I visited so many dear friends and met so many wonderful people on my mini-tour of the west coast, but the highlight of the trip was a pilgrimage to Cathedral Grove – one of the last stands of old growth forest on Vancouver Island. The fact that I was reading Richard Powers’ magisterial novel, The Overstory, during my travels, definitely contributed to the portentousness of the experience. Here’s a photo that may give you some idea of the sublimity of the Douglas Firs there, just outside Port Alberni.

Saturday, 17 August 2019

Saturday, 10 August 2019

Susan Glickman : part one

Susan Glickman grew up in Montréal, but after many travels landed up in Toronto with a husband, two children, a dog, and an old house that always needs fixing. Formerly an academic, she now works as a freelance editor and is learning to paint. She is the author of seven books of poetry from Montreal’s Véhicule Press, most recently What We Carry (2019). She has also published four novels, three children’s books, and an award-winning work of literary criticism: The Picturesque and the Sublime: A Poetics of the Canadian Landscape (1998). The children’s books and her novel The Tale-Teller (2012) have all been translated by Christiane Duchesne for Les Éditions du Boréal, the novel appearing as Les aventures étranges et surprenantes d’Esther Brandeau, moussaillon (2014).

Photo credit: Toan Klein.

How did you first engage with poetry?

I was enchanted with poetry from the moment my parents began reading Mother Goose to me, and I started making up rhymes before I could read or write. I loved the sounds of words as much as I loved their meaning and I loved their rhythm as much as I loved their sounds. I don’t think we read much contemporary – or even modern — poetry in high school, but I bought a copy of Leonard Cohen’s Selected Poems 1956–1968 at a school bookfair when I was sixteen, and my head exploded.
Then, in university, I had the great good fortune of studying with Denise Levertov, who became my mentor and my friend. Everything I understand about open form — about writing to express the inner rhythms of thought and feeling, about the line break and the breath — I owe to her, and to the practice that began with her. Living in Greece the next year, when I was nineteen, introduced me to modern Greek poetry and that also made me more interested in experimenting outside closed forms. I sometimes go back to those forms, however. I especially love the knotty logic of sonnets, because they help me tame big emotions

http://poetryminiinterviews.blogspot.com/search/label/Susan%20Glickman

In the last two years I taught eleven courses, edited nine books and the liner notes for one CD, and mentored three students privately. I also wrote the first draft of YA novel and started a new manuscript of poems and revised another novel that has not been published yet.

I had four books come out during that same period — My latest novel, The Tale-Teller, my sixth book of poems, The Smooth Yarrow, and the final two titles in my “Lunch Bunch trilogy of children’s books, Bernadette in the Doghouse and Bernadette to the Rescue. This meant I had to do final edits and a lot of promotion for them as well — which wasn’t as much fun as it ought to have been because it was so hard to juggle everything.

For example, when I went to Ottawa for a poetry festival a week after my husband had major surgery, I had to set up a schedule of friends visiting daily to help him with things because I felt so bad about going away and then, on that trip, I lost the power cord to my laptop so was not able to correct my students’ work as I needed to before teaching the following day. This is the kind of stuff that happens when you try to do everything!

The only way to survive as a freelancer who wants to do her own writing is to be brutally efficient — which means you will have no social life. You should, however, get a gym membership and use it, because you will need to keep your energy level up. In addition, if you keep fit, you can look good in inexpensive clothing, which is all that you will be able to afford. The only thing you shouldn’t skimp on is getting a decent haircut from time to time. Having a good haircut makes you look like you’re competent and in control of your life even when you are not. That and a watch. Always wear a watch. Only teenagers use their cell-phones to check the time.

Besides getting a good haircut and wearing a watch, here is what I always tell my creative writing students at U of T and Ryerson when they ask me for advice. I tell them a writer only needs a few things:

1.  something to write with
2.  good lighting
3.  an ergonomic chair
4.  a dog, to make you get out of the chair and go for a walk.
5.  Roget’s thesaurus and a couple of good dictionaries
6.  a library card
7.  regular visits to the optometrist
8.  co-operation from other people in the house (In other words, they must be made to understand that even though you work at home you are WORKING at home and therefore are unavailable except in an emergency).

Ideally you get a room of your own to work in, even if it’s tucked away in a corner of the basement, somewhere you can leave ongoing projects spread out and no one will mess with them, but if you are forced to work at the kitchen or dining room table, make sure everyone else clears away their stuff after every meal so you have space to work. (You may need to get a bunch of bins or baskets for them to sweep everything into).

