By Ariel Gordon
Originally from rural Alberta, poet K.I. Press has lived in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Ottawa. She’s now lived in Winnipeg for a decade, long enough, she says, that it “has slowed down the pace at which I can process urban fluster.”
Since moving to Winnipeg, Press has launched her third collection, Types of Canadian Women and of Women Who Are or Have Been Connected with Canada, Volume II (Gaspereau
Press), got full-time work as a creative-writing instructor at Red
River College, and gave birth to a daughter with fellow poet A.J. Levin.In her fourth collection, Exquisite Monsters (Turnstone Press), Press turns mothering poems on their ear, while focusing on biomechanical androids and pop culture.
Q&Q talked to Press about her latest collection, which launches May 7 at Winnipeg’s McNally Robinson Booksellers.
What made you choose to write about pregnancy and mothering, but with a slant?
I wrote a lot of mothering poems for the simple reason that I had a baby. Only a few of them have survived into the book.The pop culture and science-fiction references in Exquisite Monsters started with a Battlestar Galactica obsession. I’ve been a fan of a number of sci-fi and fantasy shows over the course of my life, Battlestar being only one. I was pregnant during the final season, and—this is in the poem—I missed the very last episode because it was on while I was giving birth. I somehow found this
significant.
How has teaching creative writing at RRC’s creative communications program affected your writing?
I experiment and am more confident in many more styles, genres, forms than I used to be—something I’m trying to hone by working on the multi-genre MFA at University of British Columbia. Getting older and losing fear of failure also helps.
To read the rest of the interview, see the Quill & Quire website.
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This interview is part of a National Poetry Month feature on Quill & Quire. Upcoming: a final interview with Elena Johnson.
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