The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Born in Reykjavik in 1962, Sjón is a celebrated Icelandic novelist. He won the Nordic Council's Literary Prize for his novel 'The Blue Fox' (the Nordic countries' equivalent of the Man Booker Prize) and the novel 'From The Mouth Of The Whale' was shortlisted for both the IMPAC Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. His novel 'Moonstone – The Boy Who Never Was' was awarded every Icelandic literature prize, among them the 2013 Icelandic Literary Prize. His latest published work is the definite edition of the trilogy CoDex 1962.

Also a poet, librettist and lyricist, Sjón has published nine poetry collections, written four opera librettos and lyrics for various artists.

We talk here about the influence of David Bowie; modernist poetry; self publishing and promotion; the Icelandic penchant for collaboration; the Surrealist metaphor; respect among practitioners of different art forms in Iceland; Guy Madden; magpies; Icelandic folklore and sagas; beginnings and creation stories; dream logic; story-telling and figuring out life; myths and metamorphosis, the Future Library Project; Reykjavik, city of literature; literary tourism; and his forthcoming book CoDex 62.

Alice Notley is a poet whose work has influenced generations of poets; she is considered a pioneering voice on topics such as motherhood, feminism, disobedience and domestic life.

Notley has experimented widely with poetic form and has written a book of criticism, a play, and a biography. She has also edited three publications. Her collage art appeared in Rudy Burckhardt's film "Wayward Glimpses" and her illustrations have appeared on the cover of numerous books, including some of her own. With over forty books and chapbooks and several major awards to her credit, she is one of America's most prolific and lauded poets. She lives in Paris, France.

We met in Ottawa, Canada to talk about, among other things, the enjoyment, pleasure and necessity of poetry; language, communication, voice, and hearing versus reading; Shakespeare; the difficulty of being a female poet; Sylvia Plath; postpartum depression; John Keats; Homer; reading aloud; suffering, skepticism, fate, the death of those close to you and the world of the dead.

Eli MacLaren is an Assistant Professor of English at McGill University in Montreal. Subjects taught include Canadian poetry and fiction; First Nations writers; bibliography and the history of the book. We met to discuss an article he wrote for Canadian Poetry entitled 'Significant Little Offerings: The Origin of the Ryerson Poetry Chap-Books, 1925–26'. We talk, among other things, about the literary publishing environment in Canada during the 1920s, Lorne Pierce's idealistic nation building, risk, the desire for a national literature, restrictive copyright laws, Confederation poet Charles G.D. Roberts, Ryerson's Makers of Canadian Literature series, authors covering publishing costs, romantic versus modernist poetry, the arts and craft look of the chap-books, poetry's goal of moving the average reader and making sense of death, author's lives informing their poetry, shining light on neglected works, the origins of chap-books, and the birth of the small press movement in Canada.

Jason Guriel is a poet and critic whose work has appeared in such publications as Poetry, Slate, Reader's Digest, The Walrus, Parnassus, Canadian Notes & Queries, The New Criterion, and PN Review. His poetry has been anthologized in The Best Canadian Poetry in English, and in 2007, he was the first Canadian to receive the Frederick Bock Prize from Poetry magazine. He won Poetry's Editors Prize for Book Reviewing in 2009. His essays and reviews are collected in The Pigheaded Soul (The Porcupine's Quill, 2013). Guriel lives in Toronto, Ontario.

We met at the Toronto Public Library on College in rooms where the Osborne Collection is kept. The collection was donated in 1949 by the English librarian Edgar Osborne in recognition of the Library's outstanding service to children.

We talk among other things about The Pig Headed Soul, the key to being a good critic, poems not poetry, obsessing, 'The Case Against Reading Everything', Carmine Starnino, 'culture' writing, confessional criticism, pop culture essays, the adoration of poet Peter Van Toorn, 'world class' poet Robyn Sarah, the importance of pleasure, thoughts the culture wont allow itself to have, "I don't care about your Life', literary community, honesty in criticism, response to reviews, Chris Wiman, Clive James, Michael Hoffmann's Behind the Lines, William Logan, Jill Bialoski and plagiarism, the Griffin Prize, dirty money, and diapers.

Gillian Clarke is a Welsh poet, playwright, editor, broadcaster, lecturer and translator. Born in Cardiff in 1937 she has written more than ten books of poetry. In 2008 she was appointed the third National Poet of Wales (Ifor ap Glyn took over in 2016). In 2010 she was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, only the second Welsh person to receive the honour. In 2011 she was made a member of the Gorsedd of Bards and in 2012 she received the Wilfred Owen Association Poetry award.

