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Tales of Sound & Fury Special Expose: rob mclennan
"rob mclennan-- a Canadian living to the north of us..."- Part One
Early in the prehistoric dawn that was April & May of this year, perhaps you heard the thunder, perhaps felt the siesmic awesomeness that was the cyber-Gotterdammerung-esque Battle to be "Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere"!!!
You didn't? You were busy that night? You were watching episodes of "Lost" while Tony Brown and Canada's rob mclennan and their vast armies of supporters were trapped in Epic Struggle?
You should be ashamed. You missed all the fun.
When the e-dust settled finally,it was determined that the current title-holder (until we sacrifice him to the Sun God next year) is our own Tony Brown. But what of the only other contender to seriously challenge Lord Brown? Over the last few weeks I've had the privilege and pleasure to interview the silver medal winner, rob mclennan.
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ryk: rob- you've just recently lost, by a very narrow margin (355 to 310), the election for "Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere.” Or, you could say that you won the "Vice-Laureateship" by a huge margin. So my first question is: Pesky Opposition Party or Inevitable Violent Uprising?
rob: God knows. I was pretty impressed, I must say, at the amount of people that I knew who were forwarding the information around, well before I decided to do the same. It was pretty remarkable and humbling. It was only when my numbers started really jumping up that Tony’s started doing the same. It was a pretty tight race, especially considering that I had so little to do with the process.
ryk: Ok, smart move: “Don’t tip your hat regarding the violent overthrow of Tony’s oppressive regime”, I get it. Ok, before the whole Blog-o-lection landed in the cyber-laps of so many people, what was rob mclennan busy doing?
rob: At the point I found out, I was either just about to leave for Banff or had just arrived there, to spend a few days in the mountains on a writing retreat at the Banff Writing Studio. Even though I live in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, I’ve been writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta in Edmonton since the end of August, 2007, and this little retreat was built in to my position. I was there to get work done on some poems, as well as an essay on Banff as part of this creative nonfiction book I’ve been working on about my Alberta year, despite the novel I’ve been not working on for the past eight months. Also, I think I was doing the final proofs for a book of literary essays I’ve got out any minute. That and writing a series of letters to a beautiful young woman in Edmonton.
ryk: Busy Schedule! Let's talk about this novel you haven't been working on. In light of all the writing projects you've taken on- now and in the past- is it possible this novel exists specifically NOT to be written? That maybe it's a Grail of sorts, something for you to always pursue without a final deadline hanging o'er? (Notice how I worked "o'er" into the conversation? Ye Gods, I’m goode!)
I also notice you mentioned "writing letters." For the benefit of our young emailer, bloggers, texters and IMers, could you describe a little of this archaic and barbaric practice of (let me make sure I have this correctly) “writing words down on a piece of paper?”
rm: Well, the whole plan was to finish the novel, but I just haven’t worked that part out yet. There was even an essay on writing I read recently by Toronto novelist Russell Smith on how it’s easy to start writing a novel, but he’s met too many people over the years who just can’t work out to finish them. I don’t want to be part of that statistic (the fact that I already have a published novel does at least work to my advantage). And that’s not even all I’m doing! Writing letters, certainly; I’ve always typed out letters and sent them through the mail, even more regularly since I’ve been in Edmonton, writing stacks of letters home to friends, as well as to my daughter and my mother. Sometimes it’s just nice to get something in the mail, isn’t it? And I end up writing far more than I would if I were sending an e-mail.
It’s the same way I write blog entries, going over and over them before posting online. I don’t see what I do online really as being any different than I would send to a literary journal, except for the fact that I get to include about a million links to further explore and explain what I’m talking about, for the benefit of readers who might not have all the same information, you know?
I don’t have any specific deadlines these days, although there is an editorial project I’ve got due in June with NeWest Press and another in August with the University of Alberta Press , so they are there sometimes, but not usually. I’m more often writing and simply sending, hoping for acceptance, whether poem, novel, review, essay or interview. It’s part of the appeal of the blog, that sense of “immediate,” even if that “immediate” comes after days of working and constantly tweaking until a piece sounds exactly right.
