Kilmeny MacMichael writes from a small town in western Canada’s Okanagan Valley. She has over two dozen short works published, including with Short Édition, Cirque and antilang magazine. You can read ‘Verb in the January 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?
I am lucky to have lived 40 years of life as of September 2024. As a creative challenge for myself while I was 39, I decided to write a poem for each day. Somewhat to my surprise, I was able to do so, although only by creating several poems some days, madly scribbling anything down to make up for the days I missed. I tried out a number of different “ways” of writing poetry during that time, and ‘Verb was one of the results. While I have been consistently writing fiction stories for a decade or so, prior to this year of poetry, I had only written a handful of poems.
I was washing windows either the day or in the few days before writing ‘Verb – I am sometimes quite literal about “write what you know.” I was oddly pleased by the sound a glass pane made as I dried it and the poem was built from there.
I wrote it first by hand, I have a strong preference for writing first drafts of anything by hand.
Why was the poetic form the best fit for this particular piece of work?
Where or what is the defining line between a short story and a free form poem? Several poetry editors have told me – as part of rejection notices – that I sometimes confuse the two. I’ve been told that a poem is something you feel and a story is something you understand, but I’m not convinced. We should be feeling and understanding something in all creative works, shouldn’t we? Several of the “poems” I wrote during my 39 project have become short stories – not always after being prodded by an editor – and a couple have become future art projects.
Is there a collection of poetry or even a single poem that acts as a touchstone for you?
My given name comes from an L.M. Montgomery novel (Kilmeny of the Orchard) and Lucy Maud seems to have found the name in a romantic-narrative poem written by a self-taught 18th century Scots poet, James Hogg.
If you didn’t write poetry, how do you think you might access the same fulfillments that poetry offers in your life?
If I didn’t write, perhaps I would dance more often.
As a poet, what does creative success or achievement look like for you?
I have one poem, of which I am most proud, which when I shared it with my father, rendered him speechless. Writing something like that again is what I’m chasing.
What are you working on now?
I almost always have several writing projects on the go – at the moment, these include a horror story about body-snatchers during the 19th century Crimean War, a cookbook matching recipes to my favourite classic radio drama and a novella set on an exoplanet where our heroes rustle Salmonidaen fish. And I’m ready to write any poem down should it come along.
Are there other art forms that inspire or inform your poetry?
One of my passions is listening to radio dramas. While I enjoy exploring performances from more recent times and other places, I first encountered radio dramas from mid-century America, and these, particularly the detective shows, are the ones that I fall back on as comfort listens. I’m positive that the rhythms of hardboiled radio detectives such as Gerald Mohr’s Phillip Marlowe, or Jack Webb’s Joe Friday have affected my writing, after hundreds of hours in their company over the past twenty years.
I also watch a lot of films, often older films, particularly black and white films. There’s something I find very appealing about the world as presented in white and black. It was Pinhole Poetry’s photography that caught my eye!
Of course, like many people, I read a lot, and I also find energy from exploring the world outside, and also in moving – I have found that most of the few poems I have written so far which are actually decent have come from actually doing something, or being somewhere, poems that I can physically act out. (Like ‘Verb!)
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 am a chronic over-writer, when I am writing short stories or poetry (or responses to interviews.) There is a specific voice I have borrowed and replay for myself when I am going into an edit, and it says “I don’t need to say that, I don’t want to say that, give that line to someone else.”
I am also a strong believer in reading your work out loud, and if you can find someone to cold read your work back to you, that may also be really helpful. A lot of it is about how the work sounds, to me.
Do you belong to a writer’s group? If not, where do you find poetry community and feedback?
I consider myself primarily a writer of short fictions, although I hope to expand from this. While I do belong to a local writing group in my small town, this local group is oriented towards flash fiction, we don’t get into poetry. There have been several other writing friends that I have “met” through online writing groups who are good enough to provide feedback on my poems, helping me to identify which speak to other people most clearly.
Ultimately, however, if I’m not sure if something I’ve written is good, but I feel it might be, I start sending it out to the publishers of the world, such as Pinhole Poetry, and seeing what they think. You just have to keep trying! Somewhere out there, someone is waiting to hear your words, and you may never know how much they need them.