Inspiration strikes. Like lightening? Or something much less dramatic? This year, at Vancouver’s Queer Arts Festival, a group of inspiring and inspired writers has been brought together for “A Literary Soiree: A Celebration of Poets and Writers.” It will be hosted by Rachel Rose at the Roundhouse Exhibition Hall at 7:30 on August 6th.
Of the five participating writers, the following four: poets Rachel Rose, Billeh Nickerson, Betsy Warland and writer Rebecca Brown, were kind enough to allow Sad Mag glimpses into the inspirations for their new or forthcoming works (Gregory Scofield will also be there on the 6th). Sad Mag asked about new projects and favourite Vancouver moments, in order to glean a little about what compels these writers’ interest and engagement. Reading over their responses, it became clear that to be inspired is the most flexible and atemporal of feelings: a response that might occur immediately or might take years and decades to coalesce. Like lightening, then, but with a slow burn.
For Rebecca Brown, who is the author of twelve books of prose, inspiration means being elevated by others: “Though I am not ‘inspired’ as an artist, other artists’ work inspires me,” says Brown, “I am rarely, if ever, ‘inspired.’ The word suggests someone filled with urgency or commitment. Or the simple, necessary act of breathing. On the one hand art making/writing is necessary to me (though not as necessary as breathing…). On the other hand, it is for me usually quite labored and erratic; hardly as even or regular as breath.”
“I used to have this notion,” continues Brown, “[which was] inspired, that is to say, misinformed, by romantic notions of an artist being possessed, as if by a god or passion, to make something. That some muse or spirit comes upon one, possesses one, and gives one some message/object/word. More like some divine madness than the sweaty slog I go through to find words. Having said that, though, I am inspired, in the sense of being encouraged or sustained, by others’ art and words. When I see the amazing things my friends create or do, when I read and read again work by Kafka, Woolf, Stein, Flannery O’Connor, Fanny Howe, I am moved, elevated, encouraged to live more.”
Brown’s newest project is the curation of a group show on the theme of “Devotion” at the Hedreen Gallery in Seattle on August 7th. Participants in the shown include professional visual artists, as well as “folks who don’t think of themselves as artists,” notes Brown, such as “a beekeeper, a teenage boy who collects sports caps, a librarian, a priest, a dj, a restauranteur– but each of whom is lovingly devoted to something.”
Rachel Rose is similarly inspired by those outside forces, past and present, with whom and with which she has engaged. Her newest project, which comprises writing poems about “mythic and monstrous women,” aims “to give voice to the female beast.” It was inspired “by many things,” says Rose, “studying Beowulf 20 years ago; VIDA and CWILA, rage and hope and curiosity and wanting to honour those women who misbehaved, whether literally or mythically, and who were transformed into fearsome legends in order to keep the rest of us in line.”
Betsy Warland, in contrast, recalls the exact moment that inspiration struck. Warland, who has been writing “Oscar of Between” since 2007, describes her inspiration as that moment “when a trapdoor of understanding sprung open beneath my feet when seeing the Camouflage Exhibit at the Imperial War Museum in London.”
Warland explains “Oscar of Between” as a series in which “Oscar, who routinely is addressed as a woman, then as a man, then man, then woman within seconds apart in public [finds] a label for herself that finally fits: a person of between.”
Billeh Nickerson, whose fifth book, Artificial Cherry, will be released by Arsenal Pulp Press this upcoming February, was inspired to return to “the naughtier side” of his writing. After books about fast food and the Titanic, Nickerson’s newest is an offering that he describes as “cheekysweet.”
What strikes me most about all these different inspirations, is the way they expand and contract over time. Some inspirations become recognized only retroactively, or, in Brown’s case, one notion of what it is to be inspired is dismissed and other notions taken up. When I met Rose the first time, it was at the Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference, which was organized by then-Poet Laureate Brad Cran. At the time, I was tasked with interviewing poets who were involved with the conference, and I had decided to ask each one of them the same final question: if you could describe your work in one word what would it be? Rose’s answer, which broke my “one word” rule, did so beautifully, and has really inspired and stuck with me. She said her work was about “Connecting-yearning. Yearning to connect.”
Connecting, and yearning to connect, is so often about finding confluences and points of shared interest. When I asked the QAF poets about their favourite aspects of Vancouver, I received responses that gave me that thrill of recognition for all the inspiring moments that the city has to offer. For Rose, it is “the flats at Spanish Banks at low tide…” which, of course, go on for what seems like infinity. For Betsy, there was “No question about it = The Drive!” and for Nickerson, Betsy’s answer provides a kind of coincidental connection: Nickerson noted “I live on Commercial Drive. I love it when a large shipment of fruit comes in and the grocers sell big bags of the older stuff for a dollar. Once a thrifty artist, always a thrifty artist.”
For more inspiration, connection and yearning (and thrift! It’s only $5 suggested donation!), come to “A Literary Soiree: A Celebration of Poets and Writers” on Tuesday. I hope to see you there.