Old Phone Books or: The Road to Surrealism // An Interview with Stuart Ross

via SPD

When I think of author/editor Stuart Ross, I think surrealist. I think poet. I think prolific. Having written dozens of books of poetry, short stories, and novels, Ross has grown in his notoriety and acclaim over the years. A proud voice for small literary presses (Mansfield Press, Proper Tales Press, Anvil Press) as well as Canadian literature as a whole, Ross recently won the coveted Harbourfront Festival Prize. With eleven books in the works (!!!), I spoke with one of the literary community’s most productive artists about everything from his history with writing to the joys of small presses to stepping out of your own comfort zone and beyond.

from Dead Cars in Managua (2008)

Let's begin with an icebreaker. If you could read the unpublished writing of any author (living or dead), who would it be and why?

The British anti-novelist B. S. Johnson (1933–1973). I’ve read all his novels — favourites include Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry, Housemother Normal, and The Unfortunates — and each one is completely different from the others, and they are all exciting and audacious and challenging. He published such strange books, I’d love to see what didn’t make it to print. Just how extreme did he get in his attack on the conventional novel? I’m going to add the American poet Larry Fagin (1937–2017), a sometime mentor of mine: he published so selectively, but I think he had tons of stuff on his computer desktop that never saw the light. He was meticulous and disorienting in his writing. I’ve read his major books — I’ll Be Seeing You, Rhymes of a Jerk, and Complete Fragments, plus some more ephemeral works — but I have a feeling there was a lot more, and what form these writings would take is completely unpredictable.

Congratulations on winning the Harbourfront Festival Prize! What an honor and a well deserved recipient. Along with writing numerous books, you've also edited and curated so many other collections to help fellow poets. Could you speak a bit on receiving this award / your acceptance speech / the writing community you’ve helped cultivate over the years?

Thanks! It was a real shock. I was in the home of my dear friend Nelson Ball when I got the news. Nelson had died a few weeks earlier and I was going through his papers. He was sitting in ash form on a box in his usual chair right across from me when the phone rang. It took a while for Toronto International Festival of Authors artistic director Geoffrey Taylor’s words to sink in. And after we talked, I thought how apt it was that I was in the home of a mentor, and a guy who had given so much, so stealthily, to Canadian literature, and I was receiving an award for some of those very things.

I have written a lot, and I hope some of my writing is part of why I won the award. I mean, previous winners have included Margaret Atwood, Dionne Brand, Alice Munro, and Michael Ondaatje. This is what blows me away. Anyway, Geoffrey said it was both my writing and my activity that earned me the award at the official presentation in late October. I guess I have to believe him. I have also made mentorship and organizing and publishing an organic part of my literary practice. It comes naturally to me. I can’t imagine my literary life without it.

I don’t think writers have any obligation to do anything beyond writing. But some of us do a lot of organizing and mentoring and so forth — maybe because it’s a nifty way of avoiding writing! And in some ways, I find editing and collecting other writers’ works more satisfying than writing my own: it has been a real thrill to assemble “Selected” books by Nelson Ball, David McFadden, Richard Huttel, Jim Smith, and Michael Dennis. But equally, such a thrill to help bring into the world, through my former imprint at Mansfield Press, my current imprint at Anvil Press, first books by Jaime Forsythe, Heather Birrell, Nick Papaxanthos, Leigh Nash, Sarah Burgoyne, Robert Earl Stewart, and so many others. I’ve worked with important though under-recognized “mid-career” poets Alice Burdick, Stephen Brockwell, Jason Heroux, Mark Laba, and many more. 

Through my Proper Tales Press, now in its fortieth year, I’ve published mostly chapbooks by dozens of amazing young writers and even a few pretty famous geezers. There’s great satisfaction in that: in holding a chapbook just photocopied and bound, and firing off a big batch of them to the author.

As to community, I have spent decades helping to cultivate one in Toronto, through readings, workshops, book fairs, a weekly events e-mailing, and so forth, but I moved to a small town about ninety minutes away ten years ago, so I’m no longer even really part of that community. And I haven’t yet figured out how to do things, or what to do, in my new town, Cobourg, though I’ve organized half a dozen or so reading and book launches here.

I was very proud of the community cultivation I did in Kingston, Ontario, when I was writer in residence at the university there in 2010. And I’ve felt accepted in others’ communities, like Ottawa and in tiny New Denver, British Columbia, where, for a decade, I spent a few weeks each year teaching writing to kids in schools.

via W&W

You’ve been writing poetry since you were a teenager. At that age, did you know this would be a lifelong endeavor?

