Shelagh Rowan-Legg (she/they) is a writer and filmmaker. Her work has been published in The Windsor Review, The Ampersand Review, numerous anthologies, and her short films have screened at festivals around the world.
You can read Moths are older than dinosaurs… in the October 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?
The title is something someone wrote on Bluesky; I looked it up and read a little bit more into it, how moths have been on this planet for so long, and that just amazes me, that a species can still exist, especially after what happened to the dinosaurs. I was turning this over in my mind when I read that quote from Baudelaire, and somehow the two ideas came together, maybe that the only way that moths could process being around so many millions of years, would be to be slightly drunk all the time. Obviously I am anthropomorphizing the moths, but it helps with the poetic imagination.
Is there a collection of poetry that never leaves your (perhaps metaphorical) nightstand?
Probably the two collections that I return to the most are The Collected Works of Emily Dickinson, and Gwendolyn MacEwen’s ‘A Breakfast for Barbarians’.
If you didn’t write poetry, how do you think you might access the same fulfillments that poetry offers in your life?
I also make short films, though they are generally kind of experimental and poetic in their way. And I enjoy writing short stories; I’m not as prolific with prose but sometimes an idea needs to be prose rather than poetry.
How do you revise your work?
Normally on a first sitting, I will write two or three drafts, until I’ve reached a point where I think I’m at least temporarily finished. Then I will set it aside for a few days or a week, let the poem sit at the back of my head. Sometimes I will think about it, sometimes not. Then I come back to it and decide if there are further changes to be made.
As a poet, what does creative success or achievement look like for you?
I think my two biggest dreams as a poet would be to have a book of my verse published, and to have a poem featured on the podcast ‘Poetry Unbound’. Sometimes when reading through my work, I hear it as if Pádraig Ó Tuama were reading it aloud. I’ve been lucky to have a lot of poems published in various journals, so if people are reading and enjoying my work, if they are finding connection with it, that’s a great achievement. That’s why we make and consume art, to connect and learn and grow.
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?
Definitely making short films. It reminds me of poetry in terms of how you have to get your ideas cross in a briefer time span, you have to edit it together in a way that it often eclectic and unusual, and you can experiment with style and form.
How or where or with what does a poem begin?
It can come from many places. Something I might read online or in a magazine; watching a film, listening to music. I’ll read or hear something, whether it be an artistic work or a fact of life or science, and it starts working its way through my head, breaking apart so that I put it together again in a poetic way. Often there is then a second piece of information, usually a way of setting up the initial idea into a poetic form.
Are there other art forms that inspire or inform your poetry?
Certainly cinema, but also visual art, music, dance; all art forms inform and inspire each other, it’s just about how the artist finds a way to best express what they want, whether it be poetry or dance or music, etc.
How do you make space for poetry in your daily routine?
I almost always read a chapbook or pages of a poetry journal in bed at night, as it’s the best time to focus my mind, and often becomes a kind of meditation. This often also helps generate ideas, so I keep a notebook by my bed to jot down any inspiration.
What are you reading or watching or listening to lately that intrigues or inspires you?
I’ve been reading a lot about science, about outer space and the natural world. I also love apocalypse science fiction, so that is having a lot of influence on my writing. I lean towards speculative fiction, cinema, and television, which has had a big influence on my poetry.
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?
The best advice for any writing, whether it be poetry, prose, essays or film reviews, is to read the work out loud. With poetry, I often find that the breaths I end up taking, the cadence with which I speak the poem, shows me new places for punctuation or line breaks, where I might want to change a word, if I’ve got too much repetition or too many adjectives. Reading out loud is the best self-editing tool.
Do you have a trusted first reader and how did they win the honour?
I have a wonderful poetry group, Front of the Line, moderated by George Murray, and I get advice on my work from fellow poets, which helps a lot. An outside eye can often see problems or possibilities than I cannot.
Do you write by routine or do you wait for the poetry to visit you?
I used to only write when an idea visited me, wanting to wait for inspiration. But I’m not very prolific, and writing is a muscle: you need to exercise it. So I try to write by routine, and having a biweekly poetry group helps. I don’t always end up with a good poem, but sometimes you end up getting an idea from an unsuccessful poem. Of course there are weeks when I just have no ideas, and that’s when it’s good to have a prompt to get the creative juices flowing. If I’m feeling really stuck, I usually turn to writing haikus. That really helps if I’m just not in the mood, I still write something, and more often than not, those haikus become longer poems.
How did you begin writing poetry? Was there a specific inspiration or reason?
Both my mother and my grandmother wrote poetry, so I think it’s in my DNA. It just came to me naturally, the artistic form with which I am the most comfortable and which best reflects how I want to express myself, explore ideas.
In terms of poetic style or craft, is there a big question you are trying to find an answer for?
I can’t remember where, but I read something that said every poet is looking to write a poem so amazing, that they don’t recognize it as their own. I don’t think there is any big answer; the more I write, the more I realize there isn’t one big question to answer, or if there is, likely it’s already been answered long ago. But I think each generation has a new set of questions, and it’s a poet’s job to reveal those questions, and try to answer them.