Our final Woven Odes feature’s laurels rest on the be-chickened cover of Susan Holbrook’s Throaty Wipes (Coach House Books). Showing the reader “how poetry is always about risk-taking inside and outside of language” (M. NourbeSe Philip), Throaty Wipes features Holbrook’s signature mix of formal innovation and lyricism, tackling the real tough questions in life like “How does broadband work?” and “Does ‘chuffed’ mean pleased or displeased?”
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Our final Woven Odes feature’s laurels rest on the be-chickened cover of Susan Holbrook’s Throaty Wipes (Coach House Books). Showing the reader “how poetry is always about risk-taking inside and outside of language” (M. NourbeSe Philip), Throaty Wipes features Holbrook’s signature mix of formal innovation and lyricism, tackling the real tough questions in life like “How does broadband work?” and “Does ‘chuffed’ mean pleased or displeased?”Read “Memo” from Throaty Wipes below, and then check out the myriad experiences and poets that inform this stellar work: from bpNichol and Nicole Markotic to the birding haven that is Point Pelee, Holbrook’s home. ALU: Which particular poets or poetry collections have most inspired your writing?Susan Holbrook: Harryette Mullen, Sina Queyras, Nicole Markotic, Lee Ann Brown, Robert Kroetsch, M. NourbeSe Philip, bpNichol and more! All these poets inspire me with their passion for the alphabet and humour and formal innovation, all in the service of making the world visible to itself, asking it to open its arms. ALU: Are you inspired by a particular place, thing, or someone other than another poet? Point Pelee, where I live. A funneling site on North America’s bird-and-insect migration route, the air is thick with warblers, then fish flies, then dragonflies, spring peepers keeping you awake at night. I know Margaret Avison said “Nobody stuffs the world in at your eyes” but here it can feel like that.ALU: Do you have any particular writing rituals?I wish! Ideas come in the night, and are often forgotten. I did have a wonderfully bullying editor for the past year (Nicole Markotic) who shamed me into coughing up a couple poems a month. The coughs finally added up, and I had my Throaty Wipes.* * *This wraps our #WovenOdes series! You can still find Susan Holbrook and our other featured poets on our interactive poetry web, or on our poetry web poster. Also, relive (or catch up on) our Woven Odes series here.
