Terese Mason Pierre : part five

What are you working on?

I'm currently putting the finishing touches on a second chapbook, and aim to send it out before spring comes. I'm also working on a full-length collection with poet Khashayar Mohammadi, as well as a collection of my own, with Caribbean and speculative-futuristic influences. I don’t know when that will be finished. Everyone tells me not to rush.

Terese Mason Pierre : part four

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

Some contemporary American poets whose names escape me taught me that poetry doesn’t need to have a nice and tidy ending. At times, you can feel an ending approaching in a poem, like in music, but those poets would stop their poems abruptly, and leave me reeling. I really liked that effect, so I started doing it in my poems. Also, I read Michael Prior’s Model Disciple, where I first encountered contemporary instances of couplets. Prior is not the first person to write this way, but when I saw his work, it struck me as "pleasant" way of organizing a poem, so I do this a lot. The poets who write around me - Faith Arkorful, Khashayar Mohammadi, Dominik Parisien, Nisa Malli, and others - teach me that poetry can tell stories in such wonderful ways, and I try to invoke a storytelling attitude when I sit down to create.

Terese Mason Pierre : part three

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

The most difficult part about writing poetry, for me, is when I’m unable to linguistically express an idea in my head that’s incoherently shaped. I’ll try many ways—writing short lines, writing stream-of-consciousness style—but not everything works. Since I like to work in order, if I’m stuck at this point, the poem doesn’t continue, the first draft doesn’t end, and I’m forced to stop and do something else. Sometimes, I might not finish the poem, or have to rewrite it at a later date. It’s very frustrating.

Terese Mason Pierre : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I know when a first draft of a poem is finished when I run out of creative steam. I start with a bright idea, and a momentum that carries me forward until it can’t anymore. That first draft can take up to thirty minutes. I set that draft aside for a few days, then return to it to edit it some more. The poem is done, completely, when I’ve manipulated it all I wanted, and I can’t see any other way to make it clearer.

Terese Mason Pierre : part one

Terese Mason Pierre is a writer, editor and organizer whose work has appeared in Canthius, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere online and in print. She is the poetry editor of Augur Magazine and volunteers with Shab-e She'r reading series. Her first chapbook, Surface Area, was published with Anstruther Press in Fall 2019. Terese lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

How did you first engage with poetry?

When I was a child, around ages 7-10, I read Shel Silverstein’s books. My favourite was Where the Sidewalk Ends. I loved his poetry so much, I plagiarized one for a school assignment in the fifth grade. I had never written poetry as a hobby—except for small poems for my mother’s birthday cards—until I got a poem published while I was in high school. After that, I started experimenting more with poetry, but continued to read novels and short fiction. I didn’t seriously start collecting and reading poetry until the beginning of 2019.