Review of Language Matters: Interviews With 22 Quebec Poets

Language Matters: Interviews With 22 Quebec Poets

It is hardly surprising that poets should be articulate and thoughtful in conversation about their practice. Their daily working lives constellate around language: listening to it, looking for it, recording it before whatever the Muse whispers to them evanesces. We never lose interest in overhearing writers talk about writing. To know whether so-and-so uses a ballpoint pen and Hilroy notebook or a Mac, whether she writes best at morning or at night, and what her excuses are for procrastinating, is thrilling.

The Quebec poets featured in Language Matters are almost uniformly smart and thoughtful in answering a series of set questions. These include factual inquiries such as "Where were you born?" and "When do you write best?" But, as the title suggests, the interviewers are primarily interested in how living in Quebec and writing in English has influenced each poet's work.

There is no clear consensus. Some poets are essentially apolitical, while others believe that everything an Anglophone does in Quebec is a political act. Mark Abley wisely notes that English is not under threat in Quebec in the way that many languages across the world are, while co-editor Carolyn Marie Souaid, who is fluently bilingual, admits she deliberately speaks English in stores to assert the right of the minority language to be used.

The questions vary from the straightforward ("Which Quebec poet did you first read?" — Leonard Cohen is the answer for a stunning majority) to the complex ("Why do you write?"), and the responses tell us much about the poets (Stephanie Bolster, Erin Moure, Jason Camlot, Robyn Sarah, among many others) and their work, as well as providing insight into their strategies for composing poems. Anyone interested in poetry in general, and especially poetry in Quebec, will find these interviews deeply engaging.


— Bruce Whiteman Quill & Quire

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Language Matters: Interviews With 22 Quebec Poets

Founders (along with Elias Letelier) of the now-defunct online literary magazine Poetry Quebec, Souaid and Farkas have long been curious about the creative process of poets and whether living in Quebec or writing in the language of the other had any aesthetic, cultural, social or political implications for their work. These questions are central to the interviews, while other questions are tailored to the individual styles and backgrounds of the poets. ...there is plenty of food for thought not only about writing and language in general, but also about the personal experiences of English-language poets living in Quebec. Written in an accessible journalistic style, Language Matters reflects the diversity of both emerging and award-winning Quebec English-language poets and their many innovative poetic forms.


— Heather Leighton Rover

Language Matters: Interviews With 22 Quebec Poets

What does it mean to be an English-language Montreal writer, or more broadly, an English-language writer in Quebec? For some the question is essential, and for others, the question is a curiosity, nearly in passing. For some writers, these questions might be entirely irrelevant to the ways in which they write. Thanks to editors Farkas and Souaid, the question allows the answers to showcase the ways in which the landscape has shifted over the years, and just how much has remained the same.


— Rob McLennan

Language Matters: Interviews With 22 Quebec Poets

Foreman is a poet, and that’s what he said in an interview. That interview and two poems of his are in the newly published book, Language Matters.

It’s Townshippers’ Day. We’re in the arena at Bishop’s College School, beside the Townships Expressions tables. Crowds stream around the exhibits. The din makes it hard to hear. And right smack in the middle of this are Endre Farkas and Carolyn Marie Souaid from Montreal, looking very calm. They are trying to figure out the best way to launch their new book. With them are Hatley residents Angela Leuck and Steve Luxton.

The four are poets. Souaid and Farkas have edited and just published Language Matters. It’s a 190-page volume of interviews and poems by 22 Quebec poets who write in English. Among them are Luxton and Leuck. So are Souaid and Farkas themselves.

Souaid and Farkas each have an impressive body of work as poets and editors. They tackle difficult topics. Together they recently created a book and video poem, Blood is Blood. The poem gives voice to both Arab and Jew, on opposite but oh so similar sides of the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict. It gives voice to other conflicts, too. Conflict, in general. It won the 2012 Zebra International Poetry Award in Berlin, Germany. They read an excerpt from the book at the Language Matters launch.

Their dilemma on this day – how to be heard - perhaps parallels that of English-speaking poets in Quebec, who often risk being drowned out or unnoticed in a sea of French. So a question about politics is incontournable in the Language Matters interviews. They pose it head-on. “Do you think that writing in English in Quebec is a political act?”

The book’s cover suggests the answer is yes. In fact, the graphics almost suggest revolution. A raised fist in red clasps a pen over a Quebec map in blue. But inside, the answers vary.

“Speaking English in Quebec, at least in a public place, may be a political act,” said Robyn Sarah. “My concerns as a poet are not political.” Writing itself is a political act, said Charlotte Hussey. It depends on the context, said Jason Camlot.

Then again, to tarry on politics would give short shrift to this muscular work. Yes, the poets talk about their external time and place – Quebec - and their relation to it. Maybe it’s their home; maybe they’re on the outside looking in; maybe both are true at once. But the book has much more to say about the creative process, and the poets’ marvelous diversity of background and expression.

The interviews reveal individual approaches to creative writing. Working rituals, or lack thereof.

The juggling act between writing poetry and earning a living – from teaching to soup kitchens to blessed retirement. How many drafts do you go through? What’s your idea of a muse? What’s the toughest thing about writing? What are the guts of the writing process, for you, and also the inner passion that propels it?

These are not cookie-cutter interviews. The questions branch out to explore areas of particular interest to each poet. The answers are thoughtful and lively. They’re mostly written, sometimes supplemented by face-to-face interviews.

A good example is the interview with Townships resident Richard Sommer just months before he died.

The interviews were selected from some 40 that Farkas and Souaid initially did over a period of four years for Poetry Quebec, an online magazine they edited. They retired the website last year to focus on their own writing, but did not want their substantial archives to disappear into the ether, said Souaid.

“We selected 22 of what we thought were the most interesting writers and some of the best, we felt, not only in Quebec but also in Canada,” said Farkas. “We had some who won Governor General awards (Erin Moure and Stephanie Bolster), who won awards here in Quebec. We had poets who were just starting out. We had poets who were well on their career. We had women, men. Black, white. The whole range which reflected the multi-cultural quilt that was Quebec.”

Some of the other notable poets in the book are Susan Gillis and Gabe Foreman (A.M. Klein Poetry Prize winners) and Rhodes scholar and Montreal Gazette columnist Mark Abley.

For the book, said Farkas, “we expanded and asked further questions. We went back and forth about two or three times to get what we felt was the individual voice.”

Language Matters is a rich and fascinating read for nonpoets, would-be poets and academics alike. It’s both personal and personable. The fine editorial hands crafted interviews and samplers of poems that do indeed give expression to the poets’ singular voices.

In fact, the book embodies the editors’ goals for Poetry Quebec, as Farkas described them: To make a statement about the literary scene in English-speaking Quebec. That it’s an important and vibrant community. To provide historical documents that would reflect the English-language literary scene.

“It’s as valuable to professors, teachers of creative process, as I think it is to the average person who has some interest in the English-language poetry scene of Quebec,” said Souaid.

In a nutshell, I agree.


— Rachel Garber Sherbrooke Record

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