The Monthly talk with poet Erik Kennedy – Part 2 – Form, Structure and Influences

Could you pinpoint any influences?

I have tons of writers and poets who have influenced me. I never wanted to sound like other writers (I hope), but I wanted to find a way where I could take what it was that I liked about certain writers and use that in a particular way.

I was a massive John Berryman fan when I was young. It would be very difficult to sound like him, and if you did try to sound like him it would be very noticeable, because he is unique. I love a good James Tate poem although I try and avoid being surreal just for the sake of it. I feel that it can be overdone.

In terms of more recent writers, Richard Siken, Natalie Shapero and Bob Hicok are all writers I really admire. In Aotearoa New Zealand, James Brown (not the “Godfather of Soul”), Rebecca Hawkes, Hera Lindsay Bird and Claudia Jardine. So many more. Apologies to everyone I don’t have time to name!

The older you get, the more people’s work you experience, the more poets you read, you build up more influences. I think that is quite important.

Do you work through any particular themes in your writing?

I was on a panel about climate change the other day and I was asked a similar question, and I said love, death, climate change and capitalism are my key themes. That would, in one way or another, cover 95 per cent of what I am working on.

My writing tends to emerge from the daily news cycle or personal experiences, so I write things as they come. I don’t set out to write a book around a particular or specific theme. That isn’t the way I work at all. But as a writer you do try to come up with pithy little descriptions of your books. So my first book, “There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime”, I describe as the “collision between the digital and the pastoral”. My second book, “Another Beautiful Day Indoors”, is probably about climate change and the pandemic more than anything else. And my most recent book, “Sick Power Trip”, has more personal and rawer elements in it: chronic illness, substance abuse, warfare.

What about structure and form?

There is something lovely about a poem finding its form. Sometimes poets say that form really matters to them, but then everything they write is free verse. I use a lot of different forms, so in the new book there are “ordinary” modern free verse lyrics, there are metrical, rhyming songs, there are some spoken-wordy poems, and there’s even a little essay (I won’t call that piece a poem even though it is within a book of poetry). I am also quite a fan of prose poetry.

Do you try using different forms for particular poems?

There is a method you can try when a poem isn’t working with one structure and so you rewrite it using a different structure. I find that a useful technique. You often get that exercise in writing workshops.

One of the really fun things about being a poet is that you get to play with form and structure, you get to shift and change the way your work looks and sounds. That isn’t always the case with other forms of writing where the expectations may be different.

Where to now?

My new book, “Sick Power Trip”, comes out in July. There will be some launch gigs for that soon. I am also writing loads of new poems, which gives me that wonderful feeling of having some momentum. I am happy that I’m writing new work, but I am also very happy with the new book!