In this exclusive interview with Evadne Macedo, author of The 29^thDay, Priscila Uppal (poet, professor and novelist) shares her thoughts on writing. Priscila Uppal was/is poet-in-residence for Canadian Athletes Now for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (which have just started). Priscila Uppal recently published her sixth and seventh collections of poetry, Successful Tragedies: Poems 1998 – 2010, and Traumatology. Priscila Uppal has written two novels (The Divine Economy of Salvation and To Whom it May Concern) and five other collections of poetry (Ontological Necessities, Live Coverage, Pretending to Die, Confessions of a Fertility Expert, How to Draw Blood from a Stone). Priscila Uppal also wrote poems to accompany images by artist Daniel Erenworth in Holocaust Dream. Priscila Uppal is a professor at York University and her academic book, We Are What We Mourn: The Contemporary English-Canadian Elegy, was published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2009.

Priscila Uppal on Writing:

1. You were selected to be CanFund poet-in-residence during the Olympic and Paralympic Games – please describe these exciting experiences. Is it difficult to write poetry in the middle of all the hustle and bustle or do you find that the energy helps you generate new material? You blogged about Bilodeau, who was motivated to train towards his gold-medal win by his brother, who had overcome many obstacles relating to his disability. What other inspiring stories have you come across at the Olympics or the Paralympics? What were the most moving moments you were part of at either the Olympics or Paralympics?

It was a privilege to write about the athletes and the winter sports they have dedicated their lives to mastering. I was surrounded by elite athletes (summer and winter Olympians, past and present; national team athletes) and their families and friends, and the space provided by Shaw for CanFund included a bar and stage for musical bands and relaxing hubs from which to watch all the Olympic action on television while basking in the breathtaking view of the cauldron and Olympic rings on the water.

I kept a notebook of sport terms, rules, and poem ideas, and found the more I wrote about sport, the more I wanted to keep writing about sport. The vocabulary is metaphorical, inventive, and a good deal of fun in terms of its aural qualities. The dedication required to excel at this level of competition is staggering to contemplate. The support required from parents and communities to keep active at this level is also very difficult to contemplate (the majority of our athletes will be in debt following the games—the costs of nutrition, coaching, equipment–even those who have won medals for Canada). Their passion for what they do is contagious and renewed my passion for both poetry, and for writing poetry for a public audience.

At first the athletes were likely skeptical about the role a poet might play in the games. Some were amused. But after a few days, they grew more open about welcoming this verbal expression and celebration of winter sport. In fact, they were seeking me out to ask what poems I was writing, which ones I might be reading later on the evening publically to the group, and some were even suggesting poem topics for me. It was wonderful to receive immediate positive feedback and to see their faces light up as they recognized the vocabulary and world of the poems and yet were still challenged to experience and appreciate their sports in new ways. When the Moffat luge brothers walked in on the last evening and recited “Luge Love Haiku” to me, in unison, I was thrilled they were so happy with the poems. Many people told me it was one of the highlights of their time.

Bilodeau’s story was a very moving and inspiring one. But there were moving and inspiring stories every day. Jeremy Wotherspoon’s putting himself out there again after serious injuries; Joannie Rochette’s brave figure staking of her programs following the unexpected death of her mother; Jon Montgomery’s skeleton triumph after years and years of training; the first women’s bobsleigh medals from teams which needed to raise money to purchase their bobsleighs; the Hamelin brothers winning gold medals together; the strength of character of Brian McKeever as he was denied his dream to be first person to compete in both the Olympics and Paralympic games. There are many more great stories. Many from parents and friends of the athletes and their supporters which I don’t have time or space to talk about here.

2. I decided to contact you after I watched you on the current season of Writer’s Confessions. I liked your sense of humour and how you spoke with such delight about carrying on conversations with characters in the books you read as a child. I related to your comments because my interest in writing stems from my childhood love of books– I read constantly and lived more in my alternate worlds than in the real one. Please tell us more about your childhood– What kinds of books did you like to read?

When I was very young, I loved my children’s bible. I found the stories sufficiently violent, epic, exotic, and morally ambiguous to keep me fascinated and coming back for more. I was haunted by images of Samson having his hair cut off, or Moses hitting the mountain with his staff, or Jesus betrayed with a kiss by Judas. In fact, I was quite obsessed with the bible stories until a Sunday school teacher banned me from the group when I proudly stated that my favourite disciple was Judas. Nothing happens without Judas, I told her. She thought I was an evil child. I now know I was simply announcing that I was a writer.

