Interview
with Eric Winter
1) What are your thoughts about reading your poetry
in Cobourg at the POW! Festival?
Reading aloud is the easiest way to put poetry to use, Beats publishing
by far. Here you know how it is being received, whether it's being understood,
whether it's being enjoyed. When it's in a book you never see the reader
and the odds that fame or wealth will result from publication of poetry
are too long to be worth the time and effort that goes into it.
2) Please tell
us about your most recently published book and also a little about any
other books you've had that "saw print."
Having said that I must confess to having a book published recently
by Hidden Brook Press in Brighton. There is no money in it but it is
handy to have a bundle of your poems neatly packaged in a book instead
of being scattered all through a computer. It makes them easier to find
and carry them around. For the same reason I have published three or
four small chapbooks myself.
3) At POW!, do
you plan to read pieces from your book (or books)? Do you plan to read
new, unpublished work? Will your reading be a mixture of the two?
And again, since they are easy to find ( I should say relatively easy,
often I can rarely find my place) I will be reading from material that
is nicely packaged in book form. I will also read new materials
4) How would
you describe your poetry?
I am not a hand-wringer and my poetry is usually not about me in any
serious way. Nor do I write about the delights of nature. It's not that
I don't feel them. I just find it hard to write on such subjects in
a way that is new. I have been told that I am an ironist and I'm not
particularly proud of that. An ironist tends to keep himself at a distance,
not get his hands dirty. However, he can say things that are not true
in order to reveal the truth and that's sometimes an advantage. Take
this line from The Man on the Hat' I'm all poshed up in Australia
and I say ' I evoke murmurs of envy and delight from badly dressed Australians
hunting kangaroo' You bet I do!
5) When did you
start writing poetry? What prompted you to start writing poetry?
I had written textbooks and I was always straying into metaphor and
to the poetic so I thought I should give it a try. That was some thirty
years ago
6) What inspires
you to put pen to paper / fingers to keyboard? Can you describe (a little)
your writing process in creating a new poem?
It all depends on what the poem is about and that depends on the audience
that you have in mind. Are you aiming for an audience that would be
happy reading T.S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Leonard Cohen or watching
TV - If you are not thinking of an audience for what you write you are
just blabbing. We tend to write for our peers, that can be a fault.
Who are our peers? You have to be careful there. If you are a pigeon
fancier and fill your writing with metaphors like tumbler and fantail
the audience might not want to listen. Much of what I wrote when I first
came to Cobourg was what is called occasional poetry, poetry for an
occasion. Poetry like that is for a captive listening audience and has
to be understood at first hearing - it's the oldest poetic tradition.
There's no going back to figure out what is meant. There is another
kind of poetry that has to be pondered because it stretches the reader
- what does he mean by that? What I try to do, and this can take a lot
of time, is get both in the same poem. The audience should get it the
first time and yet more if they read it again. In other words the poem
has more than one level. Some people can do this without thinking. They
are the natural poets. I wouldn't say that I am one of those..
7) The POW! Festival
is built on the notion that poetry should not be relegated to an existence
as "a niche art form" that the average person doesn't care
about.
There's more to compete with now. When Tennyson wrote 'The Charge of
the Light Brigade' and Charles Dickens gave readings of his works throughout
the United States the theatre was the only competition with the printed
or spoken word. Edison's invention of the wax cylinder recording on
the phonograph did not occur until 1878. Tennyson used it, Dickens died
too soon. I have seen two movies of War and Peace, one made in Russia
the other by the BBC. Both very good but they are only good providing
you have not read the book. So, I'm not sure that visual presentation
of stories, or poetry for that matter, is an improvement. It's just
different, like hamburgers.
Yes, poetry is a
niche art form but there's nothing wrong with that. So is golf, so is
rap. What are we afraid of, isn't that good. Canada is a country of
niches thank God!.