Lance La Rocque : part five

How does a poem begin? 

Poems seem to begin randomly from phrases I hear on the street, lines from songs, photographs, signage, titles of other people’s poems, lines from my journals, dreams.  But since my poems, for better or worse, seem unintentionally obsessive, they seem to begin in the unconscious before I’ve done anything concrete.

Lance La Rocque : part four

How important is music to your poetry? 

I spent years trying to learn how to play the guitar and how to read music. I hoped that listening to and playing music might help me develop a greater sensitivity to sound. I don’t have any talent, but the endless practice might have helped my poems. I don’t know.  I also learned a lot about how flexible singers can be when phrasing lines over a regular beat. The same lines/lyrics can be performed very differently. Somehow that frees up my approach to lines.

Lance La Rocque : part three

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author? 

I tend to return to Emily Dickinson (I love her slippery, off-kilter intensity), Tomas Transtromer (the depth of images and aura, the otherworldliness emerging from the ordinary world), and Nelson Ball (the vitality of his micro-linguistic play with words and ordinary things. He shows me how my backyard or kitchen is filled with lively, overlooked worlds.). All of them make the ordinary appear surreal/intense and make me want to find a way to do the same.

Lance La Rocque : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished?       

When I return to a poem several times and can’t change anything without making it worse—then I feel it’s ready to keep…or trash.  But maybe poems are never really finished. Sometimes friends have suggested major reconstructions that I couldn’t imagine. I love that rediscovery of open-endedness.

Lance La Rocque : part one

Lance La Rocque lives in Wolfville, NS. With Lisa, Emily, and Max.

He has published in Hava LeHaba, Industrial Sabotage, The Northern Testicle Review, and Periodicities. He has a book of poetry, Vermin (Book Thug), and most recently, a chapbook, glitch (above/ground press).

How did you first engage with poetry?       

I must have been writing poetry since I was at least thirteen. My mother carries around a poem I had published in a Salvation Army newsletter. It can be disturbing to rediscover your early selves and affiliations! I thought more carefully about poetry and began to write more when I met Stuart Ross and j w curry.  I’m grateful that two writers I admired published my poems. Sometime after I moved to Nova Scotia, Stuart told me that the poet Alice Burdick was moving to Halifax and maybe I should collaborate with her. He and Alice would probably find it amusing that that secretly pressured me into writing a lot of poems!