I’m not sure I ever thought about that consciously. Though probably I felt, “I am a writer,” and thus would always be. Funny thing is, after my teenage years, it took me ‘til well into my thirties until I would answer, “I’m a writer,” when people asked me what I did. Up till then I would say something like, “I’m an editor. Oh, and I also write.” I admit I still feel a bit pretentious saying, “I am a poet.”

Has poetry been a steady ongoing passion since you first began? Or have there been weeks/months/years where you took some time away from the blank page?

I often don’t write for weeks at a time. I once didn’t write for a year and a half. But I still consider poetry an ongoing passion. I also believe that reading poetry, or thinking about poetry, or worrying that I’ll never write another poem again, is part of writing poetry, so maybe, in fact, I’ve never taken any time off from writing it.

You've released about one book a year since the mid 90s. How do you know when a collection is finished and the next one is ready to begin?

For years now, I have been working on several projects simultaneously. Or maybe it’s more like I start one project to avoid finishing the last. Right now I have, I think, eleven books on the go: poetry, fiction, non-fiction. But some I haven’t touched in a couple of years. Every so often, I get on the back of one of them, give it a few kicks, and bring it to the finish line. Or, sometimes, I just sort of realize that I have unknowingly brought it to a viable conclusion. I do feel a bit panicked when I don’t have a book scheduled to come out. That’s the situation I’m in now. I feel a bit panicky. I know that younger and more diverse writers are what publishing companies are most excited about right now, but I always hope there might still be some interest in my work. I’ve been pretty darn lucky, pretty darn privileged, to have all the books out that I have.

At sixty, I do worry that I won’t finish those eleven works in progress, and I’ll stupidly add more. But maybe that’s okay. In my fiction, a plot’s loose ends are never neatly tied up, because such is life, so I shouldn’t worry that I will likely leave behind a whole bunch of unfinished projects.

I admire writers who write one book at a time. But it’s not what stimulates me as a writer.

from A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent (2016)

I was initially drawn to the surrealism in your work. Even the more autobiographical pieces have slight twists of reality. Has surrealism always been a fixation for you?

It’s something that has always existed in most of my writing. It is a quality of many — but not all — of the writers, especially poets, that I’m drawn to. And yes, even when I have made a conscious effort to delve into autobiography in my writing, there are elements of surrealism. To me, it’s the natural reaction to being flung against our will into this world. I’m also fascinated by unlikely and impossible juxtapositions, and I guess that’s one road to surrealism.

With the recent passing of Canadian poet Nelson Ball (I’m sorry for the loss of your good friend), you posted numerous tender and thoughtful anecdotes about him and his work, which led to me reading his poetry for the first time. How was it working with a poet whose writing was so much different than your own? Did assisting Nelson influence your own writing at all?

I have a wide range of aesthetic interests as a reader, and Nelson’s work certainly commands a chamber all its own. Reading Nelson has influenced my work, consciously, in that I occasionally try to “write a poem as if Nelson were writing it.” I emulate his compression, his line breaks, and so forth. Sometimes it’s the exact right form for something I have in mind. I remember asking Nelson about this: if he has noticed that quite a few poets are clearly borrowing from him formally. He had noticed, and it really pleased him. Being his editor on four full books and a chapbook (I also edited his selected, Certain Details, but that didn’t involve altering poems)—and my touch was very light, because he was a real pro—didn’t so much influence my writing, but I still learned a lot from him. I was in Chicago last year to attend a celebration of life for my dear friend, the poet Richard Huttel. I wanted to write a poem for him. I didn’t know how. I went to a spot by the water that his son told me he really loved. I thought: “How would Nelson do this?” And the poem came out. In fact, the day before Nelson chose as his last day (he died with medical assistance in a hospital), I wrote a poem for him, in his own style, that he got to hear read to him. I had the incredible honour of being with Nelson, along with two other very close friends of his, when he died, and that experience, I know, will influence me in ways I don’t yet understand.

Back in 2004, you released an anthology of Canadian poets “under the influence” of surrealism. Were these all writers you already knew, or writers you found out about once you decided to conceive a collection? Are there other Canadian surrealists that have popped up since then?

Surrealism has become a lot more prevalent since then. It shows up in movies and music videos and commercials. All the poets in Surreal Estate were friends of mine. Many of them still are, but not all. The influence of American poets like Mark Strand and James Tate has spread north in the past decade or two, as well as international poets like Tomas Tranströmer and Tomaž Šalamun, so you’ll find more surrealism in Canadian poetry nowadays. I think even music videos helped surrealism along. I’ve published a lot of great young surrealists through my imprints at Mansfield and Anvil. I think the best two pure surrealists working in Canada now are Steve Venright and Jason Heroux. Hugh Thomas, Jaime Forsythe, Gary Barwin, and Peter Dubé are up there.

via GoodReads

You released a collection earlier this year, so perhaps it's too soon to ask, but: what are you currently working on?

