Interview with Sue Sinclair
Place, Purpose, and Community for New Brunswick Poets.
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Summary
Sue Sinclair and Jenna Morton discuss the art and practice of writing in New Brunswick, emphasising the importance of creating time and space for reflection upon life - and the unique way in which writing and reading can fulfil this need. They highlight the influence of place, purpose, and the vulnerability of putting one's work into the world. Sinclair emphasises the significance of community and a sense of place in her own writing process, underscoring the way that an energised and active writing community helps to both affirm the value of poetry in cultural life and maintain a connection between the writer and the process of writing. Sinclair also discusses how being in New Brunswick affects her writing and how the landscape and lifestyle here help her to find the calm necessary for her to do the act of writing poetry.
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Transcript
Sue: We'll also have conversations about the emotional side of putting your work out - that it's being vulnerable. That's a challenge. I don't know many people who don't feel that [while] putting their work out into the world. And there's not much to be done about that, but I think acknowledging it to each other can be helpful: acknowledging that there's a risk, and then you know, giving ourselves a pat on the back for taking that risk.
Tosh: The voices of New Brunswick writers are the heart of WordCraft, a podcast aimed at creating community through words. WordCraft is a creation of the Writers' Federation of New Brunswick, a nonprofit organisation that helps New Brunswick writers to write, acquire skills, and showcase their talents to the world. The show is hosted and produced by Jenna Morton with technical production by Tosh Taylor. The WFNB acknowledges that the land on which we live, work and gather is the traditional unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik and Miꞌkmaw peoples. And we honour the spirit of our ancestors' treaties of peace and friendship. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Jenna: Welcome to our final episode of season one of WordCraft. Thank you for joining me, Jenna Morton, on this journey of discovery and discussion around the art, and the practice, and the business of writing in New Brunswick. If you haven't listened to our first five episodes, please be sure to go back and listen to some wonderfully talented people open up about their process and their passion and settle in right now to hear the wisdom of poet Sue Sinclair. Her thoughtful reflections on how place can influence our practice of writing offers a perfect end to our first season of WordCraft, and a perfect beginning for your own exploration of what it means to you to be a New Brunswick writer creating in New Brunswick. Sue is an associate professor at the University of New Brunswick, and an award winning poet. Her 2022 collection, Almost Beauty: New and Selected Poems, won the New Brunswick Book Award for poetry, and her previous collection, Heaven’s Thieves won the 2017 Pat Lowther Award for the Best Book of Poetry by a Canadian Woman. Other collections have landed on the Globe and Mail's top 10 books list, and won international awards. Welcome to WordCraft Sue.
Sue: I'm very happy to be here.
Jenna: Thank you so much for this. All season, we've been starting our discussions by really kind of taking things right back to the root. And I'd love to hear those first moments that you kind of remember going, "Oh, yeah, I'm a writer." And then how that translates to, "Oh, I actually have a profession where I can be a writer."
Sue: Right! Yeah, those are different things, aren't they? Okay, so if we go right back to the root. I was definitely a big reader, as a kid. I was probably a kid who wasn't so comfortable in the social world, and so books were...books were my social world. And I did grow up in a family that, you know, provided books, and I did read poetry as a kid, I had definitely a couple of anthologies. And, you know, I still have A A Milne poems stuck in my head from those days. So I definitely grew up as a reader, and that very easily translated into wanting to be a writer. But I would say that it took a while to realise what it actually meant to be a writer. I had sort of a romantic Anne of Green Gables idea of being a writer, but maybe not a lot of sense of what that is in practice - which is a lot of practice. So I would say that it took a while to really develop a strong practice of writing, like maybe in my late teens is when I really started developing a regular commitment to writing and to think about reading as a serious part of that activity as well: to read poetry as consistently and broadly as I could. I'm thinking about those moments, though where I read poetry and it did that thing, you know, and I went, "Oh!" And I think those happened in school, usually - those moments of finding poems and going, "Oh," like, I remember reading e e cummings for the first time and going, "oh!" It just did something. The world gets a little more magical. I think of that Emily Dickinson quote about what is it? Something like, "If I feel as though the top of my head has been lifted off, I know that's poetry." I feel like I had that feeling several times in school encountering poetry. And then let's see...I did do a degree in creative writing: a master's degree at UNB. That was a pretty significant watershed moment for me. In terms of - I was studying with Don Mckay and Jan Zwicky, and I had a really active and enthusiastic group of peers, and that was when I really got the sense of, "oh, you can build a life around this." And here, I'm sort of getting into your question, I suppose, about writing as something like a profession. It does seem very strange to talk about it in that way, but just about how a person could build their life around writing. And by writing, I mean also that it's a consistent sort of thoughtfulness about how you're living in the world too, right? It's not just words on paper, but it's really thinking hard about what it is to be in the world, and to experience the world, and to try to be a solid presence in the world. I will say that I'm grateful for studying with Don Mckay and Jan Zwicky, and Bill Gaston on the fiction side - I was still writing fiction at that point, too. They both sort of downplayed writing as a profession, and up-played - if that's a word - writing as a practice, as love, as care. And I have always had the hope that if you really are devoted to writing as practice, as care, as some form of relationship - the professionalisation stuff will sort of come in the wake of that. The hard part is writing something that is meaningful, helpful, challenging - whatever you want it to be. And then I suppose there is something about getting out in the world and sort of becoming a part of the world of published writing and parts of those conversations that appear around published writing. But then, I kind of still hope that the main thing is still just trying to write something that does something, and I'm kind of vague about what that something might be. There's another quote by Natalie Diaz who says, "Poetry is a room." And I think she said, "There are 100 ways of getting into that room [or] 1000 ways of getting into that room." So I'm a little vague about what the poem is or does - because I feel like there are multiple ways of entering the room or, creating a room, or being in a room.
