Estlin McPhee : part five

What are you working on?

Currently, a collection of poems engaging with my experience growing up in the Pentecostal church, plus witchcraft, werewolves, and being a gender weirdo.

Estlin McPhee : part four

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

I’m delighted to have been reading my friend Alessandra Naccarato’s debut book Re-Origin of Species, which continues to offer new surprises and meaning to me after many readings. I’ve also been reading Billy-Ray Belcourt’s new book NDN Coping Mechanisms, which is truly spectacular. Other recent, mind-bending favourites have been Not Here by Hieu Minh Nguyen, Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith, and If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar.

Estlin McPhee : part three

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

I find poetry—especially my own—to be very slippery. The words themselves don’t always summon the magic; sometimes I look at my work and find that meaning, music, or even image have retreated for the day and everything sounds flat. Other times the same words are full and alive. I don’t know why that happens but I find that difficult—knowing that sometimes I just have to wait, trusting that it will come back.

Estlin McPhee : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished?

What I’m really familiar with is the intangible sense that a poem is not yet finished and has instead reached a standstill. But usually I try to ignore that little voice of certainty and I say the poem is done when I want it to be done—when often the poem is still percolating or changing form (and it might need to do that for years to come, which is just very slow). So when that sense shifts and solidifies into a different feeling, then I know a poem is finished. I’ve only written a couple of poems that found their final forms quickly; I am mostly slow.

Estlin McPhee : part one

Estlin McPhee is a writer, magic-maker, and collective organizer whose first chapbook of poems, Shapeshifters, was published by Rahila’s Ghost Press in 2018. For five years, they co-curated REVERB: A Queer Reading Series with Leah Horlick. Estlin's writing has appeared across North America and can be found online at emcphee.com.

How did you first engage with poetry?

I didn’t like poetry as a young person (too boring, too slow!) but was interested in stories and studied creative writing in high school. We had a unit on poetry and my writing teacher—having never instructed us on what a poem was or shown us examples—told us to write a poem by the end of the block. She refused to answer any of our questions about where to start, how a poem should look, etc. I felt so lost at first, sitting there watching the clock tick and trying to come up with a poem, when I didn’t even know what a poem was. Of course then I realized it could be anything, and what a gift that was.