Anansi: As you've evolved from serious reader, to academic, to educator, to, now, critic, how has your experience of reading changed over the years?
Katherine Parrish: The range of what I read has really broadened. You could say I read for two. (Or, really, for 140 per year, and then some!) I keep my hand in what's going on in really esoteric circles—critical theory, small press, avant-garde, digital poetry, and poetics, but I also read what might be considered more conventional novels and stories and poems, and even some young adult novels, because a lot of what I like is just too far removed from my students' expectations of how literature works. Not that I don't introduce that stuff to them as well. But I don't want them to think that good books have to be hard to read.
And I have to remember how much my own personal tastes have changed too. I read sci-fi and fantasy literature almost exclusively in high school. And in my early twenties, my boss at a second hand bookstore in Kingston once remarked that my taste in literature reminded him of that of his great-aunt. At the time, I was snatching up the essays of J.B. Priestly, G.K Chesterton, and Robert Louis Stevenson.
And when I read as a critic, it's similar to the way I read as a teacher. I want to shine a little more light on work that, on their own, most people wouldn't necessarily find or find their way inside.
Anansi: Shortly, you'll be back in the classroom. Has the summer break rewarded you with any new teachings to impart on your students?
KP: Oh geez, that's funny. I don't really think of what I do as imparting knowledge. I know what you mean, but the phrase feels really foreign. I actually used this summer to recharge. I figured if everyone's going to resent teachers for having their summers' off, I should probably give them something to resent and actually take a mental break from the job. But you know, it's when you're truly relaxed that the best ideas come. Like, while I was watching this charming YouTube video made by a fan for a Christine Fellows' song, I got about four ideas about how I could use it in the classroom. For example, this line:
here's the line break
to remind you
there has been a struggle
. . . would be a lovely way to explain one of the potential functions of a line break.
Anansi: Do you have a favourite Anansi author, or book, or passage?
KP: Just one? I remember reading Dennis Lee's yesno when it first came out. I was on the subway on the way to work, and I think the force of it propelled me right into the classroom. I burst in, waving it around wildly and said, Kids, kids, you've GOT to LISTEN to this. Last year, I got a group of my students who struggle with reading but seemed to have this great ear for poetry to do a choral reading of that same passage:
And nofull the species lacunae the alphazed shambles,
but yesward the clearwater improv & biogrit slog,
and noful the corporate borgias the aquagoth vaders,
but yesward the stewards emergent in homewhether stab,
and noful chromutant the decibel swoosh of warmwarming,
but yesward the jiminy wakeup to planetude lost -
and noful-but-yesward the herenow & bountyzip nowhere.
The class was split into a "noful" side and "yesward" side and they moved towards each other as they read. I think we managed to get it to work once. It was a bit like herding cats. Cacophony was their favourite word. But they loved it. And they understood it.
But looking at your backlist, I'm reminded that Anansi published Erín Moure's Furious. That's an important book. It should be on any contemporary poetry study list. Oh, yes. I also like it a lot. Which is not always the same thing.
And I'm also part of the Gil Adamson and Kevin Connolly fan club. I even sent away for the decoder ring.
And Daphne Marlatt's Ana Historic.
And . . .
Anansi: You've signed on to be a contributor to the new online review site, Agora. What about the online world appeals to you as a critic?
KP: There's just so much space and opportunity. You hear so much about the poor state of Canadian review culture—there's no absolutely no excuse for it when online publishing venues are relatively free.
I also the like that you can situate a review in so much context. There is no reading or interpretation without context. We all read from somewhere. And to be able to demonstrate very quickly where someone is writing from, or the critical context that shaped a particular reception—it helps to illustrate what for me is an absolutely fundamental premise: nobody writes in a vacuum, nobody reads in a vacuum. There. There's some knowledge that I do impart to my students. The link is a critical gesture.
