DAVID MCGIMPSEY

David McGimpsey for DESK SPACE



I picked up this desk when I lived in Halifax when I was completing my doctorate at Dalhousie University. It's a banker's desk which was originally stored in the basement of Entitlement Books on Barrington Street. The desk took up more than half the space of my little study room in my apartment at the time but I loved its hugeness and sturdiness - the way it could support shelves and a TV! It's kind of a classic anti-IKEA type desk. It's been my main workplace ever since: the physical center of my work life and a spiffy place to put my Colonel Sanders piggy bank.

ZOE WHITTALL

DESK SPACE Who?

ZOE WHITTALL Zoe Whittall, novelist, poet, unicorn.

DS When did you start writing, publish your first book or when are you publishing your next?

ZW Started writing at 18. Published at 25. Fourth book, Precordial Thump, out in October 08.

DS Where do you write?

ZW At cafes in my neighbourhood, or lately, in the blue chair featured in the photograph.



DS Why do you work where you do?

ZW Right now, I am broke so can't spend tons of cash in a cafe with my laptop, so I've made myself comfortable in this cozy corner. It's a quiet spot, close enough to the coffee maker, far enough from the TV with fairly inconsistent cell reception so I can avoid my text-addiction.



DS What are you working on now?

ZW Final substantive edits on a new novel, copyedits on the poetry book, a book review, homework, my resume and to-do list.

This week on DESK SPACE

Monday: Zoe Whittall

Wednesday: David McGimpsey

Friday: Susan Glickman

ANDREW PYPER

Andrew Pyper for DESK SPACE

DESK SPACE Who (a witty one-liner or a bio)?

ANDREW PYPER I'm a novelist who (obviously) doesn't care about the conditions of where he works.

DS When did you start writing, publish your first book or when are you publishing your next?

AP My first book was a collection of stories, Kiss Me, published in 1996. (God, that sounds like a long time ago).

DS Where do you write (at your desk/outside/in bed)?

AP I work in my basement, at a crappy, "temporary" desk I've been using for seven years. I deserve better, I think - but I'd rather be working than shopping for new office furniture or tidying.

DS Why do you work where you do (at you desk because it is a quiet space/outside b/c it helps you think/in the park b/c you can smoke, etc)?

AP I work at home, in the basement, because it's close, and because it's so ugly here nobody wants to come down to disturb me

JERAMY DODDS

Jeramy Dodds for DESK SPACE

DESK SPACE Who (a witty one-liner or a bio)?

JERAMY DODDS Friend of the Animals, Poet, Amateur Enthusiast.

DS When did you start writing, publish your first book (or when are you publishing your next)?

JD I started writing during puberty because talking was impossible. I couldn’t get anything published for an eon and a day. Some things have changed, some of the people close to me have died and the natural environment has dilapidated. And Coach House Books is about to publish my first collection of poems, in a day or two, we’re calling it Crabwise to the Hounds.

DS Where do you write (at your desk/outside/in bed)?

JD I write in longhand while pirouetting around the room on my wheeled office chair, or surveying the circumference of my estate, or during commutes to and fro from work, or fulfilling visitations with family and friends. I sit at my desk only during the editing of final drafts. But I like sitting there, it means the poem has come through a lot; a lot of nay saying, ridicule, injustice and paratrooper-type hazings, and it is now time to treat it like a business partner, one who is no longer silent but has shown up with all the start-up cash needed to build a Christopher Walken theme park.

DS Why do you work where you do (at your desk because it is a quiet space/outside b/c it helps you think, in the park b/c you can smoke, etc)?

JD The Desk is not only a structure that interrupts gravity, keeping my laptop going to smithereens. The desk means business. It has all the needed utensils at hand, dictionaries, tumblers of vodka, trinkets of nostalgia and woe and best of all it doesn’t criticize, much. It is a platform, sure, but it is also a friend. When I’m at the Panel (the name of my desk) I am unstoppable and decadent, if only for a moment. It is here that I want to be found when the revolution begins, it is here where the shore meets sea, meets the horizon, meets the crass neighbours of our dreams.

DS What are you working on now?

JD I am translating the Poetic Edda from Old Norse/Icelandic to English. I’ve been at it for a few years now and I might be close to having a third of it done. I’ve been trying to teach myself Old Norse as I go along, but I am a poor teacher and one of those students who are easily interrupted by the janitor’s closet door ajar. I’m thinking of subtitling the work, ‘Speculations from the Old Norse’ instead of translations. I’m also really into robotics right now, so I’m trying to make some baroque cog and elliptically driven machine that will answer these kinds of questions for me.

