Hilary Sideris : part three

How has your consideration of poetry changed since you began? 

In my twenties I was thrilled to discover Bill Knott, who sometimes wrote in rhyme and meter, always in surprising ways. He also used some confessional elements, lamenting, often comically, his personal plight, as well as grim facts of history. His poems are both hilarious and disturbing. I didn’t know poets could do that. In his poem about Ezra Pound, “Penny Wise,” he wrote:

well alright
I grant you
he was a fascist
ahem antisemitism the
er war and wall
I’m not defending them
but at least
you’ve got to admit
at least he
made the quatrains run on time

Knott spoke in a comedic voice about history’s traumas. He was idiosyncratic, both formal and informal, an oddball (I speak of the poems, having never met the man.) Later, I discovered D. Nurkse, Charles Simic, and the comedic female voices of Terri Ford, Jennifer Knox, and Sarah Sarai.

Terese Mason Pierre : part three

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

The most difficult part about writing poetry, for me, is when I’m unable to linguistically express an idea in my head that’s incoherently shaped. I’ll try many ways—writing short lines, writing stream-of-consciousness style—but not everything works. Since I like to work in order, if I’m stuck at this point, the poem doesn’t continue, the first draft doesn’t end, and I’m forced to stop and do something else. Sometimes, I might not finish the poem, or have to rewrite it at a later date. It’s very frustrating.

Emily Coppella : part three

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

My poetry process is a lot different from my prose process. A lot of my fictional prose is edited in whichever fiction workshop I’m taking, or through a group of close writer friends that I have. We message each other to ask for advice and occasionally meet up to chat about our work among other things. On the other hand, I don’t seem to share my poetry as often. It’s not so much an issue of insecurity as an issue of intimacy. I’m not afraid to share my work, it’s just that many of my poems seem so intimate that I like to be with them by myself for a while, maybe for too long.

Tyler Pufpaff : part one

Tyler Pufpaff: Poetry Editor at Variant Literature. English & Business student at UNCG. Lover of black coffee and the Godfather movies. Previous publications have appeared or are forthcoming in Torrid Literature Journal, Coraddi, and Poetry Diversified 2019: An Anthology of Human Experience.

How did you first engage with poetry?

I was taking a creative writing class in high school. Naturally we broached the subject of poetry – most of us dreading the assignments to come. My poems scored poorly but my friend, well, she was gifted. The competitive side of me came out, playfully, and I kept writing desiring to score better than her. I never did. A year later, far removed from home in my grandparent’s guest bedroom, I would write. I would stay up all night drinking whatever bottles my coworkers would buy for me (underaged) and I would just feel. Had I not had the introduction a year prior, I can’t even imagine what kind of misery I’d still be in. This is when it started. I haven’t stopped since.

D.A. Lockhart : part four

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

I’ve been blessed to have met and worked with a good number of highly accomplished poets from both my graduate school days and my professional life. Campbell McGrath provided some of the absolute best guidance with some of my early poetic work. He pointed me through the notion of the lyric consciousness of a poem and how the moment within the poem must live and breathe. Maura Stanton and Catherine Bowman had massive influence over me as a young poet. Poets that I’ve met only through their work have as been absolutely crucial to sense of poetry include Gerald Vizenor, Armand Garnet Ruffo, Natalie Diaz, and Leslie Marmon Silko.

Michael Maul : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished?

For me, poems finish somewhere in the middle ground somewhere between my own preferences and the poem’s self-interests. We both get a vote. If I force things or become a bully, I can wreck a poem. But you can’t rely on the poem’s voice (inspiration?) to properly complete itself. I believe it is the job of poems to contribute Truth to its writer. And it is the poet’s job to keep truth healthy while fabricating a fitting vehicle for it to travel in.

Of course without close attention, these interests can inadvertently work at cross-purposes with each other. Which is painful.

Diana Fitzgerald Bryden : part one

Diana Fitzgerald Bryden is the author of two collections of poetry, Learning Russian (Mansfield Press) and Clinic Day (Brick Books). Her novel, No Place Strange was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel award and longlisted for the Impac/Dublin. She has published numerous poems, essays and short stories in journals and anthologies in Canada and the U.S., including, most recently, The Malahat Review and Praire Fire.  A collection of short stories, Sorry Darling is close to completion. Diana lives in Toronto, where she arrived as a teenager from London, England.

What are you working on?

A collection of short stories, with the working title Sorry Darling.