poetry mini interviews

How does a poem begin? Noticing. Discomfort. Strangeness.

Why is poetry important? Anything that inhibits the process of becoming a robot!

How important is music to your poetry? I’m constantly listening to music. I grew up playing music, in so many bands and orchestras, and ab...

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author? Yehuda Amichai’s Psalm . Italo Calvi...

What other poetry books have you been reading lately? Eyes Bottle Dark with a Fistful of Flowers by Jake Skeets Hymnswitch by Ali Blyth...

What poets changed the way you thought about writing? Edmond Jabes, because he was able to write about the Holocaust truthfully, that is n...

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry? Balancing love of form and resistance of misinterpreting the world as a poem.

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t? Compression. Instantaneous connections. Chant.

How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers group that you work ideas and poems with? Yeah, I exchange...

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began? Yeah. When I started out, I was very attached to a sense of pacing, phrasing, cr...

How do you know when a poem is finished? When it sort of hums.

How did you first engage with poetry? I was a voracious reader growing up, but in terms of poetry that engaged me as an aspiring writer, I...

Alex Leslie has published two collections of poetry, Vancouver for Beginners , out from Book*hug this October, and The things I heard abo...