G. E. Schwartz : part twelve

Why is poetry important?

Because it gives us the best possibility to present and explore our knowing and unknowing: that it can be a modest restatement of the notion that we are more than an organism in an environment, more than an integrated personality, more even than a mature and creative individual, as the phrase goes... as we are wayfarers and pilgrims.

Joshua Weiner : part five

Why is poetry important?

Poetry is the home of metaphor, without which there is no knowledge; it is original science. 

Angela Gabrielle Fabunan : part one

Angela Gabrielle Fabunan graduated from Bowdoin College and attends the University of the Philippines MA Creative Writing Program. In 2016, she was awarded the Carlos Palanca Memorial Foundation Awards for Poetry. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Cordite Poetry Review, Asymptote Journal, Cha Literary Journal, Contrary Magazine, Eastlit Magazine, and New Asian Writing, among others. She is one of the current poetry editors at Inklette Magazine. Her first book of poetry, The Sea That Beckoned, is available from Platypus Press.

How did you first engage with poetry?

I was very fortunate to have an ally and a mother figure in my third-grade teacher Mrs. Lippman, during my first year in the U.S. She had an enormous library for an eight-year-old girl to feast on. I still remember the first poetry book I read, entitled Poetry For Young People: Emily Dickinson. It had a picture of a tree with a dove in it. I abandoned poetry a couple of times in my life, but thankfully I had teachers such as Professor Anthony Walton at Bowdoin College and Professor Nerissa Guevara at the University of Santo Tomas who picked up where Mrs. Lippman left off in educating me as a young writer of poetry.

Carlie Blume : part four

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

I recently read Tiana Clark’s I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood and was floored. I also just finished Cluster by Souvankham Thammmavongsa and was struck with her range and ability to bring the reader to their knees with a simple, stark poem. I also often return to Jonina Kirton’s Page as Bone- Ink as Blood as well as An Honest Woman. I will never tire of those books. Jonina’s poetry is so heartfelt, raw and wise. It breaks my heart every time.

sophie anne edwards : part two

How did you first engage with poetry?

There was always poetry on my bedside table as a child; the written word was always somehow a home for me. Although I have written most of my life as a process of meaning-making, to find words for what I can’t understand or grasp, sometimes to process grief, or as a means to conjure a whole other space, I feel like I am only really beginning to engage with poetry recently. My writing feels more complex now, but also simpler, more a part of me and also apart from me. Turning fifty has made me (mostly) accept the limits of my life and the possibilities of my contributions to it, but has also stabbed me with the deep sense of the limits of my remaining time. Both of these things are motivating and somehow freeing.

Shannon Mastromonico : part five

How important is music to your poetry?

Music is extremely important. I've always had a very strong connection to music in general, so it has proven to be a big inspiration when I write. Music is lyrical poetry.

Poetry is one of the most important things to me and I almost gave up. I have been writing for thirty years but I have only been actively honing my craft and submitting work for about a year. As soon as I decided to call myself a poet, as soon as I decided to send my work out there, I stepped onto my true path. Since May of 2018, I have been published more than ten times and I self published my first chapbook of poems earlier this year. I truly cannot believe that I waited so long.

James Roome : part two

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. I remember doing an assignment on them as a pair as one of my first essays as an undergraduate and being absolutely floored by Song of Myself. I sat on the edge of my bed and read the whole thing in one sitting. It was so free and welcoming and casual and fun to read in a way that other poetry I had been exposed to had not been, yet it was still intensely philosophical.

Dickinson, I was bamboozled by at first. I found her syntax and capitalisation challenging. Now I find her to be one of the most consistently rewarding poets I read. Her imagery and turn of phrase is so idiosyncratic. She inspired me to make more surprising choices with language and imagery.

After those two, Wallace Stevens for the spiritual nature of his work, Frank O'Hara for his surrealism and joy, CD Wright for her incredibly generous and vivid work (she operates within a frame of reference that is alien to me, and that makes her work extremely interesting to me).

I just realised, every single poet I’ve mentioned is dead.