Leah Callen : part one

Leah Callen is an emerging poet with an MFA in creative writing from the University of Victoria, BC. Her work has appeared in Barren Magazine, Vallum Magazine, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, and Contemporary Verse 2. Her poem is coming soon to a Twin Peaks anthology by APEP Publications called These Poems Are Not What They Seem. And she is a contributing editor of poetry with Barren Magazine.

How did you first engage with poetry?

I started writing highly-charged, erotic poems about sex, god, and poppies in high school because my hot hormones had to spill out somewhere. A lot of the time it was on the page. I felt great freedom in such self-expression, and I was also studying singing so music and poetry naturally went hand in hand. The funny thing is my wild word collages were unappreciated by my first high school creative writing teacher and I dropped the course. Another teacher saw something in me and tried to grow it by publishing my poems in a class chapbook. Who knew that years later I’d do two university degrees in creative writing? You should always follow your own art.