Marius Kociejowski was born in 1949 in Bishop Mills, Ontario. In 1973, he left Canada and later settled in London. His first collection of poetry was Coast, published by Greville Press in 1991. Anvil Press then published Doctor Honoris Causa (1993) and Music's Bride (1999). A Canadian edition of his poems, which collected the above, So Dance the Lords of Language, was published by Porcupine's Quill in 2003. He has also published two books on Syria, The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool: A Syrian Journey (Sutton, 2004) and a sequel, The Pigeon Wars of Damascus (Biblioasis, 2010), and edited the anthology Syria through Writers' Eyes (Eland, 2006). He lives in London and is currently at work on a record of a world journey through London's exiled and émigré artists, writers, poets and musicians.

This interview was conducted via email between 28 October and 2 December 2010.

 

EVAN JONES: Would you mind telling me a bit about your background?

MARIUS KOCIEJOWSKI: I grew up in the middle of nowhere, on a farm, in a small village which nobody has ever been to and which, by all accounts, very few people have ever left. My father was Polish and my mother is English, which probably accounts for my European as opposed to Canadian frame of mind. My parents had no aptitude for farming whatsoever and made the fatal mistake of naming their cows. So little did they make from raising cattle ...