Charlotte Newbury : part three

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?

Clarity and freedom of image. There’s also something to be said for that specific feeling you get after reading some poems that doesn’t really have a name - it’s a mix between comfort, recognition, and the sensation of being punched in the gut. Poetry doesn’t need you to pull your punches in the same way other forms do. A novel-length work that did to its readers on every page what Ada Limón’s Bright Dead Things does, for example, would probably have to come with a health warning.

Noah Falck : part three

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

Lately, I’ve been reading more novels and collections of essays, which is rare for me. However, I’ve been slowly dipping into and finding joy in Rick Barot’s During the Pandemic, Mary Ruefle’s Dunce, Matt McBride’s City of Incandescent Light, and Adam Clay’s To Make Room for the Sea. I’ve been returning to W.S. Merwin’s The Lice, Larry Levis’s The Dollmaker’s Ghost, Lucille Clifton’s Collected, & Laura Kasischke’s Space, In Chains. 

Jai Hamid Bashir : part two

Why is poetry important?

Poetry reminds us that we are cellular beings composed mostly of emptiness, and at our best, the potential of another elsewhere that resides inside of us. I recently found in The Paris Review the Italian poet, Antonella Anedda said, “I write to intensify reality and at the same time to undermine it.” That is very similar to my negotiations of wanting to write poetry and devote myself to the craft. However, on a level of being a reader, poetry, especially with the way pronouns, and other mechanics of the medium, such as enjambment, allow us a type of embodiment and intimacy. 

Carrie Olivia Adams : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I believe, perhaps rightly or perhaps wrongly, that one of my best strengths as a writer comes from being a close editor of others’ poems through my role at Black Ocean. And so, when I look at my own work, I am able to do so about as dispassionately as possible. There are so many times when I’ve gone back to a poem and cut lines or stanzas that were very emotionally close to me—they may have resonated with a specific moment or a particular sensation when they were written—but in the end, they did not live up to the strength of the poem and could not stay. I don’t want to be overly attached to anything in a poem, so attached it prevents me from seeing clearly whether it belongs there or has earned the right to stay. So, for me, there is usually a moment when I re-read a poem in the revision process and it feels like it was written by someone other than me, yet, someone who has intuited my entire experience. When the poem feels like another me speaking to me with the greatest empathy, then I know, it is finished.

Michael Edwards : part two

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

Seamus Heaney has always been a strong influence on my writing, in the way the lens of poetry can focus on many subjects, like family, upbringing, myth — His work reminds me that poetry is expansive. More recently Kayla Czaga, my extraordinarily talented mentor at SFU’s The Writer’s Studio, has heavily informed the way I think about writing, specifically poetry. She's helped me to explore other chambers in the poetic dwelling and supported a sort of redevelopment of my personal writing practice. Kayla also pointed me toward reading poets like Raoul Fernandes, Curtis LeBlanc and Rob Taylor, which has felt like a school of poets with which my own work is compatible. I’m constantly finding myself nodding in a “yes, yes, yes” to their aesthetic.

Michael Igoe : part three

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I am really never “all done” with a poem. I review it in a different stage and revise it. I can always clean up anything I write at a later point in time. Rephrasing and structure are very important! 4. A handful of poets have shaped my worldview and my own work. Rimbaud, Whitman, Eliot, Adrienne Rich and Anne Sexton ( to name a few).

Donatella du Plessis : part one

Donatella du Plessis is a micropoet from Durban, South Africa. Her poetry has appeared in Feminine Collective, Idle Ink, Dust Poetry Magazine and The Write Launch. 

How does a poem begin?

Poems begin when I see something that disturbs me. Often, it’s something really small, like a dead bird, a vase of flowers, or a cupboard with breathing holes cut into it, but I will spend a lot of time agonising about why that particular object appears that way in that particular moment.