Marguerite Pigeon

April 28, 2010 by Anonymous

Poetry Is Dead is an ongoing sponsor of The Cross-Border Pollination reading series, started by poet Rachel Rose. The next reading will feature Ray Hsu, Marguerite Pigeon, Camille T. Dungy, Mary Cornish, and David Zieroth. The reading will be May 4th in Vancouver and you can find more information on the Facebook event page. For future readings you can join the fan page. Poetry Is Dead recently caught up with Marguerite Pigeon to discuss her most recent book of poetry Inventory.

Poetry Is Dead: Your poetry book Inventory focuses on the object as muse. What was your drive to write about objects and what compelled you to some of the objects (preferably the banana)?

Marguerite Pigeon: I got into "things" when my prof at UBC, George McWhirter, introduced me to Francis Ponge, the French poet who considered ordinariness and objects to be way to go for poetry because through them he could think clearly about expression, subjectivity, experience. Later, I realized that lots of poets have, as you say, used the object as muse, including two of my favourites, Octavio Paz and Zbigniew Herbert. My own method was to inventory (thus, title) the things immediately around me -- literally within reach. My stapler. My tea bag. Myself. The more I brainstormed, the weirder everything seemed. I'd just moved back from Central America when I started this project, so bananas, in particular, took on a new power and became a conduit for that experience, for thinking about fragility, class, and women.

PID: You write both prose and poetry. Do you have a preference? Do you have trouble switching between the two?

MP: Oh man, do I. I've been working on a novel almost exclusively for the last two years, so whenever I try to write a poem, it comes out like a chopped up sentence. I'm trying to read lots of poetry to curb this tendency. I don't have a preference between fiction and poetry. They're like songs and rap. You can't dance the same way to pop and rap, but it feels good to let yourself go with both vibes. The experience is different.

PID: What are you working on now?

MP: I'm on - sigh - draft seven of my novel. I'm tinkering with a few poems. I have written three short stories this year that have been rejected by journals. And I have a very good play by a Mexican friend that I'm supposed to have translated into English three months ago. It's been an uneven time.

PID: Who are you reading right now?

MP: Well, it sounds pretentious but it's true: I'm reading Proust. It's changing my life. I'm on volume two. It's neither fiction nor poetry. It's beyond. I'm reading the collected poems of Czeslaw Milosz, very slowly with lots I don't understand. And I recently finished Jeramy Dodds' Crabwise to the Hounds (dense, funny, amazing).

PID: Does your poetry find itself in other mediums besides the printed page?

MP: Hmm. I'm not really "poetic" in my daily life or anything. That would take a different level of attention. I have given classes in high schools through the League of Canadian Poets, which is fun. I use song/rap lyrics as a way to demonstrate that poetry can be accessible. I also get them to write object poems, which turns out to turn their cranks. I find their responses very satisfying.