Suzette Mayr's big problem
New Markin-Flanagan Writer in Residence faces new challenge: time to write
In her stark office, with its view of the University LRT station and Brentwood Mall, Suzette Mayr curls up on an office chair and explains her Big Problem. After a summer spent teaching in the Pomeranian region of Germany, the author of Moon Honey and The Widows has just taken up her new role as Markin-Flanagan writer-in-residence at the University of Calgary.
The job is a writer’s dream – she’ll spend half of her time "interacting with the public," which means giving readings, talking to aspiring writers about the manuscripts they submit and so forth, while the other half is entirely available for writing. Hence the Big Problem: "Just being a writer," says Mayr (rhymes with fire, not hair) is something she’s "never done before on a full-time basis."
For the past nine years, while teaching in the Liberal Arts Program at ACAD, Mayr’s writing time has been limited to the summers and little bits of time during the rest of the year. "In the old days I would write around work, but now it is work. So what do I do, set up a nine-to-five day, or a five-to-12 day? Now writing is what I'm supposed to be doing and I don't know how to do it. It's shocking. It's really a Big Problem," she laughs. "But it's so good. I'm very happy to have this problem."
Mayr’s program of work for the next few months already offers plenty to fill whatever work schedule she arrives at. Not only does she plan to complete a novel she’s been writing for five or six years, but she’s also begun a new poetry manuscript which she hopes to complete.
"And just the other day I inadvertently started a new thing, with leftovers from other things – so maybe I'm starting something from scratch, I don't know."
The turn toward poetry reflects her growing sense that the structures of prose limit the kind of engagement with the raw stuff of words that her work has always displayed. In her novels, a key word ("pap" for example) sometimes lodges itself in the writing for a paragraph or two, as if it was being turned over and over with fascination or amusement, and then put down. It’s the pull of such pure play with language that draws her toward poetry, Mayr says.
"Sometimes you find a word, and you can't let it go. In the direction I am heading in, or I was heading in, there isn't room for as much language play as I'd like," she explains. "I think that's why I want to do poetry."
It’s a poet who provides one of the more memorable characterizations of Mayr’s work. In Evan Jones’s book Introductions: Poets Present Poets, Toronto’s George Elliott Clarke describes her as "part tonic water and part disinfectant." It’s not exactly like being compared to fine wine, but Mayr considers it a real compliment.
"I love that description!" she says. "Disinfectant sounds pretty good, and tonic water has quinine in it, so it gets rid of malaria. You know, it's all about sort of acidic cleansing things."
Put that way, Clarke’s epithet starts to make sense, since both Moon Honey and The Widows did aim to scrub away some nasty stains of preconception and self-deception.
Although Clarke has supported Mayr’s work by selecting it for anthologies, her novels have also made their own way – clear across the Atlantic, in fact. Her teaching job in Germany came about when Hartmut Lutz, the head of the Canadian studies department in Greifswald’s Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik, picked up a copy of The Widows at the Edmonton airport, liked it and called the author. Now in German translation, Mayr’s story of Frau Schnadelhuber and her German-Canadian friends who shoot Niagara Falls in a barrel has done surprisingly well – at least, Mayr is surprised.
"The response it had here from some German-Canadians was kind of negative. They thought I was using too many stereotypes. Then when I got to Germany they thought it was hilarious."
Things went so well in Germany that on the day we speak, Mayr’s house is full of friends she made there who have come to visit. So, with a near-promise to share some of her new work at her inaugural reading on September 26 ("I’m going to try to get something polished up enough to read"), Mayr is off to look after her "houseful of Pomeranians."
(Suzette Mayr’s public reading and official launch of residency takes place on Thursday, September 26, at 7:30 p.m. in the Engineered Air Theatre. A reception will follow. The event is free and open to the public.) |
