Episode 43: A conversation with Ryan Fitzpatrick and Nikki Reimer
Dec 1, 2022
BIOS
Ryan Fitzpatrick is a poet and critic living in Toronto/Tkaronto. His critical work centres on questions of spatial production, emergence, intimacy, and assemblage as they relate to contemporary poetics. He recently completed a PhD at Simon Fraser University and a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Toronto Scarborough. He is the author of four books of poetry and over a dozen chapbooks including Sunny Ways (Invisible, 2023), Coast Mountain Foot (Talonbooks, 2021), Fortified Castles (Talonbooks, 2014), and Fake Math (Snare/Invisible, 2007). With Jonathan Ball, he edited Why Poetry Sucks: An Anthology of Humorous Experimental Canadian Poetry (Insomniac, 2014). With Deanna Fong, Janey Dodd, Susan Rudy, Fred Wah, and others, he worked on the Fred Wah Digital Archive. Currently, he is the publisher of Model Press, an online-only poetry micropress.NIKKI REIMER (she/they) is a multimedia artist and writer, and chronically ill neurodivergent prairie settler currently living in Calgary / Mohkinstsis. She has been involved with art and writing communities, primarily in Calgary and Vancouver, for over 20 years. They are the author of three books of poetry and multiple essays on grief. GRIEFWAVE, a multimedia, web-based, extended elegy, was published in February 2022. Frequent themes are feminism, the body, the Anthropocene, late capitalism, death, grief, loss, and animal subjectivity. Patreon: patreon.com/nikkireimer
Show Notes:
03:55 Ryan Fitzpatrick’s “incoherent imagination” of the city of Calgary.
05:00 Nikki Reimer’s Behind the Drywall
05: 12 Ryan Fitzpatrick’s Coast Mountain Foot
05:18 Shelf Life Books’ YouTube episode Double Book Launch: Ryan Fitzpatrick and Nikki Reimer with Kit Dobson.
07:35 Marc Herman Lynch is a TIA House assistant. He attended this zoom interview. He joins the conversation at a certain point in the interview.
08:48 Nikki Starts talking about Behind the Drywall
09:55 Discussion of Calgary as it has been shaped by the Oil and Gas industry.
11:12 The purpose and the establishment of the +15 in Calgary.
13:24 Calgary’s real estate business and its connection to masculinity and the Stampede.
14:15 Stampede: Misogyny, White Supremacy and Settler Colonialism By Kimberly A. Williams
19:20 George Bowering’s Rocky Mountain Foot
20:19 Fitzpatrick talks about his book Coast Mountain Foot
21:25 Lynnwood Ridge Housing
22:56 Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture Book by Lisa Robertson
23:36 The Consonant C
23:50 The issue of finding space for artists
26:20 Fitzpatrick discusses his move to Vancouver
27:14 The contestation of space in Calgary and Vancouver.
31:08 Cultural and literary production in both cities.
32:01 Reimer’s DOWNVERSE
32:14 Fitzpatrick’s FAKE MATH
32:40 Reimer talks about [Orange].
33:50 Filling Station Magazine
33:52 The literary scene in Calgary in the 2000s.
35:07 KSW refers to the Kootenay School of Writing.
35:48 Fitzpatrick talks about filling station magazine.
37:50 Fitzpatrick references TISH magazine.
38:27 Reimer talks about KSW.
45:18 Fitzpatrick finally succeeded in convincing Marc Lynch to join the conversation.
48:26 Discussion of Journal and reading group About a Bicycle.
TIA House recognizes the generous support of the Canada Research Chairs program and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. We also appreciate the support of the Faculty of Arts and the Department of English at the University of Calgary, where our offices are housed, as well as the guidance of Marc Stoeckle at the Taylor Family Digital Library.
TIA House is run by Larissa Lai, Shuyin Yu, Ryan Stearne, Shazia Ramji, Rebecca Geleyn, Mikka Jacobsen, Benjamin Ghan, Amy LeBlanc, Marc Lynch, and Mahmoud Ababneh.
Our Intro/Outro music is Monarch of the Streets by Loyalty Freak Music, accessed from the Free Music Archive.