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Tuesday April 17, 2007
INTERVIEW
Robert Smith of Montreal, Quebec,
conducted by Claudio Parentela in Catanzara, Italy.
©
Parentela/Smith/Retort Magazine 2007
|
Tuesday 17-Apr-2007 13:19
|
RETORT
MAGAZINE ISSN 1445-7164 |
Q)Name?
My
full name is Robert Markland Smith. Ironically, I am an
alcoholic, and I am named after Markland Molson, who was
the founder of Molson Breweries, in Montreal. They still
make Molson beer, after over a hundred years of brewing.
Q)
Location?
I
live in Montreal, but I am originally from Ottawa, the capital
of Canada. Montreal is a much larger city, about three million
people. It is cosmopolitan. I remember hearing on TV about
twenty years ago that at that time, over one person out
of three in Montreal was born in another country.
Q)
Your artistic background….?
My
parents were artistic. My mother sang opera and could play
Bach on the piano. My father was a playwright for CBC radio
in the forties. He became a translator later on. My parents
introduced me to the arts very young in life. I was given
excellent drawing and painting lessons from the time I was
about four or five years old. I took art lessons and attended
workshops until I was about 40. My mother used to take me
to visit museums when I was four or five.
I
completed a bachelor’s degree in French literature
at Loyola College in Montreal in 1969. I kept taking creative
writing classes at night and eventually returned to university
when I was 31 to do an MA in linguistics and translation.
I would say these last courses influenced my writing, especially
the course in rhetoric and senior composition.
Q)
How and when did you get started to write?
I
was a jock (i.e. an athlete) until I was in first year of
university. I had a green belt in judo by the time I was
13. However, when I was 16, I broke my knee skiing and began
to read. I began to enjoy reading so much that I devoured
about three novels a week. And one day, I told myself, “I
enjoy reading so much that I want to give this pleasure
to other people. I am going to become a writer.” I
remember that day I was reading To Have and Have Not by
Ernest Hemingway.
Q)
How would you describe your writing?
Although
I have experimented with many different voices, I would
say my style is very conservative. It is rare that I write
a sentence that is not grammatical or logical. This is partly
because of the way I think, partly because I do translation
of business documents for a living. I studied classical
forms of poetry. I used to write sonnets and so forth, until
a friend of mine said to me, “Why don’t you
get a bit closer to the people?” So now when I am
writing a story or something, I write in slang, but it remains
grammatical.
Q)
Where do you get the inspiration?
I
suppose I am a religious man. I often pray to modern day
saints like Salvador Dali, e.e. cummings, Franz Kafka or
Thelonious Monk for inspiration. I tried praying to Frank
Zappa, but what came out was very angry writing.
I
used to do a lot of psychedelic drugs like LSD and pot and
haschich for inspiration. The style of my drawings under
the influence of mind-altering drugs was different. On LSD,
I would create very original concepts. On pot I would draw
very loosely and freehand.
In
1968, I made a conscious decision to go crazy, in order
to find inspiration to write.
If
someone gives me encouragement as a writer or an artist,
it motivates me also.
Q)Books
published?
I
have only self-published about six or seven books. My first
chapbook, in 1976, was called Whether We Be Bond or Free.
I submitted a copy of it to poet Allan Ginsberg, and he
said it was very biblical in style.
Then
in 1983, there was I’ve Been So Happy Since I Got
My Lobotomy. This is a small book of poems and illustrations
in English and French. It is meant to be a reconciliation
between Christianity and Marxism. I meant to create a clash
that would be a surrealist image, in the sense described
in Le manifeste du surréalisme, the surrealist manifesto
of André Breton, around 1915 or 1920.
The
drawings in this book were surrealist caricatures done under
the influence of psychedelics.
There
were a couple of other poetry books, like Intimate Raps
with the Morning Star. These poems were sometimes original
English creations influenced by Ted Hughes, other times
they were translated from French.
In
1990 there was True Confessions of a Bunny Rabbit from Hell,
which was, in retrospect, a pretty angry book of prose and
poetry, because I was going through a divorce.
In
1994, there was sort of a Smitty’s greatest hits,
under the title of Lands of Exile. It contains pictures
also.
