What poets changed the way you thought about writing?
I thought I was afraid of poetry ‘til I read Amber Dawn’s How Poetry Saved My Life. I used to think poetry had to be abstract, painstaking puzzles to be solved. But that book showed me poetry can be fresh, accessible, contemporary, can be working-class and gritty, it can dive boldly into the feminist conflict raging in my head, it can be therapeutic and personal and political. Her following collection Where the words end and my body begins, a book of glosas, opened my eyes and ears to other queer poets writing along these lines.
Betsy Warland taught me the importance of scoring a poem, working with text, breath and empty space so that the piece reads accurately, rings true.
I always see new and beautiful possibilities of form through the genre-bending and blending work of Dawn, Warland, and others like Chelene Knight and Daphne Marlatt.
And works by Dina Del Bucchia, Daniel Zomparelli and Jennica Harper have shown me pop culture is a legitimate poetic subject, and that poetry can be great fun.
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