M. Wright : part one

M. Wright is an educator and poet living with his wife, Dylan, in Minnesota. He is the 2016 winner of the Atlantis Award in poetry and the author of the chapbooks a boy named jane (Bottlecap Press) and Dear Dementia (Ghost City Press) which was featured in the 25th annual Poets House Showcase. His poems have recently appeared in The Penn Review, Saint Paul Almanac, Glass Poetry, UCity Review, Wildness, and Jet Fuel Review. More: wrightm.com

Photo credit: May Waver maywaver.com

What are you working on?

I’m currently editing and writing the final poems of my first poetry collection!
 

Canisia Lubrin : part one

Writer, editor, educator, activist and critic, Canisia Lubrin has had work published and anthologized widely, including in Brick, Vallum, The Puritan, Arc, Toronto Star, Best Canadian Poetry in English 2018 and The Unpublished City, nominated for the 2018 Toronto Book Award. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph. Her multiple-award-nominated debut collection is Voodoo Hypothesis (Wolsak & Wynn/Buckrider Books, 2017). She lives in Whitby, Ontario.

Photo credit: Anna Keenan

What are you working on?

Long and short fiction, nonfiction, my next poetry collection.

Shaindel Beers : part three

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

I think I’m much more open-minded than I used to be. Working as a Poetry Editor for fifteen years, I’ve seen poems that are brilliant that I can’t explain or don’t understand, but there’s something there that gets you. When you’re a young, beginning poet, it’s easy to buy in to your own ego and not recognize the brilliance in the other or to believe a few professors and discount whatever they don’t like. Poetry is a big umbrella. We can all fit under it.

Jessica Morey-Collins : part twelve

Why is poetry important? Accessing others’ perspectives is fundamental to being a helpful member of any collective. Poetry allows a window into others’ experiences, associations, and imaginations. For me, it excellent company.

Raina K. Puels : part one

Raina K. Puels is a Boston-based writer, educator, and editor. She lives in a sunny apartment with her cat Layla and her many succulent babies. You can read her work in PANK, The American Literary Review, Essay Daily, Berfrois, Queen Mob's, Maudlin House, Occulum, bad pony, and many other places. Check out her website for links to all her publications: rainakpuels.com. Follow her on Twitter to see where her trail of glitter leads next: @rainakpuels.

How does a poem begin?

A poem begins with a breath. A wingbeat. A stone tossed into a murky puddle. Then begins the sinking, the flying, the breathing. But also the stillness. A sleeping swan, face tucked into her plume. The transfixed child first seeing two women kiss. Peanut butter threatening to spill off the spoon, but staying firm in her convictions. A poem begins as soon as I put my feet on the cold floor in the morning. Or as soon as sun beams slip through the blinds and rouse the cat who then rouses me, fish breath my favored alarm clock. Or does a poem begin on the pillow plush with dreams? You tell me.  

Michael Dennis : part four

How does a poem begin?

For me a poem can come from anywhere.  It sounds so obvious and trite, but the truth is I’ve carried a notebook with me since I was a teenager.  Anything that catches my eye goes into the notebook, at least it does when I’m diligent.  But I’ll write a poem on any piece of paper that happens to be near if an idea hits.  I often don’t know where a poem is going to start but I am always working towards the ending.  My poems begins with me having an end I want to get to.

Peter Norman : part one

Born in Vancouver, Peter Norman has since lived in Victoria, Ottawa, Calgary, rural PEI, Halifax, Toronto, Windsor (Ontario), Montreal, and Edmonton. He has published a novel and three poetry collections. A fourth, Some of Us and Most of You Are Dead, is forthcoming in fall 2018 from Buckrider Books. For more info, visit peternorman.ca.

Photo Credit: Melanie Little

How do you know when a poem is finished?

No idea! I don’t trust any of my assessments of a poem (is it worth keeping? is it worth revising? is it actually — gasp! — done?) until at least a good several weeks have gone by. After that, the self-congratulatory flush of creation will have faded, and I can take a colder, harder look at the thing. Even then, though, my judgment is always suspect.

I’m reminded of something that happened during the editing of my last book. It included a sonnet about a funeral home. The poem was ten years old and had been published in a journal; I figured it was more or less okay as it was. However, my editor, David Seymour, felt that the closing couplet needed work. Looking at the piece again, I agreed with him, but my proposed solution (as it often is) was that we simply delete the whole damn poem. David pressed; he believed the piece had something to offer, and a stronger ending could salvage it.

I reassessed. Maybe the problem was that the couplet was straining prematurely to wrap things up. So I shoved the couplet aside, got rid of the sonnet scheme altogether, and just started adding quatrains. I ended up with seven new stanzas and a forty-line poem that worked a lot better. All along, the issue hadn’t been the last two lines; the issue was an incomplete poem. For a whole decade I’d thought it was finished, when in fact it was barely begun.

I’m not sure there’s a point to that story, except to reiterate that I never really know when I’m done. And good editors are awesome.