Poetry Quebec: Are you a native Quebecer? If not, where are you originally from? Why did you come to Quebec?
Robyn Sarah: I was born in NYC but that was because my father was doing graduate studies at Columbia at the time. I am Canadian by parentage (both parents Canadian) and have lived in Montreal since the age of four. My mother’s parents came to Montreal in the 1920s, escaping the devastation and economic distress of post-war Poland.
PQ: When and how did you encounter your 1st Quebec poem?
RS: Am I supposed to remember? I don’t usually ask poems to show me their passports when I encounter them.
PQ: When and how did you first become interested in poetry?
RS: I began reading and writing poetry as a young child, and was confirmed in both habits by my early teens. I have written an essay on this subject. It is called “I to my perils: How I Fell for Poetry”, and was first published in The New Quarterly (commissioned to kick off its “Falling in Love with Poetry” series.) The essay is reprinted in my book of essays, Little Eurekas: A Decade’s Thoughts on Poetry.
PQ: What is your working definition of a poem?
RS: Still working on it.
PQ: Do you have a writing ritual? If so, provide details.
RS: Not really. It’s a nice idea. I wish I did.
PQ: What is your approach to writing of poems: inspiration driven, structural, social, thematic, other?
RS: For me, poems usually begin with a phrase I like the sound of. I call these “tinder words”. They come to me from nowhere—sometimes they occur as part of a letter I’m writing or a journal entry, or in conversation; sometimes they just come into my head and I jot them down. Poems germinate from them, sometimes within days, sometimes not until months or years later. I rarely know what a poem is going to be “about” when I start playing around with one of these phrases. I guess this means my poetry is ear-driven, though I am not a “sound poet.”
PQ: Do you think that being a minority in Quebec (ie. English-speaking) affects your writing? If so, how?
RS: Possibly being part of a minority gives me more freedom to be myself in my writing. (As a Jew, I am also a minority within a minority.) Minorities may be sidelined, but they are also exempt, at least to some extent, from the expectations of the dominant collectivity.
PQ: Do you think that writing in English in Quebec is a political act? Why or why not?
RS: Speaking English in Quebec, at least in a public place, may be a political act—then again, it may just be “doing what comes naturally”, but it runs the risk of being interpreted as a political act. I have never felt that writing in English in Quebec was a political act. I have never thought about this at all. My concerns as a poet are not political.
PQ: Why do you write?
RS: Can’t help it.
PQ: Who is your audience?
RS: Anyone who wants to read me.
PQ: Do you think there is an audience, outside of friends or other poets, for poetry?
RS: Yes. When my poems have been broadcast on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, I have received emails from many Americans who were not poets: homebound mothers, an elementary school teacher, a pediatrician, a marine biologist, a parole officer—among others. But I think to reach such an audience, the poetry has to be accessible and to speak to universal human concerns in a way that moves people.
PQ: Does your day job impact on your writing? How?
RS: Time, time, time. And “money writing” occupies mental files that have to be disengaged before I can do “my own” writing.
PQ: How many drafts (beer too) do you usually go through before you are satisfied/finished with a poem?
RS: It varies. I tend to work one continuously evolving draft, rather than writing separate drafts. The process can take anywhere from an afternoon to a decade or longer. Call it nursing a Guinness?
PQ: Do you write with the intention of “growing a manuscript” or do you work on individual poems that are later collected into a book?
RS: Definitely, individual poems. I have never written poetry with a book in mind.
PQ: What is the toughest part of writing for you?
RS: Maintaining the discipline to make daily time for it. Disengaging my mind from everything else in order to be open to it. Recognizing and confronting various forms of procrastination. Resisting dangerous superstitions (such as that if I am not Tolstoy or Shakespeare, I should forget about it.) Resisting other dangerous superstitions (such as that I don’t need to aspire to the level of Tolstoy or Shakespeare.)
PQ: What is your idea of a muse?
RS: I have never thought about this.
PQ: Do you have a favourite time and place to write?
RS: No, but certain kinds of weather and light seem to put me in the mood. Wild windy rainy days, especially in autumn, with lamps on indoors during the day, are great. Falling snow is great.
Blizzards are great. Early morning light and late afternoon light are better than midday light.
Does this mean I write more at those times? No, but at those times I am most strongly reminded that I want to be writing. And I am more likely to open a notebook and start scribbling.
PQ: Do you like to travel? Is travel important to your writing? Explain.
RS: Sure I like to travel, doesn’t everyone? Question arising: as a poet, how much can I afford to travel? Is travel important to my writing? I guess not, and a good thing too. (p.s. when I do travel, it tends to disrupt my writing rather than stimulate it. However, I may write about it later.)
PQ: Do you have a favourite Quebec poet? If yes who and why?
RS: No particular favourite, no. I like Klein, of course. And of my own generation, Peter Van Toorn.
But (as Dylan Thomas once put it) I tend to like poems, not poets.
PQ: Do you write about Quebec? If so, how and why? If not, why not?
RS: Not on purpose. But I write primarily from my life experience, so Quebec (more precisely, Montreal) certainly makes itself felt in my poems. There’s a lot of winter in my poems. And I once wrote a poem called Québerac, named for a certain locally available cheap wine, now long defunct but ubiquitous in the 70s and sold (if I remember right) only by the magnum. French words and phrases have found their way into some poems, not because I was trying to “write Québec” but because they were the first words that came to mind.
PQ: Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau once declared, "The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation."We agree, but PQ. does want to know who are you in bed with. Literally. What poets are you reading these days? What book(s) are you sharing your bed with? Are you a monogamist or a polygamist reader?
RS: Most recently--Rilke on the bedside table, Moritz by the breakfast plate. But that’s just this week. I like anthologies and usually have one or two near to hand. “Busily seeking with a continual change” best describes my poetry-reading habit, though there are some poets I return to faithfully over decades because they not only bear re-reading but yield more each time. That’s the kind of poet I want to be.
Robyn Sarah is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently Pause for Breath (2009), as well as two collections of short stories and a book of essays on poetry.
