What inspired you to become a writer?

I don't think there was any one thing that inspired me to become a
writer. I was writing very early. Stories almost as soon as I could write
at all. I'd say simply learning to read at an early age (taught by my
mother, who read with me a lot when I was really young) led me naturally
into writing. So, I wrote mainly stories, then poems in high school. I
didn't know there was such a thing as a "career" in writing, and I still
don't think of myself as really being in a career. I think it's just the
way I understand myself and the world around me, from early on. After a
while I did it every day, got very disciplined about it. That's when I knew
it wasn't just something I'd tinker around with, but rather something I had
to learn to do better and better and the only way to do it was to write and
write and write. And that meant, and still means, writing a lot of shit to
try to get to the good stuff. The everyday writing discipline probably
started when I was 18 or 19.

How did your Menno background affect your decision to become a writer?

I don't think my Menno background had any direct effect on my becoming a
writer. And it was never a decision. I did it quite naturally from the
beginning, and then just got more disciplined about it. Being of Menno
background had all kinds of effects on my content, and on the fact I tended,
still do, to shy away from received forms. I had too much "form", or rules,
in the Menno background. So, to this day I tend to work away at a poem
until it has the form I've made it into. If that makes sense. It has to be
my form, which sometimes is close to existing forms, other times not.
Music, and my love of it, has had a major influence on my writing. So, to
some degree, hymns have had an effect. Music was there, all around (even at
home where my parents sang, my mother played the piano). At the same time,
I broke away into rock 'n' roll and, to a lesser degree (in those days
anyway), into jazz. That had an enormous effect on my writing. I say this
in a general way. I work with sound and rhythm all the time in my work.
e.g. one of the influences on my long line was the playing of Bill Evans.

Why did you decide to branch out into different forms of literary and performance art?

I think all art forms are interrelated to varying degrees so, I think,
it's fairly natural to cross borders sometimes. In my case, music is
probably my first love so it was inevitable I would go in that direction.
At first, I'd write lyrics, then as I learned how to read in public readings
(including exploring the full range of my physical voice; i.e. reading out of
the body more than out of the head), and I understood my voice was an
instrument, I began collaborating with musicians. My foremost collaborator
has been jazz/improv pianist Marilyn Lerner. No real decision here.
Marilyn phoned me (when we were both living in Winnipeg) and asked if I
wanted to do something together. And we did. Worked on the CBC a few
times, recorded a cassette and a CD, and are in the middle of recording
another one this winter (adding improv cello and some percussion to the
mix). No decision, at least not in the classical sense; a flow from words
to sound to music and back again.

Cally Feldman