How did
you first come to constraint-based poetry? What is it about the constraint that
resonates?
I never really enjoyed poetry until I learned its rules; specifically, until I discovered how metre, and its nuances, can be used in combination with other devices (consonances, internal rhymes, etc.) to create music. I was a musician before I was a poet; so, form, rhythm and melody have always been important to me. I was also a physics student, very much leaning toward the mathematical side; so, technical and procedural qualities inevitably feature heavily in my approach to art.
I started writing formal poetry seriously around 2003. It wasn’t until a few years later that I began to consider more severe restrictions. By 2008 I was writing anagrams, and by 2010 I was writing palindromes. By 2012, I had begun combining these letter-based restrictions with traditional meters and forms. That was also the year I started to develop my own restrictions, such as the aelindrome.
Writing constraint-based formal poetry genuinely feels, to me, like the perfect midway point between composing a song and solving an equation. It offers the best of both worlds. This is why I do it. I also like the way it intertwines the traditional and the revolutionary; seeing something evidently experimental meet a tested, eternal method.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
The only activity I have to fit my writing around is running Penteract Press, which is becoming increasingly demanding, as we evolve from leaflet-making micro-press to full-book publisher. I normally start the day replying to emails and dealing with orders from our store. Then, for the rest of the day, I’m reading submissions, editing and designing forthcoming publications and, when the mood takes me, writing poems – with all this occasionally punctuated by a short break to walk the dog!
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
In truth, there aren’t any journals, either online or in print, that I’ll frequently read cover-to-cover. I generally dip into them when something catches my eye…. rob mclennan's Touch the Donkey is a good print zine, showcasing a variety of styles; I’ve discovered a few new poets there. Calgary’s filling Station is a good one, too.
I do most of my online poetry reading on Twitter (either directly from the Twitter box, or via links to magazines), and I’m more interested in leaflet publications and books than print journals. My preference is for art objects that focus on a single aesthetic vision, I suppose.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
I’ve been reading a lot of manuscript submissions lately, for Penteract Press, and I’ve been lamenting their relative absence of formal, metered poetry. There’s really not that much of it around, it seems…. So, it was a pleasure to read A. E. Stallings’ Like recently; it features the best formal poems I’ve read in a long while, and it was my favourite book of 2018.
I also enjoy poetry that takes inspiration from science, or which otherwise looks outward, rather than inward. Ken Hunt’s The Lost Cosmonauts is another wonderful book that has come out in the last few months.
There’s also a lot of great visual poetry around at the moment! And, while constraint-based poetry is rarer, I’m seeing a few new exciting poets in that area also: Find out which poets I mean by keeping an eye on Penteract Press….
I never really enjoyed poetry until I learned its rules; specifically, until I discovered how metre, and its nuances, can be used in combination with other devices (consonances, internal rhymes, etc.) to create music. I was a musician before I was a poet; so, form, rhythm and melody have always been important to me. I was also a physics student, very much leaning toward the mathematical side; so, technical and procedural qualities inevitably feature heavily in my approach to art.
I started writing formal poetry seriously around 2003. It wasn’t until a few years later that I began to consider more severe restrictions. By 2008 I was writing anagrams, and by 2010 I was writing palindromes. By 2012, I had begun combining these letter-based restrictions with traditional meters and forms. That was also the year I started to develop my own restrictions, such as the aelindrome.
Writing constraint-based formal poetry genuinely feels, to me, like the perfect midway point between composing a song and solving an equation. It offers the best of both worlds. This is why I do it. I also like the way it intertwines the traditional and the revolutionary; seeing something evidently experimental meet a tested, eternal method.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
The only activity I have to fit my writing around is running Penteract Press, which is becoming increasingly demanding, as we evolve from leaflet-making micro-press to full-book publisher. I normally start the day replying to emails and dealing with orders from our store. Then, for the rest of the day, I’m reading submissions, editing and designing forthcoming publications and, when the mood takes me, writing poems – with all this occasionally punctuated by a short break to walk the dog!
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
In truth, there aren’t any journals, either online or in print, that I’ll frequently read cover-to-cover. I generally dip into them when something catches my eye…. rob mclennan's Touch the Donkey is a good print zine, showcasing a variety of styles; I’ve discovered a few new poets there. Calgary’s filling Station is a good one, too.
I do most of my online poetry reading on Twitter (either directly from the Twitter box, or via links to magazines), and I’m more interested in leaflet publications and books than print journals. My preference is for art objects that focus on a single aesthetic vision, I suppose.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
I’ve been reading a lot of manuscript submissions lately, for Penteract Press, and I’ve been lamenting their relative absence of formal, metered poetry. There’s really not that much of it around, it seems…. So, it was a pleasure to read A. E. Stallings’ Like recently; it features the best formal poems I’ve read in a long while, and it was my favourite book of 2018.
I also enjoy poetry that takes inspiration from science, or which otherwise looks outward, rather than inward. Ken Hunt’s The Lost Cosmonauts is another wonderful book that has come out in the last few months.
There’s also a lot of great visual poetry around at the moment! And, while constraint-based poetry is rarer, I’m seeing a few new exciting poets in that area also: Find out which poets I mean by keeping an eye on Penteract Press….
Anthony
Etherin
is an experimental poet. He composes constrained, formal and concrete poetry,
and he invented the aelindrome. His books include Cellar (Penteract Press, 2018) and Danse Macabre (above/ground, 2018). Find him on Twitter,
@Anthony_Etherin, and via his website: anthonyetherin.wordpress.com