Soliloquies Anthology

Outside it’s windy. I wonder about how long it’s going to be before the sickness gets here. It could be this breeze or the next one. It could be already here and we’re all already dead. Because I feel like my skin is peeling off most of the time. I feel like my head is going to explode and my flesh is on fire and if someone doesn’t touch me soon and use their fingers to remind me of the outline of my body I’m not going to exist anymore. This breeze or the next one. It could come at the end of this sentence, it could come in the middle of a vowel. I start to think about the letters in Pete’s name, that e that dips in the middle and stretches him into two syllables.

What I want is to get fucked so hard my whole body is a bruise. What I want is to run into Pete afterwards, reeking of semen. I want to ask him why he never calls me, and what the fuck he was thinking leaving his underwear underneath the bed. It’s not your bed anymore. I want to tell him his tattoo is stupid. Who are you to ask me how I’ve been? Who are you to ask me anything?

Not that if you asked me a question again sometime I wouldn’t answer and I wouldn’t try to be funny and charming and cute. Not that if you told me a joke I wouldn’t laugh, even if I didn’t think it was funny.

What I want is for Liam to tell me I’m pretty. He says, you’re pretty and our legs are tangled in the green fleece blanket. He says, you’re so pretty it makes me nervous. You’re the prettiest purple in the world. That’s why I lost my hard on. Not because you’re too hairy or you’re not flexible enough or you have too much cellulite, but because you’re so so pretty. Jeeze Louise you’re gorgeous. I saw God and he told me so. So pretty I can’t even touch you.

How pretty?

Holy mackerel it’s crazy. You’re as pretty as the page in The Great Gatsby where Jay kisses Daisy on a sidewalk in the moonlight. You’re as pretty as a drive through the mountains and the big horned sheep we pull over the car to admire. You’re as pretty as apricot chutney on focaccia bread. The lamb is roasted and the cheese is melted. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. I look at you and it feels like a Tyrannosaurus Rex is ripping my torso in two, so pretty it hurts, it aches and I think about all the ways in the world I will never deserve you. So pretty the aliens will take one look at you and they’ll take you to their planet and they’ll line up around the block just to catch a glimpse of you. So pretty the sickness can’t even touch you.

from Frankie Barnet’s Giant Lizard King

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Paula Wilson asks Frankie a few questions:

PW: Your forthcoming story in Soliloquies 15 is titled Decarie. How do you feel your move from Edmonton to Montréal has affected your writing?

FB: Probably the most obvious difference between living in Edmonton and Montréal is that I’m going to school here. I guess what is kind of interesting is that for a long time most of my stories were about Edmonton, even after I moved here. Decarie is probably the first story I wrote that is actually set in Montréal, written half way through my second year living in Montréal.

PW: How do you feel you’ve grown or changed as a writer since living here and entering Concordia’s Creative Writing program? Where would you like to go from here?

FB: I think that the program has been great in that it really immerses you in writing, which can be really inspiring. My friends and I have this joke that goes, “I’m in creative writing. Living is my homework.” It is kind of a funny joke and kind of true in that I think there’s a lot that goes into good writing that doesn’t happen in a workshop. That being said, the criticisms and encouragements I’ve gotten from my classmates and professors have been really great. I’m a little sad to be graduating next year and hope to continue on to grad school.

PW: What topics do you find yourself coming back to repeatedly in your writing? What topics would you like to tackle in the future?

FB: I got a lot of flack in class for always talking about sex and being pervy, so I’m trying to move away from that stuff for now. Lately I’ve been interested in the role of setting in a piece, and the dynamics between mental and physical escape. It’s weird, the themes you become fixated on sometimes, most everything I’ve been working on lately deals with the wilderness and the idealistic visions characters project onto such landscapes. Mostly this has been inspired by the documentary Grizzly Man, as Timothy Treadwell struggles to reconcile his romanticized notions of the Alaskan landscape with the dangerous and brutal reality of his surroundings. While such a fantasy is crucial for Treadwell–his relationship with the grizzly bears offers his life meaning–it is ultimately through this necessity that Treadwell meets his death (spoiler alert).

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Frankie Barnet is a new contributor, her short story Decarie is forthcoming in Soliloquies 15. Hailing from Edmonton, Alberta, Frankie is a young writer living in Montréal. She studies English Literature and Creative Writing at Concordia University.

Twenty Directions

A paperclip holds me together

Wax traps a whisper in my ear

Dry sand fills my mouth

A single palm tree dips in the distance

The scent of crushed coffee beans creaming

triggers a goosebump caravan up and down my spine

I can see the flavor of her chapstick

in the reflection of Jeremy’s San Diego shades

We’re lost in a forest, surrounded by pine

so we head back south

but Sarah won’t stop QQing about her feet

Nothing happens after something happens
C’est la vie

The stoic tablecloth of faith

is primped across a trio of table tops

Grinning into the opaque compact mirror between her toes

I levitate and tear from myself my soul

(What use is it anyway?)

