Paul Vermeersch’s beautiful new book of poems, Self Defence for the Brave and Happy posits that the 21st century will be through acts of imagination, dreams and daydreams, creativity, and even dissociation. When you can’t trust anything, the poems argue, your imagination becomes the only valid interpreter of reality. To wit, in the poem “Don’t Wait for the Woodsman,” Vermeersch warns, “Only stories want us to live. The wolf will lie in wait/ to devour us. Do not blame it for doing what wolves do.” And in the titular poem, we are advised “Tell yourself that you are beautiful. Listen only/ to songs that insist it.”

Part inspirational tract (borne of a deliciously playful inspiration, not the usual kind), part prophetic revelation, and all crafted with Vermeersch’s signature elan, Self Defence for the Brave and Happy is a generous chocolate box stuffed with bon(-bon) mots, the perfect gift for your inner visionary. Shine on, you crazy zircon.

This editor-at-large RM Vaughan sat down with Vermeersch to talk about the new book.

RM Vaughan: The book moves effortlessly between prophetic pronouncements and intimate, personal observations. Is it a goal of the book to conflate the two in order to make the reader more keenly aware that we live in prophetic times?

Paul Vermeersch: I think all times are equally prophetic and intimate. The lives of individuals unfold along with the cosmos. But the prophets only seem to get at half the picture, only the grand events. Perhaps one of the jobs of a poet is to be a prophet of the small things, too—to prophesy the taste of lobster, the pang of guilt, the fear of darkness. We can’t put small things on hold when big things happen. I think my poems encompass that spectrum: both the landscape and the figure within the landscape, both the star system and the escape pod within the star system.

RMV: The world has not seemed as dangerous as it does now in generations. But at the same time we have never been able to share our thoughts, worries, and joys more easily. It occurs to me that your book attempts to sort out, or at least guide the reader through, this very strange era.

PV: I agree that the world seems dangerous now. I don’t know that it feels more dangerous today than it did in World War II, for example, with the Holocaust unfolding and the atom bomb about to drop on Hiroshima; but it feels like a different kind of dangerous. A hundred years ago, the world was on the brink of slipping into the Great Depression. Today, I think we’re beginning to experience something I call the Great Regression: a time characterized by fear and greed, a time when fascism is resurgent and the institutions of democracy are under constant attack by demagogues, when misinformation is widely disseminated to drown out the truth and to sew discord, when the impulse to compassion is met with derision and the impulse to acceptance is met with bigotry, and amid all this chaos the kelptocratic class is raiding the world economy to fill its coffers. The Great Regression might be the precursor to a neo-feudal dark age ruled by narcissistic robber-baron billionaires. The effort to bring this about is already well underway. And all this is in addition to the mounting environmental catastrophe. If the world seems dangerous today, it’s because we’ve already seen how all this will end.   

RMV: That leads to the next question. You employ classic sci-fi imagery and tropes in the book, but there is no Asimov-like remove on your part, no impartiality—which I love. How have the observational and speculative traditions of sci-fi influenced and/or been discarded in this book?

PV: It’s 2018. Asimov imagined our time, but we are living it. There is no remove because we are already the ghosts haunting someone else’s future. Our era is the dystopian failure of a once hopeful prophecy. We were supposed to inherit Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland or Gene Roddenberry’s post-capitalist utopia. Instead we have a world prophesied by J. G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick. How else can we discuss this? Science fiction has given us the vocabulary to talk about our present era because it has always been about our present era.

RMV: “The future will be old and used. It will leak” is my favourite line. I shouted “Testify!” when I read it. Because, pardon my gloom, but it does feel like we have used up the future. Simone Signoret wrote, “Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.” Can the same be said of the future?

PV: The used future is an important concept in science fiction. In a lot of science fiction, everything is new and shiny. The idea of the used future is why George Lucas imagined the Millennium Falcon to be a grimy, run-down hunk of junk. Even in the future, there will be old things, broken things. It’s Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias in reverse, the prophecy of future ruins. I wanted to work with that idea for precisely the same reason people want to renovate their kitchen or buy a new car: because we didn’t inherit Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland, because we’re in a race against time, and we’re desperately trying to save whatever shiny parts of the future we possibly can.

RMV: The section titled “Nu Rhymes for Nuclear Children” is a selection of nursery rhymes imagined from a post-nuclear war childhood. They are blunt and scary, and almost read like placards or protest songs.

PV: I started writing these nursery rhymes in 1995, and they never really fit in with anything I wrote until now. I think they were waiting for this book. They’re all about 20th-century tragedies like the Kennedy assassination or the election of Ronald Reagan. I wanted to update the concept of traditional nursery rhymes that were about horrible things like tyrants and plagues. When the rhymes were redacted with thick black lines to hide parts of the text, they were finally ready for the 21st century.

