Featured Interview: Matthew James Weigel, Winner of the 2020 Vallum Chapbook Award

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Chapbook Contest, interview, It Was Treaty / It Was Me, Matthew James Weigel

Interview by Leigh Kotsilidis

Matthew James Weigel (he/him) is a Dene and Métis poet and artist pursuing an MA in English at the University of Alberta. His words and art have been published by people like Book*Hug and The Mamawi Project, while his first self-published chapbook “…whether they took treaty or not, they were subject to the laws of the Dominion” is held in Bruce Peel Special Collections.

It Was Treaty / It Was Me feels almost like a collage. Drawing on government records, archival images and his own family history, Matthew James Weigel blends prose and poetry to look how John A. Macdonald and his government used treaties to dispossess Indigenous peoples of their lands. Weigel juxtaposes the machinations of the Canadian government with other versions of the story; official history bumps up against memories recorded in the body, exposing corruption and violence. “I wake up at 6am to a weight on my chest. / I massage it until it says the word treaty,” Weigel writes. This body memory is inextricable from land and water. “Did you know that when you wrote this down the river would remember it?” In recounting these histories, Weigel re-situates them. Under a picture of Queen Victoria’s throne, he writes: “I have acquired and used this photograph without permission. It has been digitally altered to suit my needs.” Another photo, though, remains beyond his grasp – an image of his family, held at the archives of the University of Alberta. These are not just questions of what happened, but who gets to tell the story of a past that bleeds into present. Sometimes, the most important act is to bear witness. “Dreamt I was a river again,” Weigel writes in the final poem, “2020: witness (continued).” “A thread of a glacier unwinding itself in slow motion, / slow enough to dip hands in and drink.”

Featured Interview: Joe Neubert, 2nd Place Winner of the 2020 Vallum Chapbook Award

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Chapbook Contest, DC Poems, interview, Joe Neubert

Interview by Leigh Kotsilidis

Joe Neubert was born in Georgia and is currently living in Washington, DC.

In DC Poems, the sublime is all around. Joe Neubert’s new chapbook is a collection of snapshots from everyday life, where the poet is the observer, watching and wondering from a distance. With sparse language and precise images, Neubert records the seconds of the day before they’re gone: “early March the sun / the streetlights the people / the afternoon men / playing checkers on a trashcan.” Time and space are reconfigured – we are in D.C., but also Siberia, and also rural Spain, and also the southern pole. Neubert charts these moments in a circular relation to each other. “Does the view from the roof on a monday in march / stir the cells of their unknowable individual / private universes,” he asks.

Featured Interview: Lillian Allen

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Interview by Natalie Podaima

Lillian Allen: Internationally acclaimed poet/performer and language innovator, Lillian Allen works at the intersection of dub, sound and rebel poetics. She has several award winning recordings and several critically acclaimed books of poetry. Considered a cultural de-programmer, Lillian has been a strategic initiator of programs, networks and arts organization in the city of Toronto for several decades now. She is a longtime arts activist. now in her sage years and focuses on mentoring the mentors and in intensifying work to decolonize aspects of the Canadian cultural terrain as she remains an instigator for liberation and change. A professor of Creative Writing at OCAD University, she initiated and led the development of Ontario’s only Honours BFA in Creative Writing.

Lillian Allen is the judge for the 2020 Vallum Award for Poetry. With the deadline for this year’s competition fast approaching, we asked Lillian to tell us about her own writing process and share some advice for those submitting.

Can you talk a bit about your writing process, and specifically, how the multidisciplinary nature of dub poetry affects this process — do you begin with words?  With music? Is there one aspect that you prioritize while developing a new piece?

I approach writing my pre and first drafts in a variety of ways. Anything can spark me to write; an idea, an insight, an image, a phrase, an action memory, a rhythm, a pulse, a flash, a clearing away of the brush, an aha moment. I see what flows out of my pen, I try and capture an emotional feel. As I continue to explore and evolve my writing subject, I do some research/searching around. On the side of my page I jot ideas and feelings related to context which helps with why I’m wanting to write the particular piece. I write with creating images/imagery in mind, working with figurative language through the senses. I always think in metaphors too. I usually develop a kind of pulse for the piece and my entire body is involved with the motion of ideas flowing out on the page. It is a deep pleasurable moment in the writing process, like a peak experience. In further developing the piece I have to shape it and then bring the things I understand about the craft to bear making sure it is saying/conveying exactly what I want to get across. In the polish, I shape for meaning and impact. Later on, say if I want to record or perform, I’ll bring those particular skills to create that experience.

To what degree do you consider your audience in your work, and are you seeking to elicit a kind of dialogue? Would you say this is influenced by the act of performance, as opposed to written or recorded work?

