Host: Kyeren Regehr

Guest: rob mclennan

Recorded at: Haus of Owl Creation Lab, Victoria, BC, on lək̓ʷəŋən homelands

Links:

rob mclennan

Arc Poetry Magazine

Haus of Owl Creation Lab

Canada Council for the Arts

Transcript

[Poem: "The Statuary," read by Kyeren Regehr]

[Poem text omitted from transcript.]

rob: Hello. Welcome to the Poet Laureate Podcast, a sonic sanctuary for poetry. The poem is listening. I'm rob mclennan. We are recording at Haus of Owl Creation Lab in Victoria, BC on Lekwungen homelands. This episode is sponsored by Arc Poetry Magazine. Based in Ottawa, Arc Poetry Magazine features poetry that is woozy, cunning, shearing, and wild-like, alongside prose that offers new perspectives on the verse you thought you knew. For over 45 years, Arc has been a vital presence in Canada's literary landscape, publishing poetry, interviews, reviews, and more, and sustaining lively conversations around contemporary poetry while bringing emerging and established voices into dialogue. Explore current and past issues, subscribe, or learn more at arcpoetry.ca. We also gratefully acknowledge the support of the City of Victoria and the Poet Laureate program. There it is. I read your notes. I did it very well. Uh, so here we are. We're doing a thing. So you are, uh, the current poet laureate of Victoria. That's a question.

Kyeren: Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

rob: Well, you think so.

Kyeren: I seem to have been doing an alarming amount of work on behalf of poetry, even without the fancy title.

rob: So, uh, like, uh, how long is your tenure? How many laureates have been here before you? 'Cause I consider that, like, most writers don't even know what poet laureate means, or, like, writer in residence, so we can't expect the public to know what these things mean.

Kyeren: Well, it just seems reasonable, right?

rob: Yeah. So I'm going to ask you, like, what I just did. What's, what, what's your... Like, how long is your tenure? Are you like—

Kyeren: Yeah, yeah.

rob: —number 48? Are you number three? Like—

Kyeren: I'm number seven.

rob: —I have no idea. Okay. Yeah, so it's fairly new.

Kyeren: We also have a youth poet laureate program, which is fairly rare—

rob: Okay.

Kyeren: —as far as—

rob: Yeah, I think Mississauga has that also, and—

Kyeren: I mean, there's just a couple of places...

rob: —uh, maybe Edmonton—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —and possibly Calgary.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: Yeah. I should've looked this up before today.

Kyeren: Uh, so my, my tenure is two years.

rob: Okay.

Kyeren: In the past it's been four years. I'm the second laureate here that just has the two-year tenure.

rob: Okay. So the program, there was a shift in the program at some point then.

Kyeren: There was a shift, yeah. I believe the pandemic was once again the culprit. I think it felt really long to be the poet laureate for four years during the pandemic, but two years now feels quite short to me. There's so much I wanna offer that I know I'll not have time for, you know? Um, the pandemic also created a delay within the laureate prior to me, so the city corrected that at the beginning of my laureateship, which created a slightly disastrous overlap between two poets laureate and their programming. It was, it was interesting last year.

rob: Yeah. We're starting with the challenges, people. Well, well, we have two simultaneous in Ottawa.

Kyeren: Yeah, you have French and English.

rob: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but you know, but they're set up, the structure is that they're together.

Kyeren: That's the structure, right?

rob: Yeah, that's the way we do it. We announce—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —two at a time. So they're expecting that.

Kyeren: I'm sure there are structures in place—

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: —that kind of offer them, you know, equal footing to some degree, and—

rob: Yeah, we, like—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —like the current pair are the first two that have the position since I've been part of the admin—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —uh, through VerseFest and Verse Ottawa. So I, I wasn't really on the ground in the same way for how the prior ones were administered, but we sort of let them kind of do what they want up to a point. But the two current ones, Véronique Sylvain and David O'Meara, seem to be the first two that are actually doing projects together.

Kyeren: Oh, that's really nice.

rob: And it's really cool—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —that it's not just one person way over there and one person way over there—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —and they don't seem to interact in any way. These two are act— Like, they're specifically doing projects together. And how long is their tenure?

rob: Uh, it's a two-year tenure, but COVID, a lot of our VerseFest staffing kind of crumbled, as did our poet laureate program. So it took me a year and a half working with the city to put the program back together.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: I was in the conversation of starting this run of laureates, which started in 2017, having our first two laureates. But I wasn't, like, in a direct conversation with the city. So even the people at the city don't understand why they're the office that are running the program. And I actually had four staff changes during that year and a half I was trying to put the program back together. "Oh, no. No, they've left. They've retired. You have to talk to me now." It's like, so I have to explain everything like a fourth time. So it's a two-year tenure, but because the city is trying to figure out how best to help and how to move it forward, we're kind of giving the current pair a third year.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: So that'll give time for the city to kind of figure out how to move forward.

Kyeren: That's nice flexibility.

rob: Yeah. It... Oh, yeah. And it will be—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —and, like, they had to agree to it, of course, but—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —uh, it was a way so the city could reassess the whole thing before we announce two more.

Kyeren: Right.

rob: Um, but we had the first laureates, the first official municipal laureates in Canada back in, like, '82, '83—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —which was cool. And they had three-year terms. There were three of them, a dollar a year, and then the third guy moved away halfway through his tenure. And then the city cut that budget of a dollar a year.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: But it was still cool that we had it, right? And then the frustration was that up to us getting it put back together, which is mainly Rod Pederson, the guy who put VerseFest together, got all of us together. He, he really drove that train. It was like everybody else in Canada seemed to have laureates but us, but we were first, and no one seemed to really know that.

Kyeren: Amazing.

rob: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I... But so what do you... Like, how do you approach it? What do you even think the role means?

Kyeren: You know, I think the poet laureate is the, is like the representative for poetry.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: And they are bridging that gap between poetry and the people because that gap is c—being created in school or what have you.

rob: Right. So like a cheerleader basically, right?

Kyeren: Yeah, cheerleader for poetry. Yeah. But I think it's also about taking the temperature of the city and figuring out what the people need of poetry, and then sort of making events that fit into those gaps. Right. I don't think the role is simply to promote poetry. Uh, it's, it's also to listen. Every city has, like, a different emotional landscape, and I think part of the laureate's work is paying attention to that changing emotional weather and asking how poetry might, you know, genuinely serve it. And the laureateship is less about amplifying the laureate's own voice than it is about making room for other poets and, and bringing their voices forward, ideally people— You know, kind of encounter enough different kinds of poetry and enough different kinds of poets that they can begin to see themselves inside it all.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: Like, one of the things that, um, that I'm really happy with is this little, uh, event I've done four times now called The Poetry Doctors, and, uh, I came to it because of my experience, uh, as an editor in the city and also running the reading series Planet Earth Poetry. There were just so many people who were looking for editors, but editors—

rob: Mm.

Kyeren: —are expensive. Right. And so I used some of the city money to pay really good editors, and I jumped in there, too. And, uh, we offered editing services kind of based on university office hours, where you get 15 or 20 minutes—

rob: Right, right, right.

Kyeren: —with one poem, and then those skills that you learn on that poem are transferable. One hopes, and that's sort of—

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: —a variation on the writer in residence.

rob: It is. Right?

Kyeren: Yeah. What I love is that people who come don't leave with only one edited poem. They leave with another way of reading their own work, with, you know, questions and tools they can carry into the next poem and the poem after that. You know, a lot of the time I was teaching people ways to break a line because most people have to learn that. It doesn't come naturally. So those 20 minutes can keep working long after the appointment is over.

rob: When I was at University of Alberta, I was told that 10% of my time was for the public, whether it be students or whatever else.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: Like, "Hey, sir, I write poems and I don't know where to send them." Like that kind of thing. Like—

Kyeren: Yes.

rob: —just, 'cause no one teaches you how to submit to magazines. No one, like, sits you down—

Kyeren: They don't.

rob: —and says, "Okay, here's how to find magazines," uh, or anything like that. And, and the rest of it, that time was supposed to be mine, just to get work done without having to worry—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —about where food and rent was going to come from.

Kyeren: Yeah, I don't, I don't think—and benefits. That was cool. I don't think we have a writer in residence program here.

rob: Mm.

Kyeren: Think, no, we have one at UVic in the religion and society. I'm s—I've got that wrong. And I think we have an artist in residence here, which is sometimes—

rob: Okay.

Kyeren: —a writer. You know, I was recently interviewing Toussaint, Toussaint St. Negritude, uh, from Maine, and when he was inducted into his poet laureateship, he was given an office in the library and office hours for the public.

rob: Yeah. I was given office hours, too, and I had an office, but I was in my office seven days a week from 9:00 to 6:00. But I was also living in a basement apartment of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend. And I didn't have coffee there, I didn't have food there. I'd wake up and go to my office.

Kyeren: Hmm.

rob: And I used my office as my workspace and my living space, like just during the day to just get stuff done. And so they kept telling me they wanted me to go somewhere else on campus to do office hours. I'm like, "Yeah, I'm not doing that." They didn't like that, but like, I'm just here. People can come here.

Kyeren: I would love to do that, but, um, one of the things that I've noticed speaking to other laureates, uh, is that there aren't always the resources to give of yourself. Like our writer in residency has—

rob: It was a very different—

Kyeren: —yeah, it has a—

rob: —consideration—

Kyeren: —a nice chunk of money that—

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: —yeah, that kinda goes with it and you can give of yourself.

rob: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was getting like 33, I think, for that—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —nine months. And I think it was Erin Mouré a couple years later that got them to push it up to 50.

Kyeren: See, that's amazing. So I'm wishing Erin had been there before me. That's amazing. That would've been nice.

rob: But 33 was cool. Yeah, yeah. I was very happy with that. Universities have that. I think it's difficult for cities because, you know, they've got people that are unhoused and—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —et cetera. It's hard, I think, for a city to spend money on poetry if they don't have the awareness of how transformative poetry can be in someone's life.

Kyeren: Right, and Victoria's been a v—a poetry town for a very long time.

rob: It has.

Kyeren: But you know, you'd be so surprised at how little people actually know about the really great poetry—

rob: I would not be surprised.

