Micheline Maylor : part five

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

            T. S. Eliot because of his musical lines. Seamus Heaney for what he does with history. Mary Rueffle. Billy Collins for his ability to speak of the ordinary with levity. Carolyn Forche for memorializing. Douglas Glover for being the best editor of prose. Agha Shaid Ali for bringing Ghazal forms to English. Jan Zwicky for metaphor. Patrick Lane for being the best editor of poetry. derek beaulieu because he forced me to reconsider what poetry is. . . so many reconsiderations. Reading itself is an act of reconsideration.

Micheline Maylor : part four

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

            I work for a press, I’ve been mainly reading things not published yet, but one to watch for is Ruba’iyat for the Time of Apricots by Basma Kavanagh to be released this September. It’s a book length long poem about the importance of women, the environment, and beautifully told in succulent language that makes you want to fall in it like a blue pool of happiness. Look for it this September at the Winnipeg International Writers’ Festival. Share it with your mothers, and aunts, and grandmothers. It’s important work and a tribute to those that women came before us.

Micheline Maylor : part three

Why is poetry important?

            I was talking to a music promoter about the economics of poetry the other day. We were talking about the economics of poetry and he asked, “why does anyone take that in school. Why would anyone be interested. Here’s a guy that makes his living from selling other people’s poetry/songs and he just didn’t get that the reason people buy his tickets is the same reason that people read poetry and want to write it and song. Because it makes the audience FEEL good, or right, or sad, or enraged, or sexy, or sassy, or whatever. . . But poetry and song have the same function. It makes us FEEL. And this is a very good thing for people, and for communities, and societies, and civilizations. Poetry makes us more civil.

Micheline Maylor : part two

What do you find the most difficult about writing poetry?

            Self doubt. An author can tinker with a poem endlessly and the second guessing can become paralyzing. The precision of the language and the constructs can over-ride the feel of the poem at times. I can look at the same line and see three or four different ways to re-phrase the line either through language or grammar. At some point, you just have to let it go. There’s that famous quote by Oscar Wilde, “I was working on a proof of one of my poems all morning and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”

Micheline Maylor : part one

Dr. Micheline Maylor is past Poet Laureate of Calgary. Her collection Little Wildheart is with U of A Press (2017) and was longlisted on both the Pat Lowther and the Raymond Souster awards. She teaches creative writing at MRU.

Photo credit: Nikki Reimer

How did you first engage in poetry?

            I was lucky. I grew up in a house full of art and books. My mother was important to my love of reading and learning. We moved to Calgary in 1974 and I remember hoping into her yellow Datsun 510 and heading over the library in the basement of Chinook Centre. Every Saturday I could bring back books and exchange them for new ones. I remember learning to read via Dr. Suess. So, my first experiences with reading were that of poetry. I think this is the case for many kids. The rhythms and cadences of the simple rhyme make for the best ways to teach reading.