Coming up

on DESK SPACE: Jonathan Ball

ALICE BURDICK

About some things on or near my desk:

The handprints are Hazel's, along with the paper poppy. Directly above her art is a painting by Drew Klassen of a tv showing snow. Below Hazel's handprints is an etching by Susan Fothergill. The baby swinging away is Arthur, 3 months old.

Alice Burdick for DESK SPACE

DESK SPACE Who?

ALICE BURDICK I'm Alice Burdick, poet and mother, human working on stuff. Author of Flutter (Mansfield Press, 2008) and Simple Master (Pedlar Press, 2002), as well as a whole slew of chapbooks etc.

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

AB I started writing at a very early age, little rhyming poems and then, later, a play about a ballerina. My Dad is a poet (I call him a secret poet) and translator, and used to speak to me in Old Norse. My first book, Voice of Interpreter, was published in 1991 through The Eternal Network (I was co-editor with Victor Coleman). My first perfectbound book was Simple Master, published in 2002. Flutter came out in 2008.

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

AB I write poems in little or large notebooks or sketchbooks wherever I may be sitting or lying down. Later they go into the old computer and then I edit em.

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, etc)?

AB I like my desk, but I can only work at it really these days after my daughter Hazel is asleep or when she is at daycare. What I like about writing by hand into notebooks is that it can happen anywhere and I don't have to use any electricity to do so. We're in an old house and eventually my office will be in the attic, in a dormer window, but for now my station is set up in the dining room. You can see a hutch with a cake bell on top of it right behind the desk.

DS What are you working on now?

AB I'm working sporadically on a new bunch of poems. I don't usually write to make a cohesive manuscript, but I've got an idea in my head right now to write something tentatively titled 'Baby everything'. I am not afraid of the domestic or my children appearing in my writing.

Coming up

Next week on DESK SPACE: Alice Burdick

GUY MADDIN

Guy Maddin for DESK SPACE

DESK SPACE Who?

GUY MADDIN Guy Maddin, largely sedentary filmmaker, fulminator and frequent napper. I should've included a shot of my couch!


DS When did you start becoming interested in film or make your first film?

GM I decided to make a film in 1982, when I was 26, but because of my dronelike sloth didn't get around to it till I was 30.

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

GM Many alleged ideas comes as I write -- I'm sure that's the same for most of your correspondents -- so right there at my desk. But I find strolls unusually productive; walking makes for melancholic, almost graveyard-spiraling, thoughts. I also take a lot of long dry-haired swims in the pool with my friend Steve Snyder. Over an hour the two of us will discuss how to massage our heartbreakingly strange family lives into our fictions. So, equal parts desktime, dogwalk and poolspell.

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

GM At the desk because I'm a slave to it. I can answer emails, the phone, do laundry and prepare meals from this central location. I resent the amount of time I spend in this chair, but I haven't mastered the modern teenage girl's ability to write while lying on my stomach in bed while sipping soda from a straw so I am doomed to this sedentary life and the fat ass it's given me.

DS What was the last film you watched?

GM The Old Dark House, just last night. Somehow I'd never seen this picture before even though it features many of the thesps with whom I'm obsessed: Karloff, Laughton,Thesiger, Massey and, now, Gloria Stuart!


DS What are you working on now?

GM I'm trying to write the script for my next feature, a thing called Keyhole, or the Naked Ghost, but the late fall weather is so fine I'm going crazy with euphorically sad yearnings. Can't do a thing! Weather of all sorts creates enervating euphorias in me, something I both cherish and resent.

Coming up

This week on DESK SPACE: Guy Maddin