Kyeren: —systems. When I, I took Planet Earth Poetry on, our Instagram page had 146 people. Now it has, I think, like 1,500 or something. We had to grow it in order to allow for the resources to bring more, uh, people into the fold.

rob: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Which is, which is part of the function of the poet laureate—

Kyeren: It is.

rob: —is to be that bridge between—

Kyeren: It is...

rob: —uh—

Kyeren: —which becomes frustrating, 'cause there shouldn't need to be a bridge between, you know, literature and the public. But there is. So I don't know—

rob: Yeah, a need for it.

Kyeren: —I blame the education system in a certain kind of way. And then, and then media.

rob: I've been 30 years yelling at Ottawa media, uh, because Ottawa seems to pretend that we're national and not local. Like, when you have kids, you don't pretend your parents never existed. You can be local and national at the same time. So if you were a local writer, a lot of the media treated you like you weren't good enough to go to Toronto.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: Like, for God sakes. And then someone would come in and do an event, and then they'd get an article or review in the daily paper or the weekly whatnot.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: And it's like, you know we're here, right? Like, you can s—"I'm invisible," you know?

Kyeren: I really think that's—

rob: You can still things...

Kyeren: —that's one of the reasons why we all need book awards in our cities and poets laureate and reading series because then—

rob: Right, it tells the public who doesn't know how to do the research—

Kyeren: Yes.

rob: —to get these particular books.

Kyeren: Yeah, like—

rob: It does, yeah. I, I, I, I saw a woman once go into Chapters, uh, back in the late '90s, and every year she would buy the Governor General's Award winner poetry for her granddaughter.

Kyeren: Wow.

rob: And that was interesting. Yeah. It was frustrating she only bought that one book and didn't bother looking at the shelves, but—

Kyeren: Because the whole short list is basically the same. You know? It—

rob: Yeah, that was interesting in that little moment, yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah. And many other books that weren't, you know, that weren't included.

rob: Yeah. And then like things like Sesame Street, the people in the neighborhood was firemen and policemen and grocery store guy, but it was never the artist.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: So it feels like there's this cultural problem with not understanding that there's value in—

Kyeren: In art and, and artist shouldn't just mean painter. There are other people who do stuff also.

rob: Yes.

Kyeren: Like musician and writer and, you know, whatnot.

rob: Yes. But that always felt like a lack to me.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: Like culture is programming people to not be aware that we exist.

Kyeren: Yeah, the artist. What would you have been if you weren't an artist, rob?

rob: I don't know. I, I announced at four I wasn't taking over the farm. And then, and then my dad spent 15 quiet years pretending that—

Kyeren: ...something else is gonna happen.

rob: Um, although I do wear the work shirt of my father. Yeah, I don't know, 'cause I've, like, in my mind, it didn't matter what I did, my parents are going to be equally disappointed. It was farmer or other, right? I could have been a doctor or lawyer, so I just, I figured it was this huge freedom. I might as well just do what I want.

Kyeren: They're gonna be equally disappointed.

rob: Right. So I just quietly just did what I wanted to do anyway and—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —kind of moved off in, in that kind of direction. I might have painted, I might have done music, and then having a kid at 20 made me go like, "Okay, if I'm gonna do anything, I need to do it seriously or I sh—or I should just not bother." And writing meant I didn't have to buy paint supplies. That was really how I moved into that direction.

Here is the clean, complete, line-by-line polished transcript for pages 4, 5, and 6 in the exact formatting of The Poet Laureate Podcast:

rob: And then the poem, I figured I'd give, I'd give myself, like, 10 years trying to figure out poems before I tried, like, another form like the novel. Poems seemed conceptually easier to write a poem as opposed to writing a novel. It seemed less onerous—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —I suppose, right?

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. I kind of made a, a pragmatic choice in a certain kind of way at 20 years old with a baby. I was equally pragmatic. I became a dancer.

rob: Yeah. So writing is my second penniless career.

Kyeren: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Should try and be a visual artist next and be a triple threat of angst and poverty. I don't know. It's just fun to make stuff, so I just—

rob: It is.

Kyeren: —enjoy making stuff. I don't know what I'd do. I'd implode if I couldn't make things.

rob: I'd probably do something else. I don't feel the need to spend too much time thinking about what that could have been. I'm very okay with that. Did you want to read another poem?

Kyeren: Sure. Okay. Thank you.

rob: One of yours?

Kyeren: Thank you. Yeah. Neat. This actually, I, I wrote this after the end of last season at Planet Earth Poetry. It was a really disastrous season for me because we didn't get any funding, uh, speaking about penniless artists. And so I had planned the whole season with the, uh, stupidity/hope that we would actually have the same funding as the previous year, that I spent honestly two, three, four times as much time as I would normally have spent trying to get publishers and publicists and, and writers here—

rob: Okay.

Kyeren: —um, you know, trying to negotiate. It was a really hard season, and this is, um, what I want to say is it came from that frustration.

[Poem: “Poets. A feast, a haunting, a scaffold,” read by Kyeren Regehr]

[Poem text omitted from transcript.]

rob: So would you consider that to be an example of, like, your position, uh, affecting, uh, or you responding in your work to the position?

Kyeren: It's more that my position becomes part of the work because, you know, everything does. My poetry cannibalizes whatever's happening and goes to the places that hold the most emotional torque for me, and I often find myself processing my life through writing and then, you know, whatever emerges gets refined through the craft. But, you know, I've had to write traditional laureate poems too, which are different.

rob: Yeah. Right.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: 'Cause I think back to, uh, what... The, like, the British poets laureate were, like, writing poems about, like, the king came to town or something. Uh, but honestly, like, Catherine Ahern, who was our first Ottawa poet laureate in the '80s, uh, she was writing poems like that of, like, the queen came to visit and—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —and, um—

Kyeren: I've had to write those too. I mean, no queens, but Remembrance Day.

rob: Oh, okay.

Kyeren: And that was, that was really hard because you have to consider that you're writing for people who've lost.

rob: Well, that's just it.

Kyeren: You know? And most...

rob: And I get the sense that I think Fred Wah, like, just said he, he wasn't gonna do that kind of stuff as, as, um, parliamentary poet or he wasn't interested—

Kyeren: Really?

rob: —in that kind of—

Kyeren: Wow.

rob: —thing. And most, I think, writers would not be doing that kind of thing without putting in a snide remark or something like that.

Kyeren: Well, I know I have. I've done those poems. I call them my public facing poems.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: They're very different to that voice, and they're very accessible.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: And I'm really thinking about the audience because I'm taking the role kind of seriously, then I really... In that I want to bring people into the fold of poetry.

rob: Right. And, and—

Kyeren: And so, you know, you, you gotta consider, like, w- with Re- Remembrance Day, there are people who've lost their family, there are military, there are Indigenous elders, there are children. So writing a poem for that, that... And they wanted, like, a prayer-like type thing, and I saw what they had the previous year, but then I wanted to write something that was literary.

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: You know? It... That was really tough. It was the toughest poem.

rob: Yeah, 'cause Catherine Ahern's poems were, you know, her poems—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —were the... They weren't great. But it was interesting—

Kyeren: ...but it, but it was interesting that she...

rob: —Well, she was creating the role—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —in a way, but it felt like in hindsight she was maybe taking off what, what the Brits had been doing—

Kyeren: Right.

rob: —when, when that role was created over there.

Kyeren: To bring it here.

rob: I'm just thinking offhand, there's that poet laureate in Fredericton. They either kicked her out of the position or, or everyone yelled at her 'cause she was using... I forget her name offhand. She was using the position to bring very difficult topics into conversation.

Kyeren: Wow. See, that's tough.

rob: Yeah. Uh, which is fascinating, and her work is interesting. I wish I could remember her name. Do you know of—

Kyeren: I don't. I don't, but I'm just... Sorry, I, it, I, I wanted to share that I did write a really difficult poem that the city didn't like.

rob: Oh, yeah?

Kyeren: Well, I don't know. I kind of feel they didn't like it when I read it at city council. I felt like everybody in the room was shocked. I wrote about the unhoused situation—

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: —in downtown Victoria, which is honestly pretty bad. You are not from here, so you may not know how bad it is. And the poem, you know, it wasn't there to decorate the meeting. I, I've been frustrated that the language that's usually used around homelessness can become, you know, so abstract and, you know, quickly includes policy and numbers and procedure, and poetry can return us to the fact that we're speaking about individual human lives. I-- But it seemed to me that the room wasn't happy that I'd written that poem. And then I read the same poem at Planet Earth Poetry, and it was honestly one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had reading because normally, like, my poetry's weird. I've written a book about a cult, you know, I get it. So when I read a poem, like half the room, I could hear them hearing me, and then you can hear your poem, and there's like this reciprocity. The other half, they, they couldn't care less about my content.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: But with this particular poem, it's like the entire room became a single ear.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: And they were hungry for what I ha- had to say because everybody is so disturbed by the heart of darkness in downtown Victoria and all of these people sleeping on the streets. And, and I thought, "Oh my goodness, this must be what it feels like for a poet who's naturally writing into the zeitgeist all the time." They're getting this kind of like feedback. And honestly, the amount of people who came up to thank me for that poem, people who, who weren't poets as well.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: And I read it at another event. I read it three times, and the same deal, people who I would normally not hear from came up to thank me. And the poem itself is not in my voice. It doesn't feel literary enough for me to send to a publisher.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: I don't know what I'm quite gonna do with it. But I think maybe its job was to serve that need, and yeah, so now that's kind of that need is, yeah.

rob: That becomes really interesting.

Kyeren: It does.

rob: So then, so then y- you, the way you see yourself as a writer, i- is that shifting because of the role? Or was that sort of a poem in the moment—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —due to the opportunity of the role or—

Kyeren: Yeah, no, it's, it's a great question. I think that my idea about what poetry can do has shifted. Occasional poetry is written into a particular moment, uh, for a particular audience. You know, its life may be in the room. It may just be in the room in what allows people to, you know, in what it allows people to feel or recognize or hold together for those few minutes rather than in a literary magazine or a future publication. And, um, you know, I think a poem can alter the emotional atmosphere of a room and it can bring language into places where, you know, the usual language has stopped being adequate. And like this idea of these public-facing poems, which are not really the sort of thing I normally write, there's another kind of small body of work that's come out of this large, which I don't really know what the hell to do with, except that they've been well-received at events.

rob: Right. But then—

Kyeren: Yeah...

rob: —but that's spanning your repertoire. It's still you, right? It's, it's...

