Zoe Whittall is the author of The Best Ten Minutes of Your Life, a collection of poetry published by McGilligan Books in 2001. She is also the editor of the short fiction collection Geeks, Misfits & Outlaws. Her first fiction collection of short stories, Bottle Rocket Hearts & Other Stories, is forthcoming with Cormorant Books. She is currently at work on a novel about an agoraphobic in Parkdale and a Y.A. novel about sex and fundamentalism. Her fiction and poetry appear in many anthologies including Breathing Fire 2: Canada's New Poets, edited by Lorna Crozier & Patrick Lane; Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity, edited by Chloe Brushwood-Rose & Anna Camilleri; Bent: On Writing, edited by Elizabeth Ruth; Girls Who Bite Back, edited by Emily Pohl-Weary; and Ribsauce, edited by Taien Ng-Chan. Other interesting facts about Zoe are that she weighed one pound at birth and her first word was "more". At 30, she enjoys making fancy salads, writing lists and evading her creditors. Originally from South Durham, Quebec, she has lived in Toronto for the past ten years.
Dani Couture interviewed Zoe Whittal in August of 2006.
At an age where many writers are just having their first book published, you already have an extensive publishing history. What is it like for you now to see work you likely wrote in your late teens and early twenties in print?
Well, it depends on my attitude. Sometimes it horrifies me to think that poems I wrote at 21 are published in my first book, The Best Ten Minutes of Your Life. I didn't have a lot of hands-on editing for that book, and I look back and think it really could've used a lot more work. At the same time, I'm quite proud of it. I was 25 when it came out, and I still have an affection for the odd phrase or witty remark or snapshot. For a long time I couldn't read it, it made me crazy. But I don't know how much of that is about age; I find a lot of writers I've asked will say they are shy or embarrassed about their earlier work, even if they published it at 30 or 40. I also think that at 25 I had this impression I was incredibly mature and tough and so of course thought I'd be published by then. I remember being so scared it wouldn't come out until I was 26 and 26 felt old. The arrogance is hilarious to remember.
A lot of the poems are confessional, straight-up autobiography, which I think was influenced by my age, and also because that's what I loved to read at the time - I was hugely inspired by performance poetry which tends to be on the confessional side, and all queer writing from that time (the late 90s) was very much from the school of personal is political. While writing that book I'd read The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruptions of One Girl in America by Michelle Tea, I read Chelsea Girls by Eileen Myles, and Wendy O Matik's poetry and a lot of non-fiction feminist essays or personal zines and comics about identity, so that's where I was at.
It was a lesson in both humiliation and strength and audacity, in a good way, to publish that young.
I wrote a novel at that time too, and I'm very VERY VERY grateful that never saw the light of day. Oh my god, it was horrible stuff. But it had some themes that were very marketable at the time, so I think it could've been published if I'd sent it out. Luckily, I held out. I think it would've been a career ender.
On your blog - Our love is God, let's go get a Slushie - you chronicle everything from upcoming literary events to extremely personal ruminations. Visitors are afforded an intimate look at parts of your life not often shared with the general public. Do you find blogging cathartic? Does it affect your writing?
Well, it's funny because I've been blogging for about 8 years now, always anonymously, or semi-anonymously, and I've tended to be really personal in that forum. So I've been quite careful about what I write on my blog as I intended it to be a space to focus on my writing career and promoting upcoming readings and not just my everyday observations. There have been a few times where I've chronicled some personal things, but I guess I thought I was being vague enough. Often I write things that seem confessional but they're totally made-up. Part of the whole fiction writer / liar line that I love to cross over and over. Perhaps I'm just not great at mystery. Hmm. I do tend to blurt out inappropriately honest things when I speak to people in person so perhaps it's part of that. I'm mildly tourrettic.
You had an active literary life in Montreal before you moved to Toronto. Do you feel that you've lived two separate literary lives?
