Interview on theVarieties of Form with Mary Cresswell

Emma: Thank you Mary for taking part in this interview! I love reading the variety of forms you use in your poetry, especially in your collection Field Notes, where there’s ghazals, sonnets, ballads, word clouds, and riddles. What’s your process for these more structured poems—do you have an idea of what form you want to tackle before you begin to write? What is appealing to you about writing with these various forms?

Mary: I can’t possibly separate poetry from form—my father’s favourite way of keeping children quiet was either reciting formal poems at us or “capping verses”—tossing out a line and waiting for us to make up a new, answering line that (1) rhymed, and (2) echoed the meter. (And this was long before school age)… I know we each have a unique definition of poetry, and mine is “licence to play silly buggers with words”, which of course can lead to anything. I often do start playing with a single line. Sometimes it turns into a couplet that would be a good end to a sonnet; sometimes I use someone else’s line as an epigraph or a refrain; sometimes I let accidental alliteration call the shots. My feeling is that the choice of form, the original decision, just happens by itself; my job is to catch it in the act.

​Emma: As well as formal poems, your collections also include pieces that are looser in structure such as prose poetry. How is your experience of writing these poems different to ones that rely heavily on structure?

Mary: Non-structured poems feel very wild and woolly to me, rather frightening, as though I were in alien territory. When I write them, I am always surprised that they sound like anything. In fact, I’m rather surprised they happen at all! But I’m getting better…

I think traditional methods must be kept alive, if for no other reason than to make it possible to care what long-gone poets were doing, or trying to do. It would be sad to see the word ‘poetry’ attached only to spontaneous explosions of language, ignoring all the clumps of words that look as though someone took time to decide how they wanted to express themselves, not just what words they felt like saying. As well, we are worrying a lot about disinformation these days: it is valuable to keep in mind that we can (if we want to) evaluate what we say before we publish it, rather than just worry about it afterwards (or not).

Emma: Nowadays, most poetry is loose, wild, and free verse dominates. In your writing, there is a focus in formal structure, rhyme, and wordplay, that isn’t often seen in modern poetry. What value do you think these traditional techniques bring to the current poetry scene? And what techniques do you use when you are experimenting with form and creating your own structures?

Mary: You asked about techniques used in creating my own form and structure, but I can’t consciously pin anything down. If I already know what I want to do—like end up with a sonnet—I will start out writing a couplet for the end and then work backwards. But I spend far far more time just faffing around, sometimes getting nowhere and sometimes (less frequently) being able to grab hold of a thread that will take me to a complete poem. I think one difference between us is that you think of writing a poem as a structured intellectual exercise and I think of it as a way to be goofy, and I’m quite OK with dropping the whole thing when I’m not getting anywhere.

Emma: You previously worked as a science editor, and there is a deep concern for nature throughout your book Body Politic, where the sky is falling and endangered species struggle to survive. How does your background in science influence the poetry you write?

Mary: My years as a science editor keep me in mind that every word has a precise definition, that everything has a specific meaning as well as any figurative meaning. These are very different, sometimes both are useful in the same poem, sometimes they are best kept separate. (As a history major not a scientist, I’m quite happy to see them mixed up.)

The need to be 100% precise was good training for poetry later. In my teens I wanted to be a writer, but working my way through university, and then family needs, was a total end to my own free time for years. When I retired I finally had the free time to take a couple of workshops and get my brain on the move. The internet opened up all sorts of destinations for poetry, and that also happened at a good time for me.

Emma: Finally, what are you currently working on, and what would you like to create in the future?

Mary: I have just finished some poems using only words from other poets’ vocabulary, from selected poems. OK, but not very edifying… I would like to learn more about poetry published via pdf, ebook, or the like (separate from a printed book edition). The immediate reason is the outrageous cost of overseas postage, but I’d certainly sign up for a class on the topic. The poetry market seems to be changing by the minute, and now that there aren’t obvious (and permanent) major publishing channels, I’m not at all sure how to keep up to date on particular areas, whether of form or of content, for both reading and submission.

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Mary Cresswell is from Los Angeles and lives on the Kāpiti Coast. Her career as a science editor took her from the Apollo Project in the US to the kākāpō recovery project for DOC, after which she took up writing poems. She has published six poetry collections plus many poems in journals.