Kyeren: Yeah, it is still me, but it's, it's a, it's a different-- It's me considering an audience and me considering, um, occasion.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: I usually don't think about audience at all. I'm just with the act of the poem arriving and then using craft to discover its shape or, you know, to deepen what's there and help it become more fully itself. But yeah, I'm only thinking about the poem, not about who will hear it in the future. So public-facing poems, you know, they have to consider the audience. Which is not the way I normally write. Like, I had to write a poem for the presidential investiture of, uh, the, the new president of UVic a while back. This is before the laureateship. And that was a really weird poem to write too. The same sort of poem. Had to be read at convocation, and had to follow the president around to all his meetings and his public, you know, kind of dos, and figure out who he was and how the heck I was gonna write a poem about this guy.

rob: That's kind of weird actually.

Kyeren: It's really weird. I feel like I was stalking the president of UVic for a couple of weeks.

rob: So you—

Kyeren: But yeah, but I wrote the poem...

rob: —so it was almost like a, a form of journalism.

Kyeren: It is.

rob: Right?

Kyeren: It is.

rob: You were doing like a profile piece in a feud—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —yeah...

Kyeren: —yeah...

rob: —except through the medium of—

Kyeren: —yeah, the poem. And also it was funny.

rob: Right. So yeah. I'll read a funny poem later.

rob: Well, it had to be friendly. You're, you're not gonna be like, "This guy the dick. This guy the dick." Like, that, that would not have been—

Kyeren: I kinda... I w- I weaved in a little bit of—

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: —and I don't know whether he liked that.

rob: You, you said you've talked to other laureates. Are there other ideas that other people have done that you've tried to incorporate or ideas other people have done you think are really cool, but not necessarily—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —what you wanted to personally do?

Kyeren: Totally. Actually, with Ellie's permission, Ellie Kraljić Gardiner from, um, Vancouver.

rob: Yeah, she's great.

Kyeren: Yeah. Think this was Rachel Rose's idea, was to have poetry ambassadors. When I came in, I still had the other laureate who was still doing her thing. It was this weird crossover. It took like—

rob: Mm.

Kyeren: —three months to even announce me.

rob: Okay.

Kyeren: And I was trying to make events, but I wasn't announced. It was kind of a disaster.

rob: You were like a secret laureate?

Kyeren: I was a secret laureate for like three months. It was very weird.

rob: Like a side laureate.

Kyeren: But then, but also I couldn't do a whole lot of stuff that I wanted to do because—

rob: Right.

Kyeren: —you know, it takes planning. So the, the first—

rob: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyeren: —year felt like pushing a boulder uphill, honestly. What Ellie suggested is just to try with the poetry ambassadorship, and so I picked three amazing women, uh, amazing poets and all advocates for poetry already. And just meeting with them and having them on board with me and having them repost my posts and sort of help me figure out what it is that, you know, I was trying to do, it was amazing. It felt like psychic protection.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: You know? So—

rob: And—

Kyeren: —so I totally took that on. Yeah. The other thing that I've heard that I just loved was Fiona Tinwei Lam's use of film.

rob: Hmm.

Kyeren: Her poetry films are incredible. I really love that. And I have a half-finished poetry film that I shot at Ballet Victoria with a marvelous ballerina, uh, Dana Brandt, but I didn't complete it. My family had some massive life events, and it just kind of fell through the cracks. But Fiona re-inspired me, and I'd love to finish it. I'm fascinated with, you know, the marriage between poetry and film. It's such an easy access point into poetry for people.

rob: It's all, like, access really.

Kyeren: It's just providing access.

rob: It's providing access. Yeah.

Kyeren: And this is why I did the l- the podcast—

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: —was because I wanted something that was free and that would feature people who wanted to advocate for poetry and people who are community-minded.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: So I get to talk to all these people—

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: —who are doing what I like doing.

rob: And there are different really neat ways to provide access. Yeah. I remember going to walking by a hotel in Winnipeg a year or two ago and seeing text right above the front, the concierge desk.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: And it's, it's a poem by, like, a '70s Winnipeg poet.

Kyeren: That's really interesting. That's very interesting. Wow.

rob: Uh, and I think Derek Beaulieu, when he was poet laureate of Calgary- I think he was trying to get street names changed, like little, uh, like back alley lanes that didn't have names, and trying to name them after, I think Roy Kiyooka was one, and, and just, you know, artists and poets and writers from the city. And it cost something like 2,500 bucks to give a, a lane a name, so was trying to find that in a budget. I don't know how many he actually got done.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: Not as many he, as he would've liked.

Kyeren: That's really interesting. That's really interesting, right?

rob: Yeah. Because then if someone looks that street name up, boom, there's poetry.

Kyeren: Yeah, like what Coach House did with bpNichol Lane.

rob: With bpNichol Lane. I was just thinking about that.

Kyeren: And then, and then there's actually a literal concrete poem in the—

rob: In the concrete...

Kyeren: —street. Yeah.

rob: Yeah, it's very cool. A concrete, concrete poem. I've seen photos of it. Maybe like a pavement concrete poem, but whatever. Yeah.

Kyeren: My first book was printed by Coach House.

rob: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Kyeren: So I—

rob: Yeah, yeah.

Kyeren: —I looked it all up, yeah.

rob: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they were beautiful books.

rob: But yeah, just, it's interesting the way different people approach attempting access.

Kyeren: Yes.

rob: Like, if it's all done in the same way, uh, the public knows how to protect themselves from it. But if we kinda get them out of left field, like, oh, there's a poem. You know? Uh, then hey, this is good. 'Cause I, like in the '90s I made these little poem handouts. It was a single piece of paper.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: It said poem on it. I'd fold it in, into thirds, and I'd hand it out as a promotional way, 'cause most people told me, "Oh, I haven't read a poem since high school."

Kyeren: Yeah, it's—

rob: So it's like, so you know nothing about the art, right?

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: If my handout made one out of every hundred people want to read a second poem, didn't matter if it was mine, then that was a huge accomplishment. "Oh, wow, I didn't know poems could do this."

Kyeren: So you were, you were printing other people's poetry and stuff.

rob: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I probably did a few by John Barton.

Kyeren: And you know what? That, yeah. That was fun. You know, that's—

rob: Yeah, John probably has a lot of papery bits in his house with, in his suite, uh, with a poem on them that I've done over the years.

Here is the clean, complete, line-by-line polished transcript for pages 7, 8, and 9 in the exact formatting of The Poet Laureate Podcast:

Kyeren: But you know, that's one of the things I think is a job of the poet laureate too, is, is uplifting other poets, is bringing their voices forward.

rob: Oh, for sure, yeah.

Kyeren: Because the role is not about me. Almost everything that I've done and that I see other laureates who are doing the work do is, is just feature tons and tons of poetry—

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: —and tons of poets, and trying to find like the diversity that the city needs so people see themselves.

rob: Yeah. That creates access, too.

Kyeren: Yeah, and again, that, that's my sense of what the role should be too.

rob: Yeah. 'Cause if you're a cheerleader, it's not about you per se.

Kyeren: No.

rob: You are part of it, but it's supposed to be about the thing generally.

Kyeren: Exactly.

rob: Right?

Kyeren: Yeah. You're kinda like an unofficial laureate. I mean, you've got how many books? 1,400 Above Ground Press chapbooks and—

rob: Uh, yeah, Above Ground has produced about 1,500 items, 800 of which mighta be, might be chapbooks. Um, I've, I've—

Kyeren: That's a substantial contribution...

rob: —and I've published about 50 books. I've written more. And I just had a new one accepted two days ago.

Kyeren: Oh, did you? Where? What? Where?

rob: On the internet. That's how I got it. I got an email.

Kyeren: Oh, you mean what publisher?

rob: Yeah. Uh, University of Calgary Press.

Kyeren: Very cool, 'cause you got one coming out with Caitlin Press too.

rob: Caitlin in June, yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah, yeah.

rob: And then the Calgary one's probably gonna be, like, two or three years away or something, which is normal university press system.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

rob: But, you know, we could all be dead by then. Feels very weird.

Kyeren: Well, I mean, you've also got the journal, The Little Journal, Touch the Donkey—

rob: Touch the Donkey.

Kyeren: —Yeah, yeah, yeah... and Periodicitys.

rob: Periodicitys, yep, monthly, online.

Kyeren: Yeah. Like 20 to 25 pieces a month. And you have Verse Fest.

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: And the admin, the laureates. So like you—

rob: I, I have a lot more than that.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: The, the Tuesday poem I curate every Tuesday morning.

Kyeren: Wow.

rob: Uh, I think number 700 will be out in September.

Kyeren: That's—

rob: Yeah, 'cause I usually try to curate like six months ahead. So then if I lose a month, I'm still ahead. That's my logic, right? Like Touch the Donkey, it's a quarterly—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —and I try to be a year ahead.

Kyeren: Oh, that's interesting.

rob: If I can. A year.

Kyeren: Yeah. Wow. So then again, if I lose a month...

Kyeren: So 49 issues, how many years is that?

rob: Well, I was about to say I'm not doing the math on that, but, uh, I didn't want—

Kyeren: I'm, I'm asking you...

rob: ...you writing to do the math. Um, I started in 2014. My wife Christine and I were starting to make little people.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: And I was gonna be home with those little people, and yeah, Rose emerged in November 2013, and sadly there's a part of me that said, "Oh, no, I'm gonna be home. People will forget me." So I made another project.

Kyeren: So what is it? 'Cause anyone who knows me knows that I do the same thing. I mean, you're like me 10X.

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: But I do a lot, and people ask me why I do that much, and kinda what's wrong with me or—

rob: Yeah, yeah.

Kyeren: —um, what am I trying to prove, or am I trying to give myself a nervous breakdown?

rob: That makes sense to you, an 80 chapbook year, like a loser.

Kyeren: So yeah, I, I, I—

rob: It's fun to make stuff...

Kyeren: —what is that s—

rob: —And there's so much good work.

Kyeren: Yeah. Is that, is that what it is?

rob: That's pretty much it. Like, what's, what's the spring? The whole, the whole thing is, is, is propelled by my enthusiasm.

