Interview by David Ly
The following is an interview between David Ly and Jason Purcell, author of the chapbook A Place More Hospitable (Anstruther Press, 2019).
David Ly: Hello, Jason! Congratulations on this beautiful chapbook full of such wonderful poems. Out of all of them, “Love Noises” has to be one of my favourite pieces. I was particularly struck by this line:
A man uses a spoon to scrape them from his body,/humming about a place more hospitable than/he is.
It’s such a nice little character study, that paints a really nuanced image of a contemplative person.
Jason Purcell: Thank you, David. I so appreciate your kind words about this chapbook and these lines in particular, and I’m grateful to you for taking the time to talk about it with me!
DL: Of course. I appreciate the delicateness in your writing, and ability to say so much in so few words—especially in the title. Could you speak a bit about how the phrase “a place more hospitable,” encapsulates what you wanted the chapbook to tell?
JP: I knew I was interested in exploring, or asking questions about, the alienation one might feel when living in a sick body. Because I’m living with a stomach illness, and because my network of friends happens to practice and write about fermentation—sourdough, kombucha—I developed an interest in gut flora and microbiomes. These have become ways for me to think through my illness, and to think about the ways in which my body harbours not only my own life but also countless others. As I was working on this collection, I was thinking about the relationship between myself and my microbiome, and the ways in which I hadn’t felt hospitable to myself, mentally or physically, or to everything also living inside me.
This shifted (somewhat—I need reminding!) my thinking about my experiences with chronic illness and pain. There have been times during which I have struggled to care for myself or to be gentle with myself during flares or bouts of illness. The line in the poem [you quoted earlier] sees a man scraping away his gut flora, perhaps because he feels at his end and that they’d survive better elsewhere. Perhaps this is a bleak way to end the chapbook. But I think now, as I answer this, calling the chapbook A Place More Hospitable opens up a space, even if it’s only within the book’s pages, that can indeed be hospitable to all kinds of thinking about pain and illness, about their reverberations, but that, I hope, move toward care. How might I become more hospitable, or treat myself and my sick body with more care?
DL: And I think that asking that sort of question shows the level of reflectiveness you imbue these poems with. From there, how does a poem start for you? When can you tell a poem has reached the point where it’s saying what you want it to say?
JP: Poems start in all kinds of ways, but one commonality is that they are never easy for me. A poem is always difficult for me, in one way or another: formally, thematically, linguistically. I don’t know if it’s the register or form or genre that I communicate most clearly in, but I do know it’s one that stretches my thinking most, that makes me most aware of the limitations of my mind, that tells me where to push harder. Of course writing is always work, but poetry feels particularly difficult to me.
As for how I know a poem finished, or saying what I want it to say, it comes down to a question of movement. Is the poem still moving, or has the idea, question, language stilled? If I feel it’s settled, I’m willing to trust that and let go. Despite my Virgo Rising, I don’t feel the need to strive for perfection, and am very good at letting something go and shutting off. All I ask myself about a poem is: has this gotten at something? Has it snagged a thread? If a question emerges from the poem, or helps me look at something from an unusual angle, I’m satisfied.
DL: Well, as a reader, I can tell you that your poetry is a delight to read and definitely provokes questions and gives me a different perspective on what poetry can do; especially with memorable imagery! I was struck by images of (human) teeth appearing in several poems, often times evoking this inkling in me that the speaker was in pain or trapped. How did the teeth imagery come about, and why that particular body part?
JP: The poems that make up A Place More Hospitable were places for me to reside in feelings of pain that you identify here, and also to think across or through or alongside the feelings of ill/wellness that cause me to be aware that I am tethered to my body. Trapped, as you say! The two sites of pain in my own body that I am writing with here are my stomach and my teeth. And there is so much weight to both of these locations: folks say that oral health is overall health and the stomach is the second brain. There is a lot going on here! And so these poems are a first step in the exercise of writing about these sites of pain for me. The imagery of the tooth has really resonated with people, or at least they have been affected by it. I think it brings up a lot of feelings in folks. Who among us truly likes going to the dentist?
DL: What inspired you to write these poems?
JP: I started writing these poems as I was making my way through my MA thesis, which explored similar or adjacent themes: illness, the body, sexual desire or lack of it. These poems were, first and foremost, an exercise to get me thinking and writing about these themes and topics from another angle. I wanted to refocus my eye and attention; writing in another genre and form helped me to do that. When I finished the thesis, I was left with a pile of poems that I thought were saying something independent of the work that I had done in my thesis, and that was an interesting and unforeseen result.
DL: And we’re so glad to see them bound in this chapbook! What encourages you to keep writing?
JP: The community of brilliant, engaged writers and thinkers we have around us! There is so much incredible and vital work being done, so fertile and urgent, and the opportunity to try to think and write alongside this work is what keeps me going forward with writing.
DL: It’s been wonderful chatting with you, Jason. My last question to you is: could you describe what the process of creating your first chapbook was like? Any advice you’d give writers looking to publish one?
JP: I’m incredibly grateful to Jim Johnstone at Anstruther Press for his careful, attentive, and enthusiastic engagement with this material, and I’m grateful to you, David, for sending me his way! Seeing as this is my first chapbook, I have limited experience to draw on, especially when tasked with offering advice, but I think what is crucial—and what I sense many writers know already—is to work with people who will hold your work and sit with you as you polish it. There are so many brilliant publishers and editors working today, particularly at the level of the chapbook, like Anstruther Press, Rahila’s Ghost Press, and Glass Buffalo Publishing, among others, who are putting out the exciting work I am always so excited to read. Find the people who are doing the work you admire and respect, and who in turn hold and respect your own work.
Jason Purcell is a writer and editor living on Treaty 6 territory in Edmonton, Alberta. He is the Programs Officer at the Canadian Literature Centre, which is housed at the University of Alberta, where he also received an MA in English. He is the Interviews Editor for Glass Buffalo, Circulations Coordinator for Eighteen Bridges, co-editor of Ten Canadian Writers in Context (UAP 2016), and author of A Place More Hospitable (Anstruther Press 2019). Alongside Matthew Stepanic, he is co-founder of Glass Bookshop, Edmonton’s newest independent bookstore. | @jasonvpurcell
David Ly‘s poems have appeared in several anthologies and magazines. He is the author of the chapbook Stubble Burn (Anstruther Press, 2018) and a forthcoming poetry collection Mythical Man (Anstruther Books, 2020). He can be found on Twitter @dlylyly and responds well to GIFs of Michael Fassbender.