Sharon Berg Interviews Stan Rogal​

(ECW Press, 2025)

Stan Rogal

Sharon Berg:  You say in the Author’s Note for ... more songs the radio won’t play..., “the true emphasis is on the process and/or style of writing, not the destination but the journey that is of significance, allowing the reader to attach their own thoughts and experiences... Not cover versions, not parodies, exactly (though parodic) but redactions, mutations, Frankensteins... making the whole greater than the sum of its parts--a gestalt, to varying degrees...” This suggests you stand behind a work you know will be read in different ways, even twisted to make it ugly and/or beautiful, depending upon the perspective of its audience. Do you generally accept the varied bias of an audience? Is this book a continuation of sorts, or a leap apart from your prior work? Please elaborate.
 
Stan Rogal:  Once I have completed a work and sent it out into the world, I have no choice but to accept the varied biases of an audience. In fact, I’m warily interested in what the response might be; otherwise, there’d be no point in allowing the work to escape the computer.
 
Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann said she quit poetry after two award-winning collections since she didn’t want to fall into the trap of many poets: that of using the same themes, the same language, over and over again. My book is a continuation of sorts in that I’m always seeking—to paraphrase Leonard Cohen—“new skins for old ceremonies.” In fact, one of the finest comments made about my poetic oeuvre is that every book is somehow different, each from the other, though maintaining my personal voice.
 
SB:  Ha! On a personal level, that presents a comment I received from a reader of my short fiction in a different light. She said she was unsettled by the different perspectives presented in different stories. I chuckled to myself as that was precisely what I’d aimed for. I do note that in regards to your work, the media for ... more songs the radio won’t play... says the work deploys “non- or a-poetical language to challenge how a poem should work; sampling; and off-kilter humour... to update [your] playlist for a present-day audience.” This leads me to ask: if you’ve challenged the very parameters and functionality of the language used in poems, how would you--as an artist using written language as a medium--describe your present-day audience? What would their common interests in poetry be?
 
SR:  It can be argued, I think, that anything can be labeled a “poem” these days, from the rhyming Hallmark Card type, to prose broken into short lines of blank verse, to anecdotes or morale boosters, to a single word (Aram Saroyan is given credit for the shortest poem in English: “lighght”) or image on a page, making it impossible to establish any such thing as a “common interest” among either poets or readers. And, of course, the further one deviates from the more popular Hallmark Card model, the fewer adherents one has. Add to this that most so-called poets (because there are an abundance out there) neither read nor purchase other poets—except possibly friends—for fear of having their own individual voices interfered with, and you end with a high number of siloed groups, each with their own personal leanings and preferences. As for my own present-day audience, I would say few and far between, and I’m fortunate to have had a handful of publishers take an interest—and a chance—on my work.
 
SB:  Though you’re definitely correct to say that almost anything is being labeled poetry these days, some of it is definitely not quality by any definition. The rest of your response leads me to assert there are certain historic guidelines for poetry and you challenge those rules. So, read my following query as an exploration of the rationale inherent to your work’s overthrowing of those expectations.
 
At times the voice of poems in ... more songs the radio won’t play... seems bored (“so on & so forth example after tedious example, yadda, yadda, snap!”). Other times it’s fraught with teasing (“oh, allow me [please] to fry an egg on that [most serious, here] most perfect hot ass”). Sometimes it seems baiting (“I never knew I was being groomed to be the sex toy of a narcissist”). The media speaks about your work’s humour, but collected in a single book, without the relief associated with poems containing joy or celebration, the book seems dark and weighty. How do you respond to the idea that a primary goal of poetry is to evoke an emotional response? How important do you feel emotional balance is to the profile of any book?
 
SR:  I admit, I’m little interested in trying to manipulate the emotions of a reader. Having no personal insight into this unknown entity, I prefer to let them feel what they feel in their own way. One person’s joy can be another’s grief. Humour (or a sense of humour) is a very personal attribute. Something I believe to be hilarious can fall flat to an audience—is this thing turned on? I’m hearing crickets out there! Both interpretation and misinterpretation are normal human conditions that I have no control over. Language itself is slippery and faulty at best. Ludwig Wittgenstein said: “Only describe, don’t explain.” He said: “Don’t look for meanings; look for the use.” I’d rather have my readers judge my poems for how I use language/words to construct them rather than what specific meaning they might contain.
 
