“The other thing I say in Out of Line after ‘if you don't have community, art will break your heart’ is your heart will be broken anyway, eventually, but it's better with community. You will recover faster and you won't die of heartbreak if you have community.”

In this episode, Tanis MacDonald encourages us to challenge the voices in the canon that do not satisfy, and examines her changing relationship with both walking and art.

She discusses:

1:06 | How poetry attracts people with its strangeness and makes space for two disparate ideas to sit alongside each other.

1:58 | Writing about a female experience of the city in her poetry collection Mobile.

4:40 | Reclaiming the “Crazy Jane” trope and writing about a character who is struggling to leave capitalism and colonialism behind.

7:06 | Considering questions of mobility in her forthcoming book Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female. 

11:24 | Being vulnerable with students and using her own work to teach revision strategies.

14:26 | Her book Out of Line: Daring to be an Artist Outside the Big City and how to measure success as a writer.

Guest Bio:

Tanis MacDonald is an essayist, poet, professor and free-range literary animal. She is the host of the podcast Watershed Writers, and the author of Out of Line: Daring to Be an Artist Outside the Big City. Her essay “Mondegreen Girls” won the Open Seasons Award for Creative Nonfiction in 2021. She identifies as a bad birder, and lives near Ose’kowáhne in southwestern Ontario as a grateful guest on traditional Haudenosaunee territory.

About the Podcast:

Parallel Careers is a monthly podcast about the dual lives of writers who teach.

Few writers make their living from publication alone; many fill the gaps with teaching in both academic and community settings. Much of the work is precarious, and there are few opportunities for professional development.

Parallel Careers features writers with diverse practices and points of view—writers who are at the top of their game in both craft and pedagogy. Tune in to hear the big ideas and practical tips they take into their classrooms. Take their insights into your own class or craft.

Credits:

Parallel Careers is produced by Claire Tacon, in partnership with The New Quarterly magazine. Erin MacIndoe Sproule is our Technical Producer and Story Editor. Music composed by Amadeo Ventura. Financial and in-kind support provided by the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, St. Jerome’s University, and the Government of Canada.

If you like our podcast, please leave a review—it really helps other listeners find our show! Thank you!

You can find Tanis’s work here:   

Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female

Mobile

Out of Line: Daring to be an Artist Outside the Big City

GUSH: Menstrual Manifestos for our Times

Rue the Day

The music you heard on this episode was composed by Amadeo Ventura. You can hear more of his music at amadeoventura.weebly.com.

Visit TNQ.ca/parallel to access more of Tanis MacDonald’s writing and teaching tips.