[Transcription of a live interview held in the Talonbooks Warehouse.]

Dina Del Bucchia is the author of Coping With Emotions and Otters, published in April 2013 by Talonbooks.

Daniel Zomparelli: This is your first book correct?

Dina Del Bucchia: Yes, I have not birthed a book before. This is my first.

DZ: Is this the first project, as a writer, that you’ve worked on? Because I know you’ve been working on a lot of other projects.

DDB: No, I work on a lot of projects, and we (the projects and I) get in a fight, or I abandon them, or I need to give them some space, and I usually come back to them. This, I did see to fruition.

DZ: To me, the book has this self-help book style, but the poems feel as if they were written first before they became this self-help book concept.

DDB: Right, the first part of the book, that became a poem, was a really long rant poem, and that was the original form of How To Be Angry.

DZ: Was it an emotional response poem? Did you get angry and write a rant poem?

DDB: No!

DZ: Was it a real rant poem?

DDB: Something inspired it, but I don’t remember what it was.

DZ: Try to remember throughout this interview.

DDB: Are you trying to Barbara Walters me? Do you want me to bring up painful memories?

DZ: I’m trying to Oprah you, and at the end I’ll shame you for everything.

DDB: It’ll work. I just had all these ideas about anger, and I don’t remember where they came from, but what ended up happening to get it to the form that it is now is that someone in my writing group, Nancy Lee, had suggested that what I’d written was many different poems. And I was like, “You are totally right and this is why you are better and smarter than me.” So I took it apart and then wrote it as steps instead of just a rant. Some friends, Laura Matwichuk and Kim Nguyen, asked me to be a part of an art exhibition called Funny Business. And that’s where the initial self-help thing came from because I made this really crappy looking pamphlet with clip art [based on a self-help pamphlet].

DZ: What makes it so interesting in its mockery of self help, is that you have these guides to help deal with emotions, but the way they are written, the reader feels even more conflicted at the end of the poem. I don’t even know what my question is … I just liked that.

DDB: I like that too, and in general I like creative things that produce that kind of response. I mean, some people don’t like it, there’s those people that get to the end of a movie and they’re like, “that movie had no ending.”

DZ: Where was the happiness?

DDB: Exactly. There’s this idea that things need to be completely contained and neat and tidy, like a self-help book. You reach the last page, go out into the world as your whole, new, beautiful self that’s gonna take on the world!

DZ: Did you see the last episode of Girls?

DDB: I did.

DZ: Which I feel hits on the same thing.

DDB: I agree.

DZ: There was a lot of mixed reviews, when people were asking, “well what does this mean?”

DDB: Spoiler alert. I think the great thing about the ending is that a lot of people thought it was a happy ending.

DZ: Which, if you’re in your twenties, you know that there are no happy endings in your twenties.

DDB: At any age, you know, life can punch you right in the crotch area. That’s what’s great about someone like Lena Dunham, it doesn’t matter what art you create, you can look up to someone like that. She’s 26 years old and she’s creating these very complicated and funny stories.

DZ: Which is what your book reminds me of, I’m not saying you are in any way inspired by Lena Dunham, but it reminded me of that, and also that Tumblr Fuck! I’m In My Twenties. In respect to actually coping with emotions, there is no real perfect way to cope with them, and the only way to do so is to just recognize them and how complicated they are. It makes me think of the poem in which the narrator is watching the Food Network, but eating pops and chips and feeling sorry for themselves.

DDB: I think a level of emotional honesty with yourself is good. And it’s not easy, people don’t want to do that. And people don’t want to say, “It’s good for you to eat those chips, maybe it’s great.”

DZ: Maybe it’s the best. I have to say, my favourite parts of the poem are these simple one-liners. How To Be Jealous, number five, “betray a dolphin.” I want to do this.

DDB: Do it. Try it out. Everyone just try it out.

DZ: I want to, I feel like I need to do this at least one time in my life, and I feel like it would solve all of the world’s problems. I have to say I did do one of the recommended things in your book, and I have ruined a sunset before.

Because some of these one-liners are so goofy, do you feel like this is why the sincerity in the poems come off so strong?

DDB: I definitely do. I think there’s something in the idea of a joke and in dark humour that illuminates how people understand things. With jokes there’s an “a-ha” moment that brings something to light that may not have been understood if there was a more solemn delivery system.

DZ: Which is why I love comedic poetry, because it provides a similar equation.

Ok, so none of my friends read poetry (aside from the poets), but the rest of them don’t give a fuck about poetry. They ran out at the fuck store.

DDB: They were at the fuck store, and they were like, “oh, this fuck is about poetry, no thanks.”

DZ: And I would send small snippets to them, illegally, because this is copyrighted material, and they loved it. People hate surrealist things, but they enjoyed the poetry. I mean, they still were like, “how are you supposed to betray a dolphin?”

Let’s talk about otters. Why otters?

DDB: Have you seen them?

DZ: Is it just because they are super precious and they hold each others’ hands?

DDB: No, I mean that’s definitely part of it, but a lot of animals don’t really have a lot of personality, but otters, there’s something in those faces and the way they behave.

One time I was at the Vancouver Aquarium, watching the otter pool. It was Nyac at the time, and she was trying to nap and there were these kids screeching. And I thought, I’m sorry you have to deal with this, you’re an elderly lady, and all these people are talking at you, and you just want a nice nap.

The aquarium can do great things, because they have resources and they have money.

DZ: And also, it’s a great place to betray a dolphin.

DDB: It’s totally great, because they have some dolphins there. If you want to betray another animal, it is totally up to you. But, I think the belugas don’t give a shit, so they are not going to care if you try to betray them. They’ll be all, “talk to the fin because, … because I don’t care.”

DZ: You couldn’t think of a rhyme in time.

DDB: I couldn’t, talk to the fin is fine.

DZ: Talk to the fin because you ain’t gonna win.

DDB: I think everyone has certain allegiances to animals. Most people are just dog people.

DZ: Do you have a weird YouTube addiction?

DDB: Of course, I love YouTube.

DZ: Because you have this additional aspect of otters, but through the lens of YouTube.

DDB: Through the lens of YouTube but also through the lens of all media, and how anyone can become a celebrity, including an animal that can’t talk or be interviewed.

DZ: It’s a weird thing that people are engaging with nature a lot, but all through the interwebs, which provides this disconnect.

DDB: It does, but in some way it’s really great, like with books or other media, we use to access things that are not in close proximity to us. But it is delivered to us through a filter.

DZ: Plus you have shitty people commenting on it with like, “otters are gay.”

DDB: Right? If only people knew.

DZ: They’re just looking for same sex marriage.

DDB: They don’t like the haters. But that’s the thing, they don’t have a political affiliation, they don’t have any agenda, they are not humans. There is also something really beautiful we can learn about ourselves from seeing animals.

DZ: Lastly, because we have to bring her up in every interview we have, what would Beyonce say if she read your book.

DDB: She would probably look at the cover and say, “This is so cute. Bless.”

DZ: I feel like she would find it really relate-able.

DDB: She would be into it. She would give a lot of money to otters.

DZ: She could actually afford to betray a dolphin.

DDB: She could actually afford to ruin a sunset for a lot of people.

DZ: She could Mr. Burns a sunset.

DDB: Illuminati. Beyonce.

DZ: Well I think that concludes our weird interview.

DDB: Thanks, if people read this, it will probably be upsetting for them.

DZ: PETA is gonna come after you. Because of all the dolphin stuff.

DDB: We’re vegetarians, so back off, PETA.