How did you first come to postcard prose? What is it about the form that resonates?
I like the blocky melancholy of it, kind of sandboxy.
When I started writing (and reading, really), I was into poetry, I was into the little rhythms of it. I liked the movement within constraint. But then I always loved the rhythm of when a funny person tells a loud story and the sentences spill over, because I grew up in the midst of a bunch of languages in Hong Kong, so I am invested/interested in running on, even if it leads to dead ends. Which is definitely an artless/selfish impulse in a way, but I like shooting the shit, which in some way this kind of prose always is, like a smoke break, which like jamming is about the sheer consistency of meeting over time to develop your own language with someone, so when I get published it’s like someone happens to overhear. There’s a tight, passing intimacy to the form that I like.
How does a story begin?
I think for me right now fundamentally a dynamic between two people.
Do you see your writing as a single, extended project, or a series of threads that occasionally weave together to form something else?
Weave. Maybe into a fashion statement.
How do you see your music and prose works in conversation, if at all?
Rhythm is quite important to me. Compelling the body to move. I just (mis?)read your question now as “how do you see your music and prose work in conversation” as in how do those two things which are one thing leek out into daily speech.
I’m also mostly weened on improv, learning my instrument through jamming with different people, so I think my sensibilities/ways of reacting as a musician apply a bit to my writing too.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
Various waves. When I know I have to, I go there. But normally I’m just scribbling.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
I am terribly out of touch right now. But generally, new_sinews, ergot., Propagule, Sixth Finch, mercury firs.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
I have only been reading Ulysses lately, quite
piecemeal, and for the first time, but it is very very exciting. Like watching
the swerve of atoms in language.
Atsushi Ikeda (@ah_daradara) is a writer/musician based in Montreal, whose work has appeared in ergot., Apocalypse Confidential, new_sinews, and more. He plays guitar for Holly McLachlan, Jasmati, and various improv duos.