RMV: The poem “The Prophets Want to Know if They Were Close” is, for me, the cornerstone of the book. We all want to know the future, but it is arguable that only prophets want to actually live in that future. In an era when everything can, and often does, shift overnight, in a heartbeat, what is the role of the prophet? Can prophecy even operate in such times?

PV: The job of the runner is to run toward the finish line, but what is the runner’s job when she reaches the finish line? Just so, the job of the prophet is to tell the future, but what is the prophet’s job now that we are in the future? I imagine the prophets lying on the ground, exhausted, wrapped in thermal blankets. The blankets are cocoons—the prophets must metamorphose into something else. When they emerge, they will have become poets. Then, instead of predicting the future, we can create it.

RMV: The book is being positioned as both a warning and a tonic, as something marking where we are and at the same time offering a helping hand. And there is a lot of joyful noise in this book! How do you keep your own spirits up?

PV: When my last book came out, one reviewer called me “the prophetic, post-apocalyptic poet,” and as flattering as that might be, I have no desire to be a prophet of doom. The 24-hour news cycle has perfected that job, and I can’t compete with it. It was a conscious decision to inject a bit of hope into this book, not only as a tonic—an antidote to the 24-hour news cycle—but also as an admonishment. Our imaginations are the key to a new future. We can’t create a better world unless we first imagine it. I wanted that idea to come through. I wonder, are we now living in a dystopian world because we’ve spent the last half-century imagining one? Has it all been a self-fulfilling prophecy? What if we return to Tomorrowland, to Gene Roddenberry’s undiscovered country? What if we spend the next half-century imagining a better society, a better world? What prophecy will we fulfill then?

Meet and hear Paul Vermeersch at the following:

OCTOBER 28, 2018 
Ottawa
PLAN 99 READING SERIES/OTTAWA WRITERS FESTIVAL
5:00 pm at The Manx Pub

NOVEMBER 3, 2018
Waterloo, Ont.
WILD WRITERS FESTIVAL
Poetry Workshop Master Class
More details TBA.

JANUARY 19, 2019
TORONTO
SPEAKEASY READING SERIES
More details TBA.

Father, took Joseph in English,
is Sioe An (like Sue Ann),
is bapak to me,

& we spelled
her name wrong repeatedly.

Uncle, took Joseph in English too,
is Sioe Siet (like sue seat), is paman to me,

& he didn’t correct us all along
until now & Hoei,
in English, Josephine.

As far as I know ‘ibu’, ‘saudara’, ‘isteri’,

are as unknown to me as ‘Hoei’,
are mother, sister, wife,

& Hoei was oui was we
was

EXPLORE THE FEATURE:

Editor’s note by Gwen Benaway ● Prose by Kai Minosh Pyle ● Interview with Lindsay Nixon ● Visual art by Fallon Simard ● Interview with Ziibiwan Rivers ● Prose by Jaye Simpson ● Poetry by Arielle Twist

A note from the editor:

When I was asked to guest edit an Indigenous-specific supplement for This, my first instinct was to look toward the Trans, Two-Spirit, and Queer Indigenous voices that were emerging around me. Indigenous transness is a complex way of being in the world. As Billy-Ray Belcourt notes in his essay, The Poltergeist Manifesto, Queer Indigenous being is a double impossibility. Indigenous being is often viewed as an impossible selfness, a remnant of a past conquered people or an unimagined future. Queer Indigenous being is similarly located in either the sexual and gender diversity inheritance of our Two-Spirit ancestors or invisible in mainstream White Queerness. If Indigenous being broadly and Queer Indigenous being specifically are seen as impossible ways of being within settler society, Indigenous transness is absent from colonial imaginations.

The voices in this supplement resist the assumed impossibility of our lives to show the vibrancy of our living. When Jaye Simpson writes “how do I explain my queerness to the gatekeeper of my blood line?” they are speaking back to the impossibility of Indigenous Queer and transness, answering it with a clear invocation of radiant being. Arielle Twist writes, “I am reworking my reality” and “How does a tranny/ coexist with lust.” Her writing is not about a distant Indigenous transness rooted in the past, but a celebration of an Indigenous trans body here in the present. Indigenous transness in Twist’s poetry is a sexually active and fully present hereness that not only exists, but desires and moves through a world that refuses to allow our realities to exist.

In Kai Minosh Pyle’s work, they inhabit a rich complexity of Anishinaabe and Métis being. They write, “duality is binary with an ndn heart,” complicating notions of traditions, gender, and pushing softly back on notions of Two-Spirit being which exclude or erase transness. The line, “i’ve stopped using the word ‘traditional’ because i no longer know what it means and maybe never did. you should, too,” hits like a thunderstorm over a lake. There is beautiful “survivance” in Pyle’s work, interweaving anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) language while questioning the ways we are taught to see Indigenous transness.

