“I Don't Want to Beat a Poem to Death”: A Short Interview with Lillian Nećakov

  Lillian Nećakov has published many books of poetry over the last thirty years, most recently Hooligans. She is also a collage artist, proprietor of the Surrealist Poets Gardening Association, and the curator of the Boneshaker Reading Series at TPL’s St. Clair/Silverthorn branch. The following interview took place on March 15, 2012. Jim Smith: What are your three favourite lines from your most recent book, Hooligans? Why? Lillian Nećakov:

“the writer slants his pen toward the snow filling his cranium” “her legacy festers under the chewed fingernails of scientists” “to replace the weight of the host on their tongues”

All three lines (the second selection is actually two lines) conjure very clear images. With one or two lines you get a whole story in a sense, they are very compact but filled with all kinds of possibility. I think these lines could be part of any poem; they can be plucked out of the poems they belong in and be worked into something else. That is the beauty of them. There is a clash of images, putting disparate things together like snow in craniums and someone’s legacy under fingernails. I love doing that, I think it really makes the writing stronger, I really strive to put as much as I can into the least amount of words. I want the whole story in a few snapshots for the reader. I believe that’s the best way to disseminate the emotional intensity of the ideas to the reader. I particularly like the last line I chose because it captures what I am fascinated by and what I write about; the dichotomy between science (I get it) and religion (which annoys the hell out of me). JS: David W. McFadden shows up in your poems, as he does in Stuart Ross’s and mine. He is like a recurring dream. Why do you think that is? LN: I like the way you put that “a recurring dream!” He is a dream, a Canadian dream, especially if you are a writer because he has the ability to seem like writing poetry is a something anyone can do anytime, anywhere. His writing is deceivingly simple, flawless and on the money. It’s kind of like looking at a beautiful pond on a spring day, with the swans and ducks out, then you look closely, a little deeper beneath the surface and you see the mud, crayfish and leeches. I am not saying his work is bleak in any way, more melancholy and just plain honest. He is telling us the story of our lives through his life and he does it so well that we can’t help but get sucked in. His work is seamless and when you read him, you can just hear that voice of his in your head, telling you the story of your journey, his words kind of smooth over all the bumps. JS: In “F=ma,” my favorite line is “Pi would only amount to 3.” Math is important to a lot of the poems in Hooligans. Why? LN: Math makes sense. It is a language that has no need for translation, it transcends borders, wars, atrocity, it is simple and extremely difficult, it is precise, elegant and can explain the fundamental laws of the universe in one line. I love that! It’s like a great painting, lines of a poem or a scene from a film that can, with a few brushstrokes or camera pans, unveil an entire story or transport you to a time in your life that really mattered. Take for example these last lines from Octavio Paz’ poem “Brotherhood”:

I too am written, and at this very moment someone spells me out.

