Matthew M. C. Smith : part one

Matthew M. C. Smith is a writer from Swansea, Wales. He writes about landscape, the passage of time, spirit of place, memory and cosmos. Matthew’s work can be seen in Poetry Wales, Barren Magazine, Finished Creatures, The Storms, Anti-Heroin Chic, Seventh Quarry Press, Fevers of the Mind, Icefloe Press and The Lonely Crowd. He is also the editor of Black Bough Poetry and poetry fest on Twitter @TopTweetTuesday.

Matthew runs, hikes, attempts to locate caves and burial mounds, collects vintage Star Wars and messes about with his kids. He has published Origin: 21 Poems is close to finishing The Keeper of Aeons, with Broken Spine Arts.

What are you working on?

I’m working on my second collection of poetry, after ‘Origin: 21 Poems’ in 2018. It’s heading for five years since I self-published my first work and I have a publishing house for my second, Broken Spine Arts. The book is called ‘The Keeper of Aeons’ and it deals with deep time and points in history; it delves into landscape and the spirit of place, culminating in journeys outwards to the cosmos. We travel from a shamanistic experience in Ice Age Gower to floating in the Space Station and gazing back at Earth. It might be out this autumn. 

I’m also editing forthcoming anthologies with my poetry press, Black Bough poetry. There are several volumes coming out, guest-edited by Briony Collins and Jen Feroze, respectively, and I oversee the projects, as well as the Dai Fry Award for Mystical Poetry anthology, which is also in the pipeline…and a Christmas edition! I also run TopTweetTuesday, a weekly poetry fest on Twitter where poets from across the world share short, imagist poems, conducted by a guest host. I have a lot of plans for future project and have to remember to pace them out as it’s a hobby.

Andrea McKenzie Raine : part three

How does your work first enter the world?

I am fortunate to have a local writing community – a weekly poetry reading series called Planet Earth Poetry, which involves an open mike segment and a sponsored featured reader. This is a group of active, high-calibre writers who are immensely supportive and welcoming. The group also cultivates a myriad of learning workshops, writing retreats, and networking opportunities.

Susie Meserve : part two

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

Yes. Many times. I thought for a long time that the “I” in a poem should be taken out, obscured, muddied, that the worst kind of poem was a deeply personal poem. My first book (Little Prayers, Blue Light Press, 2018) is filled with fantastical leaps and it takes a kind of sideways look at my personal experience. In 2017, when I started work on the manuscript I’m sending out now, I surprised myself by writing intensely raw and revealing poems about my experience with motherhood and my struggles with infertility, including the life-threatening miscarriage I suffered in 2013. I had to shut off a voice telling me that this kind of writing was bad. It’s been very freeing to write about this stuff, though the challenge, always, is to find some way of moving beyond the myopically personal into more universal territory, and I’m always looking for models. Franz Wright did this beautifully in his writing about addiction, God, and mental illness.

Jenna Jarvis : part two

How did you first engage with poetry?

My extrinsic motivation is a decade-old vestige of belonging to In/Words’ writers circle and reading series – and, eventually, its editorial board – throughout my undergraduate degree at Carleton University. I meant to get involved in projects as an undergrad because ‘being involved’ is the mark of a dedicated and talented student in any discipline. The co-curricular record told me so. Secondary school guidance counsellors told me so. My writing work is adolescence protracted. My ‘real world’ is a protracted version of university. Maybe ‘town and gown’ is an irrelevant distinction. Maybe ‘literary indistinction’ is the default setting. The campus pub turned into a 7-Eleven in Taiwan. The 7-Eleven turned into a summertime backyard barbecue outside of Ottawa’s 9-to-5.

Katerina Canyon : part five

How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers group that you work on ideas and poems with? 

My work enters the world in various ways. Recently, I was on an airplane, and I looked down and saw a golf course and on that course was a group of golf carts chasing one another. It reminded me of geese, so I wrote a poem about elitism.  I also have a poetry group. We're called The Canyon Poets. We meet every Thursday night. I provide a theme and the next week we bring a poem to share. Inspiration strikes me in many ways at several places. I am most inspired in the morning before the rest of the house wakes. It is pretty much the only time my mind is allowed to work, rest, and wander.

Heather Haley : part five

How does your work first enter the world?

Via the ear. I often hear words and phrases that tickle my imagination. I have used prompts and sometimes will compile a list of random words, then free associate.

Jared Povanda : part five

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

100%! By reading other poets, I find my own poetry rushing to catch up to the brilliance around me. I never considered myself a poet. I started with fiction, then nonfiction, and I didn’t begin seriously writing poetry until last year. Slowly, I’ve begun to convince myself that I’m not a complete hack, and that poetry isn’t some incomprehensible world of strange rules and line breaks. I can tell a story in poetry, too, and once I made that realization, I stopped letting my fear of failure get in the way of my writing. I oscillate heavily between confidence and self-doubt, though, so ask me this in another year, and I might say that poetry is as dense and thorny as it was before I started writing it.