Apart from those books, I loved to read horror books and adult books. I think I realized very early on that the world is a frightening, dangerous place, and so horror novels were a world that I found believable. I was also desperate to leave childhood—I wanted to be an adult, with more control over my surroundings and activities, with more knowledge about the universe—and so I read a lot of books that I don’t think young people read much nowadays. My favourite novel was Great Expectations, for instance, which we read in Grade eight, and which I read three or four more times over high school. I was like an orphan and so have always responded to orphan stories—they have to navigate the adult world early on and find inventive avenues through which to make their dreams, usually of escape out of their current circumstances, come true. I’ve always responded to that.

3. I am very grateful that Terry Fallis has actively supported and mentored me. Who was the first person to recognize talent in you as a writer? Have you ever been mentored? If so by whom, and what kind of mentorship did they give you? Have you ever mentored anyone?

I had two teachers who recognized my writing talent (and talent for reading, too): Richard Teleky, an acclaimed novelist, and Branko Gorjup, a Canadian literature academic. Branko took my poems to Barry Callaghan at EXILE The Literary Quarterly and that’s where my publishing career began. Barry published 10 poems in the next issue of Exile and published my first collection of poetry not long afterwards.

I think it’s extremely important for writers to mentor other writers (for all persons to mentor others, for that matter), and I have this opportunity on a fairly large scale as a professor at York University. I have helped see many of my students into print, including Matt Shaw, Jennifer Hann, and Leigh Nash, among others (all strong new writers worth checking out). I work with Diaspora Dialogues, which offers mentorship to young artists in Toronto; I’ve worked with many writers, both young and old, emerging and experienced, through editorial work at Exile; and I give numerous talks, readings, and workshops throughout the year to schools and the general public in which mentorship is part of the overall program.

4. You seem to have a keen sense of the whimsical in your poems but you also engage with academics in your role as professor at York University, writing books about sombre topics like mourning. How do you balance all these parts of your identity? When do you find time for writing your poetry– is this something you have time for in your day, or is this your evening occupation?

I never want my writing life to become stale. This means that I must always be exploring different aspects of myself and the world. I am curious about so many things that I’m never bored. While it is sometimes challenging to balance all my duties as a professor, arts activist, family member, partner, friend, with those of being a writer, I do feel privileged that writing is a part of my professional life and not something that I do ‘on the side’ so to speak, without institutional and community support. I try to organize my life so that I can write when I am most mentally and physically equipped to write. That way I use the time to the utmost advantage.

5. In The Island Walkers, one of John Bemrose’s characters compared devoting one’s life to poetry to setting off across the Atlantic in a boat that is too small. I asked him to explain whether he felt this way and wonder what your thoughts are — is it possible to sustain yourself as a poet in Canada? If not, what changes would be necessary to make that possible? Given that you have  published seven collections of poetry, what advice would you give to other poets?

Excuse the Olympic reference, but I would never ask a skeleton athlete if they felt it was desirable to devote him or herself to the sport of skeleton. We devote ourselves to activities, causes, people we are passionate about. I could not imagine my life without poetry. Poetry has given me a way to articulate my understanding of the world, to explore experiences, to communicate with others across space and time. While it can sometimes be frustrating that many talents poets suffer financially for their devotion, I don’t think that it discounts the value of the form.

In terms of changing the situation for the better, I think it needs to begin in our schools and homes. We have ghettoized poetry as a subject, relegating it to a week or two ‘unit’ in an English class, where poetry is mostly taught as if it required a decoder ring. There is no better way to alienate readers from poetry than to teach it this way. Poetry needs to be included in our daily lives so that we recognize it as something deeply necessary and human. When poetry is presented as something worthwhile, as something that has relevance and acceptance in everyday life, then it will be accepted, enjoyed, and encouraged as such. Children love poetry. It’s adults who discourage them from developing this love later on in life, as if it is not a practical concern. And yet, so many adults are searching for any kind of spiritual or emotional connection to their environments, and poetry is certainly one way to achieve this, but without practice and familiarity, this avenue is lost.