Kyeren: Yeah?

rob: Yeah. The, just, the, all, like Above Ground and Touch the Donkey and Periodicitys, uh, is me getting excited about a piece of work I wanna share with other people.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: And like the r- the initial real push of Above Ground, uh, which will e- will be 33 this summer—

Kyeren: Amazing...

rob: —was I couldn't afford to give out books to people. "Hey, you should read this. This guy's really cool." But I can afford to hand out chapbooks.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: Yeah. Speaking of which, I have a stack of Touch the Donkey over there that I am giving away.

Kyeren: Oh, that's amazing.

rob: Like, I want to sell stuff too, but, uh, Touch the Donkey, and there will be an emotional cost, but there is no financial cost. And Touch the Donkey, uh, my goal, leaning more toward experimental work. It's usually roughly half American, half Canadian, with the occasional other, uh, per issue, and I try not to have two contributors in the same city in any issue.

Kyeren: Hmm.

rob: So even if nothing else, I'm introducing people in the issue to each other.

Kyeren: Very cool.

rob: And then I have supplemental interviews that post on the Touch the Donkey blog. You know, tell me about these poems. How do these poems fit with what you've been doing? How do these poems fit with what you've ever done? And the initial logic was, um, it'll help sell copies of the journal. That did not work. Uh, but I've done about 300 interviews in, uh, 12 years of Donkey.

Kyeren: Your interviews are a link in a workshop handout that I give—

rob: Uh-huh.

Kyeren: —to students.

rob: W- Those are the 12 and 20s. I've done, like, 2,000 of those.

Kyeren: Yeah, Periodicity's too, but—

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: —the Touch the Donkeys as well, and they're both links.

rob: And then the 12 and 20s—

Kyeren: There's so much valuable information...

rob: —was a pros- was a project of access. When I was at U of A, I'd never lived with internet before. I'd have to go to the internet cafe, have my list of stuff I need to do, pay two bucks half an hour, and try to just, like, send that email, grab that thing, send that email, grab that thing—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —and get out of there, 'cause I didn't have more than two bucks a day. But U of A, I had access. So the 12 and 20s, the work was the three days building the questions and then just sending out, "Hey, you wanna do this?" and posting them is kinda like monkey work in a way. It's not really brain work, right?

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: So my logic was it would make me look really active on the blog, but it would allow my attention to focus on work.

Kyeren: Right.

rob: So I was able to do writing.

Kyeren: Right.

rob: Yeah, that was my initial logic, and I posted 175 when I was at U of A.

Kyeren: You still have to proof them, though.

rob: I, I do have to proof them, and you would be shocked at the amount of times that I have to correct the name of an author on there that is almost always in the list of this author is so important to me. It's like, well, then why can't you spell their name correctly?

Kyeren: Funny story about cult life—

rob: So funny.

Kyeren: —And I never tell these people I've corrected the-

rob: ...I just quietly do it and sort of shake my head.

Kyeren: We, um, we printed-- Well, Coach House printed the cover, and we had Sylvia Legris's name spelt wrong on the back.

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah, we had to print 400 more copies.

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: My biggest, my biggest mistake recently proofing, 'cause I'm, I'm not a very good proofer. I'm, I'm a really-- I don't wanna sort of... I, I'm just gonna say it. I'm a really good creative editor. Like, I, I, I love editing people's work. I love letting it be what it is and finding a way to lift it into more, kinda more of itself. I'm not a very good proofer. I'm a terrible proofer.

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: So I, I printed for, um, for this... We had this poetry dispenser going into the public library. It's like a gumball machine, and it's filled with over 65 local poets' work—

rob: Hmm.

Kyeren: —on little tiny pieces of colored roll-up paper. It's very, you know, whimsical and gorgeous, and it's this old-fashioned machine with a fishbowl top and the wrought iron legs. Well, as we were rolling the poems, towards the very, very end of us rolling, uh, like 650 poems—

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: —we realized, not me, other poets realized, that there were some really weird glitches. And so when I, I had copied and pasted them into the publisher file, a couple of fonts had decided to turn an apostrophe into a #amp

rob: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to get that a lot with early blogger stuff.

Kyeren: Yeah. Well, so then I had to unroll 650 poems, Rob—

rob: Yeah. Yeah, that's irritating...

Kyeren: —and roll them back up again and find those, those three poems, 10 copies of each.

rob: I, I did, I did edit an anthology once that the publisher, no matter how many times I asked, would not give me the cover to proof.

Kyeren: Ooh.

rob: And he spelled his own press name wrong in the cover design. And, um, oh my God, and I was unfortunately in the office—

Kyeren: Trauma.

rob: —uh, when that happened. And he would just pick a copy up off the floor and throw it against the wall. And by the third time it's like, "Okay, he didn't find it funny. I'm gonna go." But for, like, 15 years I would mail this guy postcards care of, and I'd put the wrong name. All wrong. And people in the office were sending me emails like, "You have to stop doing this." He spent, like, three days so mad. Like, hey man, you should've sent me the cover to approve.

Kyeren: Oh, dear. Oh my God. So the moral of the story is don't, is don't mess with Rob McLennan. Do what he says.

rob: Well, I don't know about that. Think that you might be going a little far.

Kyeren: Well, I don't know. I don't know. That, it sounds like you might have nearly given the poor guy a heart attack.

rob: Yeah, and then every few weeks Vancouver writer Michael Turner does send me an email telling me I have typos in, like, a new blog post, like a review or something.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: Which is a kindness I do appreciate. And you know, if you don't wanna be corrected, maybe be wrong less. But he does, like, "By the way."

Kyeren: But the, it means he's reading them though. That's interesting.

rob: That is good. He's reading the blog. "By the way, you spelled that wrong." Oh, crap. Okay, I gotta fix that. And at least with online you can fix it quickly.

Kyeren: Yeah. As opposed to a printed book.

rob: Yes, or a newsletter or something.

Kyeren: Yeah. Where it's just gone out with poets' names incorrectly spelled, and we've all, we've all done that.

rob: Yeah. It doesn't get any better than, like, Fred Wah getting mail as Fred Was, you know? Fred What, you know?

Kyeren: Oh, that's terrible.

rob: It's great. It's terrible, but it's really funny. I hope he has a good sense of humor.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. So have there been any parts of the laureateship that have surprised you?

rob: Hmm.

Kyeren: You know, I was surprised at, um, feeling a bit sad about the, the length being reduced.

rob: Okay.

Kyeren: I thought, "Oh, it's great. This is only two years. I've got so much that I'm doing." But I think, I think it was because the first year was so weird.

rob: Right, right, right, right.

Kyeren: And I feel like I've really just only come into the role this year. Like, all the things I wanted to do for last year's National Poetry Month, I finally got to do.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: And it's been ... I mean, it's b- the Poetry Month has kicked my butt, but it's been so great, and just to see everything kind of, like, roll out and... So I kind of feel sad that the, the Dream Poetry Month only happens once—

rob: Right.

Kyeren: —for me. But, you know, somebody else will, will pick it up and do it. And the other thing that surprised me, um, was just how quickly things come to, can come together. We put a s- a poetry fair together in, like, a week and a half, two weeks—

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: —with 28 poets, and with Jan Zwicky and Tim Lilburn and Garth Martens doing a feature at the end, and all these tables full of books, and it, it was an amazing event, and poetry doctors as well.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: Uh, and it was put together so fast. So, um, that was very cool.

rob: Well, in a way, this stuff—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —isn't that hard. It just takes the work. It just takes a bit of work. Right?

Kyeren: Yeah. Takes time and attention and effort and—

rob: Mm-hmm. And of course, you know—

Kyeren: You just make a few, you make a few, like, send a few emails.

rob: The finding the money is hard, but if you are doing—

Kyeren: Oh, that's the hardest, isn't it?

rob: If you're doing a laureateship, then presumably you have access to s- certain resources that you might not have had access to otherwise.

Kyeren: Really not that, that, not that much more.

rob: No?

Kyeren: No. And I think that's, um, that's been a surprise, too. Um, I think there was also, like, a, a changeover in administration as well.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: So, you know, and the overlap. It took me nine months to get the city logo for the—

rob: Right.

Kyeren: —um, yeah.

rob: Yeah. You were telling me that, uh—

Kyeren: Yeah yesterday.

rob: —yesterday.

Kyeren: But now we've got a system. Like, we've got a system happening now.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: But it, I think the structures weren't in place.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: And I really hope to leave some structures for the next person.

rob: Right, but maybe the next person—

Kyeren: So that it's quicker for them...

rob: —might approach it very differently and maybe not need those structures, which can be good and bad.

Kyeren: That's true.

rob: Right?

Kyeren: That's true. Didn't think of that.

rob: And, and yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah, and I, and I had to look it up, uh, 'cause you asked me the other night, like, how much our laureates get, and I didn't know, even though I'm part of the admin structure of it—

rob: Mm-hmm.

Kyeren: —but I'm not the one handing out the money. They get five grand a year, and they have five grand extra to play with to do projects.

rob: Yeah, see, that w- I could do so much with five grand.

Kyeren: I've got t- two, I think.

rob: Yeah. It's, it's not very much when you pay honorarium. When you want to pay honorarium at, at an industry standard—

Kyeren: Right.

rob: —it's not very much.

Kyeren: No, it's true. Yeah. And, like, the cake today cost 50 bucks.

rob: Right. So things like that. Because it's industry cake.

Kyeren: It's industry cake, yeah. And the gumball machine was—

rob: Mm-hmm.

Kyeren: —was 65. Like, it all adds up, right? All the printing and yeah. It really was. Oh, I know, I know. Jesus. And just, just for the record too, because this is gonna be in perpetuity, uh, on, on my website, the poetry dispenser was not my idea. It was Nina Massal, who's one of my poetry ambassadors. She was so excited about this idea, and then on Facebook Marketplace, a poetry dispenser appeared, voila.

