Sandra Ridley is a Saskatchewan-born poet living in Ottawa. In June 2008, her chapbook Lift: Ghazals for C. was published with JackPine Press. Lift is part of her first collection of poetry, Downwinders, winner of the 2008 Alfred G. Bailey Prize. 

A Fringe Reader at the 2006 Eden Mills Writers’ Festival and at the 2007 Huntsville Festival of the Arts, Ridley’s work can also be found in Arc, CV2, Grain, Prairie Fire, ottawater, and Taddle Creek.

Interview by rob mclennan conducted over email from May to July, 2008.

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rob mclennan: First of all, how long have you been writing? Where did you start?

Sandra Ridley: In late 2004, a shift happened in what I was doing with my time. Until then, writing was secondary – I was calling myself a photographer. But once I began to overlay text onto images, I realized that I was actually way more interested in the words themselves. Ottawa was home-base then, so I guess that’s where I started. Although if someone were to make me look, I might be able to find a book of hand-written poems from waaaay back when I used to live out west.

rm: Is this about the same time you started coming to the TREE Reading Series? Who were you reading during this point? What kind of pieces were you working on?

SR: My first foray to TREE was after moving back to Ottawa after several years in Toronto. Around 2000? I went regularly for a year, then took a hiatus until 2003 or so, writing very sporadically. Was reading a lot though. I had just finished a Masters in Environmental Studies, so unsurprisingly, most of what I was looking for was in the Canadian nature poet vein: Patrick Lane, Don McKay, Jan Zwicky. Then I stumbled on work by Robert Kroetsch, who completely opened up the landscape for me to Nicole Brossard, Daphne Marlatt, Erin Mouré. Then Margaret Christakos. One writer opening to the next.

In 2005, a writer friend of mine, Jennifer Londry, "informed" me that I wasn’t just writing and rewriting unrelated poems here and there, willy-nilly, but that I was actually working on a book. That I just didn’t know it yet. And truly, until then, the idea hadn’t even occurred to me. I had sent out poems to journals and was thrilled to have had some acceptance – I was content to leave it at that – but shit, she said the word book.

rm: How did the word affect you, affect how you thought about your writing? What was the difference?

SR: The word meant possibilities for me. That I could go deeper into a subject through a series of loosely connected poems, because of thematic commonality. That I wasn’t in a dark room anymore, but in dark room with bits of light coming in through cracks in the walls. I wasn’t sure how the manuscript would manifest, but fragments began piecing themselves together, and I felt I was working towards something. Working, another loaded word. It meant I could dedicate time.

rm: How do you think the permission of time has altered your writing? How has this manuscript come together, and how far along do you think it is?

SR: I had a lot of homework to do. I needed an immersion on what writing is, and how one goes about it. What were the traditions? Where would I fit in? How would I use language? Do these things matter? Dedicating time accelerated the learning curve. I'm definitely still on it, but at least I'm not bumping along the flat part anymore. The more I read/write, the more my writing shifts ― and it is shifting, especially within the last year. I'm now more acutely aware of what my weaknesses are, and where I want to go.

As far as the manuscript, Downwinders, it started with one short poem, which came from an image, which came from a memory that wasn’t even mine ― like looking at someone else's old photograph. But it was part of my family history or mythology.

Initially, I wrote to fill in the gap between what was said and wasn’t said within that mythology. Which was impossible. There is no complete story. Every story exists through the absence/presence of its pieces, and there's always missing pieces. And disruptions, distortions, deviations. Different tellings and retellings. One poem, as a self-contained singularity, seems inherently a failure. Then too, so does a whole series of them ― even if each poem elaborates or extends from another. There can never be a complete story.

I'd like to say that Downwinders is done, or at least, it feels done. It better be because I'm spinning out to other projects, other subjects. Leaving it behind. Still, there's the Great Existential Nag, saying nope ― nothing's ever finished.

rm: Who were you reading during this period that became important, to both you and what you wanted to accomplish with your writing? I've always been interested in how you use the long line; where did this impulse come from, and where do you think it's going?

SR: Erin Mouré’s WSW (West South West). Phil Hall’s An Oak Hunch. Michael Ondaatje’s Collected Works Of Billy The Kid. John Thompson’s Stilt Jack. I kept going back to books like these. At the time, I knew there was something vital happening in them, but wasn’t sure exactly what. Wasn’t conscious of any effect on my writing – just loved reading them. But they certainly could have been the impetus behind my experiments with longer lines, and serialization.

Short lines felt constraining. They still do. With long lines, images can tumble upon each before being cut by the margin. Long lines generate a tension, a raving resistant to silence. I think they can possess a degree of abandonment and madness, especially when juxtaposed against shorter ones. They have their own movement, outside the larger poem. They insist, then falter. Are breathy, then run out of air.

I’ve heard that long lines reach out for the horizon, especially in the context of prairie writing. If I’m implicated in this, I wouldn’t mind. As for where my long line is going –  well, it recently wrapped around. Didn’t see that coming. Thank god for John Newlove: Ride off any horizon and let the measure fall where it may –

rm: All those examples you mention (but for the Newlove) are book-length works, as opposed to collections of shorter poems. Where do you see your unit of composition, in the individual poem or in longer works, or even a combination of the two?

SR: Initially, most of my poems were very short threaded-together vignettes. As Downwinders developed, the length and style of the individual poems changed. You could probably chart a time-line based on poem length within the manuscript. The longest piece being written last – a series of 12 ghazals. I still oscillate between the two units of composition, but I do really like the idea of linked pieces. Fragmentary. One setting the groundwork for the next. What I'm working on now feels so untethered and broken to me, I'm not sure what unit it falls into.

rm: This seems as good a place as any to ask about those ghazals, recently published as the chapbook Lift: Ghazals for C. by Saskatchewan's Jack Pine. How did this sequence come about, and what prompted your interest in the ghazal?

SR: In truth, the first time I heard the word ghazal was an at open mic reading you gave at TREE, from a new series you were working on. I was hooked. Started tracking the Canadian tradition, its adaptations on the traditional Persian form. Found John Thompson's Stilt Jack, and then a slew of works from the likes of Patrick Lane, Phyllis Webb, and Andy Weaver.

The ghazal is unabashedly image based and this resonates with me, especially as the images appear shifty or disparate. Which of course, in the end, they're not. I like that each couplet of a working ghazal stands on its own, that different connections can be made within each couplet, the larger ghazal, and within a series of them. And each time a reader goes back.

With Lift: Ghazals for C., I twisted rules and also completely broke rules of the form. But even in that, I wanted to follow the Canadian tradition. Lift is a love poem informed by separation and loneliness – instead of romantic love, it's familial. Instead of the poet/clandestine lover's name in the last line of each couplet, there’s a form of dedication. Lots of other weird structural stuff, even in involving magic numbers, but I'll leave it there.