Catherine Graham : coda

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

What to leave in. No, what to take out. No, what to leave in … endless.

Catherine Graham : part five

How does a poem begin?

With a glimpse—through image, sound, emotion—that demands your attention having triggered the inner life.

Catherine Graham : part four

Why is poetry important? 

Poetry is like the crack of language (and craic!). Words meet and explosions happen. Poetry elicits more with less and refuses to be caged. It isn’t afraid of feelings or engaging with mysteries. Poetry embraces clarity and ambiguity. It’s a place of edges, thresholds, encounters. Silence and pulse.

Catherine Graham : part three

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

I had the honour of returning twice these past nine months to read at various venues in Northern Ireland where I lived for many years after completing an MA in Creative Writing. During my recent time there, I connected with poets familiar and new. I’m reading their work now: Kathleen McCracken’s Selected, Joan Newmann’s Dead End, Kate Newmann’s I Am a Horse, Mel McMahon’s Beneath Our Feet, Moyra Donaldson’s Selected Poems, Julie Morrissy’s I Am Where, Michael Longley’s Angel Hill.

Catherine Graham : part two

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?

Rip your heart out with its word-force and aural energy then put it back in before you know what happened.

Catherine Graham : part one

Catherine Graham is a writer of poetry and fiction. Among her six poetry collections The Celery Forest was shortlisted for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry, named a CBC Best Book of the Year and appears on their Ultimate Canadian Poetry List. Michael Longley praised it as “a work of great fortitude and invention, full of jewel-like moments and dark gnomic utterance.” Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award and CAA Award for Poetry and her debut novel Quarry won an Independent Publisher Book Awards gold medal for fiction, “The Very Best!” Book Awards for Best Fiction and was a finalist for the Fred Kerner Book Award. She received an Excellence in Teaching Award at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies and was also winner of the Toronto International Festival of Authors Poetry NOW competition. While living in Northern Ireland, Graham completed an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies around the world and she has appeared on CBC Radio One’s The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers. Visit her at www.catherinegraham.com. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @catgrahampoet
 
How do you know when a poem is finished?

You don’t, though sometimes you hear (faintly) that “click like a closing box” sound W. B. Yeats talks about. Otherwise, it’s when your intuition signals: done. The craft is there and the poem holds. It’s alive and ready to live on without you.