Elanor Spring : you, by Chantal Neveu, translated by Erín Moure

you, Chantal Neveu, translated by Erín Moure
Book*hug Press, 2024

 

 

 

 

Throughout her prolific career as a translator, Erín Moure’s work dances between the  strange spaces language inhabits. Her recent translation, the book length poem you by francophone writer Chantal Neveu, directly considers the complexities between relationship and language, whether it is expression between two or many, the harmony of reaching duality with another, or language’s inability to grasp feelings towards the self and the other. These notions feel entirely compatible with translation as Moure deftly beckons a full-voiced poem from the French, yet simultaneously retains the shimmering otherness of a translated work underneath. As such, the strange polyphony of familiar and other becomes reified.

Here, the other refers to every conceivable other– multiple iterations of personal pronouns become at once strange and recognizable, as even the self has the capacity for the unknown. In the slight narrative present, the poem gestures towards love, infidelity, motherhood, and the sensuality of bodies, but the driving forces are entirely language-dependent. The sharpness of the words surround themselves, glancing off of the primary pronouns “I”, “you”, “she”, “he” and “we” which fade in and out, intangibly sparkling, “I want you fully / desire to possess you entirely”. Just as the self and the other are knowable and unknowable, so too is the exactness of the reader’s senses. What you is capable of is intimacy at arm’s length- exposure without total revelation, revelation without complete knowledge. 

nothing is

and the air

the image

This direct refusal to indulge in over-explanation results in a unique clarity, the ability of every line to contain its own energy and multitude of interpretive possibilities; as one line says, “you clear space”. In this way, the construction of the poem lends itself to spaciousness, mimetically enacting time spent with another, the breath between bodies. Despite the lack of linear narration, the erotic nature of the poem is a force all its own, calling attention to tangible instances of separation and closeness. In these lines, love is a power that mimics the lovers

themselves: overshadowing, lingering, trembling between every line Neveu writes:

 

is any existential plane untouched by eros

you ask me to pull myself together

I’m undecided

exiled 

we both agree

desire generates aberrations

love is bigger than any of us 

Love weaves itself into each tangible aspect of language as a fractal, visible on the page in unrelenting lines. Love and language glance off one another, creating a sense of intertwining devotion only to be distanced and othered in the same breath. Despite the acknowledged magnitude of eros, it nevertheless is ubiquitous, seeping into the cracks of each pronoun, as devastating as it is restorative. The poem asks that we let ourselves be saturated with our own ineptitude at pairing eros to words and makes us unable to stand completely on firm ground. 

In loving, we must take the other as they are, or appear to be in whatever light we perceive them: “we fathom each other / molecules vibrate / we are proportional”. Every pronoun corresponds to each other, misunderstands each other, returns again to language and love in spite of our losses. In loving, in language, we construct the other and ourselves, imagining that our desires are somehow compatible. Neveu writes, “expressing desires / available / requesting nothing / you dispense with words”. Here, the duality of expression and the absence of articulation reverberates through the lines, creating a space where contradictions flourish and become possible. We cannot bear (and must) the knowledge that we may never fully understand one another, in the same way that we cannot fully understand each line of language in this poem. To seek complete understanding is then to miss the beauty that the other reflects into ourselves. In the translator’s postface, Moure describes the poem you as “one of the precious metals, a gem extracted from its rocky source.” Aptly, this asks the reader to be the chisel of extraction in much the same way the poem serves as a chisel to the reader. As the reader must extricate the poem, line by line, so you extricates the reader from themselves, upending understanding in favor of multifaceted movement. In this way, the reader and the poem are again the self and the other in relationship, “honouring the initial induction / the immediate joyous adhesion / vocal / physiological”. The exactness of the lines presents the need to adhere to one another and seek to create a glimmering oneness which is ultimately reliant on the reflection of others. 

The beauty of Moure’s translation is a chisel itself– her ability to exact the precise preciousness of each word and moment from the original French gives you its gem-like radiance. Like a stone, examining the poem closely gives way to detail and precision, each line sharp enough to slice. Throughout the poem, Moure has chosen to leave certain words in the original language, adding another layer of relationship. Moments where words are left untranslated add to the sensation of otherness, even if the reader is familiar with French. This choice gives the work an additional dimension of recognition which begins as a jolt of strangeness. Lighting upon “l’a-venir” for example, Moure leaves the word with its multiplicity, as it means both “future” and, as it’s constructed with the hyphen, “what is to come”. The single word becomes simple and complex, surrounded by the whiteness of the page and containing its own self, its own other, its own duality. Applying this to the act of translation, of bringing a work from one language to another, Moure gives the reader certain true cognates in which to feel othered. One line reads, “en silence”, beginning with the French word for “in” and then ending with the possibly French, possibly English “silence”. The act of translation becomes living and open, beckoning language’s interpretation. Moure’s translation and exquisite attention to each facet of the poem imbues the work with uncapturable energy and movement. 

