Q&Answers 2 - Ottavia Paluch
Q and Ottavia talk about community, disability, developing as a writer, and other cool and serious things
Welcome to the second installment of Q&Answers! I am extremely excited to finally be able to let you read this! Back in June (I know, I did say finally…) I had the absolute joy of speaking to Ottavia Paluch, of Things You Otter Know fame. She is as lovely and clever as her substack makes her seem - as you’ll find out in this interview, as well - and I had so much fun interviewing her.
Before I let you dive into this interview, a quick warning that it is very long. I had so much fun conducting all of it, and transcribing it, and in the end, I decided it would be better to just present it to you reasonably intact. Of course, there have been some edits made for clarity, concision, and pacing. I hope you enjoy!
Love and sparkles ;)
Q: Hi! So, can you just give me a bit of an introduction to you?
O: Yes, I’m Ottavia, pronouns are she/her, just wrapped up my second year at the University of Toronto where I major in English. I write a substack called Things You Otter Know, and I’ve been publishing poems on and off since I was like 14 or 15. It’s been a wild ride, and I’m based in Toronto, Canada.
Q: Nice, nice. I love your substack, I’m sure loads of people love your substack. So how did you get into writing it?
O: The substack was kind of born out of a drive to just write more, and write more consistently. I had gone through a bad writing slump in mid-2021. My friends were graduating highschool, I was stuck, and I wasn’t writing so much anymore, I wasn’t reading poems, I wasn’t sending them out. And I was like, damn, you know, something’s missing in my life and then one night it clicked for me: it was writing. Then I was like, okay so how do I do this in a way that’s consistent and also like, try something I hadn’t previously done before, and that was the substack. I think I also thought I would commit to it for six months and give it up, to think that we’re now two and a half years into it and I haven’t stopped, it’s kind of crazy to me.
Q: Your dedication is insane
O: I just don’t have a life Q
Q: [tiny laughs] Oh me neither, don’t worry, I think most substack writers don’t have a life. I do this in-between A-Levels.
O: Oh God, I’ve heard about those. Remind me again where you’re based?
Q: I’m in England!
O: Oh my God, what city?
Q: I’m not from a city, I’m from this tiny place just about two hours outside of London. There’s nothing here.
O: I’ve been doing my research on England, Q, because I’m going to be on exchange in Leeds in the fall.
Q: Oh nice! Leeds is amazing.
O: You’ve been?
Q: Yeah, it’s also really near to one of my favourite places, which is York, which has the National Railway Museum, which is why it’s my favourite place.
O: Are you a train kid?
Q: I am a train kid, yeah
O: I love that for you
Q: Unfortunately I am that kind of autistic person
[community laughing]
O: The older I get the more I get into trains, you know, it’s kind of becoming a problem. I have Wikipedia tabs open on trains for like no reason. I haven’t read them yet. They’re just there waiting to be read!
Q: That’s so relatable. I was talking to a friend and I was like, I can’t ask Ottavia about public transport, I can’t ask Ottavia about trains.
O: Sure you can. I am so excited to pay the eighty pounds for the train and just meet you at Nyewood.
Q: [laughs] That would be great. Our public transport system is, I assume, marginally better than Canada’s, but not much.
O: Oh, the margin is thick. In Canada if you want to get a cross country train it’s like a bajillion dollars - or should I say pounds? The hard thing about coming to a country like yours is the exchange rates between the British pound and the Canadian dollar is so bad, I’m gonna go broke before I even enter, like it’s gonna be interesting.
Q: Yeah you guys are so much poorer over here.
O: The pound is so high against the Canadian dollar. Like, what did you do?
Q: A lot of colonisation, I think
O: [laughs]
Q: Our prime ministers are trying really hard to break us, so I think it’s generational wealth at this point that’s propping us up.
O: Sorry what was your question? [laughs] We got completely off track
Q: I was going to ask about how and why you got into poetry in the first place, because obviously you got into it at quite a young age, or started publishing quite young.
