Kyla Jamieson : coda

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

The ocean is my favourite poem.

Kitty Coles : part one

Kitty Coles’ poems have been widely published in magazines and anthologies and have been nominated for the Forward Prize, Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her debut pamphlet, Seal Wife (2017), was joint winner of the Indigo Dreams Pamphlet Prize. Her first collection, Visiting Hours, will be published in 2020 by The High Window. www.kittyrcoles.com

How did you first engage with poetry?

Through nursery rhymes and my mum reciting ballads like ‘Sir Patrick Spens’ when I was very young. I’m still more interested in how poetry reaches us when it’s heard than when it’s read off the page. For me, the words need to feel right in the mouth and have a rightness to their sound and rhythm.

Leah Callen : part one

Leah Callen is an emerging poet with an MFA in creative writing from the University of Victoria, BC. Her work has appeared in Barren Magazine, Vallum Magazine, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, and Contemporary Verse 2. Her poem is coming soon to a Twin Peaks anthology by APEP Publications called These Poems Are Not What They Seem. And she is a contributing editor of poetry with Barren Magazine.

How did you first engage with poetry?

I started writing highly-charged, erotic poems about sex, god, and poppies in high school because my hot hormones had to spill out somewhere. A lot of the time it was on the page. I felt great freedom in such self-expression, and I was also studying singing so music and poetry naturally went hand in hand. The funny thing is my wild word collages were unappreciated by my first high school creative writing teacher and I dropped the course. Another teacher saw something in me and tried to grow it by publishing my poems in a class chapbook. Who knew that years later I’d do two university degrees in creative writing? You should always follow your own art.

Victoria J Iacchetta : coda

How does a poem begin?

As each day passes, and I look back on things I’ve written weeks, months, or years ago, I find it’s increasingly difficult to really understand how my poetry takes form. Of course my words are intentional, and most of the time I begin a poem with a general objective. But the process of getting from A to Z, I rarely track, or map out.

I’m an artist at heart, and I’ve found it’s always best to let things just take their own direction. When it comes to my creative outlets, like painting, sketching, or writing poetry, I enjoy the freedom of letting my work develop along the way.

With that said, I usually have a few lines floating around in my head already that force me to start thinking a poem to life. So, typically, I just start with getting that initial idea on paper and use that as a jumping off point. It’s not unlike me to change the entire beginning of the poem once I’ve gotten to the end.

Amritpal Singh Arora : part five

How does a poem begin?

For me, a poem typically begins with an idea, a memory, a simple observation or certain tension. Often these present themselves as an opening line or refrain. I typically allow myself to mull this over for a few days and before I put pen to paper. My aim, then, is to capture the feeling this initial idea has elicited in me and try to put this into words.

James Dunnigan : part one

James Dunnigan is a poet, scholar and fishmonger from Montreal. His first book of poems, The Stained Glass Sequence, won the Frog Hollow Chapbook Competition in 2018. A second chapbook, Wine and Fire, is forthcoming with Cactus Press.

Photo credit: Luc Robitaille @ Robitaille Photo

How does a poem begin?

With words. I’m really being serious. The best way to find if not an opening line then an opening into a potential poem, I find, is a method I call the prise au vif, or ‘catching raw’. It’s not my method exactly but one I’ve learned to practice over years of discussion with poets Bryan Sentes and George Slobodzian. One vivid example of this method in practice, to my memory, was an afternoon when I was sitting with George on his balcony one summer, the both of us sunburnt, drinking beer. George spots an unsettlingly large wasp in the pine tree in front of us. He points this out to me saying something like “man, look at those wasps”. Then he sort of smiles and starts to reword it out loud, slowly: “wasps among the pine cones (…) wasps/ among the pine/cones (…) wasps among/dry pine cones (…) under afternoon airplanes” sort of playing with it, and if it’s good enough he’ll put it down on paper. The observation or thing observed doesn’t even have to be “poetic” in itself. You don’t need to be in a heightened state to get there, though we both certainly had something of a glow on that afternoon. It’s just a technique you learn, like embroidery or filleting a fish or mindfulness or jumping turnstiles. It’s the articulation of it, the deployment of it in language, via the notational system of the line, that makes it poetry.

Evelína Kolářová : part two

Why is poetry important?

Literature, and consequently poetry, should always be highly regarded for its ability to express human experience. Unlike other forms of art, it uses language as a medium for the articulation of human experience. If we want to articulate something, one of the best ways to do so is with language. Literature provides a critical picture of the world, provides us with an opportunity of self-reflection and progress by pointing out certain issues, and with an opportunity to enrich language. Poetry specifically is important for its use of figurative language and for the possibility to create an architectural masterpiece by experimenting with forms and structures while simultaneously not imposing them on us. A poetic view of the world is important as well – a poet’s worldview. We need poets and their view for their ability to observe the world through different perspectives and perhaps for their ability to express concepts which one is able to see but seldom notices.