6. Your newest collection of poems, Successful Tragedies: Poems 1998 – 2010 shows how natural it has been for you to  express yourself in poetry over more than a decade. Some authors, such as John Bemrose, seem to incorporate poetry into the language and flow of their novels. I was therefore surprised to note that you seem to have written a narrative that does not include much poetry (other than one poem at the beginning of a chapter in To Whom it May Concern). Your story succeeds on the strength of your plot, prose and character developments. In short, one would never know that you are a poet. What is it that enabled you to do this? Do you have a very different process for writing novels compared to poetry? Is it that you also publish poetry collections, so you are not pressed to include poetry in your novels? Do you consciously limit poetry from infusing itself into your novels or redirect your poetic urges into other projects?

I’ve heard this before. I don’t write novels like a poet. I’m not sure that’s true. I believe I think like a poet, whatever that means. To me it means I think in broader structures, in making metaphorical and sometimes difficult connections between dissimilar things. I love what language says, but also what it hides.

I think what people mean when they say I don’t write novels like a poet is that I don’t write an overly self-conscious poetic prose. But I think a lot of my dialogue is more of the world of poetry, parable, and fable, sometimes than it is realistic dialogue.

Each book dictates to me its own aesthetic qualities. I might write a more “poetic” novel in the future. It all depends of the demands of the book in terms of its subject matter, its approach, what I hope to explore.

7. Your teaching and research interests include English Poetry, European Poetry, Canadian Literature, World Literature, reading culture and representations of readers in art, revisionist mythmaking, adaptation, and the artistic process. My interests in science and social justice ideas have become part of my first novel, The 29th Day - how have your academic interests influenced your personal writing?

Graduate school was a revelation to me—was I actually being paid to read books and write about them? For me, this set of circumstances has been bliss. My academic interests and my creative interests are one and the same; I just approach each with different tools, including a different language, and this keeps me on my toes—a good thing for a writer and scholar. My job is to read, discuss, debate ideas on a nearly daily basis. As a scholar, I can investigate and research these areas of interest, and as a writer I can articulate these concerns or debates in creative and innovative ways. My works are always conversing with each other, and with other bodies of knowledge. I want my writing to talk to many disciplines, to be relevant to areas beyond the literary.

8. As editor, your publications include Uncommon Ground: Matt Cohen, Red Silk: An Anthology of South-Asian Canadian Women’s Poetry, Barry Callaghan: Essays on His Works, The Exile Book of Poetry in Translation:Twenty Canadian Poets Take on the World and The Exile Book of Canadian Sports Stories. Do you find editing makes you a better writer? What advice would you have for other writers, based on your experience editing?

Editing is a form of mentoring, community-building, and educating. Edited collections can introduce new writers to audiences, instigate and encourage new scholarship, provide contextualizing knowledge about authors or artistic practices or literary traditions, actively create dialogue among artists and researchers, and shape literary trends or concerns. While edited collections always take much longer than one anticipates (and more money and/or more secretarial or administrative support), they are well worth the time and effort.

Matt Cohen and Barry Callaghan are both Canadian authors with important bodies of work, but only a meager amount of criticism was available on these authors before the above collections were published. With Red Silk, we were able to highlight a new group of upcoming South-Asian Canadian writers, and since its publication, several of the featured writers have gone on to publish full-length collections, new books, and other important works. The translation anthology was a particular joy. Each participating poet underwent a learning experience by translating poets from other languages and national literary traditions—many are going to continue to translate their chosen poet, or additional poets. Fifteen languages were published in that book—a formatting nightmare, but what a wealth of material for readers. And with the sport book, I have been able to provide literary and non-literary readers alike with an exciting body of tragic and comedic stories regarding a human activity that intersects with our lives on a near daily basis. I’ve also been able to prove that our best literary imaginations have tackled the topic of sport, and therefore sport shouldn’t be seen as unliterary subject matter.

9. As Pasha Malla noted in his interview, depictions of South Asian families are often quite stereotypical. Or, they connect everything that individual characters do to the history and culture of their country of origin– as if these people only exist in relation to where they (or their parents or grandparents) came from.  What I liked about To Whom it May Concern was the extent to which you reflected the real situation experienced by many immigrants or children of immigrants – that, as a result of many factors including racism, many people no longer have links to the cultures they are presumed to have because of immutable characteristics, such as skin colour. We are Canadians and yet are still asked, “Where do you come from?” Yours is the first novel I have read that really accurately captured the essence of this dilemma. I have spoken about race and fiction with Kim Moritsugu and John Bemrose and would like to hear your thoughts on how racialized people are depicted in novels, how you construct race in your novels and your experiences as an author.

