, Ottawa 200
Ellen Chang-Richardson [photo credit: Nicolai P Gregory] is the author of Blood Belies (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024) and five solo poetry chapbooks including the moleskin coat (above/ground press, 2025). Their second trade collection, Through the Eyes of Another, is forthcoming Spring 2027. They write to shine a light.
You and I recently participated in a ‘poetry crawl’ around Centretown, organized and curated by Amanda Earl. What was the process of working Ottawa research for that project? What were you hoping to find?
Great question. When I first began, I had wanted to explore the ghostly themes of Amanda’s “real surreal” poetry crawl. I had an idea that I would find past queer East-Asian poets who may have been working in Ottawa throughout its history as a municipality and pay homage to them through a series of either golden shovels or centos. What I quickly discovered, however, is that records related to such writers are near nonexistent. Unsurprisingly, if there were any queer East-Asian poets writing in the early days of Bytown, they were writing in the margins.
It would be interesting to keep digging, to find those margins. Vancouver writer Joy Kogawa lived here through most of the 1970s, and it would be curious to understand how much of her novel Obasan (1981) might have been written here. The late Toronto writer Priscila Uppal was from Ottawa, and Asoka Weerasinghe is still in the east end of the city. What were you able to find, if anything, and how did that impact the pieces you composed for Amanda’s project?
While Joy Kogawa, Priscila Uppal, and Asoka Weerasinghe are all writers who popped up throughout the course of my research, they were the only ones that did. As you and I discussed – that can’t be right! So it definitely would be interesting for someone to keep digging; to find those margins, and to bring any lost names back into the light. A literary historian or archivist, maybe (if there are any of you out there reading this, I encourage you to consider rob’s proposed project). As for the pieces I ended up composing for Amanda’s project: I pivoted. Because going with my first concept was not possible, I turned instead to the history of the neighbourhood(s) and the building(s) themselves. Echoes, as a concept, interests me quite deeply – physical locales and the metaphysical questions of what came before, what exists now, and what is lost or found in the spaces.
As you say, your work explores physical spaces and the questions of past and present. What brought you to considering such a landscape of layers? And how does that show itself in your work?
I have to pin this on moving around the world throughout my childhood and, subsequently, the interest that arose in me with regard to the discipline of history. I have lived in Oakville, São Paulo, Shanghai, Toronto, and now Ottawa. Moving through various places and cultures makes one think about the intersections – how events that take place on the scale of time affect the landscape(s) they take place within. It’s all very philosophical but it can be wondrous too.
When it comes to my work, these layers take form by way of visual and sonic elements. On the page: my poetry is visual. It takes into account the boundaries of the physical page, and text can appear in both black and grey font (colour variance implying layered voices). Read out loud: words are literally looped upon themselves and spaces translate into bated breath, creating soundscapes upon which the main poem is then overlaid.
What I’ve appreciated about your work for some time is precisely that attention to visual and sonic elements. You suggest the “main poem” is overlaid across these created soundscapes. Is the music of your lyric how your compositions begin? Do you begin with sound and then attempt to layer meaning and narrative overtop that music?
Perhaps the term is less “main poem” and more “entire poem” – this question made me revisit my answer to your previous one! I like when that happens. Thank you for saying so regarding my attention to visual and sonic elements. I appreciate that you appreciate that aspect of my work. Sound is actually the last thing that comes into play. Contrarily, I work in the conceptual and visual first. Step one: language and meaning. Step two: visual composition to help drive meaning. Step three: are there any tongue in cheek elements I can apply? Step four: how might this feel read out loud? Step five: edit, edit, edit, edit, edit.
There aren’t so many poets I’m seeing working the lyric that lean as heavily into visual or sonic elements, and your work-to-date maintains a really fine balance between the three. What brought you to this point? Who were you reading that prompted such a layered attention?
Thank you, rob, that’s really kind of you. I’m occasionally told my work is “not lyric enough” so to hear you say that you feel it balances the lyric with visual and sonic elements is nice. I’ve always been interested in hybridity. I firmly believe that art is not created in silos and thereby love seeing, and being an example of, work that braids multiple elements. Unsurprisingly, I read and listen widely – some of my greatest inspirations (and this is not an exhaustive list) include Aristophanes, Italo Calvino, Anne Carson, Cristian Bök, BBNG, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Sandra Ridley, Hala Alyan, Sara Peters, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, M. NourbeSe Philip, and Meeka Walsh.
There does seem a bit of a contemporary lean away from lyric experiments with sound and visual in Canadian writing, so I can get why you’re hearing that, even if I don’t actually agree with any suggestion that your work isn’t lyric “enough” (whatever that means). You mention having lived in a vast array of geographies across your life. Have you relationships with any of those geographies that still hold in your work, or were these more points-on-a-grid, stepping stones to where you currently are?
Another great question, rob. I would have to say my relationships with those geographies is akin to stones collected and held dear. To understand this simile, you have to understand that I love collecting stones (lol) – from the beaches of Newfoundland, Vancouver Island, Greece, and more; to pieces of buildings that once were. To me, these places are iterative; their impact, endless; informing my understanding of the world and the way I move through it.
I had the sense that in your first full-length collection, Blood Belies (2024), you were working to articulate a through-line between some of these geographies and histories. How consciously were you aware of these histories in relation, and composing poems through them?
Quite aware – we’re all related! As much as the powers that be would try to have us believe otherwise.
This reminds me of bpNichol’s idea, especially through books of The Martyrology, that all the writing connects, even if only because it is written by the same hand. Not that this is a simple thing, but can it be as simple as that?
Yes – if only more people saw it this way. We’re one, you know? Meeka Walsh once told me this: “Resonances are good and words belong to everyone.” I happen to agree.
rob mclennan lives in Ottawa, where he accidentally co-owns a house across the street from where his parents were married, and spent more than twenty years running a reading series two blocks from where he was born. His latest poetry collection is edgeless (Caitlin Press, 2026). His prior collection, the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025), recently won the 2026 Archibald Lampman Award.