1. Time management is absolutely essential. I use the free Sunbird calendar you can download from Mozilla for long-term planning, but also plan each day in much more detail on work-sheet I review every morning and revise every night.
2. Know when you are most productive and schedule your most important work for then. For example, when I am working on an editing project, I usually spend mornings on my own writing and afternoons on editing and then go back in the evening to review what I wrote in the morning and edit it some more and maybe also get in a tad more editing if I didn’t meet my goal for the day. (Yes, the workdays are absurdly long. Often I work ten-hour-days, 7 days a week.)
3. Give yourself realistic goals and try to stick to them. It’s better to be pleased that you got more done than expected than discouraged because you got less done than expected! When I’m juggling teaching and editing and writing at the same time, I never expect more than 500 words a day from myself; 1000 words a day is for when I have more concentrated writing time and if it turns into 2000 or more, I am delighted.
4. Don’t answer the phone unless you are expecting a call. Pick up all your phone calls at around 4:00 before people leave work so if anything important turns up, you can still call back.
5. Strictly limit the time you spend on email and Facebook and other social media. Turn off the internet when you are writing (it’s OK to use it for research). You can browse Facebook as a reward when you meet a goal. It’s way more fun that way.

including this little bit published online in Open Book Toronto some years back:

 Q: When you are writing fiction, is there an audience you are thinking of?

A: It took me a while to realize why this question made me so uncomfortable. Finally I realized that the problem was that I write for a reader, singular, who is actively making my work come alive in their imagination through a process of engagement, and not an audience, plural, sitting there listening while I perform the work for them. Although I always read my writing out loud to get the rhythms and sounds right and prune any syntactical awkwardness, although I do care hugely that it lend itself to live presentation, there’s really only one reader I’m writing for: highly intelligent, empathetic, curious, witty, and easily bored (though not irritably critical). This reader has impeccable taste, has read widely and with great discrimination, and demands that I revise ruthlessly. I’ve never actually met this reader, but we have a tacit agreement that I will do my best to write something worth reading and they will do their best to provide generous attention.

Interview with Pearl Luke                                                           (2007)

What is your favourite thing about writing?

My favourite thing about writing fiction is the sensation, when it’s going well, of inhabiting another world and other bodies; of living more than one life. It’s exhilarating and terrifying because you have no idea where you are going or how long it will last. My favourite thing about writing poetry is the sensation, when it’s going well, of making something fine; finer than I’d ever hoped I could. In the best of all possible worlds, both these sensations happen simultaneously and that, right there, is my reason for living.

But there are lots of other things I love about writing that keep me going even when I’m not in the zone. I love sharpening pencils, for example. I love having an excuse to make endless cups of tea. I love going for walks with my dog Toby because we both need a break from sitting, for God’s sake, and then finding that the impasse is resolved after about a half an hour of chasing squirrels and admiring my neighbours’ gardens. I love not needing an excuse to buy more books. I love not having to dress up to go to work. I love having articulate friends. I love writing on napkins in cafés and on in little notebooks on trains. I love doing cryptic crossword puzzles and playing Scrabble and reading Roget’s Thesaurus and calling such activities “research.”

Good thing you didn’t ask me what I don’t like about writing however, because there are just as many things I could list there! For instance, I don’t love that look on people’s faces when they ask you what you do and you say you’re a writer and they want to know if you’re famous because of course any good writer would be famous, right? I don’t like the loneliness, and the endless waiting when you send stuff out, and the lack of money. But you didn’t ask, so I won’t answer.

What do you think readers would be most surprised to learn about you?

I’m really funny! But so far that hasn’t made it into my books. I don’t know why. It may be that my humour is a defence against feeling the kinds of things I let myself feel in my writing. Or it may be that my humour is just too improvisational to merit transcription.

http://www.accessola.org/web/OLA/Forest_of_Reading/OLA/Forest_of_Reading/Forest_of_Reading.aspx?hkey=e913abbb-1687-438d-bc68-64eda110aeb1

dovegreyreader scribbles

a Devonshire based bookaholic, sock-knitting quilter who was a community nurse once upon a time.

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

The Friendship of Poets.

I didn’t know Helen Dunmore and I don’t know Susan Glickman, but when I bought my copy of Helen Dunmore’s poetry collection Inside the Wave last year, a few months before Helen died, one of the first things I noticed was the book’s dedication

‘For Susan Glickman’

Having also had a book dedicated to me for the first time recently I now understand quite how special this is. Jacob’s Room is Full of Books might have been written by Susan Hill, but it’s my book really; it’s like a baby of mine. I look on the book fondly when I spy it in bookshops and have even been known to give it greater prominence if I feel it is sitting in the shadows; a bit like easing a child to the front of a crowded venue so they can see. I have been known to open a copy just to check my name is still there; maybe stare at it a bit longer than usual; maybe hope that someone will ask me ‘Is it any good?’ or ‘Should I read it?’ I’d like to think, being traditionally English and therefore modest, self-effacing and retiring (ahem) that there would be no brag and boast, that I wouldn’t say ‘ Of course Susan dedicated that to me you know…’. But there are no certainties in life. The words might slip and slide out before I could stop them because I am inordinately proud and honoured by the whole thing.

And I don’t know but I can only imagine Canadian author and poet Susan Glickman might have felt similarly honoured about Inside the Wave; to be the dedicatee of someone’s final collection of poems surely an honour beyond thanks, an indication of a very special friendship. The connection was enough to make me order a collection of Susan Glickman’s poetry and The Smooth Yarrow (2012) has sat beside Inside the Wave ever since.

