Poetry Quebec: Are you a native Quebecer? If not, where are you originally from? Why did you come to Quebec?
Mark Abley: I'm not a native Quebecer but it's hard to say where I'm from -- by the time I was 12, I had lived in England, northern Ontario, England again, Alberta and Saskatchewan. If pressed, I'd say I'm from Saskatoon. I came to Montreal -- not quite the same thing, emotionally, as coming to Quebec -- at the age of 28. My wife and I were moving from England to Canada, and we wanted to see if a great bilingual city could be our home.
PQ: When and how did you encounter your 1st Quebec poem?
MA: Listening to "Songs of Leonard Cohen" on the stereo player in my family's living room when I was in high school. That means I encountered ten of them at once. I still know a few by heart.
PQ: When and how did you first become interested in poetry?
MA: I was 14 when I realized that I wanted to be a writer -- not necessarily, or not just, a poet. A little later I bought "A Pocket Book of Modern Verse", edited by Oscar Williams. I can still recall sitting in a park on a warm day in Saskatoon, my mind lit up by the discoveries. By the time I was 16 I was convinced that I absolutely had to be a poet.
PQ: What is your working definition of a poem?
MA: Why do we need a definition? I try to avoid it. Definitions fix ideas in amber, whereas poems wriggle free.
PQ: Do you have a writing ritual? If so, provide details.
MA: No, and I suspect I would write more poems if I had a ritual to call my own. Maybe I need to invent one.
PQ: What is your approach to writing of poems: inspiration driven, structural, social, thematic, other?
MA: Nothing works for me without an initial inspiration, and inspiration can't be forced. After that shard or scrap of inspiration -- an image, a phrase, a memory, a place, whatever -- then the hard work begins. I tend to rewrite a lot. I wish I'd rewritten some of my early poems a lot more.
PQ: Do you think that being a minority in Quebec (ie. English-speaking) affects your writing? If so, how?
MA: I'm sure it does, but not always in obvious ways. Our minority status tends to make us more aware of the arbitrary quality inherent in any language and also of the incongruities that emerge when languages mingle and clash. I also know that the battle to keep French vibrant in Quebec -- even when I find it tiresome and annoying -- has been a kind of inspiration for me. My book "Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages" said little about Quebec directly. Indirectly, Quebec's influence was enormous.
PQ: Do you think that writing in English in Quebec is a political act? Why or why not?
MA: Not necessarily. If you want to, you can choose to see almost anything through a political lens. I often choose not to.
PQ: Why do you write?
MA: Because I have to.
PQ: Who is your audience?
MA: For poetry, I wish I knew -- obviously the audience is very small. For journalism, it's much wider. My children's books and especially my non-fiction books have led to fascinating responses from readers in many places. This is one of the great pleasures of being a writer, and it's sad that it happens so rarely for most poets.
PQ: Do you think there is an audience, outside of friends or other poets, for poetry?
MA: Don't forget the classroom. For better and sometimes for worse, the academy does play a role in keeping poetry alive. Beyond the classroom, yes, I do know outsiders who love to read poetry -- but only a very few. One of them is a high-profile editor in Toronto who left school at about 15 and discovered the joy of poetry in his 40s.
PQ: Does your day job impact on your writing? How?
MA: Of course; how could it not? If I didn't have to earn a living, I would have been -- would still be, even now -- a much more prolific poet.
PQ:How many drafts (beer too) do you usually go through before you are satisfied/finished with a poem?
MA: It varies. I was satisfied too easily when I was younger. Now it often takes me eight or ten drafts -- or more.
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?
MA: Each poem is a rare gift. I always work on one at a time. Growing a manuscript sounds like growing a fir tree.
PQ: What is the toughest part of writing for you?
MA: This answer is specific to the writing of poetry: giving myself the space, the solitude, the energy, the liberty, and above all: the time.
PQ: What is your idea of a muse?
MA: On my office door there's a New Yorker cartoon of a bearded man hunched over an old-fashioned typewriter, beside a wastebasket containing many sheets of paper. Behind the man's back is sitting his muse, a lyre by her feet. She's holding a revolver. She's pointing it at the man's back.
PQ: Do you have a favourite time and place to write?
MA: Morning, now that I'm middle-aged. When I was young I often wrote after midnight. As for place, I use a desktop computer rather than a laptop, so the vast majority of my writing is done in my office.
PQ: Do you like to travel? Is travel important to your writing? Explain.
MA: I love to travel, and find it a great inspiration. It tears some of the fog away from my clouded sight. Often a journey will provide the catalyst for a poem, and the first few drafts will be scribbled by hand on whatever paper is available. (Later I'll revise the poem in my office.)
PQ: Do you have a favourite Quebec poet? If yes who and why?
MA: In different moods I would give different answers. Nobody is a consistent favourite.
PQ: Do you write about Quebec? If so, how and why? If not, why not?
MA: "About" is a more difficult word than it seems. A few years ago I wrote a poem called "A Key That Opens on the Night." In my mind, its setting was a park near where I live in Pointe Claire. But a reader doesn't need to know that. The basis of another poem, "White on White," came to me while I was walking along Lakeshore Road. But the poem is not "about" that setting. I think a writer's place of residence inevitably has an impact on his or her work -- but not necessarily in a conscious or overt way. So Quebec informs my work, even if I don't set out to write about it.
PQ: Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau once declared, "The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation." We agree, but P.Q. 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?
MA: I'm a polygamist and I often have trouble letting go of my bedside wives, I mean books. Here are some of the books by my bed at the moment:
