Interview by Matthew Walsh
Over last summer, during Toronto Pride season, I got to have a conversation over Twitter with poet and lawyer Marcus McCann about his new collection of poetry, Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe published with Invisible Publishing. McCann’s collection focuses on gay relationships, dating, homophobia, but it doesn’t stop there, moving from very serious material to tender and funny anecdotes about dating and acceptance of one’s identity. We got to talk about the poetry scene in Toronto, the Naked Heart reading series, and Glad Day Bookstore and Café, where Marcus is part-owner.
Matthew Walsh: Marcus, this is your third full-length book of poetry, the others being The Hard Return (Insomniac Press, 2012) and Soft Where (Chaudiere Books, 2009). You also have a slew of chapbooks, and have been prominent in the poetry and writing community. How does this collection differ from your previous work?
Marcus McCann: It definitely feels like a different collection. I got some advice from Suzanne Buffam part way through writing this book that changed the complexion of many of the poems. She was looking at something of mine, and pointed to a weak stanza and she just said, “this would be a good place to make a move. What does ‘make a move’ mean?”
@croonjuice: Hmm…I guess it means mixing up the syntax, make a leap in thought, make strange associations/connections. Admitting something personal?
@mmccnn: That’s it, exactly.
@croonjuice: Speaking of making moves, one poem that really jumped out at me was “To A Lover, Shy of His Attachments” which is the last poem before the section “Talk of Safety is Talk of Danger.” The intimate language, the slow pensive voice and lines “I prefer it out here, /where your high beams/on me, for example, and your smirk is like a smooth rock I treasure regardless of its weight” really stood out. Can you tell us about the big moves you made in that poem?
@mmccnn: The Hard Return was a book about metaphor. But the individual poems, many of them, are descriptive, without a narrative or aphoristic turn. So this book is sort of about that. That poem started as an update of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20—which of course is loaded with good moves. “To A Lover Shy of His Attachments” takes a different tone than a lot of the other poems. I think you’re picking up on that. It’s also a poem of direct address.
@croonjuice: Ahh, cool little note! I think that poem begins “A woman’s face, with nature’s own hand painted, /Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion.” That poem does have a different vibe, with the direct address.
@mmccnn: My poem’s also directly about being non-monogamous.
@croonjuice: The line “I`m okay with it” packs a punch when you break the poem down line by line.
@mmccnn: It’s weird that it needs to be stated, but for most readers, I feared the “nononono” would be read as some sort of moral failing, like I was angry at the addressee—which obviously was not my intention. It can be very difficult to write about the fragility of relationships without dipping into accusation.
@croonjuice: There’s a few poems like this one, about relationships, but the collection also has a political stance, which you can pick up on through the section with names like “Cruising is Public Service” and “To Talk of Safety is to Talk of Danger.” That ties into your work as a lawyer in some ways.
@mmccnn: That’s interesting. I mean, I didn’t set out to write a political book, but it was written by me, and so it shares many of my normative values.
@croonjuice: I noticed there’s some lawyer terminology placed here and there. Do you find that your work as a lawyer and the kinds of cases you take on shows up in your poetry?
@mmccnn: Honestly, I try to avoid it, but in the new book, for example, I embedded s. 92(9) of the Constitution Act 1867 into a poem about watching a partner orgasm. The title of the last poem is a fake translation of “Small Claims Court” into French and then back into English.
@croonjuice: How did you settle on a title for the new book? It sounds like a mantra of sorts.
@mmccnn: David O’Meara, my editor, wanted me to change it. Mantra’s are easier to remember, and roll of the tongue easier, but yes. The idea of slowing down is sort of the theme I intended for the book. I wrote most of it when I was in Law school, which was…a hectic time in my life.
@croonjuice: Interesting, because in many ways you are not slowing down at all! You are a lawyer by day, poet by night, but you also, I believe, are co-owner of the new Glad Day on top of all this poetry stuff.
@mmccnn: Yes, all of that! I`m also doing some activism. That is certainly true.
@croonjuice: I remember Glad Day being on Yonge Street, but with the new location it’s more expanded now?
@mmccnn: Glad Day has been around for 40 years. It was probably going to close in 2012, so a group of rad queers bought it, me among them. In November of 2016, it moved into a ground floor space on Church St. It has a liquor license and so it is a bookstore and cafe and bar and it’s open like 18 hours a day. When we moved into the space, we were aware that we would be getting a new revenue stream (food and cocktails), but we didn’t anticipate that book sales would double, and they did. You should stop by next time you’re in town.
@croonjuice: I remember how terrifying it was to even consider losing it, because it was such a great resource. The man that was always there had stories galore. He’s seen a lot. He used to give out free condoms with every book purchase, and the store was always socially connected to the village, and Pride.
@mmccnn: It’s funny you should mention Pride—I ended up spending my Pride weekend behind the bar at Glad Day, helping out. A very different experience, throwing raging dance parties in a bookstore with a capacity of 240.
@croonjuice: That sounds like where I need to be! What did you guys do for Pride at GLAD?
