Aaron Tucker : part one

Aaron Tucker [photo credit: Julia Polyck-O’Neill] is the author of the forthcoming novel Y: Oppenheimer, Horseman of Los Alamos (Coach House Books) as well as two books of poetry, Irresponsible Mediums: The Chess Games of Marcel Duchamp (Bookthug Press) and punchlines (Mansfield Press), and two scholarly cinema studies monographs, Virtual Weaponry: The Militarized Internet in Hollywood War Films and Interfacing with the Internet in Popular Cinema (both published by Palgrave Macmillan).

His current collaborative project, Loss Sets, translates poems into sculptures which are then 3D printed (http://aarontucker.ca/3-d-poems/); he is also the co-creator of The ChessBard, an app that transforms chess games into poems (http://chesspoetry.com).

Currently, he is an uninvited guest on the Dish with One Spoon Territory, where he is a lecturer in the English department at Ryerson University (Toronto), teaching creative and academic writing. More at aarontucker.ca.

How did you first engage with poetry?

I was introduced to poetry with The Cremation of Sam McGee in elementary school, which I loved and was givenfairly traditional texts in high school – I remember being given some Robert Frost poems and then the obligatory Shakespeare;

The first poem I remember being enthralled by was “Black Rook in Rainy Weather” by Sylvia Plath. Growing up in Lavington, a small community in the interior of B.C., I was struck by the poem’s frustration with banality, the yearning for the extraordinary that would be willing to make itself known. I also remember, during this time, taking Michael Ondaatje’s The Cinnamon Peeler out of the Vernon Public Library. For the life of me, I can’t remember why I chose the book, but, looking back, it really shaped how I think about the scale of poetry – I tend to love working on larger scale works, multiple pages, poems that interlock and echo each other. This was further bolstered by the Canadian poetry class with Stephen Scobie I took during my University of Victoria undergrad: his passion and experience with Canadian poetry constructed a reading practice that sits deep in the core of me; too, it was the first class where I read bpNichol’s The Martyrology, Phyllis Webb, Gerry Shikatani, among others.

It terms of actually writing, the biggest initial influence was John Lent at Okanagan College and his creative writing classes there. Not only is John an incredible poet, but his generosity and intelligence in responding and mentoring taught me so much about writing and engaging in writing communities.