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Essay Type: interviews
Essay Date: 1992
BCBW: Why is your new book called "inkorrect thots"?
bissett: On the campuses, especially when it comes to writing, there's a lot of talk about being politically correct. People often ask if I think something is politically correct or not. People's concern for political correctness seems somehow retrograde to me. I actually find the whole concept very Victorian, even though it may have some things to offer. I thas a very puritan ingredient to it. So I wrote this poem called inkorrect thots. The Ministry of Korrect Thots explains everything for everyone, but then it has to apologize because it can't explain everything.
BCBW: You've been in the poetry game since 1963. Do you realize that you've become something of a role model?
bissett: Well, I always remember what Bobby Dylan says: "Don't follow the leaders, watch your parking meters". When I started writing I was helped a lot by older poets and professors and people that liked poetry. So all that mutuality is really important. But I think people do things because they want to do them and because it's necessary --not because of role models.
Being senior or junior really doesn't have much meaning for me anyway. When I was very sick as a child, that made me see older people as not really older, because I almost died myself a number of times. So I was old when I was young, and I got younger when I got older.
BCBW: After 20 years as a publisher, how did you feel about having to sell blewointment press in 1983?
bissett: It was hard. The letting go took two years. I had put so much into it. I was very angry at the jury and I was very angry at the Canada Council at the time. I had to sell blewointment to pay for a few months of loan payments at the bank. But I still owed $12,000. It took a long time to pay it all back, all because of the erratic behaviour of the doinks on the jury who suddenly gave the press a big decrease.
BCBW: Doinks?
bissett: I don't think I'm being negative in calling them doinks. Some of them are. Some people on the juries have only had jobs as professors. They may be very good at their job, but they may have no experience of living without a salary, and they have no idea how dedicated the people of the art world are in Canada, and how many sacrifices we make. People just don't know.
BCBW: Artists have been dealing with all this for centuries...
bissett: Yes. Most of us are still trying to get just a living wage. There's no glamour in being envied or put down, and that particular merry-go-round goes on constantly. So you just do your work because you love your work, and when people are great to you it's terrific and it happens just as much as when people are not great. It would be insincere to harp on any regrets, because I know better stuff has occurred since the blewointment days, or at least just as good stuff.
BCBW: Was your show at the Vancouver Art Gallery, "fires in th tempul", a major turning point?
bissett: Yes. That was very lucky. I didn't do anything for that to happen. The price of my paintings raised somewhat after that show, and I was treated differently in a lot of areas. It's very encouraging to be treated as a hard working artist rather than the other things I'd often been treated as. You can work your buns off but if you don't get no luck you still are in deep shit.
BCBW: Through all your changes since blewointment at least you've had the consistency of being with Talonbooks for 15 years.
bissett: Yes, Talon is amazing. They've been so good to me. In my personal life I'm still restless. The 'greener pastures' thing kicks in fairly regularly with its attendant mythologies and blind alleys. But with someone to publish me I don't feel like going anywhere else.
BCBW: Nowadays when you read over your earlier books, what do you see?
bissett: I think the writing knew more than I did.
BCBW: When you give your reading at the Free Press festival, which will you read?
bissett: I never know what I'm going to read before a reading.
BCBW: Why is that?
bissett: I prefer to gauge life, and my mood. Some poems don't work one night, others do. It's the same with being in the band. We're always surprised by what works. You think it's quite cool, you hope it's fine. If the audience loves it, terrific. If they hate it, terrific. But I feel very encouraged if people like what I do. That's really important to me. I love it if they love it. It really does help me.
BCBW: After all these years I think many people still only regard you as an ecstatic artist. The weirdo hippie poet who spells funny...
bissett: Well, it's possible that my ecstasy is different from their ecstasy, and they don't accept that. It's possible that they don't write about their ecstasy and they don't want me to write about mine. It's possible, too, that they don't see where we have a lot in common. They may think that since they don't write about ecstasy and I do, there isn't a cognitive process, a real knowing going on in what I do.
