Cameron Anstee : part five

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

Jack Davis, Faunics

Anne Carson, If Not, Winter
Bardia Sinaee, Salamander Festival
Nelson Ball, Walking
Noelle Kocot, Phantom Pains of Madness
A whole pile of recent chapbooks from the likes of Puddles of Sky Press (Kingston), bird, buried press (Peterborough), Coven Editions (Ottawa), Gap Riot Press (Toronto), Rahila’s Ghost Press (Vancouver), above/ground press (Ottawa), and on and on.

Cameron Anstee : part four

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

I have admiringly read the interviews at Sachiko Murakami’s The Hardest Thing About Being a Writer, and don’t want to repeat things that have already been so articulately discussed there. So first, I would direct anyone that hasn’t already to visit and read. On top of these things, for me, I struggle with patience (impatience), volume of projects, and time. I’m learning to sit on my work, and learning that it tends to improve when I do, but I’m also conscious of how long the first book took to write, and trying to be at peace with seeing that I might not write too many (if I even manage to write a second—the first feels like such a surprise now that it exists, I’m not quite sure how it happened). I also always try to keep in mind that the writing is just one small part of the community/continuum of small press action and people that I consider myself lucky to be connected to. There is a responsibility to be an engaged member of such communities as more than just a writer—you need to contribute in other ways. Be a chapbook maker, or run a reading series, or show up at readings and buy chapbooks, or research and write literary histories, or be a bookseller, or write reviews, or do amazing things like the CWILA count, or run magazines, or organize book fairs, etc. etc. etc. You need to find and make space for your own writing, but you also need to try to show up when you’re able and to do these other vital things. I run a very modest chapbook operation, but one that still requires a fair bit of time, and one that I feel like I never have enough time to even begin to make a dent in the list of poets I want to publish. I’m really trying to actively think about how much time I can give the press, and give my poetry, and find some kind of balance with and between the non-poetry things in my life. I see no way to write in isolation of these other things, and it is a negotiation I’m trying to figure out on a daily basis.

Cameron Anstee : part three

How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers group that you work ideas and poems with?

As I said in an earlier answer, I’m a hoarder these days, I don’t share work readily in many places. There are a few little mags I love and trust, and otherwise the work stays with me. I do have some close, trusted friends that will generously read works-in-progress and manuscripts, and with whom I talk shop. These friends date to my university days working at a campus lit mag and spending free hours in the student pub talking/arguing poetry, and are the formative social influences on my work and processes. My end of these conversations has been quiet over the past year and half or so as the full length book has gone through editing. I didn’t write much that was new while editing the book, so I’ll have to start sharing again soon as I begin to write new things.

Cameron Anstee : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished?

No idea whatsoever. I am a hoarder, and a slow worker, and I somewhat compulsively return to old work to steal and/or revise. It took a decade to produce Book of Annotations, and given the absurdly small word count of the book, that timeline is a bit ridiculous. For the book, I know they’re “finished” because the book is on shelves now. If I hadn’t submitted the manuscript, or if it hadn’t been accepted, I would undoubtedly still be fiddling with them. I rarely send out work to magazines, and even if I did so more, I would still be tinkering with the poems after publication. I’ m going to try to let the work in Book of Annotations sit for a few years to see how it settles. In the past I’ve been guilty of publishing too much too quickly, and I always know it is too quickly because I regret the work almost right away (often in the gap between submission and publication). I rarely look at chapbook publications prior to the trade book for this reason. If I can still stomach looking at a poem after six months, that’s a good step. After two or three years, I’m thrilled. I want to see how the book holds for me personally up in a decade or two.

Cameron Anstee : part one

Cameron Anstee lives and writes in Ottawa ON where he runs Apt. 9 Press and holds a Ph.D. in Canadian Literature from the University of Ottawa. He is the editor of The Collected Poems of William Hawkins (Chaudiere Books, 2015). Book of Annotations (Invisible Publishing, 2018) is his first full-length collection of poetry.

What are you working on?

Poetry-wise, I just published my first trade collection, Book of Annotations (Invisible Publishing, 2018), a book of primarily minimalist work. In the wake of that, I am working to organize readings over the next year to help bring the book to new places and (I hope) readers. I just finished rubber-stamping edition information on the back of a set of three wood-type broadsides I commissioned from Jeffrey Macklin (Jackson Creek Press, Peterborough) to celebrate the publication of the book. I am writing a conference paper on Barbara Caruso’s astounding presspresspress (1988-1998) for the upcoming Kanada Koncrete conference at the University of Ottawa. I am playing catch-up with a handful of projects from Apt. 9 Press (the one closest to going to print is a really excellent collection of poems by Peterborough’s Elisha May Rubacha). I am trying to prioritize finishing some academic projects (including an index of Nelson Ball’s three little mags from the 1960s). I am trying to write some new poems, and figure out how to do that after a trade collection for the first time. I am overdue on almost all of it.