There's not? (Giggling and grinning) Organizers probably forgot with how hectic it is.
You of course have an accent. Where are you from?
Poland. I speak Polish.
How long have you been writing in English?
Since 2000, the Millennium exactly. Maybe I wrote my first poem in English on New Years Eve. (We're both giggling and grinning now)
Can you see a connection with Canadian and Polish literatures?
(We both slap our knees with the hilarity of such a heavy question.)
Lots. But maybe not so much. I'd have to really think about it.Now for typical Paris Review Questions: What's your advice for a young writer?
I like the Paris Review. My advice (I gotta admit we can barely look into one anothers' eyes for the cliche of my question) is probably read, read, read. And be open, engaged with the world.
I'm asinine for asking that question, sorry Derek. What are you reading right now?
Brendan McLeod.
The novel he wrote in three days or something like that?
Did he? It's really good.
What got you into SLAM poetry?
I was in Vancouver and they have a really strong spoken-word scene there. I just learned how to write for performance.
What made you perform a surrealist cut-up for your opening night at the WIWF?
I was at a festival in Brandon, and we started trying these cut-ups and really amazing work came out of that.
Is your name, Dawda, pronounced like the movement itself, Dada?
Yep, same way, but my stage name is Drek Daa, the organizers didn't put that on the handouts.
* * *
J.S. is a propagandist and pamphleteer for over sixty-six Crown and Association publications. He has been both staff and contributing writer for weekly newspapers such as the Selkirk Journal, the Gimli Spectator, and the Midnight Sun, in Dawson City, Yukon. His poems and prose have appeared in the Golden Buzz (now the Force Gazette), Tart Magazine, and as low, low, low-run chapbooks. He is also founding member of the now defunct rap-futurist collective, Xenophane Six.
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