Alex Manley : part three

Do you have a social group or writers group that you work ideas and poems with?

I spent six years at Concordia University’s now-infamous creative writing program from 2007 to 2013, over the course of which I came to have a deep appreciation for the experience of workshopping poetry, of being in close contact with other poetic minds. The sensation of pushing and being pushed in new poetic directions is something that I’m not sure you can achieve by other means. I think you genuinely have to meet with other writers, consider their work, have them consider yours, and let the process take you where it may, maybe? That’s not to say that that experience is only available in creative writing programs, though. I’ve been lucky over the past two years to be a part of a small group of Montreal-based poets who meet every so often to consider each other’s writing, and the feedback from those writers has made me a stronger writer, a better poet and, I like to imagine, a more interesting person. (I also count them as my friends, or like, whatever.)