I’ve got three novels on the go: one is about ape puppets, another about an interrogation, and the third is a kind of sequel to Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew, but with the emphasis on my father (in SDJ, my mother assassinates a neo-Nazi, repeatedly). It’s a kind of picaresque journey through Central America. Also working on a memoir. A book of interviews. A new collection of miscellaneous poems. A book-length collaborative poem with the Halifax-based poet Jaime Forsythe. A collection of two-page short stories. A book about writing, or maybe not writing. A book-length poem about the street I grew up on. And a collection of one thousand very tiny poems.

Outside of your own work, who/what have you been reading recently? I’m also a music nut, so what album/song/artist has received the most plays from you these past few months?

Oh, I don’t spend a lot of time reading my own work! But I am loving recent poetry collections by Americans Emily Pettit (Blue Flame) and Terrance Hayes (American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin) and Matthew Zapruder (Father’s Day) and Mary Ruefle (Dunce). The novel Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River, by Jung Young Moon, is amazing, and I return to César Aira always. I’ve also been reading lots from British fiction writer Deborah Levy, and a great book of essays by Chilean writer Alejandro Zamba called Not to Read. Plus Sarah Schulman’s Conflict Is Not Abuse, which is very dense but I’m learning a lot. Recent discoveries have been the Russian poet Gala Uzryutova, who I am working to translate right now and the Estonian poet and novelist Rein Raud. I just received a beautiful unpublished manuscript by the brilliant Norwegian surrealist and friend, Dag T. Straumsvåg. I keep going back to the works of friends of mine who have died recently: Nelson Ball, Larry Fagin, Dave McFadden, Richard Huttel. Ron Padgett’s Big Cabin has given me a lot of comfort in the wake of those deaths. I wrote him the other day to tell him and he wrote back, glad that not only did I like his new book but that it was “useful.”

Music is really important to me, and maybe now it is as important to me as when I was in my teens and twenties. And I still listen to some of the same artists: Randy Newman and Nick Lowe are regulars on my turntable. Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins made a perfect album, Rabbit Fur Coat. My current favourite band is Slothrust; Leah Wellman is a brilliant songwriter and performer, really formidable. Another young American band, Mothers, led by Kristine Leschper, also totally impresses me: what a voice! When I need certain kind of comfort, I put on Sam Cooke’s gospel recordings with the Soul Stirrers, or maybe some Swan Silvertones, the greatest of the black gospel quartets from the genre’s Golden Age.

If you can, provide a photo of your workspace (or describe with words). What are some essentials (music, tea, midnight wine, cigarette, etc.) while you create?

I work in many different places. The assigned “office” in my home, I always never use. Generally, though, whether I’m writing in my living room or on the kitchen table, or in a café or in a motel room, there is green tea happening. When I lived in Toronto, I used to write a lot when on the subway. I have no routine: I sometimes write when I wake up at 4:00 a.m., then go back to sleep, or I write late at night before sleeping, or in the afternoon to avoid my paid work. As my friend Larry Fagin said when I asked to photograph him at Veselka in Manhattan: “No photos.” The potato latkes there are way overpriced.

from Hey, Crumbling Balcony! (2003)

This decade is almost over and the 20s are about to begin. What do you think the 20s will be known for when we're all long gone?

Well, we might already be gone in the next decade. And then we’ll be known for destroying the world and all its species. And now, as I’m writing this, because I’ve taken so long, we are in the next decade. About a dozen days in. And way too much has happened.

For this ongoing author interview series, I'm asking for everyone to present a writing prompt. It can be as abstract or as concrete as you choose.

Do you still have an old phonebook lying around? Flip to a page and choose a full name at random. That name is the title of your poem. Your poem is seven lines long, the number of words on each line dictated by the phone number (zeroes are a stanza break). The poem is a portrait of this stranger whose name is the title.

In closing, do you have any advice for writers trying to grow and/or make that leap into publication? Or rather, what's something you would have liked to have known when you first started taking your writing seriously?

Some basic advice: push beyond your comfort zones, in content and in form. Don’t settle on a “voice.” Embrace chance and don’t worry about understanding your own poems. Meaning is way overrated. I’m not sure it actually exists.

Any final thoughts / words of wisdom / shout-outs?

A shout-out into the nonexistent afterlife to all the great poets I knew and who influenced me and who have died in the last few years. Some I knew well, and for decades; others I met only a few times or just corresponded with. David W. McFadden, Bill Berkson, Joe Rosenblatt, Tom Clark, Nelson Ball, Larry Fagin, Richard Huttel. Please don’t anyone else die, okay?

STARTED November 22, 2019

COMPLETED January 12, 2020

from Motel of the Opposable Thumbs (2019)