I’m pleased you noticed the shifts in voice and tone in the poems, which is one of the devices I tend to use frequently in order to present my poems in a more energetic and dramatic fashion. Maybe blame my theatre background for that particular extravagance.
 
SB:  Okay, that suggests something about your approach that I’d call your internal dwelling--your theatre background—but I’m wondering how that connects with your external abode. So, where do you live? Is it an urban or rural setting? Do you feel there is anything about the environment surrounding you that impacts upon your writing? Is it open spaces? Or crowds of people? Please explain how the environment around you affects your approach to writing.
 
SR:  I was born in Vancouver and now live in Toronto, both urban centres. I would say that my writing is reflective of a bustling city life in that I tend to create using a bombardment of various stimuli, everything is grist for the mill.
 
SB:  I can see that! The Playwright or the Director chooses a path through the chaos, calming a tsunami of factors in the crowd of people who present a play. But in terms of the audience for ... more songs the radio won’t play..., I’m sure you’re aware of a group who will naturally be drawn to reading it. But there is also a different group, one you want to read it. How are those two groups different? Please elaborate.
 
SR:  Judging from the limited number of book sales and little or no media coverage, I must admit to having absolutely no awareness of any group being naturally drawn to reading my book. Since my book is literary—meaning, I suppose, that the poems are more dependent on theoretical practice than on content and meaning—I would hope to attract readers from the academic world, though, not being already a part of that elite community, the chances are slim to nil. 
 
SB:  I’m not so sure your chances of gaining the audience you aim for are actually that slim. It is true that authors--or perhaps any artist--rarely sees their own achievements. But to change the topic... book titles are often difficult to come up with, even though some authors seem to begin there. What was your experience in developing a title for ... more songs the radio won’t play...?
 
SR:  The title was easy. I was listening to the Canadian singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards’ song One More Song the Radio Won’t Like and I thought, yeah, it’s one thing for an artist to sit at home alone and toil to create a particular piece, but the bigger and perhaps more challenging task is how to get it out there into the world to share with an audience. Not only did I have a title, I had the basic idea for the collection: to take “popular” songs and rewrite them in such a way that they’d never have been played on the radio. Not simply using sexual, violent or profane language—which has become rather commonplace today—but employing discourse from science, philosophy, literary theory, popular culture, and the like, to pervert, complicate and make generally awkward. 
 
SB:  Ha! Well, you know you accomplished that! I’m curious, because some books require intensive research of a particular topic, historical era, or some other aspect of the story. Please describe the most intensive research you did for ... more songs the radio won’t play.... How far would you travel to conduct your research? Do you perform most of it through interviews, on the internet, or through books and printed documents?
 
SR:  There was a fair amount of research to be done, especially around the original songs, as I sometimes wanted to include details around the song’s creation as well as biographical information about the performers. I also came to realize very quickly that my knowledge of the lyrics was often limited to a few lines or the hook. I relied heavily on the internet and liner notes from my CD collection (which is where I found and chose the majority of songs).
 
SB:  It would seem your collection holds a broad range of musical genres. On another note, readers are often interested in knowing how much of a work is invented and how much is autobiographical. Would you care to share your approach/thoughts on this aspect of your readers’ curiosity?
 
SR:  There is nothing autobiographical in the work unless you consider the particular voice and tone of the poems to be autobiographical. The varied ‘I’ of the poems most often refers to the song’s original performer, or else it’s a simple convenient trope, a mask, that is definitely not the writer. Details about the performer or the song are, as a rule, true accounts. Quotes and phrases lifted from the several discourses are true, though by using them to re-write the original songs, the new versions themselves can be regarded as having been “invented.” My hope is that the reader is familiar (or becomes familiar with) the original and compares it with the newer version—what works, what doesn’t? Of course, some emotion may arise, especially if the reader “loved” the original and “hates” what I’ve done to it. 
 
