7/21/2020

the act of de-filing

The act of “defiling,” of taking things out of their normal files and putting them into new files (or eliminating files completely) is crucial to what I want to do. Poetry is all about metaphors, which is a form of lying to the reader—saying x is y when it’s clearly x! But it’s also y. I’ve made it y in my head, so it gets to be y in a reader’s head, too. And y is often truer than x or at least more interesting. The poetry I’m most drawn to creates these new connections and wakes me up to the world, allows me to see it freshly. Readers can expect me to lie to them continuously for their own imaginative good the way my favourite poets have lied to me!

- Kayla Czaga, in conversation with Kain Stewart, over at Event Magazine. You can read the whole thing here.

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