ROB TAYLOR

Rob Taylor for DESK SPACE

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

ROB TAYLOR Hey, I’m Rob Taylor! I write poetry in my very yellow basement suite in Vancouver, and dream of one day being a backup power forward on the Chinese National Basketball Team. Don’t worry, I’m not planning on starting ahead of Yi Jianlin. I’m not crazy!


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

RT I started writing in 2003. A couple chapbooks since then, most recently Child of Saturday, but no books. I am working on a manuscript, though. I’ve been doing that for far too long.


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

RT Yes. All of the above. These days, mostly in a small notebook while riding the bus, back left or right corner, whichever is available.


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)?

RT I write wherever I find myself, and I happen to be spending a disproportionate amount of my time on the bus these days. I’m on the Skytrain quite a bit, too. That’s quieter (runs on magnets!), and therefore better for poetic contemplation, but the rides are shorter. Because of this most train rides end in haiku, and occasionally a limerick (saucy days).


DS What are you working on now?

RT Well, there’s that whole manuscript thing.

And I’m pretty determined to get Heritage Minister James Moore to run one of my poems in his constituency newsletter. My new limerick (Thank you, Skytrain!) opens: “There was a young man from Port Moody / Whose waistline declared him a foody.” Fingers crossed!

I also run One Ghana, One Voice, Ghana’s first online poetry mag, which keeps me pretty busy.

Most importantly, I’m working on a new project: Literary Laundry… Literaundrature! With at least three sites out there exploring writers’ desks, I figured spin-offs would be inevitable. So I’m getting in there first!



Sure, you’ve seen your favourite author’s desk. You’ve studied the drawer where he stores his pencil, the wastebasket where she tosses her hopeless first drafts. But where does he store his pencil, if you know what I mean? What does she unbutton before she drops her real stinkers?



“I’ve read Penny Dreadful three times, I know all about Shannon Stewart’s computer monitor, but I’ve never seen an assortment of her rumpled blouses piled in a hamper. Can I really call myself a fan?” To me, these are the kinds of questions any real lit nerd must ask in this day and age.



I’ve been a fan of Desk Space for quite a while. Yours is by far the finest of all desk photo sites (suck on that, Writers’ Rooms!), so I am very honoured to have this opportunity to launch Literaundrature here. I hope that you will come to see it as the Mork and Mindy to your Happy Days (or, for the kids out there, the Private Practice to your Grey’s Anatomy).



This first edition of Literaundrature is a bit of a cross-over (like when McDreamy operated on Addison’s brother’s brain tumour) – a couple standard laundry shots, and then my desk space from my laundry’s perspective. Left sock first, then right. As a special bonus, my desk from the perspective of my left big toe.

Coming up

This week on DESK SPACE: Rob Taylor

DENNIS E. BOLEN

Dennis E. Bolen for DESK SPACE

DESK SPACE Who?

DENNIS E. BOLEN Dennis E. Bolen, notorious black humourist.

DS When?

DB Been at it since publishing a poem anonymously in my senior year high school annual—thus launching the past forty years of desperate scribbling.

DS Where?

DB At desk, always at computer (not shown in photo).


DS Why?

DB It is a room of my own.

DS What?

DB An irreverent history of crime in British Columbia. It’s fiction.

Coming up

This week on DESK SPACE: Dennis E. Bolen

STEVE MARKLE

I like to write in crowded spaces. Last night I jotted down some ideas at the Dresden in Los Angeles, shown here.

Steve Markle for DESK SPACE

DESK SPACE When did you start becoming interested in film or when did you make your first film?

STEVE MARKLE I made my first short film at age ten. Used stop motion animation to bring a shoe to life. Called the film "Shoe Business".

DS Where do you write or come up with ideas for your work (at your desk/outside/in bed)?

SM I move from one spot to another. A few hours at a diner, then to a coffee shop, then a hotel lobby. If there are no cute girls, I'll move to the next location.

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)?

SM I prefer working in a crowded space. The din of the room helps me concentrate on my work. I hate silence.


DS What are you working on now?

SM I've got a few TV and film projects in the works. I can't tell you about them because I don't want you stealing my killer ideas.

Coming up

This week on DESK SPACE: Steve Markle

SEAN DIXON

Sean Dixon for DESK SPACE

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

SEAN DIXON Sean Dixon, etc.

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

SD I wrote my first play in 1989 while working the nightshift at the Toronto General Hospital Radiology Department, purging files. It was produced a year later and I’m still proud of it. My playwright career has been up and down since then. I had a minor Toronto hit in 1995 with a play called The Painting, about a priapic man who worked in a cheese shop, and another in 2003 with a play called Billy Nothin’, described as an existentialist cowboy metamorphoses.

First novel was published two years ago with Coach House Press --The Girls Who Saw Everything -- about several women in a highly self-regarding book club whose latest reading project entangles them in serious world events and the search for a missing boy.

A few months after that, I published the first book in a YA trilogy about a brother/sister pair of peacenik Vikings who are destined to face each other on opposites sides of Ragnarok. The first of these was called The Feathered Cloak. The second, out this August, is called The Winter Drey.


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

SD I’m sitting in Alternative Grounds Coffee Shop on Roncesvalles right now. There’s a corner table here that I like because it features a little hidden side shelf which gives the table more space than it seems. Very appealing characteristic for the middle child in a large family.

At home I either write in the office/guest room in front of a large window, or, when there’s a guest, up in the third floor bedroom in front of a smaller window. None of it is ideal because I can’t see the action on the street below due to an overhanging roof, and also because I like to be surrounded by my library when I write. I used to have a desk that was tucked into a shelf unit, creating the impression of a cave of books that I sat inside, with a side view of a window overlooking a back parking lot where I used to witness the most insane domestic quarrels.


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)?

SD I work at the coffee shop to escape my computer and the internet, although it just so happens that I’m here right now with both.

DS What are you working on now?

SD I’m in the early draft stages of a book about a woman who decides to embark on a vendetta despite the fact that she’s not temperamentally suited to the task. It’s serious though — she’s trying to take action against a man who killed her lover and ruined her life. At the moment I’m thinking of calling it The Doppelgangers.

Coming up

This week on DESK SPACE: Sean Dixon