In the translation of Neveu’s you, Moure furthers and amplifies the unknowable relationships that shimmer even as they alter. The reader is at once invited in and excluded, spoken to and eavesdropping, equilibrated and unbalanced. you presents an opportunity to be lost and found in equal measure, to examine more closely ourselves and others, to remain willing participants in eros and language, and in each scintillating line, “we don’t resist the vectors of enthrallment”.

 

 

 

 

 

Elanor Spring is a poet and translator from Boise, Idaho. She holds a BA in French and a BA in Creative Writing from Boise State University. She’s currently a graduate student at the University of Maine in Orono studying Poetry and Poetics. Her work can be found in Oroboros, fig.press, and forthcoming from P-Queue.

Bennett Malcolmson : 2026 VERSeFest interviews: Emma McKenna

 

 

 

Emma McKenna [photo credit: Sarah Ziolkowska] is a feminist, bi, disabled writer. Born in Duncan, British Columbia, with a childhood spent in Alberta, she has since made her home in Southern Ontario. She is the author of two poetry collections, Gold Star (Book*hug Press, 2026) and Chenille or Silk (Caitlin Press, 2019). Her poetry examines trauma and class through a lens of disabled/sick femme embodiment.

Emma McKenna reads in Ottawa alongside Misha Solomon and brief open set at the Qu’Art event on Thursday, March 26, 2026 as part of VERSeFest 2026.

[ content warning: contains discussion of sexual violence and abuse ]

In the title poem, Gold Star, you explore multiple meanings of the phrase—from childhood rewards to its use within queer communities, alongside its history of exclusion. The poem moves between childhood shame, adult violence, and shifting definitions of identity and belonging. What drew you to place these different meanings in conversation with one another? How did the phrase “gold star” help you reflect on how identity and worth are measured or assigned over the course of a life?

This poem emerged as an exploration of how shame, desire, and danger are learned and stored in the body. How do children experience their bodies as sites of disorder and/or discipline and/or stigma and/or harm? And how do we then, as adolescents and young adults, take that messaging into exploring our own bodies and sexualities? I aimed to put into conversation the ways in which normative gender and sexual roles are internalized at a young age, and how being conditioned as a “good girl” can groom young women for abuse. Additionally, I wanted to show that misogyny can be perpetuated not only in heterosexual but in queer relationships, too, and highlight the fact that bisexual women experience a disproportionate rate of sexual violence.

I want to ask about how you use a page. Across the collection there is variation in form from how Section 271 is presented as Victory Waltz, Verse, Refrain, Chorus, and Bridge to how the poem Spider Legs climbs up the page: I want back there. I went back again. How do you use a page? Form coming first, or the truth of the text making the form? 

The collection uses a variety of forms to explore the themes. In writing this book, the necessity of each poem announced itself, and through revision, the final forms emerged. The poems you mention above, Section 271, a suite poem, and Spider Legs, use form to convey the meaning in specific ways.

Section 271 is the section in the Canadian Criminal Code defining sexual assault. The legal subsections contain a lot of repetition, with numerous caveats, conditions, circumstances, etc. These “qualities” inform whether the law can be applied. In “Victory Waltz,” I play with the musicality of a waltz, the back and the forth of it, to dramatize the way in which the law interprets narratives of sexual violence. As one might imagine, who will be victorious is usually defined at the outset, but why not watch the dance unfold? 

The following poems in the suite use the form of traditional song structure to capture elements of the relationality of sexual violence. In “Verse,” the singular storyline of the “victim” is set up. In “Refrain,” the poem recites interpretations and meanings of “stop.” In “Chorus,” the lack of pronouns is meant to demonstrate the interchangeability of the subject, and the ways in which the story can be shifted depending on the narrator. Finally, in “Bridge,” the poem grapples with the assigned meanings given to survivors of sexual violence. 

“Spider Legs” is written as a domestic thriller in verse, depicting the banality and ubiquity of intimate partner violence. Modelled on the common house spider, each leg of the poem creeps through the hope, apprehension, and risk of maintaining a relationship with an abuser.