SB:  That’s what makes the appreciation of some works challenging, the work that an author hopes to spur their reader to do. It’s one of the things that makes true for poetry, a generative spark that involves the reader in full appreciation of the work.
 
I wonder, how did you describe this book to a potential publisher once you began to work on it? Or did you complete ... more songs the radio won’t play... before you began approaching publishers with the manuscript?
 
SR:  I’ve written on spec my entire career, meaning that all my books have been completed before sending to a list of publishers over the transom. I remember being at a party one time and talking to a female TV personality who was finishing a first novel. I asked if she had a publisher in mind. She said yes; in fact, she already had a contract signed through her agent. She asked who was publishing my book. I said I didn’t have a publisher (or an agent), that I always sent my work out blind. She gave me a stern look and said: “I’d never waste time writing a book unless I had a publisher for it up front.” I thought: must be nice. At that point, she turned away in search of a fresh drink and greener pastures.
 
SB:  I hear you. A large part of the fresh crowd of authors believes that agents and publishers should be lining up to sign them on. It doesn’t happen, so they write few books. I don’t believe that every author has to live in a cold garret and suffer hunger or illness to write meaningfully, but on the other hand success isn’t delivered on a silver platter.
 
How does this book fit in the stream of your literary works? Is there a fundamental difference between ... more songs the radio won’t play... and your prior or future work?
 
SR:  It’s a perfect fit in my meandering stream. I have 13 poetry collections. One began with the folk song “Sweet Betsy from Pike” and my involvement with an environmental group. Another dealt with Mallarme’s notion that each of us has an imaginary art museum in our heads. Another explored chaos theory. Another used weather imagery as a main theme, me deciding that while very few people talk about poetry, everyone talks about the weather. Another was a book of traditional haikus based on the life and works of Richard Brautigan. Recently I noticed that Molly Johnson wrote her song lyrics to one CD as blocked prose rather than the usual stanzas. I’ve set out to write a series of prose poems using musical tropes such as repetition and nonsense syllables. No publisher on the hook for this one either, yet I mule-headedly persist. What did Beckett say? “I can’t go on; I’ll go on.”
 
SB:  I have no doubt that you will continue, always in your own way, Stan. Thanks so much for sharing these insights into your writing process with me.

Stan Rogal was born in Vancouver and now lives and writes in Toronto along with his artist partner, Jacquie Jacobs. Work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada, the US, Europe and Asia. The author of 28 books, including 8 novels, 7 story and 13 poetry collections. A produced playwright and former coordinator of the popular (now defunct) Idler Pub Reading Series in Toronto. Retired from the UofT Standardized Program where he worked with Health students and professionals on improving technical and communication skills. No other distinguishing marks or scars that show.

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Sharon Berg attended the Banff School of Fine Arts Writing Studio in 1982 and was accepted to Banff’s Leighton Artist Colony in 1987. She taught in Ontario after studying to become a teacher with a focus on First Nations Education: B.A./Laurentian U.; B.Ed/U of T; M.Ed/York U; and D.Ed/UBC. She received a Certificate in Magazine Journalism from Ryerson U and is an alumni of Humber College’s Writing Program. Sharon founded and operated the international literary E-Zine Big Pond Rumours (2006-2019) and its associated press, releasing chapbooks of Canadian poets as prizes for the magazine’s contests. Her poetry appears as full books with Borealis, Coach House, and Cyberwit, and she has four chapbooks with BPR Press. Sharon’s short fiction is with Porcupine’s Quill, and her nonfiction appears with BPR Press. Her writing appears across Canada, the USA, Mexico, Chile, England, Wales, Netherlands, Germany, Siberia, Romania, India, Persia, Singapore, and Australia. Her 3rd poetry collection Stars in the Junkyard was a Finalist in the 2022 International Book Awards, and her narrative history The Name Unspoken: Wandering Spirit Survival School won a 2020 IPPY Award for Regional Nonfiction. When she retired from teaching, she opened Oceanview Writers Retreat in Charlottetown (Terra Nova National Park) Newfoundland.