One Night Stanzas

You’ve already seen Juliet’s poems, and I hope you’ve also had a chance to check out her personal blog and her fantastic zine, too. Now you can read a bit more about Juliet, her poems and her creative process…

Tell us about your poems.
Anyone who knows me only through my Crafty Green Poet blog could be forgiven for thinking that I only write about nature and the environment. On the other hand, anyone who only knows me from my performances at the now defunct Edinburgh cabaret nights Kin and Silencio could be forgiven for thinking that all I write are angsty personal poems about lost love. In fact I write about everything from alienation to zebras with the occasional surreal poem that seems to defy description or definition. I write a lot of haiku, quite a few ghazals and a lot of free verse.

How long have you been writing?
I started writing poetry when I was living and teaching in Malawi for two years in my early twenties, but it took a while for me to start taking it seriously.

Do you have any publications to your name? What’s the next stage for your work?
I’ve been quite widely published in print journals (recently in Blithe Spirit, the journal of the British Haiku Society, and Wisteria, a US based haiku journal) and online (recently on Words Myth and Shamrock.) I also had a poem in The Book of Hopes and Dreams which also included poems from poets such as Margaret Atwood. A few years ago I self published a pamphlet ‘Bougainvillea Dancing’ that raised over £200 for charities working in Malawi. I’m not sure what the next stage is, though I’m starting to facilitate writing workshops and I’m sure there’s much more I can do with combining poetry and crafts.

What do you think is your biggest poetic achievement to date?
I think I’ve made had quite a few achievements that I’m proud of, but given that I am not a natural performer and also because it’s the closest I’ve got to ‘being famous’ I’d say performing my poetry on the main music stage at the Meadows Festival in Edinburgh a couple of years ago in front of an audience of around 100. Being recognised in the street afterwards gave me a real buzz…

What’s the best thing about writing poetry? And the worst?
The best thing about writing poetry is that I can do it anywhere - many are the train journeys and business meetings that have given rise to haiku.
The worst is that poetry doesn’t pay and so I need a real job as well…..

Got any suggestions for young, upcoming poets?
Read loads of poetry, read so much that poetry floods your brain, read as many different poets as you can to avoid being overly influenced by any one poet and also to experience as many as you can of the different possibilities poetry offers
Go to lots of poetry events - to hear poetry spoken and to meet other poets
Start a blog and share your poetry with the world
Join in an online poetry community such as Read Write Poem (http://readwritepoem.org) which offers prompts to get you writing, ideas for extending your writing and a friendly and encouraging community of writers to share your work with.

Who/what influences your poetry?
nature, conversation, music, visual art, news stories, novels, languages and dialects, eavesdropping on conversations, …. poets who particularly inspire me include Margaret Atwood and Ruth Padel.

Vertigo

She is panic attacked by the vertigo of wanting you,
the sweet sad darkness of desire,
the magnetic north of you.
The undertow.

Dream-stated by watching you dance
she anticipates more than fate could give,
loses sleep and weight,
creates unconsoling poetry from stolen glances,
waits for chances that will never come.

She is haunted by the knowledge
of all she will never know,
wishes the impossibility of you
were not so complete.

Wants to learn
how to fall.

(Photo by Bangkok_diary)

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Tags: advice for young writers, featured poet juliet m wilson interviewed, publishing, resources for young writers, young poets

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under ONS Featured Poet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.