CoCoPoPro: Here Is Where We Disembark by Clea Roberts

We’ve been going west to east for the most part on our Coast-to-Coast poetry project, but we’re making a major trajectory adjustment this morning. We must now go north! We’re trekking to the Yukon where poet Clea Roberts makes her home. Our featured poem is from her highly acclaimed debut collection, Here is Where We Disembark (Freehand Books, 2010). Landscape and the natural world are major players here, and although not many of us have been to the Yukon, Roberts’ poetry has a way of not only bringing us there, but making us feel right at home. One section of the book is even devoted to the ever-captivating Klondike gold rush. Don’t forget to scroll down to read the Q&A with Roberts.

Q&A with Clea Roberts

What are you reading right now?

David Abram’s Spell of the Sensuous and Adam Gopnik’s Winter.

Where is the oddest place in which you have ever written (or been inspired to write) a poem?

A guest house in Bhaktapur, Nepal. Sometimes being somewhere radically different from home lets me sink into the familiar in a deeper, more intense way.

Why should people read poetry?

Poetry lets us know ourselves a little better.

Who are your favourite poets?

Don McKay, Sharon Thesen, Sue Goyette, Laura Kasischke, Stephen Dunn, Tomas Tranströmer and Louise Glück, to name a few.

What’s your must-read literary magazine or website?

I like Orion magazine. They publish great nature poetry. Also Lemon Hound and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

*****

Clea Roberts lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, on the Takhini River. She is the co-organizer of the Whitehorse Poetry Festival, and her debut collection of poems, Here Is Where We Disembark, was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award.

_______Edited from the original post, published on the LPG blog