His work has been recognized with the PIP Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative Poetry, and has been shortlisted for other awards, including the EJ Pratt Poetry Prize, the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the CAA Poetry Prize. His five books of poetry include The Hunter, The Rush to Here, and a new collection, Glimpse: Selected Aphorisms (ECW).
He frequently reviews books for The Globe and Mail, and is the editor of the popular literary website bookninja.com.
Murray lives in St John’s, Newfoundland.
1) As a writer (i.e. someone whose artistic practice is predicated on time spent alone) how do you approach performance? What do you get out of it?
I am a somewhat reluctant performer, in that I don't make a lot of big gestures or inflect my voice in that "poet" way some people like to. I just simply read the work at hand, though I am pretty good at joking with the audience between pieces. I like the immediate feedback of the audience energy, but I also like the nerves of getting there. Backstage I'm a wreck, but once on stage, I'm usually fairly okay.
2) What do you want people to know about Glimpse: Selected Aphorisms?
It's fun and has depth and is accessible and interesting to other poets and critics, but also to the general public. Besides the breadth of its content, this range of accessibility is probably the reason I'm most proud of it. I like it when people who got dragged out to a poetry reading (boyfriends, wives, friends of poetry lovers, etc.) come up to me all excited after and say, "Hey, I don't normally read poetry, but I'll read THAT." I hope Glimpse is a good gateway book for people you feel might otherwise be too reluctant (or intimidated) to try reading contemporary poetry.
3) Will this your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?
I've been to Winnipeg several times before, but mostly on business. I've heard great things about the arts and culture community there, and I know the literary community is first rate. I've published a few times in Prairie Fire and CV2, so I hope I have a foot in the door with the locals and see some friends.
4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?
I'm reading several novels and a raft of poetry books. Notably: Annabel by Kathleen Winter and Far to Go by Alison Pick, as well as new poetry by Robin Robertson, Seamus Heaney, and Geoffrey Hill.
5) What was your process for writing/editing the aphorisms that make up Glimpse? Did it differ markedly from your process when writing long poems?
With Glimpse, I culled most of the aphorisms whole from old journals. I hadn't even realized I was writing them at first. Once I harvested a critical mass of them (about 1000), I went about sorting and discarding the bad or repetitive ones, and then edited the good ones for craft and brevity. Since then, now I've realized they are part of my writing process, I am much better able to recognize them as they form. So now, when I write an aphorism, it's not by pleasant accident, but generally on purpose.
* * *
George Murray will be appearing at THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival:
September 23 - Campus Reading at RRC.* * *
September 24 - Panel, with Sina Queyras.
September 24 - Mainstage, with Ariel Gordon, Nora Gould, Ignatius T Mabasa, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Sina Queyras.
Ariel Gordon has two chapbooks to her credit, The navel gaze (Palimpsest Press) and Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999 (Rubicon Press), and this spring, Palimpsest published her first full-length poetry collection, Hump. She recently won the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer at the Manitoba Book Awards. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.
No comments:
Post a Comment