Alice Burdick : part five

Why is poetry important?

I don’t know why it is important, but it’s important to me and to others who don’t need to know why it’s important, but that it is. That would go for most art, I think. The value is in its existence. It is a mode of creation that hits home for some readers and some writers because we’ve chosen words to communicate ideas, feelings, imagination.

Alice Burdick : part four

How important is music to your poetry?

I love this question. Music is very important to words in general I think, when they’re working well. On a process level, I love writing while listening to music, and the types of music will influence my writing or invite a certain sort of exchange/conversation in a poem. Rhythm in all its forms is necessary, and makes a poem more enjoyable and exciting to read or to hear. It’s not all about “meaning” (whatever that is), but it’s a lot about sound and experience, and enjoyment.

Alice Burdick : part three

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?

Poetry is a very flexible form, and that is exciting. It operates on both minute and epic scales, and it can do a switcheroo at any point along the way. It is a nimble form and reminds me most of jazz in that way, free to take the reader as far in or far out as the poem goes.

Alice Burdick : part two

How did you first engage with poetry?

I first was exposed to poetry when my parents read it to me. My dad is still a writer of poetry, although very few have read his work. But there was always a manual typewriter on the go in our house. One of my earliest memories of poetry is the book Archy & Mehitabel by Don Marquis, with those great illustrations by George Herriman. Later, as a teenager, I found out about many different types of poetry through an extracurricular high school class called The Dream Class. It was what hooked me for good (or for better and for worse).

Alice Burdick : part one

Alice Burdick is the author of four full-length poetry collections, and a book of selected poems: Deportment: The Poetry of Alice Burdick. Her work has appeared in many chapbooks, broadsides, folios, magazines, journals, and anthologies, and she co-owns an independent bookstore in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia called Lexicon Books.

What are you working on?

I have found these months of the pandemic a very unproductive time in terms of writing poetry. I am working on a variety of writing projects, including a fun collaboration, but mainly I’m just keeping up with life - figuring out daily existence things like feeding, housing, and clothing the kids and cats (not so much with the clothes for the cats). Every now and then I write something, but it is incidental and not something I can dedicate a lot of time to right now. I’ve been doing this long enough that I know that life is doing the writing right now, and bits and pieces will present themselves for use later.