Steven Ross Smith Season 1 Episode 4

Poet Laureate Podcast – Episode Four
Steven Ross Smith |  Writing Like Jazz 

In this fourth episode, Kyeren Regehr welcomes Steven Ross Smith — poet, mentor, arts leader, and former Poet Laureate of Banff. One of Canada’s great poetic experimenters, Steven speaks about improvisation and constraint, the sonic body of the poem, and his long-running Flutter Tongue series. With clarity and generosity, he reflects on risk, coherence, and the question of what poetry is — and might yet become.

The episode features three readings, including an untitled poem from Fluttertongue Book Three: Disarray, a lush invocation of oceanic memory and language, and “How Is,” a piece that balances wit, resistance, and political undercurrent.

This episode offers a reflective pace — Steven’s words are full of nuance and deep listening, and we’re grateful to share them.

This episode is generously supported by Sage Hill Writing, one of Canada’s leading providers of learning opportunities for professional and emerging creative writers. Based in Saskatchewan, Sage Hill offers retreats and programs that provide writers at all stages of development with tools, community, and mentorship to move their writing forward. At Sage Hill, your writing matters. Learn more at sagehillwriting.ca.

Books by Steven Ross Smith are available at fluttertongue.ca. The Green Rose (with Phil Hall) is available from  above/ground press and Lakeshore Press.

The Poet Laureate Podcast is recorded in studio at Haus of Owl: Creation Labs—supporting artists to create the best work of their careers. Original music by Chris Regehr. To learn more or reach out, visit www.thepoetlaureatepodcast.com or find us on Instagram @poetlaureatepodcast & poetlaureatepdcast@bsky.social.

We acknowledge with gratitude that this work was created on the unceded homelands of the lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples.

Transcript

Poet Laureate Podcast: Episode 4 - Steven Ross Smith

Introduction

(The episode begins with Steven Ross Smith reading an untitled poem.)

Hungry for words I read. To describe something already there is to de-scribe, to un-word, to discover into unfamiliarity, ozone murmurs. Last night at the reading, words rattled and wrenched, clattered. The air fell to batten ears bracketing blank perplexity. I coughed, carried on, got through, then drove into the dark, jolting, coffee. Peering for deer. Wind pushed me. I tuned in the radio to get lost in someone else's words. On static crackles out of the night came antibiotics, livestock, came sustainable. Superbug food for the world. A sponge. I suck up these words. The way night sucks light. I breathe, drink, watch, eat words, omnivorous. No weight or density is too great. I hoard and by day jab a few back into the air. Tiny verse probes. Everywhere else, research digs and speaks to help humankind. Pens. Good sounding words to put me at ease. Relax. Aine Ville Benin. I'll feel better soon. Go on to more meaningful work. I'll drive a taxi through the ha-lit streets, nurse in wards filled with crisis and elegy. But here I poke around with juxtaposition, hidden puns, cryptic reference, messing with the dis, the un, and the dark. I don't know where I am. I'm de-worded, written over, as relevant now as an Elvis impersonator in a white jumpsuit, sighted in a tunnel in Moose Jaw. I'm a desperado at work against hope, a dewlap on the throat of speech. I flap, crave, persist .I un-word in the un is where to begin. I beg un.

Interview

Kyeren: Welcome to the Poet Laureate Podcast, an illuminous sanctuary for poetry and reflection. I'm Kyeren Rae, and this is Episode Four, supported by Sage Hill Writing, one of Canada's leading providers of learning opportunities for professional and emerging creative writers. Based in Saskatchewan, Sage Hill offers retreats and programs that provide writers at all stages of development with tools, community, and mentorship to move their writing forward. At Sage Hill, your writing matters. You can learn more about their programs at sagehillwriting.ca.

We just heard an untitled poem from Flutter Tongue: Book Three by Steven Ross Smith, who was poet laureate of Banff from 2018 to 2021. Welcome, Steve, and thank you for being here.

Steven: Hi, well, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Kyeren: Steven, that poem we just heard, where did it arrive for you? In sound, image, feeling?