In
1998, Teichtner Editions published Poems and Tales from
the River Styx and in 2004, Rumpleforeskin Meets the Abomination
of Desolation. By then I was writing only short stories
and novellas. There are no pictures in these last two books.
Let
me just mention that when I was a kid, under ten years old,
I was a big fan of Tintin, the Belgian adventure comics.
When I was nine years old, my dad broke my heart when he
told me I was no longer allowed to read picture books. He
wanted me to read books without pictures. So as an adult,
I got revenge by publishing picture books and drawing caricatures.
Q)
What other artists inspire you?
Let
me say I am moved by a lot of artists. However, I don’t
like Poussin, Watteau, I am not crazy about Rubens or baroque
art. I like pretty well every other kind of art.
I
get moved when I see El Greco and his characters with elongated
fingers and dark, stormy clouds over Toledo.
I
get high reading Hemingway or Kafka. When I read Hemingway,
I wish I still drank. When I read Kafka, it puts me into
a dream state.
I
read the Bible at times, and I get moved by the rhetoric
of Saint Paul, although I don’t agree with a lot of
his ideas. I used to like the psalms of David, but I guess
they are old hat to me now. I find this might be due to
translation. The images sound hackneyed if you have been
overexposed to them.
Dali
drives me wild. His combination of classical realism with
surrealistic madness is very exciting.
One
of the writers who influenced me a lot was Dos Passos. I
read Manhattan Transfer when I was a teenager, and it gave
me a sense of social justice.
And
not to mention Baudelaire, Lautréamont, Steinbeck,
Dostoievsky, and of course, Claudio Parentela.
Q) What are you working on now?
I
wouldn’t say I am blocked right now, but I have chosen
not to write for the time being. I haven’t landed
a grant from the government in about three years now, and
I am raising my two teenage daughters, Isabelle and Cordelia.
I find I can hardly be writing “poesy” while
I have to pay the bills. So for the past two years or so
I have only been translating. I am trying to be a responsible
parent. There is a big market for translation in Canada,
from English to French and vice versa.
Q) What advice could you give to someone who wants to
Be an artist?
There
is a saying in French Canada that goes something like: the
life of an artist is extremely difficult, especially when
you are not a celebrity.
Q) What does music, in its entirety, mean to you?
Music
makes me think abstractly. Just like mathematics. When I
used to drink and do drugs, I was always in jazz clubs and
I knew most of the jazz musicians in Montreal. I also like
classical music, including Romantic music, like Richard
Strauss, Rachmanninoff or Beethoven. Bach is so mathematical
and precise and harmonious that it calms me down and helps
me meditate. I have a collection of about 400 vinyl records
and a record player. Mind you, I also really enjoy groups
like Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, the Fugs,
Captain Beefheart, The Last Poets, and even musicians like
Hank Williams Junior. At times I listen to James Brown or
Mahalia Jackson. I remember reading a book called The Blues
People, by Leroi Jones. It provides a good explanation of
the evolution of black music out of Gospel, African worksongs
and slavery. I find that in America, the artists who possessed
the real genius were Afro-Americans. There are so many rock
n’ roll songs that were originally composed by Little
Richard or Chuck Berry or Fats Domino. People like Elvis
mainly imitated black music.
Q) What is your personal definition of life and art and
everything else in between?
I
tried for the past forty years to have a take on the Big
Picture. For instance, my mother just died yesterday, and
I have buried about 25 people, friends of mine, intimate
friends of mine, neighbours, distant acquaintances –
all during the past year. You can’t carry that much
grief without having some kind of metaphysics.
I
wish I knew where my mother is right at this very minute.
James Brown died a week ago, so maybe my mom is doing the
boogaloo with James Brown. Maybe she is having tea with
Saddam Hussein, because after all he was the leader of a
country.
My
mother said some very funny things, like “the problem
with democracy is that it puts everyone on an equal footing.”
She should have been a stand-up comedian.
I
don’t believe in war. Unfortunately, the governments
of the world are spending more on war and weapons than on
grants to writers. This is very sad.
We
all know who Shakespeare was or what he supposedly wrote.