BCBW: How do you feel about coming back to B.C. for the Festival?
bissett: I've been living in Centralia most of the time since '85. It's a thrill to come back here and see close friends. The climate in Centralia is very hot and very cold and very sultry and very humid and very totally freezing. My body's got quite used to it. And so has my mind, almost. So when I come back here in winter, it's a luxury.
BCBW: Speaking of Centralia [Central Canada] what's your response to the political schisms in Canada?
bissett: I've been watching the constitutional workshops on tv. Rogers Cable has them on until 2 o'clock. It's amazing! We live in a kind of shadow country. Our constitutional workshops are on the cable channels and are not even on the large networks.
I've been very impressed with Ovide Mercredi and the clarity of his mind and the presence of his being. Some of the people I saw were reacting like 'the Family Compact rides again'. Upper and Lower Canada were obsessively concerned about themselves. Then he persisted and continued with the clarity of his mind and his position. I saw a real turnaround in people's minds. They started to get it and understand it. I'm very encouraged by all this.
Maybe we'll get a whole bunch of words that promote the distinctiveness of Quebec and promote the inherent self-government of aboriginal peoples. It could happen. I'm still hopeful. I get really into it. Without being Pollyandrew about it, I live in hope.
BCBW: You've always been a keen political observer. What do you think about Brian Mulroney?
bissett: I've been bummed out by him. I'm just waiting until he's no longer in office, so we can do something about restoring our own sovereignty. The Gulf War was a reminder that we don't want to get too involved in American policy making and how cruel their society is. Now we're just realizing that all this bullshit about globalization and free trade and privatization and deregulation is all a big power-grab by the ruling class for more luxury. It's basically union-busting. Hopefully we can come back to some democratic sense rather than blatant oligarchy.
BCBW: You don't recognize Canada as democratic?
bissett: Well, the word democracy can be applied to Canada, but in a lot of respects it's bullshit. Look at the stacking of the Senate to get the GST through, or shoving Free Trade down people's throats. Even the chief negotiator Simon Reisman said it was a disgrace and would not work to our benefit.
Mulroney and Bush and Reagan and Thatcher really felt they could provide more jobs if they eliminated the taxes on wealthy people. But I think most people are seeing through it now. If you don't tax wealthy people then there are no jobs and they'll just put their factories where the cheap labour is, like in Mexico with workers working for $5 a day. Labatt's from London, Ontario is moving to Cancun, Mexico.
By the way, do you agree? Or are you the classical interviewer that doesn't have to agree or disagree?
BCBW: I'm the classical interviewer.
bissett: I worry now that the Free Trade talks are really affecting support for the arts. Hills, the American free trade negotiator, wants the Canada Council on the table. But I think there's a democratic move towards establishing values and rights in the United States by all the people who've become disenfranchised through Reagan and Bush. This actually will help us. We've got to help ourselves. We can't rely on the empire. Canadians are waking up. We can assert ourselves and take control of our own sovereign destiny.
BCBW: So what did the swans have to say to you this morning?
bissett: I asked them about theory and art, and they liked the question. They said art can be theory if it really wants to, but its not art; art is about living directly. That's what's ecstatic and illuminating about it, it emphasizes living directly rather than theoretically.
BCBW: What else have the swans been saying?
bissett: Well, the swans told me the trees are meeting secretly to decide our fate on the planet. The trees are trying to decide whether they'll grow more leaves and branches to protect us from the ozone, or just let us burn. This is a big controversy in the tree population. Some trees are bitter about us, but others want to help.
BCBW: As you get older, do you get better at being happy?
bissett: It keeps going backwards and forwards. You go through so many things: for a while, The Loved One is God, for a while Writing is God, for a while Art is God, for a while The Community is God. All these things have their down sides, as well. But this is, relatively speaking, the healthiest period of my life, which I'm very grateful for.
