Interviewing
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Adrienne Rich – Does Poetry Matter?
Adrienne Rich has published more than sixteen volumes of poetry, three collections of essays, and a feminist study on motherhood. Her work has been translated into German, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch, Hebrew, Greek, Italian, and Japanese. Her latest book, Midnight Salvage: Poems 1995-1998 (W.W. Norton, 1999) has just been released in January. In the Fall of 98, Adrienne Rich, in conjunction with Dionne Brand, visited Calgary as a guest of Markin-Flanagan’s Distinguished Visiting Writer Programme. paulo da costa spoke with Adrienne Rich during her weeklong visit which included readings, panel discussions and the screening of the movie: Adrienne Rich and Dionne Brand in conversation. paulo da costa: In our technological,…
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The Magic Is Simply A Door
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The Democratisation of Poetry
Bob Holman (USA) became a poet in the third grade when his teacher said, “That’s a very good poem, Robert. Where did you copy it from?” He has published five books, most recently The Collect Call of the Wild and a poetry CD, In With the Out Crowd. He has also helped to put poetry on TV, producing The United States of Poetry for PBS and appearing on MTV’s Spoken Word Unplugged. Currently, he teaches a course at Bard College, “Exploding Text: Poetry in Performance.” Holman works to change traditional definitions of poetry and to broaden its audience through work that has been noted for its raw power and irreverent…
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Eugénio de Andrade – Between Brutality and Tenderness
paulo da costa interviews Eugénio de Andrade Eugénio de Andrade is the most loved of the living Portuguese poets and the best known outside his country. He is thin, slightly hunched by the weight of nearly eight decades of life and there is a visible frailty in the way he walks. His hair is pure white. Of himself he has said he is a mixture of brutality and tenderness. In 1994 the city of Porto offered him a house with a view to the sea and the small colourful fishing boats rocking by the shore. The house was designed having in mind that a poet was going to inhabit it.…
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Erin Mouré – Dialogues and Polylogues
Erin Mouré is one of Canada’s most respected and eminent poets. Winner of the Governor General’s Award for Furious, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award for Domestic Fuel, the QSPELL Award for Poetry for WSW, Mouré has published twelve books of poetry, including A Frame of the Book (aka The Frame of a Book), which was co-published in the U.S. by Sun and Moon Press, and Sheep’s Vigil by a Fervent Person, shortlisted for the 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize and the City of Toronto Book Award. Her most recent collection, O Cidadán, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award in 2003. Mouré lives in Montreal and writes with a…
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Quincy Troupe – On Reading Like a Sleeping Pill
Quincy Troupe is a poet, journalist, and teacher. Two-time winner of the prestigious Heavyweight Champion of Poetry and winner of American Book Awards for both nonfiction (Miles: The Autobiography) and poetry (Snake Back Solos), he leaves audiences in awe with his incendiary jazz performance style. His most recent work, the picture book Take it to the Hoop, Magic Johnson — is a dazzling tribute in poetry and pictures to the great American basketball athlete. This October paulo da costa spoke with Quincy Troupe during WordFest in Calgary. Quincy Troupe Well, let me go back to the beginning a little bit – I was a very good basketball player at…
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The Magic Is Simply A Door
I HAVE been having a kind of conversation with Paulo da Costa for at least four years now. He’d sent us a short story, “Hell’s Mouth Bay,” in response to Margin’s first ever call for submissions. Naturally, we were slow in responding as we worked out our editorial processes, so when we finally decided we wanted to take his story, he had to write back with the unfortunate news that it had already been taken elsewhere and, consequently, it was no longer available, even in reprint. Needless to say, we were disappointed.
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Adrienne Rich – Does Poetry Matter?
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Eden Robinson – Traplines
Eden Robinson’s debut novel, Monkey Beach, was nominated for the 2000 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Monkey Beach is the first novel published by a member of the Haisla First Nation, and has been widely acclaimed by critics and readers alike. Robinson’s previous collection of stories, Traplines, was awarded the Winifred Holtby Prize for the best first work of fiction in the Commonwealth, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and Notable Book of the Year. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Robinson grew up near Kitamaat, BC and now lives…
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Verónica Volkow – The Hunger of Being
A collaborative interview: paulo da costa and Shane Rhodes interview Verónica Volkow. Verónica Volkow, born in Mexico City, is a poet, a translator, an essayist and a photographer. Until the age of eighteen she lived in the house of her great-grandfather, Leon Trotsky. She has written exhibit catalogues on Arnold Belkin, Francisco Toledo, Christine Couture and Nicholas Sperakis and translated the works of León Trotsky, Víctor Serge, Henry Michaux, Michael Hamburger and Elizabeth Bishop. Verónica has published three books of poetry: La sibila de Cumas (1974) Litoral de tinta (1979) El inicio (1983) and two books of essays: Graciela Iturbide, los disfraces (1984) and Diario de Sudáfrica (1988). She is…
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Dionne Brand – A Map to the Door of No Return
Dionne Brand was born in Guayguayare, Trinidad and moved to Toronto in 1970, where she went on to build a reputation as one of Canada’s finest writers. Winner of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry and the Trillium Award in 1997 for Land to Light On, Brand is also known as an essayist, short story writer and filmmaker. Her latest book A Map to the Door of No Return, is a thought-provoking map of her own art in which she sketches the shifting borders of home and nation, the connection to place in Canada and the world beyond. paulo da costa spoke with Dionne at WordFest. Dionne Brand: I wanted…
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Alberto Manguel – God’s Spies
ALBERTO MANGUEL is an editor, translator and essayist. He was born in Argentina and since the eigthies makes Canada his home. He is the author of several books, among them A History of Reading, which was awarded France’s prestigious Prix Médicis. He recently published the anthology God’s Spies – Stories in Defiance of Oppression and a new edition of The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. paulo da costa spoke to Alberto Manguel in Calgary. paulo da costa The stories in God’s Spies portray abuse of power in the context of several political, social and cultural backgrounds. In your introduction to the book you quote Robert Graves who says the writer’s…
