KARAN

Maria, thank you for these tender and striking poems. Your work moves through personal and spiritual landscapes with both vulnerability and strength that I admire deeply. In “Leaving Mexico,” you write “Because the microwave / lighting the evening / crept into my metaphor / without asking me.” I love that image so fucking much — the microwave lighting the evening. Let’s begin with the process question. How do you approach writing a poem? Do you start with an image, a line, or an idea? Do you have a writing routine? And most importantly, why poetry?

MARIA

Thank you, Karan. It’s truly an honor to be here. I think I start with a feeling. It’s usually one that’s been sitting on my sternum or in my collarbones for a while. If I catch it at the right time, usually early mornings, I can get a good whiff of it and transcribe it into a poem. This particular poem comes from a feeling of helplessness. God, that one felt fucking good to get out.

My writing routine is pretty simple: I write first thing most mornings. The quicker I get from my bed to my computer, the better. I also have a rule: no to-do lists until I’ve written. 

Why poetry? My original dream was to be a singer-songwriter. But I was (and still am) tone-deaf. Poetry lets me write, and I don’t have to ruin it by opening my mouth. 

KARAN

I’m struck by how you often engage with the divine in unexpected ways. In “Don't take this the wrong way, but God can’t hear you,” you write “In fact, all 3.95 billion gods / wake up every morning / in little apartments, get dressed / in colors that can scream.” God is my favorite subject in poems, even if I don’t mention God. Tell us about your relationship with God, especially how it connects to poetry. How do you approach writing about spirituality and the sacred in ways that feel fresh and personal?

MARIA

Do you have five hours? Lol, just kidding. I grew up in an evangelical church. God has been with me since the womb. I was baptized at sixteen in my boyfriend’s pond, and then a few years later, I left my parent's house with two hundred dollars in my pocket, no plans, and a slowly unravelling faith. Of course, I did the thing most people do when they leave a conservative church: go off the deep end. (Lol, kind of anyways.) Now, well into my mid-twenties, I do feel something calling to me that feels like God. But I don’t have the guts to say I believe in God. I’m not sure I ever will. That feels too certain. And like I can’t take it back when I want to (which is most days.) I approach writing about God with the assumption he won’t get mad at me if I do. Then, I’m simply curious. What if . . . we are all God? What if . . . God eats men for dinner? What if God is a fortune cookie and I crack him open? Then what? (I wrote about that this morning.) Basically, I’m spreading rumours about God and I’m praying he doesn’t find out.

KARAN

Your poems, like you, navigate between Mexico and Canada, between past and present. In “Hope tract,” you write, “Because the chords / in my throat drowned in hymns long before / I was baptized in my boyfriend’s pond.” How does this movement between places and times inform your poetic sensibility? What role does memory play in your work?

MARIA

I can’t count the number of times I’ve remembered something through a poem. I think memories, especially painful ones, like to stay hidden until they feel safe to come out. Thankfully, my memories feel safe inside my poems. Karan, I’m not sure what poetic sensibility means, to be honest, lol, but I do think movement between places and times begs interpretation. When things change, we want to know why. And we spend a lot of time doing just that. I was born in Mexico with white skin to a Russian Mennonite farming couple. I grew up eating Mexican food and speaking Low German, after immigrating to Canada and learning English. So yeah, I’ve had to figure out what the hell all that means for quite awhile now, haha. Poetry eases this process significantly and to it, I owe a great deal of my sanity.

KARAN

In poems like “A little feral” and “My Father's Eyelashes,” (I’m scared of that poem and I mean it as a high compliment!) you create some really powerful images through unexpected juxtapositions. The bumper sticker leads to dripping watermelon, and the father’s eyelashes become “Gates to hell.” Walk us through the process of writing the father poem, if you feel comfortable. I’m hoping the demystification will help me be less scared of that poem.

MARIA

The father poem is one I wrote in my writing community, Gather. It’s after Dion O’Reilly’s poem “My Mother’s Hands,” which is phenomenal and everyone should read it. That particular week, we looked at cacophonic sounds and how they can create disgust in a poem. I wrote this poem shortly after I wrote a poem called “My father, a horse whisperer” (published in Queen’s Quarterly in their Winter 2024 issue). That poem was a brutally honest depiction of my childhood and it was the scaffolding I needed to start writing some other scary shit. There really is no mystery except they, indeed, were the gates to hell.

KARAN

We ask this question to all our poets so I’ve been excited to ask you this for a while! There’s a school of poetry that believes a poem or a poet can categorize their work in one of these four ways: poetry of the body, poetry of the mind, poetry of the heart, poetry of the soul. Where would you place your work within this framework, if at all? And do you see your poetry moving to a different direction?

