What are you working on?
Currently, a collection of poems engaging with my experience growing up in the Pentecostal church, plus witchcraft, werewolves, and being a gender weirdo.
Tuesday, 31 December 2019
Evelína Kolářová : part one
Photo credit: Ondřej Cihlář
How does a poem begin?
Either as a lightning strike of inspiration upon some strong experience (which does not necessarily have to evoke the poem instantly) or during a review of writer’s notes as a result of the review and creation process. It is usually the former in my case, exceptionally the latter. A poem has to start somewhere – that somewhere is different for every poem and poet, be it an experience of trauma, catharsis evoked by other literary pieces, a strong sensual experience upon the discovery of the wonders of nature, or inspiration by another piece of literary work. Behind every poem, there is a need for the articulation of human experience. If it is powerful enough that it is written down, if the moment of somewhere is powerful enough, a poem can begin. It is upon the poet to decide whether they want to work with some sort of a structure behind the poem or whether they want to give it the chance to flow autonomously. It is usually that I do not impose any structure on my poems.
Monday, 30 December 2019
Brian Henderson : part three
What poets changed the way you thought about writing?
OK so ever since I was a kid I’d been listening to my Dad play his classical records on his home-made hi-fi (as it was in those days) with its huge tower speaker thrust into the corner of our various living rooms over the years. I was so enraptured with that music’s ability to reach some deep core in me that I wanted to write music just like it. The only problem of course was I had no idea how to do that, let alone even play an instrument at that time. But I could write, so that’s how it started: poet free. As it turned out I did very little writing of any kind; poetry, though it has affinities with music, is of course not music – it’s so saddled with expectations of referenciality and representation -- but honestly without some of that it just can’t do the sorts of things music can emotionally. And then I read Dylan Thomas in Grade 11. And that blew the doors off.
WCW made an impact on me with the “No ideas but in things” mantra for sure. Here was an opportunity to side-step grand and sweeping statements about the way things are, for the things that actually are and for opening their expressivities. (Maybe an early incipience of what was to became Speculative Realism?)
Duino Elegies launched me into the possibilities of linguistically inventive meditation. Rilke changed my notion of what both thinking and prayer could be. And Wallace Stevens allowed baroque and mannered language to flourish convincingly inside some of that thinking. And then the huge echoic depth and silence of Paul Celan.
And then along came John Berryman and Sylvia Plath and poetry as the possibility of a writing life-path, where one writes oneself into life and possibly even death.
Also The Drunken Boat and “I is another” which totally made me re-think notions of the self, and how performative it might be, the multiplicities of an “I” and the absences, the voids. How can words witness such things? Better how can they be such things?
And then the Canadians excited me in that wonderful explosion in the 60’s and 70’s: Gwendolyn MacEwan particularly with her deeply lyrical myth psychology was a turning point, and Don McKay’s transformative ecopoetic revelations too.
And in the States: Louise Gluck, Mary Oliver, Galway Kinnell, Charles Wright.
And then Hugo Ball, the DADAs and Andre Breton, the Surrealists; Friederike Mayröcker especially, showed how truly electricly freeing language could be.
And the ones I haven’t mentioned: Robert Bly, Robert Hass, CD Wright, Brenda Hillman, Michael Ondaatje, Steve McCaffery, bp nichol, Christopher Dewdney, Anne Carson, Margaret Atwood, Tomas Tranströmer, W.S. Merwin, John Ashbury, Henri Michaux, all of whom have touched my practice in one way or another. It’s an impossible map.
OK so ever since I was a kid I’d been listening to my Dad play his classical records on his home-made hi-fi (as it was in those days) with its huge tower speaker thrust into the corner of our various living rooms over the years. I was so enraptured with that music’s ability to reach some deep core in me that I wanted to write music just like it. The only problem of course was I had no idea how to do that, let alone even play an instrument at that time. But I could write, so that’s how it started: poet free. As it turned out I did very little writing of any kind; poetry, though it has affinities with music, is of course not music – it’s so saddled with expectations of referenciality and representation -- but honestly without some of that it just can’t do the sorts of things music can emotionally. And then I read Dylan Thomas in Grade 11. And that blew the doors off.
WCW made an impact on me with the “No ideas but in things” mantra for sure. Here was an opportunity to side-step grand and sweeping statements about the way things are, for the things that actually are and for opening their expressivities. (Maybe an early incipience of what was to became Speculative Realism?)
Duino Elegies launched me into the possibilities of linguistically inventive meditation. Rilke changed my notion of what both thinking and prayer could be. And Wallace Stevens allowed baroque and mannered language to flourish convincingly inside some of that thinking. And then the huge echoic depth and silence of Paul Celan.
And then along came John Berryman and Sylvia Plath and poetry as the possibility of a writing life-path, where one writes oneself into life and possibly even death.
Also The Drunken Boat and “I is another” which totally made me re-think notions of the self, and how performative it might be, the multiplicities of an “I” and the absences, the voids. How can words witness such things? Better how can they be such things?
