Alex Boyd is the host of the IV lounge reading series in Toronto, Ontario. He took over from Paul Vermeersch, the series' founder on May 9, 2003.

Alex is a writer of poems, essays and fiction. His creative writing has appeared in WORD, Ink magazine, dig, Taddle Creek, and various other places, while essays and articles have appeared in The Globe and Mail, Books in Canada, The Danforth Review, and Quill and Quire. After living in St. Catharines to attend university, and Scotland to learn a little more about his roots, Alex considers Toronto his home once again. Danielle Couture interviewed Alex in May 2003.

To read some of Alex’s work, visit his web site: www.alexboyd.com. 

Um, no. But my taxes are very simple, actually. I try and lead a very simple life.

I was raised here in Toronto, and began writing poetry fifteen years ago. There were a couple of moments that helped define me, as a writer and as a person: I wrote throughout university, and showed some poems to a cranky old professor I knew would be honest. Aside from pointing out that I needed to know verse and structure – even if it was just to discard them, sometimes – he was very critical of one poem I’d written. He said it was pure rant, without a drop of empathy for anything else in the world. I had thought it was enough to be sassy and clever, as a writer.

If good writing can do anything, it can try and observe and capture something unique. It can fight against cliché, it can remind us that there is more to life than obsessing with our sex lives, watching TV and buying things. There are many good reasons to write (I often think I don’t know them all, and maybe shouldn’t have it all clearly dissected). Sharon Thesen said in an interview recently that worthwhile poetry is "radical" for being "rooted in a profound sanity." And I thought, "Yes, that’s good poetry too."

Understand, I’m just explaining where I’m coming from, and this is not to say I’m going to be exclusive in the way I’ll book the IV lounge. A good book reviewer puts personal taste aside, and so does a good series organizer. It’s just important to be worthwhile, and there are many ways to do that.

The other event that helped define my writing was in 1995 – I was a year out of university my mother died suddenly. While I didn’t become fully conscious of it at the time, I spent that summer re-working old poems and writing new ones. It gave an urgency and emotional weight to my desire to clarify and communicate. And it taught me, in no uncertain terms, that I have a finite amount if time to get the writing done.

I found living in Scotland didn’t change my priorities or perspective. I’ve always just written about whatever I think is important, whatever I’ve mentally and/or physically stumbled across. A lot of my poems are about time, change and mortality, so Scotland was interesting in that the history there has a stronger physical presence. My poetry is often designed to be universal, so you wouldn’t know some of the poems were written in Scotland rather than Canada.

It’s fairly straightforward in that it’s three worthwhile readers, either published or promising, every other Friday night at the IV Lounge. Paul Vermeersch has done an outstanding job for five years and I’m honoured and excited to take it over. It’s a part of the community, in that people do it for no payment, really, aside from the obvious self-promotion. I’ve always found the crowd at the IV Lounge to be attentive and appreciate, and maybe in some way that comes out of the feeling that the readers are there for the love of it.

There is every possibility for success in showcasing new talent, though a reading is only one piece of a larger picture, for an emerging writer. I would hope reading in a series to an appreciative audience offers useful support, as well as useful feedback. Having said that, I don’t provide unsolicited feedback, because I just tend think to think someone should ask for criticism before it’s offered. I think it’s fair to assume writers want to try something out on an audience without anyone necessarily shoveling criticism in their direction afterwards. As for bringing attention to new talent, I’d personally enjoy seeing more readers read something they admire written by someone else. The trend is for everyone to read his or her own work, but I think it’s a decent gesture to read something by someone else, and helps to dispel the feeling that we’re all desperately swimming alone. Of course, a warm reception from an audience does that too. It also makes sense to mix evenings: to combine fiction and poetry on the same evening as a way to try and encourage exposure to more kinds of writing rather than segregate everything.

I’ll be exposed to more as I go along, and I plan to include some of the diversity we have in Toronto, while remembering to try and catch people from outside the city. Without the budget, currently, to pay for travel expenses, it can get a little tricky. I want to try and put established talent alongside some emerging voices, which goes back to your question about how to bring attention to new talent.

Bookstores in Scotland had mostly the tip of the iceberg – Atwood and Ondaatje. I remember noticing Richler in a German bookstore, and I don’t remember bookstores in Italy. I just remember the damn crazy moped things everywhere. It was an interesting experience to still be drawn into bookstores like a magnet, and yet not be able to read a word because of the language barrier. It’s actually very valuable to be given a palpable understanding that not everyone reads in English. Touring overseas with my own book is still in the advance planning stages, you could say.

Well, I’m fussing over a first novel, and I have enough poetry for a first book of poems. I’ve also been writing reviews in the last few years, and some essays have been published in recent years as well. Some samples of the writing are on my website. I read in the Art Bar series in Toronto in July, and meanwhile I look forward to meeting people at the IV lounge.

Dani Couture is a Toronto-based poet.