2020 Governor General's Literary Awards Poetry shortlist interviews: Anne Carson

norma jean baker of troy, Anne Carson
New Directions, 2020
The Canada Council for the Arts’ 2020 Governor General's Literary Awards poetry shortlist 

The 2020 Governor General's Literary Awards winners will be announced on Tuesday, June 1, 2021.

Anne Carson [photo credit: Peter Smith] was born in Canada and lives partly in Iceland now. 

I’m fascinated with the ways in which you approach books, especially given how many you’ve published so far. Does each new project begin as a potential extension of a far wider, ongoing canvas, or do you see each work as uniquely separate? Or a bit of both?

each one a new push into unknown places on tracks not yet possible.

Your work has long been engaged with blendings of ideas and forms, with this new work, a play shortlisted for a poetry prize, exploring both Marilyn Monroe and Helen of Troy “from their point of view.” What is it that such blendings provide that might not be possible otherwise?

i think of it more as juxtaposition than blending.  i find it more fruitful to think about 2 things in interaction with each other, rather than to think about either of them alone.  a triangular conversation is often easier than one on one.

The mythological Helen of Troy continues to fascinate contemporary poets, from H.D.’s infamous take to Georgia poet Gale Marie Thompson, who published her Helen Or My Hunger last year with YesYes Books. Has the mythological Helen become a figure that changes with each era because we require new ways of thinking about her?

yes certainly.  but Greek myths were always a vehicle for rethinking whatever problems are present to society’s mind at the moment – infinitely malleable substances, like play-doh with an air of ancient truth.

Given your exploration of form, what is it about the poem that holds your attention? Everything else you seem to do in your writing, from librettos to plays to essays, circles the foundation of poetry. What is it about poetry that anchors your attention from falling more fully into other forms?

falling is key.  there is no real falling in a prose medium, prose is a mechanism of intention and control.  only in poetry can you simply step off the building and fall. 

Have you been writing much in the way of poetry since norma jean baker of troy was completed? What have you been working on since?

a comic book version of Euripides’ Trojan Women with artist Rosanna Bruno is to be published this month (may 2021) by New Directions. 

a 12-minute opera libretto for composer Caroline Shaw and the Philadelphia Opera, available online.  title We Need To Talk.

a full-length opera libretto for composer Bryce Desmond and the Chicago Lyric Opera, to be mounted in 2024.  title Herakles.

an illustrated version of Euripides' Herakles (illustration by me).