SOUVANKHAM THAMMAVONGSA

Souvankham Thammavongsa for DESK SPACE

DESK SPACE Who (a witty one-liner or a bio)?

SOUVANKHAM THAMMAVONGSA Souvankham Thammavongsa is the author of two poetry books from Pedlar Press, Small Arguments (2003) and Found (2007).

DS When did you start writing (publish your first book, or when are you publishing your next)?

ST I first started writing when I learned how to spell my name correctly.

At 11, I published a short story about abuse and violence titled "Penny." I used the real names of my teachers because their names were easy to spell but my teacher thought this was a "confession" and reported it to the Principal who called social workers.

I thought it was funny and I loved that everyone was reading my short story.

In 2003, my first book was published by Pedlar Press. The poems in it were published as a series of chapbooks I printed and bound and sold out of my knapsack for five years.

I'm not sure when I'm going to publish my next. I just want to watch television right now.

DS Where do you write (at your desk/outside/in bed)?

ST I write in the corner of my house.

Why do you work where you do (at you desk because it is a quiet space/outside b/c it helps you think or in the park b/c you can smoke, etc)?

I write where I do because it's clean. There is no distraction or intimidation. Or room for anyone else. It’s just a corner. It makes me feel like I’m in trouble and I’ve been sent away. My job there is to prove I’m good enough to come back.

DS What are you working on now?

ST I’m working collaboratively with Kat Burns. She’s taking some of my poems and putting them on film for Nuit Blanche. I’m also working with Paramita Nath who is turning Found into a five-minute film for Bravo.

This week on DESK SPACE

Coming up on DESK SPACE

Monday: Souvankham Thammavongsa

Wednesday: Jeramy Dodds

Friday: Andrew Pyper

LEAH HAYES

Leah Hayes for DESK SPACE

DESK SPACE Who?

LEAH HAYES I'm an illustrator living in New York and I draw comics. I like to play music with friends and I like to teach kids how to make cartoons. I have a twin sister, and I love my computer.

DS When did you start writing, publish your first book (or when are you publishing your next)?

LH I started writing my first book in college senior year, during class. I had a wonderful teacher named Frank Olinsky who inspired me very much, and he also allowed me to doodle in class. I wrote a book of my doodles, basically, and sent them to Fantagraphics.

My second book came out 2 years later, and hopefully my next one will not take as long!

DS Where do you write (at your desk/outside/in bed)?

LH I write in my house, in various places. I work from home, and for a while I would write at restaurants. I made a lot of weird friends that way.

DS What are you working on now?

LH I'm working on my next book, and I'm getting things together to write a children's book. I'm working on some record covers for friends, as well. And my next album.

SHANE NEILSON

Shane Neilson for DESK SPACE


What are these giant mounds? It may seem like a visual pun, but the truth is: I write on my laptop. I have no real desk per se; I write anywhere, when there is time. What if someone is in the same room, watching television? I just put earphones in. Papers are scattered throughout the house; books are piled up everywhere, so there is not a discrete picture I can send which is representative of a writer's space.

Why do I do this? Because I've found the very need for space claustrophobic. When the writing is going well, I take it as my due; when the writing is going poorly, I've found I begin to blame where I am, if that place is static. So I've stopped using a dedicated space and have become more flexible. My wife is happier with that arrangement; it doesn't create a resentful no-go zone for her. It used to be that I needed routine, I needed "space" cleared away; but now I'm taking Tom Waits' advice when he referred to the barroom phase of his career, when he found that his hands on the piano were like old dogs: going to the same old places. Time for new tricks.


This horrible floral couch is like a butterfly bush: I alight here sometimes. It is outside of shouting distance of my family, and if there is any locus of me being "away" from them it is here. Though I am often interrupted and am never really free. But really it's just me and the laptop; I don't think of this place as a refuge or den, merely a place where I am at just one remove. Again, there is no desk.


Acquiescing to the raison d'etre of this site, perhaps the most important desk in my life is the one that holds the accoutrements of writing: soda, coffee, remote control, pen, phone. I never write on it, it's too low and at the wrong angle, but the computer may rest on it when I'm done or about to start. Because it is not recognized as "mine", you might see snacks on it (my wife's) and tissue (my daughter's), as you do in this picture. We're messy!

I have purposely not shown bookshelves (boring) because these are technically not desk spaces. My own shelves are perhaps interesting because I have never sold a book; I have all the books that I have ever and never read. This means that I need bigger and bigger homes as the years pass. My poor parents- their basement is festooned.

