Zoe Dickinson (she/her) lives on the unceded lands of the Lək̓ʷəŋən peoples on Vancouver Island, where she is a manager at Russell Books and Artistic Director emerita of the Planet Earth Poetry Reading Series. Her debut full-length collection, Staff Picks for Invertebrates, is forthcoming from Guernica Editions in 2026.
You can read fledgling 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?
I’ve always been interested in place. This poem is part of a collection called Staff Picks for Invertebrates (forthcoming in 2026 from Guernica Editions) that is inspired in part by the Pacific coastline. The bluff I walk along every day is a character in that collection, and so are the tides, the rocks, the local flora and fauna. In this poem, I’m encountering the bluff as it is in late summer, during a drought both personal and environmental.
Why was the poetic form the best fit for this particular piece of work?
Poetry is a way of interacting with the world: of seeing and being seen. In this poem I am observing a specific part of the landscape, through the lens of my own particular human emotions, and forming some sort of reciprocal relationship with it. I’m not seeing the bluff as an object to be acted upon, but rather as a being with its own agency. I don’t know any other form of writing that would allow me to make that leap. Poetry is unique in the way it allows the poet to guide the mind of the reader down whatever weird pathway or digression the poet wants to travel, with no apology needed and very few limitations.
Do you have a collection of poetry or even a single poem that acts as a touchstone?
Many! Jan Zwicky’s Thirty-Seven Small Songs & Thirteen Silences, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (I recommend the version edited by Thomas H. Johnson), If not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho translated by Anne Carson… I could go on. I’m a book nerd and a bookseller by trade, so I could (and frequently do!) do this all day.
If you didn’t write poetry, how do you think you might access the same fulfillments that poetry offers in your life?
I can’t begin to imagine. Poetry has no replacement.
How do you revise your work?
With lots of help! The first pass I usually do myself, and then I’ll send the second draft on to my critique group. I take their feedback and do another round of edits, and then if I don’t feel satisfied, I might send it back out for critique again. That being said, some poems stay pretty close to their original version in the end. Not every poem needs to be fiddled with forever.
I think the most important thing in revision is being clear on what the goals of a poem are and knowing when it’s reached those goals. You may receive feedback that is totally valid but doesn’t mesh with your goals for that particular poem. Having that sense of the poem’s own internal structural integrity is important or you’ll wind up with something that’s lost all its momentum. Poems are by nature idiosyncratic. That’s part of the point of poetry. Every poem in the world is not for every person in the world, and that’s okay. Sometimes even people you respect won’t be in the right place for a particular poem of yours. Figuring out the difference between “didn’t reach this specific reader” and “not yet crafted well enough to reach your desired reader” is the most important skill for revising poetry.
As a poet, what does creative success or achievement look like for you?
I want people to read my poems. That’s it, really. I want my work to be read and spoken and if I’m really lucky, it may make some small difference in the way its readers see the world going forward.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a series of short poems tentatively titled Variations on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. They’re short observational pieces written almost like field notes, based on daily direct observation of and engagement with the Pacific ocean. Right now they’re structured as a series of chronological fragments labelled by moon phase and tide level (rising tide, 2.6m for example). I figure I’ll keep doing this for about a year and maybe I’ll have a book!
How or where or with what does a poem begin?
For me, it almost always begins with a specific image or observation. It’s a deceptively simple equation: I walk on the beach, I pay attention, I go home and write a poem. Of course it doesn’t always work out that way, but I find that if I get out into the world (currently my obsession is the ocean but the same principle would apply for any other environment), experience my surroundings in that deeper way that poetry allows, and then give myself even a small amount of mental space afterwards in which to write something down, a fairly decent percentage of the time some poetry comes out.
How do you make space for poetry in your daily routine?
It helps to have a dog. That sounds silly, but dogs need routine, and no matter what the weather’s like they always need a walk. We do the same walk every morning with our dog, along the same stretch of beach here on Vancouver Island. I can’t escape that even if I want to, and on the days when I can set aside whatever petty bullshit is obsessing me that day and actually pay attention to my surroundings, the possibility for poetry is always there. After our morning walk, I steal five or ten minutes out of the morning routine to jot down a few lines. If I don’t take that time, often the possibilities raised during my walk dissipate and come to nothing. If I do take the time, they have a chance to emerge, and I end up with something I can polish into poetry.
Do you belong to a writer’s group? If not, where do you find poetry community and feedback?
Yes, I have a longstanding critique group that meets once a month. I owe a lot to those women. If you’re going to write something for public consumption, this is a necessity. If you’re writing for your own amusement that’s another story, but everyone needs a bit of help to determine if what they’ve got on the page is transmitting accurately into other human brains.
I’m also a faithful attendee at the local reading series in town – I’m lucky because Victoria has one of the best reading series in the country and an incredibly talented poetry community. Planet Earth Poetry runs every Friday for most of the year, so a week rarely goes by when I don’t have the opportunity to listen to poets and/or read my own work at the open mic. It’s essential sustenance for my own poetic practice to spend that time in a room of people who are all trying to do the same thing. Just hearing poetry spoken regularly keeps my mind in that poetic space, and that is where I want to spend as much of my time as possible.
How did you begin writing poetry? Was there a specific inspiration or reason?
I remember dictating poetry for my mother to write down before I learned how to physically write. It’s always been a big part of my life. When I was 9 or 10, my father gave me a collection of Emily Dickinson’s poems, and I read the crap out of that book. Every page was dog-eared and some of the dog-ears had dog-ears. I was astounded that this person who had been dead for quite some time could take the driver’s seat in my brain and make me see things. And some things, I would forever see differently after reading her poem. That poem would inform my gaze for the rest of my life. Since then, making a similarly indelible mark on someone else’s view of the world has been my ambition in life.