Writing Spaces: Elana Wolff

Elana Wolff’s poems have recently appeared (or will appear) in Canadian Literature, EVENT, The Dalhousie Review, Leveler, The Boneshaker Anthology, Prairie Fire, and The Antigonish Review. Her bilingual collection of selected poems, Helleborus & Alchémille, (Noroît, 2013; translation by Stéphanie Roesler), was awarded the 2014 John Glassco Prize for Translation. Elana Wolff’s essay “Paging Kafka’s Elegist” won first place in the 2015 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest and is published in Issue 136.

This is not where my ideas bubble up and my imagination gets kindled (at least not for the most part). It is not where I put pen or pencil to paper. It’s too cluttered here and there’s not enough flat space on which to lay a page. Most of my scribbling takes place elsewhere. But this is where my computer is, where the words meet the screen, get reordered, printed, and sent. This is the interface space between the inside and outside worlds.

The three things that help me write (I think in doubles) are:

1. Weak coffee or strong tea
2. Reading and dreaming
3. Putting pen to paper and letting go