Intern Interviews, Writing, Writing Rooms

Interview Sina Queyras and Poonam Dhir

“I WANT A WAY OUT, I WANT TO BUILD A NEW WORLD, I WANT A ROADMAP”: This month’s Puritan features a conversation between Rooms Researcher, Sina Queyras & Concordia student, Poonam Dhir! You’ll find an excerpt below. For the full interview check out: puritan-magazine.com.

PD: You wrote “Anger may not snatch my pen but it guides it daily. It raises my heart rate and the speed of my fingers on the keyboard.” Can you expand on the role of anger in your writing? And in other areas, if you’d like.

SQ: There’s that great Stevie Smith line about anger’s freeing power. She also famously wrote: “I was much too far out all my life / And not waving but drowning.” I always keep those lines side-by-side. Anger is still frowned upon, yes, we don’t like it too directly, we don’t like it at dinner parties, we don’t like it in the classroom, we definitely don’t love it in art. People often describe angry art as immature art. Undeveloped art. So, as an artist, you have to manage it, the challenge is to harness one’s anger; to ride it, not tamp it down too much, but also to express it in a way that doesn’t cost the person expressing it—me in my case—or the reader receiving it, too much. I don’t think I have been consistent at this; it is something I learned with Lemon Hound (both the book and blog). How to manage anger, how to make it, if not beautiful, at least something that I could enjoy. And I think that’s why satire is so compelling. I am not a great satirist. I wish I were a better one because it is empowering to be able to laugh at the things you are angry about. I do find that I get motivated by anger more than by beauty. And I don’t love that about myself. On the other hand, I love that I will respond when I’m angry, rather than shutting down, or being silent. I’m glad that I take those risks. I would rather take the risk of offending than not saying anything at all.

bridgethuh COVID Writing Rooms

Jessi MacEachern

In partnership with Writers Read Concordia, “COVID Writing Rooms” highlights the writing spaces and practices of artists during the early days of the pandemic.

Q: How does your current set-up differ from pre-Covid?

A: This space is now the single location from which I write, teach, and socialize. As a result, the wider world into which I wish to write can feel out of reach.

Q: How has this space shaped your writing routine and ritual?

A: When I am sitting at this desk, to my right and within immediate

reach is my bookshelf of poetry, so that I am accompanied by other voices (H.D., Lorine Liedecker, Mina Loy, Daphne Marlatt, Erín Moure, Lisa Robertson) as I begin a new line, revise a suite of poems, or copyedit a forthcoming manuscript.

Q: What are you missing?

A: I am missing the city’s elsewheres; a special sort of inspiration lifts exclusively from busy cafés or friends’ couches.

Q: How are you finding joy in the current moment?

A: Surprisingly, or not, dystopian fiction! N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, and Doris Lessing’s five-volume Canopus in Argos: Archives. I just began the first book of Lessing’s “space fiction” yesterday!

bridgethuh COVID Writing Rooms

Cason Sharpe

In partnership with Writers Read Concordia, “COVID Writing Rooms” highlights the writing spaces and practices of artists during the early days of the pandemic.

Q: How does your current set-up differ from pre-Covid?

A: I recently moved, so my living/writing situation has changed in a way that loosely maps onto the pandemic’s waves. When the first lockdown was announced back in March, I lived with roommates. Now I live alone. My current set-up differs from a pre-Covid set-up in that my pre-Covid set-up was better suited to long stretches of time spent outside the house.

Q: How has this space shaped your writing routine and ritual?

A: I haven’t lived or worked in this space for very long, so it remains to be seen. Having the time and space to write has been a goal of mine for years, and it’s bittersweet, (and, if I’m being honest, a bit icky feeling) to have reached that goal in the context of the pandemic. You know what they say: be careful what you wish for.

Q: What are you missing?

A: I miss the unexpected. Chance encounters, a meandering afternoon hangout that somehow turns into dinner, drinks, and then a night out. I know all those things will resume in time, so I’m leaning into the stability of a routine for now.

Q: How are you finding joy in the current moment?A: I take solace in small indulgences: reading in the bath; spending hours crafting the perfect playlist; The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. A sustained writing practice relies on a delicate balance of finding joy with others and finding joy alone, so writers might be uniquely positioned to adapt to the current moment.