Susan Glickman

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You are here: Home » ninja_forms_preview_page » 2014 » June

Archive for month: June, 2014

I can’t remember if I linked to this delightful article from the Mount Allison student newspaper, The Argosy, or not ..

27 Jun 2014 / 0 Comments / in The Blog/by Susan Glickman

Canadian poets discuss creative writing

Julie Bruck and Susan Glickman speak at Mt. A

by Daniel Marcotte
October 9, 2013

The Centre for Canadian Studies held their third event in their fall lineup last Thursday, with award-winning Canadian poets Julie Bruck and Susan Glickman leading a discussion after reading selections from their respective poetry collections. Hosted by Professor Christl Verduyn in the Owens Art Gallery foyer, the event served dually as the writers’ second-last stop in their two-week tour of Maritime universities.

Both writers published major, critically-acclaimed works last year: Bruck’s third collection of poems, entitled Monkey Ranch, earned her the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, and Glickman’s historically-inspired novel, The Tale Teller, as well as her poetry collection The Smooth Yarrow, continue to receive positive reviews throughout Canada since their release in 2012.

Bruck was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, and now lives in California where she continues to write and teach classes at the University of San Francisco and The Writing Salon, an independent school of creative writing for adults based in San Francisco and Berkeley. Her poetry has been featured in popular publications such as The Walrus and The New Yorker, among others. She is currently in the process of writing her fourth poetry collection.

Bruck cites the home as a frequent source of information and inspiration. “Our family relationships are our most intimate ones, and often our most fraught,” she explained. She believes this is often where people bear their true selves, giving a truer sense of being and living: “We reveal ourselves at our most human, whatever that may be.”

Although unbeknownst to her at the time, Susan Glickman went to the same high school as Bruck in Montreal, and went on to study dramatic arts and English literature in Boston, Massachusetts and at Oxford University in England. She has taught at the University of Toronto, and continues to live in the city where she works as a freelance editor for academic journals, in addition to pursuing her own creative projects.

Because of their extensive experience as educators, particularly in the fields of creative writing, both Glickman and Bruck offered advice regarding the composition process. They described their best inspirations as coming from extended contemplation and metaphoric extrapolation, rather than an instant eureka moment. “It’s usually a thought that won’t go away, like a grain of sand in your shoe,” speculated Glickman.

Due to Glickman’s success in both prose and poetry, she could attest to the varying challenges provided by each medium. “People who read novels like everything to be explained, and I’m still not used to that,” she elaborated, praising the concise and “compressed” nature of poetry. She also views poetry as a genre that is more perfectible and capable of expressing a complete idea or thought: “there’s a possibility of getting every word right, but that never happens with fiction,” she said.

Both poets also agreed that the process of writing must change the writer as much as it aims to change the reader. They explained that the role of a poet is to describe or conceptualize a common idea or feeling in ways that have not yet been used by either the writer or their audience. “If you’re not surprising yourself in the process,” Bruck commented, “then the work will be very flat.”

Despite their acclaim and success, both writers were refreshingly humble and eager to share their stories and advice with their audience during the discussion. Although not all students may go on to publish award-winning poems or prose, the pleasure of meeting excellent writers with the help of the Centre for Canadian Studies is a rewarding experience nonetheless.

– See more at: http://www.argosy.ca/article/canadian-poets-discuss-creative-writing#sthash.ukWyb0ON.dpuf

Nice Review of The Smooth Yarrow from indefatigable reader Michael Dennis

22 Jun 2014 / 0 Comments / in Reviews, The Blog/by Susan Glickman

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/

I fall into Susan Glickman’s books as easily as into conversation with a dear old friend.  Her voice just sounds so natural to me and I am endlessly curious to see what she wants to talk about next.You would be hard pressed to find a more natural voice in Canadian poetry and a voice full of such casual authority.

Witches Tit

Not particularly cold, it blushes slightly, a tiny bud
in the shadow of my left breast. You’d think it a freckle
or a mole and not be as far wrong as those who
four hundred years ago
would have burned me alive at the sight of it
after, of course, a significant interval of gratuitous torture
involving spikes being driven into various parts of me
tender anatomy and ending not in confession
but in exhausted and probably unconscious silence.

But who convinced the witch-hunters that evil marks the flesh?
And who was not deformed back then by something or other—
the body a map of disease and malnutrition,
stinking, lice-ridden, with bleeding gums and falling hair,
eyes clouded by cataracts, lids drooping with palsy, limbs trembling with ague,
pocked with sores, tumours, abscesses and ulcers.
Yet they ignored clear evidence of our shared mortality
in their search for one singular blemish, an extra nipple
with which to suckle a satanic familiar.

You’d think that centuries of plot and counterplot would have revealed
that most successful villains are unremarkable, their bodies
as fallible as ours, their faces as plausible, their stories
as full of lamentation and excuse. That the hand of God
if it bothered to write to us at all would surely be less
inscrutable. But no.
The encryption of the universe continues beyond our comprehension
as we study the marginalia on each others’ skin
blinkered and enraged, seeking somebody else, anybody else,
to blame.

…

Glickman has been writing the same solid line since she published her first book of poetry Complicity (Signal Editions, 1983).  Like all of her poems, those in The Smooth Yarrow are so humane and heartfelt and yet there is a tension underlying this naturalness – and it is that tension that makes these poems/stories universal.  Glickman knows what it is that we want to know.

Kiss

The baby, insatiable, eats you,
your cheek round as a breast
and almost as soft.

He pats it as a baker pats dough—
part scientist, part lover.

The dog licks his ass
and then your face;

nature’s egalitarian,
he means it kindly.

Mouth to mouth
we find each others’ softest places
and breathe.

…

Along with those many other traits I’ve long admired in the poetry of Susan Glickman, there has always been a fine sense of humour.  Humour is far too rare in the world, certainly far too rare in poetry.  With Glickman her wit is never far away from her wisdom.

I have always been partial to poems that are lists and in the following poem Glickman lists a litany of small defeats and fear.  It could be my list – or yours.

Things From Which One Never Recovers

A 42-year-old eardrum burst in sympathy with an infant’s infection
the arbitrariness of luck, both good and bad,
sunrise over a field of poppies south of Sparta
the boy in university who said I’m sorry, but I only want to be lonely
the girl on the high school basketball team who said
You have the biggest ass I’ve ever seen
the taste of cod-liver oil in a spoonful of molasses
administered by a schoolfriend’s proper British mother
as a prophylactic against obsolete diseases
betrayal
giving birth
snorkeling for the first time in tropical waters—
how the fish part impassively to let one through
and carry on, oblivious to their own casual beauty
a contemptuous review that gets everything wrong in elegant language
like a sadist with impeccable manners
the entrenched injustice of the world that renders one’s own problems
too trivial to mention
that there are different kinds of shoes for every sport
but only one pair of arthritic feet
Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Opus 28
discovering the possibility of a really good wine
having a wild bird eat from your hand
being lied to by your child
seeing your child hurt and being unable to do anything about it
being hurt yourself and being unable to do anything about it

Awards & Prizes

The Violin Lover, Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2006.


WINNER 2006 Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction!


The Picturesque and the Sublime: A Poetics of the Canadian Landscape Montreal and Kingston: McGill Queen's University Press, 1998.


WINNER 1999 Gabrielle Roy Prize Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures


WINNER 2000 Raymond Klibansky Book Prize Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada For a transcript of the Klibansky acceptance speech -- please click HERE

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