By rob mclennan
Born in Sarajevo in 1985 and raised in Geneva, Switzerland, Sanita Fejzić is an Ottawa-based poet, fiction writer, playwright and journalist who immigrated to Ottawa in 1997, “the year of the ice-storm.” The former Editor in Chief of Ottawa-based Muse Magazine, she later held the position of Senior Editor for the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Canadian War Museum, before leaving the job to pursue a career in literary fiction.
Her novella Psychomachia was shortlisted for the 2015 Ken Klonsky Contest and will be published by Toronto’s Quattro Books in September 2016. An earlier novella, “To Be Matthew Moore,” was shortlisted for the same competition in 2014. Pearl Pirie’s phafours press published her first poetry chapbook, The Union of 6 & 7 in 2014, and Carleton University’s In/Words released her second chapbook, a short story written in verse, City in the Clouds, in August 2015, coinciding with the announcement of her appointment, alongside Jenny Greenberg, as incoming co-editor for In/Words Magazine and Press. Fejzić’s poetry and short fiction have also appeared in a variety of magazines and journals across Canada and the U.S. including The Antigonish Review, The Steel Chisel, The Byword Literary Journal, In/Words, The Newer York and The Continuist, with journalistic pieces published in The Globe and Mail, Rabble.ca, Guerilla Magazine and Apartment613. She is working to stage her first play, The Blissful State of Surrender, and is currently enrolled in an Accelerated Master’s degree at Carleton University.
In 2015, as part of a fellowship through Ottawa’s Apartment613, she wrote a series of articles under the title “The Department of Compliments and Complaints,” that, as Apartment613 wrote to introduce their January 2016 interview , “allowed people to share what they love and what they wish they could change about Ottawa. She interviewed people all over the city, and the diversity of answers is fascinating. Her fellowship with Apartment613 wrapped up late last year, and to tie it all together, we asked her to tell us a bit more about herself, her future projects, and, of course, give a compliment and a complaint about this city.” As she spoke of the series:
It became rapidly clear that what respondents appreciated most about any area of town was a sense of community. Whether it was access to child care services or simply an atmosphere, a mood, which was fostered by small, independent restaurants and shops, people seemed to love running into each other and getting the ‘small town vibe’ as one of the respondents called it. The complaints I addressed in my previous response. There were also a number of individuals that complained about the way the City allocated funds, the way corporations, particularly condo developers got away with careless gentrification, and so on, but many [respondents] requested not be included with their name and photo. It is strange to think that, given with the opportunity to voice their truth, many respondents felt scared and did not engage in free speech. In a way, they were disciplining themselves, and that was a common phenomenon. I spoke with an older gentleman in the Glebe for over twenty minutes and he had many intelligent and sensitive things to say, but ultimately declined to have me publish his responses because he was trying to sell his house and was worried that my interview would negatively affect his ability to sell.
In the same interview, she discussed some of her current projects:
I’m currently working on a hybrid novella titled The Decapitation of the Four-Headed Beast. It is concerned with “Parrhesia” which is translated into English as “free speech.” Inspired by Michel Foucault’s lectures “Discourse and Truth” captured in his posthumous book Fear-less Speech, I, like Foucault, am concerned not with “the problem of truth, but with the problem of the truth-teller, or of truth-telling as an activity.” Obviously there is some resonance here with the C&C Department. I am also working on two collections of poetry, one titled, The Encyclopaedia of Eccentric Suffering and Subtle Ecstasies and the other, Out/Flow of Desire.
Sanita Fejzić performs at Ottawa’s VERSeFest , reading from her work-in-progress collection of prose poems titled “Encyclopedia of Eccentric Suffering and Subtle Ecstasies,” as part of the “student showcase” on March 19, 2016 at Knox Presbyterian Church.
rob mclennan:
You’ve been a journalist for some time, writing for a variety of publications including Apartment613 and Rabble.ca. How do you see your journalistic work interacting with your literary work? Do the two sides interact at all?
Sanita Fejzić:
The writing for rabble.ca and the blogging for Apt613 are different, both in terms of tone and content.
rabble.ca is a left leaning online newspaper and I’ve done research-based journalistic articles and a number of case studies for them. These are fiercely political. I have made a financial case for free universities in Canada, and have debunked myths about youth mental health, homelessness and corporate resource extraction. I think I'm compelled to write these articles because I am an ethical human being; I am an agent of power shaped by and re-shaping discourses on truth and knowledge, and, to continue to shameless paraphrase Foucault, since power is everywhere and comes from everywhere, I am trying to negotiate the general politics of truth/power/knowledge. To be simple: I have an ethical obligation to participate in the flux of discourses that are everywhere.
