Do the Things You Must and Forget the Rest: On Priscila Uppal with Canisia Lubrin, Dani Spinosa, and Meaghan Strimas

In honour of Priscila Uppal’s memory, and a little over a year since her passing, we wanted to bring together fellow writers and friends of Priscila’s—Canisia Lubrin, Dani Spinosa and Meaghan Strimas—in an interview to remember her. 

Puneet Dutt: Thank you everyone for your time. Could you tell us how and where you first met Priscila?

Canisia: I had heard about Pris years before I met her as a student in her 3rd year Intermediate Poetry Workshop at York University. 

Dani: I detail the experience of meeting Priscila in the blog post that I wrote after she passed. I met her through my then-partner, who was a student of hers. He became her cat-sitter. I stayed over with him one night. I left behind (by accident!) a pair of particularly embarrassing underwear. The rest, as they say, is history. 

Meaghan: I met Pris while I was a student at York U in the Creative Writing program. I never had her as a professor, unfortunately, but she took an interest in my writing and she introduced me to Exile Editions, where I published my first two poetry books. Pris was, at first, a mentor to me, but this relationship blossomed into a lasting friendship. I miss our conversations dearly, and I miss her laugh: boy, we sure laughed about the many absurdities of life! 

Priscila Uppal
Photo by Mark Tearle Author photo from first printing of Priscila's chapbook, What Linda Said (Gap Riot Press), courtesy of Dani Spinosa

Puneet: Many people attest to Priscila’s sense of humour when describing her. As you were good friends of hers, could you share your funniest memory of Priscila?

Canisia: I don’t know that I can share my funniest memory (just like the favourite thing below). Let me say this. She had this way of bobbing/shuffling her body by shifting her weight between her toes and her heel when talking—just talking—about Barbados, her favourite place on Earth. That always threw me into gales of laughter. And she never understood me about that, even though she would just humour me with a smile and a small shake of her head. 

Dani: I’m going to have to echo Canisia’s response here; Pris did the funniest little shuffle. Pris and I used to go on these walks in the morning to a nearby cemetery, and I’d meet her at an intersection between our homes, and when she’d see me from the other side of the street, we’d both do this little “I see you” shuffle. It still makes me laugh thinking about it. Also, as much as the girl was good-humoured, generous, and kind, she could also be a real shady lady after a few glasses of bubbles and some of the shade she threw on those girls’ nights were pretty damn funny, though I can’t possibly reproduce any of it here. 

Meaghan: Pris was a great person to blow off steam with and she didn’t suffer fools. She loved listening to a good story (she was a fabulous listener in general), and if she was especially outraged by someone’s bad behaviour, she would shout, “Noooooooooooo!” This reaction always cracked me up. Pris was enthusiastic about everything in life, and when I was with her, I felt so heard and understood. She gave the best advice, and she saw the humour in even the darkest moments. We see this thread in her writing. 

Puneet: What is your personal favourite line or work by Priscila, and why?

Canisia: I always have trouble thinking in this manner of favourites. My brain just doesn’t allow it. I find that I respond to literature depending on what I need, what it does, from moment to moment. So today, I’m reading again her most recent (assumably last, but knowing Pris, there’s likely more) work: On Second Thought. I appreciate her candid, floor-shifting voice, as usual. How she moves between the head-sense and heart-sense of things. That she became even more of all the things she had been committed to in her previous works, but with an expanded sense of vulnerability and accountability and humour. Do you know how she pulled off this dangerous balance? I’m still in wonder.

Dani: I’m obviously biased, but I really love “Gravity” from What Linda Said, both when the stunning Tracey Hoyt recites it in the play, and in the printed version Pris put out with my micropress, Gap Riot. I also love “Sorry, I Forgot to Clean Up After Myself” from Ontological Necessities. 

Meaghan: In On Second Thought there is a poem called “A Good Death” and it always catches me off-guard. In this poem, Pris recounts the disappearance of Father Adelir Antônio de Carli, a Brazlian priest who tied 1,000 balloons to a chair and disappeared into thin air. It’s such an evocative poem. And the event is so ridiculous, and the poet’s sense of glee and wonder so palpable. You must read it. Also, when I was packing up some of Pris’s work for the archives, I came across the newspaper clipping from which she culled this poem. She was always open to being inspired, and she noticed everything. Such a curious cat.    