Steven: Well, the poem itself is from, uh, as you said, Flutter Tongue Book Three: Disarray. Uh, the disarray is important because, um, I was trying to write, uh, into, uh, kind of chaos. I was trying to write the way I think a jazz musician might play, might improvise, but doing so with language. The way that poem came to me is, well, you probably have hinted, is through the sound, through ideas. Um, it's—there's an element of spontaneity in it, in the way it's composed. I mean, I always revise, but I like the notion of improvisational, uh, work and spontaneity in the creation of poems themselves. As I sometimes say, I like to undermine my own intentions. And yet my intention is to not have an intention, but that's an intention. So, um, I think the poems come to me through many levels, material, especially the materiality of language, that being sound, rhythm, uh, idea, et cetera.

Kyeren: The poem really hit me. I don't think I've heard it before.

Steven: Probably not. Uh, I have read it before, but not for a long time. That poem was written 20 years ago. The book, uh, was published 20 years ago. It's one of two award-winning books. So, um, I'm kind of, I'm always, uh, pleased to go back to it and, and, and look at those poems and think, where was I when I wrote that? What space was I in? But I know that the concept for this book was to try to write like jazz, not about jazz, but write as if I was a jazz player. But words are my, uh, medium.

Kyeren: Well, Steven, you're a master of the poetic border blur. In your Flutter Tongue series, you've described seeking extremes and, uh, polyphonic risk while still holding onto communication. How do you surf the edge of what language can do in a poem without losing connection with your audience?

Steven: Yeah. Well that's, that's a challenge. And you know, we'll hear sometimes the terms like, uh, accessible, you know, is a poem accessible? Mm-hmm. I mean, uh, what interests me is what does that mean? Uh, because I can't actually—there's nothing that I can do to, to force, shall we say, a connection with a reader or a listener. Uh, it's, it's up to the listener to enter my poem and try and find a connection with that. Um, not that I'm trying to shift my responsibility, but how can I determine what you or someone else, how they're going to connect with my poem? I have no idea. And, uh, so I make it, I put it out there and hope that a receiver will find some connection. Even though I like to work with, uh, improvisation and disjunction, and dissociation, I try to create within the poem some kind of connection, some kind of coherence. Even though it may, you know, run off as they say madly in all directions. I try to find something that will hold those directions as well, and what that is, is kind of a mystery, although in craft, you can create certain links. Um, but, uh, I think sometimes people have said my poetry is challenging. Uh, I guess so. I, yeah, I enjoy the adventure.

Kyeren: Steve, is there a moment where you feel that you found a sweet spot when you're writing or performing between experimentation and connection? I kind of wanna ask you too, does the poem ever change for you when you're performing it?

Steven: Yes. I think, uh, when I'm performing, unless I'm doing full-on improvisation, which I have done, um, when I'm performing, I mean, I'm responding to the text. Uh, I don't stray too far from the text. If I do, it's probably an error. And then you try to, you try to weave it in, you know. But, um, but what I think the challenge is, is to give in a performance of a poem is to give myself fully to it. To not... to give all of my attention and my body and my mind to the poem and to nothing else, which can sometimes be a challenge in a live reading with a room full of people. You know, there's so many ways distraction can occur. But the most successful moments when I'm in that sweet spot are the ones where I'm totally in the poem. Uh, my ego is not there. Mm-hmm. Nothing is there. My distractions are not there. The poem is there and I'm somehow just channeling it through, you know?

Kyeren: Yeah. You're the vehicle.

Steven: That's the sweet spot. In creating the poem, I'm not sure, uh, you know, you're messing around with words. I move things around. I edit a lot. I revise. I listen. I write with the ear. Mm-hmm. Uh, I write, I try to write with the body. Um, sometimes it's happening, sometimes it's not, but you keep working it until you feel like you, you can't work it anymore. You can't get any sweeter, if it's sweet at all. You can't get any more so.

Kyeren: You've described your process as a dance between improvisation and constraint and openness, and you've spoken of language as a living organism. Uh, can you speak more about how your body, your breath, your rhythm, your physical presence, interacts with language as you write and/or perform?

Steven: Yeah, I'd like to answer that question, um, in part by reading a short poem. Um, and then I'll elaborate. This is just from, uh, from work in progress called I Did Not Grow Up in a Jungle.