DESK SPACE Who?

SHANE NEILSON I am mere.

DS When?

SN I was first a reader, and that remains inveterate. My first chapbook was published with Frog Hollow Press in 2003. My first trade collection comes out with Biblioasis in 2009. I like to think that there will be more, but when is so demanding a question, Miss Christie!

DS Where?

SN Anywhere. I am not the prissy ordered sort that requires a dedicated space. I write as my daughter bounces around, as my wife asks where I managed to lose the remote. I am interrupted often and only resent that a little. Music is always playing. Sometimes the CFL on TSN is on mute. Or the poor old Leafs. Or my wife, who has found the remote and switched on Coronation Street.

DS Why?

SN Well, I object to the smoking part of this question. I would. After all, I'm a doctor. Smoking is very, very stupid. But... I write anywhere because my wife feels I am more a part of the family that way: she hates me disappearing for hours on end. So I learned to write amidships.

CLAIRE CAMERON

(Click on image to see Claire Cameron's desk notes! It includes some annotations, which Cameron also does for the notebook pages she has up on her website)

Claire Cameron for DESK SPACE

DESK SPACE Who (a 'witty' one-liner or a bio)?

CLAIRE CAMERON Claire Cameron a barefoot and pregnant writer living in Toronto.

DS When did you start writing, publish your first book (or when are you publishing your next)?

CC My first novel, The Line Painter, was published by HarperCollins last year.

DS Where do you write (at your desk/outside/in bed)?

CC At my desk. I am 8+ months pregnant at the moment, so I have a series of three chairs that I rotate through while I'm writing. The arse, you see, gets quite sore.

DS Why you work where you do (at you desk because it is a quiet space/outside b/c it helps you think or in the park b/c you can smoke)?

CC I write at my desk, because I have notebooks post-it's, reference books and scribbles all around my computer that I might need to reference at any time (though rarely do). I had a vision of myself writing in a coffee shop, but I can't. Too many distractions.

DS What are you working on now?

CC My second novel, which might be called Truth & Beauty in Beijing -- or possibly not.

Next week on DESK SPACE

Coming up on DESK SPACE

Monday: Claire Cameron

Wednesday: Shane Neilson

Friday: Leah Hayes

MICHAEL LISTA

Michael Lista for DESK SPACE



My apartment has four rooms: bedroom, john, office, kitchen.



This is the office.



Turn right another 90 degrees to find the elusive poet eating Captain Crunch. The picture above my head, above the bookshelf, is titled "The Death of the Young Poet" -- a spectacular find from W.S. Welsh Bookstore on St. Viateur. The print shows a wan young man having just expired below an open window, to his left a chest of papers all-too recently torn up, burned, one can assume tearfully etc..., and a single candle on the night table caught a moment after being extinguished. i.e. Money.



The desk. The painting above the desk is by an old roommate, Josh Guthrie, painted when he used to drink a lot of Olde English. The desk is my dad's from college. The piles tend not to make sense. On the far right today is Bloom's controversial "Best Poems in the English Language" anthology, second-to-right are translations still to do, then Layton, then the MS, obscured by chair, then Hamlet, then Dante, the last two for self-intimidatory purposes. To the right is the kitchen but don't go in there. It's not clean.

DESK SPACE Who?

Michael Lista Michael Lista, poet.

DS When?

ML My first book, Bloom, is forthcoming from the House of Anansi. Published in Canadian and British journals and mags including The Malahat Review, PRISM International, Canadian Literature, and the art magazine Border Crossings. Poems from my first book are also included in The Best of Canadian Poems in English, appearing in September.

DS Where?

ML I almost always write at my desk and am panicked about working anywhere else. I love this room. But I've been rambling a bunch this summer and have done some of the best work I've ever done away from it.

DS What?

ML Still finishing my first book -- fingernails to cut, a nose to blow. Then I'll do something else.

TONY BURGESS

Tony Burgess for DESK SPACE

DESK SPACE Who (a witty one-liner or a bio)?

TONY BURGESS Tony Burgess is a writer which is, believe or not, a fall back plan.

DS When did you start writing, publish your first book (or when are you publishing your next)?

TB Uh…was dirty little scribbler as a boy…and published my first book, the helllmouths of bewldey in 1997. sort of I don’t write individual books but rather shove stuff down sheep intestines and pinch when I get a good length. They are samey but that’s what you want in a good weiner.

DS Where do you write (at your desk/outside/in bed)?

