Word Out 2011

I have had the very recent honour of getting into an email dialogue with the charming and delightful JonArno Lawson – author of the poetry collection " Think Again". This poetry book is an amazing look at teen relationships in four lines. Dealing with the excitement, the esoteric and the pain of teen love, Lawson's book examines both from a male and female perspective.

As a writer I decided to put him to the test and ask him some skill testing writerly questions. So be prepared as we enter Q and A with JonArno.

1.    Has reading a book ever changed your life? Which one and why, if yes?

There’ve been so many, it’s a very hard question to answer!  If you mean was there a book that actually changed my behaviour, as well as my thoughts, I’d say “The Sufis” by Idries Shah. It changed my life more than any other book. It reminded me that there were better ways of being. It didn’t (and doesn’t) allow the usual avenues of escape.

   2. Do you prefer to read fiction or nonfiction? Explain your choice.

I prefer both (depending on the book, of course!). For instance, David Grossman’s “To the end of the land” is a novel I read recently that I loved, because it brought to life (among other things) aspects of being a paren't I’d never seen described elsewhere. If they’d been in an autobiography, they’d have been too personal, I would have been repelled. But because his descriptions take place in a fictional world, I can identify more readily and generously with the characters.

On the other hand, Tahir Shah’s book “In Arabian Nights” is intensely autobiographical. In it, he searches for “his” story – the story that will best help him to understand or come to terms with himself – the story, I guess, that his life grows out of. His source. And so he goes to many different story-tellers, and reads many books, and has a thousand and one small and large experiences which he describes with relish – and because it’s not fiction, I care, not more, but at another level, what will happen to him. The fact that it’s “real” makes it hard to believe! But he manages to make it believable.

   3. If you could be a character in any novel you've ever read, who would you be and why?

That’s a question that would bring anyone up short! It makes you realize how many trouble-laden lives there are in novels. Am I allowed to cite a non-fiction book instead? If so, I’d say Patrick Leigh Fermor in “A Time for Gifts” – I’d love to have done what he did when he was a teenager (he walked from London'to Istanbul, all by himself, in 1933).

Or I would have liked to be Lucy on a good day in Narnia.

   4. Has reading a book ever made you cry? Which one and why?

A great question. There’s that heart-wrenching scene in the Golden Compass (by Philip Pullman) where the little boy has been separated from his daemon, and he dies. I didn’t cry, but I wish I’d never read it because it still depresses me to think about it. The fact that it’s not real doesn’t make it any less sad.

   5. How many books do you read each year?
  
If you include picture books (I do), probably a few hundred. I re-read a lot too – some books I read over and over again. Angela Banner’s “Ant and Bee” books I love as much as I did when I was six. Same with Howard Garis’s “Uncle Wiggily and his Friends”. Doris Lessing’s “African Laughter”, Stendhal’s “The Red and the Black”, Mikhail Zoshchenko’s “Before Sunrise” (in his book “Nervous People”), Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” Ted Hughes’s “What is the Truth?” – these are a few of the ones I can’t get enough of.  

6. Is the pen truly mightier than the sword?
  
That depends on how sharp your pen is!

7. Name one book you had to read but hated, and explain why you hated it.

I’ve been forced to read so few books. . .I’ve forgotten the ones I didn’t like! Edward Gorey, in an interview, talked about re-reading books he hated so that he could remember exactly why he hated them. A very original approach! I had to read a pile of poetry books once when I was a judge for an award. I remember strongly disliking some of them, but can’t remember their titles or authors. Even then, I remember that almost all the books had admirable lines here and there, and it seemed uncharitable for me to strongly shun a book that contained even one good line. It’s so important to hold onto what you like. To memorize poems is a great (and fun) thing to do as well. Ted Hughes describes a traditional (and entertaining) way of memorizing in his book “By Heart”.

   8. If someone wrote a book about your life, what would they title it?

Avoid Being Taught What’s Best Learned By Accident

   9. If you could pick a book you've read to make into a movie, which one would you choose?

“We are Utopia” by Stefan Andres. (It's funny, I just googled the book and discovered that it was adapted for television in 1955, in Germany. Whether a copy of the TV film exists with English sub-titles [I doubt it], or at all [in German – more likely], isn't clear. But apparen'tly someone had the idea to film it before I did!).

  10. What was your favourite book as a child and why?
 
The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. There was an entire world in them, which seemed to confirm (or at least suggest?) the fact that there were entirely different worlds than the one I lived in, and that was exciting at every level, especially the spiritual level.

11.In writing "Think again" did you have any difficulty with male vs. female perspective? If yes, how did you overcome that difficulty?

I don’t think I had difficulty with this (though some readers might disagree. . .). At some point I had to put the poems into a sequence, and it seemed to happen naturally. One thing that helped, maybe, was that the poems that became “Think Again” weren’t written with any sequence at all in mind. They were part of a much larger manuscript, and I hadn’t linked them up in any way. The sequence revealed itself out of them, which was a surprise to everybody involved. Julie Morstad (the illustrator) probably had as much (or more) to do with linking them than I did.
  

