Estlin McPhee : part one

Estlin McPhee is a writer, magic-maker, and collective organizer whose first chapbook of poems, Shapeshifters, was published by Rahila’s Ghost Press in 2018. For five years, they co-curated REVERB: A Queer Reading Series with Leah Horlick. Estlin's writing has appeared across North America and can be found online at emcphee.com.

How did you first engage with poetry?

I didn’t like poetry as a young person (too boring, too slow!) but was interested in stories and studied creative writing in high school. We had a unit on poetry and my writing teacher—having never instructed us on what a poem was or shown us examples—told us to write a poem by the end of the block. She refused to answer any of our questions about where to start, how a poem should look, etc. I felt so lost at first, sitting there watching the clock tick and trying to come up with a poem, when I didn’t even know what a poem was. Of course then I realized it could be anything, and what a gift that was.