Edited by derek beaulieu and rob mclennan, and designed by Chaudiere co-publisher Christine McNair, The Calgary Renaissance highlights some of the diverse and astonishing experimental poetry and fiction that has emerged out of the past two decades of Calgary writing. An essential portrait of some of the most engaged and radical of Canadian writing and writers from one of the country’s most important literary centres. You can order a copy directly, here.
For further (ongoing) interviews with contributors to The Calgary Renaissance, check out the link here.
kevin mcpherson eckhoffloves poetry parties and saying “Me me me, me memememe … mmmmm.” Forge and rhapsodomancyare his fault, as are the final issues ofdANDelion magazine and Open Letter, guest edited with his bff, Jake “The” Kennedy. Sorry! BookThug published MerzStructure No. 2 Burnt by Children at Play. Check it! Out! Library-style! When kevin’s not teaching at Okanagan College, he hangs out with a Laurel and two kiddos, sometimes cuddling at the Starlight Drive-in during a full moon in July or dipping into Halfway Hotsprings during a light February snowfall. Oh, and you can catch his face as “Tall Security Guard” in the film Tomato Red.
Q: How long were you in Calgary, and what first took you there?
A: I bodied & spirited in Calgary on-and-off for about two years, between 2005 and 2007. I had applied to three MA programs; the only one to accept me was the U of C.
Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community in Calgary?
A: I don't really remember. "Get involved in" sounds like i joined Satan's Helpers. I wrote unfortunate poems and stories all through my undergrad, but Calgary was my first experience with an actual community of writers, which just sort of respirated outward from the mitochondrion of classes, readings, pub hangouts, and friends of fiends of friends...
Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all? What did Calgary provide, or allow?
A: This question has hugely helped me figure out, I think, my current unwriting ways, my lack of current. For the past about 18 months, I’ve been a co-stay-at-home fodder for a baby and a toddler and have been totally unprepared for the loneliness and the ensuing lost lust for poetry, readingly and writingly. In part, I suspect it has to do with the temporary suspension of any reason to procrastinate—i.e. avoiding class prep & essay grading are super poetry energizers for me. I feel, however, an equally significant factor is the withering of my social life. Hanging out with writers, critics, mentors, artists, and performers in Calgary hugely inspurred/inspored/insparred/inspired my understandings of contemporary poetry, historical con/texts, language’s political uses and abuses, the business of publishing, etc. This setting was hugely generative for me: two-and-a-half of my books came from work that started during my 16-months living there.
Since leaving Calgary, my sense of community has shifted, expanded across borders, somewhat dissolved, and concentrated in a bff; overall, it has slowly become more and mar isolated, mostly due to geography. And probably my incapacity to thrive on the sextuple-you (www). I know I’m leaping like an acid frog between past & present, but there’s not really one without the other, eh? I never really realized how remarkable my moments and comrades in Calgary were until recent years.
Calgary provided a readymade audience of peers and mentors—totally a support group, of sorts—that accepted just about anything as poetry. I could name names, but other Renaissancers have already named them all. Here might be something: the community out there allowed me to write for myself, and by whatever means I liked. You know that dumb adage: “write what you want to read”? For me, in Calgary, it became: “write what/how I want to write (because writing isn’t reading)”.
Q: What prompted your move away, and what kind of effect has the shift made in your work?
My partner’s spirit rejected all of Calgary’s anti-matter, and I started teaching at Okanagan College pretty immediately after graduating. For the past eight or nine years, I’ve tried to recreate the kinda community I found in Calgary by organizing poetry readings, starting the Bureau of Vertigo Bookmakers, working with Kalamalka Press, etc. However, the pattern of trying to energize students every semester, only to have them transfer away to another institution after a year or two and having to start over has finally got me a little exhausted/defeated at the moment. This is to say that one major shift was from arriving at a readymade literary community that invigorated my work to striving to create such a community, but never quite achieving it, at least not consistently.
Another effect of moving back to Armstrong was the slow death of the chapbook press I had started in Calgary, by the skin of me teeth. Its life had been fueled by the literary gift economy that thrived in Calgary, primarily derek b’s No Press, but also Jonathan Ball’s Martian Press and other one-offs that folks would self-publish. I’ve tried resprouting the press both online and in print as our teeth, but it’s been challenging to find the kind of work that excites my ions, especially innovative critical writing. I’m a terrible solicitor. I think I’m an extrovert who needs a real-life literary culture in my face to provoke my work ethic, both as editor and poet. Overall, the shift has meant a general decrease in productivity. Or maybe shifting priorities. I dunno. Let me get back to you in a few more years.
Sheesh. This is depressing. And that’s almost a pun.
Q: What are you working on now?
Bah. I usually need to work on multiple things simultaneously. There’s a something called The Fool’s Sermons and another tentatively titled ☐☐, but both manuscripts move at a pace of about three poems a year. I’m also supposed to working on a speculative young adult novel. Ah, and the webseries Robot & Snail. Sporadic collaborations with my dear pal Moez Surani. Performance/acting workshops. Learning how to dad. Carriage house renovations. Volunteering at Caravan Farm Theatre. Allyship & witnessing.