Anyone who has found his or her way onto rob mclennan’s e-mail list knows what a restless writer, publisher, and literary agent-provocateur he is. Streams of correspondence come my way, some of it broadcast and some of it imploring me in my capacity as editor of TNQ: Might I turn my eyes to this or that writer, event, opportunity, or literary dilemma? Lately, noting our earlier issues on the writers of Montreal (Issue #106) and Newfoundland’s Burning Rock (#91), he’s suggested I step up to an issue on Ottawa, a literary centre he believes is both underrated and over-looked.

Photo of rob mclennan by Christine McNair.

Rob’s own work (see his latest, Glengarry) is often grounded in a sense of place, so it should not be a surprise that he wants to champion his hometown, a place where he has spent much of his adult life publishing and promoting other writers as well as working on his own writing (two novels, a book of essays, and a travel book). I imagine him passing out Xeroxed broadsheets on Ottawa street corners—whatever it takes to bring the work of his fellow citizens before an audience of their own. So, I said to him, while I didn’t have an issue to devote, I’d be pleased to give him a soapbox on our blog. My questions and his answers below.

How long have you lived in Ottawa and how do you see your own role in relation to literary life in our capital city?

I returned to Ottawa, city of my birth and my mother’s family, in September 1989 when I was but nineteen years old, just in time to attend less than a month of university classes. My daughter Kate was born a little over a year later, and soon after, I became aware of literary activity in the city. I witnessed an exodus of some very active participants out of Ottawa in the mid-1990s, when folk such as Rob Manery, Louis Cabri, Mark Robertson (who later returned as Max Middle), Warren D. Fulton, Grant Shipway, Tamara Fairchild and others moved on, for the sake of other opportunities. I know there were some that were frustrated by the lack of options here, given that we had very little in the way of funding, publishing, university/college creative writing jobs, or media. Can you imagine, we have two major universities and not a single creative writing program, unlike cities like Regina, or Guelph? Stephanie Bolster left by the end of the decade, fresh from her GG win, for the sake of a teaching gig at Concordia University in Montreal. There was a part of me that thought about leaving as well, but for my lovely daughter. I remained and decided instead simply to make the city more livable, from organizing readings to launching the ottawa small press book fair, writing reviews, and doing a flurry of readings, writing, and publishing of my own. January 2012 will mark twenty years as events organizer, which is a bit frightening.

I think I originally saw my role as one of fulfilling a series of perceived lacks, from creating venues for reviews to chapbook publishing to launching the biannual small press fair to organizing and promoting readings. There was almost nothing of the sort when I arrived, and what little there was wasn’t terribly welcoming to anyone new or anything different. The old guard was strong, and awfully defensive. Looking back, I’ve long attempted a role of critical engagement and encouragement, ranging from above/ground press, the ottawa small press book fair, the ongoing reviewing on the blog, Poetics.ca, seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics, and the more locally-specific Chaudiere Books and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual journal ottawater, now seven issues old. Most of what and why we know of the Beat writers came through Allen Ginsberg as publicist and Lawrence Ferlenghetti as publisher, and we know of Calgary’s more contemporary range of writers through the work of filling Station and dANDelion, and more specifically, Derek Beaulieu. There’s just as much worthy happening in Ottawa that deserves to be encouraged, published, and promoted, so that’s where a good part of my ongoing energies go. To lift up any lift us all. I think, as the son of an Eastern Ontario dairy farmer, I learned early the essential benefits of living within a community.

Would you say that the Ottawa literary scene has a distinctive character—i.e. is it just an interesting mix of whoever washed up on those shores or is there something about the voices of Ottawa writers that really grounds them in place?

I’ve noticed over the years that there are a number of misconceptions about the City of Ottawa, that we’re predominantly a city of transients, and that no-one is actually from here. When you think of the literary life of any city, who the particular essentials actually are, do we think about whether or not they were born in that place? I was born here, as were many other Ottawa writers; we aren’t any more transient than any other city, I think.

That being said, a particular voice? I’m not sure about that. I know Ottawa poetry has long had two threads running through it, from the official one that runs through Arc Poetry Magazine, and historically, the University of Ottawa (Seymour Mayne) and Carleton University (Christopher Levenson, Michael Gnarowski, Frank Tierney) and the poets that emerged in the 1980s—Colin Morton, John Barton, Blaine Marchand, Sandra Nicholls, Nadine McInnis[TNQ #103]—and another thread of a more rebellious kind, from William Hawkins to Michael Dennis, Dennis Tourbin and Riley Tench to Rob Manery and Louis Cabri, to jwcurry and Max Middle. Of course, there are always the individual offshoots, from John Newlove to Diana Brebner to Robert Hogg and others. Can any of this be considered any kind of singular voice?

For parts of the 1990s, I was reminded about what Björk talked about for Icelandic music: only one punk band, one country band, one folk band, etcetera, but we’re far richer now.

Are Ottawa writers any more or less interested in the machinations of government than writers from other places? I know TNQ has published one of a series of stories by Ottawa writer Jean Van Loon on the lives of government bureaucrats—not your usual literary terrain, but she really taps the drama of people whose lives are hostage to politics.

I don’t know anyone here any more interested than anyone else, and the only writer I know writing overtly on the doings of Parliament Hill is Toronto writer André Alexis, in his most recent novel, Asylum. Life on the hill seems so far removed from what any of the rest of us are doing.

Does Ottawa invest in the literary life of the city?

