1. How did you arrive at the two sections of “Reporting from Night” – “Earth’s Familiar Objects” (about memory of objects) and “Who is Us” (about childhood)? Can you talk about your process to build this collection? Did you intentionally write around the two thematic threads or did the themes emerge as the collection grew?
I wrote the poems in my first collection, Reporting from Night, over a long timespan. In that book, poems I wrote from my late teens through my early 30s mix with those I wrote over a few years after I turned 45. Many of the earlier ones were published in literary journals in Canada, the U.S., and England, (the poet Mark Strand read those and gave me a blurb for the book based on them), while the later ones were written in a burst when I found renewed energy for writing, after I had given birth to my third child. The two sections contain poems from both writing “eras” of my life. “Earth’s Familiar Objects” was the working title of my manuscript in its first phase. I agree that it draws on indelible memories and the mysterious persistence of objects. There’s a hallucinatory, surreal aspect to the poems. “Who Is Us” reflects changes of identity. Some poems draw on my own childhood, while others reflect the shock and sleep deprivation of motherhood. The poems often sprang from attuning my ear to my children’s exuberant, sometimes muddled, and often innovative approaches to language acquisition. I followed them around with a notebook!
2. In Siren, you experimented with the ghazal form. What led to this formal choice and who were you key inspirators?
I’m in awe of the power of the ghazal and aware of both its long history and its vibrancy to this day. I am a mere beginner: it would take a lifetime to honour it. As well, in my view the ghazal in English is a form in itself, with the limitations and peculiarities of English. As with haiku in English, the form is in a sense waving across a riverbed at the versions in other languages, versions that draw on long traditions. In English, ghazal-writers can acknowledge and adapt aspects of ghazals in Persian, Urdu, or Farsi, for example, but the poems cannot really be considered the same form. The first ghazals that affected me deeply were the mainly free-verse translations of Ghalib by Aijaz Ahmad, Adrienne Rich, and William Stafford. I had read the ghazal experiments of John Thompson in Stilt Jack, finding them provocative and intriguing, but not until I read those Ghalib translations did I fall in love with the form. Again, the poems in Siren pay homage to the form in various ways (a few use the traditional radif and the self-address in the final couplet, but most are simply inspired by the form). And some are a feminist reply, a sassing-back, to John Thompson. They are all rooted in my own experiences as a now-middle-aged woman, a North American descendant of Irish, French, and Scottish settlers, so they are inevitably quite different from the work that inspired them. I started writing them after recovering from a massive pulmonary embolism. After this near-death experience, the form seemed to scintillate and beckon. It seemed to work for me as a way to express my amazement at having this second chance at life. Siren contains poems in various forms (haiku, quatrains, free verse, Sapphics) but the ghazal-esque poems really seem to draw readers’ attention.
3. The language employed in Siren (“Love to me was cotton candy: spangle, collapse, tongue grit / With you, it’s sadness scissored out”) and Reporting from Night (“An emerald moth has flattened itself on the/window/like a set of poisoned lungs.) is at times dark, disturbing, and provocative. Who are these poems addressed to? Are they meant to provoke a response or are they in response to something?
Thank you for choosing these quotations. The lines from “The Coin Under the Leftmost Sliding Cup” in Siren seem humorous to me, although I can see how they might be disturbing. The poems in both books switch registers often. They are high-low, fairy tale/nightmares. The diction is diverse. In my reading and my own writing, I like to leap through history and blend my findings with contemporary references. While aiming at times for aphorism or even philosophical observations, I am also distracted, burdened, and enriched by both ephemera and literary tags that haunt me from a lifetime of reading. The titles of both books give a clue. Reporting from Night refers both to the only time of the day that I could write or edit drafts, i.e., after my kids were in bed, and to a poet’s task: to deliver observations with both an artful measure of detachment (reportorial) and a sense of passion or urgency. Siren as a title is meant to suggest all the different meanings of the word, from the classical figures to the sirens of emergency vehicles. We live in a time of climate emergency, of pandemic, of political emergency. While I aim to delight and inspire, I’m also sounding the alarm.
4. Can you reflect on a specific performance, song, painting, film, or other non-written artwork that generated or strongly influenced any of your recent work?
My youngest child is in professional ballet training. His studies, performances, and delightful daily improvisations have opened up that art form to me. I’ve been enthralled by new choreography commissioned by the National Ballet of Canada. Crystal Pite’s Angels’ Atlas was the last performance I saw before the theatres closed at the beginning of the pandemic. Her incredible work seemed both to foresee and reflect what the world has been through. My memories of that performance helped to carry me through the first months of lockdown. Siphesihle November’s On Solid Ground was also revelatory. I’m working on a series of poems in appreciation of this art form.
5. Are there any books that you keep visiting for inspiration?
I re-read Dickinson and Blake regularly. Sometimes, I will flip open my Collected Dickinson and read the first poem my eye lands on, as a kind of sign. This practice can be directly inspiring but is at times exasperating if the poem doesn’t seem to accord with my mood. Yet such friction can be helpful. I sometimes write in direct opposition to a fragment of dialogue I’ve overheard on the street or read in a news report. Conversely, I often start to write when a piece I’ve read sparks new trains of thought or imagery. I have been exploring the multimedia work of poet Sean Borodale recently. The poems of Rahat Kurd and Jane Yeh regularly inspire me.
6. Is pleasure an emotion that you would associate with any of the stages of your writing practice? Or is it not pleasure but a different positive emotion? Can you reflect on that?
Pleasure, with its attendant bliss and reward and edge of loss and elusiveness, is part of writing. Trying to grasp and bathe in the meanings that fade before you. It’s an essential aspect of both reading and writing, of art-making and reacting to art.
7. Can you name a source of inspiration from your pre-teen years that impacted your writing in some way?
My grandparents gave me a copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse when I was ten. I read it straight through. My world changed forever. The other source is non-verbal. We lived in Sudbury when I was a child. Behind the townhouse complex where my parents rented a house, there was a birch grove. I played there with my sister and my friends and often wandered there on my own. Those birches, the wild blueberries that grew nearby, the rocks, and the lake – the bush environment was formative for me. In a way, I am always there.
Author Bio
Kateri Lanthier is the author of Reporting from Night (Iguana, 2011) and Siren (Véhicule Press, 2017), which was longlisted for the 2018 Pat Lowther Award. She won the 2013 Walrus Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in journals in Canada, the U.S., and England. Her creative non-fiction essay was included in Against Death (Anvil Press, 2019; Montaigne Medal finalist). Her work appears in five anthologies, including Best Canadian Poetry 2014. She has taught Creative Writing in the English and Drama Dept. at the University of Toronto Mississauga and Poetry: Introduction for the School of Continuing Studies, U. of T. She is a Mentor in the MA in Creative Writing, U. of T.