Jamie Evan Kitts : coda

Since I’ve started this poetry career I’ve been able to develop my own style and voice, and I encourage other poets to do the same. Don’t feel beholden to Poet Voice in your writing or your performance. Cut a promo. Growl and scream. Let the weight of every word break as it must.

Jamie Evan Kitts : part five

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

Luke Hathaway’s The Affirmations, John Elizabeth Stintzi’s Junebat, Di Brandt’s The Sweetest Dance on Earth, Sue Sinclair’s Almost Beauty, Jordan Trethewey and Marcel Herms’s Unexpected Mergers, Amber McMillan’s This is a Stickup, Daniel Scott Tysdal’s The End is in the Middle, Alyda Faber’s Poisonous If Eaten Raw, Robert Colman’s Democratically Applied Machine, Katie Fewster-Yan’s Surrender & Resistance, Triny Finlay’s Myself, a Paperclip, Maleea Acker’s Hesitating Once to Feel Glory, David Huebert’s Humanimus, and Harry Thurston and Thaddeus Holownia’s Icarus, Falling of Birds.

Jamie Evan Kitts : part four

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

Language is plain enough for hate but not complicated enough for love. I feel like a poem’s steady accumulation of images in context grants that complication the focus. Poetry doesn’t have to be an answer, but it can be where we understand a problem together through reading. For me that problem is how to say “I love you” with every true reason we have.

Jamie Evan Kitts : 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 work closely with a group called the Egg Poets Society. We started workshopping each other’s poems during a COVID lockdown period in early 2022 with the aim of getting our work in publication-ready quality. We’ve been slowly accumulating new members, all folks we’ve made connections with during our degrees and careers. These are all people I can rely on to give honest and helpful feedback, but also glowing support. We’re all just so stoked about what we’re making, and every new publication is a big win. Pieces I’ve workshopped with this group have ended up in The Malahat Review, Augur Magazine, and the League of Canadian Poets’ Poetry Pause, and currently our group chat is called “Taco Poets Society” because they wanted to support me as I wait for word on what I’ve submitted to Taco Bell Quarterly.

Jamie Evan Kitts : part two

How did you first engage with poetry?

It would have been during my undergrad at St. Thomas University. My first workshop group were assigned to read Michael Ondaatje’s Collected Works of Billy the Kid. But I never really gravitated towards poetry until I was hired as the Managing Editor of the Atlantic Canadian Poets’ Archive. I took advantage of the ACPA blog to interview and platform emerging undergraduate poets from around the region. I learned so much about this craft by engaging with these folks and all the new entries I published over those years. At the end of my final term at the ACPA, I saw my first poem published in a project edited by Jenna Lyn Albert, who I had actually written an entry on for the ACPA.

Jamie Evan Kitts : part one

Jamie Evan Kitts (she/her/hers) is a Co-Managing Editor of Qwerty Magazine, a member of the Egg Poets Society, a settler on the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Wolastoqiyik People, and a trans woman. Her work has appeared in Poetry Pause, The Malahat Review, Augur Magazine, and elsewhere.

What are you working on?

I am currently Co-Managing Editor of Qwerty Magazine, so right now I’m preparing the launch of issue 46. We’ll soon be entering our reading period for issue 47. I’m also figuring out how Qwerty can expand into chapbook publication. The goal is to publish two chapbooks with the judges and the winner of a chapbook contest under a new imprint. Personally, I’ve been working on a zine of food poems which I’m excited to launch in 2023 through itch.io. I’ve been thinking of it like a demo tape or an EP which collects the single poems I’ve had published in the last couple years.