There is great scene in Michael Cimino’s Gates of Heaven where you see a bunch of white sheets flapping in the wind. I don’t remember much else about the scene apart from those sheets, the wind and sun, but it has stuck with me all these years. That one image on the screen for me is; my old house on Runnymede Rd., running around all the backyards in the neighbourhood, a kid with a dad and a mom (before my mom died). It helps me make peace with the world I walk around in. Nobody hangs his or her clothes on the line anymore. Maybe if they did we would have fewer wars. JS: Your poems are worked down to the bone and sinew. There`s nothing spare in them. Lines move like ropes of muscle. How do you do that? I know I am a very sensual person. Many of my memories, for example, are tied to smell. As I already talked about, I use a lot of imagery in my writing, and that has to be very precise in order to achieve what I want. I want the reader to feel the exact same emotions I am feeling when writing a piece. I want them to be affected after reading my work, there has to be an impact otherwise I haven’t done my job; I haven’t communicated anything. So, I work really hard at packing it all into a few really strong punches in the best way I know how. It also helps to have a great editor like Stuart Ross, who has a very keen eye and an understanding of what I am trying to do. He has the ability to essentially cut through the crap, the excess and tell me what to take out in order to make the work really tight. The fact that he is also a fantastic writer himself is a huge plus; he is looking at work from the writer’s perspective as well as that of the reader. JS: Tell me the story again of “Kandinsky Highway.” LN: Well, as you know, it is the story of our trip (yours and mine) to Kingston to do a Mansfield Press reading. With you driving, we set out from Toronto to Kingston with a few apples, a couple of cans of soda and some Halls. It was the first time after many years of not seeing each other that we would be spending an entire day together (most of it in a car) journeying to the city of your youth. It was really a magical day (despite the long detour and almost being late for our own reading). Two friends that just picked up where they left off almost twenty years ago as if no time at all had passed. I hadn’t laughed that much in a long time and I was really happy, I mean really. It was such a perfect, simple day, the highway filled with paint strips that you said looked like a “Kandinsky Highway” and the love I felt for a dear, dear friend. The stories you told me about growing up in Kingston also had a lot to do with the nostalgia of the poem. Thank you, for the title and well, you know the rest. JS: What or who is the most unlikely influence on you as the poet you are as of this book. Wow, that’s a really hard question. I don’t even know if I can say one person or thing, but if I had to choose I think it would be film. I see my poems as little movies that tell the story of where I am at the time I am writing them. Like a snapshot of Nećakov struggling with the challenges of being a parent, or Nećakov finding things to believe in, that kind of thing. I see the poem first, I don’t mean I see the words or anything like that, I actually see someone say, driving walking down the street, being shot, burned, that kind of thing. The words come later, that is why the work is so visual. “Night Writing” started with the image of Gilbert Tuhabonye’s scarred back, a picture of him I had seen in Runner’s World magazine. Then all I could see was him running. I have always loved films and the cinema; it is big part of my life. It has always been a kind of escape, going to the movies and watching someone else’s life, so different than your own yet so much the same. I wrote a whole book of movie poems called Polaroids that Coach House published in 1997. If I had to choose “who,” I would have to give you a list that would include Richard Dawkins, Van Morrison, Kurt Schwitters, and Wim Wenders. Of course there are a whole lot more. JS: Endings are a real art. You are one of the best ending artists I have read—see “Dalai Lama Test”, “Dancing Goat”, “Obliquity of the Ecliptic”, “Zero Day”, “Butterfly Lover”, “Kandinsky Highway”, “Jones”, “A Guide to Understanding”. Why does a Ne ć akov poem end where it does? LN: Okay, I think a big part of it is that I always read my work out loud as I am writing, the sound of the words the cadence, the rhythm all those things are really important to me. So, I read the thing over and over before I am finished with it. Sometimes even if there is more to say, I will end the piece because it a natural place to stop. I may then go back and insert lines elsewhere in the poem. Again, we go back to the point I made earlier, it has to be crisp; I don’t want to beat a poem to death. It’s almost like a piece of music, you can just hear where it should end and it does. It should seem like everything has been said, but at the same time, there is room for more, or maybe not. JS: Aside from the poems which involve them/arise from their example, if you could say three things to Roméo Dallaire, what would they be; what about Hurricane Carter; Gilbert Tuhabonye; Nicanor Parra? LN: To Roméo Dallaire and Gilbert Tuhabonye:

I am sorry that no one heard you. I don’t know how you live with those pictures in your head. Thank you for your humanity and your courage in telling us your stories.

To Hurricane Carter:

What does it feel like to be a hero when you didn’t ask for it? How do you stop the rage? What’s it really like driving a Mercedes?

To Nicanor Parra:

Dare I ask you to read just one of my poems? What was it like meeting Jim Smith? Do you love words as much as numbers?

JS: What are dogs? I mean, what do they do in your poems? Are they guides? Innocents? Fellow travellers? Something else entirely? LN: I haven’t really thought about that, but I suppose they are both innocents and they represent that unconditional love and loyalty we all want and need. They are a constant throughout our lives, that little bit of childhood we can carry with us through to adulthood. They sense things and know when to back off and when to go full speed ahead and they never, ever ask why. JS: Speaking, asking, talking, whispering, mouth, lips, teeth and alphabets show up in Hooligans, as they did in Sickbed of Dogs and Bone Broker. Why? LN: I think it is simply the need to communicate, to connect. This is what I am feeling, doing, saying and I need to tell. That is just me, of course, others may have other reasons or things to communicate. For me it’s a way to affirm my own existence to untangle who I am in relation to everyone and everything else, then tell you, so you get me. For me it is also just a way to let off steam and emotion in a kind of ordered way so that I can reflect on what is going through my head. At times it brings me peace at times, at times it brings a lot of heart ache and grief. It’s kind of a burden that I cannot shake, I love it and hate it at the same time. Does that make sense?