Cara Waterfall : part five

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author? 

I re-read Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith. She is masterful in the way she writes about Hurricane Katrina. She inhabits various personas — dogs, elderly patients at a nursing home, and the hurricane itself — and gives voice to the suffering of those left behind and those who survived. She is also gifted at a myriad of poetic forms, including the sestina and abecedarian, and her poetic language is second to none. But all her poetry books are worthy of inspiration.

Paisley Rekdal is another favourite. Imaginary Vessels is a book in which each poem is linked to inhabiting a particular vessel, whether it is a public persona (her Mae West sonnets are incredible) or a rumination on bubbles in a playground, where the narrator’s “thinnest edge / of dream still wavers, the one where the doctor tells me / I am carrying, but will not tell me what / or when.” The “Wartime Devotional” on portraits of skulls unearthed near the Colorado Mental Health Institute is particularly moving.

Cara Waterfall : part four

What poets changed the way you thought about writing? 

I adore The Sleep of Reason by Jenny George. She has this innate ability to write candidly and cleanly (without embellishment), but each line is layered and thought-provoking, and to be honest, deeply unsettling. Her poems stuck with me long after I read them. (The Sleeping Pig will change the way you see pigs forever!)

“Oculus” by Sally Wen Mao is a voyage into new ways of seeing and being seen, particularly in the age of social media and too much information. It’s so creative on so many levels, not only with regard to format, but also the many perspectives that come into play.

“Late Wife” by Claudia Emerson, where she addresses her first husband, her second husband and the late wife of her second husband, is extremely poignant. The language is exquisite and she expresses her pain in new and evocative ways. This book becomes even more moving when you consider that Emerson succumbed to cancer as the “late wife” did.

“Say Something Back” by Denise Riley is a meditation on grief. After her son’s sudden death, she writes not necessarily to make sense of it, but to have an outlet. The book comes at you from all angles in all formats. Her grief is so palpable and there is nothing linear in how she experiences it.

Cara Waterfall : part three

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry? 

I need silence to write creatively, but carving out quiet time can be difficult. I work part-time and I have three children under six years old so I often end up editing poems on my iPhone after they are asleep. Any lulls in my writing can be attributed to the encroachment of “real life” on my creative life (which I’m sure other poets experience as well.) That said, because poetry is my only creative outlet, I find ways to make time for it, even if it is only in increments. Those small moments of writing inspire me to continue.

Cara Waterfall : part two

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

It allows me to tap into my emotion in the most abstract ways — and it can definitely be cathartic. I find a great deal of comfort in piecing words together in this way. Poetry is the closest I can get to achieving fullness of self-expression.

Cara Waterfall : part one

Ottawa-born and Costa Rica-based, Cara Waterfall’s work has been featured or is forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry, CV2, The Maynard, The Fiddlehead, SWWIM, Rust + Moth and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. She won Room’s 2018 Short Forms contest and second place in Frontier Poetry’s 2018 Award for New Poets. She was recently selected as a finalist for the 2019 Coniston Prize. She has a postgraduate diploma in Poetry & Lyric Discourse from The Writer’s Studio at SFU, and a postgraduate diploma from the London School of Journalism.

How did you first engage with poetry? 

My father is a great lover of literature and introduced me to William Blake at an early age, specifically Tyger, Tyger. I also remember a dog-eared copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verse. I particularly love the epigraph Stevenson wrote “To Alison Cunningham, From Her Boy” and these lines in particular: “For the long nights you lay awake /And watched for my unworthy sake:/For your most comfortable hand/ That led me through the uneven land”.