Elias Baez : part five

How did you first engage with poetry?

The first time I felt a poem immediately change me was when I finished one called “Fever Dream” in 2016. I’d written poems before then, and they’re real poems, but this one affected my body. It’d been impossible to write for months before a breakup, and then a month of grief thereafter. Finally, this weird thing came out of me – I remember, it ends, ‘crystalline and pillowy, / quiet as a coral reef, / Thinking of your eyes / I ate it all’ – and suddenly I was able to get out of bed. Like I’d soft reset my imagination and so could see again. Then I knew that poetry could change things in reality, like magic, and I liked that. 

Michael Lithgow : part one

Michael Lithgow’s poetry and essays have appeared in various journals including the Literary Review of Canada (LRC), The /Temz/ Review, Cultural Trends, Canadian Literature, Existere, Topia, Event, The Antigonish Review, Poemeloeon, The High Window, ARC, Contemporary Verse 2, TNQ and Fiddlehead. His first collection of poetry, Waking in the Tree House (Cormorant Books, 2012), was shortlisted for the A.M. Klein Quebec Writers Federation First Book Award. Work from this collection was included in the 2012 Best of Canadian Poetry (Tightrope Books). Michael’s second collection, Who We Thought We Were As We Fell (Cormorant Books, 2021), will be published in the spring. He currently lives in Edmonton, AB and teaches at Athabasca University.

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

I was asked this question recently in connection with World Poetry Day – poetry shares the experience of being human with language. What I man by this is that poems are intimate events with language. A poem is language in which and through which something happens. I’m tempted to say something is discovered, but I’ve read too much Foucault to believe it entirely. And “fabrication” isn’t quite right either, which can also mire language in routine and cliche. Somewhere between creation and discovery is the urge to make sense and to find it —a sense of self, meaning, understanding— to eek out a defiant sensibility through curiosity. Because the best poems to my mind have no idea where they will end up until they do, and this is the sense of wonder they can share. I said “with language”, but maybe “in language” is a better way to put it — an event in language because that’s how human energy is traced in poetry —mind energy, body energy, spirit energy — through a collection of words tangled together with syntax, grammars and so on, whether or not these regulations are actually followed. Poems capture, and at their very best, make human experience in words. They reveal, create, and discover intimacies of subjectivity in all their complicated uncomfortable contradictions. The very best poems for me share the intimacies and vulnerabilities and outrages of learning to be human. Of course, all art forms are about this very thing! So I guess it’s the medium that sets it apart. Words tangled in rules, both tamed and set free through human desire in the face of all the forces that want to determine what can and cannot be spoken legitimately.

Jaswinder Bolina : part five

How does a poem begin?

It begins with one phrase—a weirdly described image or meaningful declaration or simple arrangement of words—that I’ve never read anywhere else before. It has to startle me, has to feel crisp, clear, and new. That often takes writing dozens of lines that end up getting tossed, though every once in a while, the good line comes first. Then begins the long, stupid struggle to do anything with it.

Kristy Bowen : part five

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

I think the longer I do it and the more I make myself write even when I don't think I can. It gets easier to get a poem or a project rolling.  For the past three years, after a long time of doing it irregularly, I've been writing almost daily, and the results are usually good.  So like running everyday, it gets less painful as time goes on.  You just have to show up at your desk with your running shoes on and you're off. The difficulty may have nothing to do with the writing itself for me, but with connecting those poems with readers.  Or maybe even knowing there are readers out there at all.  You drop a penny down a well and sometimes you hear a little splash but more often, only silence.  So you throw another coin in and hope for the best.  It isn't entirely about publication and acceptances/rejections, but also about the smaller ways you feel someone is actually reading what you're writing. That silence is terrible, and the more excited you are about what you've created, the worse it is. I don't feel this as much with visual art, which I think is an easier sell with a wider audience.  Everyone, even non-creatives, can look at a collage or painting and fall in love with it.  The audience for poetry is so small, mostly poets themselves and there are so many of us writing it. It's sometimes amazing anyone sees it at all. 