To Whom It May Concern consciously plays with a number of typical Canadian immigrant literary conventions. The accepted, or acceptable, stories are not usually the ones that are the most authentic, legitimate, or even true. But people are comforted by these fictions because then they can categorize experience and entire groups of people. Whereas, I think people, families, and countries, are more complicated than that. We are a mix of our genetics, cultural ancestries, physical surroundings, but also our daydreams, our interactions with others, our constant invention and reinventions of ourselves.

To not know who you are or where you came from has always been seen as a negative thing, a loss, a sadness, a dislocation. For me, and for many others, and for some of the characters in To Whom It May Concern, to not know these things is a blessing, an opportunity, a freedom unlike any other. I believe, in the end, we choose our heritage. And this heritage can be mixed, complex, varied, and even illogical, and especially imaginary.

10.The characters in To Whom It May Concern: A Novel are unique in that you do not normally see people in wheelchairs or with hearing impairments reflected in literature, and yet, they are not unique in that they are just regular people in society. When you set out to write your  novels, what are your goals and process in terms of developing a plot and characters or the craft of writing itself? Would you say that your current process has been refined over time from less successful methods, or is this how you have always written? Are there any non-fiction guides or great works of literature that you have found helpful in improving your writing?

For me writing does not get easier at all over time. In fact, I think it gets harder, in that I am harder on myself and tend to want to accomplish more with each book, challenge myself and my readers in new ways. This takes times and a high tolerance for frustration. I don’t want to repeat what is out there, or to repeat myself. Having said that, the process for choosing characters and plots is very natural. I have to be absolutely devoted to the characters and the story, or it won’t get written. But uniqueness is part of that devotion—I want to explore these characters because they are so rarely explored, I want to tell this particular story because I’m not hearing or seeing it elsewhere. For me, it’s like they drop in one day with all their luggage and sleep on my couch and refuse to leave until I’ve done them justice. Only then will they pack up and leave!

11. All writing links to personal experience in some way or another. These links may be overt or covert, but they always exist. For example, in writing his fabulous first novel, The Best Laid Plans and its sequel The High Road (coming in September 2010), Terry Fallis drew on his personal experiences and interests in politics, engineering, hovercrafts and feminism. The way you explore family relations in To Whom it May Concern and various poems seem to (perhaps) reflect elements of your personal life. To what extent is your writing reflective of your own family dynamics and friendships? Are the people around you concerned? Should they be?

I grew up in a shattered family. My father became a quadriplegic when I was young and my mother ran off without a trace a few years later (I didn’t see or hear from her again until my late twenties). I wanted to honor part of my father’s experience in To Whom It May Concern—although I should stress that my father is not Hardev Dange. I also know, that because of how I grew up, I have always been fascinated by family and family dynamics, by how families communicate or don’t communicate with each other, by what stories they tell each other, and by how they articulate the narrative of their family history, or the trajectories of their individual lives. The ideal family structure, a beneficial and supportive structure for all involved, is one worth striving for; however, I think a lot of us never experience this, and so we try to implement this structure with other groups of people in other areas of our lives. I did this, and I think it’s a valuable way to create family outside of your blood relatives. Family is an imaginative construct—it is adaptable.

12. You describe To Whom it May Concern: A Novel as a modern re-telling of King Lear. I am really intrigued by this — did you start out to do this, or did it evolve as you wrote your novel. I find the plot similarities between your novel and King Lear are quite subtle, though they certainly share a number of them– when you present workshops to students on this topic, what are their reactions or observations?

I find that usually behind every novel is another novel, or fable, or myth, or archetypal story. I realized that I was writing my own version of King Lear very early on in the first draft of the book. Realizing this did not really change the arc or plot of the story, but it did help keep me on track in terms of the novel’s primary focus: concepts of family, home, and inheritance. While I know many people think of King Lear as a story of an old man driven crazy by his evil, greedy children, if you read it more carefully, I think you find it is a story that is about whether a parent ever knows his/her children, and it asks fundamental questions about the nature of family duty, inheritance, and concepts of home and belonging. In this way, nearly every line of my novel engages with King Lear (and lines are quoted throughout).

Right now, a school in Breslau, Germany, is studying To Whom It May Concern, before they read King Lear. They are loving the novel, and are actively recreating parts of it, including the school mural that Dorothy helps create in the book. It’s wonderful to see the students so excited by literature, and I know that the novel will give them strategies with which to explore King Lear, thereby preparing them for King Lear (a play that is usually difficult to teach to teenagers, as they do not automatically identify with the old man or his plight), and for a more complex reading of the play.

