Both of de Meijer’s essay collections play with place and language. When asked about how that shapes her as a writer de Meijer talked about how interconnected both are within each other.
“I think, place continues to be a conversation that we’re having with our surroundings all the time … in [alfabet/alphabet], certainly I explore how land and language are intimately connected. And so that’s also gotten me more interested in place because as writers, that’s our instrument, right? So if our instrument is something that at least is meant to have a close relationship to where we live. Obviously in these colonial languages that we’re speaking right now, that’s not the case, then what position does that put us in to cultivate a relationship to where we are?”
As a writer that works with both poetry and non-fiction prose, de Meijer talked about her inclination toward a more poetic voice, how that carries over into writing non-fiction, and the way poetry can really help out aspiring writers.
“I think that I’m poetically inclined anyway. I mean, whether I think that has its strengths and its drawbacks. Every writer has certain inclinations in their voice, right? And that’s how my mind tends to work. So it carries over into my essays … I do think any creative writing student, any aspiring writer, should attempt [poetry] at least for a while because it is a great training ground or just understanding [of] the valency of each word, each phrase.
“I don’t think prose is interesting without its own cadence and rhythm and waveforms within it … You may not want it to rhyme but I think whenever we look at really beautiful prose writing, there’s always a sort of [cadence] quality, at least in the voice. If you were to remove the words and hum out the cadence or tap it out, you would still hear something musical there. So I think that is a carryover between poetry and prose.”
De Meijer also talked about how writing in non-fiction can be vulnerable — writing the complete truth without being able to invent in the same way a writer can in poetry.
“I think it’s for every writer to know what you’re ready to make public and to deal with as artistic material. Because art has its healing properties for me. That healing and writing takes place in my journal, it’s a more private writing. What I’m ready to put out in the world, I’ve already metabolized. It doesn’t feel any longer … [otherwise] I’d be asking to be witnessed and that’s a very understandable human need we all have, right? I should be witnessed by people who know me and care about me, right? My gesture with readers is not that direction. It’s my gift to them. So it’s me offering something that I’m already done with on that kind of emotional level.”
Finally de Meijer gave advice for all students who want to pursue writing:
“Every student should read as widely as possible. That is crucial. I feel like there’s no other absolute rule, but that is one. I think of writing as a translation of our attention. And so I think it starts with cultivating and attention that is engaged with the world, with the material … with that feeling of, this is my consciousness, now if I give it language, what would it say? That’s the gesture. And once you get going on that, I think that’s the pleasure and the satisfaction that will keep you going back again and again to each project … my privilege is, I don’t make a lot of money at what I’m doing, but I love it. Sure those decisions can be tricky. You can’t, I don’t think, have a really comfortable middle class existence as a Canadian writer, unless you are exceptionally successful at it. But to do what you love, there’s something to be said for it for sure.”