  12. What is the creative and writing process like for you? Describe the process that this book took. Were there any major highs or lows that influenced this book?

I write all the time, mostly in a little notebook I keep in my pocket. Much of what I write isn’t any use to me, but out of every notebook of 30 pages or so, probably 3 or 4 pages are use-able to me. I often start (and sometimes even finish) whatever it is in my head, while I’m walking or running about, or driving. Then I edit or finish it up later in my office.

To answer your second question, I hope you won’t mind if I excerpt an answer I gave to an interview with Shoshana Flax on her blog, Walk the Ridgepole: (http://walktheridgepole.blogspot.com/2010/06/interview-jonarno-lawson.html):
Just for fun (in the summer of 2006) I started making up short little rhymes for (and with) my kids. I realized I needed to use a form that would allow me to be a happy father and a happy writer at the same time – quatrains fit the bill – I could remember them easily, and I could work on them while I was with my kids in a way that let them participate with suggestions and instant critiques.

After 5 or 6 months I had a big pile of them – some were silly, some were serious – they were all over the place in terms of subject matter – what held them together was their brevity.
I sent them to a press I'd never worked with before (Kids Can), and was lucky they crossed the desk of Sheila Barry (she's Chief Editor there). She was very enthusiastic – but the marketing people had reservations because the book lacked a theme. Sheila and I both kept trying to figure out how to make it work, and then another editor at Kids Can, Karen Li, pointed out there were many love and rela
tionship poems – she wondered if there might be something there. . .so Sheila and I went back and looked it all over again, found a sequence, and there it was!
What I found so interesting about this was that the poems in this "hidden sequence" were nearly all to do with my high school girlfriend, and our relationship – we had a very hard break-up. We lost touch for years. Then, about 15 years ago, we met up again and got married. Now we have three kids. . .anyway, it's interesting that this was all about us at a much earlier time.
I took the rest of the poems and submitted them to Porcupine's Quill – they'll be published next year – which is sort of nice. The big manuscript separated itself fairly naturally into two different books.
To make a long story short, the book (as a YA book – really as a book at all) emerged in a haphazard way. It's definitely a YA book, though my kids object to the designation (being 6 and 9 – our 2 year old, however, doesn't care yet). They say that younger children can appreciate the poems too.
I hadn't thought about it before, but I realized as I answered your question that I really work with conscious intent on poems, but only with half-conscious ideas about how they might later turn into a book. I do think in terms of doing books (not just fugitive poems), but what a book will or might be isn't clear till I have a pile of poems to sort through and work with.

In terms of highs or lows influencing the making of the book, there were the original very high highs and very low lows in the relationship I had with my girlfriend in high school. These worked away in my mind for 20 years or so. . .

And then the summer I started working on them I wasn’t exactly in a low, but I didn’t know what to do next so I was at loose ends. An old friend died unexpectedly, which was preoccupying me at exactly that time. And then, being with my children and my wife (we were away at a camp) was incredibly wonderful in every way – being with them so much brought me to life again (as it always does). As I started working on these little squibs I really felt excited – I didn’t know where I was going, but I seemed suddenly to be getting somewhere. I got a small grant to work on them, shortly after, which I was very grateful for – everything seemed to be going my way. I met Sheila Barry at Kids Can Press, who was very encouraging and supportive of the work. . .but then came the lows (which lasted at least a year and a half, maybe longer) of passing it in and out of the Kids Can editorial committees, without a contract. They just weren’t sure. But finally
 they liked it, the contract came, and it was all highs again. Publishing it was fun, I’ve heard a lot of heartening things from readers over the past year, and it’s had a very encouraging critical reception, which I’ve appreciated.

13. What advice do you have for any young poets who are still trying to find their voice?

Read a lot of everything. “The Rattle Bag”, an anthology by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney, is what I’d give any poet, young or old, who wanted a broad grounding in great poetry without a slew of commentary. bpNichol wrote a poetic autobiography called “Selected Organs” that I’d give to anyone as well who wanted to find a different way of going about things.

Whenever you’re reading pay careful attention to what it is that moves you or catches your attention, even if it’s only a bit of a line, and copy it into a notebook. Do the same thing when you’re listening to people, and make sure you keep track of everything, your thoughts, words you like the sound of, phrases and ideas you like. Don’t argue with yourself before you write things down – never discount anything because you’re afraid of what others might think – be secretive if you have to be -  just write it all down, and edit it or figure it out later. You’ll start to see patterns emerging. It’s an exciting process, because it’s yourself you’re discovering.

I wish to express my deepest thanks to JonArno for particpating in the Word Out blog. If you have not already read his work then all I have to ask you is: what are you waiting for?