rob mclennan: You mentioned recently that your next collection, Apprentice to a Breathing Hand (Omnidawn, 2025), is a response text to the work of poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. I’m fascinated by your exploration of the book-length response text, whether your In Garments Worn By Lindens (Tender Buttons Press, 2018) composed as a response to Lawn of Excluded Middle by Rosmarie Waldrop, Intaglio Daughters (Ornithopter Press, 2023) as a response to the book The Unfollowing by Lyn Heijinian or Everyone and Her Resemblances (Pamenar Press, 2024) as a response to the epic structures and purposes of Alice Notley. How did you get on this path of composing book-length responses to particular poets and their works?
Laynie Browne: I think it began with a tremendous sense of gratitude, to be here in this time, with these particular poets. Unmistakably my life as a poet is possible, in large part, because of these female poets. The first homage text I wrote was for Bernadette Mayer. I was re-reading The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters, as a young mother, and I was amazed. Thus began my book The Desires of Letters. I’m writing another book for Bernadette now, which I began on the day of her passing.
My dear friend, the extraordinary poet Stacy Doris, who left us much too soon, told me when her first book came out, that one poet she greatly admired appreciated the book, and that was more than enough for her. I just love this way of thinking of poetry as intimate and written not only to any reader, but also to a particular reader. Many years later the poet Sawako Nakayasu, also a friend whose work I admire greatly, echoed this idea of an audience of one. When I wrote the book for Bernadette I didn’t know that I would continue in this vein, and it was many years before I wrote another homage text. Sometimes there is a very specific formal relationship between my book and a book by the writer I am writing for, and other times the relation is more conceptual or oblique.
rm: I completely understand the poem-as-prompt, as well as the beauty of being able to respond to the work of a particular writer while utilizing an echo of their forms. As you’ve been working through these projects, what do you think is possible through these responses that might not be possible through, say, working an essay, even one that might be considered more lyric? Have there been elements that have surprised you as you’ve worked your way through?
LB: I’m always surprised by what happens when I write. Maybe that’s one reason I continue. I like writing into the unknown, or maybe I should say, that seems to be the way I can write. What happens with these homage texts is that my attention in reading becomes heightened. It’s an amazing gift to spend time with poets whose work I love. I do think of this writing project as a dedicated intentional reading practice. As to comparing what I’m doing here to writing essays, that’s an entirely different mode. I’m not writing on, or about, or in an expository sense at all. What is miraculous to me is the way the reading makes my writing possible.
rm: What prompted you to respond in such a way to a specific book-length work through your own book-length work? And how do you think these projects have shifted the writing you do outside of these particular projects?
LB: I really don’t know, except to say that I tend to write book length manuscripts without planning to do so. I seem to need plenty of space to write through a concept or question. I’ve never really written individual short poems, except for sonnets, and these also seem to be in communication with each other, not necessarily stand alone pieces. The greatest shift I note at this time is that I’ve continued to think and write in this way for several years now, and not really written much outside the context of homage texts. Even now, when I think ahead, I’m thinking about books I want to write for particular poets. The only exception is when I write prose works of fiction or non-fiction. I’ve found it extremely rewarding to write through the work of particular writers who are incredibly important to me, and in doing so I have a sense of always being in relation.
rm: How do these processes begin? Do you dig deep into research through your subject’s work, or a particular work, or simply start riffing off individual pieces? Once you’ve decided on a particular subject or target, how do these projects begin?
LB: For each book the process has been completely different and seems to arrive organically. For instance with The Desires of Letters, I wanted to try the epistolary form that Bernadette had created, along with exploring many of the questions her book evokes, regarding being an artist and a mother. In the book I wrote for Cecila Vicuña (which is not yet published) I began with just one word, indivisible. That word inspired from Ceclia’s work, a concept of the invisible transcribed is inviolable, impossible to separate from what is most hidden and essential, became the title and focus for the book. In Apprentice to a Breathing Hand, the book I wrote for Mei-mei Berssenbrugge I worked closely with the title poem in her book Hello, The Roses, and wove lines from that poem into a series called “Euphoric Rose.” The book for Alice Notely arrived in a way that is utterly unique to my experience. I began with a question: what if one were to have a person or divine entity or being one could consult at any time, and always receive an answer. Once I started writing this book, I felt as if I had entered a dark hallway. Someone grabbed my hand and pulled. I was receiving the work, as a form of dictation.
rm: Now that you’ve worked a handful of these projects, how do they see themselves finished? Once a manuscript is completed, or even published, are there ever new questions that occur? Once a project is completed, is it ever complete?
LB: These are important questions because there are always more questions that arise. However, my method of operating is onward. I assume that with each new act of reading and writing I am continuing arcs of investigation. No single book represents more than the duration in which I spent writing it—at least for me. Otherwise, the pressure is immense, and how to “finish” anything?
rm: You mention that your first response work was for and through Bernadette Mayer, a poet you returned to again, for your current project. To return to Mayer’s work, are you responding to a particular and different text, or moving through different questions? With the amount of time passing between that prior project and this current one, have you, as a more experienced reader, simply a different set of questions across her work as a whole?
LB: This new book for Bernadette is more concerned with writing in the immediate aftermath of loss. I don’t recall consciously deciding to do so, but upon her crossing, I immediately began writing sonnets. I notice that I’m also concerning myself with the common problem of facing occasion days differently, writing through the first and second midwinter days, without her present, for instance. My grieving for my father also figures into this book, as they passed only a couple of months apart. I guess one way to tie this new book to Bernadette’s work in general, is that I always think of her as a love poet. And I also identify as a love poet—and elegy is perhaps the most challenging form of love poem that one wishes one never has need of, and yet . . .
rm: Where do you see yourself moving forward, beyond this particular project? Are there poets or structures you’ve already been considering at the back of your head? A project such as this is potentially endless: where and what might next occur?
LB: Thus far I’ve published books for Bernadette Mayer, C.D. Wright, Rosmarie Waldrop, Leslie Scalapino, Alice Notley, Lyn Hejinian and forthcoming is the book for Mei-mei Berssenbugge. I’d like to find publishers for the books I’ve written for Cecilia Vicuña and Hannah Weiner. The next book I have in mind is for Harryette Mullen.
Laynie Browne is a poet, prose writer, artist, editor and teacher. Her recent books of poetry include: Everyone & Her Resemblances (Pamenar, 2024), Intaglio Daughters (Ornithopter 2023), Practice Has No Sequel (Pamenar 2023), Letters Inscribed in Snow (Tinderbox 2023), and Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists (Wave Books, 2022). In 2024 a solo show of her collage titled “On the Way to the Filmic Woods” was exhibited at the Brodsky Gallery at Kelly Writer’s House. She co-edited the anthology I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues Press) and edited the anthology A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on The Poet’s Novel (Nightboat). Honors include a Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award for her collection The Scented Fox, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award for her collection Drawing of a Swan Before Memory. She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
Born
in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives
in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with
Christine McNair. The author of nearly forty trade books of poetry, fiction and
non-fiction, his most recent titles include On Beauty: stories
(University of Alberta Press, 2024) and the anthology groundworks: the best
of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing,
2023). His poetry title, the book of sentences (University of Calgary),
a follow-up to the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022),
appears in 2025, as do two titles with Spuyten Duyvil. The current Artistic
Director of VERSeFest, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as
writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.
