JONATHAN BALL

Jonathan Ball for DESK SPACE

DESK SPACE Who?

JONATHAN BALL Jonathan Ball: writer, teacher, and wannabe polymath.

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

JB I always wrote but got serious about it in 1999. Ten years passed, and I published my first book of poetry, Ex Machina (BookThug, 2009). Ex Machina is a long poem written according the conceit that the book is hijacking the neural machinery of the reader to produce poems, and it meditates on the interconnectedness of poetry, books, machines, and humans. My next book (also poetry) will be Clockfire (Coach House, 2010). Clockfire consists of prose poems which describe plays that would be impossible to produce: a play in which you destroy the sun, plays in which you murder the audience, a play which requires magical powers or absurd physics, and so forth.



DS Where do you write?

JB I write at the desk pictured here. I took the picture in the middle of a writing session (on my coffee break). Twice a week, I write in my office at the University of Winnipeg --- my University of Manitoba office has no computer (I am a sessional instructor at both universities). I may make notes elsewhere, but I try not to write unless I am at the desk.

DS Why do you work where you do?

JB My handwriting is too messy to read so I never work longhand, and I don't have a laptop. Also, I need to confine my writing to a particular small area that I can walk away from --- if I can't physically walk away from the work, then I go crazy feeling compelled/obligated to work constantly. There are also tax reasons to have a specific area of the apartment isolated as a home office. I listen to music while I write, heavy metal for the most part, and my computer doubles as my stereo (you can see the subwoofer on the floor).

DS What are you working on now?

JB The third draft of The Crow Murders, a novel. Not wanting to say too much about a book still in progress, I will reproduce my standard line: "The Crow Murders draws on magic realism and postmodernism to tell a story steeped in gothicism, where the book itself is a monster that seeks the death of its characters." Always working on other things, but this novel is my top writing priority.

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