The Monthly interviews American poet, Melinda Wilson – Part 2 – The question of women and women’s oppression

What ideas do you investigate through your poetic writing?

I have always been interested in women’s experiences and women’s oppression. Also women’s rights and feminism.

I am also interested in the natural world, in animals, hence my studying to be a vet, Where I lived, there were always a lot of dead animals, I found a Vole once, a dead bird, and I found myself interested in the various states of decomposition. The question of the life cycle and the natural world is something which interests me.

I don’t write directly political poetry, but every now and again something from the political world will creep in. So, women’s experiences and the natural world are the themes I can’t get away from, and often I bring the two together.

What about structure. Do you concern yourself with structure?

I don’t worry too much about structure, but every now and again I might use form to get myself writing. If I am going through a period where I am having difficulty getting started, if I am having a brain blockage, I might decide to write a Sestina, or 14 lines of Iambic Pentameter, or a series of couplets. I can’t quite explain how using form to simulate your writing works, but I do think that form can give you walls, a space to work within, and sometimes I find that useful.

Outside of that experience, I’m not super attracted to form in and of itself. To me there has to be some coming together of the form and the content. I often find that the form is somewhat imposed by me during the writing process. I need a certain level of organisation to allow me to write, but other than that, I think often the poems assume the shapes that they require to make them work.

Fisherman’s Sonnet

I once heard a used condom called
a Coney Island Whitefish and wondered
what cold-blooded vertebrate that makes me.
With my gills peeled open in these wholly hostile
waters, the shore is thick with my dead.
But most whitefish have bones, do they not?
Little skeletons holding their flesh
tight to their sides. Those tiny ivory needles
that lodge in the throat when we are too ravenous
to withstand any delay. Under the boardwalk,
the love-carcass looks nearly transparent,
more jelly than fish. More guts than vessel.
More impulse than animal.
Poor little Whitefish, forgotten so soon.

(Melinda Wilson)

This poem was published on the following website: donyorty.com/2021/11/09/melinda-wilson-reads-at-kgb/

Do you have to do a lot of editing? Do you whittle your work till you reach the core or have you pretty much finished by the time your work reaches the page?

I’m not a huge reviser and I am definitely not a whittler. The work is close to being finished when it reaches the page as I tend to do the work internally before I start the writing process. I will revise especially when I have feedback from writers I trust and admire but otherwise, as I said, I am close to being finished when the work is transferred to the page.

If you would like to find out more about the work of Melinda Wilson – see the links below

www.facebook.com/melinda.wilson.9883

dulcetshop.myshopify.com/products/melinda-wilson-amplexus

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