Posts By: Kathryn Maris
On teaching, writing and saying goodbye
Several of my posts for this residency have mentioned my former teachers. Now a teacher myself, I sometimes repeat or repackage their advice. If you have been in any of my classes, my teachers have effectively been your teachers too. A teacher who was particularly special to me was Roger Erickson. A celebrated English teacher,…
Kathryn Maris
Poetry and Multimedia II
In this installment of interviews with poets and performers who have combined poetry with other media we hear from actor Robert Bathurst, who is staging and starring in a double-bill of Christopher Reid’s A Scattering and The Song of Lunch at the Chichester Festival; Jacqueline Saphra, poet and poetry school tutor whose book If I…
Kathryn Maris
Poetry & Multimedia I
A recent trend in UK poetry is what I might call ‘multimedia projects’ or ‘live literature,’ a development that interests me for several reasons. Like many poets, I have a love-hate relationship with poetry readings. As an audience member, I find that some readings can feel electric or even transcendent. But others can be dull,…
Kathryn Maris
Bob
In defence of the sestina: part 4 Here is an incorrect story I tell. My story is that Jonah Winter’s ‘Sestina: Bob’ appeared alongside my poem ‘Ophthalmology at Dawn’ in an issue of Ploughshares. ‘Sestina: Bob’ was literally across the page from my poem, I tell people. It was literally sneering at my poem, exposing…
Kathryn Maris
On Manifestos, Arrogance and Judgment
Manifestos are arrogant. But so is any scribble to paper or canvas because art is an act of arrogance. When God created the world it was an act of arrogance. The creation of a creation myth that ascribed creation to God was an act of arrogance. Arrogance is an ugly trait. Silence, however, can signal…
Kathryn Maris
I know what I know, says the almanac
In defence of the sestina: part 3 ‘Sestina’, a widely anthologised poem, is one of two sestinas Elizabeth Bishop published. (The other is ‘A Miracle for Breakfast’.) I first came across ‘Sestina’ in the third edition of The Norton Anthology of Poetry, the doorstopper required for a creative writing class with WN Herbert in 1987….
Kathryn Maris
Hockey, hockey
In defence of the sestina, part 2 Once in a while, for no reason at all, these lines go through my head: Call me Zamboni. Nights my job is hockey.I make the ice and watch the kids take slapshotsAt each other. They act like Esposito. They are the first three lines of a poem called…
Kathryn Maris
Everyone Hates a Sestina
In defence of the sestina, part 1 Almost every poet has heard someone dismiss sestinas. Perhaps you, yourself, have dismissed sestinas. Sam Riviere, in his review of Christopher Reid’s Six Bad Poets in The Poetry Review, wrote: ‘I dread a sestina as much as the next person,’ taking for granted the inevitability of that viewpoint….
Kathryn Maris