Jaime Forsythe : part five

What are you working on?

I expect that what I’m working on now will eventually disintegrate, collapse, or shift into something else entirely, but I find it steadying to have something new to wrestle with in the background while reading from and promoting a new book. Right now all my newer material is still handwritten, prose poems and fragments, and writing it feels like trying to transcribe a distant and hazy visual: like trying to reel something in. Recurring words include: commotion, celebration, tender, limit.
 

Jaime Forsythe : part four

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

Always my own limitations, whether physical, mental, or creative. Over the years I’ve encountered several different beasts of chronic illness, and experience a lot of frustration when I can’t express, produce, or engage in the ways that I want to because my mind or my body seem to stand in the way. However, writing & publishing have forced me to reckon with imperfection and vulnerability in ways that I might not have otherwise. I’ve also learned to let go of certain expectations and prescribed timelines.

Also difficult: the patriarchy, etc.

Jaime Forsythe : part three

How important is music to your poetry?

I sometimes play music (I played flute in a band called Moon) and while that and writing poetry don’t really overlap in practice, they can stem from some of the same impulses. In both cases, maybe I just wish I could sing? I like the precision of recording, and find a similar satisfaction in the process of rewriting and editing. I like the act of making one part of music blend with and speak to the other parts, which I also like about writing poems, but in playing music with others there is this relief: I only have to control one of the parts! I don’t usually listen to music when I write, but lately I’ve been writing to Grouper, which has an oceanic, continuous quality that works for me.

Jaime Forsythe : part two

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

There are many exciting books out that I want to read right now, and it’s going to take me awhile to catch up. Here’s what’s on or near my nightstand currently, poetry-wise:

No Meeting Without Body, Annick MacAskill
This Wound is a World, Billy-Ray Belcourt
This Kind of Thinking Does No Good, Alison Smith
Sun in Days, Meghan O’Rourke
Why Are You So Sad?, David W. McFadden
Whereas, Layli Long Soldier
Collected Poems, Emily Dickinson

Jaime Forsythe : part one

Jaime Forsythe’s first collection of poetry, Sympathy Loophole, was published by Mansfield Press in 2012, and her second, I Heard Something, was released in 2018 by Anvil Press' A Feed Dog Book imprint. Her poems have appeared in The Rusty Toque, Lemon Hound, Public Pool, Minola Review, This Magazine and more. She lives in Halifax.

Photo credit: Alvero Wiggins

How did you first engage with poetry?

I think probably first through nursery rhymes (the dark versions), which my grandfather used to recite with me and then quiz me on. He would also pretend to mistake me for the various characters: Miss Muffet or Mary Mary Quite Contrary. The children’s author Jean Little was a favourite of mine when I was young, and in her novels she wrote about a teenaged character named Kate who was a writer. Little published a book of poems entirely in the voice of Kate, and I remember this having an impact: that character felt very real to me and here were all her poems collected together in one place, in a real book you could order from the Scholastic catalogue. I’ve been writing things down in notebooks for as long as I can remember.