How did you first come to poetry? What is it about the form that resonates?
I’ve come to poetry several times over the years. First was being read to by my parents (nursery rhymes and my father’s love for slightly ribald verse). Second was in my late teens when I discovered Sylvia Plath and wrote poems full of adolescent angst. Most recently (after a long stretch when I though of myself as solely a fiction writer), the void I felt after some deaths in the family came out as poems, one of which ended up being published. At that point, I decided I needed to learn more about writing poetry and began taking workshops.
Initially, what resonated for me with the form was rhythm and cadence, sometimes humour. Later, it was the many ways in which imagery could encapsulate and condense emotion and mood. I think that both are still true for me today, with of course a growing appreciation for craft.
How does a poem begin?
A poem for me most often begins in freewriting, and that usually happens on Tuesday mornings when my critique group, the Ruby Tuesdays, meets (as we have done for the past 17 years!). We always begin with a timed writing session based on a prompt (eg. poems on a particular theme or in a particular style). I’ve accumulated a stack of the thick “Everyman’s Journals” from Lee Valley After letting those semi-coherent ramblings sit for a while (sometimes quite a while) I revisit and shape the bits that feel true into poems.
Between poetry and fiction, do you see your writing as a single, extended project, or a series of disconnected threads? How do you keep the genres straight?
As is probably evident from my answer on how a poem begins, my poetry drafts are diffuse and largely disconnected from each other, related more to the prompts that give rise to them than to any deliberate project. The work of putting together a collection is to find common threads among the poems and weave them together in a way that I hope is cohesive and compelling. My fiction generally comes from a different impetus – a character, a situation or sometimes a setting – that I use as a launching point. There are, however, some overlaps: I have sometimes used freewrites to fill in details in fiction, and a number of my poems are quite narrative. The genres mostly stay in their own lanes because of how they begin, but I am currently working on a story that I wrote because the narrative in one of my poems seemed to demand a continuation and the kind of conclusion that fiction can bring.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
I retired from my day job a few years ago so I (theoretically) can write full time. However, I find myself eminently distractable by the minutiae of daily life. I begin every day by writing in a journal. Although there is rarely anything in the journal writing that is “creative”, the practice does help ground me and provides a roadmap as to when I’ll plan writing time for the coming days or weeks. My schedule also depends on what type of project I’m engaged in. I work on poetry in shorter bursts, while fiction – especially when I was working for the first time on a novel– takes longer, more concentrated stretches of time that I have to carve out and jealously guard.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
That’s a very hard question, since there are so many magazines I love (including pretty much every one that’s been gracious enough to select my work!) To pick a few: I’ll always have an extremely soft spot for Arc Poetry Magazine. I served on the editorial board for over 10 years, including as President and Associate Poetry editor. I was still fairly new to poetry when I started, so it was my education and grounding in poetry. The work published there is always stellar. The New Quarterly and The tℇmz Review are lovely journals (one print, one online) that have always been incredibly supportive. I love new projects as much as established journals, and am grateful to have been in debut issues of several magazines, including Pinhole Poetry and (of course) talking about strawberries all of the time. I’m so appreciative of the fact that you both feature interviews with your contributors about writing.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
Again, a tough question since I tend to immerse myself
in whoever’s work I am currently reading. For fiction, that would be Irish
writer Donal Ryan whose entire catalogue I’m working my way through after
starting with his incredible first book The Spinning Heart. Recent short
fiction collections by Jennifer Falkner (Above Discovery), Kim Fu (Lesser
Known Monsters of the 21st Century) and Amy LeBlanc (Homebodies)
were all exciting in different ways. For poetry, I’m excited to be reading
Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s poetry after loving her lyrical memoir A Ghost In the
Throat and being told that her poems are equally stunning. Closer to home,
each of Annick MacAskill’s three poetry collections is wonderful so I’m excited
to read her new one, forthcoming next year. Amanda Earl is an Ottawa poet whose
range of styles and subjects is dazzling. In her long-awaited new book, Beast
Body Epic, the subject is herself: a near-death saga pieced together of
memory and delusional/mythic/fairy tale imagery. And books by my fellow
Frontenac House poets continue to impress me, particularly Kim Fahner’s Emptying
the Ocean and Skylar Kay’s Transcribing Moonlight.
Frances Boyle’s most recent book is Openwork and Limestone (Frontenac House 2022). Her earlier poetry collections are Light-carved Passages (BuschekBooks 2014) and This White Nest (Quattro Books 2019). She has also written Tower, a novella (Fish Gotta Swim Editions 2018), Seeking Shade, an award-winning short story collection (The Porcupine’s Quill 2020) and several chapbooks. Her debut novel, Skin Hunger is forthcoming in 2024, also with The Porcupine’s Quill. Originally from the prairies, Frances has long lived in Ottawa. Visit www.francesboyle.com and follow @francesboyle19.
A selection of her poems appeared in the first and
ninth issues.