How did you first come to poetry? What is it about the form that resonates?
Like many, I began writing as a teenager, from that angst we each think at the age is unique. And then never stopped, although my recently concluded career as a lawyer did interfere.
I suppose it’s obvious, but what resonates for me in poetry is the compression. Say as much as can be said in as few words as possible. I also respond to the music of good poetry, and often find lines and stanzas running through my head like an earworm. I have been known when walking in the forest to declaim. My dog doesn’t seem to mind.
How did publishing your first book change your writing? What have the differences been since?
It did change my goal from writing poems to writing a book. A collection of your best poems is not a book; there must be structure and purpose. It is hard.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
When I was practising law, my days were very busy, and precluded a writing schedule, but I managed to find moments here and there. One of the advantages of poetry over the longer prose forms is that you can get something done in a quiet twenty minutes.
My work involved considerable travel, and I discovered the privacy and solitude of hotel rooms, much underestimated as places to get some writing done.
Now that I no longer work full-time, and because I am an early riser, I often write before breakfast, but I am always ready to try writing in any quiet moment.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
The ones that publish my work! I’m going to prevaricate a little here, because I am a big supporter of just about any poetry journal that invites me to subscribe. But I should cut down, as I can’t read all of all of them.
What I am enjoying are the several daily poems I get in my
inbox from various sources. As they tend to come overnight it’s a good way to
start the next morning. And then get on with my own writing.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
I am a busy clipper out of poems. If a poem does excite me, I will clip the page from the magazine or print it if I found it online. I will sometimes transcribe a poem, trying to work out--How did they do that? I have binders and binders I’ve accumulated this way. There are some poets that I clip everything of theirs I encounter (that’s the “excite”) including Brenda Shaughnessy, Alice Oswald, Mattea Harvey, Jan Zwicky, and Liz Howard. I hope I am not copyright-cheating, but I do also buy their books.
A selection of his poems appeared in the seventh issue.