THE BLACK EDITIONS INTERVIEW: Violetta Leigh
Violetta Leigh is a writer based in Canada and her poetry collection Night Paces is the second in The Black Editions imprint. Here we explore the writing life, we find out more about the poetry collection and Violetta recommends some of her favourite writers and poets.
On the writing life
Writing has always felt like an intuitive practice.
My elementary school placed me in a creative writing program in second grade. I took the class available at my high school, and then was fortunate enough to attend the Department of Writing at the University of Victoria.
I’ve studied when the opportunities arose, but most importantly - try to write for at least an hour or two every day.
I also read like I’m possessed. It’s my favourite way to pass the time and other writers, including those I’m fortunate enough to know, are my favourite sources of learning and inspiration.
On Night Paces
Night Paces explores the night and the women who inhabit it.
With this collection, I focused on exploring and documenting two main themes.
In most of the pieces, I embroidered a safe evening for women. A night with chiffon and wine, frameless entanglements, art and music. I wrote pieces in which women stepped through the rather banal activities that I read, so often, in media articles as justifications for violence acted against them, (ie. walking alone at night, drinking, sharing photographs, et cetera. et cetera.) What should be normalized is the freedom to be safe from harm. My characters stumbled through life beneath a wing of dark sky: sharp, messy, ambitious - human.
Most of these pieces are set in Vancouver: in artist studios or small businesses that have been purchased by developers over the last few years. The trend seems to be tearing them down and building investment condos, a modification that is touted as inevitable and progressive, but as a dweller here, appears to my humble perspective as leeching the city of its soul and drowning folks in financial stress. I wanted to document these lost spaces and the life they once contained.
Favourite authors/poets
I love Angela Carter’s folkloric surrealism, Anaïs Nin’s sensitive and analytical journals, the coastal magic of Eden Robinson, Haruki Murakami’s mystery novels with his penchant for rock-and-roll references, the elegant essays of Joan Didion (my favourite place to read her, always, is at an airport bar with a glass of prosecco,) the dreamy wanderings of Patti Smith, the biting satire of Mikhail Bulgakov… I could go on.
Vladimir Nabokov is a favourite writer. I’ve always been amazed by the depth and layers to his storytelling, as well as the movement maintained in his generous sentences.
There’s an online database for his novel, Ada, where some ambitious person or persons have unpacked the detail and cultural nuance Nabokov embroidered into the work. For example, the first sentence of the book is: “‘[a]ll happy families are more or less dissimilar; all unhappy ones are more or less alike,’ says a great Russian writer in the beginning of a famous novel (Anna Arkadievitch Karenina, transfigured into English by R.G. Stonelower, Mount Tabor Ltd., 1880).” In this, Nabokov both turned inside-out the first sentence of one of the most famous Tolstoy novels and jabbed at Constance Garnett, who was one of the first English translators of Russian literature and of whom Nabokov was not a fan. The level of detail he secrets into his work enriches it to a cipher or artifact - and it’s still an incredible story.
For poetry, I started with the Romantics - Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Thomas, Keats, Yeats - and am now most engaged with the works of emerging poets. I’ve read wonderful pieces in publications like Brick, Litro Magazine, Minola Review, SAND Journal, and Poetry is Dead.
Recommended reading
The Plague Dogs - Richard Adams
The Life of Elves - Muriel Barbery
Nightwood - Djuana Barnes
Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter
The Overcoat - Nikolai Gogol
Dune - Frank Herbert
Mexican Gothic - Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Just Kids - Patti Smith
The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
A Violent Streak - Stephanie Warner
COLLECTION NOW SOLD OUT
