How did you first come to writing poetry? What is it about the form that resonates?
Both of my parents had been English teachers, and we had a lot of books in our home. They loved certain poems, like “This Is Just to Say”, and I remember a book called Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry that I read and that made me want to write poems. So, I wrote from a young age and kept going through university and then I more or less abandoned it. That turned out to be a mistake, and part of a dark time in my life. My writing/life got started again when I enrolled in a class called Exploring Your Creative Potential, taught by Edward Smallfield. That was 25 years ago; I fell in love with poetry, and with Edward, and nothing was ever the same after that.
Poetry has helped me to see the world and to feel things that are complex and intense. From a formal standpoint, it’s a source of experimentation and investigation, in that I keep learning about how it works and what its possibilities are. I experience poetry, at its best, as a meeting point of my intellect, emotions and aesthetic sensibilities.
How does a poem begin?
Almost always with words or lines from an existing text, or with an image. Sometimes with a constraint of some kind, either a known or invented form. I’m currently working on a project in which lines from The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook are interwoven with my lines. Of course, what sparks a poem isn’t necessarily what it’s “about” or what it turns into, and sometimes the beginning will disappear altogether, having simply been an access point.
You’ve published multiple full-length poetry collections. Do you see your writing as a single, extended project, or a series of self-contained units?
In the past, I would have said that it’s a series of self-contained units. Now, looking back, it looks more like one long project. I think I prefer the feeling of working on a defined project, and I feel a bit at loose ends when I’m writing poems that don’t have an intended destination. The process of putting together a collection might be gathering discrete projects under one roof, like open book, or it might be looking over a body of non-project work and picking out pieces which seem to fit together, like still life with elegy, which is forthcoming from above/ground press.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
I have a weekly/monthly schedule of writing with other writers: with Edward on Sunday evenings, with my parentheses co-editors Emilie Delcourt and Harriet Sandilands on Friday mornings, and with my friends Stephen Hemenway and Doug MacPherson every three weeks. Apart from these inspiring encounters, I write once or twice a week for 30 minutes or so, between my other activities.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
Right now, I like your project very much! And also, where is the river: a poetry experiment, and Touch the Donkey. These three have expanded my poetry universe and I always look forward to them. With Edward, Emilie, and Harriet I co-edit parentheses, a print magazine based in Barcelona that publishes work from international writers. Over time, it’s become one of my favorites! We publish an eclectic mix of work that seems to grow richer and more interesting with every issue.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
Edward Smallfield, Stephen Hemenway, Laura Walker, Pattie
McCarthy, Kevin Varrone, Doug MacPherson, Tiff Dressen, Susanne Dyckman, Denise
Newman, Emilie Delcourt, Harriet Sandilands and rob mclennan all come to mind. They’re
all writers I’ve been paying attention to for many years, but they keep
evolving and doing new things. Reading work for parentheses is a source
of inspiration; I love to discover writers I haven’t been aware of and see how
they’re working/what possibilities they’re exploring.
A selection of her poems appeared in the fifth issue.