for Steven Heighton
There’s no plan for growing into a body.
A fire burns its path across your field
and when it’s done, you return to swirling winds
and a still thing, hairless in wet grass and earth,
gasping at the wrap of bare arms.
Nor is there any plan for growing into a country.
Lying here, next to snoring Miss Canada
I no longer hear blood’s machine gun
propagate in my ears. Into blue evening I follow
a mirrored concept that barely exists,
murky line of light alive in the saying.
Derek Webster’s second collection of poetry, National Animal, recently won the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry. More at derekwebsterwriter.com.
Questions and Answers
How/where do you find inspiration today?
In the poems of other poets, alive and dead. Especially poems that seem to speak to events in the world at large or to my own private feelings. When art merges with the world/self, a third thing is created. If it survives long enough, it sometimes becomes a poem.
Do you use any resources that a young poet would find useful (e.g. books, films, art, websites, etc.)?
It’s good to keep a notebook close at hand, so you can write things down in the moment they occur to you: jokes, observations, descriptions, neat phrases, angry retorts, etc. Stray thoughts have a habit of coalescing into meaningful speech over time.
As a published writer, what are your tips or words of motivation for the aspiring poet?
Read. You need to read a lot more than you think you are reading now. Try to read a book per week, every week, for five years straight. It’s worth recognizing artistic creation, while great fun and deeply meaningful, requires serious, hard work. But you don’t have to read everything. If you don’t like a book after a half-dozen pieces, put it down and read something else. Reading good poems is the simplest way to create the conditions for writing good poems.
What inspired or motivated you to write this poem?
Originally, Horace’s Ode to Glycera (i.19). Later, I found meaning in Steven Heighton’s brilliant “The Machine Gunner” and the poem developed a kind of inner dialogue with Canada’s imperialist past and ongoing, unrealized aspirations. Then Horace’s reflection on the unpredictable nature of desire became a metaphor for the unpredictable course of nationhood.