Featured White Pines Local Author Rob Taylor

Partial book cover of Rob Taylor's book The News

The Port Moody Public Library White Pines Local Author collection highlights local authors, poets, and illustrators in our community. Every month, we will interview and feature one of the authors from the collection on the Library website.

The featured author of this month is Rob Taylor.

Author of the Month: Rob Taylor

Rob Taylor is the author of three poetry collections, including The News (Gaspereau Press, 2016), which was a finalist for the 2017 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Rob is also the editor of What the Poets Are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation (Nightwood Editions, 2018) and guest editor of Best Canadian Poetry 2019 (Biblioasis, 2019). His fourth collection, Strangers, will be published by Biblioasis in Spring 2021. He lives in Port Moody with his wife and children.

About the books:

The News
Starting in the fifth week of his wife’s pregnancy, Rob Taylor wrote a poem every week as they traveled towards their child’s birth. His poems anticipated the astonishing and yet commonplace beginning of a human life.

“Oh Not So Great” Poems from the Depression Project
Poems from the Depression Project is a collection of poems that came out of a medical/poetry research project between Rob Taylor and a small team of doctors and medical students. The project recorded the experience of those living with depression, via focus groups, and presented that information to doctors in an easy-to-engage manner (short poems, written by Taylor). The hope was that the poems would boost doctors' understanding of, and empathy towards, patients living with depression.

What the Poets Are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation
Inspired by Nightwood Publishing’s Where the Words Come from: Canadian Poets in Conversation, Rob Taylor brought together two generations of poets in this anthology. These twenty-two writers engaged in conversations with their peers about the world of Canadian poetry in the new millennium: what's changed, what's endured, and what's next.

Best Canadian Poetry 2019
Best Canadian poetry is an annual series which collects the 50 finest poems published by Canadians in the previous calendar year. The poems for the 2019 edition were selected by guest editor, Rob Taylor.

Cool facts about the books: Rob read over two thousand poems to find content for Best Canadian Poetry 2019. Nothing was submitted for this collection and Rob found the poems by looking through magazines from the last year. Rob and the other editors were then tasked with narrowing down the twenty two hundred poems to the final fifty that were included in the book.

About the author and his writing process

Was writing something Rob always wanted to do?

Actually, no. Rob didn’t think about writing until halfway through his undergraduate degree at Simon Fraser University (SFU). Rob joined a newly formed poetry club at SFU and started reading the work of other poets, and writing his own. He found that being surrounded by others who were also interested in poetry inspired him to try his hand at it.

Are there any other genres of writing that Rob has tried?

Rob has written short fiction and non-fiction, both of which have been published in magazines. He is theoretically also interested in writing a novel one day. However, he struggles to get his head around the idea of writing that much, but maybe someday.

What is the most challenging part of writing poetry?

Accepting the fact that as a poet you are living on the margins of the writing world. People often turn to poetry during hard times because that’s when they feel like they need it. Rob feels that the world always needs poetry, however, the writing world (and larger world in general), does not support it as much. Poetry can also be challenging since it requires a lot of quiet and introspection, which many people don’t get the opportunity for with such busy lives.

What is the most rewarding part of writing poetry?

In Rob’s experience, people become writers (especially poets), because writing has changed their life, or in many cases saved their life, in some way. Rob feels that being a part of the world of poetry has nurtured him and having the opportunity to nurture it back is a wonderful experience.

What was the publication process like for Rob?

Rob spent seven years building up his portfolio through magazine publications. When he was ready to publish his first book of poetry, The Other Side of Ourselves, he went the traditional publishing route. Rob sent out the manuscript and it was quickly picked up by Cormorant Books.

Since then, Rob has worked to find the right publisher for each of his books. Publishing a book involves not just the publisher and the writer, but also the editor and cover designer. Rob always sends his work intentionally to specific publishers. The content of each book requires something different and Rob wants to make sure the press is a good fit.

Did publishing his first book change Rob’s writing process?

It liberated him.

“When you publish a book, you realize how little control you have over how it is received.”
Before publishing, Rob worried that his fictional work would be read as autobiographical, as a lot of poetry is naturally read this way. After publishing, and seeing the reaction from his readers, Rob decided that he may as well write openly and honestly about his life. His following work became much more open and personal because of the publication.

What is Rob working on now?

Rob is working on another book of poetry that is scheduled to come out Spring 2021. He is also working on writing some short stories, as he finds that if he has a project going in one path, he has to write something else at the same time as a rebellion against the first.

If Rob could tell his younger writing self anything, what would it be?

"Chill out. Everything will come." Even though Rob knew that most writers don’t hit their stride until years into the process, it was still hard to be patient. "My first book came out when I was 27, but it probably should have come out later. Writers often rush it, wanting to hold the book in their hands and be a 'published author,' when the work would be stronger if they waited long enough to better see its flaws."

What advice does Rob have for new authors?

"You have to love the art, but don't make it your entire life. Make it one part of your life and use every other part as material for your writing. Have a day job. Have hobbies, and passions, and travel."

"Read. Read far more than you write."

About the White Pines Local Author Collection

The Port Moody Public Library created the White Pines Local Author Collection to highlight and support local authors, poets, and illustrators from our community. We launched the collection in May 2019 with 12 inaugural authors. Learn more about this collection and how you can become a White Pines Local Author.

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