Matt Robinson : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished?

First off: for me, I am not sure that a poem is ever really finished, per se. I think poems get to a point where they get a release into the world (to a readership / listenership) via publication or performance of some kind OR they get abandoned. But I am becoming more and more convinced that a poem is never really finished. They continue, or should continue, to change and morph and grow and age and settle and fracture.

That is, no doubt, related to the fact that I am a notorious serial reviser. I always have been. I have also always had a really keen interest in the drafting and revising process—really the growth and evolution—of poems, as a writer and a reader. (Some context: the one critical article I actually ever published, years ago, was essentially an examination of how certain poems on Jeffrey Donaldson’s “Waterglass” morphed from their initial journal publication form to the pieces that appeared in his actual book.)

I’ll frame it this way: I have poems that were published in books 20 years ago that I still revisit and tweak in terms of shape and line breaks and overall construction. Some lines or fragments disappear and some get added. But there is always opportunity there. And even if a poem gets abandoned, I think it will eventually get returned to in one fashion or another: even if that takes years.

In a more finite sense, for me a poem is “done” or ready for its initial intro to the world once it passes the recording test. I draft through various stages but always get to a point where I am mostly reading the poem aloud (and recording it to listen to that recording) so I can hear whether it is doing what I had thought it was. That reading, recording, and listening process is maybe the poetic equivalent to using various fine grades of sandpaper in finish carpentry. I’m mostly listening for flow and rhythm and sound and such at that point. The logic and rhetoric and overall sense is usually already sorted at that point. What is really being figured via recording and listening is whether there are rhythmic hiccups or quirks that need to be figured out / corrected. 

So, I suppose a poem’s most recent or current iteration is close to “done” when it starts showing up as multiple voice memos on my phone.

Beth Mulcahy : part three

How do you know when a poem is finished? I know when a poem is done when I feel satisfied that I have completely expressed what I want to convey in a way that I find satisfying. It’s a gut feeling but it doesn’t always come easy and I often struggle with endings.  

Ankh Spice : part five

How does a poem begin?

Often with something the world throws at me, colliding with something I didn’t know was already germinating inside. I have a particularly strong urge to look very closely at detail, and I believe it’s a powerful thing to be able do that. For me there’s synaesthesia at play too – the small details of the natural world in particular are like sirens, I am physically unable to ignore a broken shell hit by the light in a certain way. And often it feels like there’s a reason for the ‘need to notice’ that very thing at that very moment – it’s subconsciously connected to a concept or experience my brain’s been gnawing away at. There’s this wonderful ‘click’ when the two converge, very-conscious and very-not, the ‘Oh!’ moment, and if I can catch the feeling of that I think the reader feels it, too, therapeutic and satisfying. More literally, moving begins the poem – running or swimming puts me into a state where phrases coalesce and arrange themselves as if by magic in my head. As someone with ADHD, my brain a lot of the time is a skittery, leaping, crowded thing, but both being drawn in deep to detail and moving have the same effect – everything goes held-breath, slows down, grows quiet and floaty-clear. In those states, poems are born. They layer and sort and make sense of all the vast noise of our navigating in a way I can’t ever explain, except by writing them, and hoping other people feel it inside the lines.

Douglas Piccinnini : part two

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

The most difficult thing about being a poet and writing poetry is explaining to people what poems are about – not because poetry is difficult but an explanation of a poem usually requires another poem.

Maureen O'Leary : part two

How did you first engage with poetry?

When I was four or five years old and announced that I wanted to be a poet my dad ran out that day to buy me notebooks, paper, a folder, and pencils. My parents were serious about supporting my poetry from the jump. I was really lucky. I won a prize for a poem I wrote about sheep in first grade. I didn’t know anything about sheep but everyone really liked that poem. It was a people pleaser for sure. Most of my poems haven’t been read by anyone but me yet whenever a magazine or anthology editor picks a piece of mine for publishing I always get that same good feeling that someone liked my sheep.  

Kathleen McCoy : part four

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

I've been reading Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz, EDGE by Barbara Ungar, Loving in Truth by Jay Rogoff, and An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo. I skim some of the major journals, of course, particularly American Poetry Review, Poetry (if you can overlook the recent scandal), Image, Rattle, and a lovely one out of Cambridge I recently discovered, la piccoletta barca. I'm also drawn to the great Americans we've lost recently or in recent years-- the incomparable bell hooks, the bicontinental Eavan Boland,  Robert Bly, and of course Adrienne Rich. In the past couple of years I've been enjoying poems by Jane Hirshfield, Kazim Ali, Honoree Jeffers, David Graham, James Crews, and Ellen Bass on this side of the pond, and on the other, many from Northern Ireland, poets like Medbh McGuckian, Leontia Flynn, Sinead Morrissey, Nick Laird, Stephen Sexton, and Paula Meehan from Ireland. There are so many really fine poets publishing now, both locally in upstate New York and around the English-speaking world. It's humbling and energizing and awe-inspiring. If you like your poetry to be provocative--aesthetically, spiritually, or socio-politically--poetry is a rich minefield these days.

For anyone looking to sample more contemporary poetry, I'd suggest they start at the local bookstore with a contemporary journal of poems. Then jump on Twitter and look for poetry that turns you on. It's as near as breath, and as life-affirming.

Richard Capener : part one

Richard Capener's pamphlets are KL7 (The Red Ceilings, forthcoming 2022) and Dance! The Statue has Fallen! Now His Head is Beneath Our Feet! (Broken Sleep Books, 2021). The Voice Without will be released by Beir Bua Press in August 2022. He is launching a press in May 2022. 

How did you first engage with poetry?

It was somewhat spontaneous. I grew up in a house which had books, and my sister was an avid reader, but I took to films and TV more readily. These fed into how I viewed literature, in that BBC adaptations of famous novels felt underwhelming to me. As I entered my teenage years, I became more and more obsessive about music. At this time, download culture was still illegal and it wasn’t unusual to buy CDs, which contained inlay cards with lyrics. I felt a tremendous emotional resonance towards the visual arrangement of text, and the space between lines, and began writing what I considered song lyrics. Eventually, probably compounded by the fact I can’t play an instrument, I became comfortable with the idea of poetry and accepted that these “lyrics” could be a creative expression in and of themselves. This led me to go to a chain bookstore and pick the two poetry books with the best covers (I was a teenager) which happened to be an edition of collected poems by AE Houseman and an edition of Lewis Carrol’s poetry, neither of which had any influence on me. I’m still fond of them, though, as an introduction. 

My love of visual media and music had already led to a precocious interest in the historical narratives and creative practices bannered under “avant-garde”. My passion for literature took off when I found its literary equivalents. Foremost were poets such as Frank O’Hara and Bernadette Mayer, novelists such as Kathy Acker and Burroughs, as well as that seeming golden era of concrete poetry exemplified by Henri Chopin, Brion Gysin and Bob Cobbing, who I found a little later.