How did you first come to poetry? What is it about the form that resonates?
I wish I had a clear memory of this. I’ve always loved rhyme and would write short, pithy poems for family members’ birthdays and on brightly coloured pieces of paper or in handmade cards. I’m noticing as I answer this that from a young age, I saw poetry as something to share. I frequently gave poems to others, whether they wanted them or not! I even asked for a rhyming dictionary for one of my birthdays in grade school (not the last dictionary I would ask for as a birthday gift). What is a child’s first engagement with poetry? I go back to music and nursery rhymes, of my mom and dad singing lullabies to me in the crib and then tucking me into bed as I grew older, welcoming the night with song and prayer. Surely these rituals—this early encounter with imaginative language—left their mark on me.
How does a poem begin?
Most of the time there’s a phrase or image I can’t get out of my mind. It niggles at me until I do something with it. Examples include a striped baby sock I saw hanging from a tree in a cemetery; a ship’s name that came to me in a dream; the questions my preschooler asks often right before bed: “What does sadness look like?”
Other times I know I want to write a poem about x (not the former Twitter, to be clear) but need to wait for that phrase or image to strike like flint, otherwise I have no entry point. That spark can come from slogging through, but it definitely helps to have at least a hint of inspiration, some direction to follow from the outset (even if the poem ends up changing course). If I write it down too soon, before the image, phrase, or idea has had a chance to send out roots and branch, then I risk pruning it prematurely, confining it to a shape that may not serve it well. In my case, the germination stage usually takes a few days to a few weeks and then the poem is ready to plant.
Do you see your writing as a single, extended project, or a series of threads that occasionally weave together to form something else?
When I write a poem, I’m not thinking about how this might connect to something else. I multitask enough as a mother. I don’t want to be anywhere else but in the flow of this poem that’s coming onto the page. When I am done and step back, I often see connections. A friend told me that we’re all really just writing the same poem over and over again. In some ways I disagree, because I try and tackle different subjects and inhabit different speakers, but in many ways, I completely agree. By and large, my poems address the gaps that exist in life. If my poetry is a tapestry, it’s full of holes.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
I have a 4 year old and twin babies and I am very much fitting scraps of writing in on nap times or in evenings when the house is quiet and I’m not too depleted. I’m always amazed how much energy creativity requires.
The best purchase I made right before my twins were born was a One Line a Day book. I oscillate between recording the mundane (“Boys and me all napped at the same time this afternoon”), the anecdotal (“Thanks to Beatrix Potter, M is now saying phrases like, ‘This meal is so satisfying I think it will have a soporific effect’”), or the reflective (“Sometimes my life feels so small compared to what I think others imagined for me”). Usually I scribble something quickly before falling into bed, but the book has given me the semblance of a writing practice while caring for three young children, for which I am very grateful. And when I do happen to write a decent poem, it always feels nothing short of a miracle.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
My favourite print journal was Ruminate—it sadly shut down a few years ago. But The New Quarterly is a close rival. It has so much content of good quality, it takes me months to read through cover to cover. I have major FOMO if I skip any part. I also enjoy Arc Poetry Magazine, especially their section How Poems Work. There is so much poetry in the world and not enough close readings of it apart from in academic settings. For online lit journals, Ekstasis takes the cake. It’s a beautiful experience to read the work on there.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
I was delighted to stumble upon Lorna Crozier’s Book of Marvels in the library. These prose poems are odes to everyday objects—buttons, bobby pins, tables, vacuums, etc. in the style of an adult alphabet book (A is for apple….) It’s a good companion while on maternity leave where I am home a lot, surrounded by the ordinary and the extraordinary-in-the-ordinary. It’s making me want to write my own object-odes, early motherhood version: breastfeeding pillow, soother, diaper, NoseFrida snotsucker.
I recently finished Selina Boan’s debut poetry
collection Undoing Hours and was amazed at what she does with
language(s), how deftly and creatively she wields it to make it sing in ways I
didn’t know it could.
Charlene Kwiatkowski is a Canadian writer whose debut poetry chapbook ‘Let Us Go Then’ was published in 2021 with the Alfred Gustav Press. Her work has appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, PRISM international, Vallum, and elsewhere. She works at an art gallery and occasionally blogs at textingthecity.wordpress.com. Charlene lives in Coquitlam, BC with her husband, daughter, and twin sons.
A selection of her poems appeared in the eleventh issue.