Nothing celebrates the beauty of Indigenous trans bodies more than Fallon Simard’s art. In the series of images within this submission, they show their chest after top surgery. Intercut with purple, pink, and other digital images, the artwork is a ceremony of trans ndn embodiment. Their artworks and online activism is grounded in a fierce and loving defence of Indigenous trans women and resists transphobia. Within these images, Indigenous being is present as a vital and complex living that cannot be regulated into absence or ghostly haunting. Lindsay Nixon’s interview is another window into the kinship-based notions of Indigenous Queerness and Transness. Their work as an activist, community organizer, academic, and writer is creating space and expanding profound conversations on Indigenous being across many disciplines and discourses. Within their words, Indigenous Transness is not merely an inheritance, but a vital gift to our communities.

Finally, my interview with Ziibiwan Rivers explores the legacy of toxic masculinity and the important of working within kinship and spaces that uplift us. Their music is exceptional, merging genres and modalities to envision beautiful new soundscapes. Taking kawaii into profound NDN realities, Ziibiwan’s work is everything I’ve ever wanted in the world. In all the vibrancy present in this issue, Indigenous being is a burning light, unrelenting in its intensity but gentle in its illumination.

I am immensely honoured—as an artist, as a trans girl, as an Anishinaabe and Métis woman—for the opportunity to uplift these incredible voices and celebrate the wonder of their work. We are not impossible. We have always been here, we are still here now, and we will be here in the future. Share with us in our living.

— GWEN BENAWAY

READ MORE:

my retractable claws right through his thorax.
He hugs me and his staleness is battery acid.
Cultural capital is the only capital.

That’s why the bank has repossessed my studio
in the Mortgage Crisis of the Future.
It isn’t a bug; it’s a feature of the system.
In the Fourth World, the manufacturers come and go
Talking about debt-to-earnings ratio.

Wherever the jobs aren’t, that’s where I fly.
That’s how I do my art.
Dessert in economy class is a Lampedusan blood gelée.
Dessert in this fourth-wave café is a neighbourhood primed to gentrify.
The neighbourhoods are gnashing their teeth
for yarn shops and strollers and whiteness to swoop in.
I work on commission for Lockheed Martin.
The name of this neighbourhood means Christberg,
which is a titanic sinker in need of a rebrand.
History slithers in mysterious bands.
Red touches yellow touches black.
Every man in Xberg (née Kreuzberg) has identical tattoos.
It’s 2024 and they are renovicting all the Turks and intellectuals.
The faggots too.

Raytheon’s market index soaring.
All my wars are foreign.
All my condos foreign.
Bombs fall over Jordan.

5 A.M: Exercise. If bones crack during yoga, use the elliptical first.

6 A.M: Wash, after listening for son’s truck to rumble alive and leave for the day. Bless his inherited armour skin.

7 A.M: Recite first prayer — not according to the inconstant dawn of here but of home, where the staunch sun rises at the same time each day. Remember to pray for the grandchildren, who have lost their faith.

8 A.M: Turmeric water. Call sister. Hang up if her bastard husband answers; she’ll call back when she can.

9 A.M: Set yesterday’s rotli out for the crows, who will always feed their kin. Soak lentils and thaw meat. Order groceries from daughter-in-law as she leaves for the gym, where she takes too long.

10 A.M: Complete five of twenty-two laps through the house. Game show: The Price Is Right. Relive Bob Barker, permit Drew Carey. Chai, porridge. One boiled egg on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

11 A.M: Indian Soap Opera: The Will of the Mother-in-Law. Empathize but do not remember; it’s better that way. Cackle at their misfortune from a distance afforded by time.

12 P.M: English Soap Opera: Days of Our Lives. They have gay characters now. Second prayer of the day.

1 P.M: Walk to the mall. Greet friends, use the bathroom, stare at teenagers, walk back. Notice construction where homes used to be. In the case of precipitation, don’t go outside but add fifteen house laps and unburden PVR.

2 P.M: Indian Soap Opera: My Heart Lies in a Foreign Land. Nowadays the backup dancers are white.

3 P.M: Complete ten of twenty-two house laps. Call brother, laugh. Call son, discuss other son. Speak in English to youngest grandchild, though this limits potential conversation topics.

4 P.M: Cook. Listen to the radio (Rhim Jhim); love the oldies and pretend to love the newbies.

5 P.M: Shower; stare at the mirror. If there is no precipitation, dress for mosque. There’s only a bit of perfume left. Choose red or pink lipstick.

6 P.M: Dinner. Press son’s shoulders tense from labour. Chai, cookies.

7 P.M: Third and fourth prayer of the day, at mosque or at home. If at mosque, catch up with old friends and rivals. If at home, watch the grandchildren with their Apples, which have replaced the mice. What are they always writing, tuk tuk tuk?

