Priscilla Green : part five

Why is poetry important?

Poetry is important for all the reasons all art is important. It’s creativity and it’s freedom; it colours the world and makes our meaningless existence worthwhile.

Priscilla Green : part four

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

I return to Keats and Wordsworth and Blake. I always go back to the Romantic poets.

Priscilla Green : part three

How does a poem begin? 

For me, it always begins with a feeling. I cannot write a poem about anything but that which makes me feel – deeply and irrepressibly. 

Priscilla Green : part two

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

The vulnerability it entails. A lot of myself goes into my prose, but it’s all mixed in with the other stuff – the people in my life, society, etc. A poem, however, is all me, in the most genuine and undisguised form I can ever exist.

Priscilla Green : part one

Priscilla Green is a Canadian writer and poet. Her work has appeared in a number of literary journals, including, most recently, Spadina Literary Review and Vaughan Street Doubles. She lives in Toronto.

How did you first engage with poetry?

I’m not sure I know. As a child, I used to collect poems – whenever I chanced upon one I liked, I would copy it down in a little notebook I kept. At about the age of thirteen, I discovered the Romantic poetry and fell in love with it. I learned how to play the guitar too, around the same time; it was in an attempt to write a song that I wrote my first poem.