Poetry Quebec: Are you a native Quebecer? If not, where are you originally from? Why did you come to Quebec?
kaie kellough: no, am not a native québ. was born in vancouver & grew up in calgary. i’m a western canadian who migrated east to montréal 11 yrs ago. i moved to montréal bcuz i wanted to be in a large, multicultural arts-friendly city as far from calgary’s conservatism, suburban sprawl & cowboy culture as i cd possibly get, tho i always enjoyed watching bull-riding. i am bilingual, & montréal is where my parents met, so i felt some conxion to the city. tho montréal is located in québec, i identify as montréalais, as canuck. i’ve tried to identify as québécois but’ve never been comfortable with that identifiction.
PQ: When and how did you encounter your 1st Quebec poem?
KK: don’t know abt the first one, but know that the first one that reverberated in my cranium was am klein’s ‘heirloom’ in ‘20th century poetry & poetics’ edited by gary geddes. but years before that i’d read ‘jacob two-two meets the hooded fang,’ & so mordecai was the first montréal author i ever read.
PQ: When and how did you first become interested in poetry?
KK: i’d always been a reader & lover of language. in my late late teens i started reading some harlem renaissance cats (don’t remember how i got turned on to them) like langston hughes & countee cullen. they stunned me bcz they were writing about topics i’d never seen poets approach. hughes in particular was writing in a blues form, so the poetry was linked to a 20th-century african-american musical form, it was anchored HERE, in the sound & culture of the multiracial americas & it therefore included ME. i was within that tradition, not way way outside of it.
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| kaie kellough |
at some point i was introduced to the jamaican dub poets. their rhythm, righteous social criticism & declamatory style impressed me. they were outsiders & self-proclaimed authorities, poetic pundits commenting on their society...from them the beatniks (ginsberg in particular), who led me directly to whitman, and on thru some of the major poets from the states, the caribbean, latin amreica. i came very late to canadian poetry.
tho i don’t write like any of the poets i’ve just mentioned, that’s the route my early poetic interest took. music and oral poetry were present in equal measure with the literary.
PQ: What is your working definition of a poem?
KK: well...i haven’t been writing much poetry lately. i’ve been into prose...so perhaps my definition isn’t working. it’s being overhauled right now, re-designed, souped up. but for me the poetic engine is largely fired by language & sound. i used to call my writing ‘word sound systems,’ and i guess that term still applies. it’s a literal definition: words are arranged into a sonic system. the system is guided by rhythm, melody, or a vowel or consonant pattern. words are often broken & misspelled & anagrammed & subjected to a series of rigorous manipulations. the system tests their performance – their ability to race in many different directions at once – to suggest multiple meanings & sounds. i guess you could say that for me, poetry is language in extreme high performance.
PQ: Do you have a writing ritual? If so, provide details.
KK: i used to hide myself away in my office, secret myself away from all distractions. then after a short while i’d pop out of the office to make a phone call. then i’d pop out to make some tea. then i’d pop out to take out the recycling. i wound up fighting to keep myself in the office & distraction out. now i just avoid my office. i place my laptop on the kitchen table, place the telephone next to the computer, turn on james brown, or memphis slim, take out some ingredients that i might want to cook with, and then i sit down to write. and since all of my distractions are within reach, i write. the music eventually gets turned off, the phone gets ignored, the ingredients get neglected, and i write.
PQ: What is your approach to writing of poems: inspiration driven, structural, social, thematic, other?
KK: i take more of a concrete, work-oriented approach to writing – the poems are gradually generated thru the sustained practice of writing. i apply myself to whatever ideas i have, be they formal or social or otherwise, and i work them out. i don’t wait for inspiration. i don’t think in terms of inspiration cuz the term feels a little too romantic, too airy, too decadent, but i’ll take it if it comes.
PQ: Do you think that being a minority in Quebec (ie. English-speaking) affects your writing? If so, how?
KK: i didn’t grow up in québec, and as a writer i am not restricted to québec, so the language politics have had little impact on me. they did not shape my consciousness or my sense of being & belonging. i am also quite active outside of québec, so being a language-based minority in québec has little impact on my writing. it has much more impact on decisions like who i will publish with, or which funding bodies i feel i can have more success in applying to, or making sure to cultivate relationships with artists & organizations outside the province.
i am a minority in other ways: as a mixed-race canadian. one of my parents is irish canadian & the other is guyanese canadian, and that experience of being a minority has had much more impact on my writing.
as i said in response to an earlier question, i identify as a montréaler & as a canuck, but not really as québécois. so i see myself as part of a broader population, that of the nation of canada at large, and living in mo’real allows me to be part of the toronto-ottawa-montréal corridor, so i benefit from the cultural traffic with english-speaking canada.