Watch out for the shatter, the knock back, shooter's recoil, gun crack. Heard every day. Please give me a break. A wishbone, a spear for my broken spirit. Splint me. Un-din me. Hint to me. Un-jinx me. Link me. Mint me. Anoint me. Print me, quince me. Quincy, rinse me. Roar me. Wince me. Winch me, wink me. Win me with love.

So I'm not sure how that poem answers the question, but, um, but I think that... Well, poetry is an oral form, right?

Kyeren: Right.

Steven: Poetry began as an oral form. I mean, we have the printing press now, and we had, I guess stone tablets and whatever, whatever methods there were for recording. But poetry began as an oral, uh, medium. I try to always remember that, I mean, and to remember that the tongue is a muscle. My body is a vehicle for the poem, the body, breath, sound, diaphragm, ear, all of that sort of stuff. And I try to always bear that in mind when I am, when I'm writing or editing. I think that a lot of my influences are musical. Mm-hmm. I've always, I can't play an instrument, but I've always been a fan of, uh, many forms of music and I think that there is a musical element in my work, I think. Hmm. Um, the probably the first poet that greatly influenced me was Gerard Manley Hopkins. Mm-hmm. And, you know, if you read him, he's twisting the language. He's, he's musical, he's, uh, spiritual, you know, there's, there's a lot at work in his, uh, in his poetry. And I think in a way I don't write like Hopkins, but somehow he's in there as are many other poets. Um, poetry is such a huge, huge field and influence that, um, I'm trying to just do justice through my own vehicle, which is my, my mind less so, but my body more so.

Kyeren: I'm curious as to how your approach to experimentation has changed across your seven Flutter Tongue books since 1998?

Steven: Yeah, that's definitely something that's, uh, been in my consciousness, although it's not always totally conscious. But one, uh, somewhere around 1990, in the mid-nineties, I began to think of my poetry as not really, uh, just a series of discrete poems. I began to think in a larger, a larger way. And I actually had this—it wasn't a revelation, but a sense that, um, really it was all just one poem. What I was doing was kind of just one big poem, no matter what directions it went into. And so then out of that, I thought of this idea, well, a book, a series of books maybe called, which ultimately were named Flutter Tongue, which is a musical term. Uh, fluttering is, uh, is a tongue action a musician will use, a wind player will use to create vibrato, right? And so that's where that term comes from. So when I began to think that I was going to do a series of books, it occurred to me that I didn't want to write a series of books that were repetitions of each of the previous book. So with each work—and I mean, I'm describing this in retrospect, mm-hmm, it was a lot more organic in a way at the time, mm-hmm, you know—but each book would use a different series of constraints, a different approach to the page, a different approach to the word, a different approach to the form of the poem so that I wouldn't just be repeating myself. I'm not really much interested in repeating myself. I'm much more interested in, you know, jumping off the pier into a different lake or a different stream. Sometimes I think about poetry as a stream briefly. Uh, the first book is a series of just études, experimentations. Oh, the second book was written when my son had just been born, when he was very young. It's the Flutter Tongue Book Two: The Book of Embedment. I wanted to combine personal material with, uh, experimental approaches to the poem. So it walks that line. And then each book had a different concept. Book three, as I've mentioned, trying to write as if I were playing jazz with words. The next book, I think is, uh, prose poem, and then the one after that is a long sequence, one book, long poem. You know, each book involved a different approach to creating poetry.

Kyeren: And so in a sense too, it is like a record of your life and where you were at the time.

Steven: And yeah, it's a record of my life, but not biographical.

Kyeren: But not biographical.

Steven: It's my, I guess, a record of my aesthetic life.

Kyeren: Where your consciousness, where your mind is and—

Steven: Yeah, where my mind is and where my thinking about poetry is. Yeah.

Kyeren: Yeah. Amazing. Steve, would you read us another poem? And listeners, after this poem, there'll be a brief guitar interlude for you to rest and reflect on what's being said.

Steven: Yes. Here we go with something called How Have I Lived So Long and Longer?

