Carlie Blume : part three

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

I sometimes struggle with figuring out how to elevate a poem and make it soar. I know when a poem isn’t working, but I don’t always know how to get it to that next level. I often drive myself insane with that question. That’s usually when I try to pull back and absorb myself with the work of other poets and make myself familiar with the poems that are working well.

sophie anne edwards : part one

sophie anne edwards walks and creates site-specific and responsive poetry (along with installation-based textile and visual art) on Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island). Her work has been published in a number of print and online publications. Her poems also appear in the bush for a mostly biotic readership. She was shortlisted for Arc Poetry Magazine’s 2019 poem of the year contest.
sophineanneedwards.blogspot.com Instagram: sophie anne edwards Twitter: sophieanneedwa1

What are you working on?

Mostly, I am working on a collection of poetry titled Interview with a River. I am writing about the complexity of a local river ecosystem - the biotic and the abiotic, the social, cultural, colonial, environmental histories along with my own personal emotional, intellectual and embodied relationship to the river. Alongside the responsive poetry, I am also writing with the river - finding ways that the river might be a collaborator in the writing and editing. This involves spending a lot of time on the river; I  never quite know what invitations I might set up as these emerge from cues I interpret through my walks. I have also just finished edits on chapters included in two book projects (one on geopoetics, the other on 19th century women and travel), and recently submitted two co-authored articles on creative field research with children in the early years. I also write a lot of lists (the poetry of daily life).

Shannon Mastromonico : part four

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

I started reading Sylvia Plath's work when I was in my late teens and early twenties. Her work and her life had a huge impact on my own work, how I see poetry in general.

James Roome : part one

James Roome received an MA in Poetry from MMU and is based in Manchester, UK. His work has appeared in Magma, Tears in the Fence, Ink, Sweat and Tears and the Wordlife anthology. His first chapbook, Bull, is out now from The Red Ceilings Press.

Why is poetry important?

Poetry is ridiculous. It’s an excuse to say ridiculous things and get away with it. I wrote a poem the other day about a fake study that claimed 12% of people believe that when the full moon shines on the human body, it is possible to see their internal organs. Ridiculous, right? Perhaps it’s possible to get away with it because so few people care about poetry, and those that do have a preference for the odd and unusual. The stranger, the better. Even ‘mainstream’ poetry is a niche interest. The world continues all around us. And yet, every now and again one breaks through into the popular consciousness and the ridiculousness and variety of the world is highlighted and everyone looks at it and thinks, huh!

In another, more serious way, I also think of poetry along the same lines as Wallace Stevens: as a replacement for religious spirituality. I like what Susan B. Weston said about ‘Sunday Morning’: ‘the "revelation of a secular religion."' We say these ridiculous things, but sometimes they add up to more than the sum of their parts. Sometimes there’s a stone buried in poems and when you wash it in the sea it turns red.

Finally, poetry also makes us question language. Does a word have to mean exactly what you’ve been taught it means? A prime issue with understanding and acceptance of poetry as an art form is that everyone feels a sense of ownership over the language they speak. That language, therefore, has to mean something and if you don't understand what it means then it must be elitist/you're not clever enough to get the poem. This is a misconception that I try to correct on a daily basis as part of my work as an English teacher. Poetry is about making you feel (or not feel) things, without needing to explain why. That’s valuable. It can be beautiful and surprising and harsh and weird, and it’s at its best when it resists logic.

Steve Venright : part three

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

I haven’t been reading much poetry of late, though a couple of fairly recent favourites would be Stuart Ross’s poetic novel Pockets (ECW), and the selected writings of Paul Dutton (Sonosyntactics) and Alice Burdick (Deportment), both from WLU Press. I have, however, been reading lots of books about poetry and poets. I’ve now read almost everything by Richard Holmes, including his massive and exceptional bios of Shelley and Coleridge, and his trilogy of “reflections of a Romantic biographer” which include, as in the most recent instalment This Long Pursuit, revelatory mini-bios of poets who are often better known their other vocations, such as Margaret Cavendish and Zélide (Isabelle de Charriere). Another superb poet-bio I read recently is the one on Keats by Robert Gittings. Oh, and I did just read most of John Ashbery’s Hotel Lautréamont—picked it up in Cambridge at Grolier Books which, like the poet, was born in 1927. Not bad, that guy.

Jessica Mehta : part five

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

Li-Young Lee, particularly his poem “Braiding.” It’s a reminder to love the current moment: “There will come a day / one of us will have to imagine this.”

Mary J. Oliver : part one

Mary J. Oliver’s background is in the visual arts, teaching and exhibiting in Scotland and England. She switched to writing fulltime ten years ago. Quite a few individual poems accepted by magazines and journals and anthologies, won a few prizes in competitions, so was encouraged to commit to a major project, which has been accepted for publication, 2019, Seren Books, UK. Her debut is a coalescing of prose, poetry, found documents and photographs, and demonstrates her deep awareness of the visual and tangible qualities involved with holding and reading a book.  She has always lived on the west coast of UK, either in Scotland or Cornwall. 

Photo credit: Steve Tanner, Fotgraphics, Cornwall

What are you working on?

I'm finishing a ten year project relating to a hobo's experience in Canada during the Great Depression of the 1930s (my father). It's my cross-genre debut - poetry as memoir, JIM NEAT - The Case of a Young Man Down on His Luck, being published by Seren (UK) in September 2019.