Apt613 is a local blog focusing on culture, art, independent businesses and more recently, literature. Last year I won their fellowship of the blog and published a bi-weekly column titled, Ottawa’s Compliments and Complaints Department. Somewhat of a riff off the popular Humans of NY blog, I went around town, from one neighborhood to the next, asking people what their compliments and complaints were about the city or their hood. The purpose was to paint a diverse, contemporary and balanced portrait of the city and its inhabitants. The title of the blog was purposefully subversive as the city’s Police force also has a compliments and complains department. However, instead of disciplining and punishing, or keeping order, my goal was to celebrate and expose the trivial and the petty, hoping to uncover the corrupt or unethical. In the end, the editors of the blog interviewed me in a nice role reversal, as you can see here. I also review art, independent movies, books, food and whatever else I feel compelled to write about. Apt613 is my favorite local blog and I'm happy to contribute to the discourse on what it means to be an Ottawan.
And if I’m not writing for rabble.ca or Apt613, because I’m currently very busy, I’m reading them.
rm:
You've produced poetry, fiction and have been working on a play. How easily do you move between genres? What do you feel one form might allow that the others might not?
SF:
No two experiences are the same, whether it's writing a poem and then another, and then another two years later, or going from prose to drama, though of course, each genre has a unique flavour and comes with unique opportunities. I think one of the opportunities of writing in multiple genres is the ways in which they inform one another. This allows of hybridity, something I'm fascinated by. City in the Clouds, my first [full-length] chapbook, is a short story written in verse and includes graphic elements (both in terms of medium, as I include drawings, and I suppose, yes, in terms of content since there's a sexually explicit scene). My favorite authors are Virginia Woolf, whose prose verges on poetry, and Anne Carson, whose Autobiography of Red is marketed (and therefore classified) as a verse novel. The question is, for whose benefit do we need to classify works of art, whether it be literature or other mediums? Especially in a moment when culture and technology seem to be precipitating the collapse of categories. This is what I'm noticing in my work and, well, all around me: that previous modes of classification of literature are collapsing and that in general, there is a transformation at the level of the medium and content.
Having said that, I will counter-argue: a poem is not a novel is not a play. I am in the perpetual process of mastering my craft. What I can tell you in this moment of my life is that there are two axes I am conscious of: the first is the technical axes of writing and the second is the unnameable, shape-shifting thing we call art. Technique can be learned. Through various methods, through trial and error and experience, anyone can master, at varying degrees of success, plot, character development, dialogue, writing the perfect sentence, and other literary devices like metonymy, metaphor, etc. Art, though it is made up of these details, is something else entirely. I don't dare say anything about it from fear of making it static. Maybe I will suggest, whisper, probe into the unknown and say that art is a dynamic way of seeing the world, of sensing, feeling, experiencing, and from this sensitivity to life, expressing or translating or representing it into something material, whether in the form of a poem or a sculpture or a piece of music. This cannot be taught, or rather, it cannot be learned the way technique can. It is an opening, a sensitivity, a state of being. But I have deviated from your question, haven't I? Genres are like the five senses: they are playthings, forms, always in conversation with each other. I do not move between them, they move within me.
rm:
Who are the writers that excite you the most? What writers and works have influenced yours?
SF:
The first book I read was Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. I was young, maybe six, and it was in Sarajevo, an ex-Yugoslavian translation. My mother's favorite book. I didn't understand what I was reading, the characters and the plot line(s) dazzled me, but I intuitively knew that art necessarily involved placing a mirror on reality; in other words, I understood that literature was representation, a stylized mirror of experience. In some cases, it becomes a mirror of a mirror of a mirror, and reality is no longer the primary preoccupation of the author—I do not have a taste for this kind of literature.
During the Balkan War, my mother, brother and I escaped the Siege of Sarajevo and were temporary refugees in Croatia and Italy before becoming refugees in Geneva, Switzerland, where I went to primary school. There, I fell in love with Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince; I devoured les bandes dessinées: Tintin, Astérix et Obelix and Lucky Luke to limit myself to my top 3; my brother and I would literally ignore the toys at the toy store and spend hours at the manga section reading Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z and other such violent and incredible Japanese manga; and I remember learning, by heart, entire scenes from Molière's Le malade imaginaire or from Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. In fact, I remember to this day the scene when Cyrano de Bergerac speaks about his nose: "C'est un pic ! C'est un cap ! Que dis-je, c'est un cap ? C'est une péninsule !" (I am literally LOLing as I write this).
Your question is very powerful. I hadn't realized, until this very moment, how heavily my Eastern European and French European heritage had influenced my tastes. I like Wilde, Shakespeare, Woolf, Mann, Nabokov, Lessing, Kundera, Flaubert, Proust, Camus, Beckett and closer to our times: Anne Carson, Alice Munro, Jeffrey Eugenides, Thomas King and others you may be less familiar with including, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Ismail Kadare, Ranko Marinković and Maja Novak.
