Friday 23 January 2015

Platform Reading Series: February 5th

I'll be reading with fellow faculty and students from the U of T's School of Continuing Studies in the Platform Reading Series on February 5th.


Tuesday 6 January 2015

Chatting with Susan Gillis about my new book.

I recently had the opportunity to chat with the poet Susan Gillis briefly about my new book for her blog Concrete & River. Here's a sample of what we talked about:

SUSAN GILLIS: What brought you to poetry? Or, if you prefer, what brought poetry to you?  
PAUL VERMEERSCH: I think it starts with colouring books. I always hated colouring books. Blank paper was always better. When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was draw, to create my own images. Colouring books demanded orthodoxy, an adherence to a prescribed pattern and colour palette. But I wanted to play, to explore! When I got older I discovered that you can make art using language instead of crayons or paint. I tried writing songs. I tried writing stories. They didn't seem to fit, but eventually you just grow into things. I think I grew into poetry the same way I grew into my father's hand-me-down leather jacket. I started writing poems because they fit me best, and I discovered that I liked reading them best, too. All art forms are a kind of hand-me-down, I think. They come from the past. They are given to us, and they have traditions associated with them, but we have to decide what to do with them next.

Read the entire conversation here.