above/ground press author spotlight #22 : N.W. Lea

, celebrating his seventh title through above/ground press

Born in Whitehorse, Yukon, N.W. Lea grew up on the West Island of Montreal and in and around Ottawa, including Lanark County and the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Tricounty. He currently lives with his wife and two children in Whitehorse. He has been quietly publishing his Surrrealist/Romantic brand of compact, mystical, sad sack poetry for close to two decades, from an array of chapbooks, to his full-length collections Everything is Movies (Chaudiere Books, 2007) and Understander (Chaudiere Books, 2015), both of which remain available through Invisible Publishing. When he is not writing, he is parenting, brooding or riding mountain bikes.

N.W. Lea is the author of seven titles through above/ground press: light years (2006), Present! (2014), Nervous System (2018), Five Mothers (2019), Less Dream (2021), Natural Man (2022) and Certain Forces (2025).

You’ve now published seven chapbooks with above/ground press, as well as a chapbook or two produced elsewhere. How do you see your work progressing between titles? Were these titles deliberately composed as chapbook-sized units, or part of larger, book-length manuscripts? How do you see your chapbooks in terms of your larger work?

1.

I can definitely see an evolution taking place in my work; at least, I hope! It might have to do with changing interests, different reading habits; age and effort, I suppose, as well. I do find myself gravitating to a less impressionistic mode of composing and becoming a little more “planny” and lyrical, though only in little ways at this point. I’m still very much a loyalist to dream logic and the uncanny and all that New York School stuff. But, I suppose I am becoming more sentimental, more simple in my aesthetics.

2.

Yes! I pretty much only write with chapbooks in mind right now. I love the compression of them; it’s a medium that suits my style, which is typically pretty compact and line-driven. Also, frankly, I’m just not that prolific and never have been; I’ll spend years on a poem. In fact, one of the poems in this collection is a re-work that dates back to 2009! (I checked the original timestamp). You could make the argument that I’m too fastidious or precious or clingy (and you’d probably be right), but that’s just how I roll, I guess.

3.

I would love to collect the chapbooks and incorporate them into a larger work one day. But with becoming a father of two and being a house-dad, and working, the thought of putting together a book is super daunting. I still hold hope that I will produce something trade-length in the near-ish future. As it stands, I’m totally content making chapbooks with above/ground, where I know I’ll get eyes on it from the real appreciators!

Did you notice a difference in how you considered your work once you began to publish chapbooks, or when you began to publish full-length books? Is there a difference?

Not necessarily. I tend to take life one poem at a time. I’m not especially deft with grand visions. To be honest, from a logistics standpoint, chapbooks are much easier in terms of organizing and curating, and frankly more satisfying, since for me compression is the name of the game. Even my last book, Understander, as far as trade-length goes, was relatively small at around 50 pages. This all speaks to my general anxiety around creating. I’m working on letting go. That will come in time, I have faith.

What does your process of building book-length manuscripts look like? Do you build chapbook manuscripts with eventual book-length in mind, or is it a matter of poem-writing until a manuscript shape, or even a particular quantity, begins to reveal itself?

Well, In the past, I’ve tended to chunk my books into several sections which are usually organized with at least a vague theme or motif in mind, so the strategy has been to go section by section. I suppose, upon reflection, those sections are essentially chapbooks. In the end, maybe it all boils down to chapbook writing for me, the only difference being the intention that the book is ultimately presented as a larger unified whole. All in all, though, I wouldn’t say there’s any more urgency when it comes to a larger manuscript than with a chapbook. Anytime I put something out into the world I’m pretty stressed from beginning to end. But to your point of letting the work emerge, organically and reveal itself, that is always best practice, to my mind.

Do you see yourself, then, as someone who composes poems, or someone who composes chapbooks? Or is there such a distinction?