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: And it's worth the work. What I love about the dispenser is the element of chance. You don't choose the poem because you already know the poet or the title. You receive whatever comes through the machine. For a moment, poetry behaves like an oracle. You know, a stranger has written something, and suddenly it's in your hand, and maybe it's in the hand of someone who's giving poetry a chance for the first time.

rob: Yeah, and people have done versions of that for—

Kyeren: For, yeah years, right? I heard about—

rob: Like, um—

Kyeren: There's a, there's one in Portugal that has just a single poet.

rob: Yeah, like there's, isn't there some, I forget where it is. Is it in London or something where there's like a short story dispenser, like a cigarette machine—

Kyeren: A short story dispenser?

rob: —or something. I think it's like an old cigarette machine—

Kyeren: Oh.

rob: —where you can buy the, like the packs, and instead they're short stories.

Kyeren: It must be micro fiction.

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah. Little short things—

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: —which is pretty cool.

rob: Yeah. And Tamara Fairchild in the mid-'90s in Ottawa actually ha- bought like one of those toy machines. You put a quarter in, you get the little bubbly thing, right? The little pa-

Kyeren: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

rob: So, and she had poems in them. You put in your quarter. Uh, like that was really neat. She did that for a couple years.

Kyeren: That is cool. I, I looked at those. They were quite expensive.

rob: Yeah.

Here is the clean, complete, line-by-line transcript for this section, formatted to match The Poet Laureate Podcast episode layouts—including the mid-show music break marker:

Kyeren: Even the vintage ones, and then there are different sized bubbles—

rob: Especially the vintage ones and different sized holes in the bottom. If it's called vintage, you can just add a zero. That's what it means.

Kyeren: Oh, yeah. No, really. It's, it's true.

rob: Yes. No, you just find, you'd have to go to some guy's shed. "Can I have that?" "Yeah, sure." Try that. That's the way to do it. Go, go to some, like a junk store.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: And then you just get the thing fixed.

Kyeren: Well, we're doing one more at Russell Books, and I don't think I'm gonna be doing more than two.

rob: Okay.

Kyeren: Yeah. Just not just with the cost, but just with the sheer rolling work.

rob: Right, 'cause machines like that require upkeep—

Kyeren: They require, yeah...

rob: —and new material and that kind of thing. Yeah. I know in Ottawa, JW Curry was trying to send visual poems to Jones Soda.

Kyeren: Hmm.

rob: Right? Uh, Jones Ave, is, is that not what it's called? It's like that... Yeah, there's, there's nodding. The young people are nodding. There's something in your arm. Because you can send in photos, and they put your photo on the label, and then d—you know, they put your name on the side and everything like that. And so he was trying to send visual poems in. Like, that was a neat way to get a poem published. Although they only would give him, like, three labels. I thought if you're, if they're using your content, give a case, for God sakes, of the drink, not just the label. You know, was there— But I thought that was a cool way of trying to, like, work, work the system—

Kyeren: Yeah, yeah.

rob: —in a very unusual way, right?

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: Like, a text poem might not have been accepted on that.

Kyeren: But a visual poem makes sense because it's a label, so yeah.

rob: Yeah. You know Denman Island Chocolates? Was it Denman Island Chocolates that had poetry in the wrapper for a while?

Kyeren: Oh, cool. Does anyone remember?

rob: It was only for a very short time, and I was ready to send a poem, and then it just wasn't there anymore. And there was a winery in Niagara that had, uh, poems on the labels.

Kyeren: I love that.

rob: They did a Chris Dewdney. They did a bpNichol. And these are, like, $70 wines.

Kyeren: Huh.

rob: So I think we got one or two. Uh, we pretended they were, like, anniversary presents to each other, my wife and I. Um, yeah, I, I forget which winery, but they only had done maybe, like, six or seven, maybe one a year kind of thing, you know? But it was very cool.

Kyeren: We need more things like that, rob. Maybe that should be you as laureate to start prodding at, at wineries or that kind of thing. "Hey, what about this?" And, and most people m—will probably say no. But—

rob: I'm more of a kombucha girl, really.

Kyeren: Hmm?

rob: I'm more of a kombucha girl.

Kyeren: Then do that. Make everything weird. Uh—

rob: So we should probably do one more poem and then have a little break.

Kyeren: Okay.

rob: And for all the people who are listening after we produce this, there will be this lovely music, and you can think about the fact that we're all eating cake.

Kyeren: So you're suggesting they should just pause and just go off and do something for a few minutes—

rob: Get some cake...

Kyeren: —and then come back refreshed.

rob: Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Kyeren: Okay, cool. So my last poem will be a poem I've read before. Uh, many people in the audience will have heard it. But because I'm talking about poets leaving signature poems on the podcast, this is kind of a signature poem for me, and it's from my book, which is kind of a memoir with poetry and prose and dramatic monologue because apparently I want to write in all four genres at once. And this is one of the voices, uh, from this strange ashram I lived in in my 20s. This is Rupi.

[Poem: “Rupi,” read by Kyeren Regehr]

[Poem text omitted from transcript.]

rob: And that is a perfect poem for a break because, uh, you know, let us eat cake.

Kyeren: Let us eat cake.

[Mid-show music]

[Poem: “Forty-twelfth Birthday,” read by rob mclennan]

[Poem text omitted from transcript.]

rob: Uh, and I should mention that the three poems that I'll be reading in this, uh, second segment are from a Coach House anthology edited by Sina Queyras, On Occasion: Poems for the People, and they're all part of the manuscript that University of Calgary just took, so that'll be out in, like, two or three years or however that works. I should probably sign the contract before I say too much.

Kyeren: This will be out maybe after you sign your contract, so it's fine.

rob: Well, 'cause I got it, like, kind of five minutes before I flew to Victoria, so I didn't have time to print it and mail it and all of that stuff. So it's easier just to access it in the already published anthology. I don't know what's going on.

Kyeren: So rob, I'm curious for us to talk about how poems come to us, how they start.

rob: Okay. Yeah. That, that's nice. Oh, would you like to hear my response on that? Uh, for, for me, uh, mine start with language, and I just sort of feel out where that takes me, and I feel as though content, in a way, are just, like, the building blocks to get there. Yeah, and, and I don't even know if that metaphor totally works because there's an element where it's like, well, no, the language are the building blocks to get me there, or it's the content of whatever happens to be going on sort of in my head or in my household or in my reading.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: Like, I don't start necessarily with, "I'm gonna write a poem about dogs," or so—like, I don't necessarily do that, but I don't not do that either. So I don't know if I start with kind of anything and I just kinda move from there. So I don't know if that is a completely inarticulate answer. Uh, I kinda feel out where it might go, and some poems can take weeks. Like, I know if I'm working on a short story, they can be less than 1,000 words, and it could take me eight months.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: 'Cause I'm just sort of carving and carving and carving and then letting it sit, and maybe one day I'm going through it again and realize, oh, okay, this is a section that needs to go between these two—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —for the logic. 'Cause I don't want a linear logic. Same with these poems, like, in this anthology and in The Book of Sentences. I don't want necessarily an overt direct line linearity from beginning to end. I kinda want a collage element.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: So present something, and then I wanna have a leap— In a way, I kind of think the poem I put on the page comes together in the reader's head, and I have to allow the space in my own language for the reader to kinda get there on their own, but not really on their own. Like, I put up maybe suggestions or signposts, but I'm not—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —I'm not giving them a map per se. Right. Yeah, yep. No idea if that made any sense.

Kyeren: No, I can follow it. I have a lot of narrative poems, but I also intentionally write anti-narrative poems.

rob: Okay.

Kyeren: Like ghazals or like versions of ghazals.

rob: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah. Where the, um, the through thread is, um, emotional or it's a mood or it's language-y or something, something different.

rob: Right, and they're supposed to be like the anti-sonnets, right?

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: So they go against—

Kyeren: Exactly...

rob: —the narrative logic.

Kyeren: Yes.

rob: And they allow these sort of couplets to leap, uh, having leaps between them, and I'm mar—far more interested in that kind of—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —narrative logic than... Like, if, if I'm reading a poem and I could have just understood the whole thing through bullet points, then kind of what was the point of the process?

Kyeren: Interesting.

rob: Same with me reading prose. Like, I'm there for the language. If I'm just there for the information, then I'm not actually interested in writing, and I know that that's maybe, like, that's a bit extreme there, fella, but I get bored. It, like, if I'm reading something that I'm just willing to skip passages 'cause I'm waiting for the next kinda plot point, then that feels a failure of the writing to me.

Kyeren: But you're so supportive of so many writers.

rob: Yeah, but it doesn't mean I like everything. But I also know that everyone—

Kyeren: Confession.

rob: But I know that everyone coming to a poem, whether as writer or reader or any other piece of writing, are coming to it for different reasons.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: With different interests and different purposes.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: You know, I would think that Christian Bök is going into a poem with very different interest than either of us.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: Like, that is a good thing. That, that means, uh, for, a, like, a healthy literature having different points of view. But then you need to read those works in a way on their own terms, don't you think?

Kyeren: Yeah, no, totally.

rob: I used to complain about, uh, people in the '90s, specific people I won't name, that were, like, complaining that basically this poetry book is bad because it's not living up to the standards of my own personal interest as opposed to w—what that author is interested in.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: And it really felt like I like clowns. Schindler's List didn't have clowns, therefore Schindler's List is a bad film. Like, it's nonsensical.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: Yeah. Right?

Kyeren: Yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm really interested in, in where poetry starts for people because it seems to be like, I don't know, I wanna call it a mystical process.

rob: Hmm.

Kyeren: Because even when poets try to articulate it, they kind of move around in circles around it, and I wanna know what, what actually happens. Like, what... Like, for me, it starts in my body.

rob: Okay.

Kyeren: I feel the rhythm, and I think that's because I was a dancer.

rob: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah. Yeah. And so my body, like, it wants to move, and if I have something really intense happen in my life, it wants to move out of me, and it often will come out as a poem.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: And that's like a cathartic poem, and I feel the rhythm, and maybe I have an idea of what I wanna write because I'm, I'm trying to process something, and then I process it through the, through the work. But other times, there's this thing that happens where, like, you'll get a first line. Like, it just all of... Just like, it's like you could just catch it as it comes past. Or there's a rhythm that comes in my body, like, like maybe I'm feeling a trochaic rhythm. As if I sit down with that, words will come, and there'll be, like, a mood or a tone. Like music has a mood. Each song has a mood, right?

rob: Right.

