Chris Banks : part two

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

This is a great question. I feel like I understood more about poetry fifteen years ago than I do now. I started out as a deeply lyric, meditational poet who used narrative as the pilot-light of every poem. Now, I like poems that do not mine memory so much as the imagination. The imagination is much more important to me now. Every poet after the first few books has to ask themselves: what do I do when I run out of the past? Out of childhood experiences? It can become a crisis of voice and some people never get past it. My answer, of course, is when you run out of the past you are left with the goods. My poems have become much more surreal, more associational, more mischievous, more wondrous. I love all my books and I am very proud of them. However, I am much more interested in creating a surprising experience, one less rooted in a particular time or place, for a reader nowawdays. Who knows where my poems will lead me next? I just follow where my imagination leads me.