How did you first come to poetry? What is it about the form that resonates?
My father was a big Goon Show fan, one of the many things I inherited from him. It was a long running and hilarious BBC comedy radio series, the most famous person to come out of that show was of course Peter Sellers. Spike Milligan, a national British comic treasure who also voiced many characters on that show, published a book called Silly Verse for Kids in 1959. My dad had a copy and I read that book obsessively as a kid. It was so inventive and funny, and it played with language in a way I had not experienced before and every time I read it, I discovered something new. I can still recite some of those poems from memory today. To me that is what resonates about poetry—good poems let you discover new modes of thinking, new ways of expressing something, but they also help you find the poetry (or “smell the poem” as my friend Peter Van Toorn liked to say) in other things. For example, my wife and I recently started watching Letterkenny (a great show), in which they refer to cigarettes as “darts” (this may be a common rural Ontario expression, I don’t know) which I think is a beautiful image. Poetry is everywhere when you open yourself to it.
How does a poem begin?
Sometimes a line will just pop out of nowhere while I’m walking, sometimes a good title will manifest itself from a conversation I am having, sometimes a short poem will come to me fully formed. There are no rules, which keeps things surprising. I had a dream once where I received a box of books from a publisher, when I opened the box the title on the cover read Rodney Hates You, Lee Pachoun & Other Poems, have no idea what it meant in any Freudian or Jungian sense, but a day or two later I figured I should try and write a poem with that title, so I did and now it is the working title for my next full length book of poems. A poem begins with a spark, that spark can come from anywhere.
Do you see your writing as a single, extended project, or a series of threads that occasionally weave together to form something else?
I don’t think either really, I like the idea that each book, chapbook etc. is its own thing. I did a chapbook a couple of years ago called The Hotdog Variations (above/ground press) I thought about including it in my next collection, as it’s so weird and a real departure from my other work. I’m very proud of it, but I also like it to be separate from anything else I put out. After I’m gone and some ambitious scholar puts together a Collected Works (ha!) I relish the idea of people mulling over this strange little outlier in my work. It’s fun to have delusions like these.
I love the idea of a collected series of poems, or books that extend for a long period of time, it would be interesting to be able to see the progression, or the shifting of outlook or attitude in one’s writing, but I just don’t think I have it in me, at least not right now.
Sometimes things do thread together, or compliment each other, but this is never a conscious choice on my part. Agnes Varda, a filmmaker I greatly admire, always said that chance was her greatest assistant director. Whether it is purely chance, or the creator’s will/subconscious/karma, or just openness to the idea of some kind of spontaneous creation, that allow these happy accidents to occur. It’s then you find these threads that speak to something larger or more complex than the poems individually. But if you try and force that kind of thing, it’s the kiss of death.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
I have to scrape for every minute that I get to work on my writing, which I think is a good thing. I have a family, a full-time job and two demanding cats that take up most of my time. So when I find time to work on creative projects—be it editing video, publishing chapbooks with Turret House Press, writing poems—it is precious, so I appreciate and savour it. The challenge will be when I retire from my job─currently scheduled for October 2025─and I have more time, to retain that sense of appreciation. A wise man I knew once said if you want something done look for the busiest person you know to handle it, because they will find time to get it done. There is usually a reason a person finds themselves with too much time on their hands. If you take away that sense of urgency, the only thing to motivate you to get anything done is the enjoyment of the process, that gives me hope. Because when it comes down to it all our time is precious, it’s important to try and remember that. So to answer your question, I don’t have a daily schedule, at least not when it comes to writing.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
I’m awful. I used to subscribe to literary journals like Vallum, The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review, CV2, and others, but as I have gotten older I have done less of that. I tend to seek out poets and their work and try to get my hands on their books instead. It’s the classic whole album vs playlist debate I guess. I’m an album person. Having said that, I do enjoy Emily Tristan Jones’s Columba online poetry journal, and of course this one, I’ve read some wonderful things on this site. I really should get back into print journals though, maybe I’d get published in more of them if I did.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
I was visiting Hamilton Ontario for work recently, while I
was there James MacDonald at The Printed Word recommended Alfred Starr
Hamilton’s A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind (The Song Cave) which
I have been reading on repeat ever since. It’s one of those rare books you come
across at the right time that scratches you just where you itch. I’ve been
reading a lot of short fiction lately, which is a new thing for me. I loved
Stuart Ross’s recent book I am Claude Francois and You are a Bathtub, Haruki
Murakami’s First Person Singular, and I’m currently deep into Robert
Walser’s Berlin Stories─though technically it is non-fiction─I just
discovered him, so I’m excited to seek out more. I’ve also had the privilege of
putting out some very exciting poetry with Turret House from authors I hope everyone
gets to see more of in the future; Elizabeth Wood, Misha Solomon, Patrick
Grace, Daniel J. Rowe, all had terrific chapbooks with Turret, I was proud to
be an outlet for them and I’m excited to read what comes next.
James Hawes lives and writes and creates digital video in Montreal. He is the publisher of Turret House Press, a micro-press dedicated to new and experimental Canadian poetry. His first full-length book Breakfast with a Heron (Mansfield Press) was short-listed for the 2020 ReLit award. His last publications were Under an Overpass, a Fox (Turret House Press) and The Hotdog Variations (above/ground press). He hopes his second full-length collection will be available soon.