Coach House Books asks Sina Queyras a few things about Lemon Hound

CH: What’s a lemon hound?

SQ: A lemon hound is someone who is on the scent, someone who sniffs out the tart and tender as well as the vibrant and tasty. No relation to sour puss, I can assure you, but not afraid to see the darker notes in life: a kind of feminist flâneur.

CH: These poems really foreground rhythm and repetition. Why?

SQ: These poems reflect a convergence of Stein and Woolf. I have long been a Woolf fan, and only recently, and after much resistance, have I fallen under Stein’s spell (as Toklas would say). Folks are usually either a Stein or Woolf fan – this book is about the space where they meet.

CH: This emphasis on rhythm is reminiscent of Gertrude Stein but at the same time not, because it doesn’t become nonsensical the way Stein sometimes does. Can you talk about this influence?

SQ: I’m a lover of Stein, not a scholar of Stein. I’m playing with her, responding to her, but my affection is really in relation to Woolf, so it’s a sort of refracted Stein.

CH: In what ways has Woolf affected you?

SQ: For me Woolf is the god of writing. I came to writing the hard way. Literally. I failed English in high school. It wasn't that I couldn't ‘write.’ In fact I had the desire to write, and some encouragement to do so early on, but I hadn't read: there were few books in my life, I had no solid education, English was my father's second language and might as well have been my mother's, so the mechanics have always been difficult. Woolf taught me to write. Well, reading her taught me to write, I mean. I read her diaries, I read her letters, I read her novels, I read and reread and began to keep a journal myself, stretching my sentences, my reading, my thinking. I have never dreamed of achieving a body of work such as Woolf did – my desire was more about learning to write a proper sentence or articulating a clear thought. In that sense she is a sobering taskmaster, and she continues to be a great teacher.

CH: The opening poem, ‘Lake of the Woods, August 1993,’ serves as introduction to the book, but its tone is more pastoral than the rest of the book, which is often quite urban, making for an interesting tension. Are you torn between rural and urban?

SQ: I am torn. I think many of us are. I have been influenced by both Lisa Robertson and Erin Mouré’s relationship to pastoral, the bubbling up of it in urban settings. But this poem reflects my leaving western Canada, leaving a space where nature was at the core of my sense of self. In my twenties I was a woman who did what she needed to do to remain in a certain geography. My desires seemed to demand that I leave that behind. Now I pine for what I left.