Interviewed by Halle Gulbrandsen

Ben Ladouceur is a writer and teacher whose debut collection of poems, Otter, was published by Coach House Books in 2015. It quickly impressed the literary world with its honest voice and lyrical charm. His work has been featured in many literary magazines such as Arc, The Malahat Review, PRISM international and The Walrus. He was awarded the Earle Birney Poetry Prize in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Type Book Award in 2015. Originally from Ottawa, now based in Toronto, Ben graciously agreed to converse with me over email and again showed his wit in answering these questions about his life as a writer.

Why poetry?

This is a question I’ve fielded a few times since Otter came out, and a question I’ve read in many interviews with poets. I have never seen someone ask a novelist, “Why novels?” Everybody writes poems in elementary school. All I did was remain in that state of poem-production. I don’t see that as misconduct, though apparently it is, because most adults aren’t writing poems. But sometimes I want to grab strangers on the subway and shake them and ask, “Why not poetry??”

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Interviewed by Patrick Connolly

Kate Hall is a poet whose first book, The Certainty Dream, was shortlisted for the prestigious Griffin Prize in 2010. She completed her BA and MA in Creative Writing at Concordia University and has since been published in Boston Review, jubilat, PRISM, The Malahat Review, Arc, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, and LIT. She is currently on maternity leave from her post at Dawson College in Montreal.

How did you get your start in writing?

I don’t know when I got my start in writing really. I’ve written as long as I can remember, which seems sort of a lame thing to say; probably everyone who is a writer has written for a long time. I wrote when I was kid and as a teenager and I guess somewhere someone decides that the poems are worth reading. I would have kept writing anyway but that’s how it happened. There are two things that happen in getting your start as a writer. One of them is internal and how you feel about your own writing, the creative choices you make, the projects you embark on. Other things you have much less control over like how other people respond. A writer’s work happens so much in the dark, alone and it’s important that someone tell you it’s worth it. I am not talking in the sense of getting published or of having a first book because those things are very different. But somewhere along the line, someone has to tell you that you belong to the poetry. I’m sure every writer has had that experience, although probably they wouldn’t express it in those words. I have also been lucky enough to have had that experience or who knows?

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Interviewed by Shannon Rayne

Billeh Nickerson is a poet, performer, editor and teacher. He is the author of four poetry collections of poetry —The Asthmatic Glassblower; McPoems; Impact: The Titanic Poems; and Artificial Cherry— and the humour collection Let Me Kiss It Better. He is also co-editor of Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay Male Poets. His most recent book, Artificial Cherry, was shortlisted finalist for the 2014 City of Vancouver Book Award. He is the Chair of the Creative Writing department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.  www.billeh.com

You incorporate a lot of humour, sarcasm, wit and irony in your poetry – making both your poetry and your readings a joy to encounter. What are the advantages of using humour as a writing tool for you?  What does it allow you to do in your writing? 

Hmmm, that’s an interesting question as I find that humour has been beneficial to my work, but it also causes some folks to undervalue what I do. I love it when readers let their guard down after laughing. That’s the best time to pull a knife of an image or situation on them. That ability is the advantage. It can also start the conversation on taboo and political topics. [Read more…]

Interviewed by Maegan Cortens

Amy De’Ath was born in Suffolk in 1985. Her poetry books include Lower Parallel (Barque 2014), Caribou (Bad Press 2011), and Erec & Enide (Salt 2010). With Fred Wah, she is the editor of a collection of poetry and poetics, Toward. Some. Air. (Banff Centre Press 2015). Her critical writing has appeared in Anguish Language (Archive Books, 2015), and Cambridge Literary Review. She is a PhD student at Simon Fraser University and works on the poetics journal Line. She lives in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories.

What was one of your earliest encounters with poetry that has had a lasting effect?

Here’s a cute anecdote: I’m not a massive Sylvia Plath fan, but when I was 17 and leaving the college at my high school (Sudbury Upper School), I went to return this first edition copy of Plath’s Ariel to the school library. I had renewed it so many times but previous to that it hadn’t been borrowed from the library since 1976. The librarian handed it back to me and told me to keep it, which made me feel good because, in her opinion, I was a person worth that book, worth reading it. I guess that feels significant because I think you have to have a certain amount of confidence to read poetry, let alone write and publish it. [Read more…]

Interviewed by Lang C. Miller
Photo by Kim Soles

Hal Sirowitz is an internationally known poet and the author of five books of poetry: Mother Said; My Therapist Said; Before, During and After; Father Said; and Stray Cat Blues. His work has been translated into thirteen languages and published in many anthologies and magazines. He was awarded the Nebraska Book Award for Poetry, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He is also the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York. Hal has performed and appeared on MTV’s Spoken Word Unplugged; Lollapalooza; Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival; the Helsinki International Poetry Festival; the Jerusalem Conference of Writers and Poets; PBS’s Poetry Heaven; NPR’s All Things Considered; PBS’s The United States of Poetry and Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Garrison Keillor has read many of Hal’s poems on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac and he has included Hal’s poems in his anthologies Good Poems and Good Poems for Hard Times.

Hal Sirowitz is a retired New York City public school teacher. He lives with his wife, the writer Minter Krotzer, in Philadelphia.

Your poems always seem to be lightened up with humour, and that especially comes through when you perform them. How important is comedy to you in your writing?

I always saw myself as a poet, though some people in the audience thought I could make it as a comedian. Once, I met a radio personality from upstate New York who owned a comedy club in Binghampton. He arranged for me to perform with a comedian. The guy was a hypnotist who would get women in the audience to get on stage to pretend to strip. His audience – he was the opening act – didn’t like me. That was the end of my comedian career. I think there’s a fine line between comedy and my work. Unlike most comedians I only make fun of myself, never others. I’m thinking of Joan Rivers’ Elizabeth Taylor’s jokes. My poetry is a blend of humor and seriousness. When I’m writing I usually don’t try to be funny. My work has to look good on the page, unlike most comedians who couldn’t care less. [Read more…]