How did you first come to poetry? What is it about the form that resonates?
Well
this raises the question, what even is poetry? It’s non-prose, except when it
is prose; then it’s prose poetry. Poetry is based in written language but
reserves the freedom to break with any of its conventions; for example, to
break the line before the margin, to add white space within or between lines,
to go diagonal, to order words in ways that do not constitute a sentence, or to
press words into service in defiance of their usual dictionary definitions. The
poet is at the same time free to adopt one or more constraints just for fun, be
that a rhyme scheme, a regular meter, or something procedural. I’m drawn to
these freedoms, and to questions about how language works (or doesn’t).
Like many people, I first wrote poetry in adolescence. Based on a couple random anthologies I’d scored as library discards I was all fired up about William Blake, Ezra Pound and Allen Ginsberg. Then there was a gap of a few decades before coming back to the form in mid-life. Maybe it’s my mid-life crisis?
How did publishing your first book change your writing? What have the differences been since?
I wish that publishing my book was the most significant thing that happened to me in the early months of 2024, but this was not the case, and it’s tough to untangle the effects of different simultaneous events and ruptures. In terms of the book, though, I was fortunate that it had excited enough interest to result in doing some interviews over an extended period. This kept me returning to the themes of that project, mentally—explaining them, expanding on them, going on about them in ways that I might otherwise have felt I was done with after writing the original material. In effect I wound up doing some prose writing (formally or informally) about the paradoxical aspects of life in the North, and about my own rather peculiar history.
Right now I would say I’m grappling with the limitations of lyric poetry, and the desire for a poetry that can address the parts of our lives that we cannot or will not talk about. Confessional poetry made the move of saying, let’s put everything out on the table. I want to put stuff back under the table, but I want some way to gesture at the table itself, at the existence of the hidden stuff while keeping it hidden. How to do that? I’ve not cracked this nut.
The other thing that changed with book publication is that it opened the door to reviewing. I’ve written tens of thousands of words of book reviews in the last couple of years. That was a new form for me, and I’m still exploring the different things that a review can do and be.
How does a poem begin?
Having read other poets’ responses to this question, I feel like there is a right answer and a wrong answer. The right answer is that a poem begins with extensive drafting, brow furrowed, sitting down with great industry and deliberation to the work, grind, revise, work work work. The wrong answer is to wait for a poem to appear in your head and scurry to write down as much of it as possible, to be followed by light revisions, and nothing that in any way resembles a form of labour. I do it wrong.
Do you see your work as a single, extended project, or a series of threads that occasionally weave together to form something else?
Threads. Or bubbles? Things that emerge, sometimes coalesce, sometimes dissipate. I simply do not have the attention span for a vast, lifelong project. That said, it does all come out of my actual life—I don’t (so far) do a lot of writing that is research-based, where it’s focused on some abstruse topic that I don’t live day to day—so there is inherent continuity in terms of themes and interests. But I don’t think in terms of an overarching project. I think in terms of this poem, and this poem, and this poem.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
Poetry exists entirely in the in-between. I’ve never found it helpful to force it. Having a full life, and listening when something starts to bubble up on the way to the bus stop, is to me more fruitful than staring at a page trying to think of something to write down. It’s become fashionable to say that you don’t need inspiration, and maybe some poets have such a reliable connection to the channel of words that they can just sit down and start drafting poems any time, but I am not that person. I do need to wait for it. While I’m waiting, why not keep busy? Not to mention that poetry is hardly going to pay the rent.
I do make a lot of time for reading. It’s how I typically start and end each day, with a stack of books by the bed. Reading is fuel for writing, so my days are shaped around that imperative, alongside the other imperatives like work and the body and hanging out with my husband and petting all the neighbourhood cats.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
filling Station is a favorite for printing the odd and experimental. I’ve seen good things in CV2 lately (aside from that awkward plagiarism incident) and also have a soft spot for Riddle Fence, which has published some of my weirder stuff.
Online, well, talking about strawberries all of the time is pretty cool for the name alone! Also have to give a shout-out here to the rob mclennan suite of online activities: the Tuesday poems, periodicities, and so forth. That guy does more before breakfast than most poets get around to in a month. Another big favourite is Strange Horizons, which not only publishes awesome science fiction short stories and speculative poetry, but also takes criticism seriously. This includes book reviews (I’m on the roster there), podcasts, and essays dissecting various aspects of the field. Every week!
Who are some of the writers you have engaged with lately that most excite you?
Some
new books I read in the past year or two that blew my mind include Lorna
Goodison’s translation of Dante’s The Inferno into a Jamaican-inflected
English, physician Conor Mc Donnell’s book-length medical-themed poem What
we know so far is …, and Zane Koss’ brilliant meditation on rural men’s
storytelling in Country Music. I’ve also taken heart from Derek
Beaulieu’s extended manifesto, Do It Wrong. All these books open up
fresh possibilities for what the written word can do.
Dawn Macdonald lives in Whitehorse, Yukon where she grew up without electricity or running water. Her poetry collection Northerny (University of Alberta Press) won the 2025 Canadian First Book Prize and was longlisted for the Nelson Ball Prize. Her most recent publication is the chapbook Weeds of Canada (above/ground press).