O: Yeah, I’ve been writing for pretty much my whole life, just doodles and stupid stories about fairies. And in grade six, I had a teacher who would do these monthly creative writing prompts and you’d respond to it in a thousand words or so, and so I would make up these crazy, outlandish, stupid twelve-year-old stories and he liked it, he saw potential in them. One time he pulled me aside, he was like, you know, you’re good at this, you should keep doing this, and that was wild to me because it was the first time in my life where I’ve ever found out that I was good at something. I was like damn it, you know, this old fart believes in me, I should keep going with it. So I kept writing stories and stuff on the side, and then in the summer between eighth and ninth grade - high school - I found Mary Oliver and I got really obsessed with this one poem of hers, I think it was ‘Sleeping in the Forest’ or something.
Q: Who doesn’t get obsessed with Mary Oliver
O: I know, she’s just incredible, and I just fell in love with the language there, and that got me into a rabbit hole, like well if Mary Oliver can do it, I can do it too. I started writing really stupid poems over the summer, and then I eventually discovered that you could get those published, so I started sending them out to like, The New Yorker and tiny Canadian teen lit mags, everything in between. I didn’t really get my first acceptance until eight or nine months later. I couldn’t give it up, I think I almost gave up after a rejection, you know, I was like, what if everyone hates my poems, I’m never going to do this again, but that persistence, I think if I hadn’t stayed with it, it wouldn’t have led me down the path I’m on now. So I’m very grateful to my 14-year-old self.
I think the real breakthrough must have been Gigantic Sequins. That was a really big deal for me, because that was a contest, and basically what happened was I wrote the poem, and it was one of those magical moments where it just came. It just happened. I finished it and I’m sitting back and I thought, you know what? I have to do this for the rest of my life. I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since. Literally a few weeks later I sent it in to Gigantic Sequins and then I left to go watch Panic! At The Disco with all my friends.
Q: [laughs] I’m sorry that’s such… That’s such a 2018 thing to do!
O: Oh my God, they were great, Brendon took his shirt off. A couple weeks later Sophie Klahr and Robbie Auld, who were then the editors of Gigantic Sequins, came back saying hey this is cool, and I was like on my bed crying, it was a whole thing. I think since then, I look back on that thing and I don’t see myself in it, like it’s not a poem I would write. Back then I was really just pretending to write as somebody who I wasn’t, and it’s only been since doing Adroit and Iowa, and all these things, that I’ve discovered that I’m at my best when I’m me on the page.
Q: That’s such a lovely sentiment, I think, in my last interview, talking to Jenna, I talked about how there are poems, like you said, that you look back on where you’re just like that wasn’t me. As you get older is there that sense of coming into yourself more in your writing?
O: Yeah, yeah for sure. You know what Q, I’m gonna be real with you, I haven’t got there yet I don’t think, I think I’m almost there, but I haven’t written poems consistently to know where I am. I was in a class over this school year which was a creative writing workshop, and we were just work-shopping poems all year, and that really got me back into the swing of things, and I have about twenty or thirty new poems ready to go, and I’m very excited about that, I can finally revise them and just send them out, get back into the game and figure out who I am as a poet.
I think if there’s anything I’ve learned it’s that my voice is the most important thing. I’m not really one for fancy language, even though I’ve gotten to the point where, I’ll read someone else’s poems, I was reading Chelsea Dingman’s collection, because I’ve been trying to read more, and I finished it and I was like, that’s really good I should write a poem, and I tried writing a poem that sounded like her, it sounded nothing like her, Q, it was wild. So I think eventually I’ll have to come to a place where… I don’t think every form is for me, you know what I mean? I think I’m still developing as a poet, you know, I’m only twenty. Who said that you have to spend ten years writing your debut book? So um, hopefully by thirty, there’ll be something out in the world with my name on it.
Q: Yeah, Ottavia will have evolved into final form poet Pokemon.
O: [laughter] You know I always regret not getting into that stuff. When I was a kid I was surrounded by nerds who loved Pokemon and Beyblades. I was just not one of those kids, but now I look back it’s like maybe I should’ve been more nerdy.
Q: I think I didn’t have enough friends as a child to not be a total nerd, but I regret to say my thing was Pokemon go, that’s how I got into Pokemon.
O: I mean that was everybody’s thing. I was walking to the mall and back, like, where the hell are the Pokemon.
Q: I was like ten years old running around the Natural History Museum not even looking at the dinosaurs, trying to get that rare Pokemon.
O: Does sound like a place where you could find a lot of Pokemon, I’ve gotta tell you.
