How important is music to your poetry?
I can't write even a grocery list while listening to recorded music. Music is too compelling to my ear and distracts me. But while I write, I listen in my head for rhythm, phrasing, emphasis, and sound. When reading poetry, I hear it in my head, and feel cheated if I don't hear music. To me it is a necessary ingredient.
What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?
Metaphor. Several poets I know spill glorious metaphors from their pens, implying worlds.
When I speak, I often resort to metaphor. But when writing - perhaps because of decades of work in analytical, expository, and advocacy writing - my first instinct is to the direct and simple, with a goal of clarity. That is not what poetry is about! Where metaphor does appear in my work, it often takes the form of a verb or adjective that applies to another domain than the one under contemplation, and so implies a comparison. Metaphor is something I want to work on in future, with its scope for multiple interpretations and opening up the work.
Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?
Almost every day. Each new poet I read (well, almost each) offers new possibilities - innovative use of language or image, new ways of seeing things, new attitudes, new forms or just new levels of enjoyment. Some spark an urge to write myself. In moments of frustration with my own work, I have sometimes thought - this is way too difficult. Followed almost immediately by - if it were not difficult, you'd be bored, so suck it up. In the past few years, I've experienced the deep satisfaction of seeing my work offer solace to friends in pain, something I did not anticipate when I started on this path. Poetry keeps me growing.
How did you first engage in poetry?
Following a long-time casual interest in poetry, my first true engagement came through a workshop led by Ottawa poet Stephen Brockwell. I signed up in hope of a shakeup of my brain, and that I got! But my deep focus on poetry came about through the magic of a weekly poetry critique group of supportive but clear-eyed women, the Ruby Tuesdays group. We offer each other not only critiques, but introductions to new poets, prompts to new writing, information about workshops and publishing and reading possibilities - and of course moral support through the ups and downs of writing. Plus we laugh a lot.
