My First Poem Was Jacked, Every Line: Larissa Andrusyshyn in Conversation
SUSAN GILLIS: How did you first come to poetry--or how did poetry come to you?
When I was young I was obsessed with reading. I wrote on my mother's old
electric typewriter, little stories, that kept getting erased or deleted. I was
a morose little kid, in grade school I loved folk music; Simon and Garfunkel,
Neil Diamond and Bob Dylan, anything with sad lyrics. I remember memorizing and
reciting some poetry that my mom loved (Robert Service's "The Cremation of Sam
McGee") but not very much. But I had a particularly wonderful English teacher in
grade 7, Mrs. Pryer, who led the class in a semester of poetry and I wrote my
first poem for her class, I still have it, about how I was like a dandelion. It
was tough at that school; I was weirdo and did not relate to my classmates
easily and they were all to happy to remind me of that. I just remember walking
into class the morning it was due and reading it to her and a little crowd
gathered around me. I felt something had changed for me right then. That poem
was published in the school paper and shared at a parent/teacher meeting. I was
suddenly existing, singled-out for something. I have never stopped writing since.
I carried notebooks and filled them with angsty poems. I switched schools and
was accused of plagiarism more than once (very flattering). I was never much
good at anything else and nothing drew me like poetry did.
It's the perfect repository for the reclusive weirdo that I am. I can write
about any little curiosity I like, I can lie and I can also tell the terrifying
truth. I love that I hop from subject to subject. I can fixate on every word,
line break or speck of punctuation. I love the machinery of it in that way. Poems
are complex little structures and you build as much as you tear down when you
make them.
SG: Many of your poems connect something comic to a variety of emergencies, large
and little. I’ve known you to build and tear down in great swathes as you work,
almost as though the poem were living on a huge canvas, or as a spatial
installation, and I’m wondering what role you would say that kind of
compositional energy plays in the things you choose to write about.
LA: It's interesting to consider that subject would influence composition or
vice versa. I definitely do build and destroy a lot when I write; I'm like a
city planner and a Godzilla all at once, I suppose. I think when I get caught by
something enough to need to write about it there's an exuberant, over-zealous
energy I have. I get downright giddy when I have a new poem banging on the door.
I write way too much, go off on tangents, follow dead leads and make a giant,
confusing structure out of it. I research a lot and often get emotionally
attached to the subject. I can't read about a dung beetle navigating the desert
using the milky way without falling in love with it really, in that sick, mad
and wandering the streets kind of way. I tend also to ruminate about new poems
and sometimes a first, or last, line will occur to me later and I can go back
and start to see where the real poem is supposed to be. I guess I just pile the
paint on the canvass and wait until I figure out what the composition is really
about. I do try to let it rest before I start to hack away at it though. But
it's easier to pare down than it is to build up.
I think that the subjects that draw me are often a nice tangle of comic and
tragic. I gravitate toward the whimsical and surprising and very often the
natural world. If my writing style influences what I write about then I think it
could account for why I write about things that are too 'big' for poems.
SG: What's inspiring you these days?
I've been to so many readings and book launches lately. Some of them even
had free wine. That's pretty inspiring.
I'm also very affected by the work I do. I run creative writing workshops
for incarcerated or at-risk youth through the QWF's 'Writers in the Community'
program. I get to connect to kids who really need it and I see them learn to
create something that is validating to them and I get to share in their process.
It's enough to keep me renewing this vow of poverty I took with no
regrets.
Larissa Anrdusyshyn is a Montreal-based poet and educator. Read her poem Hieroglyphica here.