Q: Yeah they were mostly by the T-Rex. But yeah, the way that you’re talking about like, Ocean Vuong’s quote that you have to spend ten years writing, like, your debut, I think it’s kind of novel, because the environment of teen writing is kind of toxic, it’s like they expect you to come out fully formed immediately.
O: You know, I thought I was fully formed when I started publishing poems, and then I grew up. It’s really wild. I think because you and I, we come from that background where we’re not based in the States, so we’re looking at things, usually, from an outsider perspective, and the stuff that we enter is usually national, and not like, is it Scholastic?
Q: Yeah.
O: Yeah, so a lot of the opportunities that my peers have been awarded, I haven’t been able to experience, so I think for me it’s about just making the most of what I have and making those connections and friendships as I go along. I think now that I’m in a position where I’ve gone out of that mold, that complex, and I’m just writing for me now, I just detach from all of these things that try to attribute weight to your writing, it’s rather freeing.
I think now, what’s very important to me is giving back to the writers who are in that position dealing with this - you know, having to wake up and go to bed every night and everything they think about is college, and winning awards and determining their worth based on external success, and I see things like Significant Otters, for example, as a means to sort of bridge that gap, and to show folks who may be reading, that there’s folks out there who care about them, who don’t want them to think that everything they do has to be awarded and published and whatnot for it to matter.
I think there’s a lot of value in recognising that poetry and art in general should be created without the intent of external validation. I don’t write poems, I don’t write the substack to be rich and famous, right? I just write it because I like to do it and that’s, again like I said earlier, I don’t have a life, right? So you know, I think reminding kids of that mindset, I know it can be a tough shell to crack when you’re in that stage and you think, oh my God my life is over if I don’t win, you know, Bennington, but I didn’t win Bennington, and I’m okay, so you’re gonna be okay too. I entered Bennington like three years in a row. Nothing. Those bastards.
Q: I had a similar problem with Adroit. Discovered the mentorship and applied this year, as like my last opportunity to apply, and I still didn’t get it, it was like, damn you Peter Laberge.
O: We put way too much emphasis on that programme. I’m seeing a lot of programmes coming up, I think. I worked with Incandescent for a couple of years on their mentorship programme and then I think Sunhouse, they have one now and that’s a brand new magazine. I haven’t really had the chance to look into that in depth yet, but I want to, because a lot of my friends are on the Masthead and they’re all so brilliant, so I really trust that their vision of how the mentorship model should work is the vision for how teen writing should look.
I think that kind of peer-to-peer interaction is only going to benefit the kids, instead of thinking… like my mentor for adroit, who’s just the most incredible human being ever, she was I think fifteen years older than me, and I don’t even know what it was, she’s not even that old, she’s young as hell, but I was fifteen, so like anyone older than twenty was like old AF. So I was kind of intimidated at first, but once I warmed up to her, its like, she’s a pal now right? We write really long sappy emails to each other every year. She’s just the most wonderful human being.
So if anything, I just wish that every young writer had access to those opportunities. If we were less gatekeep-y, and less based on merit, even writers like yourself, you didn’t get into Adroit, right, doesn’t mean you suck. It doesn’t mean you don’t care, it just means there were others that were a better fit considering the mentors that were available. I think even if you beat yourself up on those days where you’re like, damn it I didn’t get into Adroit, no one’s gonna care. When people look at my LinkedIn, the first thing I write is not, ‘I got into Adroit’, right? Mentorships help, as I said, but if you aren’t able to access that, it doesn’t mean that you’re less of a writer.
Q: Yeah, you know I think that’s part of the reason why I started my substack, especially for disabled creators, I felt like there just wasn’t really space for us, and there was a lot of this expectation to be something that we’re not, and I was kind of fed up with it. I think diaspora poetry in that way is really interesting, it gets to me because a lot of it can feel like performance art, rather than poetry.
O: I mean a lot of teen poets I know have talked about that, right? So I do think the sooner we move away from that the better, but I don’t think it’s up to the teens. I think it’s the institutions that promote that sort of work that are making the job more difficult.
Q: Yeah definitely. And also moving away from the whole concept of like… like being outside of America and watching them have that sort of Scholastic and Young Arts, and they sit there like Oh this is going to get me into college, and it breaks my brain, because I just feel like all this for a scholarship? You’re breaking yourselves, you know?
