How did you first come to poetry? What is it about the form that resonates?
I have to give credit to my parents for my introduction to poetry. I had a bookshelf in my room when I was a kid, and owned some books of children’s verse by Dennis Lee and others, but it was from my step-father Ted’s books when I was becoming a teen, where I found the Beat writers and a couple of University of Toronto poetry anthologies, that I became hooked on poetry and adjacent arts. When I was young I was drawn to what I thought was poetry’s ability to transgress and obfuscate, and although these are elements I still enjoy, I’ve come to wonder at its endless variety of expression and form.
How does a poem begin?
To be honest, I have deleted a few attempts to answer this question because I find the beginnings of a poem almost everywhere, and start many poems in different ways, it could be a phrase that pops into my head, a deliberation over something, or a reaction to what I am reading, etc. Most of these beginnings are terrible, but with quantity there is hope for a few worth further exploration.
Do you see your writing as a single, extended project, or a series of threads that occasionally weave together to form something else?
I find myself working simultaneously on different projects in a chaotic manner, and only start to focus on a particular project when it is at the point of becoming submission ready. Although my chapbook, English Garden Bondage (above/ground press 2022), would be an exception to this as it was written in a single stretch of a couple days, where my other work, BRICKWORKS (Frog Hollow Press 2021), was written among alot of unpublished material including my self-published NOMOGRAPHY, over a few years. Lately I have been plugging away at several things, but it looks like I’ll have enough for another brick motif chapbook ready for submission soon, and with IceFloe Press publishing couple of poems of a non-brick type I am concentrating a little harder on similar material.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
There is no set schedule, but there are rhythms to the seasonal day, some of them newish from the pandemic, like through the winter I have homeschooling to work around, but mostly my writing is fit between the chores of operating a tiny farm; feeding animals, chopping wood, maintaining fields, shoveling snow/shit, etc. It is in the winter that the bulk of my writing gets done, also being lucky to have a partner that puts up with my aesthetic, and not so practical, pursuits is incommensurable. I write in my notebook multiple times daily, and move to my phone when there’s something every so often not daily.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
Until poetry pays more, hah, I rely on a two subscriptions (one free), and rural internet makes it hard to browse as much as I would like, but the quality and the frequency of poetry arriving in my mail from a single source is astounding, above/ground press puts out like 75 titles a year, so a year’s subscription works out to $1 or less per title, and the titles they do put out are well curated, ranging the continuum from vispo and conceptual work to lyrical and deeply personal work, by some of the very best contemporary poets. I also am on the model press mailing list which free, and delivers interesting chapbook pdfs to my inbox every so often (monthly?). When I am online I have lately been going back to in no particular order The Pi Review, Taco Bell Quarterly, Periodicities, The Quarantine Review, Ice Floe Press, and talking about strawberries..., among so many others that come up in my Twitter feed.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
I have only come to
contemporary poetry 5 years ago, so I still am in that wonderful phase of
“discovery,” where most everything is new. I've really enjoyed lately, Gary
Barwin, Jan Zwicky, Sue Sinclair, rob mclennan, Annick MacAskill, Kenji
Siratori, Meira Cook, Simon Brown, Carolyn Smart, N.W. Lea, ryan fitzpatrick,
Marcus McCann, Amanda Earl, Pearl Pirie, Ian Le Tourneau, Chris Banks, Matt Robinson,
plus so many more whose book isn’t at hand. I also read non-fiction as well and
have been absorbed in the work of Sianne Ngai, Leigh Claire La Berge, Sara
Ahmed, Antonio Gramsci, Christina Rivera Garza, plus what isn't at hand.
Russell Carisse is currently living on unceded Wolastoqiyik territory in New Brunswick. Here they have resettled from Tkaronto into an off-grid trailer in the woods, with their family of people and animals, to grow food and practice other forms of underconsumption. Russell is the author of chapbooks, BRICKWORKS (Frog Hollow Press 2021), and English Garden Bondage (above/ground press 2022). Their work can be found online and in print.
A selection of their work can be found in the seventh issue.