"Interview"
bissett: On the campuses, especially when it comes to writing, there's a lot of talk about being politically correct. People often ask if I think something is politically correct or not. People's concern for political correctness seems somehow retrograde to me. I actually find the whole concept very Victorian, even though it may have some things to offer. I thas a very puritan ingredient to it. So I wrote this poem called inkorrect thots. The Ministry of Korrect Thots explains everything for everyone, but then it has to apologize because it can't explain everything.
BCBW: You've been in the poetry game since 1963. Do you realize that you've become something of a role model?
bissett: Well, I always remember what Bobby Dylan says: "Don't follow the leaders, watch your parking meters". When I started writing I was helped a lot by older poets and professors and people that liked poetry. So all that mutuality is really important. But I think people do things because they want to do them and because it's necessary --not because of role models.
Being senior or junior really doesn't have much meaning for me anyway. When I was very sick as a child, that made me see older people as not really older, because I almost died myself a number of times. So I was old when I was young, and I got younger when I got older.
BCBW: After 20 years as a publisher, how did you feel about having to sell blewointment press in 1983?
bissett: It was hard. The letting go took two years. I had put so much into it. I was very angry at the jury and I was very angry at the Canada Council at the time. I had to sell blewointment to pay for a few months of loan payments at the bank. But I still owed $12,000. It took a long time to pay it all back, all because of the erratic behaviour of the doinks on the jury who suddenly gave the press a big decrease.
BCBW: Doinks?
bissett: I don't think I'm being negative in calling them doinks. Some of them are. Some people on the juries have only had jobs as professors. They may be very good at their job, but they may have no experience of living without a salary, and they have no idea how dedicated the people of the art world are in Canada, and how many sacrifices we make. People just don't know.
BCBW: Artists have been dealing with all this for centuries...
bissett: Yes. Most of us are still trying to get just a living wage. There's no glamour in being envied or put down, and that particular merry-go-round goes on constantly. So you just do your work because you love your work, and when people are great to you it's terrific and it happens just as much as when people are not great. It would be insincere to harp on any regrets, because I know better stuff has occurred since the blewointment days, or at least just as good stuff.
BCBW: Was your show at the Vancouver Art Gallery, "fires in th tempul", a major turning point?
bissett: Yes. That was very lucky. I didn't do anything for that to happen. The price of my paintings raised somewhat after that show, and I was treated differently in a lot of areas. It's very encouraging to be treated as a hard working artist rather than the other things I'd often been treated as. You can work your buns off but if you don't get no luck you still are in deep shit.
BCBW: Through all your changes since blewointment at least you've had the consistency of being with Talonbooks for 15 years.
bissett: Yes, Talon is amazing. They've been so good to me. In my personal life I'm still restless. The 'greener pastures' thing kicks in fairly regularly with its attendant mythologies and blind alleys. But with someone to publish me I don't feel like going anywhere else.
BCBW: Nowadays when you read over your earlier books, what do you see?
bissett: I think the writing knew more than I did.
BCBW: When you give your reading at the Free Press festival, which will you read?
bissett: I never know what I'm going to read before a reading.
BCBW: Why is that?
bissett: I prefer to gauge life, and my mood. Some poems don't work one night, others do. It's the same with being in the band. We're always surprised by what works. You think it's quite cool, you hope it's fine. If the audience loves it, terrific. If they hate it, terrific. But I feel very encouraged if people like what I do. That's really important to me. I love it if they love it. It really does help me.
BCBW: After all these years I think many people still only regard you as an ecstatic artist. The weirdo hippie poet who spells funny...
bissett: Well, it's possible that my ecstasy is different from their ecstasy, and they don't accept that. It's possible that they don't write about their ecstasy and they don't want me to write about mine. It's possible, too, that they don't see where we have a lot in common. They may think that since they don't write about ecstasy and I do, there isn't a cognitive process, a real knowing going on in what I do.
