#1: An Interview with rob mclennan
"I grew up on a farm, and I had already understood through experience how one exists within a community, which I simply transferred to my consideration of literature."
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Today’s interview is with rob mclennan. Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, he currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour.
His most recent titles include a collection of short stories, On Beauty (University of Alberta Press, 2024), the poetry collection World’s End, (ARP Books, 2023), a suite of pandemic essays, essays in the face of uncertainties (Mansfield Press, 2022) and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023).
An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics (periodicityjournal.blogspot.com) and Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com). He is editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com
Who are you and how do you express your creativity? Or, who are you and how do you describe your art?
I describe myself as a writer, and have been writing full-time since the early 1990s (with remarkably brief forays into visual art, acting and music, none of which I’m actively doing, but am not against returning to at any point). Over the past thirty-plus years, my writing has stretched across poetry to fiction to reviews to essays to non-fiction. I am also an editor and publisher of many literary schemes, including the chapbook press above/ground press (which recently turned thirty-one years old), which I feel an intrinsic part of my daily writing practice and writing life (however one wishes to describe such).
I prefer the self-designation of “writer” over “poet” (which feels reductive, and doesn’t contain my multitudes), or over “author” (which feels a term of status over actual function: I write, therefore writer; I do not “auth,” etcetera). There are moments I’ve wished to reduce my creative biography thus: “rob makes stuff.” It just seems easier.
What keeps you coming back to creative work? Why is it worth doing?
I’ve always considered literary work a kind of study, as much as anything else. I focus my time and energy in creating and composing work, but also working to further explorations based on prior writing, prior research and elements of craft and form. There’s no point in continuing to produce new work unless we properly understand what has come before, so a large part of what I consider part of my writing practice is working to better understand (the extensive reviewing I do is a large part of this, I’m sure). I spent my twenties working the muscle of daily writing routine, and have evolved since into this being what I do all day, every day. This is how I best think, and best produce work.
Honestly, if we are to survive and evolve as a species, it requires regular considerations of self-evaluation and re-evaluation for everyone, ways in which we require our thinking to be challenged, questioned and altered. Conflict comes, in large part, due to those trapped and immobile in their ideas.
What legacy do you hope to leave with your art?
I haven’t any control over such a thing as that, so I suppose all I can hope for is to be seen as a combination of curiosity, kindness and encouragement. I would hope the books get read, at least a few of them, well after I’m gone. “Genius” is an overused word, often thrown around rather carelessly, but I’m not against it.
What are your biggest challenges when it comes to maintaining a steady creative practice, and how have you overcome them?
The biggest hurdle might be apathy, I suppose. We battle laziness and lies in our search for the truth. Across certain stretches it does feel a bit hard to maintain momentum, but I think I am quite good at the long game. I spent my twenties building up my writing routine, so the daily impulse to sit down to work isn’t the same kind of challenge. Short-term frustrations do tend to get in the way, but those usually fall by the wayside soon enough. An income sure would be nice. All of this is ongoing.
What advice do you have for someone who wants to start or maintain their creative practice in a new way?
Don’t let short-term frustrations get you down. Read as much as possible, write as much as possible. Find your people. Be patient with yourself, and your work. Be curious. Do the reading.
Why does mentorship/ community support matter?
Not that there are ever shortcuts, but it can be helpful to have advice from someone further ahead in experience. Another eye is always important, even if just for the sake of cheerleading. It isn’t impossible to work in a complete vacuum, but we are social creatures, after all. If part of the point of creating art is to release it into the world, it seems important to get a sense of how it might be seen or considered in the larger context of already-published works. You can’t write a sonnet and not expect it to be compared to every other sonnet that has ever been written ever, so you should at least have some sense of the form, say. The last thing one wishes is to build the best 286 possible and then have the market mock you for being so outdated.
And yet, what we do is art, not graphic design. We must follow our enthusiasms first, over any demands of the market. Still: if one is going to work weird or marginal, be aware of the margins that came prior. One can’t break boundaries if completely unaware of where those boundaries lay. One needs to understand form and structure before one can break, twist, rebuild or push against any of it.
Do you have a mentor? If yes, who is your mentor?
I had no specific or overt mentors, but there were many writers over the years who did tell me that what I was doing had value, whether or not they were able to help me further what it was I was attempting. They each were, in their own way, mentors of a sort. I first encountered poets Henry Beissel and Gary Geddes while I was still in high school, and they were both helpful in that regard, although I learned through the process that neither of them cared for the writing I found interesting (centred around 1960s west coast TISH poetics). I spent years visiting each of them whenever I went home to the farm.
By my early twenties, I’d relocated to Ottawa, and encountered further encouragement from writers such as Michael Dennis and Diana Brebner, two poets who also didn’t necessarily know what I was attempting, but provided essential encouragement and conversation. It wasn’t until I encountered poets such as Ken Norris, George Bowering, Judith Fitzgerald, Joe Blades, John Newlove, David W. McFadden, Gil McElroy and Stan Rogal by my mid-twenties that I’d really begun to encounter poets with an affinity to the work I was attempting, and have an encouragement for what it was I was doing paired with real appreciation for the writing. I was pretty much off and running by that point.
If no, are there other support structures or community that have helped you?
Honestly, starting to attend readings generally, and open sets, specifically, in my early twenties helped me encounter others attempting to do similar things to what I was attempting. Find your people is important advice, and can help enormously. As well, I grew up on a farm, and I had already understood through experience how one exists within a community, which I simply transferred to my consideration of literature. You seek help, you provide help, etcetera. There are things you can do for others, and things you require help with or through.
It took a while before I realized that this approach wasn’t how most approached writing, which actually made me realize how much more important it was for me to continue in this same way. One helps in the ways that one can, so I do that. Not everyone wants to run readings, or book fairs, or do reviews, or conduct interviews, etcetera, so I do all of that. Most writers are happy enough in their corners, focusing on their own projects, but I’ve always approached this with more openness, a far wider scope.
How did you find your mentor? (or support structure/community)
I’m not sure how I first began figuring that out. If one doesn’t know readings exist, how does one look for them? But Ottawa poet Michael Dennis was instrumental into me first starting to read in open sets. I wanted to write, and he told me that a good reader sells more books than a bad reader, so I forced myself against shyness to work that particular muscle. And through that, I begun to discover what worked and what didn’t; I found my people.
How has your mentor (or support structure/community) impacted you?
Support is a wide-ranging consideration, and can mean anything from reading invitations, book sales, audience engagement, funding to engaged conversation.
Stepping off stage and someone offering: “I really liked that piece.” These are the moments that not only drive us to continue to do such lengths of work across solitude, but offer a rudder as well, to assist with direction, when needed. I couldn’t have done most of this work without support. I wouldn’t still be pushing so damned hard to keep going.
Who is your dream mentor, living or dead, and why?
I think the late American poet Robert Creeley would have been interesting to spend some time with, and around. Robin Blaser, also. As I understand it, both offered an openness, encouragement and a liveliness that would have easily prompted some new ways of thinking, and some new bursts of energy. Perhaps, even, to have been in the San Francisco orbit of Jack Spicer, apparently at a particular bar right by City Lights Bookstore. I remember Michael Dennis telling me years ago he made a pilgrimage there at one point (although long after Spicer had died; just to be able to drink in the same bar). I hope to do same.
(Interview conducted via email July 9, 2024)
Find your people. Probably the greatest advice I'd give any writer. It is such a lonely gig that it truly is a gift to your self to force socialization and bring some supportive similars into your life.