The Hippie blogs every moment from below

Tomorrow we will regret this

Stapled to the sky a flame licks my insides

eyes seeping caffeine, screaming

“Walk with shoes if you don’t have feet!”

All the while the walnut dances with his wife

the rusty, southern sign points north

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Lizy Mostowski asks Matthew a few questions:

LM: As a young poet, are you consciously going for a certain aesthetic or do you allow your writing to flow freely and instinctually?

MM: I definitely try to allow my poetry to flow freely and instinctually during the initial scratches of pen to paper. Most of my writing hits the page between metro stops or when I’m up late at night unable to sleep. It’s rare that I’ll sit down in front of a computer for the purpose of writing a poem. For me, that step comes when I transcribe to a word processor, where the first conscious edits are made. I live for those moments when a good idea, a line, or even only a few words come to mind and I scramble to get them down on paper.

As I continue to grow as a writer, I find that my work is shrinking, becoming more concise, economical. I find myself trying to say more by writing less—influenced, admittedly, by the restrictive form of Social Media. While my style lends itself more to free verse than traditional modes, I do find pleasure in the occasional haiku. “Memory Key,” which has been selected for Soliloquies 15, is a good example of my use of free verse to express an overall idea and theme in a poem.

 

LM: You read at the Pilot in November, alongside Dean Garlick, Jacob Wren, David Clink, and Doug Harris. You gave a great, well received reading, in my opinion. Did you feel as though it was a learning experience, as a student, to have read alongside established authors? Is there any advice you would give to your peers? Is there anything you would change or improve on your reading?

MM: Reading at the Pilot Reading Series in November was awesome. I’m grateful for Professor Jon Paul Fiorentino providing my Advanced Creative Writing Poetry class with the opportunity to take part throughout the year. Also, kudos to my classmate, Heather Stewart, for her great reading that night.

As a writing student, any opportunity to take in a live reading by established authors is a learning experience. The lessons vary from technical—How close should I stand to the microphone?—to timing and style—When might be the best time to use a pause for emphasis? My revision process includes reading aloud, so I become aware of the details, the way a poem sounds, and how it all plays into the overall meaning.

When I decided which pieces to read live, I picked ones that served the form best. I suppose my advice to my peers with regards to readings would be: Practice and be comfortable with what you’re reading. You don’t necessarily need to memorize it, but you should memorize how your poem feels from one line to the next. Also, if you can to choose pieces that may actually gain depth from being read aloud, it will be all the better. Even if you’re not scheduled for a reading any time soon, you should prepare as if you were—you never know what you might discover about your own writing in process.

I grew a pretty gnarly handlebar moustache for “Movember” to raise money and awareness for prostate cancer. Being that it was the 29^th of November, my ‘stache was in full force in time for the reading. I think I’ll go with a cleaner look next time around.

 

LM: What do you plan to do with your Creative Writing degree, anyways?

MM: World domination, definitely. I’m all over place when it comes to writing. My earliest work comes in the form of some (real awful) poems I wrote a decade ago while I was in high school. Later on my writing took the form of articles about the Montreal Canadiens for HabsWorld.net where I served as Editor-in-Chief  for the 2007-2008 season, as well as a collaborator and editor from 2005 to 2009. Before entering the Creative Writing department at Concordia University, I was drawn to screenplays.

While screenwriting is still one of the paths I plan to follow, I have become intrigued by the storytelling potential of the video game medium. I recognize that video games are continuously evolving and have a lot to offer thanks to advances in technology.  Especially here in Montreal, a world leader in the industry, there is an increasing accessibility for a group of people who share a passion for games to get together and get creative. I’m confident the skills I pick up as I complete my Creative Writing degree will allow me the opportunity to find work that I will enjoy doing.

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Matthew Macaskill is a new contributor, his poem Memory Key is forthcoming in Soliloquies 15. He is entering his third year at Concordia University in the Creative Writing program. He’s a born and raised Montrealer who bleeds bleu-blanc-rouge.

Jeremy Hanson-Finger is a new contributor, his short story Black Clouds is forthcoming in Soliloquies 15.

LM: Soliloquies, in the past, has been more Concordia-based and has only recently expanded to accepting submissions from all over Canada. Having done your Master’s degree at Carleton University in Ottawa, how did you first hear about us?

JH: I went to high school in Victoria with Andrew Battershill, a previous Soliloquies contributor, and Peggy Hogan, a previous Soliloquies editor. We’ve stayed friends since.