My life in Montreal - although I used to think of it as spanning a long time - was really only three years, from 18-21. I never thought about publishing back then. I made 'zines and I maybe thought about being in an anthology at some point, but I wasn't really certain I wanted to be a writer. I guess I felt like a bit of a faker, that I didn't look or act like a real writer. It's quite possible to be a performance poet at 18 and an event organizer - I used to put on an open-mic riot grrl inspired event every month - but a real writer was quite another story. I was also a musician and sound artist and activist so until I moved to Toronto where all the writers seemed to take themselves so terribly seriously, I didn't consider focusing on my career as an author. It just sounded overly-entitled and strange. Once I started submitting to journals and getting my work accepted, taking classes and cornering any author that I met to give me the key to their success, then I realized my stacks and stacks of stories and poems I scribbled in my journals could become something good enough to be read.
So yes, in Montreal I felt like a performer and in Toronto I felt like a writer, eventually.
Can you describe your latest poetry project, "The Emily Valentine Poems"?
Not really? Okay. Sure. Uh. Emily Valentine was a character on 90210 who appeared for a few episodes and she was fairly butchy or tomboy like - for TV - and she seduced the good-boy Brandon and got everyone to take drugs and fucked up their little lives and then she went nuts, of course. The book has a section of fan letters written to 80s icons, mostly concerned with thoughts on fame, madness and how being a 'bad-ass' girl (I mean that sarcastically) relates to both celebrity and instability. She's one of the 80s pop icons I wrote fan letter poetry to, so I decided to title the collection after her. A lot of the book was written while I was writing and performing collaboratively with Lisa Foad and Hadassah Hill for a sound project called Trash & Ready. We wrote and performed work mostly about queer culture, sex, gender, class and used music, costuming and sound to create this cabaret circus show. It was fun and sometimes awful but I learned a lot. I came home from touring little towns and wrote poetry geared more towards the page, which became the Emily Valentine Poems. I was also reading more experimental poetry and prose poets at the time, so I think that shows.
They are mostly prose poems that look at femininity, pop culture and anxieties. That sounds boring. Ok, the back cover that my editor wrote sounds better and here it is:
"...an innovative book that challenges the impossible notions of femininity that permeate our culture."
Does growing up on a sheep farm inherently make one a good poet?
Ha ha. Come to think of it - poets and sheep farmers are a lot alike. There's a similar lack of recognition for sheep farmers. The dairy farmers are like the novelist big-shots, getting all the government money and buying fancy cars while the sheep farmers just sort of hang out thinking their flocks and farms are special and interesting but they'll never make much money from it but they're still kinda cool.
Sheep are so quiet and contemplative, I think all that time I had as a kid to just sit around watching them in groups while they chewed their cuds and looked adorable and out of touch with reality, that was probably good for cultivating the patience necessary for being a poet. I think I always mention my shepherd past in my bio because I have a hang up about people thinking I'm from Toronto.
Finally, is there a question you've always wished someone would ask you in an interview?
Yes, I always hope they'll ask me to give them a mixed tape playlist. So here's mine:
And You Belong to Me - Scream Club (feat. Amy fantastic)
Marilyn Monroe Sleepover - Stink Mitt
Your Ex-lover is Dear - Stars
Maps - the yeah yeah yeahs
Polyester Bride - liz phair
The chronicles of Sarnia - final fantasy
Content, was always my favorite color - the most serene republic
Just to get by - talib kwali
Good enough - Cyndi Lauper
Standing in the Way of Control - The Gossip
#1 Must Have - sleater Kinney
the district sleeps alone tonight - postal service
the boyfriend song - gentleman reg
growing up in Springfield - team dresch
left & leaving - the weakerthans
always on my mind - willie nelson
Canadians have an odd relationship to the U.S. We define ourselves against them, first of all. Many of us in urban centres find guns appalling, our history is closer to compromise than conflict, possibly born out of the need to accommodate both French and English, and the same need has introduced a greater love -- at least in theory -- of diversity, and a recognition diversity is a strength, not a weakness. There is a distinct Canadian identity that Canadians...continue reading
Your second collection of poems, The Cold Panes of Surfaces, is out now. Your first book, Bonfires, won the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award in 2004. Did winning a national award for your first book bolster your artistic confidence while working on your second, or did you find it daunting, as though you had more to live up to than other poets working on a second collection?
I think it certainly gave me a boost of confidence and the permission I needed to do what I wanted to do artistically with the second book. I didn't feel any outside pressure because of winning the CAA award, or feel that I had any expectations to live up to. Winning the award was terrific, and it was good publicity, but it was also an education on how fleeting such praise can be, and how it leaves your writing life virtually...continue reading