Mike Blouin profiled by Broken Pencil
Mike Blouin, author of the novel Chase and Haven, was recently interviewed by Spencer Gordon of Broken Pencil. You can read the full interview online here, but we've put a taste below:
BP: What role, if any, did the community of Oxford Mills have in the writing of your novel, Chase and Haven? Moreover, how has the Ottawa literary scene (small press included) and its particular cast of characters helped or hindered your creative process?
MB: Chase and Haven is firmly set in the community in which I currently live and work which is Oxford Mills, Kemptville and the wider North Grenville County area. My next novel takes place here as well as do parts of the novel to follow. Strangely they each take place in the 1970's and I was not living here then. I find it very beneficial to be able to stand in the places that my characters walk. I could take a reader of Chase and Haven on a walking tour and point out Chase and Haven's trailer, the restaurant Chase hangs out at, the highway and roads they ran away on, Chase's basement apartment, the pivotal railway crossing is one concession away from my current house and interestingly several readers have identified it, though it's never named. I hear that train every night from my bed. All of this helps me, I think, to stay close to my characters -- they're not just in my head. I can see them when I drive around.
My third novel branches out from this area to travel to St. Thomas Ontario and my new book of poetry travels to the southern U.S. and New Brunswick -- in both cases because they are driven there by historical events.
Collett Tracey at Carleton University taught me that it is necessary for a writer to exist within a small community of like-minded individuals. I had never believed that to be true and I now realize that it is, or that it is certainly very beneficial to have one and I feel lucky that I do. At the very least it dissolves the sense of isolation which can easily develop for a writer. At the very real risk of leaving out important names (which I will do, sorry) I have been affirmed both as a writer and as a person who writes (two different fellas) by the following writers (people who write?): rob mclennan, Rhonda Douglas, max middle, Dean Steadman, Sandy Ridley, Monty Read, Sean Moreland, Amanda Earl, Anita Lahey and supported by Arc, the AB Series, the Tree Reading Series, the Newstalgica Reading Series, the Factory Reading Series, and the Writer's Festival. I don't think the whole of the Carleton Tavern would hold the number of fledgling writers who have been supported in one way or another by rob mclennan, though it would be interesting to find out ...
BP: In Chase and Haven you employ a spare, deceivingly simplistic tone, pounding out a declarative, insistent rhythm (a style Emily Schultz calls 'Gowdy-like', but that could also be likened to minimalist American authors). Do you feel this style of writing most befitting of your subject matter? Or is this a style you employ naturally in your fiction?
MB: It certainly could be likened to minimalism. I tend to think of it as removing filler. I take out (or don't start off with) the passages I have trouble reading in some novels. Pieces should be strong enough to connect themselves and readers are certainly smart enough to do that. Why do we continue the narrative spoon-feeding? I try to restrain myself on this topic but ... it's 2009 for God's sake. I just don't understand why so much of our fiction is the way that it is. So much of it bores me to death. I'm shutting up about this right now.
I do think that the styles of my fiction and my poetry come from similar, related places. The style does change a little with subject matter but the larger subject matter remains consistent; we're alive, we'll die -- what's up?
BP: How long have you written fiction? How has your experience and achievements with writing poetry influenced your work with prose? Do you feel more at home with one form than the other?
MB: I have been writing fiction for an ungodly amount of time -- 32 years. When I started writing smoking was a digestive aid that promoted an overall sense of well being. Drinking and driving was just how you got home. An adult cartoon was The Flintstones. Times have changed for the better I think. Except for the cartoons -- Fred Flintstone trumps Peter Griffin (I like to have to look for my sub-text). I've been writing poetry about the same amount of time. I feel equally at home with both. I am at home with the narrative process, poetry or prose are just different means to that end. I am likely a better novelist than I am a poet. That will only be true though until my next book of poetry comes out.
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