How to cheer up a poet

Lesley Choyce has a new poetry collection out, and a new travelogue. We reached the iconic Atlantic Canadian writer mid-adventure in Lisbon, Portugal.

ABT: Toward the end of Never the Same Sea Twice, your sixteenth collection of poetry, you include three portraits of the poet: in the 1960s, 1980s and today. You’re brooding in the first two, and smiling in the last. What changed?

LC: When I was younger, I tried to fashion myself as an angry alienated young poet because I thought that was what poets were supposed to be. It was more pose than reality. My poetry was not even very angry but simply angst-ridden.

As I got older, I became more mellow and lost the angry young man motif. Brooding grew wearisome after all and I had moved to Nova Scotia and become a Canadian Author (with a capital A). This made me cheerful and careful — or at least I gained a sense of humour about the Human Condition, or at least the Human Canadian Condition.

So now, in my seventies, I want to be known as an insightful but cheerful scribe who can turn a good phrase while still being slightly absurd.

ABT: As a reader of “To You the Reader of this Poem,” first off, you’re welcome. Second, you suggest that 85 per cent of poetry should be gratitude, and 15 per cent for whining and complaining. But what if whining and complaining takes up 85 per cent of my brain?

LC: There’s really not much point to whining. A writer can complain if there is hope it can create change. But, yes, I am ever thankful to anyone who actually reads my poems. My readers are my heroes and I am deeply indebted. So if I can’t actually pay them for their kindness in cash — which would not work out all that well for me — I want to offer them the occasional kind words and good-spirited advice.

ABT: In “Epilogue: What Does it Mean to Be a Writer?,” you urge us to “write in all genres.” How do you decide which genre for which experience? Specifically, why did you choose to write Around England with a Dog as a travelogue, rather than poetry, or location-inspired fiction?

LC: Yes: the poet should write fiction and the journalist should write poetry and all writers should dabble in “creative nonfiction.” So my wife and I travelled with our dog around the U.K. looking for funny and interesting things to happen so I could write stories about our quest, just like my ancient nomadic ancestors. As it turned out, we were “looking for love” (as well as adventure, inspiration, greater truths, history, poetry, profundity and beer) in all the right places. And so the story must be told … but in my own quirky way.

Around England with a Dog Lesley Choyce Rocky Mountain Books

Never the Same Sea Twice Lesley Choyce Ekstasis Editions

OPPOSITE PAGE: Lesley Choyce broods in the 1980s photo for Reinventing the Wheel

LEFT: He’s smiling in this recent photo from his 16th poetry collection.

ABT: At the end of a fun-filled adventure, you take us home with you as Grand Dude holding a sleeping infant grandtwin, “pure darkness giving way to milky grey,” and you reflect on the ancestors you sought in England, and the family you made in Canada. Did this journey change the way you thought of your identity, connected to the past or to the future?

LC: I did one of those DNA tests hoping to find out if I had any interesting or exotic blood in my family line. The report came back basically saying, “Mr. Choyce, you are a quite average boring white guy of generic northern European descent.”

While this only confirmed what I already knew, my journey around the home of the original Choyces told me that we all have a history that has led to our individual, most improbable existence, and every search of our own past will lead to discovery (as well as inspiration, beer, etc.).

The quest is always more interesting than the outcome, I would say, just as the joy of actually writing outweighs the reward of having been published.

ABT: Switching hats, how many books do you think you’ve put out as publisher of Pottersfield Press? How does that form of book creation feed your soul, compared to writing your own books?

LC: Pottersfield has published close to 300 books since inception in 1978. I feel honoured to have brought into print so many great souls whose words have found readers. It’s more a labour of love than a business and each writer has taught me something and their stories have added greatly to my experience of living the literary life.

ABT: They say your first hundred books are the hardest. Now that you’re in your second century, what challenges get the heart-fire burning for you as a writer?

LC: My first book of poetry, published by Fred Cogswell of Fiddlehead Books, was titled Reinventing the Wheel, so now I’m more interested in reinventing myself. How to do this? By finding new voices in fiction to write from and moving forward more than looking back.

I’m struggling daily with my new identity, as any writer should, and keeping my eyes open to discovery and challenge. I feel like I’ve only just begun to understand the world and to be able to capture the crazy wonder of it all. ■