LM: Your thesis is on “dirty bits in postmodern American novels”, what inspired your interest in American postmodern lit in particular? How do you feel that studying it has influenced your writing?

JH: My dad mainly. He was born on Long Island and started university at Rochester in 1967, so he was in an interesting place in a really interesting time. He took a class called “Literature of the Apocalypse” or something like that, which was all Coover and Barthelme and Pynchon and all those guys. So I got really into Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Robbins and Richard Brautigan in late high school on his recommendation, and then moved on to the heavier stuff during university.

My MA thesis was on the politics of carnival imagery and terror in Pynchon’s 1973 Gravity’s Rainbow and David Foster Wallace’s 1996 Infinite Jest – Wallace’s novel being in some ways a response to what he saw as the supposed co-optation of the postmodern techniques of Pynchon’s generation by mass media.

Anyway, what I got out of working on that was a really solid understanding of the various theories of transgression in art and literature. The most useful was Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection, which allowed me to contextualize a lot of the stuff I was getting at in my own writing in terms of ideas about human subjectivity and psychoanalysis. I think for a long time my writing has been about making people uncomfortable, but the academic approach at least gave me one framework for understanding what I was doing and some of the possible reasons why.

LM: Do you believe that it is important for a writer to have an academic background? Do you think that there is a strong relationship between your academics and your creativity?

JH: I don’t think it’s necessary. Some of the greatest writers are great because they didn’t know what writing was supposed to be from the canon. For me, I think it was a good choice, because I’m all about big ideas, and it’s big ideas that get me excited to write something, not narrative. Which means that my major problem is with narrative drive, something I’m still working on. My current inspiration is Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

LM: What inspired you to pursue a Master’s degree?

JH: I originally applied for a few creative writing MFA programs in the last year of my undergrad, but didn’t get in anywhere, just wait-listed at UBC. I had initially planned to just work for a year and try again, but job prospects were not promising in Ottawa at that time.

Basically it was just a, “well, if the economy sucks and I can get a scholarship and a TAship so that I come out more or less even, and I can spend a year studying really interesting stuff, why not?” sort of decision, but I’m really glad I made it. I loved being a TA – I gave the filthiest lecture my prof had ever heard to his third-year American Satire and Utopia class about Gravity’s Rainbow.

I did consider going on to do my PhD, but I was so burnt out by the end of the MA (and my hundred-page thesis on two 1000-page books) that I’m glad I didn’t commit to going straight through.

I might go back at some point, but now I have a job as an editorial assistant with a publishing house in Toronto, which is a really fascinating and useful thing to do for money while I work on creative projects at night.

LM: Can you tell us about the collection of short stories you’re working on, entitled Airplanes and Bad Things Happening to Women?

JH: My old roommate once pointed out that two things showed up in every single story she’d read of mine – airplanes, and bad things happening to women. So I figured I might as well embrace it. It’s currently 18 stories, ranging from one sentence to a 10,000 word story and a 30,000-word novella. They all combine humour with serious topics, generally focusing on the way in which men and women relate to each other. And airplanes. I guess in that respect it’s very influenced by David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Sort of David Lynch meets David Foster Wallace. 

LM: You’re co-editor of Dragnet Mag, a new online literary journal, launched recently by yourself and Concordia graduate Andrew Battershill. What inspired the creation of Dragnet Mag? What do you hope to see for the future of the journal? Can you tell us more about it?

JH: Andrew and I have always seen eye-to-eye on what sort of writing we like, and we realized that there were no electronic Canadian literary mags who published the kind of stuff we wanted to publish and took advantage of the unique opportunities of digital publishing. So we started Dragnet with the idea that it’d be a journal that published writing that didn’t take itself too seriously, even if it dealt with serious topics, and did so in a format that made it easy for everyone to read no matter what device they used.

As a result, Dragnet can be viewed on the website in columns that fit on one screen (nobody likes reading an endless single column of text), as a print magazine layout on Issuu.com, and as an ebook that works on eReaders and mobile devices. We had stories from Sheila Heti, Jacob Wren, and J.R. Carpenter in the first issue, along with a bunch of new writers, and so far we have something lined up from Susan Musgrave for the new issue, which comes out July 2.

We will have a booth at The Word on the Street literature festival in Toronto in the fall, which will hopefully get a lot of people interested – we will likely be the only digital-only magazine with a booth there. Our long term plan is to approach the government for funding and to get enough web traffic to sell ads, so that we can cover our costs and pay our amazing contributors.

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Jeremy Hanson-Finger attended Carleton University, where he wrote his MA thesis on dirty bits in postmodern American novels. He now lives in Toronto, where he is the co-editor of Dragnet Mag. He is currently working on a collection of short stories entitled Airplanes and Bad Things Happening to Women. Let it be known, however, that he likes women and doesn’t want bad things to happen to them.