Billeh Nickerson : part five

How important is music to your poetry?

This question can be interpreted in so many ways! I am a firm believer/practitioner of reading my poems out loud during the writing process. Like hundreds and hundreds of times. That’s where the musicality plays out. In terms of writing, I’ve often listened to favourite music when writing, and lately I’ve been experimenting with listening to songs on repeat. Like the same song for an hour. I find it helps me to zone out everything else and just focus on the poem.  

Billeh Nickerson : part four

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?

I’m probably a bad poet for saying/doing this, but I find that reading a novel and/or binge watching movies most brings out my poetry muse. Maybe it’s the word “renewal” that’s tricky here. I will read favourite poems to ground me or affirm my life, though I don’t consider that renewal. I need to leave poetry and escape to something else before I can return.

Billeh Nickerson : part three

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

Frank O’Hara and David Trinidad – for their queering and pop culture possibilities

Jordan Scott – for making me rethink and reconsider each syllable

Jordan Abel – for magnifying and isolating beyond simple narrative

Lorna Crozier – for craft and humour as well as her take on the confessional

I also remember quitting my job at McDonald’s and buying a copy of Margaret Atwood’s selected poems with my last pay cheque. I told her this once, but I don’t think she could get past the fact that I worked at McDonald’s. Lol. We were/are very different writers, but my younger self loved the way she acknowledged devastation and oddness.

Billeh Nickerson : part two

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

It’s funny how folks use “music” to cover all types of music, though they have a very limited view when they say “poetry”. I’ve taken to saying “poetries” to remind folks of the multitudes of poetries and poetics out there.

While I may not write in all styles, I read widely and engage with orality and interdisciplinary works. I don’t think I’m as precious in my view of what can be a poem, though I’m not sure I was all that precious to begin with. I believe the earlier generations of poets, often my mentors, were more entrenched by poetics and poetic camps. The younger generations are much more fluid and open to hybridity.

Billeh Nickerson : part one

Billeh Nickerson is the author of five books including the City of Vancouver Book Award nominated Artificial Cherry. He is the former editor of PRISM international and Event, two of Canada’s most respected literary journals, and a co-editor of Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay Male Poets. He is also a former writer-in-residence at Queen’s, the University of the Fraser Valley, and at the Berton House in Dawson City, Yukon. He is permanent faculty and former Chair of Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Creative Writing department in Surrey, BC. He lives—and loves—in Vancouver.

How did you first engage with poetry?

My high school Writing 12 class, where I’d write poems that I would sometimes read out, impromptu, to people in the cafeteria. In retrospect, these pieces were strange hybrids of stand-up (RIP Joan Rivers), youthful angst and a poet struggling to understand and develop form.

When I started at college I was fortunate to work with Jane Southwell Munro, who helped me understand more of the possibilities of poetry. I believe she and Lorna Crozier, who I worked with at the University of Victoria, have had the most profound impact on my work. I feel that much of my understanding on craft and poetic density stems from them.