How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers group that you work ideas and poems with?
My work enters the world in three ways: literary journals, live readings, and chapbooks or books. Sometimes they happen all at once.
When I feel something is finished I submit it to a literary journal and see what happens. If it’s accepted and a launch happens I’ll sometimes read it there. Recently I was apart of a reading tour with JM Francheteau, Meghan Harrison, and Fawn Parker which we organized ourselves, so sometimes I help create the opportunity with people. More rarely I’ll get lucky and have a collection in a chapbook which I have few of, or I’ll get the opportunity to do a book like I did recently with Hybrid Heaven Press.
I have no steady groups I share my writing with before it sees the light of day. More than a year ago I had a poem in PRISM international which I shared in a poetry workshop and with friends online beforehand. I got amazing feedback, criticism, and support. That’s probably why the poem got published. But that’s rare. I started writing poetry when there was no one else around who cared or knew what poetry was so I’m used to working without anyone laying eyes on it. I’m not in a program like an MFA either and probably never will be.
Sometimes I think about seeking out a writers circle or doing another workshop but never go through with it. I feel better just doing my regular process, whatever that is. That’s not to say I have anything against them—it can be tremendously helpful to have your poems read with fresh eyes and worked on with different perspectives and I know that from experience. If anything I feel safer and freer without anyone because I can just curl up in my head and live there. Maybe that’s terrible, but that’s that.
Showing posts with label JC Bouchard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label JC Bouchard. Show all posts
Tuesday, 21 August 2018
Tuesday, 14 August 2018
JC Bouchard : part four
How does a poem begin?
Thinking about the same thing over and over and over until it won’t go away. You think about something every day, usually a feeling, and at some point the feeling latches onto some kind of reality—something you saw or did or a person or an event. It could be anything. Then you feel and think about that for a long time—sometimes it’s weeks or months—then one day you just lie down or sit down and try to write it. If it doesn’t feel right you abandon it and go back to thinking about it again until you try to write again and learn how it feels. You do that until it feels right.
By feel right, I mean it doesn’t make you hate writing it. Or there is a sense of elation. I don’t really know. I can write something and say, This feels like a good poem because I’ve intellectually tackled this subject using what I believe is decent poetic craft. But that’s so unsatisfying, like eating a half-eaten meal.
If you begin a poem and it feels unsatisfying it’s probably because it is, and if it’s unsatisfying to you it will probably be to everyone else, and so you have to go back to thinking about it and trying to write it.
Thinking about the same thing over and over and over until it won’t go away. You think about something every day, usually a feeling, and at some point the feeling latches onto some kind of reality—something you saw or did or a person or an event. It could be anything. Then you feel and think about that for a long time—sometimes it’s weeks or months—then one day you just lie down or sit down and try to write it. If it doesn’t feel right you abandon it and go back to thinking about it again until you try to write again and learn how it feels. You do that until it feels right.
By feel right, I mean it doesn’t make you hate writing it. Or there is a sense of elation. I don’t really know. I can write something and say, This feels like a good poem because I’ve intellectually tackled this subject using what I believe is decent poetic craft. But that’s so unsatisfying, like eating a half-eaten meal.
If you begin a poem and it feels unsatisfying it’s probably because it is, and if it’s unsatisfying to you it will probably be to everyone else, and so you have to go back to thinking about it and trying to write it.
Tuesday, 7 August 2018
JC Bouchard : part three
How important is music to your poetry?
Probably more important than I realize. Like I said, it was how I discovered poetry and creative expression. I might even be a music fan more than a poetry fan. At least sometimes it feels that way. Almost every time I write there’s music playing, all kinds of different music, and I think that at the very least there’s some influence there in the rhythm, diction, imagery, and feeling at the centre of a poem.
It’s also a big part of how I read and perform poetry. Live music can be soft, loud, energetic, atmospheric—why can’t a poetry reading be like that? I try to treat poems like songs and use my voice and body to perform them (at least the best I can). It feels better to do it that way.