Puneet: How would you explain Priscila’s body of work or writing style to people who have never encountered her work before?

Canisia: Her work seeks and seeks and also is blatant about what it doesn’t find. It also laughs-out-loud about being aware of this seeming conundrum but it lays out for the reader a whole unexpected series of insights along the way. 

Dani: I think Pris’s work is equal parts darkness and humourous nonchalance. Pris’s work always walks that line between considering the worst things we don’t want to look at in ourselves and then a joke about dirty underwear. Turns out that those things are never really so separate. 

Meaghan: Movement. Priscila was an intensely focussed person who had an astounding amount of energy. This “force” is also present on the page, and the swiftness and ease with which Pris can guide a reader through, and articulate, even the most complex ideas and concepts is to be admired. 

Puneet: Canisia, in a Quill and Quire article, you are quoted as saying that “Priscila Uppal saved me.” Also from the same article: “Lubrin was Uppal’s student during a time in the younger poet’s life when she was seriously considering turning her back on a career as a writer.” What other instances or memories can you recall where Priscila mentored a writer or helped to change the way they thought about their work?

Canisia: Since this quote is about me, I’ll just say that the word career next to the word writing makes me terribly uneasy. I don’t ever think of writing in this way. But to your question, I remember one of my undergraduate creative writing peers saying this: Priscila made me realize I am not a poet. And that just speaks, doesn’t it?

Dani: I guess I can only speak for myself here, but Pris changed the way I wrote completely. She made me think there was a way to sell the stuff I wanted to do to a larger market without compromising it or changing it. She deflated the silly thing I was doing—and that I think a lot of other writers do—which was to tell myself that I was too weird or “out there” or rebellious for a larger crowd. And that’s ridiculous. People are weird. They want to read weird. And in a lot of ways my wanting to call my work “rebellious” was a way to protect me from rejection. It also let me feel like I didn’t have to edit or to consider my readership. Pris was a master at selling what she wanted to do to other people—publishers, editors, funding bodies, committees—without compromise, and she taught me that, too. That and she made me start waking up early, which was pivotal. 

Meaghan: Pris was beloved by her big circle of friends, and I believe she encouraged all of us to create. She paid attention to what we were doing, how we were doing, and she talked to us seriously about what we were hoping to achieve. To be taken seriously by a person like Priscila meant something. Her interest in other people’s process and work was genuine and her drive to create was contagious. She led by example, and she didn’t believe in quitting. 

Puneet: Priscila wrote: “I probably can’t stop the future / either / but that’s where my feet / are taking me. / Where am I going?” How do you think this award honours or reshapes Priscila’s ongoing legacy? 

Canisia: I don’t think I can speak to how this award reshapes Priscila’s legacy. This is the first iteration of the award, and I think the quote speaks for itself. Perhaps, the fact of having a legacy thing that is recurring will likely do the work of bringing more readers to Pris’s work and might serve to inspire more people toward writing. Or might make people realize they’re not poets but that this does not hinder their love of poetry. Who knows.

Dani and Priscila in Barbados, 2016
Photo courtesy of Dani Spinosa

Dani: I think that this award is important because Pris was always so concerned with the fact that the vast majority of Creative Writing students stop writing once they graduate. That was her primary pedagogical concern: how to make sure young or emerging writers kept writing. Keeping her name in a place that encourages writers to keep writing seems very Pris to me. And also, the girl loved an award, probably because she just kept winning them all over the place. 

Meaghan: I hope this award emboldens those writers who receive it. And I hope this award in Pris’s name reminds people to keep remembering her and reading her work.   

Puneet: In the same Quill & Quire article mentioned earlier, Priscila is described as “equally at home in each genre, she was never content to repeat herself, always searching for new forms of expression, new ways to challenge her style and sensibility.” How has Priscila influenced your creative practice? 

Canisia: Priscila taught me as an undergraduate student of creative writing. She insisted that I should trust my own originality and my own intelligence. She did not withhold encouragement and praise where she thought they were warranted. She also did not praise or encourage for the sake of praise and encouragement. This is a good metaphorical rendering of the practice of a writing life. Do the things you need. Do the things you must. Forget the rest. Likely, someone else has it covered.

