Some folks know I am married to a Canadian woman, and so, I am American but have aspects of life that include Hockey, Snow, Coffee Crisps, Canadian Football *Go Argos* and Canadian Culture. On twitter one person rose to the top of my engagement there, and it was Richard LeDue. He is a Poet, Teacher, Canadian, and a fun person to interact with. He is someone I very much appreciate, and for more than simply his poetry.
As most poets are either poets from life and avocation or academia and an evolution towards creating their own style, describe your becoming a poet. Is it just a matter of having the tools of a writer, or are their significant factors that create a poet? I've had people tell me Hallmark cards are poetry, but similarly deny that music lyrics are poetry. If you heard such commentary, would you have anything to help either party perceive what is poetry, versus a ditty or lyrics accompanying music?
I remember reading poetry in high school and just being stunned at the depth of the language. I thought it was the coolest thing ever when words took on additional meanings, or when a metaphor was unpacked to discover a meaning that wasn't apparent on the first reading. Of course, then I was being exposed to the canonical “greats” like Wordsworth, Shakespeare, etc. This led me to believe all poetry had to rhyme or follow a certain metrical pattern, which is something I completely abandoned eventually. I even went through a phase when I wrote poems without punctuation or capital letters, which proved to be a bit too extreme, as I later discovered.
I really can't remember ever having a time in my adult life when I wasn't writing. I've taken “breaks,” where I wrote less, and even went through a period when I had given up on being a “poet.” I still wrote, but was content with no one reading it. Secretly, I thought I was a under appreciated genius, but when I reread those poems now, I absolutely cringe. I was terrible. I didn't start becoming a better poet until a few years ago. The same was true in my university days. I wrote a poem a day, and even started writing in rhyming couplets and sonnets, but again, most of those works were also garbage. All of this turned me into a strong believer in you have to write a lot of crap to get at the good stuff.
My improvement as a writer came from finding a poetry workshop website called, “Pig Pen Poetry.” The way that site worked was that you had to critique and give feedback on other people’s poems in order for them to critique your poems. I spent almost two years, focusing on improving as a writer, and learned a lot, such as a mistrust of needless repetition in poetry. Working on that site made me rediscover the value of punctuation and capitalization as well. I got to interact with a lot of brilliant folks there, and I can't thank them enough for helping me become a much better poet.
What degree of locale appears in your work? I think it is obvious that any poet creates from a sense of place, but how deeply does being a Manitoban, or a Canadian, or North American impact upon your work? What would you suggest are the factors that lead to a greater impact than others for most poets?
I live in Northern Manitoba, so I write about snow quite often. That probably sounds like a stereotypical Canadian thing. I am probably best classified as a confessional poet, so when I come up with something interesting to say about my locale, I usually write it down. The funny thing is that the way I write poetry seems to be more appreciated in the States and other countries, rather than in Canada. My limited success as a poet has mostly come from American, European and Asian publications, so, ironically, I don't really think my work resonates with Canadian poetry readers. Both my chapbooks are published/ forthcoming from an American publisher (Kelsey Books), and the bulk of journals/magazine that have published my work have been non-Canadian. Don't get me wrong, I am proud to be a Canadian writer, but I am also thankful for international publications that have liked my poetry enough to publish it. Needless to say, I don't expect CBC radio and the Canada Council for the Arts to be knocking on my door anytime soon.
To be completely honest, I write for purely selfish reasons. I like expressing how I'm feeling and my thoughts about what's happening around me. If that means writing about my locale, then I will. However, I don't really identify as a “Manitoban” poet. I prefer just to think of myself as writer or a poet.
What can a poet do to interest non poets in poetry, and what can a poet learn from society's perceptions about poetry that can lead him or her to creating works that DO interest the non poetry reader? Or should they let anything change their ethos and aesthetic? Why or why not?
Again, I write for purely selfish reasons. If there's any measure of success for me, it's having someone agree to publish me, and an even a higher measure would be getting paid for something I wrote. I'm in the minority because I believe when a non poetry reader likes what I've wrote, then I did something authentic. Over the years, I've actually started to despise poems that you need a decoder ring to figure them out. Poems aren’t supposed to confound people, but should be something that stirs up emotion in the reader. The problem is that because a lot of poetry is obscure, a lot people figure it's not for them, and I don't blame them. For example, Rupi Kaur's poems is often criticized as being “bad” poetry, but it resonates with a lot of feeling. Do I think Kaur is the best poet alive today? No. However, I completely understand why her work has appeal to readers, especially her first book, “Milk and Honey.” The poems in there are rich in authentic emotion. We need more of that, if we want more people reading poetry.
What poets move you the most, and why?
My go to answer here is always Charles Bukowski, Al Purdy and Margaret Atwood. However, I've talked about them in other interviews, so I'll talk about another poet that has influenced me, Dawn Fraser. He was from the same place as me, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, which blew my mind when I discovered him. I had, up to that point, always thought poets as from places like London, Paris, or even Toronto, but never from where I was from. As well, he was the first poet to make me realize you didn't have to have been taught in high school (i.e. Shakespeare) to be important, so he showed me that writing wasn't about being wildly successful. By all accounts, he is an obscure poet, but he wrote about what he thought was important, that being the labour movement in Cape Breton. Dawn Fraser was a complete communist too, so his writing was a bit radical. One of my favourite poems by him recounts how his father wouldn’t let him join the boy scouts because they were, in his view, just a propaganda tool.
Although Bukowski was nothing like Fraser because he was widely successful and definitely not a communist, he always said writing needs to be authentic. Fraser's writing was totally authentic. I try to do the same in my own work. One of my favourite poems I've had published was “Love Can Live Outside of Words” (published by Boston Literary Magazine), which is about my son Ramsey, who is autistic. The poem expresses the complex feelings I have about struggling to understand him, since he's mostly non-verbal. It might be one of the most authentic pieces I have ever written.
What paths to being published have you followed to arrive where you are now?
I started submitting to journals when I was in university. The closest I ever got to being published in those was an acceptance that was rescinded because the journal lost its funding. I didn't know the first thing about submitting, so I sent my poems to some of the more established journals in Eastern Canada, such as Fiddlehead, The Dalhousie Review, The Antigonish Review, etc. Twenty years later and I'm still unpublished in those academic journals. However, I discovered smaller avenues for publication in 2018 and have had much more success with being published ever since. Every now and then, I still send work to places like Fiddlehead, but I mostly focus on smaller/independent publications now. My mindset has always been to get as much out there published as you can. As much as I like to say I write for myself, it is nice when someone else connects with one of your poems. Plus, I spent such a long time being unpublished, that I might be overcompensating at this point.
I wouldn't be where I am at currently as a writer, if not for the rejections though. Rejection is part of being a writer. My first chapbook, “The Loneliest Age,” was a pleasant surprise because it was accepted by the second press that I sent it to. However, my second chapbook, “The Kind of Noise Worth Writing Down,” was only accepted after I had lost count on how many times it was rejected (it even merged with another failed manuscript I was working on at one point), but I think all that helped me edit my second book into a much stronger collection. Even now, I have been rejected by places that have 100% acceptance rates on Submission Grinder. It's all very humbling, but also a good reminder that I'm not Shakespeare and never will be.
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