Linda Frank : part five

How important is music to your poetry?

Pretty crucial. My third book was called Insomnie Blues. An attempt to write a book that loosely followed a blues scale! The title came from a song by the same name sung by the Québecois singer Pauline Julien. It always haunted me.

Linda Frank : part four

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

In the last few years I have returned again and again to Robert Hass. It is great to have his selected The Apple Trees at Olema…handy to have all those poems in one volume when you travel!

Linda Frank : 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?

My work first enters the world in my mind, then shows up in pen and ink. Once it is transferred to computer and a draft is printed I bring it my writing group.

Linda Frank : part two

How did you first engage with poetry?

I seemed to have had a love of words and poetry since about the second grade. My parents actually saved my early poems which I apparently made into a book of sorts. I loved reading poetry in the readers we had in primary school. In high school I discovered Leonard Cohen’s poetry and then his music and that changed how I thought about the written word.

Linda Frank : part one

Linda Frank was born in Montreal and now lives in Hamilton, Ontario. A retired professor from Mohawk College, she has written three books of poetry: Cobalt Moon Embrace, Insomnie Blues and Kahlo: The World Split Open, which was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award. She is a past winner of the Banff Centre’s Bliss Carmen Poetry Award and has been shortlisted for the National Magazine Awards.

Photo credit: Caitlin Burgess

What are you working on?

I am presently completing my fifth book of poetry centered around the state of Florida where my grandparents first came when they immigrated to the US from Russia. My parents both lived and died there and my sister lived and died in North Carolina. The manuscript is a mix of personal, historical and environmental poems, all centered on the state of Florida.