TB Write at the desk. Sometimes take a notebook down to the coffee shop and do some longhand stuff…I like doing that, my hand writing is so messed up it feels like I’m drawing.

DS Why do you work where you do (at you desk because it is a quiet space/outside b/c it helps you think, in the park b/c you can smoke, etc)?

TB Desk, because its here and not there. Don’t really find that where I am matters…mostly when. Has to be early in the morning then over by lunch. Can’t write when the day has started already. Have to sneak it up and under what’s gonna happen.

DS What are you working on now?

TB Uh…young adult novel called Idaho Winter. And a weiner book called Ravenna Gets. So, you know…fun…makin shit up still, so I’m alright.

This Week on DESK SPACE

Coming this week on DESK SPACE

Tuesday: Tony Burgess

Thursday: Michael Lista

STEPHEN HENIGHAN

Stephen Henighan for DESK SPACE

DESK SPACE Who (a witty one-liner or a bio)?

STEPHEN HENIGHAN [Sorry -- not witty]

Stephen Henighan, Canadian writer

DS When did you start writing, publish your first book (or when are you publishing your next)?

SH I started writing seriously at 11. I published my first newspaper article at 13, my first short story at 19 and my first novel at 30.

DS Where do you write (at your desk/outside/in bed)?

SH I write at a desk in what used to be a doctor's office.

DS Why do you work where you do (at your desk because it is a quiet space/outside b/c it helps you think, in the park b/c you can smoke, etc)?

SH It's quiet, it's away from the street, and there's a rabbit in the back yard which sometimes watches me while I'm writing.

DS What are you working on now?

SH I'm finishing a short story and taking notes for a new novel.

PAUL VERMEERSCH

Paul Vermeersch for DESK SPACE

DESK SPACE Who (a one-liner or a bio)?

PAUL VERMEERSCH Paul Vermeersch is a poet, editor, and teacher. You’d probably like him.

DS When did you start writing, publish your first book (or when are you publishing your next)?

PV I can never answer the question about when I started writing. I think people who have a definite answer to that question are bullshitting a little bit, or self-mythologizing. It’s always something cute or profound or interesting. They’ll say things like they read Pushkin when they were eight and then they knew what they wanted to do with their lives, or they’ll have some story about publishing their first poem in a local paper before they could walk. When I was a kid, I wasn’t in touch with high culture at all. I read corny adventure stories, if I read anything at all, and I wrote funny (to me) rhymes and verses, but even then I was more inspired by novelty songs than by Ogden Nash or Robert Service. Mostly, I watched cartoons and the Three Stooges. I didn’t have a literary mind then, not that I was aware of, but I liked to draw pictures, and I liked to build things. Creativity in general appealed to me. Those funny rhymes would eventually evolve into more serious attempts at writing, and a more serious interest in reading, but I can’t tell you there was a watershed moment. When I became more interested in tragedy than comedy, creatively speaking, maybe something shook free inside my head that gave me access to deeper thoughts. I still think of myself as a learner. I hope I always will. My first book, Burn, was published in 2000.

DS Where do you write (at your desk/outside/in bed)?

PV I write all over the place, sometimes with a pen, sometimes directly on the computer. I do a lot of writing at my desk, sure, but sometimes I write on the couch while watching a favourite movie or listening to music. Sometimes I write on the train on my commute to work (these days I teach at Sheridan College in Oakville). I’m not usually one for writing in cafes or pubs, though now and then it seems to help, especially when I’m suffering from a little cabin fever. But when I get down to final edits and revisions, or when I’m preparing a manuscript, it’s almost always at my desk, on my computer. My cat Milosz usually sleeps on the top of my desk when I’m working, and that helps me relax, too.

DS Why do you work where you do (at you desk because it is a quiet space/outside b/c it helps you think, in the park b/c you can smoke, etc)?

PV I tend to work on a draft of a poem for a long time, often for several weeks or even months. I think that’s why I write in a lot of different places and positions. It helps me bring different moods and perspectives to my poems, and that deepens them and gives them texture. The way I’m sitting, or the place I’m occupying, or the weather… these things affect them poem because the body and the world around it both affect the mind. I want these things in my poems.

DS What are you working on now?

PV Right now I’m working on my fourth collection of poems The Reinvention of the Human Hand. Cave paintings, self-medication, Hieronymus Bosch, general pain and suffering, Warner Brothers’ cartoons, transplants and prosthetic limbs: this book has it all. It’ll be published by McClelland & Stewart in spring 2010. Mark your calendars.