Nancy Jo Cullen : part five

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I don’t think there’s a specific answer to that. Sometimes I know a poem finished and I’m right. Sometimes I think a poem is finished and then I come back to it and it still wants some more work. Sometimes I stop even though the poem’s not finished because I don’t know where to go next. In that case it may be years before I come back to that poem.

Nancy Jo Cullen : part four

How did you first engage with poetry?

I first engaged with poetry because I had a broken heart and I suppose they functioned as a diary of sorts, those poems. But then I realized I wanted to actually write something that was at least half way decent and I started reading poetry and thinking about poetry.

Nancy Jo Cullen : 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?

When I am ready to share a poem the first person who reads the poem is my partner. She has an excellent eye and is a great help. I’ve recently joined a small group of poets here in Kingston and we read each other’s work and I’m so not a joiner but it is the best thing ever. I’m so grateful they invited me to join them and I’m patting myself on the back for having the wisdom to say yes.

Nancy Jo Cullen : part two

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

I absolutely love Billy Rae Belcourt’s This Wound is a World. Danez Smith’s Do Not Call us Dead, Marie Howe’s Magdalene. Three books I’ve read this year that I’ve really loved.

Nancy Jo Cullen : part one

Nancy Jo Cullen is a Calgary transplant now living in Kingston, ON. She’s the 4th recipient of the Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT Emerging Writer. Her fiction and poems have appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2018, The Journey Prize, The Puritan, Grain, filling Station, Plenitude, Prairie Fire, This Magazine, Room and Arc Poetry Magazine. She has published 3 collections of poetry with Calgary’s Frontenac House Press. Her short story collection, Canary, was published in 2013 by Biblioasis. Her novel, The Western Alienation Merit Badge is forthcoming in 2019 with Wolsak and Wynn. She is mid-way through her fourth collection of poetry titled Nothing Will Save Your Life.

How does a poem begin?

A poem for me usually begins for me as a phrase image that I want to explore.  Sometimes I have a plan, I know what I want to get to in the poem, other times I riff on the image and one idea leads to the next until the poem is finished.