How did you first come to poetry? What is it about the form that resonates?
I came to poetry as a teenager, as one does, pouring all my angst and weirdness into notebooks while everyone else was probably doing something more fun. What resonated about the form then is what resonates today: the intimacy and forgiveness of it. The ability to capture a moment or emotion with precision and clarity.
How did publishing your first book change your writing? What have the differences been since?
It changed the way I thought about myself – from “a person who writes” to “a writer”. It was a pretty big shift, giving myself permission to claim that identity. Since publishing my first book, I’ve grown a lot as a poet. My writing is more assertive, my voice clearer. There’s nothing, now, that feels off-limits. And, physically, my poems take up more space on the page than they used to.
How does a poem begin?
I mostly write from my own life and I usually begin with a specific image – something I’ve seen or experienced – that I build out from. Sometimes that starting point is just a doorway into an idea and I end up cutting the initial image during the editing process. Even when that happens, though, I can still see the shadow of it in the final draft.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
Both. My writing practice is almost daily, but I work and have a young daughter, so there are big constraints around my writing time. I usually write for about an hour in the evening, after my daughter is in bed, but how I use that time can look very different depending on what I’m working on. I might be writing new poems, editing old poems, picking away at essays, working on fiction, or taking care of some of the “administrative” aspects of the writing life.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
I really love The New Quarterly, both as a reader and contributor. They’ve been very supportive of my work over the years.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
Lately, I’ve been drawn to books where genres
intersect. Tanis MacDonald’s Straggle and Gillian Sze’s Quiet Night
Think both use essays and poetry to complement one another. Doireann Ni Ghriofa’s
A Ghost in the Throat is a really beautiful interplay of memoir and
historical fiction. I like the idea that a book can be more than one thing and
that a writer can create a kind of ecosystem where each genre relies on, and
enhances, the other.
