ELIZABETH BACHINSKY

Elizabeth Bachinsky for DESK SPACE

DESK SPACE Who?

ELIZABETH BACHINSKY Elizabeth Bachinsky, poet.

DS When did you start writing, publish your first book (or when are you publishing your next)?

EB I’ve always written—that is, as a kid and a teenager I wrote—but I started publishing in literary journals when I was 24. I was 29 when my first book, Curio, came out with BookThug (2005). I have two other books. Both are published with Nightwood Editions. There’s Home of Sudden Service (2006) and God of Missed Connections (Spring, 2009). I’m at work on another book that might be called Infidel. But that one won’t be done for a while yet. I’m 32.

DS Where do you write (at your desk/outside/in bed)?

EB I share a one-room studio in Vancouver with my husband, so, whenever I get the place to myself, I work there on my desktop. I also work on my laptop in the café downstairs where they make good coffee and leave me pretty much to myself. I also seem to do a lot of house sitting and travelling these days, so I write a lot in other people’s spaces and in hotel rooms or wherever.

DS Why do you work where you do (at your desk because it is a quiet space/outside b/c it helps you think, in the park b/c you can smoke, etc)?

EB This question makes me want to smoke. I may have to hike into town and get a pack of cigarettes now. And then I’ll want to take my computer outside on the deck, work out there, and smoke. Right now I’m in a cabin on the Sunshine Coast. I came up here to finish God of Missed Connections, which I delivered to my editor yesterday. So now I’m just kind of reeling around trying not to be nervous about it. I’m also trying not to smoke.

DS What are you working on now?

EB Poems. An introduction for a friend’s new book. A short story. More poems.