An interview with Dan MacIsaac

Dan MacIsaac served for ten years as a director on UVIC’s Environmental Law Centre board. Brick Books published his collection of poetry, Cries from the Ark. His poetry has been published in a wide variety of literary magazines, including filling station, Stand, The Malahat Review, and Arc. Dan MacIsaac’s work has been short-listed for the Walrus Poetry Prize and the CBC Short Story Prize. His website is www.danmacisaac.com. 

How did you begin writing, and what keeps you going?

I turned to writing after studying music because I found that words offered the kind of precision that I was not reaching in melody and harmony. I keep writing because, paradoxically, in words I am seeking the clarity and unity of music.  Walter Pater asserted: “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.” One of my goals is to write poems about aspects of music that are as accomplished as Sue Sinclair’s “Learning the Waltz” where she celebrates “the third beat that catches/ us off guard.”

What poets have influenced the ways in which you write?

I have joked about the impact of my poetical 4-H Club, getting steeped in soil by Hardy, Heaney, Hopkins, and Hughes. From Earle Birney, ee cummings and Joe Rosenblatt, I learned much about loosening up and playing with language. For sheer lyricism, I still turn to William Blake, Robbie Burns, John Keats, Federico García Lorca, Gabriela Mistral, Dylan Thomas, and William Butler Yeats.

But there have been a host of other influences, including: Margaret Atwood, Margaret Avison, John Donne, Carla Funk, Sharon McCartney, Publius Ovidius Naso, P. K. Page, Sappho, Edward Thomas, Phyllis Webb, and Jan Zwicky.

Have you noticed a difference in the ways in which you approach the individual poem, now that you’ve published a full-length collection?

Yes, now I am often considering theme—where the poem might fit in a collection, what hole it could fill. One looks for compelling patterns and shuns crass repetition. Or, to put this in musical terms, can the individual poem be like a chord that is part of a pleasing progression?

How important has mentorship been to your work? Is there anyone who specifically assisted your development as a writer?

Regrettably, I did not take a creative writing seminar or course until about 10 years ago. Although I came to this process late, my work has benefited greatly from workshops with Don McKay and Lorna Crozier. Don has a keen eye and trained ear for accurate natural detail. Lorna’s attention is unfailingly focused on what is best in a poem and what needs to be revised. Nick Thran, my editor at Brick Books, quietly encouraged me to learn how to cull the dull lines and highlight the words that worked.

Can you name a poet you think should be receiving more attention?

In the U.S., Molly McCully Brown: her collection, The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, is a harrowing verse account of eugenic sterilization.

In Canada, Julia McCarthy: this superbly lyrical poet shows in her Return from Erebus and All the Names Between the stellar radiance of ephemera.

In Scotland, George MacKay Brown (1921-1996): his work is as starkly and powerfully formed as the standing stone circles of his Orkney Islands.

In Spain, Gloria Fuertes (1917-1998) exhibits persistent, impudent wit that reminds us that poetry is serious play.