No, it’s 100% a poem to poem situation. Generally, there’s a little reading foreplay with the hope that inspiration will hit. Once in a while, I’ll take notes on site during some kind of life event, profound or mundane, and then work out the poem later. Very rarely does that yield any fruit, though. I lean pretty heavily on spontaneity in most cases for the initial composition. After that, I can spend years shaping, scrapping, restarting. Spinning that wheel!

You mention an affinity to the New York School, and I’ve seen you reference John Ashbery and Barbara Guest in various poems (among others). What is it about that particular kind of work that strikes you so deeply?

Well, Ashbery is my absolute favourite and a personal patron Saint. When I discovered him something awoke in me. I really resonated with the way his mind worked, the way you could never quite anchor down in to his words, that what he was talking about was not only haunted and beautiful and satisfying but also deeply mysterious. Somehow I felt kindred with the “what” in his poetry and still do. I aped him to a degree in the early days (along with James Tate and others) when I was figuring out my voice, though I wouldn’t say I ever wrote like him. I’m far from a maximalist, however the spirit of the NYS aesthetic remains with me. I value things like the existential absurd, a cosmopolitan tone, surreal departures finessed around concrete images, the novel use of impression and abstraction. Listing! I love to list. All things at least I’ve perceived in that milieu of poetry and that I use to this day in my own truncated way.

How does it feel to be working a New York School aesthetic up there in Whitehorse? Has the shift in geography, in landscape, had any bearing on the kinds of work you’ve been attempting?

Certainly, it has had an influence on my writing but I wouldn’t say in any transformative way. My writing mostly comes from my mental landscape, it’s my imaginal life languaged, essentially. I’m not much of an occasional or descriptive writer. That’s not to say that there isn’t an interplay or dynamic with the physical landscape. The Yukon is awesome and sublime and extreme—very hard to ignore. But l’m for the most part an aesthetic writer and language itself in many ways is the landscape or at least the foreground. I could be on the moon and my style wouldn’t change, I believe. That said, I love the natural world and have a profound respect for it. I find lots of inspiration in the forests especially, in as much as they can bring you into a primordial silence and solitude, which can either be clarifying or maddening, depending on what you bring with you. But I’m not a nature writer by any stretch. The wilderness is not Eden to me, nor is it some arena for bourgeois adventurism. It is supernatural and needs to be met with a kind of measured reverence. Not to get too witchy about it!

What influences beyond New York School poets have impacted the way you write, or think about writing?

Over the years, Jean Valentine, Theodore Roethke, Rilke, Michael Burkard, Tomas Transtromer, Milton, Blake, Marianne Moore, Fanny Howe, Rae Armantrout, James Wright, Christian Wiman, Sylvia Plath, Chekhov, Jim Harrison, Mavis Gallant have nourished me…to name just a few.

I recently discovered the poet Jack Gilbert. Incredible. Can’t believe I missed him all this time. We share similar styles: kind of high-minded but compact and still conversational. He also wasn’t very prolific, which is inspiring, since I’m always questioning my output!

How does this new chapbook, Certain Forces, feel different than your prior work, if at all? Where do you see your work moving next?

I would say these poems are a little more personal, lyrical. Many of them are about my daughter, which to me feels risky. I’m not used to sincerity on it’s face. I tend to use evasion and ironic distance as a way of getting at something inexpressible, more real than the real, which has always been my ethos: unexpected turns of phrase and discursive logic as something redemptive, salvific, even. There’s an inherent irony even in that! However, I don’t want to do that when my kids are the subject of the poem. My instinct is to be more direct and heart-centered. The big risk with that is the dreaded schmaltz! I think I negotiate that pretty well with the poem “Total Love,” for example. I’m feeling more sentimental these days, so I figure just lean into it. Other than that no major departures. I’m pretty confident in my voice at this stage. I know how my mind works, at least when it comes to making poems.

Has parenting, then, shifted the way you think about or approach poems?

Only insofar as it has shifted absolutely everything in my life, inside and out!