Poets in Profile: Lynn Tait

Some writers are drawn to their craft in an effort to be understood, but others choose their words with a different intention. In the latest edition of the Poets in Profile series, Sarnia poet/photographer Lynn Tait shares how poetry has been a vehicle for subterfuge, self-expression and grief.

Join Lynn at the Grass Roots Poetry Party in Point Edward on Sunday, August 18 for readings from the anthology EnCompass 1 (Beret Days Press). Her work appears in EnCompass 1 along with poems by Bernice Lever, Debbie Okun Hill, Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews and Jan Wood. Visit our Events page for more details.

Open Book:

Can you describe an experience that you believe contributed to your becoming a poet?

Lynn Tait:

I believe being an avid reader at a very young age certainly helped; as did my high school Creative Writing teacher Sandra Lawrence, once I began to write, and the music of Joni Mitchell as a teenager, but I became a poet through necessity. I lived in an oppressive household where there were physical punishments for expressing one?s self verbally, emotionally or questioning anything. To compensate, I wrote my feelings in journals. My journals were found and read by my mother. There was hell to pay, but I found I still needed an outlet. Poetry was the way around this. Metaphor and simile allowed me to express myself; my parents thought it wonderful I wrote poetry, and thankfully clueless as to the poems' meanings. Though there are great essays on the subject of ?Poetry as Truth,? I actually came by it through a bit of subterfuge. Since then, no matter how many times I try, I?ve never been able to keep a journal.

OB:

What is the first poem you remember being affected by?

LT:

This might sound somewhat hokey, but ?In Flander?s Fields.? Perhaps living on an air force base prompted this. It was also an easy poem to memorize. I usually cringe when I hear it recited on Remembrance Day. It has never been read aloud to my liking.

OB:

What one poem — from any time period — do you wish you had been the one to write?

LT:

?Somewhere I Have Never Travelled? by e.e. cummings. Dylan?s ?Death Shall Have No Dominion? and Yeat?s ?Second Coming? are close seconds.

OB:

What has been your most unlikely source of inspiration?

LT:

I usually need a hook. I do not write for the mere sake of writing. I?m uncomfortable with a poem that goes nowhere. Reading exceptionally good poetry inspires. I find reading reference books, encyclopedias and dictionaries extremely inspiring for some reason. Lately I?ve been writing glosa and erasure poems. I find them challenging. Unfortunately the death of our only child in 2012 at the age of 29 has become an unlikely source. I have become rather successful as an amateur photographer and I?m surprised that the one does not inspire the other — or at least not yet. Each art form seems to come from different places.

OB:

What do you do with a poem that just isn't working?

LT:

I usually spend a lot of time mulling a poem over in my head before it ever sees the light of day, so if it is to be, it will usually work at some point in time.
If it isn?t working: Keep some of the better lines for the future and toss the rest. Occasionally make it a prose piece.

OB:

What was the last book of poetry you read that really knocked your socks off?

LT:

The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane is knocking my socks off.

OB:

What is the best thing about being a poet?and what is the worst?

LT:

A love for poetry. Meeting and conversing with my own ilk. The worst: spending too much time inside my own head.