Cole Mash (he/him) is a poet, scholar, writer, teacher and community arts organizer who lives on unceded Syilx-Okanagan territory in Kelowna, BC. He has performed poetry locally and nationally for over 10 years, and his creative work has been published in CV2, Forget Magazine, The Eunoia Review, and anthologized in The Quiet Minds Anthology and Papershell X. His lyric-memoir, What You Did is All it Ever Means, was published with Broke Press in 2021. Cole has a wonderful partner, four kiddos, and two kitties whom he loves all the way to the bottom.
You can read his poem 2.0 Celsius in the October 2023 issue.
Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem? For instance, how or why you wrote it, or perhaps provide some extra context?
I wrote this poem for an event I was doing called Our Wicked Problems, which is part of the Climate Change Theatre Action Cabaret. I performed in a play as well as performing my own poems for 4 nights. So, it is actually part of a longer suite of performance poems dealing with climate crisis, this being one section.
Why was the poetic form the best fit for this particular piece of work?
At the time, I was working in a shorter form, using unrhyming couplets a lot. I felt that with the kind of sideways, surreal sort of poems I was writing, the couplets gave them an air of structure and readability that wasn’t really there in a more cascading style of verse.
Do you have a collection of poetry or even a single poem that acts as a touchstone?
Books of poetry that inspire me are always changing. Right now, I am knee-deep in scholarly books and writing, so poetry feels a little far away. But John Ashbery’s “At First I Thought I Wouldn’t Say Anything About it” is never far from my mind, and a poem I am teaching again this term at OC.
If you didn’t write poetry, how do you think you might access the same fulfillments that poetry offers in your life?
I would love to play music, and write lyrics, but I suppose that’s not very different.
How do you revise your work?
Painstakingly. I tend to write more than I need or like, and cut about 80% of it or sell it off for parts. Then it’s a lot of rewriting and rewriting and reading the work at events so I can hear if I like it. Then more chopping and reorganizing. Somewhere at the end I worry about proofreading, much to the chagrin of my first readers and colleagues haha.
What are you working on now?
I have a book-length lyric memoir that is hybrid poetry and prose and mediated artifacts. It will be going out to presses very soon after a final edit.
How or where or with what does a poem begin?
I am always writing things down. Lately, I have been working with personal narrative a lot so it often begins with stories or moments in my life.
Are there other art forms that inspire or inform your poetry?
I listen to a lot of music, which always inspires me. But I know a lot of folks are inspired by visual art or sculpture or high art things like that. Sometimes I wish that I was more cultured, and maybe as a PhD candidate and academic I should be, but my working-class roots lead me more to cartoons and punk rock than art galleries. So, the short answer is that I guess my writing practice is largely inspired by other texts (whether that is poetry, music, TVs, or whatever) but those texts come from a wide range of genres.
How do you make space for poetry in your daily routine?
I try for 10 minutes a day. I have 4 kids so even that isn’t always possible. But I try to write on the bus or in line at the grocery store on my phone—wherever I can fit it in.
What are you reading or watching or listening to lately that intrigues or inspires you?
For TV, I am pretty stoked on the new season of The Bear, as well as the new Star Wars Show Ashoka. I am listening to the new Spanish Love Songs and Screaming Females records, while eagerly anticipating the new Gaslight Anthem. For books, I have been part-way through Stephen Collis’ Almost Islands for awhile. I haven’t gotten through it because of how much reading my PhD and teaching at Okanagan College demands of me, not because I am not enjoying it.
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?
One of the best pieces of advice I think came from Anne Fleming, but my memory sucks so who knows. But it’s the old adage that in order to be a better writer, or finish a piece, sometimes you just have to live a little bit longer. It’s something I carry with me. Something that encourages me to take time with my writing, to put it down when it’s not working, and to know that living, too, is an important part of writing.
Do you belong to a writer’s group? If not, where do you find poetry community and feedback?
I run a non-profit in Kelowna called Inspired Word Café along with my partner Erin Scott and the IWC Collective. So, I regularly perform my work, which is helpful. I don’t have a traditional print-based coterie, but I have some close writer friends who are always willing to give something a look.
In terms of poetic style or craft, is there a big question you are trying to find an answer for?
No.