rob mclennan is a CanLit institution and an iconic example of the power of good literary citizenship. In addition to being one of the most prolific writers we know, rob regularly amplifies the voices of other writers through his blogs. You can find more about rob below. For now, let’s get to the burning question!

Q: You have a new book coming out: tell us all about it and how/if it stems from any themes addressed in your earlier work.

A: Well, the new poetry title is World’s End, (ARP Books, 2023), out but a few weeks back. With “new” being a relative term, after all, this is a poetry title composed across the three years prior to the year I spent composing the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022). The poems across World’s End, (the comma is part of the title) work to articulate the space of moving beyond my twenty-five years of living in Ottawa’s Centretown to what was built as a 1950s suburb, into a house with recent wife and newborn, and subsequent newborn. “World’s End,” of course, is a term the British used for a pub that sat beyond the city’s gates, and with this particular move, I felt outside the boundary of what had long surrounded me, and the differences were worth examining. Just as much, this collection leans hard into structural examinations of the lyric sentence and the prose poem, something that subsequently evolved into a full collection of short, sharp, single-stanza prose poems with the book of smaller, a collection of poems entirely wrapped around being home full-time with two small children. While World’s End, focuses more generally on that space of newness (children, geography, travel, household etcetera), the book of smaller is more overtly focused on being home with a one-year-old and a toddler (after Christine returned to work post-maternity leave), composing poems on naps, walks, park outings and scattered reading. There’s always been a Frank O’Hara “I did this, I did that” element to my poems, although one that has evolved over the years to first focus on structure.

Given I asked you for clarification on whether your question referred to the current work or the forthcoming one and you suggested I respond around both, I’ll mention I’ve a collection of short stories, On Beauty: stories, out next fall with University of Alberta Press. Each story is roughly three manuscript pages in length, sectioned across an accumulation of short, lyric prose bursts that examine elements of intimacy, silence and how small moments can impact future decisions. Nothing happens in any of these stories, but the lives of the characters within are simultaneously in motion: one never knows where any of these people might end up, and that’s what I find most fascinating about one step, one step and a further step. So much nothing is essential for absolutely everything.

I consider that my approach for writing always begins with language and literary structure—whether thinking about a particular shape of short prose or a line break or a consideration of the prose poem, for example—while elements of theme or content regularly echo across much of what I’m working on. The goal, naturally, is the perfect blend of form and content, with form always the particular prompt of any project or manuscript, approaching writing from the perspective of language and structure, and elements of story, content, theme, what have you, emerging through that process. For the book of smaller and World’s End, say, I’m not deliberately or overtly working to write on fatherhood, geography or family, but utilizing that material as a means to a particular end, perhaps. I approach from language and structure, and themes emerge: home, family, domestic, reading, history, poetic structure. There are certain arguments that writers, no matter what they produce throughout their lives, are but working on a single, extended work, and that might possibly be true of me as well. I’m currently fifty or so pages into working a book-length genealogical non-fiction project, examining my own genealogical threads and my own potential implications around such, structured around the form of a research-heavy lyric essay. It all goes back to the beginning.

More about rob mclennan:
Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent titles include the poetry collection World’s End, (ARP Books, 2023), a suite of pandemic essays, essays in the face of uncertainties (Mansfield Press, 2022) and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). His collection of short stories, On Beauty (University of Alberta Press) will appear in fall 2024. An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics (periodicityjournal.blogspot.com) and Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com). He is editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com