These writers have all influenced me, and countless others, especially poets I haven't named like Wallace Stevens, Pablo Neruda and Arthur Rimbaud.
But above all, what influences my writing is the experience of being alive. At the edge of intertexuality we come face to face with ourselves: this is the threshold each author must cross if he or she is to write something authentic, idiosyncratic and new.
rm:
How did you first get involved with In/Words? You've been co-editor there since August; what projects have you been involved with, and what is still to come? What are you working on now?
SF:
In/Words published City in the Clouds just before I became a co-editor. I came with editorial experience, having been the editor-in-chief of Muse, a bilingual magazine aimed at museum professionals published by the Canadian Museums Association. I was also the senior English editor at the Canadian Museum of Civilization when it was called that, where I edited everything and anything, so I felt compelled to join In/Words and (finally!!) start editing literature. After all, I'd quit my secure, well-paying, comfortable job at the museum to write fiction. I didn't know where to start, so I went back to get a second degree, this time in English Literature. I chose Carleton because it has a creative writing branch and immediately, I took as many fiction and poetry workshops as I could. The moment I found out In/Words existed, I wanted to join the team. When they invited me to be a part of the fun, I was thrilled.
I have since edited two chapbooks, Dave Curie's The Planets that Block our Light and Pearl Pirie's don't tickle the salamander's belly. I'm currently working on a chapbook about living in Ottawa by Amanda Earl.
One of the things we started to do since Pearl's chapbook is to invite musicians at the In/Words Reading Series. This is great, I love it. When I lived in Paris in 2005, I went to a bunch of vernissages and poetry readings and there was always, without exception, live music. It changes the atmosphere. For me, it heightens the experience of listening to someone read.
I've also been working hard behind the scenes to create In/Words' first themed magazine where we pay contributors. This is a double win: to have the ability to pay contributors and choreograph an issue. I invited Lise Rochefort to be a guest editor and the collaboration is very enriching. It's a win-win-win situation! The issue is titled Refug(e)e and we're hoping to contribute to the discourse on refugees and refuge in sensitive and intelligent ways. Deadline to submit is May 1. You should submit.
rm:
You've a novella forthcoming with Quattro Books this year. What is it about the form of the novella that appeals?
SF:
The novella is my preferred form and being published by Quattro Books is a dream come true since they champion the form in Canada. Psychomachia was shortlisted for the 2015 Ken Klonsky Contest. The very first thing I ever penned, To Be Matthew Moore, was shortlisted for the same contest in 2013. I love novellas so much that I will be doing my Master's thesis on them next year. Novellas combine the succinct, intense style of the short story with the more expansive and complex scope of the novel. They are zones of "dangerous middles," to quote Kroetsch. Because of the range of experimental possibilities with the form, I think novellas invite hybridity.
In a moment in literature when the identity of the novella is being put to test, when it is marginalized and questioned, Canadian writers such as Alice Munro continue to have a preference for the form. Other authors write novellas without including them in short-story collections, such as Ethel Wilson's Hetty Dorval, Timothy Findley's You Went Away or my personal favourite, Daphne Marlatt’s Ana Historic, to name but a few. French-Canadian writers have also contributed to the form, including (but not limited to) Anne Hébert, Nancy Huston and Marie-Claire Blais.
Needless to say, this is an exciting time to be writing novellas, and, in my case, to theorize on the form.
If you don't mind me plugging in my novella, which will be launched in Ottawa at the end of September and in Toronto the following month: Psychomachia is a meditation on revenge, violence and transformation. Inspired by real events, I wrote the story of a woman who survives her daughter following a case of sexual assault and cyberbullying. The girl commits suicide and the novella opens with a newspaper article that captures the ways in which the public discourse sensationalizes and interferes with private lives. The tension between private and public discourse on violence against women runs throughout the novel, leaving no easy answers to the ethical dilemmas the novella is interested in. Judith Belović, the novella’s main character was inspired by Albert Camus’ existentialist classic, The Stranger or L’Étranger, which is one of my favourite texts. Its narrator embodies the kind of dislocated hero that I am so attracted to. Like in Dostoyevsky’s novella, Notes from Underground, the main character of my story is strangely disassociated from society. I wanted to explore the dark and terrible forces that shape lives while at the same time document the nuances of suffering and violence as it verges on criminal psychopathology.
Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of nearly 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. His most recent titles include notes and dispatches: essays (Insomniac press, 2014), The Uncertainty Principle: stories, (Chaudiere Books, 2014) and the poetry collection If suppose we are a fragment (BuschekBooks, 2014). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books, The Garneau Review (ottawater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds), Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). In autumn 2015, he was named Interviews Editor at Queen Mob’s Teahouse. 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.
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