O: Yeah, a lot of them are, a lot of folks spend a lot of time on their craft and they treat it like an extra-curricular, um, and then it helps them enter these things with more confidence. But yeah, really it’s just luck of the draw, right? So many young kids that are really great aren’t getting recognised because there aren’t enough slots and there aren’t enough opportunities that aren’t ultra competitive. Yeah, it can be frustrating, but I hope we do start to break out of that mold pretty soon.
Q: Yeah, definitely. Would you say that your disability has influenced your creativity, or your desire to write?
O: Oh, one billion percent. Because I’m not seeing the world if I don’t have these disabilities, right? My outlook on the world is different if I don’t have low vision, if I don’t have ASD. So yeah, it’s been difficult, getting public with it. I kind of relent to mentioning it often publicly, because the internet is forever, and sometimes I’m not sure if I want people to know these things, but a lot of times, I’m like, you know what maybe it is important that they know, because that’s what helps foster awareness and acceptance, right?
Without writing I think I would be perceived a lot differently to how I am. Writing gives me something to say, like, I belong and I’m good at something and I can contribute to society, to the world, and make art that matters, and do stuff that has an impact, a positive impact on the world. It’s really given me a purpose and I don’t really know where I want to go with my life, but I know that I want writing to be a part of it, and that to me is the most important thing. It’s been a journey.
Honestly, I think writing is one of the only things that I could, you know, say that I’m good at, because I’ve been doing it for so long. But there’s a lot of things that I struggle with that people don’t see, because of my disabilities, and I think, you know, making my way through the world as I get older, I’m going to have to rely a lot on writing and getting those emotions out as I navigate the world, this world that wasn’t really built for people like us, right? And I think art is a means of doing that, we’ve got to get those feelings out, and I’m very grateful to the written word for being there whenever I needed it to be. I write all the time about my disability. Every poem I’ve ever written, I always say it’s about God or disabilities, or God and my disabilities. Yeah, I kind of have like a very niche niche, and I can’t really seem to write about anything else, even when I try. I tried writing a poem about trains the other week, and I ended up talking about the Bible.
Q: As a religious and disabled poet, I completely relate. There’s two topics I write about and it’s always God.
O: Do you want to branch out into other things, or do you feel happy talking about the stuff that you’re talking about?
Q: I think for so long I spent time pretending that I wasn’t disabled, that it wasn’t affecting anyone, that it wasn’t affecting me, but I’ve got to a point where I’m really proud that my poetry is about my disabilities. So, I think I’m quite comfortable.
O: I don’t know if I would necessarily say that I’m proud, it just kind of happens. I can’t seem to avoid talking about those things, because they cloud every single part of my life. So it’s just like that’s the way it goes. Rip that stuff away from me, and I’m not me, you know? I’m a different person, so I think I can’t envision a future where I’m writing about trees and rabbits and stuff, like I just can’t see that happening for me. I just keep seeming to go really deep into my own head, and try to answer the questions that I’ve never asked before.
Q: Yeah, I mean disability is so… No one ever calls it disability, do they, when they write about depression. They just go, oh I’m sad, now look at a rabbit.
O: Yeah, there’s that too. It took me a long time to realise that the sadness was coming because I was talking about my disabilities, right? I thought I was being teenage angst-y, but now that I’m older, and I write more poems and try and talk about new things, I’ve grown to recognise that my sadness has dimensions to it, and a lot of that is because of my maturing and developing relationships to my disabilities and my fear of the world, right? And I don’t think that’s ever going to go away.
Q: I think a lot of disability just sort of sticks with you, doesn’t it?
O: Yeah.
Q: And I mean, I was raised with a disabled mother, and I became disabled later, when I was a kid I was so scared of being disabled, I think it’s part of why I’m proud of talking about it now.
O: I think writing is one of the ways we get those positive messages out into the world, right? Like, when Jenna messaged me a couple of years ago about how inspired she was to have my writing out in the world, I still think about that you know, it meant so so much. I didn’t know there were other teenage autistic poets out there, honestly I felt like the only one for a long time, Q. I just want to keep writing to inspire those kids and tell them that they have a future despite what everyone tells them. Because as I told you, until I discovered writing, I didn’t have a future, and writing unlocked that future for me.