And then the Canadians excited me in that wonderful explosion in the 60’s and 70’s: Gwendolyn MacEwan particularly with her deeply lyrical myth psychology was a turning point, and Don McKay’s transformative ecopoetic revelations too.
And in the States: Louise Gluck, Mary Oliver, Galway Kinnell, Charles Wright.
And then Hugo Ball, the DADAs and Andre Breton, the Surrealists; Friederike Mayröcker especially, showed how truly electricly freeing language could be.
And the ones I haven’t mentioned: Robert Bly, Robert Hass, CD Wright, Brenda Hillman, Michael Ondaatje, Steve McCaffery, bp nichol, Christopher Dewdney, Anne Carson, Margaret Atwood, Tomas Tranströmer, W.S. Merwin, John Ashbury, Henri Michaux, all of whom have touched my practice in one way or another. It’s an impossible map.
Sunday, 29 December 2019
Matthew Gwathmey : part three
When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?
Elizabeth Bishop’s Collected Poems and Prose. After reading the whole thing cover to cover to cover to cover, I read just a little snippet here and there, each time I return. Highlights include: the stories/memoirs “In the Village” and “Efforts of Affection: A Memoir of Marianne Moore;” the poems “The Man-Moth,” “The Armadillo,” “Crusoe in England,” and “One Art;” a note she wrote for a talk in Rio: “Writing poetry is an unnatural act.”
Elizabeth Bishop’s Collected Poems and Prose. After reading the whole thing cover to cover to cover to cover, I read just a little snippet here and there, each time I return. Highlights include: the stories/memoirs “In the Village” and “Efforts of Affection: A Memoir of Marianne Moore;” the poems “The Man-Moth,” “The Armadillo,” “Crusoe in England,” and “One Art;” a note she wrote for a talk in Rio: “Writing poetry is an unnatural act.”
Shelly Harder : part two
How do you know when a poem is finished?
When I can no longer recognize it as a thing with which I’ve had much to do, and I’m able to enter it, and the space of it is a place I’d like to be.
When I can no longer recognize it as a thing with which I’ve had much to do, and I’m able to enter it, and the space of it is a place I’d like to be.
Saturday, 28 December 2019
Kyla Jamieson : part four
What other poetry books have you been reading lately?
I’m re-reading Sugarblood by Liz Bowen. It’s a gift of a book, a core text in my sick lit lineage that resonates in terms of both style and content. Bowen is a brilliant poet of the body, mind, and heart. Reading Sugarblood felt like finding secret staircases to all the towers of thought and feeling I had sensed but not yet accessed. (Clearly I am also re-reading Harry Potter.)
From Bowen’s poem “no small things”:
She asks bold questions about care and gender and illness, and I love the ways her poems move.
Other books on my desk: I have to live by Aisha Sasha John, Renaissance Normcore by Adèle Barclay, Women in Public by Elaine Kahn, An Honest Woman by Jónína Kirton. I had Eileen Myles’ newest book, Evolution, out of the library but had to return it.
I often wish I could read more, but I’m also aware of how much pressure people feel to always be reading/consuming/thinking/processing the external. There’s a taint of ableism in such expectations. I’ve had difficulty reading, have been unable to read for periods of time, and wrote a lot of my book when I couldn’t read. And I just want to say, it’s okay not to read. It really is.
I’m re-reading Sugarblood by Liz Bowen. It’s a gift of a book, a core text in my sick lit lineage that resonates in terms of both style and content. Bowen is a brilliant poet of the body, mind, and heart. Reading Sugarblood felt like finding secret staircases to all the towers of thought and feeling I had sensed but not yet accessed. (Clearly I am also re-reading Harry Potter.)
From Bowen’s poem “no small things”:
how can a woman tell
when her sex becomes hideous
is it in the shift
from caring
to needing care
She asks bold questions about care and gender and illness, and I love the ways her poems move.
Other books on my desk: I have to live by Aisha Sasha John, Renaissance Normcore by Adèle Barclay, Women in Public by Elaine Kahn, An Honest Woman by Jónína Kirton. I had Eileen Myles’ newest book, Evolution, out of the library but had to return it.
I often wish I could read more, but I’m also aware of how much pressure people feel to always be reading/consuming/thinking/processing the external. There’s a taint of ableism in such expectations. I’ve had difficulty reading, have been unable to read for periods of time, and wrote a lot of my book when I couldn’t read. And I just want to say, it’s okay not to read. It really is.
Friday, 27 December 2019
Victoria J Iacchetta : part four
What poets changed the way you thought about writing?
During my sophomore year of university I discovered that I’m heavily drawn to the Romantics. I can’t really explain why, but I feel an innate kinship with them. When I read romantic era works, especially poetry, I just get it; I feel it. I, and I think most people who know me well, would consider me to be a modern day romantic. My writing, and other art, certainly reflect this.
During my sophomore year of university I discovered that I’m heavily drawn to the Romantics. I can’t really explain why, but I feel an innate kinship with them. When I read romantic era works, especially poetry, I just get it; I feel it. I, and I think most people who know me well, would consider me to be a modern day romantic. My writing, and other art, certainly reflect this.
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