When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?
I always come back to Jorge Luis Borges. There is something about his work that is so layered and magical. Ficciones is a huge inspiration to my work and I will come back to those stories my whole life. The labyrinths of meaning and mystery that he creates leave you feeling whole and empty at the same time. His work does what literature should do, it reminds you of the magic of everyday life.
What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?
Poetry is deconstructivist and has a way of tearing down language and building it back together, often in a way that is healing or transformative. It’s power is to take narrative into multidimensional time, more like how we experience time than through a regular narrative. Poetry is a way to show a whole universe. I also love it because poetry is accessible. Poetry is an artform that can be with you anywhere, anytime, even if you don’t have a pen. Most people can jot down a few poignant lines on a napkin or swirl some words around their minds. For me, as someone who is chronically ill, a lot of my poems come from when I am in a space between waking and dreaming, when my body needs to power down for several hours, but my mind is still processing, dreaming, writing. I write a few words when I come out of my dream space, and slowly build a poem over time. I am able to create even though it looks like i’m dead asleep. I love that you don’t need instruments, tools or money to write poetry. Poetry is with you.
How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers group that you work ideas and poems with?
I am a lonely poet. I live in a box of cut up words. Sometimes I share bits of poems with friends. I never workshop them. I am my own ruthless editor. My poems tend to sit in forgotten word docs for several years, then I tear them apart and make them into new poems. then i abandon them again in some god-forsaken file. Eventually I am satisfied and I submit them somewhere for a third fermentation period. Over time I work my poems into a small thematic collection and make a new file. It’s a very slow process. My poetry process is a file within a file within a file.
How did you first engage with poetry?
My first encounters with poems was writing song lyrics in my diary when i was a kid, then writing my own angsty songs and poems. Some early lyrics I remember writing down were Pink Floyd and Heart. I read a lot of novels and wrote stories as a kid, but I didn’t really find poetry until i was in my first year of college and found a stack of literary magazines at the writing centre. It really shook me to my core, I was changed forever. Until then I thought poetry was all roses and violets, and I realized suddenly it was a really powerful way of telling stories and reshaping the world. I swiftly joined a literary magazine as an editor and changed my major to literature. Poetry became a protective power i had with me through the hardest times in my life, that was with me everywhere i went, create meaning out of my existence as a sick person and reclaim language that was being used against me. It helped me connect with voice, not only mine, but the voice that resonates from all of us. The voice of our spirits.
What are you working on?
I’m working on editing my first book New Infinity, out this spring with Metatron Press! It’s a hybrid novella/collection that follows a woman as she lives and dreams with autoimmune disease and finds herself healing through the process of bibliomancy. In the process of editing i’ve suddenly began writing a acu-if novella. I’m also writing personalized dream divinations, a collection of tiny spells, and an illustrated zine about my experiences in radioactive treatment.