When I arrived in Edmonton to begin my writer-in-residence year, I had to confront a number of preconceptions Albertans (among others) seem to carry around with them, that Ottawa writers (or Ottawa residents) have more direct access to altering government policies, or direct access to, say, Canada Council funding, than other corners of the country. Ottawa has a long history of having some of the worst per-capita arts funding in the entire country, and Canada Council actually admitted out loud a couple of years ago that they give less ground-level funding to Ottawa artists because they fund such things as the National Arts Centre and the National Gallery. I don’t see much of that money trickling down to the likes of me or mine. And the Ontario Arts Council grants, I know, go predominantly to Toronto-area artists, though that may just be a reflection of the concentration of population. Still, all of this can’t help but make a body feel as though we’re being mandated out of existence.

We are always amused by the OAC’s definition of “regional writer”—anyone outside of the greater Toronto area! You’ve said things in the past that indicate you feel Ottawa is neglected as a literary centre that in many ways rivals Toronto. Discuss!

I’ve long been frustrated by this. I presume that you are aware, as well, that we exist in one of the few provinces without a provincial writer’s guild? We’d get more support if we lived in Dundurn, Saskatchewan or Leduc, Alberta or Gibson’s Landing, British Columbia. Ottawa was one of the two main centres of literary life back in the 1800s, alongside Fredericton, just before Montreal and Toronto took that over for a couple of decades.

There was a point in the mid-1990s that Ottawa produced a dozen or more self-proclaimed literary periodicals, from Arc magazine, STANZAS, graffito: the poetry poster, Bywords, The Carleton Arts Review, Missing Jacket and more. And yet, we get overlooked. Ottawa repeatedly produces and/or develops bestselling, award-winning, nationally and internationally acclaimed writers, including John Metcalf [TNQ #112], Elizabeth Hay [#113], Elisabeth Harvor [#113], Michael Blouin, Mary Jane Maffini, Mark Frutkin, Mary Borsky [#100], Charles de Lint and Nadine McInnis [#103]. And yet we get overlooked.

It becomes increasingly frustrating to have so much talent and activity and still be passed over, including authors who do book tours from Toronto to Kingston to Montreal (not here), or The Capilano Review editing a “six cities” issue (without us), or even your issue on Montreal (jealous!). All of that was exceptionally cool, but when does Ottawa get its turn? Every couple of years Prairie Fire will have a Winnipeg issue; where’s ours? Even our daily newspaper, the Ottawa Citizen’s “Book” section; I haven’t had a single book I’ve been involved in as author, editor, or publisher reviewed in its pages, which makes some near-forty titles over the past decade or so. When I was in Edmonton, I was amazed and impressed to see Alice Major get a major review in the Edmonton Journal, as well as the same in both of their weeklies. Arc poetry magazine seems to have scaled back on their reviews of titles by Ottawa authors since John Barton left which means that certain titles by Ottawa authors might not see a single review (something I have a serious problem with, and work very hard to correct). What’s the point of producing more books unless we discuss and work to understand what we’ve already done?

You recently forwarded Amanda Earl’s list of 5 literary things about Ottawa that ran on Open Book Ontario. What would be on your own list of five?

It was a pretty impressive list, so I honestly don’t know what I’d be able to add, certainly not alter as an essential list of only five. I’m glad she included jwcurry, who has been far more active in Ottawa these past few years, producing polyvocal events with various groups of performers such as “Messagio Galore.” The last one was magnificent, and they’re already working up to a further performance at the spring edition of the Ottawa International Writers Festival.

Where else, in your estimation, is the real excitement in Ottawa, the writers, publications, literary events that are shaking things up, making Ottawa an exciting place for a writer to be?

There are a whole slew of things that make Ottawa literary life worth it, from bywords.ca to the Writers Festival to jwcurry’s Room 302 Books to the AB Series. It’s never one or two things, but the number and the range of writers, events, and activities. I’ve probably covered this far better throughout, through other answers.

And who’s new on the scene—poet, fiction writer, essayist, critic—that you’re excited by? And who are the stalwarts, the writers without whom the Ottawa literary scene would not have long endured?

With various writers leaving town throughout the 1990s, it did seem as though there were gaps in activity. But writers such as Stephen Brockwell, John Lavery, Rhonda Douglas, David O’Meara, Monty Reid and jwcurry appeared in the late 1990s, and have been regular participants since, and over the past few years, other writers have either moved into Ottawa or emerged, including Pearl Pirie, Sandra Ridley [TNQ #114], Michael Blouin, Christine McNair, Amanda Earl, Matthew Firth, Marcus McCann (who has since moved to Toronto, but still participates fairly regularly) and Max Middle. Peter Norman and Melanie Little were here for a few years, just before they left for her Calgary position as writer-in-residence at the University.

Pearl Pirie is slowly working her way up into writing essays, for example, and recently won the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry; I’m very excited to see her second poetry collection appear next year with Snare. There are forthcoming books by Sandra Ridley (her second, with Pedlar), Michael Blouin (his second novel) and Christine McNair (BookThug). I’m excited to watch emerging writers such as Amanda Earl, Cameron Anstee, Ben Ladouceur, Chris Turnbull and Marilyn Irwin, all of whom are at various stages of working up to first collections. Of course there are probably plenty of names I’m unintentionally leaving out. The whole scene here is open, friendly, critically challenging, and damned vibrant.

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Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections Glengarry, kate street, 52 flowers (or, a perth edge)—an essay on Phil Hall—and wild horses and a second novel, missing persons. An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau Review, seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater, and has edited numerous collections for Insomniac Press, Black Moss Press, Broken Jaw Press and Vehicule Press, and, in June 2010, a special “Canadian issue” of the Swiss online pdf poetry journal Dusie. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com. He is currently working to complete another novel or two, a collection of short short stories, and a post-mother creative non-fiction work entitled “The Last Good Year.”

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