Susan Musgrave at a book launch,
accompanied by accordionist Dominic Legere
Masset in Haida Gwaii
(Queen Charlotte Islands)
PHOTO COURTESY OF URSULA VAIRA,
PUBLISHER OF LEAF PRESS

Amidst storms in life, what helps you to keep intact and grounded, both as a human being and as an artist?

Being outside, in the wilds of Haida Gwaii where I live. Watching the waves roll in and roll out again, listening to the wind and the waves crashing on the beach all night: this puts my life in perspective.

What do you hold as sacred in your poetry?

The wilderness. I once had a Sierra Club poster that said, “In wilderness is the preservation of the world.”

Between being the observer and being observed, how do the subject and the images come into composition in your poems? How do you relate to your images?

In answer to the second part of the question, in a visceral way. The images I use are a way of making physical the emotional trials and tribulations I experience in my life. Therefore there are a lot of overt violent images, in direct proportion to the emotional damage that has been done.

The phrase “earning a living as a writer” may come across as a North American, mainstream convention. How do you resist the industrial forces and social labels from a so-called cultural or literary scene that may, on the flip side, help bring a readership to your writings?

I have only ever been interested in the process of writing, not the product, or the end result. I love language; I love spending a whole day trying to decide where to break a line. I don’t think about “readership.” I would be overwhelmed if I allowed myself to think in those kinds of terms.

What are your thoughts about the narcissism and self-indulgence of a writer?

I dislike writers who are egotistical and full of their own importance. Luckily I don’t have to be around those types of people. I prefer my friends not to be writers. Writers always want to steal your lines or your stories. Real people (as I call them) have stories of their own well worth listening to (and stealing, of course!)

Susan Musgrave at a book launch,
accompanied by accordionist Dominic Legere
Masset in Haida Gwaii
(Queen Charlotte Islands)
PHOTO COURTESY OF URSULA VAIRA,
PUBLISHER OF LEAF PRESS

Do you dream? What are some dreams that still linger in your memory?

My dream life used to be far more exciting than my waking life. Consequently I spent a lot of time sleeping and dreaming, when I was younger. Much of my poetry came from my dreams. My dreams were often visionary, and I would be left, for days, with feelings far more intense than I had ever felt from anything that had happened in my waking life. For instance, the sadness, the grief, I would feel in a dream was far more unbearable than anything I felt in “reality.” Now it isn’t that way. I haven’t had a memorable dream in a long time. I read somewhere recently that the older you get, the less you dream. Can that be true? Are dreams like eggs in a woman’s body? Are you born with a certain number of dreams, which then — dry up and cease to be?

What often proves to be difficult for you during the creative journey?

Getting started. Making the transition from the world of washing dishes and sweeping the floor and chopping wood and making meals to sitting down and entering a fictional world via a blank sheet of paper. I will do almost anything to avoid getting to work. And then, when the work starts going well, I don’t want to leave the world I have invented for myself.

What are some of your favorite words?

I love discovering new words — which is what happens when you read poetry and fiction. I discovered “rebarbative” in an Iris Murdoch novel. In New York my poetry was described as causing one’s skin to “horripilate”. (That is a word I bandy about, needless to say.) I used “lugubrious” in one of my children’s books: “Hello, you lugubrious grey-eyed cat,” said Grim. What have you got to feel so lugubrious about?” I love Anglo-Saxon words: dark, wet, wind, rain, cold, and so on.