Dani: I think Canisia’s point about Pris’s encouragement of us “do[ing] the things you need” and “forget[ing] the rest” is so key. Pris encouraged me to make time and space in my life for poetry (writing mine and reading others’). This was huge for me because I came from a family and a place—some real horrid suburbs—that didn’t think poetry was a useful, valuable, or productive thing. So, it took a lot for me to eventually decide that it deserved an important place, for poetry in my life, and that the work of poetry was a kind of productivity. 

Meaghan: Pris sometimes pushed me in directions that frightened me, and while I was perhaps cross with her in the moment, I now see her prodding as a gift. She saw my abilities as a writer, an editor, and a teacher, and her guidance is likely why, in large part, I have the career I have today.  

Puneet: Did Priscila have a writing routine?

Canisia: What Dani says (because she answered first). 

Dani: I know that Priscila’s favourite place to write was the beach in Barbados, by hand, in a normal notebook, the cheaper the better. She wrote MANY first drafts that way. 

Meaghan: I don’t think Pris ever really took a break from reading and writing, but certainly, yes, she did love her time in Barbados. I love thinking of her writing by the water. 

Puneet: What writers did Priscila love and often recommend to others? 

Canisia: To my mind, Pris recommended writers she thought you needed to read based on what you yourself were seeking or trying to do. I don’t recall her making demands about other people needing to read the writers she loved herself.

Meaghan and Priscila
Photo by Daniel Ehrenworth
Photo courtesy of Meaghan Strimas

Dani: I’m going to agree with Canisia here. I mean, Pris loved Don Quixote. That’s pretty well-documented. But, what she recommended to me (or what I heard her recommend to others) was very much what they needed at the time. She always wanted me to change my mind about Coetzee, but I maintain that his work is rape-apology with a heavy hand. On the other hand, she kept recommending my partner read this book she loved about otters. That’s the thing about Pris: she paid attention to who you were and she changed with you. 

Meaghan: Yes, yes! I agree with Canisia and Dani: Pris paid attention to the interests and needs of those around her. When I got married, she gifted us with Blanche Ebutt’s Don’ts for Husbands and Don’ts for Wives (1913). They are full of all kinds of gross advice that she knew I would never follow, and it was a kind of joke between us. 

Puneet: Would you be willing to share one thing about Priscila most people don’t know about?

Canisia: I don’t know what most people know about Pris. I was glad to be surprised by her often. 

Dani: Yeah, Pris loved Will Ferrell movies. The worst ones, too. Blades of Glory. Talladega Nights. Some rough choices, but we loved her for it. She’d, like, talk about The Seventh Seal or Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and then go right into Get Hard. Kept us on our toes. 

Meaghan: Oh, gosh. There’s so much I can’t tell you, but I can tell you this fun fact: Pris, as most of you know, was a tremendous athlete, but she wasn’t the best ice skater I’d ever met. She taught herself to skate in her thirties, and she wore this ridiculous racoon helmet while she was learning. One evening, she had a few too many glasses of champers and she put on the helmet and showed a bunch of us girls her new skating moves. She had a very silly side to her.  

Puneet: What was one of Priscila’s favorite songs? We would like to share a link here for everyone to listen to.

Canisia: Bette Davis Eyes, Kim Carnes. I mean, this song was on repeat for weeks after she passed. My streaming service was like what’s up end of year?

Dani: Look, I love and miss the girl like crazy, but her taste in music was a bit ridiculous. Normal soundtrack for a girl’s night of drinks was a lot of U2 (her favourite band), Hole, some GnR, and for some reason, she loved that Killers’ album Sam’s Town. Don’t share those. She famously rocked a karaoke mic, and her best performances were to Kim Carnes’s “Bette Davis Eyes.” THAT you can share. 

Meaghan: I can’t listen to “Bette Davis Eyes” without balling my eyes out. Not long ago, I was grocery shopping at the FreshCo. and that song started to play… I leaned on my shopping cart in the produce aisle and cried. 

Priscila touched many lives in numerous ways. If you’d like to share a memory, please post in the comments below.