Monday 4 March 2019

Metta Sáma : part four

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

I’m not sure that any poets have changed the way that I think of writing. I’ve never thought, for example, that there are subjects that don’t belong inside of a poem, nor have I ever thought a poem cannot have movement, cannot have shape, cannot have a sonic landscape that is larger than the flat page. Nor have I ever thought that a poem needs to have a consistent “narrator” or single voice or that certain subjects cannot be broached in certain formal structures. There have been poets who have worked with structures, using basic computer skills, for example, to help their poems do the work their poems intend to do, such as Douglas Kearney and a former student, Morgan Christie. And poets such as Maria Damon who have embedded poems into textiles and Anne Carson who has reimagined what a book of poems can do. They have each shown me that the worlds I imagine are possible, as long as I have the skills to pull off the work.

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