With 'Carousel' I had an idea and it all came out quickly.
— George Murray
The whole competition thing disturbs me. Not that I wasn't a part of it when I first started.
My self-editing process is intense.
In fact, in some ways, I actually feel much more confident about the quality of Carousel than I do about The Cottage Builder's Letter: probably because of its cohesive nature.
I was writing notes, but not composing poems. The Hunter began to develop out of this fragmented process.
I think the main influence has been living in New York City. Aside from all the crap around 9/11, I find it very demanding to think amid all the noise and visual pollution.
I no longer feel pressure to produce fiction.
I don't think there's anything wrong with someone having to read a poem twice. Or even a book.
I am certainly suffering from a modicum of performance anxiety.
A sequence works in a way a collection never can.
Well, we all start thinking we're going to be Romantic rock stars, but then reality hits and you realize no one reads you but other poets.
The poetry community here has been extraordinarily welcoming.
It's a bit of a crapshoot out there with young writers right now anyway.
I've often entertained paranoid suspicions about my fridge and what it's been doing to my poetry when I'm not looking, but I never even considered that my fan was thinking about me.
I wanted to rock back and forth between myth and distant futures, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It felt a bit like prophecy and a bit like storytelling.
I suppress the vast majority of what I write.
I guess there is also an element of deliberate change involved. Each of my books has been, at least from my point of view, radically different from the last.
I do try to let what is obviously unintended yet naturally good stay in.
Humour is a fine line to walk in poetry, as in fiction. I just think it's harder to write. It's harder to keep the respect of the reader too.
Then I discovered I loved writing poetry more than fiction.
New York was breaking my concentration and disintegrating my thoughts.
In my opinion, Al Moritz may be the best poet of his generation in Canada.
I'm not interested in being easy anymore. Readable, yes. Easy, no.
I think, for me, humour needs to be used like a strong spice - sparingly.
I still write the occasional short story, and poked at a novel once, but it's just not what I want to do.
I feel as though I've fooled the world into thinking I'm an adult and now they're letting me procreate.
I am still interested in the long or serial poem, but have written a few smaller things. I may start sending to journals again in a year or so... that's about it.
Even the people who have had success and made money writing these books of fiction seem to feel the need to pretend it's no big deal, or part of a natural progression from poetry to fiction, but often it's really just about the money, the perceived prestige.
