Michael Turner on poetry, 9/11, and the constructs of space and time

Michael Turner’s new poetry book – his first in two decades – has its heart rooted in form and time. His last book, 8×10, was a fiction and “visual experiment,” wherein what is common to most stories, newsfeeds, and conversations is not visible in the text: names, places, and time of day, etc.

“If you are familiar with 8×10, you will recall that each ‘story’ is titled by a darkened box in an 8×10 grid,” explains Turner. “The boxes that are not darkened — that are skipped — ‘add up’ to a multiplier (x) that links the numbers 8 and 10. This multiplier — this ‘unknown value to find,’ as described in 9×11 (‘x’) — is the underlying figure that unifies the stories in the way chapters are said to unify a novel.”

Similarly, 9×11: and other poems like Bird, Nine, x, and Eleven (New Star Books) is based on a conceit: 9/11. “The events of 9/11 are titled not after a particular space (the World Trade Center towers, etc.) but by time (September 11, 2001),” says Turner. “Those born before 1995 have clear memories of that day, just as those born before 1957 will have clear memories of American president John F. Kennedy’s assassinated (11/22/1963). What interests me is how time is spatialized — turning time (9/11) into space (9×11), as Wagner attempted to do in his opera Parsifal (1882). Like Parsifal, I too am on a quest. Not for a Holy Grail, but for an understanding of the world as I move through it, and it moves through me.”

“I have come to trust poetry, but for so long I had a disingenuous relationship with it”

Though the author is perhaps more known for his book Hard Core Logo (adapted into a film in 1996) and his novel The Pornographer’s Poem, there were signs a couple of years ago that he hadn’t completely given up on poetry.

“I have come to trust poetry, but for so long I had a disingenuous relationship with it, using it (its suppositions) against itself, against what it does so well, and that’s slow time, make space, ambiguity, the potential for multiple realities, often at once, kaleidoscopically.” In the fall of 2015, Arsenal Pulp Press re-issued his 1995 collection Kingsway for the book’s 20th anniversary.

“Of the books I have written, the only one I return to, the only one I pick up and read anymore, is Kingsway. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe because I prefer less of my writing than more of it, and Kingsway is a slight book rooted in the neighbourhood where I live.”

In 2016, Turner returned to school to do a Master of Fine Arts Interdisciplinary Studies at UBC Okanagan. Among his cohort was Tania Willard, a Secwepemc artist who started a conceptual project called Bush Gallery on Neskonlith land near Chase, BC. “Tania is the visual artist who has had the biggest influence on me this past couple of years, helping me to see the land as a pedagogical force, the wisdom in stones.”

We challenge Turner to a conceit of our own: 9×11: and other poems like Bird, Nine, x, and Eleven could be the first Canadian poetry collection that tastes like a mystery novel. We asked him to weigh in on this verdict.

“If it’s a “verdict” then I am not sure there is anything I can say that doesn’t sound like an appeal. But if I were to appeal it, I would argue that David Arnason’s Marsh Burning (Turnstone Press, 1980) is a ‘mystery’ achieved through his fusion of Norse myth and/as formal experimentation. Another might be Daphne Marlatt’s Ana Historic (House of Anansi, 1988). The title poem in 9×11 has the makings of a mystery, but I think I depart from that once ‘I’ step outside its house.”