Kyeren: And I'm trying to stay with that mood, and I'm trying to not put things on the page that don't fit with that.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: And it's unfolding. And so—

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: It's just, it's a strange, magical process. No?

rob: Uh, I'm from a farm, and I'm much more pragmatic. My dad, my dad did not get all metaphysical about it every morning. He got up and he milked the cows. He got up and he did the work. So then where does—

Kyeren: Right? So that—

rob: —where does the poem come from? Um, I... Like, in my mind, it's, it's sort of equally m—muscle and study and craft and art and kind of—

Kyeren: Well, yeah, all that too...

rob: —all of the above, and it comes from whatever it comes from. Like, that starting point. Like, I was talking about it with, with—

Kyeren: Yeah, I try not to overthink then.

rob: I was talking with Drew Lavigne, and who's the poet laureate of New Brunswick, and he was saying that when a poem comes, if he doesn't sit down and write it, it disappears. Like, it's gone from him.

Kyeren: Right, like a certain phrase or a certain idea or a certain thing.

rob: Exactly.

Kyeren: Like, something's come to him.

rob: Well, I know Margo Wheaton and I talked about that at one point, about not overloading your teenagers in activities because kids need to waste time, and that's where thinking happens. You don't wanna be, like, in your 40s or 50s and realize that you've been so overscheduled, you don't know what you like and you don't know who you are and you don't know—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —you know, that kind of thing. So—

Kyeren: Boredom creates—

rob: So when you're not—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —actively doing a thing, it's why thoughts come in the shower, 'cause you're not actively doing a task in a certain kind of way, and your mind can just wander around, and that's when stuff-- that's when you're allowing your head to kinda slow down, and stuff can just come to you.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. So—

Kyeren: So you, are you doing that as a practice, or do you have portions of your life where you're doing that?

rob: As part of my, my writing process, I'll just kinda sit down and just sort of feel stuff out. Um, I do a lot of notebook stuff in cafes and pubs and during the little one's ukulele lessons or, like, other things like that, or ringette, and just sort of playing with ideas, and then once I'm at my machine, I can maybe start moving stuff around and getting it on the computer and, and, and seeing where it might go next.

Kyeren: So you write longhand?

rob: I used to do completely longhand, uh, in the '90s, and I would rewrite every poem out.

Kyeren: Hmm.

rob: So I do 30, 40, 50 drafts of poems.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: Uh, I think it's much more internalized now, that process. But there's still a point on my computer, I can't see the poem anymore. I have to print it and then scribble all over it—

Kyeren: Yeah, I do that.

rob: —and then do a new one—

Kyeren: Yeah...

rob: —and then print that. I'm lucky to get out to write now, 'cause I'm home with, with kids and stuff, and I'm car-less in a, in a suburb. Yeah, I used to be out kind of all day every day in my 20s and 30s, and now I'm lucky to get out an afternoon every few weeks, which is fine.

Kyeren: Is that the only time you write, when you're out?

rob: No, I'm, I'm at my machine all day every day.

Kyeren: Right. Okay.

rob: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wake up and I get to work. Except now it's wake up, make my coffee, make Christine's coffee, 'cause we hate each other's coffee. Uh— Rose is already out. Christine's gotten Rose out. She's 12. She gets picked up by third-party bus service, dude in a van, at, like, 7:25. Aoife doesn't need to be out until, like, 8:45. I make Aoife lunch. Uh, I sort of do my first s—uh, first thing in the morning computer stuff, and then I, I remind Aoife, like, three times to get dressed, and once or twice more, like, "No, no, socks. You need s—you need to put socks on." Uh, and so once she's finally out the door, then I'm at my machine—

Kyeren: With socks.

rob: —until I just feel kind of fried, maybe, like, 3:30 or so, and then Aoife—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —comes in about, uh, like, 10 to 4. Rose comes in about 4:30. Then I start thinking like, "Oh crap, what am I gonna make for dinner?"

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: Then Christine's home about, uh, 5:40 or so.

Kyeren: Wow.

rob: So I'm... But, but just in between I'm just at my machine, I'm just working.

Kyeren: Oh, that's just such a dream day.

Here is the clean, complete, line-by-line polished transcript for this section, formatted in the exact style of The Poet Laureate Podcast:

rob: And, and if I feel completely fried, uh, I will decompress in front of the TV, but I'm often folding and stapling.

Kyeren: You're often—

rob: Folding and stapling.

Kyeren: Folding st— Oh, right. Yeah. Of course, yeah. Yeah.

rob: Because that is not brain work.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: So I can just do that in front of the TV, and I can just do that for hours upon hours and upon hours.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: If I do it too long, it really hurts my shoulder 'cause I'm kinda hunched, you know?

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

rob: But, like, it's not thinking work.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

rob: Like, 'cause I have boxes all over the basement of stuff I've, I'm still putting together.

Kyeren: Wow. That's so much writing time. I've gotta say I'm envious.

rob: But, but, like, David O'Meara and I have talked about this.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: Uh, we have both built our lives around—

Kyeren: Around...

rob: —getting work done. Yeah, yeah. So we've even both talked about, like, residencies. Like, we don't need to lift ourselves out of something to get work done. I get less done if I'm gonna be at, like, a Sage Hill or a Banff—

Kyeren: Mm...

rob: —'cause I'm away from all of my comforts and my systems. Christine did Sage Hill a few years ago when the kids were little, little. And even though I was full-time solo with, like, a two-year-old and a five-year-old or something for two weeks, I got more done when—because Christine was away. Yeah. If that makes sense.

Kyeren: Yeah. You know?

rob: I had the car and, you know, we're going off doing ridiculous things at the end of day. Like, we're just, "Let's go bowling," you know? And the kids were fine. Like, we were all fine. She was feeling stressed about leaving us alone. Like, we're good. We're good. Get them to school, get them to daycare. Like—

Kyeren: And then that, that big chunk of time...

rob: —or preschool, I mean. They, they didn't have daycare. They'd... Like, I think Aoife was doing, like—

Kyeren: But, you know, like...

rob: —two mornings a week...

Kyeren: —you're also getting Periodicitys out, and you're getting, you know, the journal, and you're getting, like, like when you have VerseFest, f—you're putting out writing during that time—

rob: Yeah, but Above/Ground is daily.

Kyeren: Right.

rob: Pretty much daily.

Kyeren: Right.

rob: Like, it's just a thing I, and in a way I don't think about as being like—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —oh, I can get an hour of folding here. Yeah, yeah. Cool, I have this stuff I need to staple. I'll do that tonight after the kids are in bed before I crash.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: I'll see how much I can get stapled tonight.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: You know? So I don't really think about that in a certain kind of, uh, physical way of, of an activity that's just constant. I've got some at the printer right now before I left town.

Kyeren: Well, I, I got—

rob: Yeah, a new Fred Wah chapbook. That'll be fun.

Kyeren: That will be really fun. Yeah. I got to admit to you, I don't get anywhere near that much writing done. Adminning Planet Earth Poetry is, is a lot of hours.

rob: But that was my 20s building that muscle. I forced myself—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —to consider starting three poems a week. Right?

Kyeren: I w—I write, like, two or three poems a week.

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: But the, my personal issue with not getting work out into the world is that in order to put a manuscript together, I need to be able to work on it, just it, with no other people's editing—

rob: Oh, really?

Kyeren: —with no... Yeah, I need to have a, a clean, clear space because I need to be able to get to the point where it's, like, constellating in my mind, where I can turn it and see it from all angles. I can see the shape of it, and I can see if there are gaps I wanna write into, and I'll write specific things into the, the gaps that I think there are. And I'll pull things out and lay it all out and put it all back together again several times o—many, many, many times over, actually. And so since I published Disassembling a Dancer, I have not had that space in my life. For whatever reason, we've had a whole series of—

rob: Like pretty intense things...

Kyeren: —from, from my mother dying to rent eviction to my, um, oldest child transitioning. There's just been a lot of really intense things, and I've not had that space to really get my head around my work and... Like, I've been sending one manuscript out, but I'm just not happy with it because I haven't had that sort of spaciousness with it.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: And it feels kind of precious, you know? But think I, I'm at the point with all of this, I'm sitting on so much work. Like, I'm sitting on several books.

rob: Okay.

Kyeren: And it's literally just the space in order to—

rob: Right.

Kyeren: —to just to have that, yeah, that ability to do it.

rob: Well—

Kyeren: So I'm waiting. I'm just waiting. And I wanna be clear, I'm not waiting for ideal conditions in order to write. I've never had ideal conditions. I've written steadily through years of upheaval. What I'm waiting for is a particular kind of sustained attention, not to make individual poems, but to perceive the architecture of a book. You know, a poem can be written in fragments of time, but for me, a manuscript can't be fully understood that way. I... Those different, those are different forms of work. I'm looking at, at finding time to give my current manuscripts that kind of attention.

rob: Yeah. I started writing full time when I was, like, running a home daycare and had a toddler and, you know, so the, like, there's a part of me that does think, like, if you're waiting for the right circumstances to get something done, you'll never get something done 'cause, like, 'cause there's no such thing, right? Like, I r—I've been writing in chaos for 30 years.

Kyeren: Yeah, no, I, I also started writing in chaos. I was kind of born as a poet, like, you know, properly at, at, at university, and I gave birth to Sonnet here, my 19-year-old, uh, in—

rob: Mm-hmm.

Kyeren: —at the end of first year.

rob: Oh, wow.

Kyeren: And so, yeah, I was, I was breastfeeding for four years of my university, and, and it was every night.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: Like, with very, very little sleep. So yeah, I, I always wrote in the cracks of time. I've been making chaos out of art for 30 years. First dance, then theater, then writing. I—what I'm describing isn't a reluctance to work through difficult conditions. It's the difference between making individual pieces inside that chaos and having enough sustained attention to understand, like, the shape of an entire book. You know, we all have different needs in our creative practice, and I can write almost anywhere, anytime, but it turns out that I need space, you know, space of my own, and a mind that isn't full of other people's work in order to find the shape of a manuscript.