In the text, the body is both vulnerable to violence and a source of pleasure and power. You write, I am thrumming with power to come then come again. These experiences exist side by side, intersecting with humour and tenderness in complex ways. How do you understand these overlapping experiences of living in the body? I can feel that tension in the work, but what is it like to hold these contradictions physically, and then to translate them onto the page?

The poem “Howl” was first written as two circles. The two parts are in dialogue, and are envisioned with neither beginnings nor endings, but in an endless cycle. It was also imagined as a chorus, where every repetition saw a new vocal layer joining in. It would be incredible to perform this poem with a group, as that is the true vision of the sound of it in my mind—a cycle repeating, gaining strength, becoming loud, weakening, going dormant—asking, do shame and pleasure always coexist?

I’ve been asking writers this question: I like to read The New York Times’ By the Book, but I don’t always feel a strong connection to the authors it features, as I don’t regularly read contemporary American authors. I’ve found myself wanting a more personal version of that canon, one shaped by the writers I’m reading. So… 

Where do you like to read? 

I read on the couch or on my husband’s side of the bed.

Do you dog-ear your books?

I try to use sticky tabs but will occasionally fold over a page—I’m not fussy about my books. I also take a lot of books out from the library and despite all the options to make notes, etc., I rarely take advantage of any of the digital tricks.

What are you reading now? What is on your "nightstand"? 

I’m currently finishing Julie Chan is Dead, a very fun novel by Liann Zhang. On my nightstand are two books in progress, The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde, Anecdotes by Kathryn Mockler, and an old favourite, Selected Poetry by Sylvia Plath.

 

Bennett Malcolmson is a photographer, zine maker, and occasional writer. His photographic work has been presented at Amberhill Gallery and in an offsite exhibition with the Art Gallery of Sudbury. He has also exhibited in group shows, including with La Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario and Play Smelter, presented by The COVERT Collective. He lives in Ottawa, Ontario, with his partner Chloé and their three cats.

 

Kim Fahner : Re: Wild Her, by Shannon Webb-Campbell

Re: Wild Her, Shannon Webb-Campbell
Book*hug, 2025

 

 

 

The tides of Shannon Webb-Campbell’s last poetry collection, Lunar Tides, continue to ebb and flow in her new book, Re: Wild Her. Here is a poet who moves between worlds and dimensions, seeing through things as she journeys, searching for more knowledge, wisdom, and magic. It’s about swimming, too, which is something I love to do, so I understand how a swimmer’s entry into water worlds like ponds, rivers, lakes, and oceans can pull at you with a power that is equal to that of the moon at the tides. Webb-Campbell draws from her queer, Mi’kmaq, and settler identity, delving into the teachings of her Elders, but also using ancient tools of divination like the Tarot.

In her work, the poet subverts the traditional—and very patriarchal—understanding of what it is that witches do. They may be often referred to in traditional literature and lore as ‘crones,’ but Webb-Campbell upends the incorrect stereotype to uncover the truths of wise women and oracles. In doing so, she invites readers to dive into their own maternal bloodlines to explore their origins. She conjures ancient female power and channels it through her words—embodying the strength and fluidity of the Divine Feminine—so that her poetry becomes a portal through which readers are invited to explore their own inner depths.

The first poem of the collection, “Her Eros Revisited” sets the tone for an immersion into sensuality and a feminist reclamation of raw eroticism. Divided into parts, the poem moves from “a transatlantic flight over midnight” that “catapults us through moonlight,” to Paris. Once there, the speaker says, “I write long after Anais Nin/for a world that does not exist…I am now a sultry femme/a visionary sprit/who splits, sips, and swills.” Reading this sequence feels a bit like going on a pub crawl through a city you haven’t visited before—it asks you to enter the journey of exploration. The final piece is celebratory in tone: “reading E.E. Cummings’s erotic poems out loud/under covers we tangle like root vegetables/wrapped up in borrowed sheets.”

In “Sirens Off Capri,” the speaker transforms into a siren, “making love Calypso deep/in the underwater cavity.” There’s a sense of escapism here, too, in poems like “Transatlantique,” when the poet writes: “I want to become Transatlantique/drape my spirit in Barbier costume/tango between Halifax and Paris/flow in elaborate gowns/held up by whalebone corsets…swirl with womankind/rebellious godmothers who crossed the grey ocean” to break traditions and spend “their years living in surrealist motifs.” Re: Wild Her travels the world, touching down in a variety of places around the globe, so the notion of travel, of being transported and even transformed, is a theme that is very much central to the poems presented here.

