The poet Ezra Pound once said poetry is “news that stays news.” Often, when we see poets interviewing other poets it is done in a journalistic fashion rather than in the forms we work in most. But what happens when poets do get interviewed in verse?
This month we interview Rebecca Marjesdatter, who is the current poetry editor for Tales of the Unanticipated and a longtime member of the acclaimed poetry performance group, The Lady Poetesses from Hell. Marjesdatter studied creative writing at the College of St. Catherine, library science at Rosary College/Dominican University, and was quite possibly the first and only poet to be a guest of honor at an anime convention. Her name is a tribute to her adoptive mother, who died of cancer in 1994.
A past winner of the Rhysling Award for speculative poetry, she has been published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, TOTU, and the anthologies Women of Other Worlds (University of Western Australia Press, 1999), The Moment of Change (Aqueduct Press, 2012), and the new Minnesota-based anthology of speculative poetry, Lady Poetesses from Hell (Bag Person Press, 2012). We caught up with her recently to discuss everything from blackbird anatomy to cosmic and sometimes comic transformations:
Regarding stars, words,
Energy like raven hearts
Begins where, with ink?
To catch inky crows,
Shiny foil–lure them to hand
With odd reflections.
Bringing the wind, page,
Examples of contentment
Creating meanings?
Am I quiet, or
The world, loud? No knowing, just
Shaping loaves, loam, poems.
Convening demons:
Art, change, memories, and hopes,
Muse as editors?
Carded wool, kneaded
Clay: creation is, firstly,
Order. Muses, spin!
Among tales you seek,
Runes unanticipated,
Jungles, space, cities?
Familiar paths lead
Unexpected places—these,
The ones to follow!
Eventful moments
Start with step, choice, a strange dream.
Drive, stay home, or fly?
Golden roads beckon
In every direction—still,
There’s no place like home.
Adventures too true,
Transformations of self, space,
Thoughts of times unique?
Story is truest;
History, a tale to bend,
Reflects today’s face.
Enigmatic eye,
Rebellion against when?
Known cosmos, next skies?
Was, will be—faces
Of one coin. No ways forward,
Only path is through.
Offer youth wisdom:
Runes, letters, ruminations…
Verse satisfies when?
Take seriously
Words, truth, craft. Yourself,
Take lightly; that is all.
One peers eyeing nets,
Reasons, eons, blooms. Each life?
Views of ice, crows, Eve?
Raven—serpent-wise,
Not an apple-eater. Prize?
A fire in the head.
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