I, um, I had that when my daughter was younger. You know, for two summers, uh, while she was in day camps, like art camps and such, I wrote at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. I bought this membership, and I went every day after I dropped her off. And they had this, um, enormous table out in the back, and I would lay my manuscripts out across the table over and over and over again until I got them in the right order, and I completed my first two manuscripts that way. I, I also had grants, so I wasn't carrying anyone else's work around in my head as an editor or a curator, but I haven't had that kind of time since, no matter how hard I've tried to find it. There've been so many major life events, and then homeschooling my daughter while simultaneously running Planet Earth Poetry. You know, it's been difficult to create the conditions in which a whole manuscript can constellate in my mind, and that's part of the way I write. It's, um, it's the part that I can't do in the midst of chaos. My manuscripts, they just ask for room.

rob: But it's, it's become more chaotic than university.

Kyeren: Right.

rob: Well, I was, I was telling someone, uh, near the cake that I wrote a 100-page sort of essay/memoir across the first 100 days of lockdown—

Kyeren: Yeah, nice.

rob: —as I was also caregiving the end of my dad's 16 months of ALS.

Kyeren: Wow. So it, th—like, that was just churning chaos.

rob: It's amazing. It's amazing.

Kyeren: And, and Dad died in the middle of that process.

rob: That's amazing. Like, he just didn't wake up. Like, he was fine. It was kind of irritating.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: Um, he was home. He could do his puzzles. The nurses loved him because he wasn't mad. He wasn't mean to them. They found him delightful. He was just one of these quiet, stoic Eastern Ontario kinda farmer guys, where most of his language was just, "Hmm, no." You know? Like, that was most of his words.

Kyeren: Maybe you're just more chill than me. I don't know.

rob: I do wonder if I just forced myself to kind of, no one cares, like in my 20s, no one cares if I'm gonna get work done.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: So I need to get work done.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: It won't matter in 30 years if I ate today. It won't matter if the landlords are trying to evict me for a fourth time. But it might matter if I get a certain kind of work done, and I really pushed hard on that.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: And I, I had the occasional other writer tell me that you're not supposed to write full time. It's like, "Why?" "Well, people don't do this." Like—

Kyeren: Mm.

rob: —that's not really an argument. And I felt no need to have employment, but I lived very terribly. You know, we all talk about, like, that, "Oh, to have half the confidence of a mediocre white man." I think that was me. Uh, s—and, and in hindsight I'm, I appreciate having had all that confidence.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: I just, I put my head down for however many years—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —and just worked.

Kyeren: Wow.

rob: And I also thought if I wasn't producing, then I might as well just get a job. Like, that's partly why I have so many books, is well, like, what else am I doing?

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

rob: Well, you have a lot of books. Yeah, but I didn't go to university. I have a lot of time. But I've built my life to get work done.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: 'Cause I feel as though it matters.

Kyeren: Yeah, no, it totally does. Yeah.

rob: And sometimes, you know, I've got poets waiting for me to get their media out to them, and I've got, yeah, all sorts of things happening, and my daughter waiting for me to edit her work for homeschooling.

Kyeren: Right.

rob: The, the house is in chaos and I'm just like, "Screw it, I'm writing this poem."

Kyeren: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

rob: You know? Although I do have, it's usually Mondays when I decide, like, no, I'm spending the afternoon putting the house back together 'cause everyone's out.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: That's when I, that's when I sort laundry and, and then, uh—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —spend the evening telling the children, "No, you need to put your clothes away." The girls are big enough now that I'm having a harder time figuring out what clothes belong to not only which child, but I sometimes get Rose's clothes confused as Christine's clothes. So I just sort stuff into a bed. But it can take, like, a couple hours. Like, it's a week's worth after.

Kyeren: We have folding parties where we watch TV and—

rob: Oh, really?

Kyeren: —sort and fold our clothes in the middle of the lounge room.

rob: No, I, like, I do all the laundry, I do all the dishes, I do all the, I do a lot of the cleaning 'cause, uh, Christine has the, uh, what's that?

Kyeren: Job.

rob: Yeah. And I'm the home guy.

Kyeren: Yeah. Yep.

rob: Which is fine. It works out. I like it.

Kyeren: Yeah, it certainly does. It certainly does. Wow.

rob: 'Cause I had a mom who was home, so I like being home for the kids.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

rob: And again, I was with the eldest until she was four, right?

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

rob: Doing a home daycare.

Kyeren: Yeah, yeah.

rob: ...when I was writing in a pub every night that she worked at.

Kyeren: So cool.

rob: She used to work at the Royal Oak, John...

Kyeren: rob is pointing to an audience member for those of you who are listening.

rob: She came over like, "Hey." I'm like, "What? That's great." It's really neat. Mm. Hey, do you wanna read another poem?

Kyeren: Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah? Sure. Since I'm here.

rob: Since you're here. My friend Steven Brockwell, Ottawa poet, his beloved dog died, so I wrote a poem for his beloved dog. It was a beloved dog.

[Poem: “Requiem for Nico, who was a good boy,” read by rob mclennan]

[Poem text omitted from transcript.]

rob: And that was, like, quite literally a response poem to the dog dying, and he was a big, ridiculous dog.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: Who thought he was a lapdog, and he was huge.

Kyeren: They all think they're lapdogs, for Pete's sakes.

rob: So that began with subject, and I was just feeling out the language and seeing what I could do with it. Yeah, yeah. So that might have taken, you know, 30, 40 drafts over a couple days or a couple weeks. When I'm at the end of a poem, I can do, like, 20 drafts in an afternoon.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: Just tweaking and tweaking and printing and, oh, it's so close.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: I, I feel so close. But, and it'll just keep going and keep going, and sometimes I can get it done that day, and sometimes I have to wait until the next day.

Kyeren: You know, I do that with contests. I use contests as a way to give myself a deadline to write certain things.

rob: Right, I get that, too. Yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah, I think it's left over from being, you know, an academic person and, you know, that deadline chaos that—

rob: Right.

Kyeren: —you have.

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: So I kinda turned the contests into my assignments.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: I don't always have time to actually send them in, I'll be honest.

rob: Oh, really?

Kyeren: I forget to send them in because I get it done, and then I get caught up with Planet Earth Poetry—

rob: Right.

Kyeren: —or something else. The deadline has passed. I'm like, "Oh, shit. Well, I got it written."

rob: Yeah, and I, I don't often have the fee for those contests.

Kyeren: Right.

rob: And like, I feel as though in a certain way, for a lot of the contests, I'm sort of too weird for the normal people and too normal for the weird people, like this weird middle space.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: So I don't feel as though I'm winning any contests, so—

Kyeren: Oh, I'm weird too, rob.

rob: So, uh, I just, like I said, in my 20s I was trying to start three a week and I was having these arbitrar—completely arbitrary markers.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: And I don't even think about that anymore. I like—

Kyeren: You just do it.

rob: Yeah, I can—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —if I'm working on something actively 'cause I work on multiple things simultaneously, which is a big thing. If I'm actively working on a poetry manuscript, it can be a year, year and a half.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: Uh, like last summer I got 50 pages into a thing that I got caught up with something else and I've set aside and I just haven't got back to yet. But I know it needs, it needs more and it needs something else, and it needs, yeah, it needs... It's no—it's maybe half done.

Kyeren: What's the longest span of time it's taken you to write a single poem?

rob: I, I don't know. I've not tr—that's not something I've tracked. I like to put at the back of my published books the dates of composition.

Kyeren: Mm.

rob: Partly because books aren't often published in the order in which they're composed, right?

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: So one book might appear, you know, wrong order and everything.

Kyeren: Yes.

rob: And, and I, I do feel there's a part of me that's, like maybe only I care about that, but it just seems interesting. And maybe one out of, like, 10,000 people will actually find that interesting and wonder, like, "Oh, okay. Seeing that came before this, I can actually see the movement."

Kyeren: Like the evolution of, yeah.

rob: I can, I can kinda see the line here—

Kyeren: Yeah, interesting.

rob: —of how he went from this shape to this shape.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: 'Cause I work in structure—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —when I'm working on a book.

Here is the clean, complete, line-by-line final transcript, formatted in the exact style of The Poet Laureate Podcast:

Kyeren: And what, what do you mean by you work in structure?

rob: Uh, form, I guess. For The Book of Smaller, which came out in 2022, was a book of 105 single stanza, uh, self-contained prose poems. Christine had just gone back to work after a year-long mat leave, so I was full-time, uh, with a one-year-old and a two-and-a-half-year-old. So my a—attention span for writing was very condensed. That was the only form my attention span would've allowed, and wanted to use that opportunity to finally do a book of only prose poems, which I'd been meaning to do for, like, like five or 10 years. It was in the back of my head, like, "Oh, this would be fun to do." It was almost like an opportunity presenting itself. So it was like poems that were started in parks or during naps.

Then Book of Sentences, which the book that immediately follows, and in my mind is second of, like, a trilogy.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: So The Next Thing Calgary is doing is the third.

Kyeren: Which is?

rob: Autobiography.

Kyeren: Oh, interesting.

rob: Uh, so the poem's kind of, like, physically more pulled apart in Book of Sentences. With Autobiography, a variation on that. So there's much more spacing and hesitation and pauses between phrases and lines and that kind of thing.

Kyeren: Interesting.

rob: And I wanted to do a book of prose poems 'cause I was worried in the '90s and aughts that I was... I wondered if I was leaning too heavily on, like, the line break. So I wanted to see what I could do without it, right?

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: To kind of force myself to not just be replicating old work.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: And then I worked three years on two huge nonfiction projects. And so the thing I started last summer, um, are, are actually poems that are pulled further apart. I like the idea of a book of, like, eight poems, but each poem is, like, eight pages long or something like that.

Kyeren: Right. Right.

rob: And I don't know if that'll be the final way the structure works or if I just put shorter things in between to do it as a unit, but that was the initial consideration. So—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —it feels in a way an extension of what I'd done with these. But I thought after Autobiography, I didn't wanna do another poetry book 'cause I didn't want to s—again, lapse into, "He's just doing the same thing."

Kyeren: No, no, no.

rob: So I just did nonfiction very purposefully to break that.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: 'Cause if you're just replicating old work and it's not as good, then kinda what's the point? I liked when you were really good. Why don't you do more of those? Like, there's that argument that capitalism just wants what's already been done.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: But I think if you're doing art, like Christian Bök or, or, um, uh, Greg Curnoe, who's a painter in London, Ontario in, like, the '60s and '70s, part of what makes it fascinating to watch the two of them work, like Curnoe died in '94, but we didn't... You didn't know what they'd do next.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: And that becomes really interesting.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

rob: And I'm more interested in that kind of thing than just, oh, it's another book of sonnets by that guy who's done, like, nine books of sonnets. You know, unless you're really doing something with the form, and I know there are people that might disagree with that, that maybe working through a particular form and honing it and working on nuance in between—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —there's value in that and there's something interesting in that. But yeah, I wanna do more, sort of more wild shifts.