MARIA

Hmmmm I love this question. If this was a Venn Diagram, I imagine I might rest somewhere between poetry of the body and poetry of the soul. Truthfully, I would like to write more poetry of the heart, but I’m awfully scared of love poems. If I had to guess where I would see my poems in five years, I could see a lot more poetry of the body. I was diagnosed with endometriosis this year after nearly a decade of unexplainable pain. So there are a lot of pent-up poems there that will probably want to come out. 

KARAN

Okay, tell us about Gather. What is it? How can one be part of it? Additionally, how has building and participating in a creative community influenced your own work? What have you learned from fostering these connections?

MARIA

Gather is a group of, I like to say, gutsy and bold poets. (One time, on a Zoom, I mashed the two adjectives and accidentally said butsy poets . . . and man did I hate myself when I realized I could have said gold instead. It was right there.)

I don’t like to write alone. And I like it when people care about my poems. I founded Gather on the basis of those two things. I believe poems should be cared for and enjoyed and passed around like a good dish at a potluck. I found out most poets agree with me. In Gather, we care for each other’s poems. When it comes to craft and perfecting our line breaks, we’re ravenous, yes, but we also hold each other’s love poems and death poems and sometimes even drink beer and wine and read hilarious poems together for funsies. We have poets from all over the world at our table, some established, some emerging, and all the coolest people.

Gather turned one year old this January, and what I’ve learned the most from creating a community like this one is the power of bolstering. We need each other more than ever before. I like the African proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Our table is currently full, bursting at the seams, actually. But we’ll likely invite some new poets at the beginning of April. I have a waitlist to keep track of all 438 of you (what is life, am I right?) It’s on our website.

KARAN

Several of your poems engage with the body and medical experiences, as in endometriosis. Tell us about the experience of writing about the body and its vulnerabilities? Do you find that poetry provides a unique space for exploring these experiences?

MARIA

It’s really hard. I’ve only started writing about my experiences with endometriosis this year. I was gaslighted by my doctor for almost a decade into believing there wasn’t anything wrong with me, even though I was experiencing debilitating pain on a monthly basis. I had to advocate for myself for years before I was taken seriously. I had to believe myself before anything changed. 

Part of writing about it is validating myself and the experiences I’ve gone through. When I finally gave myself permission to write about my endometriosis, it felt like, after all this time, I was finally being believed. To me, that was the big breakthrough. 

KARAN

You often write poems “after” other poets (as do I!) — Ocean Vuong, Anne Sexton, Dion O'Reilly here. What is it about the “after poem” that appeals to you? Is it a way to be in conversation with your hero’s works? I have countless poems after Bob Hicok lol. Is it because you’re often inspired by reading? What draws you to particular poems or poets as starting points for your own work?

MARIA

I don’t believe inspiration is a solo event most of the time. Often, what prompts me to write a poem is reading a poem I’m wowed by. I think it’s the highest compliment we can pay another poet: I loved your poem so much it made me want to write. What draws me to a particular poet or poem that makes me want to write is risk. When I notice a poet takes a risk in their form, their language, their line breaks, etc. it startles me. I breathe quicker and realize, oh shit, I want to try this as well. 

KARAN

Maria, you’re a champion of poetry and we love that. What is some of the best advice you’ve received so far? Also, to continue our conversation from earlier, what would you say to young poets who are confused whether to publish their work on their social media or hold on to it so they could send it to literary magazines?

MARIA

The best advice I’ve ever received has come from me and it might come across as a little unconventional or cocky, but bear with me. I’ve told myself this quote over and over and over again: “If them, why not me?” I put it on my bathroom mirror. At first, I came up with a bunch of logical reasons. They’re more talented, they’re more organized, they’re more hard-working. These were all true, mind you. But, I made a plan to make them not-true. Read more poetry, write more poetry, spend more time building my community, etc. This will be my life’s journey, I’m sure.

Don’t separate yourself from the greats. Study them. Learn from them. Rise to them, little by little, every day. 

To poets confused as to where they want to find homes for their work, I would say to let your desire be your compass. What do you want to do? Is it fun for you to post on social media and connect with other readers? Then do it. Or does the idea of handpicking a warm, beautiful home in a lit mag for your poem make you giddy? I’ve learned there is absolutely no right way. So just do what you enjoy, do it well, and the rest will come. 

KARAN

We’d also love for you to recommend a piece of art (anything other than a poem) — perhaps a song, a film, or a visual artwork — that you find particularly inspiring or that you think everyone should experience.

MARIA

I think everyone should experience Cornelius Krieghoff’s work — he’s a Dutch-Canadian artist. There is an incredible collection of his paintings in the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, and every time I go, I feel lightheaded in the best way.

KARAN

Finally, because we believe in studying the master’s masters, we would love to know which poets have influenced you most so far in your journey as a writer.

MARIA

Oh, this is such a hard question. In short: Shel Silverstein, Langston Hughes, Anne Sexton, Ruth Lepson, Ada Limón, Barbara Ras, Ellen Bass, Victoria Chang, Jane Hirshfield, and Ocean Vuong.