13.  Please comment on the practicalities behind your writing? For example, do you keep notes in a notebook? If so, at what point to you transfer them to a computer? Do you write on a laptop or a desktop? Do you hide yourself away in a quiet room or write at cafés? And the biggest question of all: Do you use a Mac or a PC?

I think that one of my blessings as a writer is that I can write anywhere on anything, under almost any circumstances. I can write in cafes, in bars, on airplanes, on beaches, in lecture halls, in sports arenas, in parks. I prefer to work, for the most part, on a computer, as I type faster than I write, but I am still perfectly content with pen and paper. I keep lots of notebooks and notes that I sometimes don’t type up for months, even years. My house is filled with paper. I keep thinking I’ll never get to it all. That’s why some deadlines are good, as they help sort the paper for me.

14. I note that you are doing a “dialogic” on Traumatology in Montreal with Dr. Cornett, in collaboration with ACCESS ASIE multilingual festival (May 6, 2010) and are reading at Disapora Dialogues at Word on the Street in September. Are there specific issues you like to bring attention to through your writing? Do you see yourself as supporting or advancing social justice goals through your writing?

For me, a lot of my writing is social work, in that it is work that is intended to form and inform community and provide a forum for social critique and social commentary. Literary works can explore social realities and concerns with compassion and sympathy and imagination, and can offer our communities alternative solutions or responses or representations of our social situations.

I have always considered myself a deeply social, even political, writer. That doesn’t mean I have solutions or a platform, but it means that when I write I think about what is at stake, and I care about what is at stake for others as well as for myself.

15. Do you have any final words of advice for aspiring writers?

Write what you want to write. Do not think one topic is literary and another is not. That one approach or style is desirable and others are out-of-date or too obscure. Write what you want to write. And what needs to be said.

This interview was originally posted by Evadne Macedo at http://books.macedo.ca on March 17, 2010.

For more information about Priscila Uppal, visit http://priscilauppal.ca . Priscila also invites you to join her for the launch of Traumatology:

Priscila Uppal and Meaghan Strimas are launching new poetry collections– Traumatology and A Good Time Had By All–and you’re invited to the party!

It will be at the Monarch Tavern in Toronto on 12 Clinton St (at Henderson)

on Wednesday March 24th, 8pm. Nibblies will be provided.

Cash bar. Cash book table.

Feel free to bring friends and to pass this evite along to lists.

Everyone is welcome.

Also: Uppal’s dispatches and sport poems are still being produced for The Literary Review of Canada (games.reviewcanada.ca) and for Canadian Athletes Now (canadianathletesnow.ca).

You can also visit priscilauppal.ca for links to other venues featuring the poems. Past entries and poems are still up on the websites. She’d love to hear from you about them!

She will return from Vancouver March 22nd.

Cheers, and hope to see you and celebrate with you!!!

Priscila

When you visit http://books.macedo.ca, see also Evadne Macedo’s previous interviews and profiles:

• John Bemrose: The Last Woman, Island Walkers, Imaginary Horses, Going Under (March 3, 2010)
• Pasha Malla: The Withdrawal Method (The 2009 Trillium Award; The Danuta Gleed Literary Award) (February 17, 2010)
• Kim Moritsugu: The Restoration of Emily; The Glenwood Treasure; Old Flames and Looks Perfect (February 3, 2010)
• Terry Fallis: The Best Laid Plans and The High Road (coming in September 2010) (January 20, 2010)
• June Hutton: Underground (January 6, 2010)
• Thomas Trofimuk: The 52nd Poem, Doubting Yourself to the BoneandWaiting for Columbus (December 16, 2009)
• Gina Buonaguro & Janice Kirk: Ciao Bella and The Sidewalk Artist(December 9, 2009),
• Don LePan: Animals (December 2, 2009)
• Ray Robertson: David (November 25, 2009)
• Deborah Willis: Vanishing and Other Stories (GG Finalist) (November 19, 2009)
• Joy Fielding: Still Life & many other novels (November 14, 2009)

After Evadne Macedo’s interview with Priscila Uppal, please visit http://books.macedo.ca for upcoming interviews:

• Anar Ali (Baby Khaki’s Wings)
• Kristen den Hartog (Water Wings, Origin of Haloes, The Perpetual Ending, and The Occupied Garden (co-written with Tracy Kasaboski)).
• Sarah Sheard (Almost Japanese, The Swing Era: a Novel, The Hypnotist: a Novel )