Dialogue, engagement with ideas, creating consciousness, sharing & building culture and community, leaving a document, all these things, but the performative aspects are also about creating and engaging in community rituals and being fully embodied and present.

What are you reading right now? 

Larissa Lai’s Tiger Flu, Lee Maracle’s My Conversations with Canadians, In a While or Two We Will Find the Tone: Essays and Proposals, Curatorial Concepts and Critiques by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, and loads and loads of books for toddlers (which I wish I had written) including Feminist Baby by Loryn Brantz, Woke Baby by Mahogany I Browne illustrated by Theodore Taylor 111, The Very Cranky Bear by Nick Bland. You can guess, I’m isolating with my granddaughter!

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Don’t forget to submit to the Vallum Award for Poetry 2020! First place receive $750 and publication in the upcoming issue of Vallum.
Deadline: July 15th, 2020
For more information and to enter online today, visit our website. 

Featured Interview: Gwen Benaway

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award, award for poetry, gwen benaway, interview

Interview by Natalie Podaima

Gwen Benaway is a trans girl of Anishinaabe and Métis descent. She has published three collections of poetry, Ceremonies for the Dead, Passage, and Holy Wild, and was the editor for an anthology of fantasy short stories, Maiden Mother and Crone: Fantastical Trans Femmes. Her writing has been critically acclaimed and widely published in Canada. She was a finalist for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ writers from the Writer’s Trust of Canada, the Lambda Literary Award for Trans Poetry, and the National Magazine Awards and Digital Publishing Awards for her personal essay, “A Body Like A Home.” Her fourth collection of poetry, Aperture, is forthcoming from Book*hug in Spring 2020. She is also currently editing a book of creative non-fiction, trans girl in love, forthcoming from Strange Light in 2020. She lives in Toronto, Ontario and is a Ph.D student at the University of Toronto in the Women and Gender Studies Institute.

Gwen Benaway is the judge for the 2019 Vallum Award for Poetry. With the deadline for this year’s competition fast approaching, we asked Gwen to tell us about her own writing process and share some advice for those submitting.

How does a new work begin to take root for you? Do you start immediately with pen to paper, or does your process include a degree of pre-meditation, coaxing-out phrases, collecting images? 

New work starts for me when I sit down to write it. Often certain images or ideas will begin the process for me but they don’t determine the final product. Writing is how I uncover what I’ m working with/through, I think of writing as a practice, almost like a physical act that opens up possibilities for beauty.

With three collections of poetry and another forthcoming (Aperature, Book*hug, 2020), I’ve heard that you’re also editing a collection of essays to be released next year (trans girl in love, Strange Light, 2020). What is your relationship to non-fiction versus poetry? In what ways do you feel that the format informs the content of your work, if at all?

I love creative non-fiction and in some ways, I feel more skilled as a non-fiction writer than as a poet. Poetry and prose are equally demanding to write and read, but I think they do different things in the world. There is overlap between the skills, but they are distinct mediums. Content and form are the same thing to me, but intention matters greatly in writing. What am I trying to create in the world and why? Those are essential questions for me that fuel my writing.

What are you reading right now? 

I just read Ocean Vuong’s new novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. I’m currently reading Billy Ray Belcourt’s new book of poetry, NDN Coping Mechanisms, and a trashy werewolf fantasy book by Patricia Briggs.

Pick one: Write what you know, write what you love, write for yourself. 

I pick none of those options! What do we mean when we say “writing”? Writing as an industry? Writing as an artistic practice? Writing as truth telling? Writing as healing? Writing is synonymous with life for me. What are you living for? What do you want? What compels you in daily life? These questions are the ones which should animate your writing because the notion that there is any one guiding principle for literary production is a deeply naive one. Some writers write for money or fame. Others for recognition or praise. And some write for themselves or their communities. These choices are related and none are mutually exclusive, but they often do different things in the world and demand a different set of ethics and relationality.

Do you have any advice for poets wanting to submit their work to the Vallum Award for Poetry 2019? Any advice for poets in general?   

I am drawn to poetic honesty and a generosity of self. In other words, poetry that knows the “small mechanics”, to quote Lorna Crozier. My advice for poets is always the same: who are you? what do you want? what images captivate you? what stories are yours? Look for the answers in a poem. Don’t perform poetry. Just embody it.

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Don’t forget to submit to the Vallum Award for Poetry 2019! First place receive $750 and publication in the upcoming issue of Vallum.
Deadline: July 15th, 2019
For more information and to enter online today, visit our website. 

 

Vallum News July 2015!

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contest, interview, poetry news, workshops

We’ve been working hard!

Read about what’s new at Vallum at the following link:
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