Jenna: I love that for sure. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that importance of community as part of the process of finding yourself in a life where writing is at the core of what you're doing?
Sue: Yeah. I hear a lot of writers pushing back against the idea that writing is a solitary practice. And I don't know how much that idea is out there. And some of it, for sure, is solitary. At some point, it's me and the page, but it is true that for most of us, I will say, there is a lot of community around that work. And that there are many people who contribute to a piece of writing, before it gets published, and after it gets published. So that it really is sort of a little hub of community in that sense. There are...even though, when I publish a poem, my name is on it, there are usually several other people who have helped make that poem a reality. And then there's gonna be other people who sort of pick it up on the other side and work with it then. So yeah, *chuckles* there's community around it on both sides. Community is helpful too, in that the dominant culture - I'll say North America, since I'm here, or Turtle Island - the dominant culture isn't one that makes a lot of room for poetry. Or it places a lot of value on it in a very abstract way, but doesn't actually engage with it very much. Community, I think, can be really helpful in just maintaining that sense that this is an important part of cultural life. It can be an important part of an individual person's life, to sort of affirm that there are other people who are finding this important, sustaining, challenging, in all the ways that you might do. Yeah, to sort of keep faith that this is a worthwhile endeavour.
Jenna: Thinking along those lines, how can New Brunswick, and the people [who live] here, step up? What should we be celebrating? What should we be thinking about when it comes to the poets who call this place home?
Sue: Supporting each other and recognizing the worth of what's in our own backyard. It's very easy to underrate what's right under your nose. I think it's good to see the value of what's right under our nose and to prize what's near us. And I mean that both in terms of supporting each other as writers, but also, the worlds that are New Brunswick. Not that everyone has to write about place, but it's good to be attentive to place and see the value of what there is to be written within the New Brunswick landscape and culture here.
Jenna: For you as a writer, what role does being here play? Are there...is it part of your work? Or is it just where you do your work? How does New Brunswick and this place interact with you?
Sue: Definitely part of my work. I would say it also is a place that allows that work to happen fairly easily. I've encountered a couple of writers who have moved to New Brunswick from more metropolitan centres, let's say, and have spoken to me about how they feel their whole nervous system just sort of calming down, and how helpful that is to them, as writers. I don't want to overstate the sort of ‘New Brunswick friendliness,’ and fairly easygoing ways of being, but I think there's something to that. And the natural world is right on our doorstep - most of us - in New Brunswick, and that also has that calming-down-the-whole-system effect. And I think that that's a good place for many of us to write from. You can't have that state, if your shoulders are tensed up, and you're anxious, and you're under certain kinds of pressures. So I think that ease is very helpful to writers. Not to say everyone in New Brunswick is going to have that same experience, but it's something I feel, and I know that at least a couple of other people have felt it. And then New Brunswick definitely also enters my writing as place. I like to write about place: thinking about how poetry can sort of help us to struggle with the question of how to be here. I feel like poetry is that for me. Maybe it's not always a struggle, but as a settler for sure, there's a lot of struggle involved in the question of how to be here.
Jenna: Thinking of it from the more practical side of the business of writing, what are some of the advantages, or some of the things about this area - this place - that have been beneficial to you, as a poet and a writer?