How many of us are aware of who was the king of England
at the time of the Bard? What wars was he waging? What will
be remembered about our age five hundred years from now
will be the artists, not the politicians like George W.
Bush.
Let
me close this section by mentioning that I got published
in communist China this year. I had written something the
Chinese government didn’t find politically correct,
so the editors censored me. They simply deleted what I said
and replaced it with a watered-down statement in gobbledygook.
Q) How do you dream up your wacky ideas? What is your creation
process?
Sometimes
I copy down my dreams, literally. Sometimes I write when
I am half-awake. Other times, most of the time, I start
with a first line, as it says in the surrealist manifesto
I mentioned above, and I develop my concept. As I keep writing,
my imagination kicks in, and I shift my focus to the other
side of my brain, and ideas come to me as I write. One thing
leads to another, and you have to practice what Keats called
“suspension of judgment.” You have to let go
and trust as you move down the page, creating images, bouncing
images off each other, making unusual connections. It all
involves syntaxical relationships between lines and shapes
and colours, and when I am writing, connecting ideas together
in unusual ways. It helps to listen to a lot of jazz by
Charlie Parker or Eric Dolphy to understand what I mean
here.
Q)
Do you value feedback, either positive or negative?
Negative
feedback can destroy a writer. There was a guy I met about
four years ago, who criticized me, he said my poetry was
crap, he didn’t think I should be allowed to receive
grants, he said I should strictly write for money. He used
to be a playwright and now he writes advertising. Well he
screwed me up for a few years.
There
were other people who appreciate my writing, and I am very
sensitive to sensitive readers. Most people probably don’t
grasp the subtleties or literary allusions involved in my
writing, but a sensitive reader can really motivate me to
produce.
Since
my daughters have been in high school, their friends have
read some of my books. They call me “the cool dad.”
My daughter Isabelle hasn’t read my books however,
and she was shocked when HER friends told her things like,
“Do you realize your father did blah blah and he used
to steal blah blah and used to shoot blah blah?” It
was hard to face my daughters for instance once they realized
I am bi-sexual. But they accept it now, I think.
Q)
How are the reactions to your work in general?
One
or two people have been extremely critical of my work. A
few writers have been very, very supportive. Most people,
who are neither philistines or artists, read 50 or 100 pages
out of my latest book, and say they generally liked it but
never finished the book. My writing is not everyone’s
cup of tea. I also got a lot of rejection slips from editors
and reading committees. What I write is not conventional
wisdom, so it doesn’t suit everyone.
Q) Tell us about a recent dream you had.
A
week ago, I went to visit my 96-year old mother in Ottawa.
As I said she died a week later. But during the evening
after the visit, I took a nap and dreamed I was on the bus,
to or from Ottawa, and we are going down the highway, and
suddenly I exclaim, in my dream, “Oh my god, we are
going to get hit by…” And sure enough, the bus
gets struck by lightning. There is a giant flash of white
light, and electricity and power, and I get fried to a crisp.
When I woke up, my heart was pounding.
Q)
Ultimate Goal?
Ultimate
is a big word. I have short-term goals, like making both
ends meet. I would like to put my daughters through university.
This involves money, unfortunately.
I
have a heart condition and have already had a heart attack.
I live one day at a time.
I
no longer strive for recognition, as an artist or otherwise.
That was a big demon I had to overcome. The way I overcame
it was by making other choices and setting other priorities
for myself. For instance, a year ago, I was asked to go
read my poetry in Australia. I heard there was a lot of
drinking during the poetry festival and didn’t want
to come back home to Canada with my tail between my legs,
so I cancelled the trip. If I start drinking again, it is
game over. Within weeks, I would lose my wife and the custody
of my kids. So that is just not an option.
I
do intend to be sober for today.
Q)
Contact info.?
Robertsmith2(@)vdn.ca
|
Tuesday 17-Apr-2007 13:19
|
RETORT
MAGAZINE ISSN 1445-7164 |
INTERVIEW
Robert Smith of Montreal, Quebec,
conducted by Claudio Parentela in Catanzara, Italy.
©
Parentela/Smith/Retort Magazine 2007
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