Reprint: 8-Ball

JB: What is your ambition as a writer—what do you want to accomplish, personally and professionally?

AG: I see books – and individual units of writing such as poems, poem sequences, short stories, and novels – as records of human endeavour. We natter to ourselves, we natter to our readers. Something changes.

As someone whose first book is coming out this year, I’m greatly anticipating being part of the larger conversation…

Beyond that, I mostly want to be able to negotiate a relatively secure insecurity for myself, which translates into time and space in which to write the next thing and the thing after that, always reaching for what I’m not currently capable of.

The rest of it I have very little control over, so I won’t speculate...

* * *

Sometime before Xmas, Winnipeg/Calgary/Winnipeg poet Jonathan Ball asked me if I would agree to an e-interview, to accompany the growing legions of e-interviews of poets on his blog.

(The gimmick being that he asks each poet the same eight questions...)

I wasn't able to get to it until early January and, even so, I had to set up my computer on my dining room table, as I haven't yet unpacked my 3rd floor office.

I'm sort of tickled that it appeared on his blog the same week as the launch of his first book, as it feels sort of apt...

Anyways, for the answers to the other seven questions Jonathan Ball put to me (and every single other poet), click here.

Fun! (And: Congrats, Jonathan!)