8 P.M: If at mosque, return home. Chai. Indian Soap Opera: Togetherness. Complete last of twenty-two house laps.

9 P.M: Indian Soap Opera: The Road I Have Walked. Fast forward through the religious parts.

10 P.M: Yell at the grandchildren in the kitchen if they have bought outside food. Bid goodnight to the family. Scowl if they say Peace Out instead of Pir Shah. Recite fifth prayer of the day from bed.

11 P.M: In the case of plaguing memories, meditate on one word until dreams come.

& if your homeland weren’t burning, I would let you lead me

south to one of those dozen American towns called The Palisades—

make a life where the close of day, from our chrome balcony,

would look like a glitter-bomb lobbed at the horizon—

we’d have cars, a dozen, just to have them all (hey, Charlie)—

you would learn to drive & drive me all around, show me every-

thing & off, hot foreign wife in the land of pasteurized

milk & no-more-honey-all-the-bees-are-dying—

Instead I will marry you right here, you hunted thing,

throw this citizenship over your shoulders like a shock blanket—

we will love right here & our love will grow to suit this place;

adaptable, accustomed to weathering the cold—& we’ll

learn not to deny that cold will come. You’ll take only

what you need. We’ll watch Rome fall, smoke our legal weed,

& I’ll quiz you on what common words to add a U to—

favourite, colour, flavour—as we work the land, wear layers

for survival. But, for now, go—revel in the throes of the dream

& I will set up camp, will save the date of your arrival.

Photo by Neno Grae.

Poetry isn’t a vocation associated with typical career paths, but even so, Toronto-based poet Sabrina Benaim’s journey has been unusually meteoric. In 2014, she performed a poem called Explaining My Depression to My Mother at the National Poetry Slam in Oakland, California.

“Mom, my depression is a shapeshifter,” she begins in the video that has now been viewed more than 6.7 million times, making her one of the most-viewed performance poets in the world. “One day it’s as small as a firefly in the palm of a bear / The next it’s the bear / On those days I play dead until the bear leaves me alone.”

Overnight, she became a viral sensation. Benaim has since published a collection, Depression and Other Magic Tricks, acquired a devoted social media following, and toured internationally. She also became, in her own words, “a bit of a poster child” for depression and anxiety and began receiving a lot of messages from other people eager to share their own struggles.

“Some of them just knock you sideways—the things that people go through and are willing to tell you,” she says. “I mean,” she adds, laughing, “Who would listen to that poem and think: oh, she has all the answers to my problems?”

The poem offers no answers, only a heartrending depiction of the agony and isolation of depression. Benaim’s reading is desperate and powerful; she is like a wild animal caught in a net. Her pain is palpable. “I like to think of a poem as a room,” she says. “You create an atmosphere, so that when someone walks into the room—even if they don’t live there, or even like it there very much—they can feel how you feel. A lot of the time, just sharing an experience is enough. You don’t have to understand it.”

She says it is okay that people don’t understand mental illness as long as they listen. “I tell my mom all the time, ‘I could never make you understand how I feel, I just need you to understand that how I feel is real.’”

In the video of that performance, Benaim looks terrified—because she was. She had been performing poetry on stage for less than a year at that point and was new to speaking openly about mental illness. “I looked at slamming as Coyote Uglying myself. In the movie, she’s very afraid [to sing] but knows she has to, and that’s how performing made me feel: I didn’t necessarily want to but somewhere inside of me, I knew I had to overcome this, and it would be worth it.”

And it was.

Writing on the internet was her outlet as a teenager and has remained a welcoming home for Benaim and her work. Explaining My Depression to My Mother is a poem about loneliness, but she feels far less alone than she used to. “A lot of people, after they read [my book], say, ‘I feel like you’re my friend, I feel like I know you.’ I’m like, of course you know me! You just read 70 pages of my innermost thoughts. We are friends!”

Fortunately for Benaim and her more than 27,000 Instagram followers, she likes interacting with people on social media. Her perspective on online interactions is remarkably unjaded and open-hearted. “To have a video like I have, and not have a thousand trolling comments on it is, I think, a testament to there being good people out there.”

Mental health is a dominant theme of her work, but it’s far from the only topic she explores. She is an avid consumer of folklore and myths; the story she loves best is Beauty and the Beast. “I really relate to both of them,” she says, “because for me mental illness has felt like the beast that hides in the castle and doesn’t want anyone to see it. But the other part of me is Belle, who wants to see the world, and read everything there is to read, and sing songs about it.”

She plans to turn this interest into a children’s book of fairy tale poetry, one of many future projects she’s dreaming of. She says she holds onto a lot of stories: “When I see the future, it’s like, wow, the possibilities feel endless for what I’m doing right now.”

“It’s nice to think the best thing that could happen to me I can’t even fathom. Because that’s what it’s been like so far. This whole experience, I couldn’t have dreamed it.”