BCBW: How do you feel about coming back to B.C. for the Festival?
bissett: I've been living in Centralia most of the time since '85. It's a thrill to come back here and see close friends. The climate in Centralia is very hot and very cold and very sultry and very humid and very totally freezing. My body's got quite used to it. And so has my mind, almost. So when I come back here in winter, it's a luxury.
BCBW: Speaking of Centralia [Central Canada] what's your response to the political schisms in Canada?
bissett: I've been watching the constitutional workshops on tv. Rogers Cable has them on until 2 o'clock. It's amazing! We live in a kind of shadow country. Our constitutional workshops are on the cable channels and are not even on the large networks.
I've been very impressed with Ovide Mercredi and the clarity of his mind and the presence of his being. Some of the people I saw were reacting like 'the Family Compact rides again'. Upper and Lower Canada were obsessively concerned about themselves. Then he persisted and continued with the clarity of his mind and his position. I saw a real turnaround in people's minds. They started to get it and understand it. I'm very encouraged by all this.
Maybe we'll get a whole bunch of words that promote the distinctiveness of Quebec and promote the inherent self-government of aboriginal peoples. It could happen. I'm still hopeful. I get really into it. Without being Pollyandrew about it, I live in hope.
BCBW: You've always been a keen political observer. What do you think about Brian Mulroney?
bissett: I've been bummed out by him. I'm just waiting until he's no longer in office, so we can do something about restoring our own sovereignty. The Gulf War was a reminder that we don't want to get too involved in American policy making and how cruel their society is. Now we're just realizing that all this bullshit about globalization and free trade and privatization and deregulation is all a big power-grab by the ruling class for more luxury. It's basically union-busting. Hopefully we can come back to some democratic sense rather than blatant oligarchy.
BCBW: You don't recognize Canada as democratic?
bissett: Well, the word democracy can be applied to Canada, but in a lot of respects it's bullshit. Look at the stacking of the Senate to get the GST through, or shoving Free Trade down people's throats. Even the chief negotiator Simon Reisman said it was a disgrace and would not work to our benefit.
Mulroney and Bush and Reagan and Thatcher really felt they could provide more jobs if they eliminated the taxes on wealthy people. But I think most people are seeing through it now. If you don't tax wealthy people then there are no jobs and they'll just put their factories where the cheap labour is, like in Mexico with workers working for $5 a day. Labatt's from London, Ontario is moving to Cancun, Mexico.
By the way, do you agree? Or are you the classical interviewer that doesn't have to agree or disagree?
BCBW: I'm the classical interviewer.
bissett: I worry now that the Free Trade talks are really affecting support for the arts. Hills, the American free trade negotiator, wants the Canada Council on the table. But I think there's a democratic move towards establishing values and rights in the United States by all the people who've become disenfranchised through Reagan and Bush. This actually will help us. We've got to help ourselves. We can't rely on the empire. Canadians are waking up. We can assert ourselves and take control of our own sovereign destiny.
BCBW: So what did the swans have to say to you this morning?
bissett: I asked them about theory and art, and they liked the question. They said art can be theory if it really wants to, but its not art; art is about living directly. That's what's ecstatic and illuminating about it, it emphasizes living directly rather than theoretically.
BCBW: What else have the swans been saying?
bissett: Well, the swans told me the trees are meeting secretly to decide our fate on the planet. The trees are trying to decide whether they'll grow more leaves and branches to protect us from the ozone, or just let us burn. This is a big controversy in the tree population. Some trees are bitter about us, but others want to help.
BCBW: As you get older, do you get better at being happy?
bissett: It keeps going backwards and forwards. You go through so many things: for a while, The Loved One is God, for a while Writing is God, for a while Art is God, for a while The Community is God. All these things have their down sides, as well. But this is, relatively speaking, the healthiest period of my life, which I'm very grateful for.
"Interview"
