Trillium Book Award Author Readings June 16

IFOA Ontario Interview Series: Erín Moure

 
Share |
Erín Moure

The 36th Annual IFOA Festival is now underway, with authors and readers meeting in Toronto and across the province for readings and literary discussions. In 2006, IFOA introduced its travelling programme, IFOA Ontario, which brings IFOA literary events to numerous cities throughout Ontario, presented by a consortium of organizations across the province known collectively as Lit on Tour. In celebration of the festival, Open Book will be speaking with four of the participating authors.

Erín Moure is a poet and translator of poetry from French, Galician, Spanish and Portuguese into English. She is the translator or co-translator of 14 books of poetry and the author of 17 poetry collections of her own work, including the Governor General's Literary Award-winning Furious. She is also the recipient of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the A. M. Klein Prize, and has thrice been a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Her latest book, Kapusta (House of Anansi), explores the Holocaust in Ukraine and the relation between responsibility and place.

Erín will be reading from Kapusta and discussing her work in two festival events this weekend.

Today she speaks with Open Book about saying hello to readers, the place in Ontario that alleviates her nerves and the incompatibility of the roles of solitary writer and public reader.

Open Book:

Tell us about what you’ll be reading at this year’s festival.

Erín Moure:

I’ll be reading from Kapusta, a book-length poetic work structured as a play. It concerns the Holocaust in Ukraine, and sad silence passed on, and the space behind a grandmother’s woodstove in northern Alberta where a little girl found peace. It has puppets and a sock monkey and songs, and is in part a homage to the tradition of documentary theatre in Eastern Europe, and to the American musical, and to the roots of musicals and cabaret in Eastern European Jewish street theatre.

OB:

Have you attended IFOA in the past? If so, what is your favourite memory? If not, what are you most looking forward to?

EM:

Yes, I have attended in the past. I’m looking forward again to meeting readers, and to discussions that involve the public during and after the events.

OB:

Tell us about a favourite spot or area in Ontario.

EM:

I’d say anywhere up north a bit in Bruce or West Grey Counties, in the meanders of the Saugeen River system. So many ecosystems, so many old settlements, so many histories and a present tense that is quiet and alleviates the nerves!

OB:

How do you manage the shift between being a solitary writer and a public reader? Is there a learning curve?

EM:

Ah that shift! It’s amazing the two roles can exist in one human being; they are so incompatible! I have to give up my quiet writing time among my friends and books in order to read the work in public after it is published, which isn’t the easiest thing to do...It can seem anachronic, the act of reading from the book (as in my own creative process I am already somewhere else) but meeting the public and hearing other authors makes it very worthwhile and encouraging.

OB:

What is your favourite part about going on tour with a book?

EM:

The readers who come and say hello!

OB:

What are you reading right now?

EM:

I’m reading Rosalía de Castro’s 1880 collection of poetry Follas Novas, and critical work written on that book from a linguistic perspective (also in Galician), since I am in the process of translating the poems into English for publication next year. I’m re-reading Oana Avasilichioaei’s Limbinal and Caroline Bergvall’s Drift, two excellent recent books of poetry from poets who are also great performers of their work.


Erín Moure is one of Canada's most eminent and respected poets, and a translator from French, Spanish, Galician and Portuguese. She is the author of seventeen books of poetry and a book of essays, and has received the Governor General's Literary Award, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, the A. M. Klein Prize and has been a three-time finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Her recent works include the book-length poem The Unmemntioable and Insecession, a memoir and poetics that is a companion text to her translation of Chus Pato's biopoetics, Secession. Her twelve books of poetry in translation include Sheep's Vigil by a Fervent Person by Alberto Caeiro/Fernando Pessoa, Nicole Brossard's White Piano (co-translated with Robert Majzels), Rosalia de Castro's Galician Songs, and Galician poet Chus Pato's acclaimed m-Talá, Charenton, and Hordes of Writing.

Post new comment

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

By submitting this form, you accept the Mollom privacy policy.

Advanced Search

JF Robitaille: Minor Dedications

Dundurn