Cary Fagan and Rebecca Comay : Thinking about our first collaboration: an email exchange.

 

 

 

On Mon, Nov 24, 2025 at 9:45 AM <Cary Fagan wrote:

It had been your idea for quite a while that we collaborate on a piece of writing.  As you know, I had no such experience and was somewhat wary.  I'm curious about what happens in collaboration that you enjoy so much?

On Monday 24/11/2025 at 10:53 am, Rebecca Comay wrote: 

Was it my idea?  It just kind of happened, didn't it? I don't think we were intending this to be an official collaboration, certainly not something that we'd actually publish, more something to entertain ourselves while in Lisbon. But yes, I've always enjoyed collaborative writing (I've done lots), even though it can be annoying. Among other things, I love a moment of relief from my oppressive superego, the chance to shed my own obsessional need to control the outcome, and to just see what happens... (But I think you don't suffer from that particular neurosis, do you?)

On Mon, Nov 24, 2025 at 11:14 AM <Cary Fagan wrote: 

Actually, sharing the notebook was my idea.  I was referring to the idea of doing something together in general.  But yes, I was the one who wrote something in the notebook and then gave it to you to respond.  We agreed that we could only write one sentence.  I found that my first entries were probably more hesitant and more self-conscious.  I loosened up over time.  And I think we got better at responding to what the other person had written while still putting down something that was our own.  When I read it over now, it seems to me that there were little waves running through it.  Two or three entries that were more descriptive of place or more humorous or more enigmatic.  As to your question, I don't think I feel an "oppressive superego" exactly, but doesn't everyone want/need to escape the self sometimes, impossible though that is?  I wonder if the fact that I write fiction in other voices and about other "characters" allows me to escape more in my regular writing life, whereas your voice is always some version of your self?  I suspect you're going to think that naive.

On Monday 24/11/2025 at 11:43 am, Rebecca Comay wrote: 

Good points! [sorry, that wasn't me talking - I see that google AI just provided a menu of replies to choose from...]. Well, all writing is an escape from (or perhaps an expansion of) the self, no? I'm not sure I see the difference between fiction and philosophy in that regard - there's a certain fabulation or ventriloquism involved in philosophy too. I suspect it's probably more about personal demons in this case, but we don't have to go there. Anyway, yes, I had the same reaction to the notebook - funny to have stumbled upon it after all these years --we begin with these stiff little disconnected observations and eventually started writing - not exactly dialogically or conversationally but more diagonally, in indirect response to the other.  Eventually we loosened up a bit and forgot who was speaking, or at least tried to hide our tracks. I also noticed that we always referred to ourselves, or to some fictional analogue of ourselves, in the third person- "he thought... "she wondered"... "he said." (Who knows which pronouns belonged to whom, or if they were the best or only pronouns, or at least that was my conceit, I’m sure it’s ploddingly obvious who was who…)

On Mon, Nov 24, 2025 at 12:15 PM <Cary Fagan wrote:

Interesting.  Would you say that there was any relationship between your entries and your philosophical writing?  Or did it seem as if those sentences were coming from a completely different place?  To answer my own question, for me this felt like something different and new.  Certainly not like fiction but also not like the more limited non-fiction essays that I've written.  I would say that these sentences perhaps share something more with the poetry that I've been trying to write since, although there is certainly not an exact correspondence.  What about you?

On Mon, Nov 24, 2025 at 12:24 PM Rebecca Comay wrote:

Not really. [says AI which apparently knows me better than I know myself].

On Tuesday 25/11/2025 at 1:48 pm, Rebecca Comay wrote: 

Just to continue for real: I've never really thought much about where my writing is coming from. I guess I didn't feel especially "poetic" when I was sitting down to do these, at least it didn't have the gravitas I often associate with poetry - or with philosophy either for that matter - more like a game.  There was a bit of a surrealist "exquisite corpse" aspect to the exercise.  We weren't exactly in the dark about what the other person was doing, but we usually weren’t directly responding to the previous entry either.  I did make a point of "forgetting" what had gone before. I wanted to be surprised at the very end when we would finally unfurl the thing and see the bits and pieces laid out side by side. I wanted that feeling of chance. Which brings us back to your original question: wasn't this actually the very opposite of normal collaboration? Whatever was going on, it involved minimal coordination or confabulation or cooperation on our parts - it was more like parallel play between toddlers. 

On Tue, Nov 25, 2025 at 2:01 PM <Cary Fagan wrote:

That makes sense to me.  Parallel play sounds right.  So here is another question.  When we try this again (which we've talked about), how do you think it will be different?  Would you want to change the 'rules'?  To me it feels like it has to be somewhere other than where we live.  We'll be going away in the spring and have talked about doing it then, which I'd still like to.  I feel like we should approach it at a somewhat different angle, but I'm not sure what that should be.  Maybe we'll just have to wait and see.  Any ideas?  

On Tuesday 25/11/2025 at 2:31 pm, Rebecca Comay wrote: 

We always agreed that it had to be away from home, away from regular life, with a fixed beginning and end --new routine, new rules, new tempo. It would be a little grandiose to call this procedural poetry, à la Oulipo, but there's something akin.  Rules… Is there a rule that says we have to have one?  From a super-egoic point of view, it's always a relief to have someone (or something) else set the rules, even if it's just a scenario, or a language game, or something as simple as a time frame.

