Poet, novelist and memoirist Carmelo Militano invited me to chat on the PI New Poetry Show on CKUW (95.9 FM in Winnipeg). So here I am, talking about writing and talking about myself for 30 minutes.
Themes: why do you write?, favourite genres, dealing with rejection, trying to earn a living as a writer, prize culture and its effect on literature, are writers inherently weird?
And since it’s a poetry show, I close with a poem I’ve written.
In Response to the 127th Call This Week For Resistance Poems
By Bob Armstrong
Yeats should have asked a referee:
“Can centres hold, or not?”
That figure slouches still upon the burning sand.
Someone call a chiropractor, stat!
And you, ‘neath a synthetic sun,
Peer down upon your magic box,
Reciting maledictions on your foes.
Can you these tools create, repair, replace?
Could you wage war on want
Like Cana’s holy sommelier
With fixes quick (that’s bad enough),
But worse still, pre-, and worse still, suff-?
‘Gainst neos, phobes and ‘splainers
You’ll this exorcism lead
And start again at Zero Year
(“It’s been done? What’s that I hear?”)