I mean, where did the time go? Time is or is not? Do yellow butterflies think of that? What would a yellow mimosa butterfly birthday be? The monarch is becoming a refugee. Mostly we don't see them. That... how can this be? How to be? My margins may be too wide, wide margins of error or too crushing. I, hemophiliac, might be marginalized and unaware. Financial reports and financiers and entrepreneurs and investors and monopolies and colluding competitors are always talking about margins. Is this a poem or just mental marginalia? Sidebar. Sidebar. Haha. Speaking of in-puns. Some people don't get it. Get what? Anything. And do we need more? Anyway? Is it possible anymore to write a non-prose poem? Is poetry an act of resistance? Is resistance poetic? Too many questions. Present today is a poem, a question, a memory, a provocation? Wait, that's a question about questioning. Time to let that trope go. To move on, act up.

Kyeren: Well Steve, that was very moving for me and it brings to mind the recording you did with your son and he has this gritty rap playing with it. And it was definitely a poem of resistance and of protest. I think that you get that that's essential right now. And would you like to speak about that?

Steven: Yes, there's a real question or perhaps risk when, uh, poetry enters the realm of politics. I both find myself propelled in that direction and not. And it's, of course, because these times that we're in are just, uh, exceptionally anxiety-creating. And if you're a thinking person, I think there's stirring your critical mind, you know, to try and just comprehend what's going on. And, you know, nationally, internationally, uh, across the world. Uh, it's a very disturbing time, and we receive that information all the time. We can hardly escape it. You can't go out anywhere without getting that information, even if you're trying not to or not to be on social media, et cetera, et cetera. And so it begins to creep in. I find it begins to creep in into my poetry, but I don't want to be, uh, just polemicize all the time. So how you salt it in is a good question. And maybe this poem that I just read is a way of salting it in without just simply writing a screed, you know, a political screed. Um, so that's, you know, working the page. Yes. I have another outlet and that is, uh, some spoken word material that I'm working on creating right now. And a few of the pieces in it are outright political. Not all of them, but a few of the pieces are. So it gives me a channel. I can be outright political in this poem, resistant, you know, I can put my opinions in there and that means that I don't have to do it in every poem that I write. You know, I have one medium for it, one channel, one poem, and, uh, otherwise I can contemplate other things. And in the recorded, the spoken word music pieces that I'm doing, uh, that piece you referred to is called "Dignity." Um, I'm still working the poetics, my poetics. Mm-hmm. You know, I'm still working with the material language and that is the rhythms, the sound, the sonic play, the word play, the meaning play, you know, I'm still doing that. But the poem, the content of that poem is pretty much outright political. Yeah. Political statement, political resistance.

Kyeren: Oh, it totally hit me in the gut, that poem. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh, Steven, you've been a director at the Banff Centre, you basically built Sage Hill Writing from the ground up, and as poet laureate of Banff and a mentor to so many, you've deeply influenced Canadian poetry. How has your work with others, uh, and with these huge endeavors shaped or changed your own poetic practice?

Steven: Well, I attended in my life, I've attended, uh, thousands of readings. Mm-hmm. Um, I've hosted hundreds, I'm sure. Um, uh, if I've attended thousands of readings, I've heard tens of thousands of poems. Um, and the question of influence is a good one because I think that those things seep into you and they influence either what you do in your own work or what you don't do in your own work, what you choose not to do. So certainly those engagements have been important and influential. I still think my early, early colleagues have influenced me probably to the greatest extent, even more than say, poetry I've heard in the last five years. And that is, you know, in early on in my days in Toronto, I was hanging out with a bunch of experimenters, you know, the Owen Sound—well, Owen Sound was the group that I was part of. Yeah. And then we were heavily influenced by The Four Horsemen, right? Uh, there's poetry of that era that I love, bpNichol's poetry, Michael Ondaatje's early poetry. Um, just so many people I could name. I was also very influenced at that time by reading, uh, the Dadaists, uh, mm-hmm, the Surrealists. Um, those kind of experimenters. And since then, of course we've had the language poets and we've had conceptual poetry, we've had conceptual art. I mean the evolution of music. All of these things are part of what have influenced me. Just, uh, many, many things one absorbs as one walks through this particular life and endeavors to put something on the page. Um, you know, what comes out in a—what comes out is, um, very hard to trace the exact moment of origin in you.

