Kim Fahner : coda

How important is music to your poetry?

My life is full of music, books, and art. I don’t have a television in my home, so I listen to music from morning until night, and I love singing. I’m drawn to singer songwriters, and I listen to people like Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Sarah Harmer, Glen Hansard, Sheila Carabine, Kathleen Edwards, Stan Rogers, Tim Baker, Amelia Curran, and Ron Hynes. The bardic tradition includes music and ballads, so it makes sense to me that I’m so drawn to those singers who are also poets. I also love listening to traditional Irish music, especially when I’m writing and reading. The Chieftains and Cherish the Ladies are always on a number of my playlists. Give me a song like “The Mary Ellen Carter” or “Cold Missouri Waters” and I’m happy as a clam. That’s the bard in me, I think, loving the way a long song tells a true story, documenting people’s lives in really beautiful ways. 

Kim Fahner : part five

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?

I always seem to turn to Seamus Heaney’s poems “Postscript” and “St. Kevin and the Blackbird.” I also love Mary Oliver’s poems, “If I Wanted a Boat” and “Wild Geese.”  I love how both Heaney and Oliver weave landscape and place into their work, but I also really love the way Heaney uses language so that his work comes alive. I’ve always been in love with the way he uses kennings and with how his poetry is so musical. With Oliver, her work resonates with me because I’m often outside walking, hiking, or swimming. I’m elemental, so I find that my sense of spirit and place is most alive when I’m outside with trees, rocks, water, and sky. I crave smaller sounds that come from quieter places, so put me on the edge of a lake at dawn and I will just be in a state of bliss. Whenever I hike, I’m always muttering “Oh, that’s so pretty.” There’s wonder in the world if only we open our hearts and eyes to see it. These days, in pandemic times, it’s been my saving grace, to walk amidst the trees and birds. 

Kim Fahner : part four

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

I read and review a lot of poetry books. On an annual basis, I’d venture a guess that I read about fifty books of poems, alongside novels, plays, and creative non-fiction essay collections. Lately, I’ve been reading Yvonne Blomer’s The Last Show on Earth and Heather Nolan’s Land of the Rock: Talamh an Carraig. I read poetry every day. The more poetry I read, the more I grow as a poet, so I love doing close readings of other people’s work. I learn from my fellow poets, and I’m grateful for that. I think my editing of my own work, too, has benefited from my deep dive into poetry over the last six years in particular.  

Kim Fahner : part three

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

Bronwen Wallace was an important influence on my notion of what topics women poets could write about. I discovered her work in a grad school seminar class on Canadian feminist poetry, at Carleton University in Ottawa, back in 1995. I was in my early 20s then. Her poetry, so rooted in the everyday world, made me think about how you can find the extraordinary moments in the ‘ordinary’ rhythms of a life. Sometimes, oftentimes really, the most beautiful experiences are ones that are unexpected and quiet. Wallace’s work gave me permission to write about my experiences as a woman. Her narrative lyric poems, especially her collection The Stubborn Particulars of Grace, changed my life. I return to that book often for inspiration and for schooling in how best to write a poem that is rich and alive with narrative detail and imagery.

Kim Fahner : part two

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

I find that writing poetry is, for me, the most intimate genre of writing. So much of me is present in each poem and, even though I try to convince myself that I’m not that much in a poem, I usually am. It is the genre that is closest to my heart, mind, and body. It’s the most visceral, alive, and heart-beaty kind of thing. Writing with honesty is something I strive for, but I also feel very vulnerable and a bit naked when reading my work in public. Maybe that’s because it’s so important to me, so it takes a bit of courage—always—to submit poems to journals and contests, but also to rise and read in front of others. 

The other part that always challenges me is editing, as I learn to become a better editor of my own work with each book of poems that I read and review, and with each poem that I write and revise. With age and practice, at 51 now, I can say that I’m a stronger editor of my own work, but still love to learn from poetry editors I’ve worked with over the last few years. I never want to stop learning how to become a better poet.

Kim Fahner : part one

Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her most recent book of poems is These Wings (Pedlar Press, 2019) and her next book is Emptying the Ocean, which will be published by Frontenac House Press in Fall 2022. She was the fourth poet laureate of Sudbury (2016-18) and was the first woman appointed to the role. Kim is a member of the League of Canadian Poets, the Ontario Representative for The Writers' Union of Canada, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. She may be reached via her author website at www.kimfahner.com 

What are you working on?

I’m working on edits and rewrites of the poems that will be in my next collection, Emptying the Ocean, which is being published by Frontenac House in Calgary this fall. Beyond that, I’m finishing my new novel and writing poems for a manuscript that centres on bees. So, it seems I’m drawn to the elements and the natural world in terms of the poems I write. Birds, water, bees. I’m fascinated by the environment, as well as by the ways in which the natural world and its elements influence me as a woman, and as a writer.