Atma Frans lives in Gibsons, B.C. on the beautiful, unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh people. Her poetry has won awards and has been published in Arc Poetry Magazine, CV2, TNQ, Prairie Fire Magazine and Lighthouse Literary Journal among others. In her writing, Atma searches for the voice beneath her personas: woman, mother, designer, trauma survivor, queer, author.
You can read How Joy has Driven its Roots Into Me in the July 2024 issue.
If you didn’t write poetry, how do you think you might access the same fulfillments that poetry offers in your life?
The medium feels less important to me than the experience of creating something from nothing. As a child, I was always drawing or sculpting, and before I wrote poetry, I worked as an architect. Any form of creation gives me tremendous joy.
How do you revise your work?
I read the poem out loud and listen to its flow. I cut anything superfluous and move lines around. Then, I look for moments in the poem that need expanding, that I need to lean into further. When I’m happy with a draft, I run the poem by other poets before polishing it into its final form.
As a poet, what does creative success or achievement look like for you?
A poem is successful when I discover that it has moved another, whether it’s a reader commenting on social media, a judge or magazine editor selecting it, or a friend enjoying it. Recently a close friend passed away and in the last weeks he kept a chapbook of my poetry on his bedside table. That my words offered solace is more meaningful than any external recognition.
We love the artistic underdogs, the experimentalists, the lovely weirdos — who or what might you get creative joy or energy from that others might not be aware of yet?
Play in any form.
What are you working on now?
I’m completing a collection of poetry on living with (generational) trauma and returning to joy and vibrancy. I’m also working on a manuscript of linked stories circling the same subject.
How or where or with what does a poem begin?
A poem begins with an image, a feeling, or an idea. Sometimes it starts with a line of another poem that intrigues me, or that I don’t fully understand. Usually writing a poem is an exploration, a search for an answer. It happens very rarely that a poem arrives in a burst of energy and lands fully formed on the page.
What are you reading or watching or listening to lately that intrigues or inspires you?
I’m currently reading “1996” by Sara Peters, “Postcolonial Love Poem” by Natalie Diaz and “Music for the Dead and Resurrected” by Valzhna Mort. I’m enjoying how these poets mix strangeness with recognizable imagery and linear narrative. The poems are startling, intriguing and delightful while gesturing to meaning beyond the words on the page. I admire how these three collections talk about the impacts of personal or political violence as well as about desire and the resilience of the human heart while pushing the boundaries of language, of what a poem can be or do.
Have you ever received advice (or has there been something you’ve learned on your own) about writing or revising poems that has made you a better poet? What was it?
Robert Bly told me in a beginner’s workshop to start a poem with the first image that comes to mind and to trust the words that spring from it, to follow them till they carry you to a new place (and then to discard the initial stanza). Nearly a decade later, I still consider this advice useful, the idea of surrendering to language, and to continue the poem till you arrive at a surprise or a discovery.
More recently, Wayne Holloway-Smith taught me the power of using discontinuity in poetry, how a poem improves when it steps away from its linear narrative and looks at something different before returning to its main topic, and how a pause or a digression can amplify the impact of what follows.
Do you belong to a writer’s group? If not, where do you find poetry community and feedback?
I belong to two local groups in which we write together, share our prose or poetry, and give feedback on the spot: what resonates in the work, what we love, and what’s not clear. I also belong to a monthly international poetry critique group in which we give each other critical in-depth comments focused on craft and composition. All three groups nurture my work and offer me a delightful experience of community.
I also frequently attend advanced poetry classes or seminars at The Poetry School in London, UK. It’s stimulating to discuss poems with an accomplished peer group under the guidance of an award-winning poet and to expose myself to a variety of poetic voices.