interview with myself, part 1

apparently, people have many questions about the below mentioned concept of Poetiken. clemens kuhnert compiled them, and gave them to a couple of authors to answer in 2003. i felt like answering some of them, too.

To you, when is a poem finished?

A poem is finished when it sounds round. I like smooth rhythms. A poem is finished when every word is equally important. Some of the poems I put on this blog are not finished.

Before you start writing, do you know where a poem will be going?

Not really, no. Mostly I do know how it will end, though, as the last line is usually the first one I come up with. If you want, I write poems backwards. The question for me is, therefore: Where does a poem start? What is it that lies at the heart of the matter?

Do you care how other poets treat a certain subject matter? Do you tend to follow trends?

I really don't care about what other poets write. Especially not when it comes to poetry. That might be a little different with respect to prose, which I find more important than poetry, because it tends to be more accessible. Personally, I find prose more difficult to write. It's a pain. My poetry is more spontaneous than my prose. Prose is a huge deal. That's probably the reason why I write so little.

I try to avoid trends like the plague, but I do notice a reoccurence of certain topics amongst the generation of writers I belong to. I think that is a) because people are much more alike than they like to believe and b) because zeitgeist and social surroundings take their toll on all of us.