PRISM interviews Elizabeth Ross: Poems, motherhood, and poems about motherhood

andrea bennett, PRISM‘s current poetry editor, interviewed former PRISM poetry editor Elizabeth Ross by email this week. Elizabeth Ross runs a blog called Occupational Hazards, writes poetry, and teaches at OCAD. She also has two pugs as well as a preternatural ability to determine exactly which volume of poetry should be on your nightstand right now. Keep reading to find out what she’s been up to, and which poem she’s picked to win PRISM‘s annual Earle Birney Poetry Prize.

1. What are you up to these days, Ms. Ross? How are you liking Toronto?
   I’m very much in the absorbing stage – trying to figure out where the good organic apples are, how to push through the strange, strong wind at intersections, and how to navigate the subway. Often when I’m in transit poems that are set (if a poem can be set) in Toronto will come to mind and I’ll feel like I’ve gained (or sometimes lost) some insight into them. Three of my favorite Toronto poems, I call them, are David O’Meara’s “Charlotte Street,” Rhea Tregebov’s long poem series “You Are Here,” and Paul Vermeersch’s “The Threatened Swan.” All of them have to to with transit on some level, and transit seems to be an important theme in my life lately.

 

2. How’s the post-MFA life? How’s your poetry manuscript coming along?
   See question 1. I finished my degree and moved across the country, so post-MFA life is dramatically different. I miss the writing community I know terribly. And completing my thesis was surprisingly exhausting. I’d been writing and writing and writing for two years and it wasn’t until I’d submitted my thesis that I realized how compressed I’d been. Even though I’d planned on sending it right out, I’ve found the transition from thesis to manuscript challenging. To compound that effect, a few weeks after we arrived, I discovered I was pregnant. As exciting as that is, I felt quite sick for the first three months and now I’m simply tired all the time. However, when I go back to the poems, I can see them fresher than I could before, even if I’m not feeling so fresh myself.

 

3. Let’s get to the prize nitty gritty: which poem have you chosen to win the Earle Birney prize for 2009-2010?
   See question 2! I chose “The New Mothers” by Sue Goyette (which appears in issue 48.3, Spring 2010, of PRISM). To be fair, I actually chose it back in May at the end of my PRISM tenure, but pregnancy has made me appreciate Goyette’s sense of humour and fine technique even further.

 

4. What drew to you to the poem in the first place? – and what’s kept your attention?
   I fell in love with the poem when I read the following lines: “Fuck, the new mothers want to say. They have to wash their water/with water.”
   Goyette’s candid exploration of motherhood is only barely hyperbole. The expectation placed on mothers – by both other people and themselves –reaches the point of ludicracy at times. (I’m still wrestling with the fact that I’m not supposed to eat brie cheese. No kidding.)
   I so admire how Goyette has managed tone. Although the poem functions rhetorically, rhetoric isn’t the point. The point is transformation through a wonderful disconnection with reality – even metaphoric reality. While one could argue metaphor disconnects (and subseqently reconnects in better way), metaphor can still be fragmentary. Goyette’s (dis)connection is an other-worldly – an immersion: “The new mothers are petting the giraffe neck of streetlights,/cooing for more light. The streets are so unsafe.”
   Even the semiotics of this world are redefined: “And they’re buckling up their tenderness. Oh the state/of the world! The new mothers have to attach umbrellas/to the things that move their children from here to there.”
   Although she combines abstractions and the oddly concrete, Goyette avoids didactism and judgement. The poem is both benevolent and eerie towards its subject. Dangerous, and not an easy feat. Goyette’s a pro.

 

5. Let’s talk shop: Have you noticed any big differences between literary goings-on in Vancouver and Toronto?
   I’m sorry to report that I’ve only made it to three readings since arriving, so I’m the last person to make any statements about Toronto vs. Vancouver literary goings-on. But I’m excited to attend fellow former PRISM poetry editor Bren Simmer’s launch of Night Gears tonight.

 

6. Finally, one nerdy editorial question: what did you learn over the course of your stint as PRISM poetry editor? Did being an editor change the way you approached submissions as a writer?
   Nerdy editorial questions are the best. PRISM was great. The first lesson, and probably the best, was to not take rejection personally. Second, to multiple submit. Third, to keep sending work out. Have a healthy, but not crazy, ego. That’s the tricky part.