What poets changed the way you thought about writing?
I’m not sure that any poets have changed the way that I think of writing. I’ve never thought, for example, that there are subjects that don’t belong inside of a poem, nor have I ever thought a poem cannot have movement, cannot have shape, cannot have a sonic landscape that is larger than the flat page. Nor have I ever thought that a poem needs to have a consistent “narrator” or single voice or that certain subjects cannot be broached in certain formal structures. There have been poets who have worked with structures, using basic computer skills, for example, to help their poems do the work their poems intend to do, such as Douglas Kearney and a former student, Morgan Christie. And poets such as Maria Damon who have embedded poems into textiles and Anne Carson who has reimagined what a book of poems can do. They have each shown me that the worlds I imagine are possible, as long as I have the skills to pull off the work.
Monday, 4 March 2019
Brad Casey : part three
What poets changed the way you thought about writing?
Very early it was the Beat writers. To write freely, that appealed to me. YB Yeat’s poem When You are Old. John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Romantics. I went to see John Keat’s death mask in Rome, the room he died in. That was an arresting experience. So a lot of male writers in my early years because I studied poetry in university and university classes tend to sway male. But also I loved Sylvia Plath too. As I’ve gotten older and been exploring it’s been Anne Carson, Eileen Myles, Ariana Reines, Ashley Obscura. A lot of women. And Bill Bissett too, Bill is one of the best poets of the last 100 years, in my opinion.
Very early it was the Beat writers. To write freely, that appealed to me. YB Yeat’s poem When You are Old. John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Romantics. I went to see John Keat’s death mask in Rome, the room he died in. That was an arresting experience. So a lot of male writers in my early years because I studied poetry in university and university classes tend to sway male. But also I loved Sylvia Plath too. As I’ve gotten older and been exploring it’s been Anne Carson, Eileen Myles, Ariana Reines, Ashley Obscura. A lot of women. And Bill Bissett too, Bill is one of the best poets of the last 100 years, in my opinion.
Sunday, 3 March 2019
Billy Mavreas : part three
How do you know when a poem is finished?
I often don’t. It would explain the scraps of paper lining my life with a smattering of words on them. It’s more the case that the poem stops than I finish the poem.
For visual poems I always know. It’s a feeling/knowing. A vague sense of satisfaction or completion. A very mini aha moment.
I often don’t. It would explain the scraps of paper lining my life with a smattering of words on them. It’s more the case that the poem stops than I finish the poem.
For visual poems I always know. It’s a feeling/knowing. A vague sense of satisfaction or completion. A very mini aha moment.
Saturday, 2 March 2019
Emily Banks : part five
How does a poem begin?
Poems often begin with a line for me, something that gets stuck in my head. Sometimes the poem will happen immediately, but sometimes I’ll have a line in my head for years before I find the poem for it. For example, in my poem “Tennessee Warbler,” which Okay Donkey published this October, the line, “I used a bathroom with the sign ‘omen’” is one I’d been itching to use for a while. It came to me when I was driving from New York to Maryland, and stopped at a rest stop on the Jersey turnpike where the woman’s room sign was missing a “W” and thus said “omen.” I knew I’d use that in a poem someday, but it wasn’t until years later when this little bird stopped to rest on my balcony in Atlanta and made me think about migration and omens that I found the right place for it. Often it happens much faster than that, but essentially I need a strong sense of a poem in my head before I start writing. Not everything, just enough lines and images that give it shape. It’s imperative for me to write a poem all in one sitting; I lose the music otherwise. I mean, I go back and revise a lot, but the poem has to feel complete in that first iteration. So I wait until I know I’m ready to write it.
Poems often begin with a line for me, something that gets stuck in my head. Sometimes the poem will happen immediately, but sometimes I’ll have a line in my head for years before I find the poem for it. For example, in my poem “Tennessee Warbler,” which Okay Donkey published this October, the line, “I used a bathroom with the sign ‘omen’” is one I’d been itching to use for a while. It came to me when I was driving from New York to Maryland, and stopped at a rest stop on the Jersey turnpike where the woman’s room sign was missing a “W” and thus said “omen.” I knew I’d use that in a poem someday, but it wasn’t until years later when this little bird stopped to rest on my balcony in Atlanta and made me think about migration and omens that I found the right place for it. Often it happens much faster than that, but essentially I need a strong sense of a poem in my head before I start writing. Not everything, just enough lines and images that give it shape. It’s imperative for me to write a poem all in one sitting; I lose the music otherwise. I mean, I go back and revise a lot, but the poem has to feel complete in that first iteration. So I wait until I know I’m ready to write it.