When a person is reading alone they can let the book grow in their imagination because they take their time with it and pay attention. Live readings aren’t really like that, so music helps me think of different ways to engage an audience. Maybe it’s a failure but I’m going to keep doing that.
Probably more important than I realize. Like I said, it was how I discovered poetry and creative expression. I might even be a music fan more than a poetry fan. At least sometimes it feels that way. Almost every time I write there’s music playing, all kinds of different music, and I think that at the very least there’s some influence there in the rhythm, diction, imagery, and feeling at the centre of a poem.
It’s also a big part of how I read and perform poetry. Live music can be soft, loud, energetic, atmospheric—why can’t a poetry reading be like that? I try to treat poems like songs and use my voice and body to perform them (at least the best I can). It feels better to do it that way.
When a person is reading alone they can let the book grow in their imagination because they take their time with it and pay attention. Live readings aren’t really like that, so music helps me think of different ways to engage an audience. Maybe it’s a failure but I’m going to keep doing that.
Tuesday, 31 July 2018
JC Bouchard : part two
What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?
Just getting the first line or stanza down. Almost everything after that is easy and just comes out. Then you get to the end and want the end to be beautiful, so you get stuck near the last stanza or line. Something has to be resolved or spoken of or given meaning.
Giving meaning to your ideas is difficult. Really you’re always trying to make your poem vindicate yourself and your ideas and your emotions. I think my poems are emotional. They’re hollow if I feel nothing in the act of writing them. The first part is the idea and the last is the emotional breakthrough where you feel like you’ve lived through something in your chair in front of your computer or notebook. Maybe that’s foolish.
Something that’s become difficult as I get older is this unconscious compulsion to compare myself to other writers. Like, that good writer is doing such and such and they get published, so maybe I should try that too in my own way. That’s nonsense though. When I get that thought I remind myself it is nonsense and it doesn’t matter at all what anyone else is doing, even if it’s your favourite writers. Sometimes it can be difficult to be yourself when you lose yourself in others.
Just getting the first line or stanza down. Almost everything after that is easy and just comes out. Then you get to the end and want the end to be beautiful, so you get stuck near the last stanza or line. Something has to be resolved or spoken of or given meaning.
Giving meaning to your ideas is difficult. Really you’re always trying to make your poem vindicate yourself and your ideas and your emotions. I think my poems are emotional. They’re hollow if I feel nothing in the act of writing them. The first part is the idea and the last is the emotional breakthrough where you feel like you’ve lived through something in your chair in front of your computer or notebook. Maybe that’s foolish.
Something that’s become difficult as I get older is this unconscious compulsion to compare myself to other writers. Like, that good writer is doing such and such and they get published, so maybe I should try that too in my own way. That’s nonsense though. When I get that thought I remind myself it is nonsense and it doesn’t matter at all what anyone else is doing, even if it’s your favourite writers. Sometimes it can be difficult to be yourself when you lose yourself in others.
Tuesday, 24 July 2018
JC Bouchard : part one
Photo credit: Syd Lazarus.
How did you first engage with poetry?
Through music and naive rebellion. I started when I was really young, about 13 or 14, around the same I became obsessed with metal, punk, and any music that subverted the norm or what I thought was the norm. It was all I cared about on any visceral level. I hated regular music and the people around me who liked it. I didn’t want anything to do with the world as I thought it was so I retreated into music. It justified my worldview and depression and warped perspective on things, such as they were.
My childhood was violent and sad and I was sad too. Music and lyrics expressed that in ways I didn’t know how. I couldn’t play an instrument because I couldn’t afford one so I wrote lyrics. A lot. All the time. I filled notebooks. One time when I was 15 or 16 my grandmother found one of them. I wasn’t hiding it. She was shocked by the things I wrote. I didn’t care. It was wonderful. As I grew older and a little smarter I discovered books and poetry and saw that writing was a thing and I could do it too, that I was actually doing it already, and maybe even one day I could make money from it and do it all the time as a job. That was 17 years ago and I haven’t stopped since.
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