yelled “VOS GUEULES” and some of us (not me, I wanted to disappear in my chair) started yelling back, then we just left out of boredom. That wasn’t very nice. And it was my only contact with the writing community at the time. Oh and I published a couple of poems in the French lit department journal, Textures I think. But we really pushed each other even though I don’t think we even really read each other very much. Turns out we did ok after that, even though we, or I at least, haven’t kept in touch: Annie-Claude Thériault keeps winning contests and being featured in Québec newspapers for her fiction, I just happened upon Maya Ombasic’s memoir in translation at the public library in Regina, and I’ve got a few things out myself. I don’t know what the others are up to. During that time I wrote a full manuscript’s worth of poems and submitted them to the Salon du livre de l’Outaouais’ book prize, which came with a publication. When an employee of the festival stopped by the bookstore I asked who had won, and they told me they hadn’t received any manuscripts worth publishing. That stung, and I actually stopped writing for a couple of years after that, maybe but probably not for that reason.

How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all? Have there been subsequent shifts due to where you have lived since?

Being part of this little group just made writing seem like something we could do. One wrote novels, one wrote short stories, I wrote poetry, others wrote other stuff, we all wrote philosophy papers all the time, and we retreated from writing to be together then went back to writing. It normalized it at the time, which was really important because I didn’t know other writers (unless you count my uncle who was writing his dissertation in history and had written a few oral history books already, which had always impressed me).

An important shift took place when I lived in Paris. Writers, writing is everywhere there, and the city is in everything people write about. So it’s in the forefront of my first collection, and the background of the second. It was a very isolating moment, living there after getting married, knowing no one, studying, figuring out things that are simple only when you’re from somewhere. SO I worked hard to find beauty through writing. I had this sense of having a very, very small place in this world of French-language poetry, which still revolves around Paris for many people.

Another important shift happened when I published my first collection and started to be invited to events in Winnipeg and Edmonton. I discovered a community of writers there – a tight-knit one in Saint-Boniface, which had called itself the post-néo-rielistes for a while, a loose one in Alberta. Charles Leblanc in Winnipeg was incredible, gave me a copy of his book too. And through the French Twist event at the Edmonton Poetry Festival I discovered bilingual writing, which launched me in a new direction. Gisèle Villeneuve’s Visiting Elizabeth is a grand, wonderful example of messing around with living in two languages. And just a fantastic book.

What did you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else? What did Ottawa provide, or allow?

Now I feel actually connected to the English-language Ottawa poets’ community, because I’ve spent so much time listening to old episodes of The Small Machine Talks and because I’ve published with above/ground press. I pay more attention to what’s going on out there than I ever did before. Moving out West I never really got into a community of writers, although I know of them, I read them, both in French and English.

Honestly I have no idea what the French-language writers’ community is like in Outaouais – so many writers end up in Montreal, anybody I knew in Gatineau who wanted to make it with anything cultural ended up there and some maybe made their way back after a while. There were a couple of poets my friend knew, both published with L’Écrou in Montreal, which is just shutting down now, sadly. They have the best titles – Fourrer le feu and En chaloupe dans l’crushed stone. I maybe met them once each, I don’t remember.

So I’m not really integrated in any writers’ community, although I’m hoping that’ll change now that I’m publishing with Prise de parole and maybe attending events. I want to be, but you know. The pandemic threw a wrench in that. I do wish I had poet friends in Ottawa, and time to see them when I go back – I’m certainly trying to create those connections through social media in the meantime, somewhat deliberately, but mostly out of interest for people’s work. It feels like Ottawa has a single English-language poets’ community, the size is just right for it to be lively, and for there to be smaller groups, but also for all of them to know of each other and come together for specific events. Small enough that they all need one another. But the river is a real problem: people just never cross into the other spaces, aside from the borderlands (from the Promenade du Portage to Rideau Street). I never really got that. I’d move between the two communities if I lived there, I imagine. I have a poem about something like that, the bridges, stepping over the river (enjamber), in my new collection.

Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements here? How had the city and its community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work?

I just published a collection, En d’sous d’la langue, which mostly deals with all the normative aspects of speaking French. Language politics is a big part of French speakers’ lives in Ottawa and Gatineau, as everywhere else in Canada and really in the world. It’s really messy. So I wanted to deal with that and apparently there was no getting around linguistic identity and Québécois nationalism, and the period when I developed a sense of identity (which has shifted a lot since), so there are quite a few poems in this collection that deal directly with life in the suburbs, in Gatineau.

I once wrote a poem about being rejected from the Salon du livre de l’Outaouais’ manuscript prize – for the manuscript that became my first two collections. It was not a good poem. They said I didn’t qualify because I wasn’t born there and I didn’t live there, even though as far as I was concerned then I was very much from Gatineau/Hull/Ottawa, more than from anywhere else. So that stung. I do love how bywords.ca approaches the same issue – people who live, work, or study in the Ottawa region, or have done so in the past. That’s a wonderful way to recognize the role a place can play in people’s understanding of themselves and their writing.

What are you working on now?

At this very moment, or at least up to the very moment when I sat down, it was making my children into kind human beings. I’m also spending time getting the word out about my new collection, En d’sous d’la langue, which came out in late October with Prise de parole in Sudbury. It’s been nice to rediscover the poems, read them out loud now and then, so I hope I get to do more of that. Poetically speaking, I embarked, a bit by chance, on this massive project that’s taken up quite a bit of the last two months. It began with writing a poem in response to bp nichol’s use of French words, after reading him for the first time this summer (yes, I know, I’m late to the party), then “reading” or skimming through all of it, and writing a whole series of responses that might be poems or essays. I’m throwing in other references, and I’m quite close to being able to edit it, which feels quite daunting. It was just supposed to be this little thing, then maybe a whatever chapbook, and how it’s the Next Big Project. I think it has to do with interruption and the breaking within things and of self and their connections, but I might be wrong. I’m experimenting, which is not to say that it’s experimental. It’s probably been done. It’s fun though, I hope that much comes through.