The Fun Questionnaire: Erín Moure’s Process

After reading Secession / Insecession, I was brimming with questions. Erín Moure graciously fielded my questions and provided some compelling answers! Read part 2 of our exchange here:

Kristen: Name one other BookThug book you know (not yours). Have you read it? What do you think?

Erin: White Porcupine by Phil Hall. In a rainstorm in a vehicle on the 401, I read it out loud to the driver. Makes me glad to be alive in poetry!

Kristen: What is the most annoying question that you hate answering during interviews? (We promise never to ask it, ever.)

Erin: What does X mean?

Kristen: Draw us a sketch about what a ‘book thug’ looks like to you. (Recommended: drawing on a napkin or another surface would be great, and if you could just take a picture of it, that would be lovely!)

Erin: Oh! But I forgot to draw a glass of water, just to the right of the book.

Kristen: What you were thinking about or doing just before you received this email? Or what has been on your mind a lot?

Erin: Just before: dusting my room, and going to get my new bike helmet. A lot: tomorrow’s election in Ukraine.

Kristen: Describe your currently published book(s) with BookThug to us in one sentence.

Erin: Insecession is a homage and echo text to my translation into English of Galician Chus    Pato’s Secession, a biopoetics, which is to say poetics and memoir, or poetics and the body.

Kristen: Was there something or someone you cut out from your book that was not published? (A paragraph, killing a character, or a fact that you can share?)

Erin: I revised a lot a lot a lot so there are a lot of words I wrote that were not in the published       version.

Kristen: Where do you write from? (cities, countries, planets – anything works).

Erin: The side of life.

Kristen: Something personal about you that your readers may be surprised to know? (Day job? What do you do when you are not writing?)

Erin: I am wearing my BookThug t-shirt as I answer this questionnaire (not on purpose).

Kristen: In your opinion, what should aspiring writers not do?

Erin: Read and listen and watch in only one language.

Kristen: What is the next big thing for you (goals, travel, etc.)?

Erin: Finish Kapusta. Go to Galicia. Go to Lviv. Stay home.

Kristen: What’s the next project for you? (If you’re working on something now, can you share a line, a paragraph or piece with us? Maybe even a word, or feeling to describe it?)

Erin: Finishing my poem-play, Kapusta. There is a marionnette, a sock monkey, and a plush lion in it, my grandmother’s stove, plus persons, including an E. It’s in English and French and will appear next year from Anansi. Here’s a bit from near the beginning.

Quand j’étais petite, la relation entre les choses, leurs tailles, était toute mêlée dans ma tête. Le monde était petit et insignifiant, sauf les arbres. Mais la cuisine de ma grand-mère était grande, plus grande qu’un arbre, plus grande qu’un monde. Dans la cuisine de ma grand-mère, tout se trouve. Tout est à l’abri. Tout est protégé.

Pourtant, je n’ai rien compris des mots qui ont été prononcés dans cette cuisine. Chaude. Dans la compagnie de la caresse.

The views expressed in this BookThug blog entry is held by the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of BookThug.

Kristen Smith received her Bachelors of Arts in English at Mount Allison University (Sackville, New Brunswick). In 2006, she was awarded the Graham Atlantic Writing Prize for her collection of poetry, Voices. Additionally, Kristen was selected as one of six poets internationally to participate in the Writing With Style program at the Banff Centre, Banff, AB (2012). In both her creative and her academic writing, Kristen explores themes of absence, nostalgia, and belonging. She currently studies at Ryerson University where she is completing a Master of Arts in Literatures of Modernity. Kristen lives in Toronto with her husband.