Kyeren: Interesting.

rob: Yeah. I wanna do stuff that doesn't make sense yet—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —until I can—

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: —see it starting to make sense.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: Yeah. I wanna do a nonfiction book on the Crystal Palace.

Kyeren: I don't know what that is.

rob: That's what it's called, right? Like, that thing that, uh, that Victoria's husband did. You know, the queen?

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: There are little replicas of it. One is in Picton, Ontario, and another one is in Perth, and so the notion that there are these small Canadian replicas of them, which falls into really, you know, interesting conversations of, like, bringing home with you, like, uh, Strathcona, who did the rail, like, he named, he named the point where the last spike, uh, was put in, he named it after his hometown.

Kyeren: Yeah, it's like you can't escape home. You bring it with you.

rob: And so I don't know. I'm kinda feeling out—

Kyeren: That's true.

rob: —what I wanna do with that.

Kyeren: Yeah, very cool.

rob: 'Cause it... So right now it makes no sense.

Kyeren: Very cool.

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: You know, I have a, a, a home project too. It's very different to yours. Doesn't make sense to me yet either. I was really fascinated with Arthurian legends for a while.

rob: Mm.

Kyeren: I had a long poem. It was longlisted for CBC and, and shortlisted for the Malahat's—

rob: Oh, cool.

Kyeren: —Long Poem Prize, and, uh, a couple of other poems around that. Well, several others. And there's a bunch of other work which is similar to that. It has the same mood, but it feels more like personal mythology.

rob: Right.

Kyeren: And then there's an exploration of like what is home when you're not born on your ancestral land?

rob: Right.

Kyeren: And, and how do you find that? What does it mean? Et cetera, et cetera. And you know, we don't have... Like a lot of us have Celtic roots, but we don't know our languages. You know, they're long lost. And just sort of like feeling into—

rob: I, I came from—

Kyeren: —into that idea...

rob: —an area that has Celtic, Celtic l—or Gaelic lessons.

Kyeren: Yeah?

rob: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Kyeren: So do you speak Gaelic?

rob: Oh, God, no. I'm still learning English. My, my father speaks Welsh.

Kyeren: Oh, nice.

rob: Yeah. Wow.

Kyeren: And then my grandfather sp—spoke, it was Scottish Gaelic.

rob: Yeah. Terry Jones from Monty Python always said that he learned-- He's a W—he was a Welshman, and he learned French from, uh, another Welshman, which meant he could only speak French to other Welshmen.

Kyeren: That's hilarious.

rob: With the accent. I always really liked that.

Kyeren: Well, I always wished that I had those languages, right?

rob: Oh, for sure. Yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah. So musical and beautiful.

rob: It's one of those rare languages that isn't rooted to anything else.

Kyeren: Yeah. Right?

rob: Yeah, yeah. And which becomes really fascinating. It's not like, you know, German you can probably, like, figure out some of the things or, or like Spanish and, and French, uh, you know?

Kyeren: Mm.

rob: Yeah, they existed before, um, before those particular invasions. But yeah, it's interesting the, that, that whole idea of home. So many of us are exploring it.

Kyeren: Well, yeah.

rob: Well, there are elements of home and there are elements of, of colonialism and there are, like, elements of all sorts of things.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: But even just, like, physically replicating buildings.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: And, and most of them that were built across North America burnt down. Like, there was one in Toronto. I think there was one in Winnipeg. This is a research-heavy piece.

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: And, and, and I like the idea of working it in prose in a certain way that, that the prose falls apart and maybe sentences don't end. So I really wanna play—

Kyeren: Mm.

rob: —with the form on that too.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: So it's not like just a straight book about, about Crystal Palace.

Kyeren: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

rob: 'Cause you even have that going, like, if you write emails, if you write a post online, when you write your blogs, you have, you know, that little semicolon finishing everything.

Kyeren: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

rob: But I'm still f—I'm feeling out not just—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —the research but the form.

Kyeren: Yeah, yeah.

rob: Uh, but it's also a thing that I need to finish other things first before I can properly focus on it.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: 'Cause it's easy to start stuff, right?

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: Yeah, yeah.

Kyeren: Finishing is another whole thing. Like, my short story collection, it took me seven years to write and seven more years to place. So by the time the thing got published, I had a whole other book of short stories.

rob: Amazing.

Kyeren: Well, I wasn't gonna just wait—

rob: Yeah.

Kyeren: —to get it published before I started something else, right?

rob: No, no, of course not.

Kyeren: Yeah, that's why I'm sitting on so much work as well. I mean, not nearly as much work as you.

rob: Like, I'm I, I know writers that, like, that can't think about doing further work until the w—book is published.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: I, I find it very confusing because I don't do any—anything else. Like, what would I be doing in that time? Like, just hanging around the house. If I'm not working, that's technically what I'm doing.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: Just hanging around the house. Hmm.

Kyeren: I've read so many of your Touch the Donkey and, uh, your other interviews. And so, uh, you have these random questions that come in, and one of them that you always ask is, what's a piece of advice? Doesn't necessarily have to be from you.

rob: Right. Well, that doesn't feel like the random question to me.

Kyeren: No, you're not asking for writerly advice, you're asking for just a piece of advice—

rob: Yeah, not necessarily—

Kyeren: You're like collecting—

rob: —given to you.

Kyeren: —collecting pieces of advice...

rob: To me— To me the random question is like, "What was your last Halloween costume?" Like, that's a random question.

Kyeren: Yeah, that is a random question.

rob: Or what, what smell reminds you of home? That's another one you asked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. When I was building those questions, like the first 175 I did when I was at U of A, the question I, I had to like, was, uh, "When's the last time you ate a pear?" I'd actually heard some interview somewhere where Ellen DeGeneres talked about that, and she was having to ask these questions or listening to an interview, and she didn't care about the answers. What she wanted to know was, "When's the last time that person ate a pear?" And I thought, "Well, that's a neat question." Like, what I love about the 12 and 20 is that, uh, different people will respond differently to s—questions, obviously.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

rob: Like, one question might prompt a big, long answer, but that same question might prompt just irritation by the person.

Kyeren: Another person.

rob: So the variation—

Kyeren: So what's your piece of advice, rob?

rob: —is fascinating.

Kyeren: Hmm? What's your piece of advice?

rob: Keep going. Keep going. Don't be mean to staff. Um, uh, try to leave a place better than how you found it.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: Um—

Kyeren: Are these other writers that you've collected or this is, it's just you?

rob: I just think those are just good general advice. Um, like most religions can be boiled down to like, "Don't be a dick," basically, right?

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: Don't bother people. It's pretty much it. Like, just don't be a dick—

Kyeren: ...if you really get down to it.

rob: —like whether or not you're wearing it, like that hat or something, like that's just—

Kyeren: Yeah.

rob: —the core element.

Kyeren: But keep going applies to writing as well. That's a good piece of advice for writers.

rob: Well, yeah, 'cause I, like, I really feel the notion of writing being a muscle, it feels like a good descriptor because there are certain people would need more training to do certain lifting, and some would need less.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: Like, we're not all given the same capacity or tools, and some people might need to work out for 20 years to do a certain kind of lifting that some person would only need six months and some person would need 500 years. Like, we're not all given the same tools.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Totally.

rob: Or interest or whatever. But yeah, like—

Kyeren: Or patience...

rob: —or patience. Just, or just capacity.

Kyeren: Yeah, that's true.

rob: Um, I work on multiple things simultaneously.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: I've been blessed with ADHD, uh, which I've only learned over the last five years is something I actually probably have, 'cause I've met a lot of, as an adopted person, biological, uh, family, half siblings, and other people that I'm related to that are like, "Oh, yeah, yeah. No, we have it, and bunches of us are medicated, and two out of my three kids," and huh. Gosh. But I had a self-directed, self-employed farmer father as a model, but I do wonder if I worked in an office, uh, if I would go insane or need to be medicated. But I'm constantly working on, like, I'm working on, like, five or six manuscripts actively.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

rob: Like, that's n—that makes no sense. But I also know I have, as an unemployed person, a larger attention span for this kind of stuff.

Kyeren: Well, it allows you to do a whole lot of things.

rob: Well, that's just it. Yeah. Steven Brockwell and I used to talk about that, that he had the attention span for the poem because he had a job, a high attention span job, and he likes having a job. So I work in the book, and he works in the poem.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm.

rob: And, and part of it is interest, and part of it is just capacity.

Kyeren: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

rob: I, I don't have time to work. I got stuff to do.

Kyeren: Lots of stuff.

rob: Lots of stuff.

Kyeren: Well right now, do you wanna read a poem to finish? And, um—

rob: Sure. I worry this is all rambly nonsense on my part.

Kyeren: No, this is fabulous, rob. It's been really awesome to speak with you and to sort of nudge into your process and, and to, and to, yeah, what you're doing in the world. Thank you.

rob: Yeah. Well, thank you very much for this. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate the patience and tolerance of everyone here.

Kyeren: And before rob reads, I wanna just say thank you again for the support of Arc Poetry Magazine, one of the most widely read literary magazines in the country. Please explore current issues and past issues, subscribe, or learn more at arcpoetry.ca. Biographies of, you know, rob and I, uh, they can be found on the podcast website and in the show notes. And books by rob can of course be found or ordered through your local independent bookstores. So thank you for listening to the Poet Laureate Podcast, and please pass it on to someone who may need it.

rob: Uh, I hate ending on a sad note. This, uh, after Stephen Heighton died, I wrote a poem.

Kyeren: Oh, that's terrific.

rob: I know. 'Cause I often, when a writer dies, especially one that I know or knew well, I, I'd write an obit, and I'd go through a bunch of stuff. But instead I wrote a poem, partly because a lot of the stories, yeah, they weren't appropriate. So, uh, I did a poem instead. "Requiem for Stephen Heighton."

[Poem: “Requiem for Stephen Heighton,” read by rob mclennan]

[Poem text omitted from transcript.]