By Michael Coleman
New York-based poet Molly Peacock always writes in the morning. Her award winning poetry has often been written before she even gets out of bed. But don’t expect her work to praise the morning dew, the beautiful sunrise, the gentle morning wind. It’s more likely to be about masturbation.
“It’s important to make art about subjects which everyone understands but very few people talk about,” she says. “I might write a poem about being in bed with my husband or remembering my father’s alcoholism. My gamble is that if I have felt something chances are someone out there will have felt it too.”
Peacock’s directness has not affected her career. Her poetry collections have ben published by Norton and Random House. She was president of the Poetry Society of American from 1988-1994 and has been poet-in residence at such American universities as Columbia, Bennington and NYU. Her peers, such as Robert Creeley and Canadian writer Libby Sheier, are also fans. Pulitzer prize winning poet Carolyn Kizer says Peacock “has a disciplined intelligence and a passionate apprehension of our mortal condition in every poem she writes.” And this Saturday, as part of the Toronto Writing Workshop, Peacock will be teaching a full day poetry workshop.
“Writing is a very lonely activity,” says peacock. “This workshop will give the writers a sense of community and an atmosphere of complete safety.”
Peacock says that the fifteen students in the program will be encouraged to share their poetry. Good poems are well crafted, passionate and sometimes difficult to share, says Peacock.
“A poet usually has a picture in mind as they write, the trick is to get that picture into the reader’s mind.”
To do that she is interested in exploring new ways to write and new subjects to write about with her students. She teaches various techniques like how to make stanzas, lines and rhyme schemes.
“It gives (the students) the techniques to control their emotions and passion.”
She insists that any potential students should see the course as an art studio, and not to expect the poems to be perfect.
Peacock currently has an apartment in New York but is staying in London with her husband, a Professor at University of Western Ontario. She says that Canadians are infinitely more polite than New Yorkers.
“There is a sense of community among the Canadian people—that you help one another.” Peacock also admires Canadian writers like Susan Musgrave, Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje. She says there are some general differences between the poetry of the two countries.
“Canadian poetry seems to deal with a lot with the weather and melancholy. There is a level of abstraction that might not be tolerated in the U.S.”
Her advice to all beginning poets?
“If you have a desire to write then you must write. If you ignore that part of you then that part dies.”
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