CURRENT ISSUE

The Strange & Luminous:
Jeremy Audet interviews Patrick Grace

What are you going to look for in a winning poem? What makes a winning poem stand out for you?

I want the winning poem to hit me in the gut from the first line in. With a 60-line limit for the Far Horizons contest, every word has to matter. Be meticulous, not spare. I’ll be looking for a poem that breaks my heart or makes it leap with joy, or wonder, or nostalgia. Send in strange and luminous poems. Take me to a moment in time, something you can’t forget. Tell me a story not often spoken. Make it gold. I love diction that’s uncommon but still accessible, the rare nouns and verbs that make me go Damn, I wish I’d written that.

Did you find yourself coming back to certain writers or poems while drafting and compiling your debut collection, Deviant? If so, which?

In the final stages of editing, I read Richie Hofmann’s A Hundred Lovers and fell in love with the simple, spare erotica of his poetry. I also discovered Ocean Vuong’s two poetry collections, Time Is a Mother and Night Sky With Exit Wounds—the initial jurors were kind enough to draw parallels between Vuong’s poetic voice and my own, and I was curious. I hadn’t read any of his work until that moment. Most of all, I turned inward to my own poems and my own voice. I believe this is one of the hardest parts of writing, but discovering your own tone and style of poetry will lead you to a greater source—a writing professor once told me that, and I’ve never forgotten it!

Deviant navigates the intersection of queerness, trauma, and violence, something your 2020 Open Season Poetry Award-winner, “A Violence,” did as well. Why should writing broach difficult topics, and what about poetry makes it an effective tool for doing so?

“A Violence” was one of those poems that poured forth after many failed scribblings. I think as writers we easily fall into a personal, familiar technique, and this poem broke that habit. I took a new path toward disjointed writing that I enjoy much more than my usual narrative. And that helped broach the discussion of intimate partner violence, because it was a poem that was “not me,” in a way. I discovered a new voice and used it to fuel the need for justice over what happened, the need to have this story told. The age-old question Are you writing this for yourself, or for the world, and why? surfaced over and over while writing “A Violence,” but I was tired of the silence. Tired of not finding these stories in Canadian literature. Poetry should be the voice for those of us who can’t share our traumas any other way.

What did winning the 2020 Open Season Poetry Award mean to you, as a then-upcoming writer?

I’ll admit it: I used to have a love/hate relationship with poetry (I wonder how many other poets feel the same). In my early days as a writer, I was too insecure in my work to take it seriously, too busy with day jobs, but the urge to write nagged and nagged at me. I needed to make space for it, a little every day or every week. Continuity is important. Winning the Open Season Poetry Award in 2020 proved to me, at least in that moment, that I “have it,” and that someone (thank you, A. Light Zachary) believed in me, in what I had to say. And that led me to take more time for my writing, to create poems in the same voice as “A Violence”—skip ahead a few years, and here we are with my first poetry collection, Deviant. In short: make time for your writing, a little bit every day.

What would you suggest every submitter look out for while reviewing their entries?

Poets should ask themselves: why this poem, and why now? Is it saying the most—or perhaps the least—that you want to say? Check every word you’re using—why that word on that line? Are the subject matter and structure of the poem connected (narrative, prose, experimental, lyric)? Rein in those feelings! Try and reveal just enough to leave the reader wanting more, enough to crave a beautiful sequel to the piece.

You’ve said you believe “poetry should be in its most raw form.” Is this still the case? What’s your process like, from first idea to first draft to revision to completed piece?

Absolutely. The more you write, the more you can remove. Chip away at the large rock and you’re left with something that glimmers. Lately when I write, it’s all notes in my phone. I try to get the scaffold of a poem or at least a few strong lines, and then I leave it for a few weeks and go back to it, adding and taking away. Always taking away. Then I put it all into my computer and touch them up some more. I was very lucky to be able to work with Annick MacAskill as the editor for Deviant. She showed me that less is more—but first, you need the more!

 

 

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