Orchid Tierney : part two

2. How does a poem begin?

My focus is usually seeded by an article or even a nugget of an idea that then kickstarts a broader inquiry through research. My Ozone project, for example, really began with some undirected collages, and it wasn’t until I read an article on the recent and persistent increase of ozone depletion chemicals in the atmosphere that I began to tighten my focus into its current trajectory. In other words, much of my work begins first with frivolous play, only to tighten through subsequent research once an idea takes root. 

JC Bouchard : part two

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

Just getting the first line or stanza down. Almost everything after that is easy and just comes out. Then you get to the end and want the end to be beautiful, so you get stuck near the last stanza or line. Something has to be resolved or spoken of or given meaning.

Giving meaning to your ideas is difficult. Really you’re always trying to make your poem vindicate yourself and your ideas and your emotions. I think my poems are emotional. They’re hollow if I feel nothing in the act of writing them. The first part is the idea and the last is the emotional breakthrough where you feel like you’ve lived through something in your chair in front of your computer or notebook. Maybe that’s foolish.

Something that’s become difficult as I get older is this unconscious compulsion to compare myself to other writers. Like, that good writer is doing such and such and they get published, so maybe I should try that too in my own way. That’s nonsense though. When I get that thought I remind myself it is nonsense and it doesn’t matter at all what anyone else is doing, even if it’s your favourite writers. Sometimes it can be difficult to be yourself when you lose yourself in others.

Jessica Morey-Collins : part two

How did you first engage with poetry? I have a mood disorder, so a lot of my adolescent work was trying to make sense of overwhelming emotional experiences that I couldn’t effectively verbalize yet.

Kelley Jo Burke : part three

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

Because I have worked with some of the best poets in Canada, as a literary producer for the CBC, I have come to see the difference between the kind of poetry I write which is written to be heard and the kind of poetry that explores and experiments with the way words exist on the page, which are written to be read. I’m thinking about the kind of in-depth experimentation with syntax and semantics that you find in the work of real stunner poets like Sylvia Legris. That is quite simply outside of my skill set. I write speech. I write to be experienced sonically, and because in my mind my work exists solely in the air, I write to communicate, and whatever wit or complexity that I play with has to be accessible in the moment of hearing, and not require study on the page. I have no expectation of being re-read. What I make has to work in the time is has between utterance and reception.

Jaime Forsythe : part two

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

There are many exciting books out that I want to read right now, and it’s going to take me awhile to catch up. Here’s what’s on or near my nightstand currently, poetry-wise:

No Meeting Without Body, Annick MacAskill
This Wound is a World, Billy-Ray Belcourt
This Kind of Thinking Does No Good, Alison Smith
Sun in Days, Meghan O’Rourke
Why Are You So Sad?, David W. McFadden
Whereas, Layli Long Soldier
Collected Poems, Emily Dickinson

Allie Marini : part three

3. How do you know when a poem is finished?

I don’t think they ever really are, because sometimes I’ll think they’re done – sometimes they’re even published – & I’ll come back to them later & find little things to tweak. For me, they can be mostly done, but still evolving depending on whether or not I’m looking at them. Usually when I finish a good first draft or first edited draft, I’ll feel relief, & that’s when I know it’s done for now.

Susan Gillis : part four

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

In a sense, yes, in that going back to certain poems and voices is a consistently reliable form of renewal. The specific poems and poets I go back change, though I always find things to confound me in Miłosz and things to waken my sense of mystery in Louise Glück. I went over and over the sonnets of Henry Howard Earl of Surrey for my second book, Volta, trying to imagine what they might be talking about if they were transposed to my time and place. This kind of renewal is also a habit; there’s usually some poet I sit down with over morning coffee, notebook at hand for moments of elation and argument. And there’s always something that isn’t poetry—essays or photographs or paintings or music or a walk or etc—but if I accidentally look at the news or social media, then the opposite of renewal happens: pressure sets in and my writing day is in jeopardy.