Field Recordings welcomes New Englander, freelance editor and writer, M.W. McKay, to the internet wilds. You can connect with McKay throughout the feature. McKay has even teased us with a poem towards the end of the interview. Please take some time and explore.
Name:
Margaret Eckman
Pen Name:
M. W. MacKay
Most recent title published:
Hope Runs Through It, published by Four Square Press (foursquarepress.com)
Where do you write?
I write at my desk, in my office. Boring, I know, but it’s a place I associate with work (I’m a freelance editor), so I can make myself get down to writing. I think of ideas for poems all over the place; the trick is to remember those ideas while they’re fresh enough so I know what kind of thing I want to write about, and then to make myself actually sit down and write.
What are your rituals with regards to writing (ex: Must have tea, a cat on the lap, etc):
I don’t have much in the way of rituals. If a poem is coming on strong, I try to write it down as soon as I can; otherwise, I just try to stop delaying and start writing. (I can endlessly delay; there’s always something else that just must be done).
By the way, the cat does try and worm his way onto my lap and knock my hands off the keyboard—most annoying!
Describe your writing process:
I try and get a first draft of a poem finished without doing too much revising, although I find myself playing with words and sounds on a first draft even as I’m trying to find the right feel and rhythm for the poem. Every now and then, I can almost write what I want in one go, but that’s a rare pleasure.
What do you when you begin to revise? What's the first thing you do during that process?
Before attempting to revise, I leave a poem alone for at least for a few hours, typically a day or two—but not much longer than that, or I may end up abandoning it. Then I reread. I listen to the sound and rhythm and work on areas that sound clunky; I see if what I’m saying feels like a truth, or if it’s just a collection of pretty (or not so pretty) words. And then I take it to my writers’ group and let them tear it apart.
When revising, how many drafts do you go through before you feel comfortable with the final product?
I typically go through three or four drafts. Sometimes I’ll come back to a poem I wrote quite a while ago and completely rework it; it’s hard to say if the end result is yet another draft or a new poem.
As a poet, whose music, or voice, sometimes do you hear as you write or revise?
At times, I hear the voices of some of my favorite poets in my ear. I try to tune that out and pay attention to what I need to say; it can be hard! As for music, each poem creates its own music, and I try to tune in to that.
How would you classify your poetry? Are you a lyric poet? A Romantic? A Surrealist?
Yikes. I typically write free verse, but I pay as much attention to sound as sense. I’ve written poems in several forms (sonnet, haiku, villanelle, sestina, etc.) just for the fun of it; I like the sonnet form best because it requires such rigor.
When I write a poem, I want to tell a complete story in a few well-composed lines, and I want a reader to find all that’s needed in the poem itself to take something meaningful from it. I want the reader to connect with the poem. I dislike poetry that ignores the reader, that’s so idiosyncratic that only someone who knows the poet’s life story—or knows the poet personally—has any shot at getting the references and, in turn, getting anything worthwhile from the poem.
Does that explanation classify my poetry in any way? I don’t know!
What poets are you currently reading?
I bounce from book to book, and read the daily poems from “The Writer’s Almanac.” Louise Glück’s The Seven Ages is on my bedside table right now.
What poets/poems do you strongly recommend a reader to discover?
I love Billy Collins; he’s just fun! Even if you think you just don’t get poetry, I think you’ll enjoy reading his books. David Whyte; his poems are so moving. And I recommend everyone read “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye. What an amazing poem.
The contemporary American poetic tradition is elegy, do you discover elegiac qualities among your own writing as a whole? Are you a poet of loss?
Can you lament something you’ve never had? I have a mentally ill son; he’s quite intelligent (and funny), but has some crippling disabilities. He’s my only child. So I mourn the loss of what could have been. But I have to look for the hope (hence the title of my book), for him and for the world, or I’ll go crazy. I think that, even though it’s in my nature to write from loss, it’s also in my nature to look for and write about that thread of hope.
Where does your inspiration come from (music, film, other books)?
I’m definitely inspired by other poets. Reading a beautiful, well-written poem can get me off my ass and writing again. I’m “inspired” by my son in the sense that writing about some of my experiences with him helps me to cope, to understand him better, and to (sometimes) find meaning in those very difficult experiences. Nature inspires me, but I struggle to find ways to write about it that don’t come off as trite. The search for meaning (and maybe God?) pushes me to write.
Explain how your local and regional environment influences your writing, your process, and your product (in other words, how does your reality intersect with the worlds that you create?):
I grew up in New York City, but I’m a New Englander at heart. Right now, I live by the ocean, and it finds its way into many poems. And the reality of my life with my son permeates my writing.
You have to invite three authors to dinner, who are they? Why?
Do I have dinner with them one at a time, or is this a dinner party? What the heck: let’s have a party! Italo Calvino because of his lunatic imagination (read If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler for a wild ride), Madeleine L’Engle because her books took me on trips to other worlds when I was growing up (I read A Wrinkle in Time countless times), and Billy Collins because he’d be fun.
Favorite title (you wish you had come up with):
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. What a title!
Line you wish you wrote:
This lovely last line from the poem “Faith” by David Whyte:
Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.
Book you did not read in high school but now have read and have an appreciation for: And why:
Hmmm, I can’t really think of one book. Can I go for poetry as a genre? I never read poetry in high school (unless forced to). I don’t think I had the patience even to look at much poetry in high school.
Favorite words:
“Grace” is one of my favorite words. “Melange” has a lovely sound, although I don’t think I’ve ever used it in a poem.
Least favorite words:
Utilize, monies, facilitate, prioritize—any jargony word. They just clunk.
Advice you would like to pass on to other writers:
The usual: find a time and place to write, read a lot (I mean a LOT), and find other writers to work with (my writers’ group keeps me writing).
What you would discuss with your pet if your pet could talk:
With my cat Ralph: how delicious Eli the chinchilla looks, how much he’d like to have the Eli for breakfast, and how important it is not to eat fellow residents of the household.
With my chinchilla Eli: how delicious Timothy hay is, how much fun it is to twirl around in a dust bath, and how important is it to stay away from Ralph.
A poem about the two pets:
Siege
A cat contemplates dinner
The warrior stretches to reach his full height.
Ten inches of valor, of fury and fight.
He faces the feline, the silent black beast
that stares at the cage, contemplating its feast.
The warrior leaps, lightning movements a blur.
The beast tries to follow the gray streak of fur.
Its golden eyes widen to witness such rage.
Its velvet paw twitches, moves toward the cage.
The twitch triggers frenzy, the cage starts to rattle.
The warrior’s ready to fight his last battle.
The feline’s less sure though; it eyes the sweet prize,
and ponders the perils of something that size.
The beast leaps to safety, gives up on the fray.
Chinchilla won’t be on the menu today.
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