{"id":46650,"date":"2023-11-02T13:56:15","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T13:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=46650"},"modified":"2024-08-09T07:40:58","modified_gmt":"2024-08-09T11:40:58","slug":"talking-with-artist-in-residence-tyler-pennock-new-works-the-art-of-writing-and-returning-to-familiar-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2023\/talking-with-artist-in-residence-tyler-pennock-new-works-the-art-of-writing-and-returning-to-familiar-ground\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking with Artist in Residence Tyler Pennock: New works, the art of writing, and returning to familiar ground"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Talking with Artist in Residence Tyler Pennock: New works, the art of writing, and returning to familiar ground\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n\n\n

By Emily Putnam<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tyler Pennock. [Photo by Ainslie Coghill]<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Meet literary trailblazer Tyler Pennock, Carleton\u2019s newest Artist in Residence whose unique approach to poetry and storytelling challenges convention and celebrates the contemporary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pennock hails from the Lesser Slave Lake region of Alberta as a member of the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Armed with a Creative Writing MFA from Guelph University, Pennock\u2019s literary career has been nothing short of remarkable.  In 2022, they released their celebrated second book, \u2018Blood<\/a><\/em>\u2019, following up the resounding success of their debut work, \u2018Bones<\/a><\/em>\u2019, which was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Indigenous Voices Award for Poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pennock also commits to fostering cultural understanding and knowledge through their teaching role at the Centre for Indigenous Studies at the University of Toronto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an ethos that Pennock is excited to bring to Carleton University \u2014 which they consider a homecoming of sorts.\u00a0\u00a0“I spent nine of my formative years in Ottawa, so this experience feels like a return to a familiar place.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tyler Pennock. [Photo by Ainslie Coghill]<\/em> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s really important that I get to be in a familiar geography with a new community and a new Indigenous space with new students, new faculty, and different perspectives. All of that physically and mentally is part of the process – and I love it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

While at Carleton, they aim to expand their literary repertoire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m working on a collection of poetry to follow up Blood<\/em>, which will again be more oral tradition in terms of how I conceive of it,\u201d says Pennock. \u201cI\u2019m also working on a couple of short stories, and a sort-of literary criticism that I\u2019ve been considering in terms of how we lose and then recover para-textual information in the context of oral traditions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve also liked reading a lot of theory lately, because it’s not something you get access to so much in undergrad. And in graduate studies you get tossed in it, like radishes in a salad. And you still don’t get enough of it in terms of depth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of Pennock\u2019s signatures as a literary artist is that they challenge traditional ideas of poems and choose to go without titling many of their works. “I imagine the poems themselves as audience members, actually speaking to each other, so not titling a poem brings forward a sense of how oral cultures work. It’s not a disembodied title or name,\u201d says Pennock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf I named a poem, you could just state the name, but it gives no understanding of the poem. Whereas if I asked you what your favourite poem is, you would tell me according to your descriptor.” In this way, Pennock\u2019s act of naming, or rather not naming a literary work, becomes one of discovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pennock’s most recent poetry release, ‘Blood’.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
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“With ‘Blood<\/em>,’ I imagined the poems as three-dimensional, overlaying on top of each other to create a dynamic and intricate interplay. There are poems that are structurally similar to previous ones and others that expand upon those structures, leading to a web of interconnected stories.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Though often given the \u2018title\u2019 of a spoken word poet or performance artist, Pennock declares, “I’m not [a spoken word poet], although I’ve been invited to spoken word events.” Rather, they see the performance of poetry as a continuation of oral traditions and cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pennock takes inspiration from all over, including from the likes of singer-songwriters such as Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, and Bj\u00f6rk, and enjoys playing Elder Scrolls on their PlayStation to engage in the art of story. \u201cThey put so much into world building, you could at any point in any of the games, going back to 2000, pick up a book and read it,\u201d says Pennock. \u201cYou can now pick up a book and it refers to a time in a game you played [and] refers to a story you already know. And I love that part.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also enjoy the outdoors and are quite familiar with Ottawa\u2019s trails, saying, \u201cI like to ride my bike, and I’ll go for exceptionally long walks, because, why have legs if you’re not going to use them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When considering advice to aspiring writers at Carleton, Pennock notes, \u201cTake the word \u2018aspiring\u2019 out is what I would say to them. There\u2019s no such thing as aspiring, you just are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cI\u2019ve been a writer my entire life \u2014 and I didn\u2019t publish anything until my 30s. Everybody\u2019s normal day-to-day voice is poetry to others, because you can\u2019t occupy someone\u2019s mind.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Pennock\u2019s tenure at Carleton spans from September 1 to December 2023. All students are welcome to drop by to engage with Pennock and fellow students for a poetry-focused workshop on Wednesday, Nov. 8 in Gordon Wood Lounge on the 18th<\/sup> Floor of Dunton Tower. You can also email them at tyler.pennock@carleton.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meet literary trailblazer Tyler Pennock, Carleton\u2019s newest Artist in Residence whose unique approach to poetry and storytelling challenges convention and celebrates the contemporary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[51,26,90,1,27],"tags":[352,302,267,794,795],"class_list":["post-46650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-news","category-english","category-fass-news","category-general","category-news","tag-artist-in-residence","tag-carleton-english","tag-english","tag-poetry","tag-writer"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46650"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46702,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46650\/revisions\/46702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}