Terese Mason Pierre : part one

Terese Mason Pierre is a writer, editor and organizer whose work has appeared in Canthius, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere online and in print. She is the poetry editor of Augur Magazine and volunteers with Shab-e She'r reading series. Her first chapbook, Surface Area, was published with Anstruther Press in Fall 2019. Terese lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

How did you first engage with poetry?

When I was a child, around ages 7-10, I read Shel Silverstein’s books. My favourite was Where the Sidewalk Ends. I loved his poetry so much, I plagiarized one for a school assignment in the fifth grade. I had never written poetry as a hobby—except for small poems for my mother’s birthday cards—until I got a poem published while I was in high school. After that, I started experimenting more with poetry, but continued to read novels and short fiction. I didn’t seriously start collecting and reading poetry until the beginning of 2019.