The novel itself? It’s called “Missing Persons,” and I did post a fragment or two of same on the blog many moons ago; I started it about six or seven years ago, well before I knew I was going to be heading west, and the main character is a fourteen year old girl named Alberta. How ironic is that?
ryk: Busy, busy man! So, a few questions, rob. What is your opinion of "Slam" or "performance poetry"?
rob: I have nothing against the forms of “Slam” or “performance poetry,” but the form itself seems to lend itself a little too easily to losing any sense of archival identity, apart from the immediate. I see far too many people that exist in it that only compare themselves to those who are in their immediate vicinity, doing the same kinds of performance. It becomes hard to improve without seeing what else has been done before you, or what else is happening in other communities. I prefer to live on the page, and simply visit “out loud.”
ryk: So true! It reminds me of a line from an Adam Stone poem that goes "...slam poets who learned everything they know about 'the Revolution' from listening to other slam poets." And, God knows, it is so easy for people to slide into the exact same mannerisms- physical and vocal- until the inbreeding starts to show. So many of them don't read a lot of poetry that isn't the chapbooks of other Slam Poets. Plus, so much of it is "preaching to a choir already on your side", where poets bravely take stands against sexism, racism, etc. by yelling at the audience how bad these things are. Little craft, no allegory, no story-telling...just loud finger-pointing. So, when people ask me if I am (or refer to me as) "a Slam Poet" I correct them that I am a "performance poet" which to me is merely bringing some theater and/or standup comic experience to re-creating the poem each time. But enough about me. So, speaking as a Canadian, do you prefer Geddy Lee or Bruce Cockburn?
rm: I much prefer Bruce Cockburn, especially since he’s from Ottawa. When he was 17, he was in an Ottawa band called The Children, run by the Ottawa poet William Hawkins; I edited Bill’s selected poems that came out in 2005, with a preface by Cockburn. When we launched it (Cockburn even came by and read from his preface), it was the biggest poetry launch that the National Library and Archives Building had ever seen, with nearly three hundred people.
ryk: Bruce is my favorite singer/songwriters and I've been a fan since the early 80's. That you've met him makes me seethingly jealous and I cannot continue this interview ...ok, I can continue, but I'm still jealous. But thanks for the name of a poet whose work I can track down. Always looking for another good poet to read.
If I may be blunt, rob- referring back to this mystery woman in Edmonton- here in America we have a phrase "I have a girlfriend in Canada" as indicating someone is a hopeless, unboyfriendable geek and that was the best they could do in claiming they actually weren’t nerdy virgins. So be honest- is she a girlfriend in Canada or is she a "girlfriend in Canada"?
rm: I don’t know the phrase, and certainly don’t recall using the word “girlfriend,”and what would be the difference, in quotes or without, what you’re asking? But she is not imaginary; her letters are written in a handwriting completely different than my own.
ryk: That may have been just me bringing the "snarky", as it were. I'm wholly joking (read: I’m very serious... Just joking!) I'm not sure the exact derivation of the phrase, but it's a standard joke here in the States. Basically, a geeky kid says that he has a girlfriend "but he lives in Canada" thereby relieving him of ever having to produce an actual living girlfriend to his friends (who know he’s lying but let him get away with it anyway...)
(There is a palpable, uncomfortable silence over the fibre-optic lines...)
To be continued...
Next week: Part 2
Submitted by rykmcintyre on Monday, May 19, 2008 (03:52:34) (1527 reads)
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| "Features: Tales of Sound & Fury Special Expose: rob mclennan" | Login/Create an Account | 2 comments |
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Re: Special Expose: “rob mclennan- a canadian living to the north of us!” (Pt.1
(Score: 1 )
by superjill on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 (15:06:23) |
So that explains why when I was seeing the SLC boy no one believed him. 
Love your interview style, Ryk. You're hilarious!
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Re: Tales of Sound & Fury Special Expose: rob mclennan
(Score: 1 )
by John on Thursday, July 02, 2009 (17:14:11) |
Weird, I think I delete a real comment by accident.
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