My poetry aims to be evocative through crafting short, sharp, and coherent narratives. I consider my poetry to be a layered process of answering questions, mainly, the how and why of relationality. My recent collection Gold Star thinks about power—who has it and under what conditions, what it does to or for us, and how to access or undermine it. I forage in my memory for images, textures, and sensations to weave into present observations, feelings, and ideas. There is little forward-looking imagination in my writing, capturing less of a what can be than a what has been. But that takes its own kind of vision, a careful and scrupulous uncovering and excavating that hopefully, when brought into the light, reveals something new or revelatory.
Like many poets, I am increasingly captivated by form, interested in how to best convey the meaning through the container of the poem itself. I am growing comfortable with letting poems determine their own kind of space on the page. Many of the final poems in Gold Star went through deep processes of revision that bore little resemblance to their beginning. They were thoroughly reconstructed, stripped away and rebuilt with precision, in a process that was thrilling to explore. This doesn’t work with all poems, either; I’ve learned not to get too invested in the shape if it detracts from the central story. It is a delicate balance of writing, revising, seeing, speaking, and hearing the poem in order to coax it along into its final form.
Emma McKenna reads from Gold Star
* * *
Emma McKenna a multidisciplinary writer with a passion for women’s histories and narratives. She received her PhD in English and Cultural Studies from McMaster University and has published widely on feminist issues. McKenna is also the author of Chenille or Silk, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry. Born in Duncan, British Columbia, and raised in Alberta, she currently lives in the Waterloo Region with her husband and two dogs.
* * *
Gold Star is available here on All Lit Up, or from your favourite indie bookstore.