The poet draws on both her Mi’kmaq and settler heritage, highlighting a series of female muses throughout the collection. In “Off Isla Mujeres (Bay of Women),” the speaker says: “kindreds comb beaches/for relics of fertility/swim in medicinal waters/before the Mayan moon goddess/we offer our feminine forms. Swimming is depicted as both a simple immersion into water but is also elevated to something sensual and sacred, something transformational. In “Seawater Portals,” there is a “womblike cave for healing/once ancient Mayan bathing rituals/a portal between the living and the dead.” There are references to selkies, and to the fish women who “emerge from the waters’ offering/after a trinity of swims all in one day/baptism by sea.”  and the speaker wonders, “what if my root system is stars?” There is also a recognition of how certain cultures are similar when, in “Ceremony Collaboration,” Webb-Campbell writes: “at this time of ecological crisis/look to Elders and Buddhists/wildflowers who know meditation.” The poet enters the natural world to highlight the beauty, and the sacred, but also to warn of what climate crisis is doing to the environment. The fluidity of the poetry in Re: Wild Her is also reflected in the way that the speaker immerses themselves in landscape. In “Nitap,” a poem for Douglas Walbourne-Gough, and referencing his book, Island, the speaker says: “you are made of rocky earth…you remind me I’m made of wind/wild like a partridgeberry/born of moose calls.” The final stanza of the poem speaks to the connections between the intertwined roles of human and environment: “in our kinship conversations/your voice fills me with island/a dialect that calls me back.”

Webb-Campbell continues to examine the way in which language is fluid, exploring how traditional language plays a role in her work and life. In the poem, “Pink Up Parched Earth”, which is on the left side of the book, a Mi’kmaw translation is on the opposite page, so you can see both as you read. The translation is by Joan Milliea, and does not follow the stanzaic structure of the English original. This reminds the reader that meanings can shift and transform between two languages, even if the central essence is common. It’s a reminder, in many ways, of how we should live in peace with one another, and how we should try to continue to work towards reconciliation in a collaborative way.

If you’ve read this far, I’ll say (openly) that I have been a fan of Webb-Campbell’s work for a while now. I was keenly waiting for this collection to be released, and it’s more of what I loved about the poems I read in Lunar Tides. If that book of poems examines love, loss, and grieving, then this one does more of that, but also extends its reach to encompass the journey from brokenness to healing. That change and healing process takes time—sometimes decades or centuries—but Re: Wild Her is hopeful and empowers the reader to work through their own broken parts, encourages them to journey both outwards and inwards, and allows for that fluidity of exploration that is part of a life well lived.

 

 

 

 

 

Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her newest book, a novel, is The Donoghue Girl (Latitude 46, 2024). Her next book of poems, The Pollination Field, will be published by Turnstone Press in 2025. She recently won first place for her CNF essay, "What You Carry," in The Ampersand Review's 2024 essay contest. As well, Kim was named as a finalist for the 2023 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize. She is the First Vice-Chair of The Writers' Union of Canada (2023-25), a member of the League of Canadian Poets, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. She may be reached via her website at http://www.kimfahner.com

Amanda Earl : 2025 VERSeFest interviews: Zoe Whittall

 

Zoe Whittall is a bestselling novelist and TV writer. Her novel The Best Kind of People was a finalist for the Giller prize and named Indigo’s #1 book of the year. The New York Times called her fourth novel The Spectacular “a highly readable testament to the strength of the maternal bond” and The Toronto Star called it “a singularly impressive piece of fiction.” She won a Lamda literary award for her second novel Holding Still for as Long as Possible, and the Writers Trust Dayne Ogilvie prize for her debut, Bottle Rocket Hearts. She won a Canadian Screen Award as part of the writing team for The Baroness Von Sketch Show. Her latest books are No Credit River (poetry/memoir), Wild Failure (short fiction), and The Fake (a novel). She lives in Prince Edward County, Ontario.

Zoe Whittall reads in Ottawa on Friday, March 28 as part of VERSeFest 2025.

Amanda Earl: In Ars Poetica, you mention that you read everything labelled autofiction, and you are drawn to autofiction as an alienated truth. You say it permits stories without villains. Were you consciously reading autofiction to try to figure out the rules or conventions? Can you talk about why the idea of an “alienated truth” was attractive or generative to you?

