1 - How did your first chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

It was thrilling at the time to see a pile of poems in one place, and be able to give them out to people. But more than the book itself, I think the community that produced it had an effect on me. In/Words (Carleton University, run by Prof. Collett Tracey) is a thriving student community of writers, and I was welcomed in with open arms. It was remarkable to be able to engage with other young writers in real time, to have a beer and talk poetry, to read to a room full of receptive ears. It has also been a gateway to the greater Ottawa community.

It’s only in the last five or six years that I’ve been working concertedly at writing, and I’m still in a very formative place (I’ll always be, right?). Looking back on the last few years of output, I’m aware of the development of my influences as my reading was growing broader. I can draw pretty clear lines and trace who I was reading during a given period. I want to think that I’m starting to find different voices of my own which are less clearly traceable to single influences, but rather show a range. We’ll see in another five or six years?

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I tried at both and, for whatever reason, poetry stuck. I really started trying to write as a result of a summer spent reading my dad’s Kerouac collection, so it was largely prose. At some point it gave way to poetry; Kerouac to Ginsberg, dad gave me the Collected Ted Berrigan, Canadian poetry in university...

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

I’m becoming more patient with the entire process. I’m setting things aside after they’re written and coming back to them days or weeks or months later, trying to see them with fresher eyes. I’m definitely editing more rigorously, and growing more accepting of needing to write scores of awful poems sometimes to get at a halfway decent one. I’ve been a full time student for the last five years, and I’ve found that my best ideas often come in the middle of seminars and discussions. As a result, every few weeks I’ll find myself with a pile of notes and half-formed ideas.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

Generally smaller pieces that grow into each other.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I’m not an especially comfortable public-speaker. That being said, I think that a microphone and a room full of people are excellent editors. As soon as I say something into a microphone, I realize what I wish I’d changed or what falls flat. I do enjoy reading, and I love hearing others read. I’m trying actively to participate in open-mics around the city, and to attend as much as I can. Exposure to other writers can only be a positive thing.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

Yikes. Give me twenty or thirty years and maybe I can start to answer that.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

Again, Yikes. I’ll defer to Raymond Souster: “S. has always believed (and still believes) that the primary function of poetry is to communicate something to somebody else [...] the big thing is to get it across, “make contact.” If you fail here, all that follows, everything else you throw in, is wasted, and you might as well start all over again.” (Preface to Cerberus, reprinted in The Making of Modern Poetry in Canada, eds. Dudek and Gnarowski). What I love about this quote, and so much of Souster’s editorial work, is his emphasis on dialogue and conversation, contact between and across. Books, not book; poems, not poem.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Both and neither. There are people in my immediate circle of friends who the process is easy and rewarding with. I’m not at all comfortable with circles and workshops. I’ve never worked in any formal way with a capital “E” Editor, so it remains to be seen I suppose.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Can I quote Souster again, only two questions later? He’s on my mind a lot as a result of current research. From a letter to Charles Olson: “We learn slowly, the important thing is to learn.”

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?

My only “critical prose” up to this point has been for university, so I’m not sure that “easy” is really a concern as I’ve not had a choice. Close, engaged, thoughtful reading is a wonderful jumping off point for creative writing, so any opportunity to really work through a text is a good experience; I’ve gotten loads of poems out of coursework.

However, one frustrating aspect of my university experience has been encountering critical positions, people and courses which lose sight of the writer and the writing. The courses I’ve not enjoyed are more concerned with the theory of theory, than with writing. There is certainly a place for theory of theory, it’s just not one that I’m too interested in. It seems to be a fine line between writing good critical prose and losing all touch with a love of literature. I’ve been inspired by the Professors I’ve had who still have trouble expressing themselves when discussing a book they care deeply about, the Professors who, without reservation, state that they love a text or writer. Which is not to say it is worthwhile to simply gush about a text, objective distance is necessary in an academic environment, but contact with the text can’t be sacrificed.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

Again, school keeps me from any sustained writing routine. I do my best school work first thing in the morning; poetry tends to come in the evening or afternoon. It comes in bursts depending on the school load. Academia is a strange bubble with even stranger schedules. That being said, the last two summers I’ve worked in an office 8-4, Monday to Friday, and I found it shut my writing down completely.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

Reading, always reading. I’m spurred on most consistently by the people in my immediate writing community, I feel a great, productive sort of competition (“wow, so-and-so is really onto something, how’d they do that? Why didn’t I do that? What am I doing?”).

13 - If there was a fire, what's the first thing you'd grab?

My girlfriend.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I love my girlfriend’s photography. She’s also a film major and exposes me to heaps of interesting films. I love walking around art galleries. Music of course. I’m not sure how explicitly I write in conversation with these things, but they’re certainly wandering around the same parts of my mind as poetry.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Kenneth Patchen, John Newlove, William Hawkins, Monty Reid, Raymond Souster & Contact Press, Michael Gnarowski’s academic work is a real inspiration and offers a way to navigate academia without losing your soul, John Thompson, Ted Berrigan, Jack Kerouac et. al, Rob Winger, Al Purdy, Michael Dennis, Stephanie Bolster, Artie Gold, George Bowering, everyone that I’ve encountered at Carleton (too many to even begin listing), all the kind, supportive folks in Ottawa, what an absurd question to ask, these lists can’t ever end, can they?

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Write a poem I’ll still like in twenty years. Write a poem someone else will still like in twenty years. Publish a book.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I’m staring at the end of M.A. in August, with no clue what Sept. 1 will bring. I’ve got to decide (if grades don’t decide for me) whether I want to pursue a PhD, and in the meantime what to do with myself. I’m the wrong person to be asking questions about occupation.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I read books I loved, and wondered why I couldn’t write a book as well. It seemed straightforward enough to at least try.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Phil Hall’s Old Enemy Juice. I just last week found a copy in Toronto for $3. He’s like some Canadian, post-modern Kenneth Patchen, a real hard edge, no mercy in the poems (Erin Moure uses the word “tough” on the back cover), looking unflinchingly at those things that are worst and best in us.

No clue about the film...

20 - What are you currently working on?

Writing wise, I’m working away at editing a few sequences that recently came together, and trying to find some footing in some newer poems.

I’m working to get my own chapbook/broadside press off the ground, to launch some books in the later summer. This includes learning how to stitch books, being shocked by the wonderful and generous people who have agreed to let me try printing a book of theirs, squirreling away money to by some meagre equipment. I’d like it to represent an interesting cross section of Ottawa poetry, from new and unknown folks to establishing to established. I’ve just this week begun printing.

I’m hammering away at the independent research for my M.A. I’m documenting and hopefully writing a history of the Contact Poetry Readings run by Raymond Souster (and others; Kenneth McRobbie, John Robert Colombo, Avrom Isaacs...) from 1957-1962. It was a remarkable moment in Canadian poetry that seems to be relegated to footnotes largely, a great early moment of contact with the American poets, and across generations of Canadian ones, who would prove increasingly influential in the years to follow. It’s going pleasantly well.

BIO
Cameron Anstee is a student in Ottawa. He has worked for the last three years with In/Words Magazine & Press out of Carleton University, a student run chapbook press and little magazine. In the summer he will launch his own chapbook press, Apt. 9. Recent chapbooks include Remember our Young Bones and Releasing Symmetry. Water Upsets Stone is forthcoming from The Emergency Response Unit. He won the 2008 Lilian I. Found Award (Carleton University) and the inaugural Origami Crane Contest (Tree Reading Series).

You can find the second series of 12 or 20 questions at rob mclennan's blog: http://robmclennansindex.blogspot.com/2009/06/12-or-20-questions-second-series.html