Kyeren: Yeah. True. As a final question, I'm gonna ask you to describe poetry in one sentence.

Steven: I have, uh, maybe a couple of answers. One is early, early on, I think, I think it was bpNichol, when asked the same question, said, "Poetry is what poets do." And, uh, while that seems to be a simple statement, it in its own way, it's a profound statement. Uh, the way I take it is that poets define what poetry is. Um, you know, I could say, well, poetry is, you know, verse, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But poets are doing all kinds of things. And perhaps at this moment there's a poet writing, creating something—I'm not even gonna say writing—but creating something that they discern is poetry, is a poem. And it may expand what the definition of poetry is. It may be something I don't know about at this moment. Maybe it's something I might do, who knows? But you know, because we've seen the evolution of poetry from, I don't know, early social chant from, uh, oh golly, the whole evolution of the word in an artistic form, uh, has morphed so much that I'm losing my train of thought. Actually.

Kyeren: Just the scope of it, the scope of it is blowing my mind.

Steven: Just blows your mind. But, um, it changes. You know, we have like the postmodernists, well they were reacting to modernism and verse and confessional poetry and all of that, you know, trying to find something that was not doing that, but could still be described as poetry. So what is poetry? It's what poets are doing, what they've done, and what they're doing today and what they might do tomorrow. That's what poetry is.

Kyeren: I love that. Poets define poetry. There is no external definition. It's internal.

Steven: Yeah.

Kyeren: That's perfect.

Closing

Kyeren: Thank you, Steven, for your presence and for your words. Books by Steven Ross Smith are available at fluttertongue.ca. The Green Rose, written in collaboration with Phil Hall, is available from Above/ground Press, and limited edition copies can be purchased through Lakeshore Press. And The Green Rose is really awesome, let me tell you. Steven's impressive biography can be found on the podcast website and in the notes. Stephen, would you be willing to leave us with a final poem?

Steven: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I have something. Uh, we were talking earlier about, uh, the way one's work evolves. Uh, and I thought maybe I would end with this poem because it, it, again, it's, it's, uh, different from the kind of work I've been doing. I find that, uh, these days my poetry is changing. I'm becoming a little, um, I don't, I'm not sure what I'm becoming. Maybe this poem will help you understand that. And it's definitely influenced by the fact that I live now very close to the ocean. It's called Salted Poem.

Maker trowels the gentle grade of Estevan, almost his name, toward wind-branched trees, willows, waved brush beach, hoping to prod poem goods. Ocean-salted pen pried open from cloaking poem gods. Poet giddy-ups, ocean-sides, treads in dusk-lit greeny cobalt blue. Poet glazed and glinted by giddy surf, listens, sifts the tug and curl of, o, ocean swell. Our cells recall, oh, the shush, the hush-whoosh, wing flap, flutter, buffs the poet's face to perch just there on the stumpy driftwood. Barred owl, right there. Its fluff and twitch, backlit by ocean's steely sheen. Switchy, twirling head, pixel eyes wide and right at me. "I caught your eye," it seems to say. Who sees who? There to scan the menu, the skidding prey I, night-blind, do not see. Owls pick up mice notes, Robert Kroetsch. Sky burial, you might call it. Hoots and swoops. The beach scurry meal. Rat. "Who cooks, who cooks for you?" Who are you? Who? Who? Who? Who me? In that once upon time, beyond mind, in my cells, scribed by salt and ghost wings. Oh my oh oh. Cellular memory, briny pitched, ocean-swayed birth. Once we crawled from it, from coral, from kelp forest with eye-shine, embryonic, oceanic, o. O. Tidal pull, o beach. Glow. O pebble granule. Oh, shore of discovery. Oh, willowy willows, o barred owl, o bardo, o bard, o. Ocean birth language, tongue-tipped with salt. Oh, wave-scribed, ocean-churned word. Ocean-kissed word. Ocean-kissed earth. Ocean-kissed world without end. Oh. Oh. Ah.