Zoe Whittall: I love autofiction mostly because I love style, voice, language, and character more than I like plot. I like a tightly plot driven TV show, I love a meandering thought bubble of a book. Give me a slim volume about a girl sitting in bed thinking about her philosophies or feelings and I’m all over it. But part of what I love about it is its implicit unreliability, and the sort of gossip-y or fake closeness of feeling as though you’re sitting beside the author when they’re at their weirdest and they’re telling you secrets. But no one is ever really telling you secrets. They’re offering you a sculpture, highly cultivated, polished and chipped away at, that only looks raw or like it has an organic, improvised quality. Every word, phrase, moment, in any good book is deliberate. If it was just blurted out and messy it would be like when you look at a bad painting but you don’t know why it's bad but you know it somehow. And the secret is that the composition is off balance. But I love the lie of autofiction. It feels close to what I like about the new narrative movement which was this raw, circular, rule-breaking literature that was often about sex and oblivion and queerness with these unwieldy and wild sentences that felt like you were just reading someone’s scrawled vulnerabilities. So alienated truth was the most concise way I felt I could describe what I think the best kind of hybrid, personal texts can aim for.

AE: Creative nonfiction and memoir have overlapping qualities. This book is described also as a memoir in prose poetry. Can you talk about your experiences in trying to label this work?

ZW: Ok so here is where I confess that I assumed creative non-fiction and memoir were one and the same? Is the difference that CNF can be more creative – i.e., loose with the facts and more story-like? It started as a book of mostly prose poems, and the more I worked on it the more I started to see a book length narrative arc. And then I started to think about the confessional element and how I might be able to be more overt about it.

AE: In your Ex-Puritan interview with Kailey Havelock about your novel The Best Kind of People, you write “I used to feel more comfortable in first person, and sometimes I still do.” Now you are using first person and writing something that is so clearly about personal experience. How did you get more comfortable with writing in first?

ZW: I feel comfortable in first and third for different reasons. Both have an intimacy that you can’t get with the other. Sustaining first for an entire novel is difficult in terms of the constraint of what you can know, but it is also roomy and had a depth you can’t always get in the same way with third. I like them both.

AE: This book is so readable, relatable, funny, biting, and raw with self-deprecating humour. As a comedy writer, I imagine you hone your craft for timing and knowing what is humorous for an audience. In the book, did you have to try to be humorous or is this just how you are? Can you edit humour or is it something that just has to flow naturally?

ZW: It's something that comes naturally to me whenever I’m wrestling with an idea or how to think about something. Certainly it’s a defense mechanism and also how I understand the world. I’ve also been working as a comedy writer for TV and crafting jokes while also writing books for about ten years now, so the instinct is hard to turn off. I definitely edit humor the same way I would any sentence, for rhythm and pay off and I think about how long a line is and whether or not the joke is too quick or too long.

AE: One of the areas of the book which impressed me was the constant engagement with its form, the metatextuality of it. You refer to it as a “book of ideas” (4) and “A poem is four hundred years of lesbian gossip” (10). You say that “form is content” (15). Content can be both the substance of a work and a state of mind. The form here troubles or queers the journal/memoir/poetic form by playing with it, such as you do in the prose pantoum (20) or by using techniques such as imagery and repetition which hybridizes prose and poetry. You mention Dodie Bellamy and the New Narrative and mention that you were inspired by it? Can you give some examples of how it inspired you? Did it help you tackle ways in which to approach an unreliable memoir, for example?

ZW: I was thinking about something Dodie Bellamy said in an interview about how the new narrative movement was big on telling not showing. I think that unlocked something in me while writing this book, to stop being afraid of defining the genre and being fixed in any which way. I was, am, very influenced by that worlde of mostly queer avant garde writers who were unafraid to break with the conventions of the time, who wrote about shame with humor, sexuality, and dying – very much influenced by aids and the conservatism of the 80s, I imagine. The kind of confessional zine era I started writing in, those movements were in conversation with each other. New narrative writers were so daring on the page with what looked like confession but was highly artful and audacious, using real names and real events, but twisting and subverting it all. I returned to Kathy Acker and Gary Indiana and Gail Scott while writing the book, I was looking for permission to really go wild after a few years of writing fairly conventional novels, form-wise.

AE: There are vivid details in the book. Is writing a journal or diary part of your everyday practice or something you did to work on this book?