Sue: I don't know if this counts as 'the business of writing,' but I feel like I need to go back to that sense of community. There is a really lively writing world in New Brunswick, that is helpful. I mean, we're ultimately each other's allies in the world of the business side of writing, as well as the world of the practice and joy and struggle of writing. So that probably is what I feel New Brunswick offers me the most, in terms of the business side of writing.
Jenna: You're a professor. You see a lot of people who are, maybe they're just there because there's a bit of an interest, but obviously you would have students come through who have a real passion and are looking to pursue writing as something more than just a class they're taking at university. What kind of advice and encouragement do you give to people who are trying to find how to fit this into who they're going to be?
Sue: It can be a tricky thing to figure out how to be a writer and make a living, and people approach that question in different ways. Especially as a poet! I mean, is there anybody out there who is just a poet? So usually, it's writing and something else, and the trick is finding the ‘something else’ that feels complimentary to the writing. So I will talk with people a little bit about that: the different ways of figuring out what might be a way of making money that allows writing to happen as well. There's a lot of questions around how you go about publishing your work, if you're sort of new to the idea of publishing your work. So I'll often give people advice about sending work out to literary journals. That's often a first step for people in terms of getting the work out into the world. That's a fairly straightforward process. You know, I often just offer people some names of journals and say, "Go look at their website. They will show you how to submit; they will tell you what they're looking for," and I try to demystify it as much as possible. And then I will also have conversations about the emotional side of putting your work out. That it's being vulnerable, [and] that's a challenge. I don't know many people who don't feel that in putting the work out into the world. And you know, there's not much to be done about that, but I think acknowledging it to each other can be helpful - acknowledging that there's a risk. And then, you know, giving ourselves a pat on the back for taking that risk. And also acknowledging that this comes with disappointments. That putting your work out there, "Do you want this for publication?" is going to mean you're gonna hear, "No, actually we don't," several times over. And just helping people to be prepared for that reality, and to acknowledge it as like, "This doesn't mean you failed; this is just part of the work of putting writing out into the world, for others to read."
Jenna: I think that's such an important reminder for all of us constantly along this journey: if you're opening yourself up, yeah not everyone's going to like what you put out there. That doesn't impact the value of the action of doing it or what you created. What final thoughts do you want people to take away from this conversation when they're thinking about the role that writing and poetry can play in their daily life?
Sue: I think that many of us experience a lot of demands to be on the go, be on the go; do this, do that, do the other thing; switch our attention from this, to that, to that, to that, as quickly as we can. I think it is difficult to create little oases of calm: of reflective time, of time to think about the big questions that most of us carry around with us, you know. Who am I? What does it mean to be here? What's important? What are my responsibilities? What do I love? Why do I love it? And that creating a little space of time - I don't know when - it might be daily, for some people. It might be weekly for some people. Maybe it's monthly. That can be just such a valuable part of a person's life. And the commitment to writing or to reading, or to both, can be part of creating those little places to really think about how it is that you're approaching being here in the world, which is such a bizarre state. And to have some awe and some wonder at that, and to try to come to terms with whatever you need to come to terms with, because we've all got that. And you know, it's not going to be writing for everybody. For some people it is going to be music or visual art, or maybe it's going to be writing AND some other thing, or for some people it's gonna be meditation. But one of the things it can be for sure, is reading and writing. And I'm really grateful for reading and writing for that in my own life.
Jenna: I think that's a beautiful space for us to end this conversation with today. Thank you so much, Sue,
Sue: Thank you very much for your questions. I appreciate them.
Jenna: Sue Sinclair is an award winning poet and associate professor at the University of New Brunswick. Thank you to Sue, to all of our guests, and to you for listening to our final episode of season one of WordCraft. If you haven't listened to our previous episodes, please do. And please leave us a review and share this with the people in your life who love writing and who love New Brunswick. My name is Jenna Morton; it has been my absolute pleasure to be on this journey with you. I hope that we will all be back here for season two of WordCraft, and until then, keep writing. keep reading and keep celebrating all that New Brunswick has to offer.
Tosh: WordCraft as a project by the nonprofit Writers' Federation of New Brunswick. The show is hosted and produced by Jenna Morton with technical production by Tosh Taylor, we acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. The Writers' Federation of New Brunswick acknowledges that the land on which we live, work and gather is the traditional unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik and Miꞌkmaw peoples. We honour the spirit of our ancestors' treaties of peace and friendship.
