The Artisanal Writer

12/21/2024

What I love about knitting is that it’s tactile, that it’s a simple technology—two sticks and a string—that can create something beautiful. It’s slow, but unlike the other two major aspects of my life—parenting and writing—I can see progress and my mistakes instantly. It’s simple yet immediately gratifying. Writing has a similar magical quality—just words on a page....

What I love about knitting is that it’s tactile, that it’s a simple technology—two sticks and a string—that can create something beautiful. It’s slow, but unlike the other two major aspects of my l…

12/21/2024

The story is this: there’s a Husband and Wife and adolescent twin boys in a home in the forest. The deck is crooked and the house is full of the half-finished projects of busy parents. In the dark winter months, this Wife feels trapped in a valley under a cloud. In the summer, I’m still in awe we even get to live here, facing a wild river as we do....

The story is this: there’s a Husband and Wife and adolescent twin boys in a home in the forest. The deck is crooked and the house is full of the half-finished projects of busy parents. In the dark w…

12/21/2024

I do many drafts, the last ones simply to refine the language. It’s not just the plot that should draw the reader through the story, but the actual rhythm of the words and sentences....

12/21/2024

I was fortunate to grow up in a predominantly oral and aural culture, which meant I paid close attention to sound, rhythm, phrasing, and cadence. This is not to say that India had no emphasis on the visual: far from the truth. But where Canadians my age had television, I had a radio....

I was fortunate to grow up in a predominantly oral and aural culture, which meant I paid close attention to sound, rhythm, phrasing, and cadence. This is not to say that India had no emphasis on th…

12/21/2024

For me, writing is a process of seeking or looking for what’s hidden. I rarely understand what the poem is about while I’m writing it. I think it’s the ‘hereness’ of these directly experienced details: something touched, felt, particular observations, that make the poem tangible and transmittable to the reader. These aren’t things I can make up, and I think they help the poem become more inhabitable and grounded....

For me, writing is a process of seeking or looking for what’s hidden. I rarely understand what the poem is about while I’m writing it. I think it’s the ‘hereness’ of these directly experienced deta…

12/21/2024

I wanted to explore the disruptive kind of repetition in this book while staying true to mundane forms in our lives. When you look at a photograph across time, what happens when you pile your seeing on top of the other over time? What do you do when it feels that the seeing (or feeling) doesn’t seem to change, but you’ve accumulated those layers as sediments over time?...

I wanted to explore the disruptive kind of repetition in this book while staying true to mundane forms in our lives. When you look at a photograph across time, what happens when you pile your seein…

12/21/2024

In this collection I’m aiming to make links between labour that is apparently unphilosophical, like manual or tractor work and philosophical, scholarly work. I’ve always been struck but how much knowledge and wisdom slips from the pleats and knots in, say, growing lettuce, knitting a sweater, hanging a door....

11/04/2024

When I was writing Her Body Among Animals, I was very aware that I wanted to write about really hard truths that involve women and the boundaries placed on their bodies; postpartum anxiety, domestic abuse, women who are not acknowledged when they are having a mental health crisis....

When I was writing Her Body Among Animals, I was very aware that I wanted to write about really hard truths that involve women and the boundaries placed on their bodies; postpartum anxiety, domesti…

11/04/2024

Over Zoom calls, Stella and I came to understand each other and our collaboration blossomed. I researched blogs, books and read everything I could about creating sequential art which a difficult art form. Many drawings didn’t make the grade. I noticed many similarities between writing a novel and creating character sketches....

Over Zoom calls, Stella and I came to understand each other and our collaboration blossomed. I researched blogs, books and read everything I could about creating sequential art which a difficult ar…

11/04/2024

Realia specifically responds to the amazing work of Jan Zwicky and Jorie Graham; their sheer intelligence, inventive gifts and unrelentingly attentive eye on ecological devastation is something pretty well every poem speaks to and with....

Realia specifically responds to the amazing work of Jan Zwicky and Jorie Graham; their sheer intelligence, inventive gifts and unrelentingly attentive eye on ecological devastation is something pre…

11/04/2024

The Artisanal Writer would like to thank and the Government of Ontario for their funding support of The Wisdom Project. The Wisdom Project is a fully funded memoir writing workshop for Ontario seniors. This OAC funding allows us to continue promoting new Canadian writers awaiting readers across Ontario, and the country!

The Artisanal Writer would like to thank and the Government of Ontario for their funding support of The Wisdom Project. The Wisdom Project is a fully funded memoir writing works…

11/04/2024

For Bad Land, it was important to me to capture the eeriness of the landscape in order to cultivate a gothic tone and create an unsettling tension that would sustain the mystery that stretches across the first half of the book. But it was equally interesting to think about how the badlands are known for the relics that are deeply buried below their surface....

For Bad Land, it was important to me to capture the eeriness of the landscape in order to cultivate a gothic tone and create an unsettling tension that would sustain the mystery that stretches acro…

11/04/2024

Southern Louisiana, and along with it Cajun culture, is drowning partly as a result of the oil industry. In response to all of this, I wanted to tell a story about a family on the brink, left behind by the massive ambitions of big oil and its false promises....

Southern Louisiana, and along with it Cajun culture, is drowning partly as a result of the oil industry. In response to all of this, I wanted to tell a story about a family on the brink, left behin…

11/04/2024

I wanted to write...edgy urban stories like the ones I love to read but in fact that is not my life and I don't know anything about that...so what happened is that as I was writing more and more about Harbour Grace, although the stories ended up being a linked collection when I wrote them and they were being published the time frame was all over the place....

I wanted to write…edgy urban stories like the ones I love to read but in fact that is not my life and I don’t know anything about that…so what happened is that as I was writing mo…

11/04/2024

The opening scene of However Far Away was written in June 2005 after I witnessed a South Asian man running along the path near Kitsilano Beach. I knew right away that the story I wanted to tell about this man had to be based in Vancouver....

The opening scene of However Far Away was written in June 2005 after I witnessed a South Asian man running along the path near Kitsilano Beach. I knew right away that the story I wanted to tell abo…

08/24/2024

In Nigeria, everyone is Black, and therefore Blackness is not a concept to grapple with. “You are home” is sort of given, and it’s where you take off your shoes, let your hair down, belch from the belly. Things you’re less likely to do at a stranger’s place. The characters out of Nigeria carry with them their memory of Nigeria, or if not so directly...their memory of a thing or construct or person that has been taken from them....

In Nigeria, everyone is Black, and therefore Blackness is not a concept to grapple with. “You are home” is sort of given, and it’s where you take off your shoes, let your hair down, belch from the …

08/24/2024

There were a number of traumatic experiences that led to the creation of Anatomical Venus, including my car accidents, my mother’s surgeries and health problems, and my grandmother’s surgeries and eventual passing. I wrote most of the poems over the course of eight years, but some of the pieces that were included ended up going back even further, to over ten years ago....

There were a number of traumatic experiences that led to the creation of Anatomical Venus, including my car accidents, my mother’s surgeries and health problems, and my grandmother’s surgeries and …

08/24/2024

This setting is absolutely essential to the unfolding of this story. I selected it – or it selected me – because for twenty-three years I attended High Holiday services in a gym. I led part of the services there, and year after year I spent Yom Kippur surrounded by hundreds of people, sometimes over a thousand, most of whom I didn't know....