ZW: I journalled obsessively in my younger years but I haven’t been consistent about it in a long time. So some of the details I’m looking back on are from photographs or are just particularly memorable, others start as a sensory detail from a journal and then I expand on them or make them more stark or interesting.

AE: What is it like to read the book to an audience? Are there certain parts that you don’t read or wish to avoid reading? Are you surprised at what people laugh at?

ZW: I mostly read from the ars poetica and any of the poems with humor because they work better out loud. Especially since I started writing for comedy shows and doing some stand-up, I’m most comfortable if I can make at least a few people in the audience laugh. There are certainly poems I don’t think would work from the stage.

AE: In some ways, the book could be a handbook for the broken-hearted, especially in its reference to transmasculine and femme butch relationships, which as you mention is rare. I love the idea of writing the book you wish to see in the world. I feel like this is a book I wish to see in the world, including the wisdom you share and its hybridity. I am grateful to you for sharing your grief, your heartbreak and your experiences as a writer. Do you think you will play with this unreliable memoir, prose poem format again? How does it compare to writing fiction for you?

ZW: Thank you! I will definitely write more prose poetry. I love the form. I love a long line and small stories pushing up against imagery and comedy and fragments. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be explicit about writing memoir again. Depends on what happens in my life, I suppose?

AE: Can you achieve an objective distance from your writing at the editing stage when you so closely write about grief and heartbreak?

ZW: I think so, or you can close to it. And then you have the gift of an objective editor who can remind you what is artful or what the interesting idea might be that you’re wrestling with, and then what is the diary stuff that can be cut to make the work better and real.

AE: You mention that your ex will hate the book but will never read it (51). Did you feel you had to be careful in how you depicted him in the book?

ZW: Yes. The book is about me and my grief process, I offer very few specific details about him and I did that on purpose bc it felt like the ethical thing to do. As a reader I love the gore of gossip and confession but as a writer I can’t help but always think of the real people I love and have loved and their feelings.

AE: “There’s the way I live and the way I want to live.” I feel like this could be a refrain for queer people and their lives, that feeling of having to fit into some concept of heteronormativity that is shoved down our throats through film, tv, etc. Do you find models for the way you want to live in art, literature and film and do they act as solace or reassurance? Today, given the rise of homophobia and transphobia and removal of rights, especially in the USA, do you feel like your work might help queer and trans people feel less alone?

ZW: I’m not sure. I’ve certainly heard from a lot of readers so far who have felt seen in terms of the specific kind of heartbreak devastation that can happen when you end a relationship with someone who was very push-and-pull emotionally, where you feel caught in a kind of addictive cycle. It’s a strange, surreal kind of dynamic, not quite like regular heartbreak or grief because there is an added feeling of such utter confusion for which way is up or down. The line about the way I live and the way I want to live was for me about the things you say and believe about who you are in relationship and how you’re getting by, and then the truth of those most sorrowful moments.

The rise of transphobia right now is so terrifying. I feel like I can’t even make sense of how bad it is getting every day. I feel like we have to prepare for war and I’m not being an hysterical leftist overstating harm, I really do feel like it’s a new era and I’m very scared.

AE: I appreciated your inclusion of the details of the literary life: awards, artist retreats, toxic CanLit, struggles to write, responses to fan mail, etc.

ZW: I couldn’t write about the last ten years of my life without mentioning the strangeness of life as a full time writer within this particular world of Can Lit. So many things happened all at once, and it was a very exciting time but in some ways any artist’s career has extreme ups and downs. It mirrored the relationship in a way. So there was chaos everywhere. And I dislike reading memoir by artists where they leave out the day to day practical details of being an artist.

AE: “I can’t choose safety as an artist…” (71) Did writing and publishing this work help you work through your grief and heartbreak and did it make you feel unsafe? How do you cope with such feelings?

ZW: I’m not sure if it helped me cope, but it did help to write a story of it all.

AE: “My feelings were so big I was stumbling through our life together, a messy chaos monster.” (51) I think a lot of people will relate to this book and I appreciate your sharing your stumbles. Thank you for writing no credit river and for being willing to be open about your experiences.

ZW: Thank you, Amanda! Looking forward to seeing you in Ottawa.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amanda Earl (she/her) is a writer, editor, mentor, reviewer, publisher, living on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Peoples. Hire her as an editor or literary event organizer. Her latest book is Beast Body Epic, a collection of near-death long poems. More info: AmandaEarl.com. Linktr.ee/AmandaEarl