Kyle Flemmer : part five

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I’m not sure that I ever know a poem is finished, as in “complete” (I can tell when a poem is finished as in “dead”), and I’m always ready to open up a poem for further tinkering. I resist the idea that a poem has an absolute terminal, a Nirvana at which it arrives perfect and whole. That said, I often define constraints or parameters for my writing. These help me decide when a poem is sufficiently developed to start sharing, itself an experience which almost always pushes the poem to grow further, beyond where I thought the conclusion should be based on its parameters.

Kyle Flemmer : part four

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

Last year I completed the 95 books challenge, and in my hurry to fit in that many I read a bunch of slim volumes. This year my goal is to read thirty books 300 pages or longer, in hopes of committing myself to the practice of sustained reading. I’ve targeted several collected works and would like to revisit a few of the classics I skimmed through in university. Presently I’m embroiled with S O S, Amiri Baraka’s collected poems. It’s been extremely rewarding exploring his oeuvre more fully, especially in seeing how his politics develop and mesh with his art over time.

Kyle Flemmer : part three

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

What decent poet doesn’t? I see that as part of the job description. That said, Douglas Kearney’s “Quantum Spit” was the poem which really brought my interest in experimental forms to the fore. From its use of typeface and dramatis personae in mounting a chorus on the page, to its publication as broadsheet liner notes in a record sleeve, every aspect of the poem challenges the boundary between image and sound. Many poets have blown my mind since then, and now that’s the poetry I seek out in particular.

Kyle Flemmer : part two

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

When I first started writing poetry I thought it must be a sort of rhyming sing-song about love or flowers or jabberwocks. A whimsical limerick was my idea of excellent poetry; metrical without being stuffy or sappy. Not that that isn’t poetry, but it took a long time for me to realize how poetry proper encompasses a vast territory of literary possibility, a territory that expands along with us as we discover new ways of thinking and being. I’m now interested in poetry that grapples with our understanding of the universe, experiments with form and material, or challenges socially accepted norms about what literature can and should be.

Kyle Flemmer : part one

Kyle Flemmer [photo credit: Dean McClelland] is an author, editor, and publisher from Calgary. He founded The Blasted Tree Publishing Company in 2014, a small press and community of emerging Canadian artists, and is presently the Managing Editor at filling Station Magazine. Kyle's most recent poetry chapbooks are Astral Projection (above/ground press, 2017), Lunar Flag Assembly Kit (no press, 2017), and PRAY/LEWD (The Blasted Tree, 2016).

How does a poem begin?

A poem begins as an itch or impulse that appears at some mental crossroads. For me, the first step toward scratching that itch involves identifying which specific lines of thinking are coming together. The poem is an attempt to explain why using language; why am I at this crossroads? What brought me here? Until I can answer that sufficiently (at least to myself), the itch doesn’t go away.