Interview with Bruce Meyer

Meet NUNUM's Spring 2020 Contributor: Bruce Meyer

7/13/2020

NUNUM

Blending Flash Fiction & Art

Interview with Bruce Meyer

Bruce Meyer lent his devilishly

fun story Leash to our Spring 2020 issue and set the whole year off on the right foot here. Bruce was kind enough to give us a bit of his time and by now you know what the first thing we had to ask him was ... keep reading for his answer and some wonderful insights into the writing life.

Bruce Meyer

Bruce, what is the first book you remember reading all by yourself?

Leash words by Bruce Meyer

There were two and I can't recall which came first: The Letters of General Isaac Brock (which I memorized because my father read it to me so often) and The Funny Bunny Factory, a rare Richard Scarry Book about rabbits who go on a quest in an empty factory. I taught myself to read at the age of three and wrote my first poem at five.

Different book for me, but the memorized part got repeated but because of my mom's voice. Let's get more recent, what was the last book you read that made you say damn that was a good book?

I still love Joyce's Dubliners but I've revisited it too many times.

I can't remember the last one because until recently I was reading two books of poetry per day or one book of short stories per day. The first one that made me say "damn, that was a good book of poetry" was Philip Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings because he made me ask "How did he do that?" I guess the most recent one may have been an anthology of flash fiction because I'm writing a lot of that at the moment (time constraints) and have a volume of my own flash, Down in the Ground, coming out in the autumn from Guernica Editions. I still love Joyce's Dubliners but I've revisited it too many times.

Leash words by Bruce Meyer

Okay this is getting psychic, Dubliners is the first book that let

Leash words by Bruce Meyer

me understand just how beautiful writing could be in the hands of a master. What about when the holidays roll around, do you have any go to writers?

Easily Seamus Heaney. He never ceases to teach me things. He mentored me and wrote me a wonderful letter after my first book came out. I wept the day he died. He was the ultimate poet -- a wise soul and a good spirit who fused the two with tremendous perception and decorum. I used to say Billy Collins and Li Young Lee, but I'm not sure any more. I love Graham Greene, especially his stories.

I've also been studying how V.S. Pritchett puts a short story

together and he has taught me to lop off the beginning and the end of things I've written. There's a sense of the Iliadic about the way he tells a conventional short story.

Brillant, lots of get to books on that list for me, thank you. I want to focus on your writing now, what writers or books influenced your decision to become a writer?

I'm not sure. My grandmother read me Longfellow. My grandfather read me Robert Service (I'm giving away my age because my grandparents were Victorians). I can't really answer the question because there has never been a time in my memory when I didn't want to write.

Leash words by Bruce Meyer

Leonard Cohen said to me, "One does not choose to be a writer. One chooses not to be."

Leash words by Bruce Meyer

I've always embraced writing as part of my life. I live to write and write to live.

I'm sure there are many people out there who'll be nodding their heads after making their way through that answer. You mentioned Leonard Cohen, any other contemporary writers you admire?

Probably Seamus Heaney who was a mentor to me. David Wevill, and perhaps Jared Carter. They've both been my teachers, especially Wevill in Texas. There are contemporary poets I adore --

Marty Gervais, John B. Lee, Laurence Hutchman here in Canada

and James Fenton in the UK. They've all taught me something and I am very fortunate to know them personally. I love the flash fiction of Meg Pokrass and Angela Readman.

Is there a writing craft book that you would recommend to new writers?

Lewis Turco's The New Book of Forms. Learn form to learn poetry and then unlearn form to write poetry. That's the James Wright formula.

Leash words by Bruce Meyer

Who has influenced your current writing style?

Leash words by Bruce Meyer

Many. Perhaps too many to count. I believe in not merely having a workbench, but having a workshop of all the possible tools I can bring to bear upon a piece of writing.

Speaking of tools, pen, pencil or phone which one do you reach for when you need to write something down?

I write prose on my keyboard. I type 100+ words a minute and then edit, edit, edit. I do more rewriting than editing. I write poetry in a Moleskine notebook in fountain pen because I believe in the idea that

one should not only write words but feel them.

When I get something down, poem or story, it will go through twenty, thirty, forty, drafts. I am meticulous about redrafting.

Well said, before we wrap this up Bruce just one last question - What advice would you give someone who is just starting to send their work out to journals?

Don't despair. There are editors who will like your work and editors who won't. If they like it and publish it, good. If they don't, there's nothing personal about their decision. Keep sending things out. Consider submissions as existing in a kind of Tibetan prayer wheel. They are only heard as long as you keep them moving.

Leash words by Bruce Meyer

Bruce Meyer is author or editor of 64 books of poetry, short fiction, flash fiction, and non-fiction. He was winner of the 2019 Anton Chekhov Prize for Fiction and has recently been a finalist in the Retreat West Fiction Prize and the Fish Short Story Prize. He lives in Barrie, Ontario.