Joanne Epp is the author of Cattail Skyline (2021) and Eigenheim (2015). Her poems have appeared in Prairie Fire, The New Quarterly, and other journals. She is also co-translator, with Sally Ito and Sarah Klassen, of Wonder-Work: Selected Sonnets of Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (2023). She lives in Winnipeg.
You can read Inventory in the April 2025 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?
This poem started as an accumulation of odd things I noticed that all seemed to have some connection with losing and finding. I was interested in how inexplicable those processes are: how objects appear and disappear for mysterious reasons, and how quickly, after a building is demolished, I forget what used to be there.
Do you have a collection of poetry or even a single poem that acts as a touchstone?
A poem that’s been important for me is “Theirs is the Song” by Anne Szumigalski, particularly the last section (from On Glassy Wings: Poems New & Selected). Her poems mingle the everyday and the mythical in a way that’s playful, surprising, and at the same time quite matter-of-fact.
If you didn’t write poetry, how do you think you might access the same fulfillments that poetry offers in your life?
I would probably do more drawing and printmaking. Right now I do these things only sporadically, and often wish I spent more time on them, but there are only so many things I can focus on at once.
As a poet, what does creative success or achievement look like for you?
It often seems as if the readers of poetry are mostly other poets, so I am always pleased when someone who is not a poet tells me they have enjoyed my work or been touched by it in some way. And, generally, I would say success is when a poem finds a reader or a listener. Until then, it doesn’t feel entirely complete. I really like reading my work for a live audience—the electricity that’s generated as they respond to my reading. I am energized by their response.
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?
I had a revelation at some point during the lengthy process of working on my first poetry manuscript. Until then, I had mostly focused on precision of meaning and sense, but I realized that it was also important to pay attention to sound and rhythm. What triggered it, I think, was recalling a poetry book I’d reviewed a few years previously—The Occupied World by Alice Major—and remembering how assonance, alliteration, and other sonic devices gave a musical quality to those poems. It seems odd to me now—the fact that it took me so long to notice this—because I’d been making music most of my life. But I’m glad this revelation did happen, because learning to listen to my own poetry made a great difference to that manuscript.
How did you begin writing poetry? Was there a specific inspiration or reason?
I wouldn’t say there was a specific inspiration or reason, more like a growing desire to write more poetry, and to learn more about the craft of writing. It wasn’t that I felt compelled to write about some particular thing; it was more that poetry was my means of encountering and interpreting the world.
In terms of poetic style or craft, is there a big question you are trying to find an answer for?
For several years I had been thinking, off and on, about learning to write formal poetry, and wondering how to get started, and if I could actually write anything other than free verse. Having taken a class on writing in meter, I now know that I can do it. Now the question is what kind of forms suit the writing I’m doing at the moment. And whether I have the discipline to keep it up!