Simon Brown : part five

How does a poem begin?

For me, a poem almost always begins with an accident. Words read and words heard cross paths and bump into each other. Two or three stick together, and an odd sensation or image emerges, a catalyst for other words, feelings, and connections. An accident can happen in the slips and stutters of everyday conversation, or a word overheard colliding with a word being read at the same moment. Another place this sort of accident happens for me is in that odd space between sleep and waking reality. I am a big fan of naps and slumber of all kinds, and I always keep a notebook nearby. So often, just before drifting off, a combination of words will form in my head, and I won’t be able to fall asleep until I write them down. Upon awaking, I read them and have no idea what it means. Thankfully! And, for better or worse, a poem is born…

Simon Brown : part four

How important is music to your poetry?

Well, the two are very intertwined for me… my first serious forays into creativity as a teenager were self-taught musical experimentation, DIY recording, tape-trading and that sort of thing, and I think most of the little twists and turns of my creative process were born at that time. So many of those inclinations and instincts still guide how I go about things creatively: repetition/looseness, continuity/rupture, consonance/dissonance, and (probably most of all) the importance of improvisation/listening, and all it implies. 

 

Simon Brown : part three

What poetry books have you been reading lately?

So many… new and old, good and bad, haha. But mostly very good! One of the books I’ve been really appreciating in the past few weeks is Black Dog Songs (Flood Editions, 2003), an older collection (which I somehow hadn’t read yet) from one of my favourite poets, Lisa Jarnot. It’s a mix of repetitive/collage-y prose pieces, and other short versified poems, almost like nursery rhymes. Very simple, yet containing whole huge dreamworlds within. I’ve also been reading the amazing new collection by Maude Pilon, Blanche Reboot (Éditions Omri, 2022), where she reworks poems by early 20th-century regionalist poet Blanche Lamontagne, transforming odes to the fields and streams of the Gaspé into what you might describe as lyrical hallucinations: sometimes funny, sometimes touching, always strange and beautiful. I’ve also been reading a couple of random missals and prayer books I recently found in the garbage. Oldies but goodies, I guess.

Simon Brown : part two

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

I’m sure it has, though I don’t remember exactly how I considered poetry before! But do I know with certainty that it has changed, because how I consider poetry is always changing. Every day, really! This is one of the things I most love about poetry, the fact that is always changing. Maybe seeing poetry as having a fundamentally changing nature is itself what has changed for me, in a way. When I was younger, I definitely didn’t know what poetry was, but I assumed that someone somewhere did know, and that it was Something, that is, something immutable, or even eternal. Now, I even feel that the essence itself of poetry might be change, whatever (ever-changing) form that this change might take.

Simon Brown : part one

Simon Brown (he/they) is a self-taught poet and translator from the traditional territory of the Peskotomuhkati Nation, in southwestern New Brunswick, now based in Wendat and Abenaki traditional territory, in the Quebec City area. His poems have been presented in interdisciplinary artworks and collaborative performances, and in journals such as Lemon Hound, Vallum, Mœbius, Estuaire, and the Fiddlehead. Simon’s latest chapbook, oh the iffy night, was published by above/ground press in fall 2021. simonbrown.ca

Photo credit (pictured with La Mouche): Mimi Lebuffe

How did you first engage with poetry?

That’s a good question… there wasn’t much around when I was a kid. I only recall one book of poetry in the house, it was called “The Absolute Best Poems of All Time”, or something like that, probably published in the 50s or early 60s. Of the poems in it, I only remember Because I could not stop for Death —, which I loved. In rural New Brunswick schools, poetry was never mentioned (Ministry of Education policy?), except once by my grade 3 teacher. She was obviously a fairly unhappy person, and was usually quite mean to everyone. The only time I ever recall her being excited, or even remotely happy, was during an apparently impromptu lecture (or sermon?) on poetry where she proclaimed, “anything you want can be a poem!”, and wrote the words FUDGECICLE STICK IN THE MUD on the blackboard. Despite my terrible memory, these words have remained with me ever since, and for this I do feel grateful towards her.