We met several years ago in Swansea, Wales at the Dylan Thomas Centre, where we talked about what is unique about Welsh poetry, the oldest living language in Europe, memorability, truth, Lear's Cordelia, Dylan Thomas's truth and exaggeration, the Welsh accent, Carol Ann Duffy, and the importance of imagination, creativity and music in education.

I met with Professor Nick Mount at his University of Toronto offices in "Toronto" to discuss his book Arrival, The Story of CanLit.

We talk among other things about the pronunciation of Toronto, the non-Toronto-centricity of his book, Alistair MacLeod, the CanLit boom, early Canadian writers publishing first in the United States, novels that are so bad they're good, the 1960s, history turning into myth, academic versus commercial success, reviews of the book, Margaret Atwood's Survival, prosperity versus affluence, 1959 and 1974, economics and the arts, the Massey Report, the Canada Council, universities, Jack McClelland, the influence of Sheila Watson's The Double Hook, Arrival's sidebar star system, the erasure (or not) of Blackness, and Aboriginal works, from the CanLit canon, Austin Clarke, dotted points of light, #metoo and the Bahamas.

Photo by N. Maxwell Lander

Zachariah Wells is the author of three collections of poetry (Unsettled, Track & Trace, and Sum), as well as a children's book Anything But Hank, with Rachel Lebowitz), and a collection of critical essays . He is also the editor of Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets and The Essential Kenneth Leslie. His poems have been translated into Bosnian and Spanish and adapted into operatic songs by composer Erik Ross. He lives with his family in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

We talk, heartily, here about Career Limiting Moves (Biblioasis, 2013), about my perverse pleasure in reading criticism, Zach's threadbare bathrobe, Paul Muldoon's critical style, Zach's negative review of Jan Zwicky's negative review of negative reviewing, the impossibility of suppressing subjectivity, the anvil of the agon, Zach's snide attack on Andre Alexis. About Michael Lista and Scott Griffin, going easy on friends, Michael Harris's poem 'Concentrate,' Margaret Atwood's Survival, Peter van Toorn, the importance of cutting to the core poems, King Lear, John Clare, the slim, stellar oeuvre of Elizabeth Bishop, and Lisa Robertson's take on Wordsworth's The Prelude

I met with famed Czech writer/novelist Ivan Klima at his home in Prague to talk about his memoir My Crazy Century. Topics covered include the criminal conspiracy of communism, the impact on his life of the Terazin concentration camp, the thrill of freedom, forests, poisonous mushrooms, communist stupidity and lack of common sense, Potemkin villages, political apathy, great literature describing complications in human relationships, fiction as invention not real life, socialism's lack of productivity, Philip Roth's understanding of persecution, the value of old maps, Samizdat literature, Kafka, and the novel Love and Garbage We're joined by Ivan's son, and grand-daughter, to help with translation, and by a squeaky chair, but I don't have to tell you that. Please keep in mind that Ivan is today a man in his late eighties.

Guy Baxter has been University Archivist at University of Reading since 2008. His responsibilities include caring for the Archive of British Publishing and Printing, the archives of the Museum of English Rural Life, and the Beckett Collection. Guy has worked in museum archives for over 15 years and has advised on several major research projects including Staging Beckett (AHRC), Giving Voice to the Nation (AHRC) and the East London Theatre Archive/ CEDAR (JISC). He is a Trustee of the Beckett International Foundation.

I met him at the Museum to talk about the Printing and Publishing Archive, and the Ladybird books collection and permanent exhibition. Among other things we discussing the importance of correspondence to the publishing business, Mills and Boon, file sets, literary biography, reader reports, Tolkien, Stanley Unwin, chance and serendipity, the importance of a general pubic audience, Agatha Christie, police mechanics using the Ladybird experts series, the appeal of Ladybird books to adults, and their conservative nature, the civil rights movement, a whitewashed view of history, diasporic nature of archives, competition, Ted Hughes, the Harry Ranson Center, critical mass, personal relationships and Samuel Beckett and archives-led study.

Historian John Cole started working at the Library of Congress as a young man in 1966. Most of his books since have dealt with this venerable institution.

We talk here about it's influence on American political and cultural life, about Thomas Jefferson as bibliophile, about books comprising a small part of the library's total collection; capturing, cataloging and digitizing the world's intellectual activity, serving the blind, teaching teachers how to use the collection on-line, subjective collecting, documenting thought and the Library's fine folk life collection.