Shannon Quinn : part four

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

There are a few poets and poems that I go to when I need to remember the amount of possibility available to this form.

Song by Bridget Pegeen Kelley, Washing the Elephants by Barbara Rass, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s collection Islands of Decolonial Love, work by Don Domanski, Patricia Smith, Jen Currin.

Sanita Fejzić : part two

How did you first engage with poetry?

The way I engage another human being, with humility, curiosity and care. Each word, line and poem has its own aura, living in its own country. Some poems are inviting, friendly and warm. Others are reserved, hermetic and extremely private—to enter into relation with them, you need time and space. There are poems will never give themselves to us, and that’s as valuable of an experience as encountering an open and generous poem we can return to over and over again for nourishment.
 

Penn Kemp : part five

Do you have a social group or writers group that you work ideas and poems with?

See below.

Kyle Flemmer : part three

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

What decent poet doesn’t? I see that as part of the job description. That said, Douglas Kearney’s “Quantum Spit” was the poem which really brought my interest in experimental forms to the fore. From its use of typeface and dramatis personae in mounting a chorus on the page, to its publication as broadsheet liner notes in a record sleeve, every aspect of the poem challenges the boundary between image and sound. Many poets have blown my mind since then, and now that’s the poetry I seek out in particular.

Aaron Tucker : part five

What are you working on?

I’m launching my first novel Y (https://chbooks.com/Books/Y/Y) in the spring of 2018 and so I’ve been occupied with that. But I’ve been really fortunate to move around the world a fair bit over the last two years with a woman I love dearly and see incredible art object after incredible art object, so I’ve been writing a long poem, about half way done (I think) about that. There is a through line of birds and I recently discovered Olivier Messiaen’s long piano piece “Catalogue d'Oiseaux” and so I have been playing it on repeat as I move through it, from Porto to Berlin to Toronto, back and forth. It is so different than my last book, Irresponsible Mediums (https://bookthug.ca/shop/books/irresponsible-mediums-the-chess-games-of-marcel-duchamp-by-aaron-tucker/) which is a computer generated collection that translates the chess games of Marcel Duchamp into poems – this poem I’m actually writing!

Manahil Bandukwala : part two

How did you first engage with poetry?

I used to consider myself primarily a prose writer, and wrote poems on the side. When I moved to Ottawa, I discovered a vibrant poetry community. Around the same time, in a first year university class, we studied Modernist poets. Reading Leonard Cohen alongside poetry on Bywords, in In/Words and in presses around Ottawa, I started to shape my own work. Reading or listening to other poets’ work has always been my biggest influence.

rob mclennan : part three

How do you know when a poem is finished?

Experience.