Pom-poms and Poetry
STUART ROSS INTERVIEWS JEANETTE LYNES
Originally a citizen of southern Ontario, Jeanette Lynes now lives in Nova Scotia, where she teaches and co-edits The Antigonish Review. Her poetry books include Left Fields (Wolsak and Wynn), The Aging Cheerleaders’ Alphabet (Mansfield Press) and inglish prof with her head in a blender turned on high (above/ground press). She is Poet Laureate for the Nova Scotia New Democratic Party. Fiction & Poetry Editor Stuart Ross had a few tough questions for her.
What’s your first memory of poetry?
Church music. My mother reciting Pauline Johnson’s poems. Don Messer’s Jubilee.
You teach at St. Francis Xavier University. What effect does teaching have on your writing?
I like teaching. I have quite a bit of autonomy and freedom. But teaching doesn’t facilitate my writing beyond providing the material conditions for me to write. During the summers I pack my pedagogical hat away in a box, close the lid and get down to my own writing. Like all (or nearly all) writers, I’d rather be able to write full-time. Despite all this, I have worked with several wonderful young poets recently, and that has been gratifying.
I love your book The Aging Cheerleaders’ Alphabet. What attracted you to the pom-pom as subject matter?
Lots of things attracted me, not least of all the proximity of the words pom and poem. The Aging Cheerleaders’ Alphabet combines several elements: it’s partly a book-length elegy (many of the poems were written around 9/11) and partly a sneaky way to critique capitalist culture from a feminist perspective (which, of course, involves both resistance and complicity). And it’s partly pure self-indulgence—I’ve always loved popular culture, and the cheerleader project allowed me to create a poetic archive of my favourite kitsch and schmaltz from the 1970s.
Do you always write poems in thematic clusters?
No. When I began writing poetry seriously about 11 years ago, I was all over the map. In fact, the more discontinuity, the better! Lately, though, I’ve been trying to stretch myself, to force myself to inhabit a particular preoccupation longer. This is also partly an attempt to resist the attention deficit disorder tendencies of my own personality. I give myself thematic cluster assignments instead of taking prescription drugs.
If we give you an extra contributor’s copy of the magazine, will you
send it to Twiggy?
I doubt it. You’d probably need a microscope to find her by now, anyway! I’d send it to Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo.
Jeanette, what’s the use of poetry?
Poetry is the last frontier of anti-corporatism.
