2023 saw the addition of more of my favourite things here on the blog: eight new interviews and thirteen new quotes on writing. Those eight interviews put me over one hundred total! And more will be coming your way soon, including interviews with Gillian Sze and Sue Sinclair in the next issues of The Antigonish Review and ARC Poetry Magazine, respectively. And my Read Local BC Poetry Month series will be back for its fifth year.
Far more important than any of that, in 2023 the Malahat Review Listserv experienced a second "unsubscribe" meltdown down (you can read my summary of the 2014 meltdown here). This time round, I opened up the opportunity to publish found poems drawn from the dozens of "unsubscribe" requests to all Listserv members, and poems poured in from Rhonda Ganz, Patrick Grace, Penn Kemp and more (you can read them all here).
On a personal level, 2023 was a very busy year, which largely explains the sparse posting! In addition to writing and teaching, I served as Writer-in-Residence at the University of the Fraser Valley in the winter, and then returned to campus to coordinate the Fraser Valley Writers Festival in the Fall. I also wrapped up edits on my next book, Weather, a companion piece to my 2016 collection The News, which will be published this Spring from Gaspereau Press.
 |
| Some of my favourite reads of 2023 |
Enough preamble! On to my review of my favourite posts of the year:
July 2023: On Display in My Mind: An Interview with Nick Thran
December 2023: Choosing Not To Cry: An Interview with Jane Munro
December 2023: Learning a Second Language When It Should Be My First: An Interview with Wanda John-Kehewin
"I don’t see the engagement with other art forms in my poems as an interest, really. It’s just my life. Maybe it has to do with trying to rid oneself of the ego, of the preciousness that can sometimes accompany one’s identity as it relates to a singular art form. I think it’s important to think about the metaphor of an artistic diversity, like a biodiversity, as something that has the potential to save and sustain life. It never has made sense to me why anyone would impose a hierarchy of value upon, or a border between, an episode of Succession, an album by Frank Ocean, a quilt by Anna Torma, and a poem by Sarah Holland-Batt. And it has never made sense to me why I wouldn’t write about the ways any other person or group’s work has burrowed itself into my own consciousness, into my own point of view and practice. " - Nick Thran
November 2023: Listening For My Breath: An Interview with Délani Valin
"I’ve long had the sense that being Métis isn’t a checkbox we tick off, nor does it end with the knowledge of Métis ancestry. Being Métis is an ongoing process: a way of seeing, being, knowing and connecting. Being in relation with other Métis people helped me see this, and made me realize the validity of my own experience. It echoed the experiences of others, and was in some places distinct." - Délani Valin
November 2023: The Poem's Hum: An Interview with Roger Farr
"At times I imagined what I was doing as a kind of psychoanalysis—deciphering exquisitely complicated “defense mechanisms” designed to throw me off the case. But the realization that I would never “get it right” was very liberating. I let go of any desire to “master” poetic language a long time ago, and instead learned to enjoy the free play and signification of words. It’s something I notice a lot of my writing students struggle with. For me, difficulty and complexity are an invitation into collaboration and creative problem solving. As a writer I thrive there." - Roger Farr
November 2023: Uncooperative with the Expected: An Interview with Dale Tracy
"Outside of poetry, I worry a lot about misunderstandings and about misrepresenting myself. But communicating with poetry circumvents those worries. There’s always more meaning in art than any one person can arrive at, so I have no impulse for readers that would get in their minds exactly what I have in mine. " - Dale Tracy
"There is a draining of the body when a lover goes and will not be replaced. I am hugely grateful for the fullness of life I have been given. But now solitude is to my soul what food is to my body. I feel a profound need, and gratitude, for the solitude that has come lately into my life, giving me time and space to write." - Jane Munro
December 2023: Close to the Barbed Wire: An Interview with Tāriq Malik
"It was a struggle pinning the words to the pages. Often, all I wanted to do was violently break open the language to express my own rage." - Tāriq Malik
December 2023: A Little Clearer and Cleaner: An Interview with David Zieroth
"write to find what the initial idea or inspiration wants me to find, and I feel this process not only creates action on the page but also is the most exhilarating and exciting in my life, and also the healthiest. " - David Zieroth
December 2023: Learning a Second Language When It Should Be My First: An Interview with Wanda John-Kehewin
"I wanted to use poetic elements like tone, diction, syntax, meter, form, etc. to weave my way through discovery and what it felt like to write in another language which wasn’t my own, but which was the only language I spoke. It felt foreign and still feels foreign to try to sound out Cree words, like I am trying to learn a second language when it should be my first. " - Wanda John-Kehewin
Happy New Year, all!
No comments:
Post a Comment