Heather Roberts Cadsby talks to Sharon Berg about her latest poetry collection.
1. You have this focus on so many small things in the world that we are surrounded by: the way a baby forming inside its mother parallels the metamorphosis of a butterfly, the take over of an old hive when the queen bee flies off, the way ducks avoid allowing a mink to feed on their young. Your presentation seems so easy, so off-hand, as if all of these things – including writing poetry – are so natural as to be expected. Yet you somehow point out how rare our witness of these things actually is. This brings me to ask, do you find the inspiration for your poems more often with observation, or reflection, or a mix of both?
My poems come from observation and reflection.
2. Several of the poems in standing in the flock of connections seem to describe love as a struggle with perception. In the collection, you strike up parallels between a hawk catching a squirrel and a man on meds to keep him ‘clean [and t]ake away the mean’. Indeed the poems about love and sex seem particularly uneasy, though you find a way to resolve the issues, such as placing a window over top of your mother’s childhood snowshoes to turn them into Edwardian artifacts. I wonder if love isn’t like this for many of us, needing a concrete reference to its context so we can deal with it without the inherent pain? Can you discuss your thoughts on the context for your poetry?
I’ve never understood how love works and what sex means. I’m sure this comes through in my poetry.
3. Your poetry plays wryly with so many turns of phrase that all English speakers are familar with. Many of your poems hold us at a distance, controlling our perception, telling us what to look at. Then you insert a poem about your live modeling and you drop all pretense of distance from your perspective. It is the same in your poem ‘Biographemes’, creating a portrait with little distance, though it must in fact be years. Can you speak about the need to drop all distance in some poems, to be immediate and up front in your storytelling, and to hold the reader at a distance in others?
Dropping distance, being immediate, hitting the reader with uncomfortable observations, are all tactics in the search to produce a successful piece.
4. What was your intention in writing this book?
My intention is to make my work available.
5. Was there a specific incident or experience or series of events that inspired this work? What was the development process for the inspiration to become this newest collection?
My childhood experiences inform my work.
6. What would you say is the most fundamental difference between your earlier work and this new collection?
There is less veiling in my new work.
7. What books were you reading when you wrote this? Are there any books that you had to keep visiting for inspiration when writing this book?
Alfred Jarry: A Pataphysical Life by Alastair Brotchie
8. How did you arrive at the title? What was your intention for the title to do?
The title is a line from one of the poems. It seemed apt.
9. Are any aspects of the book autobiographical? How did you consciously deal with your intimate material (i.e., experiences – emotional and physical) in a way that avoids the dangers of straight autobiography?
Every word is autobiographical. It all comes from one mind. My goal is not to be boring in the telling.
10. Are there poems/ideas that were originally intended but ultimately not included in the collection? How did you determine what to keep and what not to keep in the collection?
This book was very carefully edited by the publisher. They have the freedom, along with considering my input. Neither the editor nor the poet is completely right.
Heather Cadsby was born in Belleville, Ontario and moved to Toronto at a young age. In the 1980s, along with Maria Jacobs, she produced the monthly periodical Poetry Toronto and founded the poetry press Wolsak and Wynn. Also at this time, she organized poetry events at the Axle-Tree Coffee House in Toronto and Phoenix: A Poet’s Workshop. In recent years, she has served as a director of the Art Bar Poetry Series. Standing in the Flock of Connections is her fifth poetry collection.