Chris Banks : part five

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

The first really important poet to me was the Canadian poet Gwendolyn MacEwen whose lyric gifts were extraordinary. I remember taking a record out from the University of Guelph library in 1989 and listening to her read poems after she had died. It was a revelation. Next, I would say Patrick Lane and Philip Levine were touchstones for my early writing. Later came the poets Larry Levis, Dave Smith, Mark Strand, Philip Schultz, and Hayden Carruth. The poets I have been reading recently with great interest would be Kim Addonizio, Jack Gilbert, Bob Hicok, Dean Young and Dobby Gibson.

Chris Banks : part four

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

I teach high school students and what I tell them is that poetry tells you the truth about yourself. It will never sell out because you can’t make money off of it and it won’t make you famous. Believe me, I won a National poetry award in Canada early in my career and was “poetry-famous” for like six months which meant I could get a free beer in certain tiny bars in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. Aim higher. Anyways, what poetry does is immediately connects a reader and a poet in a way that gives the reader a little electrical charge. I still feel that tiny zap of understanding thirty years after reading my first poem. I hope that never changes.

Chris Banks : part three

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

I usually start with an idea, or a title, and I then start writing very rapidly. I use to write very slowly, almost methodically, especially when writing a poem in syllabics, for instance, but that has all changed. A. R. Ammons believed poetry was the result of personal anxiety and so each poem was a momentary release from anxiety. A catharsis different from therapy. I believe that too and I like to try to get some of that manic energy into a poem. Once I finish a poem or a collection, I show my work to a few trusted readers like Paul Vermeersch or Jim Johnstone. Everybody needs a few readers who you can count on to pat you on the back while pointing out glaring problems.

Chris Banks : part two

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

This is a great question. I feel like I understood more about poetry fifteen years ago than I do now. I started out as a deeply lyric, meditational poet who used narrative as the pilot-light of every poem. Now, I like poems that do not mine memory so much as the imagination. The imagination is much more important to me now. Every poet after the first few books has to ask themselves: what do I do when I run out of the past? Out of childhood experiences? It can become a crisis of voice and some people never get past it. My answer, of course, is when you run out of the past you are left with the goods. My poems have become much more surreal, more associational, more mischievous, more wondrous. I love all my books and I am very proud of them. However, I am much more interested in creating a surprising experience, one less rooted in a particular time or place, for a reader nowawdays. Who knows where my poems will lead me next? I just follow where my imagination leads me.  

Chris Banks : part one

Chris Banks is a Canadian poet and author of five collections of poems, most recently Midlife Action Figure by ECW Press 2019. His first full-length collection, Bonfires, was awarded the Jack Chalmers Award for poetry by the Canadian Authors’ Association in 2004. Bonfires was also a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry in Canada.  His poetry has appeared in The New Quarterly, Arc Magazine, The Antigonish Review, Event, The Malahat Review, Prism International, among other publications. He lives and writes in Waterloo, Ontario.

What are you working on? 

I’m working a new manuscript called Deep Fake Serenade. It is a collection of poems that leap off from where my last book Midlife Action Figure ended. The poems are sometimes narrative, sometimes surreal and confront all kinds of topics like turning fifty, new love, and renewed optimism in the face of global catastrophes. It is an imaginative work for anyone who ever wished to wear “a halo of knowing” or to be the sparks flying when outside phenomena and inside impulses collide.