@mmccnn: It was full out! Readings in the two weeks leading up. Drag brunch, a taco stand, and then four nights of dance parties till three in the morning—hey are you going to let readers know we talked on Twitter? Because I want to talk about that. Twitter and poetry. I see a lot of things happening with poetry on the internet. Online format really does seem to suit lyric poetry.
@croonjuice: How so?
@mmccnn: It requires a short duration of sustained attention. It doesn’t take any longer to read most poems than it does to complete a Buzzfeed quiz. Like, imagine a novel on the internet. I’m sure they exist but NO WONDER IT NEVER CAUGHT ON. And a standalone lyric can hang out all on its own on a simple HTML webpage and, like, it doesn’t need any help. That’s it, boom, there’s your poem. I feel like the internet is better suited for poems than books are.
@croonjuice: Speaking of booms. I love that line “baby I’ve got booms for you to hear.” Where did that come from? You have so many chapbooks under your belt, so I was wondering when you started writing poetry? Where does your motivation come from? You have a lengthy body of work.
@mmccnn: Why thank you, “wink.” You actually took a picture of the page that had that section heading and you posted it on twitter:
@mmccnn: This has never happened to me before, but with the new book people keep posting lines from my poems. It’s so weird! Again, here:
@croonjuice: Where does your motivation come from to keep writing poetry. It must be something you enjoy doing, that you need to do?
@mmccnn: Yeah I think that’s right. Poetry is like a game of chess I play obsessively, because sure it’s fun to do, but also it’s work, and you can always get better. And there are reminders about everything great and horrible in the world everywhere you go, so unlike chess, there are constant little reminders to get back to writing.
@croonjuice: And all the poems are special booms in their own way, like the one about Galliano Island. The poem “Never Straighten is My Advice” which I also really liked.
@mmccnn: Right. The booms line is from “Never Straighten…” I personified a firework as “a woman in a green dress coming forward to say baby in a moment I got booms for you to hear.” That poem is about queer family. Bonds between queer people, especially across genders, which I think is an important moment in the book, because a lot of the other “connections” are male-male.
@croonjuice: Reading the end notes, I noticed that one poem emerged as a game, another is from some found text. I do this too, using something as a jumping off point to get the poem going, something that inspires you. Is that how you start writing poems, regardless if they change completely from the source material?
@mmccnn: Yeah usually. I think most poets will tell you the same thing, which is that most poems start with some little tendril, a line, an idea, a formal constraint, a piece of found text, and then we very carefully follow that tendril, hoping that it’s connected to a larger plant, and that we don’t get so overexcited that we snap off the tendril and loose the link to the larger thing.
@croonjuice: That is the perfect way to describe how inspiration comes to you—but may leave real quick if you don’t write the tiny pieces down.
@mmccnn: Also, I think that living in the internet age, of course our poems will come from games, and found text, and pop culture…
@croonjuice: My poetry professor would eavesdrop on people in bars and write down little notes if they said anything cool, or poetic.
@mmccnn: And the inspiration will leave real quick if you hold on too tight too…wait are we still talking about poetry…or?
@croonjuice: I think it’s at least poetry related?
@mmccnn: In love, as in art.
@croonjuice: I feel like all that is connected. You said you did readings over pride at GLAD. Did you read from your new work? Any special guests join you?
@mmccnn: Yeah I did read during pride. But you know I did a little tour with three rad queers in May (MVS, TMZ, PLL). And that turned out to be an eye-opening thing. When you read with an all queer lineup, your audience is going to be tuned to a different level. And it was just so incredible to be vibing off of these queer creatives all together.
@croonjuice: I am in love with Michael V. Smith. Everyone is. And I have TMZ’s book, Whatever, Iceberg, on the way. Very excited to read it.
@mmccnn: Our our big ole gay set went down really well in Montreal and Toronto and Ottawa, but once we got out of the big cities it was a different story. Two people got up and left the Kingston show when one reader read work about having sex in the community garden, and another women approached me after that show to specifically tell me she wasn’t going to buy my book because I gave a “blue” reading—so I gave her a free copy.
@croonjuice: So no straight people showed up in Toronto, and the ones that did had a problem with your writing about your sex life?
@mmccnn: I read a couple of weeks later in Cobourg Ontario, as part of their first pride festival. And I had learned my lesson. I read culturally queer work (about karaoke, Hanlan’s) but nothing sexual. I was second to last. And then Nancy Jo Cullen read—she was amazing and didn’t hold back. She read a story in three parts. The first scene took place in a women’s shower after hot yoga, and then one scene is the narrator throwing a rock through the ex’s front window. I died laughing. It was so good. But the audience literally couldn’t make eye contact.
@croonjuice. I love the idea of the four of you travelling around and reading together. I hope to do that one day. The thought just makes me happy.
@mmccnn: Happy Pride, Boyo. My boyfriend and I are going to find a patio in the sun.
Matthew Walsh is a poet and short story writer whose work appears in Joyland, The Malahat Review, Arc, Bad Nudes and others. twitter: @croonjuice