"A Conversation with Hayan Charara"
"Whatever choices I make, I don't call it a day until I'm as certain as I can be that the poem is doing some version of knocking the reader's head off, however that manifests—breaking their heart, stopping them in their tracks, compelling them to rethink or reexamine something. I do focus on all the things that collectively fall under form's domain: syntax, line endings, enjambment, stanza breaks, poetic structures, turns, and so on."
via MCSWEENEY'S |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Billy-Ray Belcourt (Driftpile Cree Nation, Alberta) on Ecopoetry Now
"On the coast of Lesser Slave Lake, some of the Canadian government's most brutal forms of colonial oppression played out. I wonder what it means for a lake to be witness to all of it. In a way, that trauma is inscribed in the lake's ontological fabric. But, more importantly, I see the lake as proof of my people's indomitability. The lake precedes the political project of Alberta, of Canada; it precedes the concept of the settler state. The lake has been and continues to be a locus of Cree livability." |
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