Inside the Wave is a collection that has become something of a touchstone for me, in many ways a gentle and uplifting elegy, a requiem, by a remarkable writer, and I have read it over and again. It is a book of resilience and reality, of consolation and comfort. Different poems take on new resonance with each read and it has been revealing to hear Helen Dunmore’s children talking about the legacy of their mother’s words since the post-humous announcement of the Costa Book Award. About how much those words have always meant to them, but how incredibly precious they are now….

My Life’s Stem Was Cut

My life’s stem was cut,
But quickly, lovingly
I was lifted up,
I heard the rush of the tap
And I was set in water
In the blue vase, beautiful
In lip and curve,
And here I am
Opening one petal
As the tea cools.
I wait while the sun moves
And the bees finish their dancing,
I know I am dying
But why not keep flowering
As long as I can
from my cut stem?

Helen Dunmore (Inside the Wave)

When a final poem, written just days before her death, was published in The Guardian, I printed it out and stuck it in the back of my copy. Hold Out Your Arms the ultimate in consolation and preparation for the next journey.

I was reading both collections again this week, Inside the Wave and The Smooth Yarrow  and came across a poem by Susan Glickman, dedicated to Helen Dunmore, entitled ‘Snow’. It is a poem that reads as a conversation of questions and works best if read out loud with all the intonations of voice that a question and response create. I would normally quote an extract here to give a flavour, but Snow is a poem to be read as a whole so I wrote to Susan Glickman and am very grateful for her blessing to publish it here in full.

Snow

for Helen Dunmore 

What is it?
A storm of feathers
From a bird?
From a landlocked cloud.
Full of thunder?
No, full of silence.
Silence?
As a kind of song.
For one voice or many?
Many. It is a dance of transient beings.
But you said it was a song.
I meant a dance. Silence itself, moving.
Where?
To the edge.
The edge of what?
Where earth and sky meet.
The horizon?
The horizon.
Perhaps it is nothing but sand.
It may be nothing, but it is not sand.
What do you mean, nothing?
It’s landscapes are illusory.
Can you build with it?
When it is wet enough.
And when it is not wet, what then?
It cracks underfoot, or hardens into dangerous transparency.
Like glass?
But without reflection.
Moving like a river?
Unmoving. Like a lake.
Water then.
Then water.

Susan Glickman (The Smooth Yarrow)

What is the nature of something so transient. The more I read it the more I felt it, as it moved towards those final two lines. Grasping at something that is so fleeting yet so very special, something so tricky to define. Without incurring the wrath of Philip Pullman writing in Daemon Voices, as he takes up the cudgels over the ‘interrogation of poetry’, (especially in the classroom), I found much to love and ponder here, moments like that single extended line stretching out icily into the frozen distance.

I am so delighted that Helen Dunmore has lit my way to Susan Glickman because there is another much longer poem in Susan Glickman’s collection which I had only read properly this week.

I loved ‘In the Garden’ for its realistic take on gardening and plants, all seeming particularly relevant after my recent foray out there and I think we’d all agree with this…

‘Like poets, gardeners
never concede failure.
If something doesn’t thrive
they promptly transplant it….

But then I read this, the final stanza…

‘Those we love we try to coax into staying
but it is not their way, though they swear
never to forget us, and to return bearing new gifts.
We clutch this promise to us through the chill that follows
squinting at the snow. imagining instead
a blizzard of white blossom.’

Ostensibly about plants as winter approaches (and don’t we all love to keep things in flower to first frosts) but what a wonderful analogy it seems with thoughts of losing someone special. Those words arced across to Snow and My Life’s Stem Was Cut  and to the sad loss of Helen Dunmore,  before transporting me back to Hanmer Springs, New Zealand and that stunning blossom in the grounds of the deserted Queen Mary’s Hospital. In the space of minutes I had travelled many thousands of emotional miles

I have no idea about the day-to-day realities of the bonds of friendship in this case, but its language is out there for everyone to share, so how pleased I am to have discovered this one, and as if to complete the circle and bring me back to where I started, Susan Glickman tells me that her forthcoming collection will be dedicated to Helen Dunmore.

I can’t possibly end without my very most favourite poem from Inside the Wave…

Little papoose

If I were the moon
With a star papoose
In the windy sky
I’d carry my one star home.

If I were the sea
With boats in my arms
On this cold morning
I’d carry them,

If I were sleeping
And my dream turned
I would carry you
Little papoose
Wherever you choose.

Helen Dunmore

Footnote : A hat tip to poetry publisher Bloodaxe  for bringing Inside the Wave to fruition, and who have been around for a great many of my poetry-loving years featuring large on my shelves. Searching for more collections by Helen Dunmore, and having bought The Malarkey in Waterstones recently, I headed to the Bloodaxe website for any more available titles. How pleased I was to discover they would send Glad of These Times to me for £7.95 post free. Sadly my order was followed by an email of apology and cancellation, a website error as the book is out of print. Never mind, I will find a copy somewhere…and still a hat tip to Bloodaxe for being there.

What an investment and such incredible value poetry books still represent for the hours and hours they give back in return.