Reader of the Week: Liz Worth
The Pollock of prose and noise-art duo Packanimal
By Kirsten Kilponen
Published: February 23rd, 2009 | 12:00am
Some annoying rules of writing have been drilled into our brains since the day we left behind picture books for the likes of The Stinky Cheese Man, and Cinderella. Remember the teach’ saying, “You need an intro, body, and conclusion,” or “Two complete thoughts must be separated by a period?” All very helpful, but for writers like Liz Worth of Toronto, it’s all bull when it comes to creating some cutting-edge, abstract, collage-like writing. This 26-year-old will expand your mind on the experimental landscape with her new work Eleven: Eleven and with her spooky, noise-art band Packanimal.
Your book Eleven: Eleven is to the literature world what a Pollack painting is like to the art world – decentralized, non-linear, and abstract. Can you describe your book to the VZ audience?
The central theme of Eleven: Eleven is self-destruction. In 2006, I found all of the journals I'd kept between the ages of 13 and 19, and I was completely freaked out by what I read when I started looking through them. In the spring of 2008, I found myself in-between jobs, so I made the most of my unemployment and started writing. I'd been wanting to do something with my old journals so I started picking pieces out and incorporating them into what soon became Eleven: Eleven. The format became a hybrid of poetry and prose — part epic-poem and part mini-novel — but that wasn't intentional. I just started writing one morning and suddenly this story started taking shape. While there are parts of the story that are inspired by true events, it's still a fictional story. It's actually the stuff that's more surreal that was taken from my journals. The '90s were a really strange time for me.
Who, or what, are your major influences?
My influences are too many to name all at once, but I can give you an idea: writers like Lydia Lunch, Kathy Acker, Hubert Selby Jr., Aleister Crowley, and Chandra Mayor, things like fading graffiti and industrial cities, and musicians like Kurt Cobain and Patti Smith.
What do you think of the formal writing techniques taught in elementary school and high school?
I did go to journalism school, but they don't really teach you how to write. I've never been "trained" as a writer in a school setting. I don't know if that's possible. It's always great to work with good editors, though, no matter what you're writing — whether it's an article or a short story or an essay. That's really where you get good advice on how to develop your skills. It’s real life experience. School is not real life experience.
You just wrote a book about the history of punk in Toronto, Treat Me Like Dirt. What’s your connection to the Toronto punk scene, and how does the Toronto punk scene differ from other parts of the world?
The book is an oral history. My connection to the scene is as a fan. I'm too young to have been around for when things took off here in the 1970s. The history between Toronto and the US and UK is quite similar in terms of the creativity, chaos, and gender-bending that each scene had.
Tell us about your noise art duo Packanimal. Can you describe what "noise art" sounds like?
A dream that I had, along with my interest in spirit animals, sparked the name Packanimal. The concept is pretty simple — make really noisy, spooky soundscapes and read poetry over top of them. We don't have any direct influences, but I am interested in noise rock and experimental music, and I've always been a fan of spoken word and performance artists —women like Patti Smith and Laurie Anderson and Lydia Lunch would be a few.
What’s on your top list of reads you think VZ should check out?
Cherry by Chandra Mayor, The Story of Jane Doe by Jane Doe, The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus, and Falling Angels by Barbara Gowdy.
www.ditchpoetry.com/trainwreckpress.htm
Issue #28
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