Friday, 1 March 2019
Kevin Spenst : part five
Why is poetry important?
What is language? Is it biological? Is it technological? Is it private or public? How is a word in your head changed when it comes out of your mouth? There’s nothing as strangely unique and accessible as language. Poetry seems to me to be the best place to tease out its meanings in an engaging way. Poetry combines the uptick of philosophical thinking with pratfalls of slapstick.
It’s also remarkable how there can be a social dimension in something so solitary. Working with words, you are handling these nests, stones and joy-buzzers of meaning that have been thought, spoken and written by so many others who came before us. These words will also be passed down to future generations. When editing work, you also have to shift into an Ear of Another. I know what this means to me, but does it really work that way? Poetry feels like a central place in the transit of meaning-making.
Poetry has been part of many other progressive causes. (Horn-tooting: On a very small-scale, personal note, I once helped organize an afternoon poetry reading for a group of Vancouver teachers on strike. Rita Wong, Jeff Steudel, and Danielle LaFrance were some of the poets that came out.)
Also, thinking about our current moment, we see how essential eco-poetics and the poetry of protest are. In British Columbia, we are dealing with threats to our natural environment from industry and government and it’s heartening to see poets like Rita Wong so devoted to writing and resistance. Last year she wrote a gorgeous book with Fred Wah called Beholden: a poem as long as a river. Currently, she’s in court for being part of a blockade of Trans Mountain workers. Steven Collis is another BC poet who’s gone to court for environmental activism. These poets are doing important work.
What else can do all this but poetry?
What is language? Is it biological? Is it technological? Is it private or public? How is a word in your head changed when it comes out of your mouth? There’s nothing as strangely unique and accessible as language. Poetry seems to me to be the best place to tease out its meanings in an engaging way. Poetry combines the uptick of philosophical thinking with pratfalls of slapstick.
It’s also remarkable how there can be a social dimension in something so solitary. Working with words, you are handling these nests, stones and joy-buzzers of meaning that have been thought, spoken and written by so many others who came before us. These words will also be passed down to future generations. When editing work, you also have to shift into an Ear of Another. I know what this means to me, but does it really work that way? Poetry feels like a central place in the transit of meaning-making.
Poetry has been part of many other progressive causes. (Horn-tooting: On a very small-scale, personal note, I once helped organize an afternoon poetry reading for a group of Vancouver teachers on strike. Rita Wong, Jeff Steudel, and Danielle LaFrance were some of the poets that came out.)
Also, thinking about our current moment, we see how essential eco-poetics and the poetry of protest are. In British Columbia, we are dealing with threats to our natural environment from industry and government and it’s heartening to see poets like Rita Wong so devoted to writing and resistance. Last year she wrote a gorgeous book with Fred Wah called Beholden: a poem as long as a river. Currently, she’s in court for being part of a blockade of Trans Mountain workers. Steven Collis is another BC poet who’s gone to court for environmental activism. These poets are doing important work.
What else can do all this but poetry?
Judson Hamilton : part one
How did you first engage with poetry?
As a reader, my earliest memories of poetry are intrinsically linked with the work of Shel Silverstein whom I adored as a child (and someone whose work I am now revisiting with my own children). Later there were the usual suspects as imbibed through the academic syllabi of high school and college.
I’ve always enjoyed writing poetry much more than reading it though. I’m not sure why that is.
Brian Kirk : part four
When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?
I like to go back to Yeats and Eliot, particularly to read aloud. Prufrock or The Waste Land are very good. I also enjoy reading sonnets, both old and new – I like the formal at times.
I like to go back to Yeats and Eliot, particularly to read aloud. Prufrock or The Waste Land are very good. I also enjoy reading sonnets, both old and new – I like the formal at times.
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