An Interview with Kerry Ryan

When I was first asked to blog for the Writers Festival, one of my many demands, my shouting, fist-banging-table demands, was that I be allowed to interview Kerry Ryan. I had never met Kerry (I still haven’t, come to think of it), but I had read her collection of poems, The Sleeping Life, and I really enjoyed it.

I would like to thank Kerry for taking the time to answer the questions below, and encourage everyone to pick up her book.

(Psst, I heard a little rumor that Kerry Ryan and Hot Air's own Ariel Gordon, who has her own book of poems coming out soon, will be heading out on a reading tour some time in the near future. I'd keep my ear to the ground on this one, if I were you.)

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Brad Hartle: Many of your poems seem to exist somewhere between our sleeping and waking lives, and they do so with a very slow, dreamlike feel. In one, called writing to sleep, you write:

i fall asleep inside a poem,
inking dreams onto a page
until you gently slide the pen
out of my hand,
refill the aperture
with your fingers

Eyes like a camera and poems you feel asleep in. Its wonderful, and it seems sum up much of The Sleeping Life. What is it about this half-awake world that made you want to write about it?

Kerry Ryan: First of all, thanks. That’s a nice thing to say. But, really, sleep: it’s such a good idea. I love, and am fascinated by, anything sleep-related – including those delicious overlaps between sleeping and waking. I find it such mysterious territory to think about and write about, but at the same time, if I try to analyze it too much it kind of loses its charm. Like trying to explain your dreams to someone and realizing that they’re not actually funny or terrifying, or even that interesting. Dreams only work when you’re asleep. So, I guess, in the poems, I was just trying to capture the little bit of that that secret, crazy other life and pin it down to look at it in the daylight.

And, in some ways that semi-sleeping, half-dreaming experience is kind of like my writing process, in the sense that I might know where I’m starting out but then have no, or little control, over where I go or what happens. I like that too.

BH: There are also a few travel poems in the book, such as saturday night in new orleans. How do you go about writing travel poems and what are some things that you watch for while traveling?

KR: I really don’t think of a poem being a “travel poem” or having any kind of label like that. But I do write a fair bit about place, now that I think about it, whether it’s my house or my neighbourhood, or wherever I am in the world. I don’t consciously look at things and think “there’s a poem in that” but I find that I remember little details when I travel. And sometimes those details become the basis of a poem that tries to capture a place. My husband and I were in Portugal earlier this year and after a few days all the churches and castles and important landmarks kind of blurred together for me, but I remember that in Serpa – a gorgeous, ancient, picturesque town – there was an old guy wandering around whistling Jingle Bells really loud, in March. So, that’s the kind of thing I’d write about.

BH: The language in your poems is never pyrotechnical, in that it never seems like you are reaching for obscure words (like pyrotechnical). Rather, your poems flow with a very smooth and plain spoken tone. Is this something that you strive for while writing. If so, why?

KR: I’m not sure if I’m striving for it or if it’s my default. Honestly, I think it’s just that I don’t have a huge vocabulary. If I’m not comfortable using a word in a regular conversation, or have to look it up in the dictionary, I won’t use it in a poem – even if it has the sound and meaning I’m looking for. I definitely feel there are some words that are off limits because they’re just not me. I think my aesthetic tends toward simplicity – I love really spare line drawings, or, musically, just a guitar and a voice.

BH: Once you have an idea or a draft of a poem on the page, how do you go about revising and editing?

KR: For me, revising mostly means cutting stuff out, paring a poem down to the essentials. I can tinker with poems indefinitely. I never have much of a plan and I don’t really know what I’m doing (shh! don’t tell anyone) so, I just wing it – trying to figure out why a line or an image doesn’t feel right and playing with it until it does, or – often – cutting it if making it work is too hard.

BH: What's the best advice you have ever received about writing?

KR: Don’t quit your day job.

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Brad Hartle likes books. One day he may try to write one, though nothing is certain. For now, he spends his days in the basement of a big stone building in Downtown Winnipeg and his evenings in a big brick apartment in Crescentwood, where he lives with his wife, two cats, and a scattering of toothpicks, needed because he refuses to see a dentist. He is almost always happy.