Welcome to the 5 Questions Series. Each week, I’ll ask five questions of some of my favorite authors, editors, publishers, and other industry professionals. This week, I’m talking with Catherine Lewis.
I’m hearing nothing but raves for Zipless. Can you tell me about it? What inspired it, what was your process for writing and publishing?
First off, Finnian, big thanks for inviting me to contribute to your blog, and thank you for your kind words about Zipless! My debut queer poetry chapbook Zipless was published by 845 Press (the print publishing arm of the London, Ontario-based online journal The /tƐmz/ Review) in November 2021, and is up for two Bisexual Book Awards, including Bi Writer of the Year.
All the poems in Zipless were written in 2019, during my year at Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio creative writing certificate program, where I’d studied within Joanne Arnott’s poetry workshop group. At graduation, I realized I was the only student in our poetry workshop group who hadn’t started submitting my work to journals. In my classwork, I’d been writing about fairly vulnerable topics, including my late-blooming queer sexuality. However, I had not yet been ready to publicly mention my sexuality at all. Still, in 2020, my mentors kept nudging me to start submitting my work to journals, starting with less vulnerable works. Partway through 2020, I finally ran out of hobbies and excuses, and I started sending out work for consideration. Submittable became my pandemic hobby.
At Joanne’s 2020 Zoom Christmas party for her 2019 and 2020 graduates, I listened as all her 2020 graduates discussed a chapbook contest, with a deadline within the upcoming week. That week, I leafed through all the poems written during my 2019 classes, plucked out ten of them (mostly about my explorations of my queer sexuality), cobbled them together in a Word document, and submitted it to the contest. I didn’t win. But still, I kept sending out this manuscript, including edits received from Jim Johnstone on a few of the poems (during his term as Arc Poetry’s Poet-in-Residence), and adding in a poem about my lifelong struggle with beauty standards.
In June 2021, five months after I started sending out my chapbook manuscript, while scrolling through emails on my phone on Friday, the following words jumped out at me from one email: “we would love to publish it.”
Instant elation. This email was from 845 Press, where I’d submitted my manuscript back in April, after spotting a diverse set of writer friends among their chapbook authors and journal contributors.
But all weekend, I wrestled with how to proceed. Terror battled with my elation. Was I ready to publish a queer poetry manuscript, given how closeted I’d been thus far? That weekend, I discussed all this with writer friends and mentors, who insisted everything would be okay.
In the end, the allure of publication won out. With a flute of bubbly in hand, I signed the chapbook contract. Shortly afterwards, I started adding bisexual Pride flags to all my social media profiles.
All summer, I emailed back and forth with 845 Press publisher Aaron Schneider to go over his insightful line edits, and to finalize his beautiful interior and exterior layout and design. The first time I saw the cover design including Síle Englert’s cover art, I was struck by how glamourous it was. And once I saw the PDF proof of the back cover blurbs, I nearly cried.
I’ve been extraordinarily lucky. Over thirty people attended my virtual launch. My first two printings sold out, and my publisher kicked off the subsequent printings immediately. I have been immensely grateful for all the wonderful support from my publisher, from my writing community, and from all the folks who have asked me to read at their events or to write for their blogs ever since.
You are outspoken about LGBTQ causes on social media. How important is it for you to speak out about queerness in general, and in your writing?
It is incredibly important for me personally to speak out about queerness and queer issues in general, and in my writing.
That being said, there was no conscious decision to focus on speaking out about queerness, or to focus on writing about queerness. Moreso, it was that I’ve never been able to stop writing about it.
You see, my writer origin story is that coming into my queer sexuality in midlife is what turned me into a writer. During my multi-year unsuccessful battle with infertility, I hardly journaled a word. But once I subsequently realized that I was queer, I couldn’t stop crying into my journal, and I journalled hard enough that I ended up taking my first Creative Writing classes, and then applying to the Writer’s Studio. In short, my queerness is what turned me into a writer, because I simply could not stop writing about all these new sensations and feelings.
Given that my queer awakening in midlife is what turned me into a writer, my queerness cannot be decoupled from my writer self. Coming into my queer sexuality in midlife also means that I am a newer member of the LGBTQ+ community, and that this is my first time as part of an invisible minority, given that I’m a high-femme bisexual cis woman who often has to come out as queer, but who never has to come out as Asian. As such, I’ve often been drawn to writing about all of these strands in my life.
I am so incredibly honoured to have the platforms and opportunities that I do, and I am unlikely to stop writing or speaking out about queerness anytime soon.
What advice would you give emerging poets on creating an audience and finding a place for their work?
Share your work wherever you can. Stop by and read at every local open mic and poetry slam series a few times to see whether the vibe is a good fit for you. Keep tabs on submissions deadlines for journals whose work resonates with you, and submit batches of poems a few times a month. If a fellow poet’s work resonates with you deeply, let them know. Perhaps your work will resonate with them too.
How important is writing community in your career and where do you find it?
My writing community has meant everything to me. My 2019 Writer’s Studio class served as my first built-in writing community, given that most of our poetry workshop classes on alternating Wednesday nights were followed by gossip sessions and collaborative poetry writing over cocktails and nachos at the restaurant across the street. Once all our literary events moved online the following year, I missed my in-person writing community deeply. Therefore, I chose to befriend many fellow writers on social media, where I love keeping abreast of everyone’s literary successes and struggles, love life-related memes, home renovation updates, and pet photos. (I’m such a sucker for cute dogs.) Though I do have a full-time corporate job, I attend as many in-person or online literary readings and book launches as I can, during my evenings and weekends. When you spot me at an in-person event, I’m typically greeting others with “Oh my goodness, we haven’t met in person before, but I follow you on social media!” Recently, I’ve been voted onto Vancouver Poetry House’s Board of Directors, where I’ve been elected Vice-President, so you’ll often catch me on Monday nights at Vancouver Poetry Slam, where my fellow poets and I gossip and perform spoken word poetry about nearly everything!
What are you working on right now?
I do journal every day, sometimes in poetic form. Soon, I’ll be kicking off reorganizing my piles of writing into a full-length poetic memoir manuscript.
Bonus question: Have you ever taken a picture of a weird bird?
I haven’t taken a picture of a weird bird, but my last bird photos were taken during one of my training runs for a half-marathon last year. Doesn’t everyone need to gawk at some cute goslings for their day to be complete?
Finnian Burnett 