How did you first come to poetry?
I started writing as a way of responding to what I was reading, trying to imitate the elements that I liked. I read Sue Goyette’s Ocean in an intro to poetry class and everything I wrote for like two years afterward had a body of water in it. I have always been drawn to writing that feels familiar or intimate, but also that loosens my grasp on language, image, sentence, etc. When I started trying to write more seriously I really wanted to mimic that style. Around the same time I was also introduced to the writing of Nicole Brossard, Gail Scott, Daphne Marlatt etc., and their approach to writing in the feminine was really formative for me. I still feel like I am learning how to write, though, still coming to poetry for the first time.
How does a poem begin?
Usually quite suddenly, from a stray word I encounter or line from a song or walk through my neighbourhood. My writing process is me trying to understand the emotional tenors of world around me, and it’s heavily influenced by my spatial surroundings. For me poetry is a material process, i.e. I am stitching this fragment to that one and seeing what comes out of it. But I need that first fragment in order to get going. It’s a very slow process from start to end.
Now that you’ve published a couple of chapbooks, is there a difference in how you approach a poem? What have the challenges been?
My writing process is pretty haphazard. I’m very inspired by my city and the physical markers of past and present lives lived right next to mine. My process gives rise to a lot of fragmentary poems, or sometimes just lines, and I have a hard time gathering those fragments into something that feels cohesive. My first chapbook was a very intentional reflection on the place I was living in at the time, and I worked with a collaborator and a mentor who both really helped me to create a body of related poems. With my second chapbooks, HOUNDS, it took me a long time to refine everything into something that felt whole. I think it still has a pretty rambling feel to it, but I like that. The challenge for me is trying to learn the sort of conceptual planning that gives rise to a successful collection without losing the fun-ness of just jumping around randomly from point to point.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
It’s really difficult for me to make time for writing. I work full-time and am constantly feeling like there aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the things I want to do, from cooking to craft projects to just staring out the window. I have actually written very little since the start of the pandemic – instead I’ve been putting time into learning how to knit and make taper candles. Right now I’m really craving deeper connection to my surroundings, and making physical objects has been helping me to feel more grounded. I have been trying to return to writing by doing somatic-style writing prompts and leaving the results to sit unseen for a while instead of immediately trying to make them into something polished. For now, I am content to just work in starts and stops like that.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
Honestly, I feel like there are more things I haven’t read than things I have, but I like Plenitude, long con, and Brick.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
I am reading a couple of Alice Notley’s books right
now, which are hard but also fun. I just read Billy-Ray Belcourt’s A History
of My Brief Body, which was so gorgeous. I also recently read Elena
Ferrante’s Neapolitan series as well, and honestly it was exactly what I
needed it to be!