On Tue, Nov 25, 2025 at 2:46 PM <Cary Fagan wrote:

Well, will we stick to one sentence per entry?  It works well so I don't think we need to change it.  One question I have concerns the amount that we respond to the new surroundings. I like when entries are grounded in place but there's always the danger of it becoming a sort of tourist's response.  Oh, look at that lovely building!  Oh, how delicious is this pastry!  Okay, I'm exaggerating but you know what I mean.  Still, one of the things I like about "The Sun Will Bleach It Away" is how it recalls for me that time and place.  Even if it doesn't necessarily do the same for a reader.

On Thu, Nov 27, 2025 at 9:19 PM Rebecca Comay  wrote:

Oh yes -- "The view! The view!"  “Fado!” (I suspect I was the one most guilty of such outbursts). As for readers: I’ve always found it odd that the experiences that one finds most absorbing - a smell, a flash, a touch - can be the most excruciatingly boring for someone else to listen to.  (That's why you have to pay a psychoanalyst to listen to your dreams. Or be a Proust.)

On Friday, Nov 28, 2025 at 10:16 AM Cary Fagan wrote:

          Well, let’s do it again!

 

 

 

Rebecca Comay teaches philosophy and comparative literature at The University of Toronto. Her books include Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution (Stanford UP) and The Dash-The Other Side of Absolute Knowing (with Frank Ruda, MIT Press). Her next book, On Persistence is the first of two essay collections forthcoming from Seagull Books. She is a co-editor of the chapbook house, espresso. More work can be seen at rebeccacomay.com

 

 

   

Cary Fagan is the author of eight novels and six story collections as well as many books for children. Just published are A Fast Horse Never Brings Good News (book*hug) and Robot Island (Tundra Books). His novel, Still the World, will appear in 2027. He is a co-editor of the chapbook house, espresso, and the publisher of Found Object, which focuses on bringing work back into print. His books can he seen at caryfagan.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hollay Ghadery : Surprise me: what I want from poetry

How does a poem begin?

 

 

 

I want the same thing from a poem that I want from every new day of my life: to be surprised. Not disgusted or threatened, but surprised in the way I was as a child—by the novelty of something. The fuzzy brush of the back of a caterpillar against your fingertip, or the way candle wax drips, creating mesmerizing abstracts. Or when you run face-first into a sliding door you thought was open, leaving you embarrassed more than maimed, and stunned more than hurt.

I want a poem to point into the dark corner under the porch. I want it to lead me there and stay. And while I’m big on needing surprise from my poetry, I am not too concerned with how a poem achieves this end. I am open to being surprised by many approaches and forms. I think of Kyle Flemmer's lunar flag poems in his new collection, Supergiants (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025) where poems are shaped like flags, with blacked out spaces, mimicking holes in the actual lunar flag and humankind’s impressive, but cosmically feeble attempt to leave our mark on the universe. 

Aisha Sasha John's poetry: I never know where it is going to take me, but it is often structurally sparse but replete in intrinsic sense. The combination is ticklish and never ceases to move me in unexpected directions. 

“Sestina” by Ciara Shuttleworth is one of the most memorable surprises of my poetic life. Ciara cycles only six words across seven stanzas to upend meaning, starting with: 

You
used
to
love
me
well. 

What I am saying is that I want my poems to play: play in the way we all play. To engage with the world and each other and ourselves, without coercion or fear. Though play is not inherently joyful. When we play, we might get hurt. We might cry a little. Somebody might kick us in the face by mistake skinning the cat on the monkey bars. They might get off the teeter totter while we are perched high on the other end. But we will probably learn something too. Where to stand. Whom to trust. 

For me, play is also at the heart of how a poem begins. I am always trying to work my way through a puzzle. There's a feeling (it's almost always a feeling with me), I find fundamentally crucial to who I am and how I see the world and I am trying to think of how to express that feeling without losing the fully realized and ebbing nature of feeling anything. How do I show a feeling in language without language limiting the indefinable, slippery nature of emotion?

For instance, as Poet Laureate of Scugog Township, I’ve been asked to write a poem every year for the annual Christmas tree lighting, and every year, I’m presented with the same puzzle: How do I write something that feels authentic to who I am, but that’s also accessible to the community in which I live: five-year-olds. 105 year-olds. This is probably not a poem in which I can talk about my cervix again. Or disclose my search history. But I know I must have many things in common with the people in my community, and I want to tap into a slice of our common humanity without being disengagingly vague. I don’t want to write greeting card poetry. I need to be specific while expressing something universal.

The poem I ended up writing this year started with me thinking about how I often cry at symphonies or parades or concerts. Being surrounded by people who are experiencing the same thing as me: the same beauty, the same fleeting moment in time—the precious fragility of that shared space—it reduces me to tears. Joyful, tormented tears.

So I tried to capture a little bit of that feeling.

My hope was that, in this world of divisive rhetoric, echo chambers, and us-versus-them mentality, it might surprise people to remember that there will always be more that unites us than divides us. There will always be something to bring us together. We have common ground. And we’re standing on it.

 

 

 

 

Hollay Ghadery is a multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, and the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.