Ellen Adair : part one

Ellen Adair is an actor, and her Pushcart-nominated book Curtain Speech, published by Pen & Anvil press, is a collection of poems about the theatre. Her poems have also appeared in Clarion, Cypher, Oddball Magazine, and The Charles River Journal. As an actor, she has had recurring roles on shows such as The Sinner, Homeland, Bull, Billions, The Slap and Veep, along with dozens of other television and film appearances, and stage productions Off-Broadway, regionally, and touring the country. She also writes for The Turf Sports, is a guest analyst on MLB Network, and has a podcast with her husband called Take Me In to The Ballgame. They live in Queens, with their dog, Mabel.

Photo credit: Ambe J. Williams.

What are you working on?

I’m currently bending most of my energy towards a novel, although it is a novel that has poetry in it. The poetry partly helps with some exposition, though we do meet the poet, even if we don’t recognize her as such in the moment, and it serves the plot at the very end.

As for that plot, my one line summary is that it’s about a god who has a mid-life crisis—the tension for an immortal in that phrase fully intended. I haven’t been able to come to more-expanded but still-succinct elevator pitch for it, but essentially, my protagonist is frustrated with the current structure for communication between gods and mortals. The arrangement was restructured thousands of years ago, but he doesn’t think it’s necessarily led to the greater enlightenment that was intended. So: he thinks about what he might be able to do. But under the structure of the gods’ universe, he doesn’t have as many options as one might expect, given that is he is, well, a god.

I’m also working on a couple of different TV series, but there’s no passing them off as anything but prose.

Irina Moga : part one

Irina Moga is a Romanian-born Canadian poet, author of five poetry books, and a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC).

Sea Glass Circe, her fourth book, was selected for an official launch as part of the 2020 Toronto LitUp!, Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA).

A collection of poems written in French, Variations sans palais, was published with Éditions L’Harmattan (France) in 2020. 

Irina’s work has appeared in literary magazines in Canada and the US, such as: Canadian Literature, carte-blanche, Cloud Lake Literary, and Poetry Quarterly.

http://www.irinamoga.com

Why is poetry important? 

Poetry has an underestimated benefit:  it has a cathartic effect on our psyche. Its healing effect relies on surfacing emotions in an interplay of meditation and the refactoring of words and meaning. 

We can gain additional insights about ourselves through the reinterpretation of reality mediated by a poem. 

By operating in a realm that’s entirely at the mercy of words, we navigate to greater clarity in how we express ourselves and understand others. 

Michelle Moloney King : part two

How did you first engage with poetry?

Poetry was just a part of growing up in Ireland. As a Roman Catholic, Irish farmer's daughter in rural Ireland, I could feel this generational shame at my Irishness. 

We were told in school that before the 1920s our schools used to be hedge schools and teachers used to be considered rebels and that our language and identity was stripped from us and we had nothing but our minds and words to set us free. 

We were told that all the 800 years of indentured servitude, famine of genocidal proportions, all the fighting, bloodshed, risings, civil war and bombs ended when Ireland used words….

John A Costello’s November 24th, 1948 Dáil speech on the Republic of Ireland Bill, available online from the Oireachtas archives. The Act came into force on Easter Monday. And in it Costello simply and formally declared Ireland a Republic and that we had left the British Commonwealth.

And that was it….the response was...yeah, ok.

In school we were told that the UK thought nothing of us, our culture, our language. And that, in their eyes, we were the punchline of Paddy Irishman jokes which were created as a tactic to discredit the Irish. 

We were told the only way to gain back our potential was to grab an education, get a degree and use our talent to be a refutation. John A. Costello's speech bypassed bloodshed and finger pointing and said, thanks we are a Republic now and so long. Sling your hook.

I mean, wow….oh and I'm the decadent of a famous Irish Revolutionary and writer so...

Also, bedtime reading was poetry in place of stories or celebrating Irish poets in school; it has always been a way for the Irish to gain recognition and love on an international stage. I mean, the Irish are loved the world over and known for our wit with words.

My great-great-great grand uncle was Thomas Francis Meagher, the founder of the Irish flag, a writer and revolutionary - in one of his speeches he highlights Ireland's artistic talent and almost tries to convince the foreign listener that we should be considered as an asset and worthy of more due to this very artistic talent. 

And finally, I wrote in my head for years but only started writing about 10 years ago. I wrote in every genre but always knew I'd arrive at my voice from an outsider perspective. 

And that moment arrived during Ireland's first lockdown, I needed a creative outlet from my doomsday thinking and so wrote a poem. That started a journey into poetry, courses, workshops from the comfort of my home.