Q: You’ve definitely inspired a lot of people, I mean I can only speak for myself and the people I know, but you’ve got a whole bunch of people behind you that believe in you. Your writing really is incredible and it sticks with people.
O: Oh my God I’m gonna cry, shut up Q. Thanks so much, that means a lot. Make sure you tell all your Q-vians that I love them. I don’t know, however you get that done in discord or whatever. I want receipts.
Q: I will, I will. I told MJ, I was like MJ wish me luck I’m about to speak to Ottavia, he was like, you’ll be fine but good luck!
O: Oh my gosh, I never want anyone to come into contact with me with that mindset, I am the least gatekeep-y person ever. I really believe in mutual aid and that the gatekeeping of resources helps nobody. So, you know, I know when I was younger I would look up to older writers in the community and I’d be like, wow you’re so cool. But then you meet them and realise they’re just people, who happen to be really really good at one thing. So, to be looked upon as a role model to other kids is really really crazy, I’m not really used to it, I don’t think I ever will be. I don’t want anyone to approach me with, oh my God I’m so nervous. Don’t be! I’m so chill.
Q: Yeah! So what, what advice would you give to any younger reader, what wisdom would you impart?
O: I mean, I think like I said earlier too, you gotta be you on the page, and you can’t let external things cloud you from that vision. You have to be the poet that you want to be, rather than the poet that the world thinks you should be, because at the end of the day if you’re not writing for yourself, you’re not going to be satisfied. Don’t take external validation so seriously. Write for yourself, and if you feel comfortable, share it with the world by whatever means you find necessary.
Q: That’s so lovely. And do you have any specific friends or creatives who’ve inspired you generally? Anything or anyone, just five-ish, but I have no real limits.
O: My God, where do I even begin? I mean, first of all, what you’re doing is really inspiring, so don’t forget that. My favourite writer of all time is James Baldwin, I think he’s just brilliant and I’ve read too many of his books, and I think he’s taught me a lot about how I should be seeing the world, and how the world can be, how we have to work to make it better. So he’s always my number one. And then, like, all of the teen writers I’ve met over the years. Some of the ones I’m really tight with, you see on my blog who I’ve talked to, yeah, they’re all really sweet, really passionate and really just incredibly smart people.
I love telling this story; when I was judging the incandescent contest, it was myself, it was Grace Song, it was Kaya Dierks, and it was Esther Sun. Grace and Esther go to Columbia, and Kaya goes to Yale, and they’re really accomplished in their own right, and then there was me, this high school student, and the imposter syndrome was really kicking my ass, and then I took it in and I was like, you know what: I belong here, I worked hard. I might not be able to go to Harvard one day, but I’ve made the most of what I’ve had, and I think that’s what you’ve got to do when you’re in a situation like mine. I don’t have a big network, I don’t have a lot of friends, I don’t have a lot of fancy people in my mentions, right? But yeah, I think hard work goes a long way, you know, talent will speak for itself, I don’t think I had a lot growing up, I think I’ve had to work for it, and kind of grow into my own voice as I get older…
Where was I going with this, yeah, writers I like… I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from music, as well. I’m a big music kid, as my substack will attest to. Elliott Smith is probably my favourite songwriter of all time, so I’ll shout him out, Paul Westerburg, Thom Yorke, you know, all these guys. And just like, Richard Siken, Ocean Vuong, Alex Dimitrov, those guys, yeah.
Q: Yeah. Thank you so much!
O: Of course man.
OTTAVIA’S FIVE-ISH INSPIRATIONS! (with links so you can read/listen to their stuff!)
James Baldwin (this is the link to his poetry foundation page, where you can find out about and read his writing)
All of the Significant Otters can be found through this link
Elliot Smith (this is the link to his spotify page)
Paul Westerburg (this is the link to his spotify page)
Thom Yorke (this is the link to his spotify page)
Richard Siken (this is the link to his poetry foundation page, where you can find out about and read his writing)
Ocean Vuong (this is the link to his poetry foundation page, where you can find out about and read his writing)
Alex Dimitrov (this is the link to his poetry foundation page, where you can find out about and read his writing)
Ottavia Paluch is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto. A recipient of Hunger Mountain's International Young Writers Prize, her work appears in Best Canadian Poetry, Iron Horse, Four Way Review, Tinderbox, and Gigantic Sequins, among others.