PQ: Do you think that writing in English in Quebec is a political act? Why or why not?
KK: for an english writer, provincial boundaries dissolve. the nice thing abt writing & performing is that it can travel. if english writers were restricted to publishing & presenting their works in québec alone, then i might feel that working in english is a political act. but english writers can publish throughout north america; the markets for our work are much larger than the markets for french work. when my first book was published, it was launched in vancouver, ottawa, toronto, and montréal. further, i was eventually invited to read across the country – in halifax, calgary, gabriola (bc), saskatooooon, etc. i was interviewed on city tv in vancouver, on community radio in vancouver, on community radio in ottawa, and on cbc toronto. a french-language poet might get to launch a first volume in montréal, ottawa, and québec city, if lucky.
PQ: Why do you write?
KK: freedom. when i write i’m the boss. in writing i can be marlon brando or marion barry. i can be caesar or antony, cassius or brutus, a brute or a baudelairean dandy. i can be in all times at once, and have mohamed ali conversing with the prophet muhammad. when writing i am infinitely freer than i am at work or elsewhere under other conditions. when writing i can say what the hell i want, i can lament, rail, complain, nag, nurture, curse, blast anything, be incoherent, indulge, pervert anything, challenge any convention or uphold any tradition, so long as i can find a successful way to do so. in writing i can invent my own rules, and then either abide by them or profane them. freedom.
PQ: Who is your audience?
KK: i’ve read my writing to people of all ages, from varied cultural bacgrounds, from n.s. to b.c. the audience largely depends on the kind of event. the following is a generalizn – not always true, but often - if the event is more of a high-frequency performance poetry event where each poem goes 120 mph & breaks the sound barrier, the audience will be younger, 20somethns. if the event features authors who read from books instead of from memory, the audience will likely encompass boomers, gen x & even gen y. i’ve been invited to a wide range of events – folk festivals, lit fests, academic shindigs, poetry slams, cbc canada reads series live remote broadcasts from suburban chapters, black community events & so forth – so i can’t really say other than that my audience is likely a heterogeneous group. a mélange. a true north american gumbo.
PQ: Do you think there is an audience, outside of friends or other poets, for poetry?
KK: yes definitely. if you consider poetry in all its guises, from rap thru lyric poetry thru avant-garde sound poetry thru folk music, you realize that nearly everyone comes into contact w poetry & nearly everyone is at some point an active audience member for po’try.
PQ: Does your day job impact on your writing? How?
KK: it allows me to write without worrying abt how the bills will be paid.
PQ: How many drafts (beer too) do you usually go through before you are satisfied/finished with a poem?
KK: i don’t know how many draughts i drown, but i am an obsessive ed.
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?
KK: i always start out wit the idea of growing a manuscript, but while that inspires me it also defeats me & i wind up wound up & writing individual poems that are later carefully selected, collated, collected.
PQ: What is the toughest part of writing for you?
KK: toughest part of writing is sitting down. i’m an active, athletic person who already spends countless work hours seated in front of a pc.
PQ: What is your idea of a muse?
KK: an interesting idea or clear observation. a disturbing incident or an incidental disturbance. anything that rivets or screws the mind.
PQ: Do you have a favourite time and place to write?
KK: dining room table, early morning or late night. early morning with a cup of black tea & late night with a guinness.
PQ: Do you like to travel? Is travel important to your writing? Explain.
KK: in principle i love to travel, but in practice travel is a pain in the ass cuz it’s expensive & uncomfortable & complicated. in the case of travel i am careful to let the principle guide the practice. travel is important to my writing because it displaces & challenges identity. i have traveled a lot within canada, and this makes it hard for me to identify provincially or regionally. i’m not a québecker or a westerner, an albertan or a prairie person. i try to let a broad appreciation of canada’s many solitudes inform my writing, and i can do this because i’ve been from c to c.
PQ: Do you have a favourite Quebec poet? If yes who and why?
KK: nicole brossard. i like the way she challenges coherence & manipulates language, and i wow at her ability to remain innovative for so many years. also, for a lit poet she’s remarkably un-square. i’ve seen her recite with jazz musicians & really get into the performance. there are countless literary figures who are too preoccupied with some stuffed sense of their own respectability to even consider such a thing.
PQ: Do you write about Quebec?
KK: i often write abt montréal. but about québec at large, no. maybe in coming works, maybe not
