Interview with Dessa Bayrock

Dessa Bayrock lives in Ottawa with two cats, one of whom is very loud and almost always nearby. She used to fold and unfold paper for a living at Library and Archives Canada, and is currently a PhD student in English, where she continues to fold and unfold paper. She has two chapbooks with Katie Stobbart: The Trick to Feeling Safe at Home (Coven Editions, 2021) and Worry & Fuck (Collusion Books, 2021), as well as one with just her poems about bad dreams (Is It About Ruins and Ghosts?; Ghost City Press, 2019). She was the editor of post ghost press for nearly three years and was the recent recipient of the Diana Brebner Prize. You can find her, or at least more about her, at www.dessabayrock.com, or on Twitter at @yodessa.

Manahil: This is Canthius’ tenth issue, and the first for which we have a guest editor, Sanna Wani. Whether you’ve been a long-time reader of Canthius or are just getting introduced us, how did you come to decide what pieces you wanted to share with the magazine?

Dessa: Canthius feels like a soft place to land – not soft in the way that overstuffed pillows are soft, and not soft in the way that fresh towels are soft, but soft in the way that a hard hug is two soft bodies meeting in space. While this is my first time publishing a poem with Canthius, the magazine has always felt exactly like that to me: like an embrace. I wanted to submit poems that felt honest, which weren’t afraid of their feelings or being unable to define their feelings. “Everything I Own Is Out of Order” has been one of my favourites in this vein of poems for a long time; it doesn’t feel bold, or particularly ornate in its imagery. But it feels true.

Manahil: I find writing often emerges from a conversation. What conversation is happening in your work?

Dessa: I wrote this poem after a trip home to see my best friend, in that strange period after a trip where home feels familiar but not quite permanent. I think this poem asks: what is permanent? It’s pretty sure emotions aren’t, and that the hard plastic of my hairbrush isn’t, and that good weather definitely isn’t, and maybe bodies aren’t, either. But I think by the end, this poem realizes that love doesn’t have to be permanent in order to be an anchor.

Manahil: What is something you’re working on that you’d like to share!

Dessa: I’ll be reading (on Zoom!) with CV2 on October 23, including a poem about Carly Rae Jepsen that won the CV2 48-hour poem contest this year. I think it’s going to be a nice time!

Otherwise, most of my energy is going into finishing my dissertation in English literature! Which is annoying, because I’d really like to be working on a book of anti-capitalist essays with Jess. However, with a little luck I’ll submit the diss by early December and be onto better and more joyful writing projects by 2023; meanwhile, I am actively and currently soliciting all the good luck and well wishes that my broad strong back can carry.

Manahil: In closing, what is a poem, story, painting, chapbook, or book you would like to recommend others read?

Dessa: Possibly my favourite poem of all time is “I Am Not Here to Buy the Leopard” by Rebecca Hazelton, which briefly disappeared from the internet but now, blessedly, has reappeared. I’m also really, really interested to read Wolf Sonnets by R.P. LaRose, who rewrites the traditional constraints of the sonnet from Métis land, which is out this fall but not yet in my hands. Finally, when my eyes are too tired to read, they’re never too tired to drink in the beauty and strength of Katlyn Nadjiwon’s beadwork or to watch this strangely mournful, strangely beautiful short film about vowels, utilizing archival audio from English Pronunciation – a practical handbook for the foreign learner, which, I think, underscores how arbitrary and personal language can be. I watched it in an undergrad English class close to ten years ago and I’ve had it bookmarked ever since, just like I’ve bookmarked this video of a mariachi band serenading beluga whales (for times of great need).